text stringlengths 213 24.6k | id stringlengths 47 47 | dump stringclasses 1 value | url stringlengths 14 499 | file_path stringlengths 138 138 | language stringclasses 1 value | language_score float64 0.9 1 | token_count int64 51 4.1k | score float64 1.5 5.06 | int_score int64 2 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A Nor'easter made driving treacherous at times along roadways in New Hampshire on Thursday.
State police said they responded to around 100 accidents across the state Thursday. An oil truck rolled over in Salem earlier in the day, a private plow truck driver rolled over on I-93, and four people were hurt in a head-on collision in Kingston.
State police said Thursday morning that speed limits on all the major highways, with the exception of Interstate 95, had been reduced to 45 mph.
The Department of Transportation said crews started treating the roads at about 8 p.m. Wednesday. It said 100 percent of its crews were out by midnight.
As people get reacclimated to driving in the snow, DOT officials are offering some tips for staying safe on the roads. It says drivers should slow down, avoid crowding the plows, and leave plenty of room between their car and the cars in front of them.
Also, the DOT said to avoid using cruise control and always wear a seat belt. The DOT said over the past 10 years, about 71 percent of all traffic fatalities in New Hampshire involved non-seat belt use.
The Red Cross is also reminding drivers to keep a full tank of gas in order to prevent car fuel lines from freezing.
Road conditions could worsen overnight, when temperatures across the state dip below freezing.
State police are asking drivers to slow down and test the road due to possible freezing. Troopers warn that drivers may be facing black ice. | <urn:uuid:2c3c718f-b082-40d4-9cb8-17e2010302f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wmur.com/news/nh-news/Nor-easter-causing-traffic-trouble-in-New-Hampshire/-/9857858/17910120/-/146pm4qz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976445 | 305 | 1.703125 | 2 |
|A family member of a cancer patient seeks advice from a doctor by showing the patient's CT images at Tianjin Medical University Cancer Hospital in April. (Photo/Xinhua)|
One in five may fall victim if they live to be 74
About one in five Chinese people might develop cancer if they live to be 74, according to a new report.
There is one death from cancer every five minutes on the Chinese mainland, which translates into 2.7 million cancer deaths annually, according to the 2012 Cancer Registry Annual Report, which is recognized by the government.
The figures are based on data collected from 72 cancer surveillance sites in 24 provinces, covering 85 million people.
"Worldwide, China continued to have relatively low cancer incidence, but the death rate was relatively high," Chen Wanqing, deputy director of the National Central Cancer Registry, under the Ministry of Health, told China Daily on Wednesday.
The report said the cancer rate stands at 285.91 per 100,000 people in China, bringing 3.12 million new cases a year.
This is lower than most developed economies, like the United States, European nations and Australia, but far higher than in underdeveloped economies, Chen said.
"The cancer incidence rate goes up as people age," he said, peaking when they reach 80.
Given its rapidly aging population, "China's cancer burden will increase as well," Chen said.
The report said lung, stomach, colorectal and liver cancers are the main types among the Chinese population, with lung, liver and stomach cancers being the top killers.
Breast, lung, thyroid and colorectal cancers are rising sharply, Chen said.
Your moment supports my whole life
Love makes us stay together forever
Chinese under the pressure
China sends patrol vessel to S. China Sea
Why ‘Chinese style road crossing’ occurs
Beijing witnesses 7th snowfall this winter
Survey: Chinese men more 'hasty' in love
China's weekly story (2012.12.21-12.27)
Revised traffic regulation takes effect in China | <urn:uuid:2856593d-f268-4e60-82a4-bf1e93ffb967> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://english.people.com.cn/90882/8086867.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941608 | 432 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Ninety percent of the large predators in the ocean are gone and their populations have collapsed, and some scientific studies suggest that most fisheries worldwide will collapse before 2050.
The reason for this is that we have taken too many fish out of the sea, and we keep taking more before the remaining populations are able to reproduce. It’s like constantly withdrawing from a checking account without ever putting any money in. Guess what will happen to our fish – or our finances. Pretty soon, they’ll simply run out.
How to Fix It
But there are alternatives that have proven successful. One of them is to create no-take marine reserves, areas in the ocean set aside without fishing to allow marine life to recover. Watch the video where Mel, the “very weird” fish, will show you what marine reserves can do, and why we need many more.
Marine reserves are like savings accounts, with a principal we don’t touch, but which produce compound interest we can enjoy. Fish abundance increases spectacularly within these reserves – 450% on average in less than a decade. Now try to think of any financial stock with that performance.
In addition, because there are so many fish inside these reserves, some of them spread beyond the boundaries of the reserves, into areas where they can be caught by the local fishers. In places like Kenya or the Solomon Islands, fisher income has doubled in areas next to well-enforced marine reserves. Many reserves have also attracted flocks of tourists who want to see a healthy marine environment full of large fish, helping to create jobs in tourism that bring up to 40 times more income to the local communities than fishing.
For both fish and fishermen then, marine reserves are a win-win, but presently less than 1% of the ocean is fully protected. Scientific studies suggest that we need at least 20% of the ocean protected in order to replenish the natural populations to a sustainable level for continued human use.
Please share Mel’s cartoon with your friends, family, colleagues, and strangers. Let’s give Mel a voice, so that more of us understand that we need those savings accounts in the ocean.
And remember, like in a bank account, the larger the principal, the larger the interest we can enjoy.
Help us name this video on marine reserves! E-mail your suggestions to mhines at ngs dot org. | <urn:uuid:87db1c18-739e-4ec1-82ec-805af71926ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/09/25/you-can-have-your-fish-and-eat-them-too/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ng%2FNEWSBlogs%2FNat_Geo_News_Watch+%28News+Watch%29 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952837 | 494 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Evangelism: Good News vs. Bad Lies
Sermon shared by Nate Herbst
Summary: The good news is good news: learn to recognize the top 10 evangelism lies, believe the Truth and work together with God fulfilling His Great Commission.
Audience: Believer adults
About Sermon Contributor
Sharing the Good News
The good news is good news.
Everything else fades in comparison to the Good News.
Would you keep the cure for cancer a secret? Would you let a friend die in a fire?
Over 150,000 people die each day and nearly 2/sec. into a Christ-less eternity.
Nearly 4,000 by the time Iím done sharing.
How can we keep silent?
You are already sharing every day!
How many of you spoke with someone about a class, an interest, a TV show, a sport last week?
Mt.12:34 - ď...out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.Ē
What would you think if you had never heard me talk about Erin?
If I am not sharing the good news I have to evaluate where my heart is at.
The more you love God the more you wonít be able to keep from talking about Him.
If you arenít sharing, focus on connecting with Him.
We are all already sharing so much about so many things every day.
We believe so many lies about evangelism and these turn evangelism into a ďmonsterĒ in our minds.
I need to ďdemystifyĒ the good news and develop a natural lifestyle of being open about what I love most, sharing Godís love and plan of salvation with those around me.
My Goal: Share the good news every day!
The 10 evangelism lies Christians buy into:
We have each believed some or all of these at some point - but you donít ever have to believe them again.
Lie # 1 - You must have the gift of evangelism (hospitality, giving, encouragement, etc).
Many donít share because they donít feel like they are capable.
On the job training - practice!
Lie # 2 - Your personality, looks, style, actions and such validate the gospel and make it relevant.
Lie #2 - Many donít share because they feel they arenít a good enough Christian.
Thatís the whole point of the good news!!!
Lie #2 - Also, many people donít share because they donít think they have all the answers.
You never will! Do your best to prepare and then trust Him.
Lie # 3 - You must be friends first.
No biblical example.
Practically impossible - how long would it take us to befriend everyone at FLC?
Lie # 4 - You have to earn the right to be heard.
Jesus did that 2000 years ago.
Lie # 5 - They donít care how much you know till they know how much you care.
They need both!!!
Love them and share with them.
How loving is it to let them go to hell?
Lie # 6 - God doesnít want us to offend anyone.
Have good boundaries...share in a loving and truthful way and then trust results to God.
If they get offended that is not your problem.
Lie # 7 - Good works are evangelism.
Good works are good and God tells us to do them but they are different than evangelism.
Both / and not either / or.
Lie # 8 - ďPreach always, use words if necessary.Ē
Falsely attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.
There are good Mormons, Bhuddists, witches and atheists - good works donít give people the way to eternal life.
Words are necessary!
Rom.10:13-14 - ďEveryone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?Ē
Lie # 9 - Older people are stuck
Comments and Shared Ideas
Join the discussion | <urn:uuid:c6387a89-0b0b-4371-9947-a7978170ceef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/evangelism-good-news-vs-bad-lies-nate-herbst-sermon-on-evangelism-how-to-145272.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916701 | 888 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Some corporations fear that their employees might tweet something that hurts the corps reputation. And you should too! Most young adults that use twitter or a blog don’t think much about the consequences. Whatever you say/tweet/post might be available to the whole world forever – indexed by seach engines – and for everyone. This includes future bosses you might have, girlfriends and collegues. So if you post something that might be causing a bad reputation to you, try to take it off the net as soon as you realize it and just hope that it didn’t already spread around! Blog entries can be deleted, tweets can be deleted and most sites you post something onto give you the possibility too. Just do it before others recognize it and copy-paste it forever. And hope that the search engines won’t cache it forever. | <urn:uuid:f773dc9e-f80e-4ec5-b7d7-e950d3d667a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ithoughts.de/think-about-what-you-tweet-and-blog/comment-page-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928957 | 171 | 1.695313 | 2 |
State wildlife officials say hunters killed 5 percent more deer last year than in 2011.
According to preliminary data from the Department of Natural Resources, hunters killed a total of 366,747 deer over all the state seasons last year compared with 347,711 in 2011.
They killed 245,539 deer during the 2012 traditional nine-day November gun hunt and 93,452 during the archery season, including 45,775 bucks, a new state archery harvest record.
The numbers aren't final. The archery season continues in metro units. | <urn:uuid:fc856211-2546-4f11-ad62-43d2a89dd32a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wsaw.com/news/headlines/Hunters-Took-5-percent-More-Wisconsin-Deer-in-2012-189292621.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942189 | 111 | 2 | 2 |
2351 Fenn's Wainscot Chortodes brevilinea
(Fenn, 1864)Wingspan 30-38 mm.
Restricted to a small number of fenland localities in East Anglia, this is a very local species, though it can be common where it occurs.
The adults fly at night in late July and early August, and will visit sugar as well as light.
The caterpillar is grey with brownish-yellow stripes, and is quite different from other Photedes larvae. It feeds on common reed (Phragmites australis), initially in the stems and later on the leaves. | <urn:uuid:17bb9cf5-feff-4855-999d-d7e25d1a3262> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ukmoths.org.uk/show.php?bf=2351 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950176 | 135 | 2.703125 | 3 |
The Real Reason for Obama's Threat to Veto the Indefinite Detention Bill (Hint: It's Not to Protect Liberty)
I - like everyone else - am horrified by the Senate's passage of legislation that would allow for indefinite detention of Americans.
And at first, I - like many others - assumed that Obama's threat to veto the bill might be a good thing. But the truth is much more disturbing.
As former Wall Street Street editor and columnist Paul Craig Roberts correctly notes:
POLICE STATE STARTED YEARS AGO
The Obama regime’s objection to military detention is not rooted in concern for the constitutional rights of American citizens. The regime objects to military detention because the implication of military detention is that detainees are prisoners of war. As Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin put it: Should somebody determined “to be a member of an enemy force who has come to this nation or is in this nation to attack us as a member of a foreign enemy, should that person be treated according to the laws of war? The answer is yes.”
Detainees treated according to the laws of war have the protections of the Geneva Conventions. They cannot be tortured. The Obama regime opposes military detention, because detainees would have some rights. These rights would interfere with the regime’s ability to send detainees to CIA torture prisons overseas. [Yes, Obama is still apparently allowing "extraordinary renditions" to torture people abroad.] This is what the Obama regime means when it says that the requirement of military detention denies the regime “flexibility.”
The Bush/Obama regimes have evaded the Geneva Conventions by declaring that detainees are not POWs, but “enemy combatants,” “terrorists,” or some other designation that removes all accountability from the US government for their treatment.
By requiring military detention of the captured, Congress is undoing all the maneuvering that two regimes have accomplished in removing POW status from detainees.
A careful reading of the Obama regime’s objections to military detention supports this conclusion. (See http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/112/saps1867s_20111117.pdf)
The November 17 letter to the Senate from the Executive Office of the President says that the Obama regime does not want the authority it has under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), Public Law 107-40, to be codified. Codification is risky, the regime says. “After a decade of settled jurisprudence on detention authority, Congress must be careful not to open a whole new series of legal questions that will distract from our efforts to protect the country.”
In other words, the regime is saying that under AUMF the executive branch has total discretion as to who it detains and how it treats detainees. Moreover, as the executive branch has total discretion, no one can find out what the executive branch is doing, who detainees are, or what is being done to them. Codification brings accountability, and the executive branch does not want accountability.
Those who see hope in Obama’s threatened veto have jumped to conclusions if they think the veto is based on constitutional scruples.
Even if Obama's threatened veto was for more noble purposes, the fact is that it would not change anything, because the U.S. government claimed the power to indefinitely detain and assassinate American citizens years ago.
For example, law school professor and National Lawyers Guild president Marjorie Cohn pointed out in 2006:
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."
Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush’s list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government’s policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.
Glenn Greenwald and Fire Dog Lake's Emptywheel have also documented that the White House has believed for many years that it possessed the power to indefinitely detain Americans. See this, this, this, and this.
I noted Friday:
The police state started in 2001.
Specifically, on 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney initiated Continuity of Government Plans that ended America’s constitutional form of government (at least for some undetermined period of time.)
On that same day, a national state of emergency was declared … and that state of emergency has continuously been in effect up to today.
The Obama administration has also said for more than a year and a half it could target American citizens for assassination without any trial or due process.
In 2005, Chris Floyd pointed out that the ability of the government to assassinate U.S. citizens started the very week of 9/11:
On September 17, 2001, George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing the use of "lethal measures" against anyone in the world whom he or his minions designated an "enemy combatant." This order remains in force today. No judicial evidence, no hearing, no charges are required for these killings; no law, no border, no oversight restrains them. Bush has also given agents in the field carte blanche to designate "enemies" on their own initiative and kill them as they see fit.
The existence of this universal death squad – and the total obliteration of human liberty it represents – has not provoked so much as a crumb, an atom, a quantum particle of controversy in the American Establishment, although it's no secret. The executive order was first bruited in the Washington Post in October 2001 .... The New York Times added further details in December 2002. That same month, Bush officials made clear that the dread edict also applied to American citizens, as the Associated Press reported.
The first officially confirmed use of this power was the killing of an American citizen in Yemen by a CIA drone missile on November 3, 2002. A similar strike occurred in Pakistan this month, when a CIA missile destroyed a house and purportedly killed Abu Hamza Rabia, a suspected al Qaeda figure. But the only bodies found at the site were those of two children, the houseowner's son and nephew, Reuters reports. The grieving father denied any connection to terrorism. An earlier CIA strike on another house missed Rabia but killed his wife and children, Pakistani officials reported.
But most of the assassinations are carried out in secret, quietly, professionally, like a contract killing for the mob. As a Pentagon document unearthed by the New Yorker in December 2002 put it, the death squads must be "small and agile," and "able to operate clandestinely, using a full range of official and non-official cover arrangements to…enter countries surreptitiously."
The dangers of this policy are obvious, as a UN report on "extrajudicial killings" noted in December 2004: " Empowering governments to identify and kill 'known terrorists' places no verifiable obligation upon them to demonstrate in any way that those against whom lethal force is used are indeed terrorists… While it is portrayed as a limited 'exception' to international norms, it actually creates the potential for an endless expansion of the relevant category to include any enemies of the State, social misfits, political opponents, or others."
It's hard to believe that any genuine democracy would accept a claim by its leader that he could have anyone killed simply by labeling them an "enemy." It's hard to believe that any adult with even the slightest knowledge of history or human nature could countenance such unlimited, arbitrary power, knowing the evil it is bound to produce. Yet this is what the great and good in America have done. Like the boyars of old, they not only countenance but celebrate their enslavement to the ruler.
[Note from Washington's Blog: 9/11 allowed those who glorify war to implement plans they had lusted after for many years (and see this), even though 9/11 happened because Dick Cheney was - at best - totally incompetent, and the government is now doing things which increase the risk of terrorism, instead of doing the things which could actually make us safer.]
This was vividly demonstrated in ... Bush's State of the Union address in January 2003, delivered to Congress and televised nationwide during the final frenzy of war-drum beating before the assault on Iraq. Trumpeting his successes in the Terror War, Bush claimed that "more than 3,000 suspected terrorists" had been arrested worldwide – "and many others have met a different fate." His face then took on the characteristic leer, the strange, sickly half-smile it acquires whenever he speaks of killing people: "Let's put it this way. They are no longer a problem."
In other words, the suspects – and even Bush acknowledged they were only suspects – had been murdered. Lynched. Killed by agents operating unsupervised in that shadow world where intelligence, terrorism, politics, finance and organized crime meld together in one amorphous, impenetrable mass. Killed on the word of a dubious informer, perhaps: a tortured captive willing to say anything to end his torment, a business rival, a personal foe, a bureaucrat looking to impress his superiors, a paid snitch in need of cash, a zealous crank pursuing ethnic, tribal or religious hatreds – or any other purveyor of the garbage data that is coin of the realm in the shadow world.
Bush proudly held up this hideous system as an example of what he called "the meaning of American justice." And the assembled legislators…applauded. Oh, how they applauded!
This is, of course, the real meaning of the famous Star Wars scene: | <urn:uuid:90d36970-378b-4e48-ae00-1e8b48a9df05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/real-reason-obamas-threat-veto-indefinite-detention-bill-hint-its-not-protect-liberty | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961135 | 2,054 | 1.5 | 2 |
Photo courtesy Barrett-Jackson.
Camp still has its fans, apparently. The original Batmobile, an icon of the 1960s TV show portrayal of Batman, sold Saturday night for an astounding $4.62 million.
Originally built by Ford in the mid-1950s as the Lincoln Futura concept car (on a prototype Continental Mark II chassis, no less), the Batmobile took on its current guise a decade later when Hollywood customizer George Barris bought the Futura from Ford for $1 and arranged to provide a car for Twentieth Century Fox’s upcoming Batman television show. He then drew up a design, had Bill Cushenberry make a few alterations to the Futura body, removed the center section of the bubble canopy, painted it black with orange highlights, and added the various gadgets and gewgaws that helped make the car famous. While it suffered plenty of wear and tear from its use through the entire run of the show, Barris held on to the Batmobile up until this weekend, rarely missing an opportunity to promote it or show it off over the last 45 years.
Whether it was the original history as the Futura, Barris’s long-time ownership, or simply its role in a beloved TV series – or a combination of all three factors – the Batmobile ultimately hammered at Barrett-Jackson’s Scottsdale auction for $4.2 million; a 10 percent buyer’s premium brought the total sale price to $4.62 million. Though far from the highest sale price of the weekend (a couple of Ferrari 250 GTOs have sold for north of $8 million at both RM and Gooding), the Batmobile topped Barrett-Jackson’s sales for the weekend and appears to have set a record for any TV or film car sold at public auction, just squeaking by the James Bond 1964 Aston Martin DB5 that sold for $4,608,500 in 2010.
The remainder of the Salon Collection at Barrett-Jackson did just as well, accumulating $29.2 million in total sales. Among the highlights from the Salon Collection were the 1956 Chrysler Diablo show car, which sold for $1.375 million, the 1947 Talbot-Lago T26 Grand Sport, which sold for $2.035 million, and Clark Gable’s 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL gullwing, which also sold for $2.035 million. In total, Barrett-Jackson sold more than $108 million worth of cars over the weekend.
UPDATE (20.January 2013): According to Speed TV and Barrett-Jackson’s Twitter feed, the buyer was Arizona businessman Rick Champagne, who told Speed that he’s wanted the Batmobile ever since he was a kid and plans to keep it in his living room.
UPDATE (25.January 2013): Robert Bostelaar of the Ottawa Citizen noted that the Batmobile that Mr. Champagne got wasn’t entirely the Batmobile that Barris originally built.
98 Comments - Leave a Reply | <urn:uuid:0dd9208f-515d-405d-a6a4-3d1084f5f3f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2013/01/19/pow-batmobile-sells-for-4-62-million/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949879 | 621 | 1.59375 | 2 |
I have a podcast—The Beer Crate, since you asked—which is written and produced using free software, and released under the CC by-nc-nd license. It's a fun little hobby that keeps me off the street, and gives me an excuse to drink and review beer. But had free software not existed, how much would it cost to produce and host a show using proprietary software? I set out to investigate...
For many, a podcast features one or more performers sat behind a microphone, and talking wistfully about some random topic of the day. But to achieve any degree of professionalism there's a lot more to it than that. Assuming you have the hardware at your disposal, e.g. microphone, PC, broadband, and hosting server, there's still a script to write, a theme tune to source, a web site to design, and editing to be done on all those constituent bits. All of a sudden, it doesn't seem so simple.
To compute the effective cost of my podcast I'm going to consider the pricing of two alternate, non-free, offerings. One will be a budget solution, and the other will use the standard proprietary software you'd expect as part of traditional employment.
What about shareware and freeware?
Freeware and shareware have not been considered since they've fallen into disuse of late since the current fighting ground is between free and proprietary software. This is something with which Microsoft have unwittingly helped us--by comparing themselves continually against free software, they've ignored all the possibly solutions that involve freeware or shareware. Consequently, so has everyone else. It's now a two horse race.
Two offerings might seem limited. However, the cost of evaluating all the possible solutions is more expensive than simply paying for a basic proprietary package. Also, when costing applications, software upgrades are only considered when it's reasonable to expect an end user owning a previous version, from which an upgrade is possible.
Before I begin recording, I always write a script for the forthcoming episode. Sure, I improvise when in front of the microphone, and add new things as they occur to me, but for the most part I work from the written word. These words are created in a text editor—usually
vi. Sometimes it'll be in OpenOffice, or sent as an email to myself using Thunderbird, and occasionally stored on my private 'TODO' wiki—but the script is still generally written in
vi. If I am to remain true to my word of using equivalent proprietary software, I can't use anything that is free—which includes the tools of GNU/Linux, such as
vi. So instead, I must purchase a word processor. Sure, I could use notepad... but it'd drive me insane before I'd finished detailing the list of beer festivals. And don't even ask me about my handwriting!
I could use notepad... but it'd drive me insane
A quick search provides a sensibly-priced budget word processor called Jarte, which costs $29. I've never used it, but it's certainly cheaper than the so-called industry standard of Microsoft Word, clocking in at $150.
This is not a cheap start.
I like music. A lot. So it seemed only right to have a theme tune for "The Beer Crate", along with some audio stings to separate the various segments. In a proprietary world I'd have to buy some royalty-free music. This is when you pay for the right to use the music, without having to pay on royalty each time it's used. There are several sites on the Internet that will provide this—for a fee.
To budget effectively, you need to know what you're budgeting for. My podcast has four main sections: weekly news, articles, "quick tastings", and "try before you die". Ideally I'd like music between each section, plus and intro and outro, making five pieces in total. Fortunately, when music such as this is purchased you often get a theme supplied in 29 and 59 second versions for the same money. Or at least, very little extra money. Additionally, I'd like two stings: one to audibly separate the two articles, and another to be placed between each of the beer reviews in "quick tastings". So to recap, three pieces of music, a theme, and two stings.
Knowing that paying a composer would be prohibitively expensive (start with a four figure sum and work upwards), royalty-free music can be purchased from any number of sites. Royalty Free Music, for example, charge $99 for a CD of music, regardless of the number of tracks you use, so with luck I could find everything I wanted on a single disc. In reality, I'd probably need two, but let's keep optimistic. I didn't see any disc with short stings though, so I'll need to buy those separately.
An alternative is OPuzz which will sell you individual samples and music clips. This includes stings for $3 each, and 30 second musical themes for $15. My math skills tell me that 2 stings at $3, and 4 pieces of music, will cost $63. Alas, when I recorded the show’s introduction I found it ran to 60 seconds, so I'd either need to talk faster, or pay an extra $5 for the longer version. Oh, well!
The equivalent of free software for artistic works is Creative Commons. This features a number of licenses, all of them cost free. The important thing to remember is that by incorporating the CC music into a podcast you are creating a derivative version, so anything with -ND is not allowed. I discovered this caveat when working on the open source film Cenobitic and spent far too long looking for suitably licensed music. It is available, but less plentiful. Sites like Creative Commons Search and the Internet Archive have useful search boxes for this.
By incorporating Creative Commons-licensed music into a podcast you are creating a derivative version
A further alternative is to use public domain material. This might be work that is old and now out of copyright, or that which was released explicitly into the public domain by its author. Sites like the Open Music Archive provide such material.
Ultimately, the tracks I liked best were some I wrote and released under the CC many years ago! It might be narcissistic, but at least it's free.
This encompasses the recording of my spoken beer-induced words, and the effective mixing of it with the music. The basic sound recording applications would work, but cause too much stress. There are two prominent sound editors available, SoundForge and Adobe Audition (formally Cool Edit Pro). These cost between $59.95 and $349.00, respectively. The former looks like an obvious choice. However, for the full version of SoundForge (currently at 9) you will have to hand over nearly 300 notes.
Audio is one of the cases where proprietary software appears to have advantages. My very first episode was edited as multiple clips (for each section of the show) entirely in Audacity, where the manipulation of 200+ MB sound files became very painful on my PC. I’ve used the proprietary versions before and find they're usually better optimized for handling larger files in smaller memory footprints. So an upgrade would certainly offset the cost of buying more RAM. So while free software might appear to be a non-starter, I had another trick up my proverbial sleeve.
After the pain of editing the whole episode in Audacity I found another solution: Sox. This is a command line wave editing package that comprises of a file converter and mixing tool. The latter was interesting. I still created each section of the show as a separate file, but I then wrote and ran a short script to join the music with the spoken content automatically. This included overlaps and subtle cross-fades, saving the time that would have been spent in the audio editor. Time saved every week, as I now type,
and I get a complete MP3 in the same directory, complete with appropriate ID3 tags (courtesy of
In adopting this approach I realized I wasn't comparing like-for-like. The scripting tools I'd developed where not available in cheaper versions of the software. Or at least, I couldn't be sure that all the bash magic would be replicated in the budget editions. To do the equivalent tasks, I'd therefore need to pay more money for the full "professional" version. But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, and believe the entry level software is up to the task.
As far as sound manipulation is concerned, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and believe the entry level software is up to the task
The Web Site
My current site uses Apache on GNU/Linux to serve the web pages, as you'd expect, to my beer-drinking podcast listeners. I even save money by using virtual hosts, so that my single machine can run all of my other projects. But this is an exploration into the cost of activity, so I have to consider buying a web server.
IIS and Zeus are the first two that come to mind. But like many pieces of enterprise software, the cost varies according to who you are, and how much they want your business. I couldn't begin to guess at the cost, but one review clocks the cost of Zeus at $1700 per server. Without Operating System.
PC World list the Windows Web Server 2008 as being a better deal at $469. But again, you need to buy an operating system.
The cheapest way of doing this is to rent an OS and web server as a hosting package. I used to pay $200 a year for web hosting, database, email, and the like. It's probably now down to around $60, so I'll use that in my low-cost budget. I'll break even in ten years, but which time my beer podcast will be so famous I won't care about the cost!
this is an exploration into the cost of activity
Many parts of the web site use dynamic content, such as "quick tastings", and "drinkers diary" which use an SQL database to store the beer reviews and beer festivals, respectively. This would normally push up the price of a like-for-like comparisons. But since this is only a convenience, I don't feel right charging it to the budget.
Additionally, the web site uses graphics. I used free clip art, and self-made buttons using the GIMP. And it shows! But it does the job, since what's important is the beer. But a professional web designer would want PhotoShop to create a logo for "The Beer Crate" and probably some Macromedia tools. A brief Google found these coming in at $235 and $399, respectively.
At the low-cost end of the market are the sites that build your web page for free, and/or provide templates. The latter require some degree of technical knowledge because you must deploy them yourself, and the former comes with advertising because it's hosted on their server. Because I want The Beer Crate to provide unbiased beer reviews, I can't afford to have someone placing advertisements on my page, over which I have no control. So this option isn't possible.
So, if I assume that you've bought a PC with an OEM version of Windows (which most people of my generation have) you can save the $199 cost of Vista Home Basic. And the $99 for an upgrade. The balance sheet looks like this:
|Writing a script||Jarte||29||Microsoft Word||150||VI/OpenOffice||0|
|Audio Editing||Sound Forge Audio Studio||60||Adobe Audition||349||Audacity and Sox||0|
|Web Hosting||A Random Hosting Co.||60||MS Web Server + OS (approx)||600||LAMP||0|
|Web Design||Free Template||0||Photoshop+Flash (eg)||634||GIMP/Clip art/CC art||0|
Can you hear me spluttering yet?
That's between $217 and $1,832 to create a 15 minute weekly podcast! Furthermore, on a couple of occasions, I've needed to check-up on the podcast to make sure I didn't say something I thought I did. In these cases I've often been at work. So, I take a ten minute break and download the file. I then edit it with Audacity, review the script, and re-encode it before uploading it back to the server. Had I not used free software, I'd need another license for the sample editor on my work machine. I just thought I'd mention it...
That's between $217 and $1,832 to create a 15 minute weekly podcast!
So with this level of cost, is it any wonder Microsoft feel compelled to bundle so much software for free with their operating system?
And is it any wonder I use free software rather than proprietary applications? | <urn:uuid:c2f61f9d-b281-4475-9ec8-8eac1484e01e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/comment/75932 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957582 | 2,697 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Good advice, but don't deny the pushback
For years, feminist mothers have been telling all their children that they can be whatever they dream of being, if only they work hard enough.
That's not strictly true; pope is still off limits for their daughters, and for those who dream big - say, who want to be president of the United States - there's still a big bottleneck at the top. Statistically, a woman still is less likely to become CEO of a big corporation, president of a large university, or pastor of a tall-steeple church. That some women have been able to break through the glass ceiling hardly disproves its existence.
Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, has written a book, "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead." In it, Sandberg acknowledges two important points: Women often face challenges that men do not, and they sometimes make life choices that do not mesh with a skyrocketing career.
Neither of those points is controversial, but "Lean In" book is. Most of the criticism centers on whether Sandberg is in a position to understand the lives of most women. She has two degrees from Harvard - a bottleneck of its own - and a resume that includes a stint at Google. Facebook is a company that made many right moves, not including its IPO, but it was also in the right place at the right time and had a prodigious amount of good luck. (Remember MySpace?) That element serves to separate many wildly successful people from others who work hard all their lives and make good choices. In very few companies and industries does the average rank-and-file employee have any influence over the corporate decisions on which their jobs depend.
A Huffington Post commentary amusingly said, "Some have criticized Sandberg's approach, saying it only considers the needs of upper middle-class working women." A woman whose net worth is $1.6 billion - yes, that's a "b" - cannot be considered middle class by any metric.
Sandberg generally does a good job discussing gender inequity in large companies in her industry. Not everyone can work in the tech industry, though - not even everyone who lives in the Silicon Valley - and besides the service and retail workers frequently cited as necessary, essential occupations include teachers, public-safety workers, health-care personnel and so on, plus farther-flung energy and manufacturing jobs. Few of those people ever will have stock options. Gender is just one variable that influences outcome - only a minute percentage of men succeed as Sandberg has - but it's one that affects half the population.
Sandberg is right in recommending that women continuously and consistently lean in toward their goals. Their own actions, though, cannot eliminate income equality because so many external factors hold it firmly in place. Few people would say that they value their children's teachers less than they value their Facebook access, and yet teach workers earn far more than teachers. Few people would say, at least aloud, that men are more valuable employees than are women, and yet on average, in statistics adjusted for all other variables, women still earn less.
Women should cheer Sheryl Sandberg, but they should also state, clearly, that their leaning in is just one force, too often countered by pushback and stasis. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is right: America is unprepared to welcome women as a full part of our society.
That needs to change at every level, not just in the ozone around the glass ceiling. | <urn:uuid:ce413688-c92c-4766-adf8-42a1778c891d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20130311/OPINION01/130319988/0/feedback/'Lean-in' | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974003 | 721 | 1.898438 | 2 |
The Maltese Falcon, the World's Largest Floating Metaphor for the Financial Collapse, to Sail Into Port Everglades
|The Maltese Falcon stands for something, and it's something you can't afford.|
Now sure, that might sound a bit negative, but check out how the Maltese Falcon ended up floating into port here sometime on Wednesday or Thursday, according to a source who spoke to the Pulp on
condition of anonymity.
Venture capitalist Tom Perkins had the Maltese Falcon built back in 2005. It was said to be the most expensive and fastest sailing ship ever built, with a risky design employing 15 sails on carbon-fiber masts.
You might recognize Perkins' name from the days when he served on the board at Hewlett-Packard. He quit after the company used some dastardly means to investigate the board. Or you might know Perkins for his ex-wife: author Danielle Steele.
Anyway, Perkins got sick of his toy boat and listed it for sale four years later. Nobody bit for the asking price of $165 million, so Perkins was forced to lower it substantially -- tough times, you know. In August 2009, the highest-paid woman in Britain, hedge-fund manager Elena Ambrosiadou, plunked down the nine-figure asking price, reportedly about $100 million.
|You don't want to know what Elena Ambrosiadou planned to do with her yacht.|
After the purchase, she told the London Times that her big boat will likely go unused. "I work 16 hours a day, seven days a week," she told the paper. "I doubt if I'll be spending much time on her."
So, let's recap: This week, a boat will come to our fair city with a value equal to the amount of money President Obama ordered cut from the federal budget. It's also the amount Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg gave to Newark schools in the hopes of creating a decent district. In other words, if you're rich enough to build yourself such an extravagance, you can either hoist 15 sails on carbon-fiber masts, or you could save the federal budget or fix the schools of a major U.S. city.
Then you have the owners, who mention all the keywords of the past decade's financial collapse, like hedge funds, corporate malfeasance, venture capitalists, and BP. One of them tired of this toy in just a few years, and the other bought it knowing she'd rarely, if ever, board it. This is the money you don't have, and this is the money you don't have going to a toy she doesn't really even want.
So yes, the Maltese Falcon earns the right to be called a floating metaphor. Head to the beach and you might catch a sighting of its white masts, emblazoned with a black falcon. That is, if you can afford the beach parking.
Follow The Pulp on Facebook and on Twitter: @ThePulpBPB. Follow Eric Barton on Twitter: @ericbarton. | <urn:uuid:25afef0b-c491-4f10-b668-38c198962df5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2011/05/maltese_falcon_yacht_port_everglades.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952745 | 641 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Friendship Community- heART of Friendship
Target demographics: Those with developmental disabilties. Classes are held for children through senior cititzens. The general public also has the ability to participate in classes.
Direct beneficiaries per year: Over 30 artists with disabilites are served annually.
Someone who had 3 hours of volunteer time could: Volunteer at our annual art auction.
Help at the heART of Friendship Art Gallary.
Geographic areas served: Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
The heART of Friendship empowers adults with developmental and/or intellectual disabilities to pursue the creation of folk and “outsider” art as a way of developing skills, achieving self expression, finding a meaningful role in society and moving toward economic independence. | <urn:uuid:15d3abcb-e02b-400a-8f48-ae1de6434290> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://greatnonprofits.org/org/friendship-community-heart-of-friendship | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940289 | 153 | 1.992188 | 2 |
My apologies if anyone finds this post politically incorrect, but we are heading for the most important full moon of the year, the one celebrating the birth, enlightenment, and entry into Nirvana of the Buddha. Whether Buddhism is a religion or a philosophy is not for me to say, but the Buddha's teaching revolved around the relief of suffering through overcoming of ignorance. You might say, it does not matter at all how we transcend our lack of awareness, merely that we somehow succeed. Thus, whether we are naive or misinformed or complacent with our take on reality is not the issue so much as whether or not we will make the effort to know the truth and then align with it. To help us, the Buddha gave discourses in which He explained that "Right Understanding" — the first of the precepts of the Eightfold Noble Path — means, among other things, not believing things that are not true. In a world of mass indoctrination, this means stepping out of the clutter and seeing things as they are. We could suggest that the various forms of meditation that awaken intuition, insight, and knowing are just tools for extricating ourselves from disinformation, misunderstanding, and false beliefs and becoming one with the truth. Thus, to reiterate my intent, I would propose that to the extent that we are able to achieve correct awareness, the name of the Path does not matter. In short, from a personal perspective, I can honor any and all attempts that are sincere, unbiased, and worthy. This means that I can appreciate and accept all conclusions from the minds of persons who are balanced and honest regardless of whether their attainments occurred within the context of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or some indigenous belief system. I even respect the attainments when they were achieved in ritual or perhaps through use of entheogens. In short, while these are not my personal choices, I respect whatever has integrity and coherence.
In my facetious moments, I have said that we live on the Entertainment Planet of the Universe. So, whether we are looking at historic gladiator games or the current circus on Earth, these are all distractions that keep us from knowing our true selves and our destinies. In the modern world, everything is managed: our curriculum in school, our television programs, our politics and economics, and most of what we call religion. Worse, with the advent of mass media communications, more and more traditional areas of endeavor have come under the aegis of Hollywood and its counterparts in other parts of the world. Our politicians are concocted more or less out of nothingness and projected onto screens as the fictions they are. Then, when we discover they have no intention of living up to their promises, we "vote" them out instead of asking who the puppet masters are and what their agenda is.
Many years ago, I met a renegade from the film industry. He said there are two types of entertainment, comedy and tragedy. Many would agree. Certainly in my operatic world, we have opera buffa and opera seria. I would like to take an enormous risk and propose that both these literary and artistic forms depend on the second chakra. Obviously, the inspiration, elaboration, and artistic expression utilize more facets of our totality, but comedy is believed by many to arise from suppressed sexuality. It might explain why Dharma jokes can be particularly funny as well as why much humor seems to speak to some level of frustration, irritation, or objectification that often does not feel good to everyone listening. Tragedy is, of course, much more complicated but ultimately it deals with issues of loss and the grief one feels over such loss. It is therefore not funny, but this strange and circuitous essay does have some scenes worth viewing.
Back in my grad school days, someone said that Don Giovanni was a tragedy. I argued that it is a comic opera. He said, "but Don Giovanni dies." I said, "Don Giovanni goes to hell and that is what he deserved so it's not a tragedy." I was, of course, right, but the issue came up again some months ago when someone sent a link to a Lyndon LaRouche whatever. The author made the same mistake, but from what I am reading in email, countless people regard the White House announcement of the death of bin Laden as "justice served" when in reality, it is just more "splash" and distraction. It is neither comedy nor tragedy, just abuse of the power of speech. I have been deleting mail almost as fast as it arrives because people have no cause for celebration or even for hope IF they listen to script writers rather than search for truth. It is important that we extricate ourselves from the manipulative powers that would conceal facts and supplant them with gobblety gook.
So, while I am on this kick, let's add the Elenin. This comet will not usher in the End of Times but if someone wants to escape, there are countless ways to do so, just be sure that extricating yourself from danger isn't just another way to die and watch things from the other side of the veil. In the meantime, I might weigh in and suggest that once the comet goes behind the Sun, it will lose a major amount of mass, but there are those who like to promote a constant state of fear because they have figured out how to keep us endlessly distracted so we fail to see the real game.
War is a very profitable industry and nuclear power plants, like Daiichi #3, are capable of producing by-products that make very dangerous weapons with lasting global implications. We wouldn't want to hurt our economy or ding the bottom line, would we?
Then, let's see, the death of my lavender plants was due to global warming or the excessive zeal of geoengineering to forestall loss of ice?
Some people complain about the length of my essays. My mind isn't able to work in sound bytes so sometimes I need more words . . . but since Wesak isn't here yet, there might be a sequel to this, maybe something like, "Of Penguins and Polar Bears!" | <urn:uuid:e01f938c-a462-4780-b8f6-0d0d0f75fbbc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ingridnaiman.com/subscription_lists/philosophy_spirituality/wesak_fullmoon.html | 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 | 0.967125 | 1,254 | 1.867188 | 2 |
It is one thing to be lulled into a sense of progress, learning Chinese from a book, by readings ingeniously limited to the words each lesson introduces; quite another to be confronted by those words in the wilds of the language at large. That native habitat finds them consorting promiscuously with strange characters in more configurations than were sketched by Bosch: phrases, formalities, compounds and commercial puns, the elaborate titles of common dishes. Walking down the street, my head swiveling at ads, is to see some word I thought to know leering at me from a coupling at whose meaning I can only guess. This induces in me something like the vertigo of chancing on a girl, believed demure, in some obscure debauchery: lightheaded from the loss of some certainty.
Of the 3000 characters Chinese is said to employ on a common basis, I now know, I would venture, 500: which is to say my chances of recognizing a character are roughly those of losing at Russian roulette. I conceived of the 15th Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE) as a citadel of language: a chance to glimpse words at work and play in all the possibilities print offered. I would pick up one, maybe two new expressions. Mostly I would wander in studious bewilderment. My first stop was, just past Google, the pavilion of the Bureau International de l’Édition Française (BIEF), to pay homage as a translator of French to this distant outpost of the Republic of Letters. I returned there several times over the course of three visits to the fair, which I never did entirely cover.
Anyone deriving from my orbits some erroneously Franco-centric notion of the floor plan might be briskly disabused thereof with a glance at the map by whose lights, were booth size any indicator of real-world real estate, France, while still outsizing Google’s domain (but only just), would cover less than half the feudal holdings of Japan’s manga emperor Tohan, its shelves heavy with revues thick as phone books. With some geographic justice, none of these in square footage could rival Russia. As this year’s guest of honor, it boasted both the smallest books—a collection of exquisite miniatures, including Chekhov’s Guinness-recordholding “Chameleon”—and the largest pavilion: yards of carpeted steppe, dotted with scarlet cushions, right under where the roof drew like a giant breath up past stacked balconies toward a skylight vault. Of course booth size and location signified no more secret hierarchy than the pecuniary, and certainly not the geopolitical; no surprise to this jaded shopper, who regularly mistakes, while strolling chain bookstores, the piles of sales displays for bar graphs of publisher funding. Still, I would’ve liked, from idle curiosity, to see last year’s floor plan overlay this year’s in some informative animation of who’d shrunk or grown, gone or stayed. » Read the rest of this entry « | <urn:uuid:a07c73b4-7702-49a2-b138-ddc5a211d844> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edwardgauvin.com/blog/?m=200703 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947452 | 644 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Israel is definitely making progress on the subject of the Armenian genocide. In late December, during the Knesset’s first ever open-door debate on the issue, nobody was reported to have questioned whether the deliberate killing of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915-’16 should be called a genocide, nor whether the Ottoman Empire was the guilty party, nor whether modern-day Turkey inherited that guilt. For once, all this was taken for granted, as it has been for decades by virtually all historians, notably Holocaust and genocide historians.
“As a people and as a country, we stand and face the whole world with the highest moral demand that Holocaust denial is something human history cannot accept. Therefore, we cannot deny the tragedy of others,” Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin told the Education Committee.
Read Robert Zaretzky’s critical assessment of France’s new law banning denial of the Armenian genocide.
Hear, hear. But this is a far cry from the position taken, for instance, in 2001 by then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who told a Turkish newspaper that the Armenian genocide was “a matter for historians to decide,” and that Israel “reject[s] attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations.”
No question, Israel has come a long way. When the U.S. Holocaust Museum opened in 1993, Armenian-Americans lobbying for inclusion of the Armenian genocide were met with a counter campaign organized by Turkish officials and backed, according to museum officials, by the efforts of the Israeli embassy.
For decades, official Israel not only “stood silent” about the Armenian genocide, it deployed the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League and other lobbying groups to back up White House efforts to ensure that Congress stood silent, too. As late as 2007, the ADL fired a senior official for challenging Abraham Foxman’s opposition to a move in Congress for recognition of the genocide.
“Frankly, I’m pretty disgusted,” Yehuda Bauer, Israel’s leading Holocaust scholar, told me in 2005, when only a few academics and liberal politicians were speaking out against Israel’s role as blocking back for Turkey’s policy of denial. “I think that my government preferred economic and political relations with Turkey to the truth.”
That was then, but this is now, and now Israel’s relations with Turkey are ice cold, so there’s a lot less to lose by recognizing the Armenian genocide, and a great deal of satisfaction to be gained. “How many times can they recall their ambassador?” Knesset Member Uri Orbach pointed out.
Shameless hypocrisy, that’s the only term for this Israeli spectacle. The Knesset said nothing about the Armenian genocide all those years when Israel wanted to preserve its alliance with Turkey, and now it has the gall to pretend that it’s raising the issue “so that no one in the world will think [genocide] can happen again,” according to Knesset Member Arye Eldad. The only Knesset members who come to this issue with clean hands are those of Meretz, which over the years stood alone among the political parties in demanding recognition of the genocide and Turkey’s culpability for it.
I don’t know whose hypocrisy is worse — the Knesset’s or that of the Prime Minister’s Office and the Foreign Ministry, which oppose recognition on the grounds that it will cause more bad blood with Turkey, something Israel doesn’t need. National Security Adviser Ya’akov Amidror reportedly told Israeli diplomats that now is the time to “reduce tensions with Turkey, not pour more oil on the fire.”
Funny, but over the last two years, this consideration didn’t deter the government from 1) sitting the Turkish ambassador on a low chair to humiliate him in front of the TV cameras; 2) commandeering the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara on its way to Gaza, which ended with the killings of nine Turks aboard; 3) refusing to apologize for the killings; and 4) just this last Thursday, canceling a $141 million sale to Turkey of air force intelligence equipment.
Each of those moves was apparently worth deepening the rift with Turkey. But not an attempt to end Israel’s collusion in the denial of the 20th century’s first genocide, whose early disappearance from history was cited by Hitler as proof that he could get away with a genocide of his own.
In the end, though, I agree with the Prime Minister’s Office and Foreign Ministry: Israel should not do a 180-degree turn and suddenly recognize the Armenian genocide, especially not now. Like this week’s “historic” Knesset hearing, it would be too transparently false, too embarrassing.
Israel has stood silent this long; let it remain silent.
Larry Derfner blogs at +972 magazine. | <urn:uuid:b9121c7f-9613-41c8-8111-5251461f7a63> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forward.com/articles/148750/recognition-of-suffering-far-too-late/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949156 | 1,054 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Lenders will be required to provide clearer information on mortgages, allow all borrowers to repay early their loans as part of a package of changes to be unveiled by the EU today.
In future, UK borrowers, along with mortgage customers across Europe, will have to be provided with a standard information sheet outlining in easily understandable language all the product's terms.
"Lenders and intermediaries alike engaged in irresponsible practices, and consumers were not warned of the consequences of their decisions," said Michel Barnier, EU internal market and services commissioner.
"The draft set of rules presented today is designed to ensure a high standard of pre-contractual information and improved lending practices across Europe, while promoting a dynamic, competitive and more integrated single market for mortgage credit," added Mr Barnier.
The EU's proposals come as warnings have increased about the potential problems still stored up in the mortgage market as a result of home loans made in the years of the credit boom.
Last week, the Financial Services Authority highlighted so-called mortgage forebearance, whereby lenders alter the terms of borrowings to help people service their debts, as a source of future problems for the banking industry.
For every one person in mortgage arrears in the UK, about two are in some form of forebearance, and credit ratings agency Moody's has warned that this could lead to more losses for British banks as people become entirely unable to make payments.
Visit Telegraph Mortgage Services for free mortgage advice | <urn:uuid:54a2a08b-984a-4bcd-9725-017a0c661b83> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/8416944/Irresponsible-mortgage-lenders-rapped-as-new-EU-rules-come-in.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960702 | 296 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Think About Sin When Bonuses Are Revealed: Roger Lowenstein
Bonuses to senior executives are shooting up. They’re a good reminder of what Congress forgot when it was reforming the financial system. Excessive pay isn’t a problem just at banks; it’s endemic to the culture of corporate America.
Excessive and ill-conceived pay encourages chief executive officers to overreach and misallocate resources. And to be honest, except in rare deserving cases, eight-figure bonuses make me angry.
Why should one writer’s pique matter? Because one of the biggest threats to American democracy is inequality. When people lose faith in the system, institutions suffer. People stretch to buy homes, or overuse credit to match their neighbors. And when executives earn more in a half day than teachers do in a year, talented people don’t pursue careers in education.
Executive pay shouldn’t be set by government (or by op-ed writers). It should be set by shareholders. But shareholders don’t have a real voice. And the pay system is way out of line with any rational system of incentives that would serve their interest.
In the coming proxy season, you will see executives getting huge raises and justifying it on the basis that their stocks and profits are up. But a CEO’s impact is felt over many years -- not just one. A single up year doesn’t warrant a big bonus if the longer-term performance was mediocre. Nor is simply riding a stock down and then up again cause for celebration. When a batter in baseball slumps to .200, he doesn’t deserve a bonus for getting his average back to .250.
True pay-for-performance doesn’t mean doling out an extravagant sum for matching the market, or awarding a can’t- miss stock option. And the executive who receives stock options year after year is almost certain to get an award, some year, when the stock is at a low, guaranteeing a profit.
Most of all, in a rational pay system, executives who stand to make large returns would run the risk of personal loss. That that doesn’t mean cutting pay in some categories while compensating with raises in others.
In recent months, one of the most abusive pay packages was that of Larry Ellison, CEO and founder of Oracle Corp. (ORCL), the world’s second-largest software maker. Ellison is a perennial league leader in excessive pay, though he draws little notice because Oracle’s compensation is announced off-season, in September.
Last year, Ellison reduced his salary to $1. How magnanimous. He also got a whopping $62 million in stock options, in addition to $6.5 million in “non-equity incentive.”
Why a multibillionaire needed the motivation of stock options or an “incentive” plan is a question for Ellison’s psychiatrist. You would think his 1.1 billion shares -- a 22 percent stake -- was motivation enough. In each of the previous two years, he was paid $85 million.
I doubt that any performance would truly justify Ellison’s take; Oracle’s didn’t come close. Over the 10 years through Dec. 31, Oracle stock is up less than 1 percent a year.
The current proxy season is young, but a worthy challenger to Ellison is Philippe Dauman of Viacom Inc. (VIA) Dauman had a great mentor in company founder Sumner Redstone. No longer CEO, but still paid like one, Redstone pocketed $15 million in 2010.
But the real stash went to Dauman. The proxy justifies Dauman’s pay, noting he “did not receive a salary or target bonus increase in 2009 due to a compensation freeze in light of economic conditions.” This sounds like he was on hardship pay. Actually, in each of the preceding three years, Dauman was paid more than $25 million.
So in 2010, the board figured, he was ready for big-time. Dauman got a salary of $2.6 million and an annual stock award of $10 million. In addition, he got a one-time stock award of $31 million. Was there some vital distinction that created a pressing need for both awards? The proxy says the annual award is “designed to motivate employees to focus on long-term growth and stockholder value.” And the rationale for the one-time award? As the proxy says, “See ‘Annual Equity Awards’ above.”
Dauman also got $6 million in stock options and -- you guessed it -- $22 million in one-time options. Plus $11 million in a “non-equity incentive.” Viacom says each pay category was based on performance metrics; apparently, Dauman didn’t always qualify for the full award. Shareholders should thank their stars.
The compensation, of course, was blessed by a consultant, Pay Governance. But no metrics can justify such plunder. Since Viacom’s stock began trading in its current form, in 2005, through year-end 2010, the shares are up just over 1 percent a year.
Viacom and Oracle are cases of pathological greed, but the essential sin of grabbing and then grabbing more -- without any downside -- is commonplace. So is the fig leaf of hiring consultants, each of whom lowers the bar for the next.
Watch this spring, as proxy disclosures (and bonuses, and options, and “one-time” bonuses) roll. While shareholders are still trying to earn back their losses, the brass will be accumulating new fortunes. Congress thought it was taking a bold step by instituting so-called say-on-pay for shareholders. But these non-binding votes are merely show. Shareholders should be able to vote, aye or nay on pay -- and have it count.
To contact the writer of this column: Roger Lowenstein at email@example.com
To contact the editor responsible for this column: James Greiff at firstname.lastname@example.org
Bloomberg moderates all comments. Comments that are abusive or off-topic will not be posted to the site. Excessively long comments may be moderated as well. Bloomberg cannot facilitate requests to remove comments or explain individual moderation decisions. | <urn:uuid:4b216176-e38b-4896-b0af-095e9061f84a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-24/think-about-sin-when-bonuses-are-revealed-commentary-by-roger-lowenstein.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955659 | 1,335 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The North American Araucanian Royalist Society (NAARS) was organized in 1995 by the late Richard B. Shull and Daniel Paul Morrison to be a clearinghouse of reliable, objective, English-language information about the Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia. Shull and Morrison founded the society because they were interested in the Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia and were able to find very little information about the kingdom in English. In the beginning, Shull and Morrison pooled what information they had and launched a website and began to publish The Steel Crown to share that information with the world. In response, afficionados of the long-forgotten kingdom came out of the woodwork to began contribute their share to the ever-growing body of information known to the NAARS.
Today, the NAARS is a lively organization with members in Asia, Europe, South America and North America. The society organizes annual dinners to commemorate the founding of the kingdom.
The archives and library of the NAARS are fully cataloged and available to serious scholars without charge.
The Steel Crown continues to be published and contains the most extensive and exhaustive body of research about the kingdom available in English. All 14 issues of the journal remain in print and available.
After a brief hiatus following the collapse of geocities.com, the NAARS has relaunched its web portal at www.steelcrown.org.
While the NAARS is supportive of the Royal House of Araucania and the Mapuche people, the NAARS remains staunchly independent. We do not speak in any official capacity for the Royal House, the Mapuche people, or the Republics of Chile and Argentina.
Our mission is to foster increased understanding and appreciation of 1) the centuries-old struggle for dignity, sovereignty, and self-determination by the Mapuche people, 2) the legitimacy of the liberal constitutional monarchy founded by the Mapuche people in 1860, and 3) the ongoing work of Prince Philippe and the Royal House of Araucania to preserve the legacy inaugurated with King Orelie-Antoine I. | <urn:uuid:ed46eba3-278a-4d50-9eff-6962fca0dba9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.steelcrown.org/membership | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932916 | 434 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Perky, Pretty and Popular. These words could reflect almost anyone, but not in this case. This time we are talking about the effervescent Dinah Shore. This lady of charm and song made an impact upon the ‘shores’ of many a heart. In the 40’s when her radio program, In Person Dinah Shore was apexing towards the top, Dinah played to the servicemen that were far away and her USO shows never failed to capture the crowds. Her radio program showcased her singing talents and acting skills...considering it was Dinah’s show. That was not a bad thing...in fact, it proved to be a success as she was on the major markets throughout the program’s history.
"Who Wouldn’t Love You" was sung by Dinah in July of 1942. It was peppy piece that spilled Dinah’s flair for music that made her fame notable. In this particular episode she also sang "Be Careful, It’s My heart" that premiered in the Bing Crosby movie classic, "Holiday Inn". She rubbed elbows with the big names and would introduce songs that were playing the big time...in nightclubs and on the big screen.
"For Me and My Gal" "Bells are ringin’ for me and my gal. birds are sinin’ for me and my gal..." was typical Dinah Shore foray into upbeat tunes and melody. As one guest said, "No one sings quite like Dinah." How true that was. Dinah was in the league of Doris Day and Patti Page. Music was not music, unless Dinah had a hand in it.
She knew how to have clean fun, a playful presence and sincerity in everything she did. Her’s was a family friendly show...even the tunes could be whistled by the youngin’s.
America was embroiled in one of the worst wars of its history and show people, such as Dinah Shore, delighted in uplifting the American mood. You might say it was her way of contributing to the war effort. But she never played loose with her celebrity status and made every effort to have In Person Dinah Shore be a symbol of cheer and hope. | <urn:uuid:81c7e3c9-f577-48dc-af19-8ce28a5a493d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.otrcat.com/in-person-dinah-shore-p-49752.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983296 | 467 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Simply begin typing or use the editing tools above to add to this article.
Once you are finished and click submit, your modifications will be sent to our editors for review.
The disease in humans has three clinical forms: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic. Bubonic plague is the best-known form in popular lore, and indeed it constitutes about three-fourths of plague cases. It is also the least dangerous form of plague, accounting today for virtually no deaths and in the past killing only half of its victims (at a time when contracting the other forms of plague...
What made you want to look up "pneumonic plague"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:79ca338f-e224-46e7-b7bb-b6efd3b392ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/465503/pneumonic-plague | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929874 | 141 | 3.09375 | 3 |
The Pushpin stool/table by Kenyon Yeh
Multifunctional pieces of furniture are great not only for small homes but also for any other type of space. They introduce a new concept and they reinvent a certain design. It’s the case for the Pushpin. The Pushpin is either a table or a stool, depending on how you use it. It was designed for COOIMA by London-based designer Kenyon Yeh.
The Pushpin has a minimalistic design. Its design was inspired by the office drawing pins. The designer took that idea and changed the dimensions to form this interesting and functional piece of furniture. The Pushpin is a flexible piece of furniture that can serve both as a stool and as a table. They work best in pairs of two. This way of one of them is sued as a stool the other one can be a table. Also, if an extra seat is needed, all you have to do is flip the table and there it is.
The Pushpin is a playful piece of furniture. However, it has a very simple shape and design. It’s not colorful neither does it have eye-catching details. Yet it’s an intriguing and fun item. Featuring a simple and familiar shape, the Pushpin is easy to integrate in just about any type of décor. Also, it’s made of natural cork. This makes it comfortable not overly cozy. The smaller surface was designed to be sued as a stool. When you flip it over you can use the larger surface as a coffee or side table. | <urn:uuid:b68eb8be-53b8-46e3-a88a-644d81536046> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.homedit.com/the-pushpin-stooltable-by-kenyon-yeh/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96984 | 325 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Heavily armed foot soldier of ancient Greece whose function was to fight in close formation. They probably first appeared in the late 8th century BC. They were equipped with new and heavier armour, including a metal helmet, breastplate, and shield; each had a sword and a 6-ft (2-m) spear for thrusting rather than throwing. From then on, battles were won not by individual champions but through the weight of massed hoplite phalanxes breaking through enemy ranks. Though the phalanx was unwieldy and the equipment cumbersome, Greek hoplites were the best fighters in the Mediterranean world.
Learn more about hoplite with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Warfare in ancient Greece appears, for the most part, to have consisted of set-piece battles between independent city-states. The hoplite was an effective solution to this situation. A city-state could not afford a professional and/or standing army, so battles had to be fought by the citizens themselves. The tactics and techniques used in battle therefore had to be simple enough to be quickly mastered. Since the equipment was provided by the individual hoplite, it had to be affordable by an average citizen. The hoplite probably first appeared in the late seventh century BC. In the early Classical Period most battles appear to have primarily involved clashes of opposing phalanxes; tactics were simple and casualties relatively low. Towards the end of the classical period more sophistication seems to have occurred, culminating in the 'new model' army of the Ancient Macedonian Kingdom.
Almost all the famous men of ancient Greece, including philosophers and playwrights, fought as hoplites. The most well-known hoplites were the Spartans, who were trained from childhood in combat and warfare to become an exceptionally disciplined and superior fighting force.
The fragmentary nature of Ancient Greece, with many competing city-states, increased the frequency of conflict, but conversely limited the scale of warfare. Unable to maintain professional armies, the city-states relied on their own citizens to fight. This inevitably reduced the potential duration of campaigns, as citizens would need to return to their own professions (especially in the case of farmers, for example). Campaigns would therefore often be restricted to summer. Armies marched directly to their target, possibly agreed on by the antagonists.
If battle was refused by one side, they wouldn't retreat to the city, in which case the attackers generally had to content themselves with ravaging the countryside around, since siegecraft was undeveloped. When battles occurred, they were usually set piece and intended to be decisive. The battlefield would be flat and open, reducing the possibilities for complex tactical manoeuvres. These battles were short, bloody, and brutal, and thus required a high degree of discipline. At least in the early classical period, other troops were less important: (cavalry) generally protected the flanks, when present at all, and both light infantry and missile troops were negligible.
The strength of hoplites was shock combat. The two phalanxes would smash into each other in hopes of breaking or encircling the enemy force's line. Failing that, a battle degenerated into a pushing match, with the men in the rear trying to force the front lines through those of the enemy. This maneuver was known as the othismos. Battles rarely lasted more than an hour. Once one of the lines broke, the troops would generally flee from the field, sometimes chased by peltasts or light cavalry. If a hoplite escaped, he would sometimes be forced to drop his cumbersome aspis, thereby disgracing himself to his friends and family. Casualties were slight compared to later battles, rarely amounting to more than 5% of the losing side, but the slain often included the most prominent citizens and generals who led from the front. Thus, the whole war could be decided by a single field battle; victory was enforced by ransoming the fallen back to the defeated, called the "Custom of The Greeks".
Individual hoplites carried their shields on their left arm, protecting not only themselves but also the soldier to the left. This meant that the men at the extreme right of the phalanx were only half protected. In battle, opposing phalanxes would exploit this weakness by attempting to overlap the enemy's right flank. It also meant that, in battle, a phalanx would tend to drift to the right (as hoplites sought to remain behind the shield of their neighbour). The most experienced hoplites were often placed on the right side of the phalanx, to counteract these problems. There was a leader in each row of a phalanx, and a rear rank officer, the ouragos (meaning tail-leader), who kept order in the rear. The phalanx is thus an example of a military formation in which the individualistic elements of battle were suppressed for the good of the whole. The hoplites had to trust their neighbours to protect them; and be willing to protect their neighbour; a phalanx was thus only as strong as its weakest elements. The effectiveness of a phalanx therefore depended upon how well the hoplites could maintain this formation while in combat, and how well they could stand their ground, especially when engaged against another phalanx. The more disciplined and courageous the army the more likely it was to win - often engagements between the various city-states of Greece would be resolved by one side fleeing before the battle. The Greek word dynamis, the "will to fight", expresses the drive that kept hoplites in formation.
A notable exception to the general pattern of hoplite warfare was the system used by the Spartans. As a result of a social revolution occurring in the 8th-7th centuries BC, the whole Spartan state became militarised. This was made possible by the conquest of neighbouring lands, and the enserfment of the people. Known as Helots, they farmed the lands owned by the Spartans, thus removing the burden of supporting Sparta from the Spartans themselves. This left the Spartans free to dedicate themselves to the art of war.
From the age of seven onwards, Spartan males were trained for a life of warfare. They were taught iron discipline, and almost programmed to forget about their individuality for the sake of Sparta. The strenuous training and comradeship engendered between Spartans made them ideally suited to hoplite warfare, which required high levels of discipline and selflessness. Spartans did not fear death; only the shame of defeat in battle. In Spartan military culture, throwing away a soldier's aspis was not acceptable. The saying went: "Come home with this shield or upon it".
It is not quite accurate to describe Spartans as professional soldiers - this was not a trade which they chose to do, but a requirement of their birth. Spartans were not employed as soldiers; instead, they were provided with serfs to support them. This can be compared to feudal Europe; knights were not professional soldiers, but a militaristic caste, supported by the local population. Nevertheless, despite their obvious differences to other Greek city-states, the Spartans fought in much the same way as other Greeks, only perhaps more effectively. The Spartans did, unusually, have a standard-issue equipment, including a shield called the aspis, featuring the Greek letter lambda (Λ), in reference to their homeland Lacedaemonia and the bronzed cuirass that was bestowed upon all of the Spartans with their helmet. Every Spartan wore a scarlet robe to represent them as Spartans, though the cape was never worn in combat. The Helots would usually accompany the Spartans in battles and provide ranged support, for the Spartans thought of archers as a job unfit for a true warrior. The Helots also set camps and performed labour for the Spartans whilst on campaign.
During this period Athens and Sparta rose to the position of dominant states in Greece, and their rivalry in the aftermath of the Persian wars brought Greece into renewed internal conflict. However, the Peloponnesian War was on a scale unlike conflicts before. Fought between leagues of cities, dominated by Athens and Sparta respectively, the pooled manpower and financial resources allowed a diversification of warfare. Hoplite warfare was in decline; there were three major battles in the Peloponnesian War, and none proved decisive. Instead there was increased reliance on navies, skirmishers, mercenaries, city walls, siege engines, and non-set piece tactics. These reforms made wars of attrition possible and greatly increased the number of casualties. In the Persian war, hoplites faced large numbers of skirmishers and missile armed troops, and such troops (e.g. Peltasts) became much more commonly used by the Greeks during the Pelopennesian War. As a result, hoplites began wearing less armour, carrying shorter swords, and in general adapting for greater mobility; this led to the development of the ekdromoi light hoplite.
Late on in the hoplite era, more sophisticated tactics were developed, in particular by the Theban general Epaminondas. These tactics inspired the future king Philip II of Macedon, at the time a hostage in Thebes, in the development of new kind of infantry - the Macedonian Phalanx. Although clearly a development of the hoplite, the Macedonian phalanx was tactically more versatile, especially used in the combined arms tactics favoured by the Macedonians. These forces defeated the last major hoplite army, at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), after which Athens and its allies joined the Macedonian empire.
An illustration of this can be found in the Athenian class system of the Solon constitution. The four classes (in ascending order) were thetes, zeugites, hippeis and pentacosiomedimnoi (measured in produce per year of land). The three lower classes were drafted into the military according to what they could provide. The thetes rowed the vast Athenian fleet of ships; the hippeis, who could afford horses (an aristocratic animal, never used agriculturally) formed cavalry; and the zeugites fought as hoplites.
This can be compared to the military system used in the early-to-mid Roman Republic, wherein the Roman citizenry was divided into distinct social classes. These classes (excepting the landless proletarii) were used as different troop types; the lowest formed skirmishers (velites), the highest fought as cavalry (equites), and the middle classes, forming the bulk of the army, fought as heavy infantry. In this system, troops were expected to provide their own equipment, so only those rich enough to afford the armour and weapons could fight as heavy infantry. Indeed, the success of both the Greek hoplite armies, and the early Roman army can be ascribed to their middle class makeup. These were landed, relatively wealthy citizens with a vested interest in the defense of their state; they had much more to lose than the landless classes, and fought with proportional valour.
The image of the men of the polis (the city-state) taking up arms together in defence of their country remains linked with the Ancient Greek culture. Many grave markers that have survived contain the phrase "died in the front line".
The Athenian playwright Aeschylus' grave says nothing of his literary career and marks only his participation at the battle of Marathon. Aeschylus' play The Persians is a celebration of that victory. Some of the abiding images of Grecian art, such as Polycleitus' doryphoros, "spear-bearer", contain the image of the warrior. (The spear in his right hand, since it was likely bronze, has been lost to time.) The attraction is that fear is the main enemy, and if a soldier succumbed he would leave his comrades unprotected. Often the comrade would be a family member or close friend (supposedly in the Theban Sacred Band the line would be composed of pairs of lovers). The valour in protection of your friends and country came to be the most prized attribute of a Greek. The Spartan poet Tyrtaeus wrote:
or from a less warrior-oriented culture, Euripides the Athenian (from his diatribe against Heracles):
A man who has won a reputation for valour in his contests with beasts, in all else a weakling; who ne'er buckled shield to arm nor faced the spear, but with a bow, that coward's weapon, was ever ready to run away. Archery is no test of manly bravery; nor! is he a man who keeps his post in the ranks and steadily faces the swift wound that the spear may plough.
This seems to represent the prevailing view of valour in the Hellenistic world. Grave markers proudly note death in the front rank, presence at great battles and acts of courage. Much of the art of Ancient Greece, therefore, reflects their desire for recognised bravery.
Each hoplite provided his own equipment. Thus, only those who could afford such weaponry fought as hoplites; as with the Roman Republican army it was the wealthier classes who formed the bulk of the infantry. Equipment was not standardised, although there were doubtless trends in general designs over time, and between city-states. Hoplites had customized armour, and possibly family symbols on his shield. The equipment might well be passed down in families, since it would have been expensive to manufacture.
Hoplites generally armed themselves just before battle because the equipment was so heavy - the total weight of the hoplites' armour was around 22-27 kilograms (50-60 pounds). A hoplite typically had a bronze breastplate (muscled armour), a bronze helmet with cheekplates, as well as greaves and other armour. The design of the helmets used varied through time. The Corinthian helmet was standardised, and was a very successful design. The crests on the helmet differed for each city-state. The Thracian helmet had a huge visor to further increase protection. In later periods, linen breastplates called linothorax were used, as they were tougher and cheaper to make. The linen was 0.5 cm thick. Hoplites carried a circular shield called an aspis (often referred to as a hoplon) made from wood and covered in bronze, measuring roughly 1 meter in diameter. This medium-sized shield (and indeed, large for the time) was made possible partly by its shape, which allowed it to be supported on the shoulder. It spanned from chin to knee and was very heavy. It weighed 8-15 kg (17.6 - 33 pounds)
The primary weapon was a spear around 2.7 meters in length called a sarissa ot doru. Although accounts of its length vary, it is usually now believed to have been seven to nine feet long (~2.1 - ~2.7m). It was held one-handed, the other hand holding the hoplite's shield. The spearhead was usually a curved leaf shape, while the rear of the spear had a spike called a sauroter ('lizard-killer') which was used to stand the spear in the ground (hence the name). It was also used as a secondary weapon if the main shaft snapped, or for the rear ranks to finish off fallen opponents as the phalanx advanced over them. It is a matter of contention among historians whether the hoplite used the spear overarm or underarm. Held underarm, the thrusts would have been less powerful but under more control, and vice versa. It seems likely that both motions were used, depending on the situation. If attack was called for, an overarm motion was more likely to break through an opponent's defense. The upward thrust is more easily deflected by armour due to its lesser leverage. However, when defending, an underarm carry absorbed more shock and could be 'couched' under the shoulder for maximum stability. It should also be said that an overarm motion would allow more effective combination of the aspis and doru if the shield wall had broken down, while the underarm motion would be more effective when the shield had to be interlocked with those of one's neighbours in the battle-line. Hoplites in the rows behind the lead would almost certainly have made overarm thrusts. The rear ranks held their spears underarm, and raised spears upwards at increasing angles. This was an effective defence against missiles, deflecting their force.
Hoplites also carried a short sword called a xiphos. The short sword was a secondary weapon, used if and when spears broke, or if the phalanx broke rank. When the enemy retreated, hoplites might drop their shield and spear, and pursue the enemy with their swords. A disadvantage to the xiphos though was that it was extremely heavy and did not provide as much reach as most swords from that period.
The amorous drift of the first hoplite on the right wing: the battle of Mantinea, 348 B.C.(Brief Article)(Poem)
May 01, 2004; All armies are alike in this: on going into action they get forced out rather on their right wing, and one and the other overlap...
Reinstating the hoplite; arms, armour and phalanx fighting in archaic and classical Greece.(Brief article)(Book review)
Aug 01, 2010; 9783515093309 Reinstating the hoplite; arms, armour and phalanx fighting in archaic and classical Greece. Schwartz, Adam.... | <urn:uuid:09ac04b0-880b-4274-8567-6010e26a9a27> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reference.com/browse/hoplite | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979231 | 3,625 | 4.15625 | 4 |
Students at the National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences in Pakistan have been working on a robot to assist the visually impaired. It looks pretty simple, just a mobile base that carries a laptop and a webcam. The bot doesn’t have a map of its environment, but instead uses vanishing point guidance. As you can see in the image above, each captured frame is analyzed for indicators of perspective, which can be extrapolated all the way to the vanishing point where the green lines above intersect. Here it’s using stripes on the floor, as well as the corners where the walls meet the ceiling to establish these lines. From the video after the break you can see that this method works, and perhaps with a little bit of averaging they could get the bot to drive straight with less zig-zagging.
Similar work on vanishing point navigation is being done at the University of Minnesota. [Pratap R. Tokekar's] robot can also be seen after the break, zipping along the corridor and even making turns when it runs out of hallway.
NUCES Pakistan visually impaired guide robot:
University of Minnesota offering: | <urn:uuid:9877335f-3aa4-4103-89b1-a5ba4c03765e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hackaday.com/2011/02/24/vanishing-point-robot-guidance/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940306 | 232 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Public Access to Data
According to the United States Office of Management and Budget, more than 60 percent of all Internet users interact with government Web sites. E-government will save taxpayers a significant amount of money and add value to their experience with government as their needs are better served.
GIS technology supports Web standards and is often the engine of government portals. Esri's GIS is used to locate polling places, reserve campgrounds, report on traffic conditions, locate property for lease or sale, report crime statistics, identify planned development, and show the location of emergency events and their impact on the community.
The Internet has introduced a whole new way to interact with government. GIS makes that interaction more powerful and presents data in a form that makes viewing and understanding easy.
More case studies , books and white papers and user videos. | <urn:uuid:a036f836-1a0b-44d0-8033-1d615c794039> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.esri.com/industries/cadastre/business/public_access | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944231 | 169 | 2.71875 | 3 |
A class of cholesterol-lowering drugs, also known as HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors. Statins work by blocking the action of an enzyme that controls the production of cholesterol. By slowing down cholesterol production, they improve the liver’s ability to clear cholesterol from the blood. Statins are the first-choice drug for treating elevated low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or “bad”) cholesterol levels, and they have relatively few immediate, short-term side effects. There are currently six statin drugs available in the United States: lovastatin (brand name Mevacor), pravastatin (Pravachol), simvastatin (Zocor), atorvastatin (Lipitor), fluvastatin (Lescol), and rosuvastatin (Crestor). A seventh statin, cerivastatin (Baycol), was removed from the market in 2001 because of its link to 31 deaths from rhabdomyolysis, a condition of severe muscle deterioration.
People with Type 2 diabetes are prone to dyslipidemia, or abnormal blood lipid levels, characterized by smaller, denser particles of LDL cholesterol, relatively low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL, or “good”) cholesterol, and high levels of fatty substances called triglycerides. Having dyslipidemia raises a person’s risk of atherosclerosis, heart disease, and stroke. Diabetes itself is also an independent risk factor for heart disease.
The American Diabetes Association recommends that adults with diabetes have their LDL, HDL, total cholesterol, and triglyceride levels checked every year. Treating LDL cholesterol is the first priority in lipid management. If a person’s LDL level is greater than or equal to 100 mg/dl, the first treatment recommended is dietary modifications, along with increased physical activity and improved blood glucose control. However, if the LDL level is 100 mg/dl or higher and the person has existing heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, or cerebrovascular disease, drug therapy should be started in addition to lifestyle changes. Drug therapy should also be started immediately in anyone whose LDL is 130 mg/dl or higher, whether or not the person has existing cardiovascular disease.
Statins are considered the first-choice drug for lowering LDL cholesterol levels, but other types of drugs may be added to achieve secondary goals, such as raising HDL cholesterol levels or lowering triglyceride levels. Other classes of cholesterol-fighting drugs include resins, such as cholestyramine (Questran) and colestipol (Colestid), which lower LDL cholesterol; fibrates, such as gemfibrozil (Lopid), fenofibrate (Tricor), and clofibrate (Abitrate, Atromid-S), which lower triglycerides and to some degree raise HDL cholesterol; and high doses of the B vitamin nicotinic acid, or niacin, which can improve all lipid levels.
In November 2001, at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association, researchers announced the results of the Heart Protection Study, the largest study yet on cholesterol-lowering therapy. The 5 1/2-year study, which followed more than 20,000 people with risk factors for heart disease (such as diabetes, hypertension, a history of heart attack, stroke, or blocked arteries elsewhere in the body) showed that participants who were given simvastatin reduced their risk of heart attack or stroke by one-third. One interesting finding of the study was that simvastatin substantially reduced these risks even in people who had relatively normal cholesterol levels to begin with, which suggests that the drug may benefit an even wider range of people than had previously been thought. Blood tests showed that simvastatin was safe and did not increase the risk of liver or muscle damage or cancer. | <urn:uuid:6d05c678-03f6-4397-8228-4cc40bfaf673> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/articles/diabetes-definitions/statins/1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937742 | 801 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Oil prices rose slightly Tuesday as expectations that the Federal Reserve would soon announce a plan to jumpstart the U.S. economy outweighed a downdraft caused by speculation that the Obama administration was preparing for a release of strategic oil reserves.
Benchmark crude for October delivery was up 8 cents to $96.62 a barrel at late afternoon Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract finished up 12 cents to $96.54 on Monday on the Nymex.
Brent crude, which is used to price international varieties of oil, rose 25 cents to $115.06.
Natalie Rampono, commodities analyst at ANZ Banking Group in Melbourne, Australia said one factor weighing on prices was speculation that the administration of President Barack Obama was closely studying the possibility of an emergency release of oil reserves in order to keep prices down.
On Friday, the U.S. government reported the economy added a weaker-than-expected 96,000 jobs last month, increasing the likelihood of another round of stimulus from the U.S. Federal Reserve when its policy makers meet later this week.
That belief has helped support oil prices in recent days, Rampono said.
In other energy futures trading, wholesale gasoline was up nearly 1 cent to $3.0314 a gallon. Heating oil fell 0.2 cent to $3.1647 a gallon. Natural gas rose 2 cents to $2.832 per 1,000 cubic feet.
The Associated Press | <urn:uuid:1efa211c-7df9-43ef-943a-934936e2d466> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/sep/11/oil-hovers-above-96-in-asia/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947749 | 307 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Wireshark, a tool recognized universally as being one of the best network analyzers available, has long been used by legitimate network professionals as well as a shadier crowd (and everywhere in between). While useful for analyzing both wired and Wi-Fi traffic, monitoring 802.15.4 protocols (such as Zigbee) have not been a common use in the past. [Akiba] of FreakLabs has brought us a solution which works around the normal limitations of Wireshark’s libpcap base, which does not accept simple serial input from most homebrew setups that use FTDI or Arduinos to connect to Zigbee devices. Using named pipes and a few custom scripts, [Akiba] has been able to coax Wireshark into accepting input from one of FreakLabs Freakduino boards.
While there are certainly professional wireless analyzing tools out there that connect directly into Wireshark, we at Hackaday love showing off anyone who takes the difficult, cheap, out of the way method of doing things over the neat, expensive, commercial method any day. | <urn:uuid:c17f4bcc-852f-410a-8247-1f06acf335c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hackaday.com/2010/12/29/bringing-the-shark-to-the-bee/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=104f7cb3e5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95744 | 223 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Chapter 7 Bankruptcy for NY Residents
A Chapter 7 bankruptcy case is a proceeding in which a person who owes debts, referred to as a debtor, seeks relief from creditors under Chapter 7 of the United States Bankruptcy code (the “Code”). The Code refers to Title 11 of the United States Code (11 U.S.C. sections 101-1330). In a Chapter 7 case, the debtor’s nonexempt property is subject to seizure by chapter 7 trustee who subsequently liquidates the property by auction or sale and uses the proceeds to pay unsecured creditors pro rata. In most cases, debtor’s have no assets that are subject to seizure by a Chapter 7 trustee because State and Federal exemptions protect those belongings.
Filing Chapter 7 Bankruptcy
The debtor’s goal in filing chapter 7 bankruptcy is to obtain a discharge from all of his or her dis-chargeable debts. The discharge is a court order that releases the debtor from all or most of his or her debts as well as prevents future attempts by creditors to collect debts. In order to complete a chapter 7 bankruptcy petition and applicable forms, the debtor should gather and identify the following information: (i) A list of all creditors and the amount and nature of their claims; (ii) proof of his or her source of income; (iii) a list of all property and assets; (iv) a complete and accurate monthly budget which includes living expenses such as rent payment, car payment, food expense transportation, etc.
Chapter 7 Bankruptcy and Automatic Stays
Upon filing any bankruptcy case, an automatic stay is put in place preventing collection efforts by creditors. The immediate relief given to all chapter 7bankruptcy filers can transform their lives. The effects of a successful chapter 7 bankruptcy completely eliminates most debts and not one of those debts remains on a Chapter 7 bankruptcy record as unresolved or unpaid. | <urn:uuid:2561ed6e-46e7-4022-ab0d-f37148e0144a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.whiteplainsnybankruptcyattorney.com/chapter-7-bankruptcy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953058 | 391 | 2.0625 | 2 |
A home theatre is the perfect way to kick back and relax after a long day, allowing you to watch blockbusters in the comfort of your own home. You don’t need to build a brand new home to get a whizz bang home theatre, in fact you’d be surprised at what you can put into your existing premises. Read on for more (also see home theatre).
A home theatre can be as simple or as elaborate as you like. Most home theatre systems however are composed of some common elements – the TV or screen, an AV receiver, speakers, a DVD or Bluray player, and so on. A home theatre specialist will be able to listen to your needs and pick the right elements and also design the layout of your home theatre so that it is easy to use and maximise your experience. During the design stages, the professional will take into account your budget, the size and shape of your room, the lighting in your room, who will be using the home theatre and so on.
As well as designing the home theatre, they will also install it for you and show you how to operate every element so that you are confident in your new technologies. Installation can be as simple as pulling each item out of the box and placing them (hiding the cables as best as possible) but for larger, more complicated home theatre systems that have integration and automation elements (push a button for everything to start at once for example), you may have to have cabling and wiring installed into your walls. Be aware that this means that the walls will have to be opened up and repaired and painted afterwards.
We need your email address so that we can send you the details of businesses who express interest in your job.
We need your phone number so that businesses who express interest in your job may call you for more details.
or enter your location to search | <urn:uuid:4a0ff3ee-2474-4b81-8235-2cf099a99b18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.homeimprovementpages.com.au/find/home_theatre_design_and_install_existing_premises | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967194 | 382 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Ustad Vilayat Husain Khan, the Agra gharana stalwart, taught a number of stellar names in Hindustani music. His 50th death anniversary was observed fittingly with concerts in New Delhi recently
During the first half of the 20th Century, the Agra gharana was a major presence in the Hindustani classical music scene as it had produced quite a few luminaries of whom Faiyaz Husain Khan, hailed as Aftab-i-Mausiqi (Sun of Music) by one and all, was the brightest star. While he reigned supreme as a star performer, his cousin Vilayat Husain Khan came to be widely regarded as the Acharya of the gharana. He was a veritable repository of the gharana’s musical wealth and had earned an enviable reputation as a vaggeykar (a master musician-composer).
The Agra gharana traces its antecedents to Haji Sujan Khan whose family was primarily that of Dhrupad singers. Two brothers — Shyamrang and Sarasrang — emerged as well-known practitioners of Dhrupad but the tilt towards Khayal occurred with Shyamrang’s younger son Ghagge Khudabakhsh who was born circa 1800. His eldest son Ghulam Abbas Khan, who was born some time between 1818 and 1820 and died in 1932, was the maternal grandfather of Faiyaz Husain Khan and grand uncle of Vilayat Husain Khan. He lived a long life and not only did he train many eminent singers but also supervised the training of many others belonging to at least two generations. Such were his exacting standards that when his grandson Faiyaz Khan was at the pinnacle of his glory, Ghulam Abbas Khan’s only appreciative remark was: “Haan, ladka ab kuchh-kuchh gaane laga hai” (Yes, the boy has started singing a little). Like all the other children in the family, Vilayat Husain Khan also received instruction from him.
Born in 1895, Vilayat Husain Khan emerged as a competent singer, a great teacher and a versatile composer. As his father Natthan Khan, himself a well-known singer, died when he was only six years old, his training took place under the guidance of several elders of the gharana. Those familiar with the world of Hindustani classical music know very well that this is a world where myths and fables are accepted as history and where many musicians do not acknowledge those from whom they have learnt while claiming discipleship of those who never taught them.
However, there are exceptions like Vilayat Husain Khan who acknowledged in writing that he had learnt from as many as 42 gurus. Such was his humility that he has mentioned the names of even those — for example, Rampur’s Fida Husain Khan whose son Nisar Husain Khan was one of the foremost Khayal and tarana singers of the 20th Century — who taught him only one cheez (composition). Listed among these 42 gurus are such greats as Faiyaz Husain Khan, Alladiya Khan, Abdul Karim Khan, Bhaskarbua Bakhle and Mushtaq Husain Khan.
Vilayat Husain Khan too imparted his vast musical knowledge without hesitation to all those who sought it from him. Those who learnt from him included Mogubai Kurdikar, Durga Khote, Ram Marathe, Jagannathbua Purohit, Gajananrao Joshi, Menaka Shirodkar and former ruler of Jammu and Kashmir Dr. Karan Singh, who later became a union cabinet minister and ambassador and is currently ICCR president. The Ustad did not live long and died at the age of only 67 in 1962. His son Yunus Husain Khan emerged as an authentic torch bearer of the Agra gharana but he too passed away prematurely some years ago.
Ustad Yunus Husain Memorial Society recently organised a concert to commemorate the memory of Ustad Vilayat Husain Khan on his 50th death anniversary. Dr. Karan Singh inaugurated the concert that featured vocalist Yashpaul, a disciple of both Vilayat Husain Khan and Yunus Husain Khan, and sitar player Sharmishtha Ghosh. Fateh Muhammad Khan and Kamal Sabri provided accompaniment to Yashpaul on tabla and sarangi respectively while Subhash Nirvan accompanied Sharmishtha Ghosh on tabla. | <urn:uuid:d5275527-d359-4e74-9361-dc8ec81a8fb2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thehindu.com/arts/music/article3865874.ece | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977909 | 962 | 2.1875 | 2 |
The key part of determining any flash exposure is the lens’ aperture, but shutter speed plays an important role too. The duration of the flash output from electronic flash units is quite short— 1/1000th of a second or even faster is not uncommon. The exposure is made while the shutter is open, but the actual shutter speed will be slower because there is a maximum synchronization speed that varies with each camera and is the time during which the shutter opens, the flash fires, and the shutter closes.
What happens when you shoot at a higher shutter speed than your flash will synch with your camera? You only get part of a picture! What part is missing depends on which way the shutter travels and how much you get—if anything—is determined by the shutter speed you selected. Nowadays, some SLRs have a high-speed synch mode that works with specific speedlights. Check your users’ manual and see if your camera offers this feature.
And don’t think because you’re experienced that you can’t get it wrong. The above image was made with a Pentax 6×7 and 75 f/4.5 SMC lens with a flash exposure was 1/60 sec at f/11. But clearly I needed to shoot it at the 6×7’s correct synch speed of 1/30 sec. Nevertheless, the large negative and fine grain of the Ektar 100 roll film allowed more than acceptable images and prints to be made from a cropped negative. But it would have been so much better if I had access to the entire negative.
Besides matching the camera’s correct sync setting, lower shutter speeds allow more of the ambient light to influence overall exposure, mostly the background – because the aperture you select determines the main subject’s exposure. Using a slow shutter speed can “open up” the background allowing more ambient light to affect the exposure and show more separation between subject and backdrop. But beware the color temperature of any artificial lights that are part of that ambient light. Depending on how bright they may be, using slower shutter speeds can add unwanted color that can pollute skin tones in your shot. The solution: Increase shutter speed but not too much. On the other hand, warmer light sources can add a pleasant warmth to the photographs with makes the camera’s LCD preview screen your new best friend.
Joe Farace is author of “Studio Lighting Anywhere” a new book that’s available from Amazon.con and your friendly neighborhood book or camera store.
This post sponsored by BorrowLenses.com – Renting Canon, Nikon, Olympus & Sony, bodies, lenses and more. | <urn:uuid:9704c440-9381-4cb3-a286-25b3d26ea1c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://photofocus.com/tag/sync-speed/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921758 | 550 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Post-Contact Native American
(500 years ago to present)
When European explorers first arrived in Wisconsin they encountered many different Nations. The Ho-Chunk (formerly called the Winnebago) and Menomini lived near Green Bay. Ioway, Oto and Santee populations lived further west, near the Mississippi River. Other groups, including the Potawatomi, Ojibwa, Sauk and Mesquakie, had moved to Wisconsin ahead of the Europeans.
This diverse population continued burial traditions passed down by their ancestors. Some tribal members were buried in formal cemeteries, while others were buried in family plots or in isolated graves near cabins. Many Nations added their dead to ancient burial mounds. Sometimes people were buried in sitting positions or reclining positions. Sometimes they were only partly buried, or were not buried at all. Scaffolds continued to be used for many years.
Many post-contact Nations in Wisconsin built ‘Spirit Houses'. Spirit houses are small structures built of logs or planks, built to shelter graves. They took many forms. Some looked like little picket fences or piles of logs. Others looked like small houses, complete with peaked roofs. Some accounts of Spirit House burial suggest that the bodies of the dead were laid directly on the ground surface, making the Spirit House more of a mausoleum rather than a grave covering.
Many ethnographic accounts state that burial ritual varied widely within single Nations. The first Nations of Wisconsin are composed of family lines called ‘clans'. Each clan is usually affiliated with an animal totem, and the clans of a single Nation may be divided into two or more groups linked to the earth or sky.
Among the Ho-Chunk, for example, the Hawk, Pigeon, Eagle and Thunderbird clans were given scaffold burial, while other clans were buried in graves topped by wooden spirit houses.
Among the Ioway, each clan was said to have its own burial preferences. The Ioway are believed to have utilized both scaffold burial and Spirit Houses. When Spirit Houses were used, the dead were placed inside in a sitting position. The Ioway may have also been among the last people to build mounds in Wisconsin. Late Oneota/early Ioway burials are definitely known to have been placed in older mounds, and there are hints that some new mounds were built after European contact.
Santee traditions combined scaffold burial and earth interment, depending on personal preference and season of death. Some bodies were quickly buried, while others were wrapped and left on scaffolds for years. Earth burials were surrounded by wooden picket enclosures similar to spirit houses.
The Prairie Band Potawatomi used scaffold burial for Eagle Clan members. Members of the bear clan were buried in brushy areas. Clans linked to water were buried near water. Members of the Thunder clan were placed on hilltops, in sitting positions inside spirit houses.
Early accounts of Menomini cemeteries describe the use of scaffolds, log spirit houses and burial in older mounds. Ojibwa communities are uniformly described as using Spirit Houses. | <urn:uuid:f9ba70c5-d1a8-40c2-9652-698a48321b09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/archaeology/mounds/cemetery/postcontact.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982091 | 648 | 4.03125 | 4 |
Solving SOA Problems by Merging It with WOA
In his rescent article, Dion Hinchcliffe assesses the direction of Enterprise architecture and SOA in particular. He notes the following trends:
- Modern software architecture, with SOA as the top-level organizing principle, seems to have more and more trouble keeping up with the rate of change in most organizations... There's a growing sense that the business is "pulling away" and despite enterprise architecture and SOA being intentionally proactive, the default stance is one of short-term reactive response and trying to "clean up afterward"...
- Consumption of SOA and service-based IT is still too low... The early "field of dreams" approach to services... finally morphed... in many organizations into more mature services landscapes with some actual governance. But now we see that the subsequent complexity, rarefied skills and tools, and additional constraints ended up stamping out a lot of SOA consumption at the edge... Without consumption and uptake, SOA cannot access the "return" in ROI...
- The focus on SOA still tends to be on the [over]engineering of seams and processes instead of removing constraints on the business and increasing ready access to value... Despite heavy investments in IT for 30 years and the openness and interoperability intents of SOA, the majority of our enterprise data remains submerged and inaccessible to most business users, silos are still prevalent, and there still lacks the human dimension...
In Dion’s opinion, the main reasons for these SOA shortcomings can be attributed to three main problems:
- Project/product oriented focus of SOA implementations.
- Concentration more on the technology than on the enterprise nature of SOA.
- The fact that SOA progress is driven more by the standard bodies than by the real implementations.
He suggests that:
...the openness and visibility of today's modern Web seems to provide living examples of what's effective at driving forward business results with SOA. By this I mean when it addresses the key issues around improving the response to opportunities and directly enabling self-service, all while remaining highly scalable and protecting users and data... Web-Oriented Architecture (WOA)... [is] a parallel "track" for SOA that's evolved organically in the wilds of the online world to meet many of the same challenges that we have in our organizations today.
Dion explains that
Key to the story of WOA is that at least one critical feedback loop is present in online businesses that is much less evident in most SOA efforts today: Their business will fundamentally thrive or die based on the adoption of their services. Most new online businesses offer an API (the Web version of SOA) at the very outset these days and it's now common for the services themselves -- instead of the visual Web pages -- to be the dominant point of usage early on... This is a yardstick that would change a lot of what we focus on in SOA.
Despite the fact that there is quite a few differences between SOA and WOA, Dion sees many service-based approaches being emerged naturally in WOA that can be leveraged to improve business performance of SOA:
- Responding to change faster. Reducing execution chokepoints by making SOA more self-service (running your SOA like a business) by broader audiences in the organization.
- Increasing consumption. Using new service delivery models that make SOA the easiest, cheapest, and fastest way to solve problems.
- Actively enabling access to value. Opening up broad access to data and people using models such as deeply linked REST-based data webs and open supply chains. Adopt browser-based approaches to consumption such as enterprise mashups tools and user distributable widgets that project the SOA across the organization.
Dion concludes his article by stating that:
The bottom line: Since many of the very best examples of SOA that works are the models we seeing being proven out in large scale on the Web, we must learn as much as we can from them (and the price is right, even the most compelling lessons here are free.) While enterprise SOA will never be identical to Internet-based WOA, we can borrow the best ideas from the success stories that have emerged on the Global SOA (which is what I call the service-enabled side of the Internet)...
Dion seems to be spot on in defining current issues (and their origin) of SOA implementations. Whether his solution - merging WOA with SOA - will solve them remains to be seen.
Why would these issues be different with WOA?
None of the issues presented by Dion are technology dependent. Suboptimal programming models certainly don't help resolving them. Versioning does, but WOA/REST has no versioning strategy in sight because there is nothing to version. You change something and most likely, everything breaks. The fact that REST coupls access and identity will actually make Dion's issues quite worse in a WOA world.
We were within reach of delivering a decent programming model, that could have resolved all this, but no, the industry had to go all the way back to CRUD their way up.
Until people will show precisely how they build entire information systems in a RESTful way and how they resolve these issues, this will only remain some pump and dump analyst talk.
Good, but not quite right
Ok, things I do agree with:
1. Totally agree with
The focus on SOA still tends to be on the [over]engineering of seams and processes instead of removing constraints on the business and increasing ready access to value
2. Also, in the two first causes pointed out, namely the product/project orientation and concentration in technology.
Now, what I disagree with.
1. Third cause: I feel it is not the standards driving SOA, but actually implementations! All the way around. Actual implementations are wrong, too RPC driven, IT domain modeled. No wonder business cannot make it there!
2. WOA as an example of improved response, self-service and high scalability, business side. That is not correct, simply because the web oriented apps tend to be wrongly modeled too! Internal domain model exposed, CRUD through HTTP, Database transactions over HTTP, all those are examples of proposals for web enterprise applications. Tell me if those are not IT oriented instead of business oriented. Problem is always the same: IT people think naming the variables with some business domain concept names will make that business usable, well not.
3. Examples of SOA I see working are not in the web. They lack the IT invisibility, technology independency that is key for composability and business use.
What it is valuable in Dion's research and proposal is the business driven idea. But sadly, actual WOA implementation, as Jean-Jacques mentions in his post, is not different from SOA, so it is not of help for improvement to check implementation.
BTW, for Jean-Jacques: it is not Suboptimal programming the problem, but Suboptimal understanding of the goal, leading to Suboptimal modeling.
William Martinez Pomares | <urn:uuid:152ba960-d5cd-4788-b8d8-4f92b12471d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/10/SOAWOA | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949616 | 1,473 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Jackie GleasonActor / Comedian
Born: 26 February 1916
Died: 24 June 1987 (cancer)
Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
Best known as: Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners
Name at birth: Herbert John Gleason
Jackie Gleason was a big, bluff comedian of the 1950s and 1960s. One of TV's early stars, he specialized in blustering loudmouths, blue-collar philosophers and thin-mustache cocktail-hour types. His show The Honeymooners, in which he played the scheming bus driver Ralph Kramden, ran only from 1955-56 but achieved cult status in endless reruns. (Shorter Honeymooners sketches were a regular part of Gleason's variety shows throughout the 1950s and 1960s, but the 39 full half-hour episodes seen in reruns come from the 1955-56 season.) Gleason also hosted several television variety shows and played dramatic roles, most notably starring as pool hustler Minnesota Fats opposite Paul Newman in The Hustler (1961).
Extra credit: Gleason was a successful composer and conductor of jazz-inflected mood music, recording over a dozen albums during his career... Gleason's character in The Honeymooners often is cited as the inspiration for Fred Flintstone.
Copyright © 1998-2013 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved.
More on Jackie Gleason from Infoplease:
Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:55d52441-1c1b-407b-9679-3de020546cb6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/jackiegleason.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965683 | 313 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Are you ready for MOOCs? A MOOC is a massive open online course. That's a course where the participants and materials are distributed across the web. To make this work, the course also has to be "open" and have large numbers of participants.
How large? Thousands. Yes, you thought that 101 course you took as a freshman that had 300 kids in a lecture hall was large and impersonal - or perhaps you liked the anonymity that came from large numbers. A MOOC connects "distributed" instructors and learners across a common topic or field
This is a recent form of online course development and many of the standard formats and resources of online courses - for example, the Learning Management System (LMS) - don't really work.
Google artificial-intelligence guru Sebastian Thrun was in the news earlier this year because he left Stanford University to start a company based on the A.I. course he made freely available last fall. With that course, tens of thousands of students were taking it on the web. Now, two of his old Stanford colleagues who were also trying out MOOCs have decided to bring their own free online courses into a for-profit venture.
A lot the attention comes from the fact that these are "elite" schools experimenting with this format. The company they have started is Coursera www.coursera.org which says it wants to make "the best education in the world freely available to any person who seeks it."
MOOCs are founded on the theory of connectivism and an open pedagogy based on networked learning. At the start, these courses were typically free of fees to participate. This new venture takes it in a commercial direction. Those fees may be a kind of tuition if the participant wants some certification or accreditation after successful completion. Of course, the design of these courses is often without specific requirements (as in papers or tests or materials that would need to be graded) although they usually have the familiar weekly topics to focus discussion.
In some ways, they remind me of early (and not so great) online courses with minimal structure, weekly presentations/lectures, discussion questions, and suggested activities and other resources. The materials in these new MOOCs may in fact be very high quality. But pedagogically, much of the course motion is expected to come from the participants and so the course allows curriculum and structure to emerge from the exchange between participants. Discussions and participants reflecting on the concepts amongst themselves and also sharing resources using any number of social media tools are seen as part of the learning process in MOOCs.
By leaving their elite university, are these professors and the students who take these courses further pushing the idea of a University 2.0.? Is the degree from the elite university becoming less valued?
Right now, Coursera has eight courses, centering on computer science with some math, economics and linguistics. (5 taught by Stanford profs, 2 by profs at the UC-Berkeley and 1 by a University of Michigan professor) These are all listed as free now and none give you any type of credit from any source. Learn for the sake of learning. What a concept.
coursera.org/modelthinking's description starts out by saying: "We see political uprisings, market crashes, and a never ending array of social trends. How do we make sense of it? Models. Evidence shows that people who think with models consistently outperform those who don't. And, moreover people who think with lots of models outperform people who use only one."
I'm not much interested in Coursera's business model, and more interested in the impact this may have later on online learning, pedagogy and the changing university. In fact, I was torn about what category on this blog this post should be tagged as - since it falls into my Open Everything, Pedagogy, eLearning, Trends, Social Web - almost any category might come into play.
Game changer? Maybe. With more than 335,000 people already registered for the five Stanford-provided courses in the Coursera catalog, who knows what may come of this. | <urn:uuid:e3bf0f19-59f4-4552-a21f-a9a078068f4b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.serendipity35.net/index.php?/archives/2543-Are-You-Ready-for-MOOCs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967872 | 854 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Ontario, CA (PRWEB) October 11, 2012
"As the leading disability insurance lawyer in the nation, I review thousands of ERISA cases each month," says Frank N. Darras.
According to Robert T. Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad's Prophecy, this law, passed in 1974 will provoke the stock market crash of 2016. He calls it “the law that changed the world,” and Darras agrees this is a real possibility and baby boomers should protect themselves now.
Kiyosaki warns that first, “there will be a market sell-off caused by baby-boomers converting to cash. Secondly, the cost of living and medical costs will go up. And the third reason is people will make bad decisions in how they handle their money.
"What is terrifying about ERISA is that it in an uncertain economy, it further raises anxiety levels of the Baby Boomers reaching retirement age in the next 5 years. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, was supposed to benefit Americans' retirement and disability plans, yet it enacts harsh penalties on retirees who do not exit the stock market by age 70."
Many employees have used ERISA to save for retirement through IRA’s and 401(k)’s. Almost half, 48%, of that money is invested into the stock market. That percentage could have serious consequences on the unpredictable stock market once a large demographic, like the Baby Boomers, all start turning 70 at the same time, says Darras.
Once a retiree turns 70½ years old, they must exit the stock market and withdraw at least the required minimum or risk losing 50% of their retirement account. Chances are retirees will not be willing to pay the extra premium and risk losing that much from retirement. Imagine the consequences to the stock market if all of the Baby Boomers try to withdraw concurrently. Regardless of where you live, whether it is in Alabama, New Mexico, Oregon or West Virginia, ERISA applies, no state is exempt.
“Considering the devastating recession that already occurred, it is scary to think of the possible repercussions that ERISA’s policy will have on the stock market. Baby boomers reaching retirement age should be aware of the law and consider withdrawing before age 70,” says Darras.
The fine line on so many of ERISA’s policies is just one more reason to consider private retirement and insurance options. Disability insurance provided by ERISA has a long reputation of denied claims and workers never receiving their proper insurance benefits. Often, workers who face long-term disability have to take funds from their retirement just to make up for the holes their company’s long- term disability ERISA policy leaves.
“Now more than ever, workers should consider private long-term disability and long-term care insurance and retirement plans that aren’t under the unreliable and often sticky government plans. Paying a little more for individual coverage may save you a lot later-both money and stress,” says Darras.
Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/10/prweb10004949.htm | <urn:uuid:598ad0eb-8264-4411-9c9a-a3ba16cc9c96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.insurancenewsnet.com/article.aspx?id=360558 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951252 | 663 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Visiting the D Day beaches of Normandy
By 1944, Hitler had over-run Eastern and Western Europe, and only the English Channel separated the Third Reich from Great Britain. As the months went by, Germany created its “Atlantic Wall” – a seemingly impregnable string of concrete bunkers and artillery emplacements. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill surmised that the only way the war could be won was by going on the offensive and taking the fight to the Germans in a coordinated invasion of occupied France. The day chosen for the D-Day invasion was June 6. Allied troops landing on unprotected beaches to confront the gun emplacements suffered tremendous casualties before securing their objectives.
Veterans of the landings often spoke of the horrific images and sounds that stuck with them for decades after that day. For today’s visitor, it’s still the sights and sounds, albeit very different ones, that make Normandy an unforgettable pilgrimage.
In the parking lot at the American Military Cemetery at Omaha Beach, hundreds of visitors made their way to the manicured entrance. The air was filled with revolving languages – French, English, German, Japanese, Russian. All talk dialed down to a hush as they walked through the columns of the Memorial and looked out over the reflecting pool to the neatly rowed landscape of 9,387 marble crosses and Star of Davids stretching from the woods to the cliffs.
A carillion began to play. The tune wasn’t the expected church music; instead the bells were ringing The Star Spangled Banner. They were followed by a single bugler, who stepped out among the rows of crosses to blow Taps. A few veterans hunting for specific graves stopped their searches to come to attention, while adults and children of the various nationalities stood in respectful silence.
Visitors who are physically up for it can walk a series of zig-zag steps down to Omaha Beach, which was one of the assault points assigned to the American forces, and scene of the day’s biggest casualties. If you go, walk to the water’s edge, turn around and imagine the difficulty of the assault, with hundreds of yards of beach, followed by high, vegetation-tangled cliffs.
A trip to the D-Day beaches can be done in a long day, but the scope of the invasion was so large that I recommend taking two days to fully appreciate it. Two days also provides the opportunity to venture inland to see towns like Caen and St. Mere Eglise, where British and U.S. paratroopers dropped in to cut German supply and reinforcement routes. St. Mere Eglise is where the 101st Airborne profiled in Band of Brothers saw their first action.
Normandy is in the northwest part of France, approximately 150 miles from Paris. The French highway system is excellent and they drive on the right side of the road, making it very U.S. driver-friendly, even in the small towns, although the roads there can be tight. There are lots of tolls, so understand the currency values before getting on the road and have coins on hand.
Driving to the ocean from Caen will bring visitors to Sword, Juno and Gold Beaches, where the British and Canadian troops landed. These are pretty quick stops, since there wasn’t much German resistance built up in this part of Normandy and the three beaches show little evidence of being battle sites. Continuing west along the coast, the next stop is the military port of Arromanche-les-bains. This is where the British Navy filled barges with cement, then towed them and sunk them close to the French coast to create an artificial harbor that was used to offload tanks, trucks, artillery and supplies. Remnants of the harbor can still be seen today. The story of the harbor’s daring creation is told in the D-Day museum at Arromanche. Entry is 6.5 euros for adults and 4.5 euros for children, and is well worth it for the films, interactive maps and collections of military memorabilia.
A little further west are the German gun emplacements and concrete bunkers at Longues-sur-Mer. These are worth a stop because they are among the best-preserved and most intact structures on the route. Sure to be a big hit with kids. Again, think of the massive firepower these emplacements were able to direct onto the beaches.
Omaha Beach is about 8 miles west of Longues-sur-Mer. Continuing past Omaha, you’ll come to Point du Hoc. Here, a team of 260 Army Rangers was assigned to scale the rock cliff with grappling hooks and eliminate the gun emplacements trained on nearby Omaha and Utah Beaches. Two-thirds of the Rangers were lost in the assault. Point du Hoc vividly illustrates the raw power of war. Prior to the assault, U.S. Navy battleships concentrated their big guns on the clifftop. Today, Point du Hoc remains a kind of man-made moonscape, without as much as five consecutive feet of level ground. The tangle of twisted reinforcing rods and shattered concrete bunkers makes you wonder what it was like for the Germans, many of the Czech and Polish conscripts, who sustained that bombardment.
West of Point du Hoc is the last major beach, Utah, which also was an American landing zone. Utah had less German resistance and the smoother rolling landscape reflects it. Utah has some emplacements and also has several of the inverted-cross anti-tank obstructions.
If You’d Like To Go
Normandy hotels for the June 6th anniversary of D Day are booked solid, so I shopped an alternative trip for the Memorial Day period, departing May 24 and returning May 31.
It’s better to visit early or wait until the fall, since the airfares once you reach mid June start to climb north of $700 per ticket, depending on departure city, to Paris. For the Memorial Day trip, priceline.com had fares of $538 from New York’s JFK to Charles DeGaulle airport. Check here for latest fares and availability.
A couple options here. You can take the train www.raileurope.com from Paris to either Caen or Bayeux, which are both close to the D Day sites (Bayeux is also home to the Bayeux Tapestry exhibit). In either city, you can rent a car and see the sites yourself, or book a tour. In Paris, priceline.com had compact rental cars from $344 for the week, or $404 for a mid-size car. Rentals were cheaper in Caen, $299 for a compact and $359 for a mid-size. Check here for the latest rates and availability. A tour is a little bit easier on your otherwise designated driver, since he/she can sit back and enjoy the sights, but a full-day private D Day tour for a group of up to six people can run almost $600.
Priceline.com offers a robust lineup of hotels throughout the Normandy region, with the majority clustered in the larger towns close by the ocean. Check here for rates and availability. Start your hotel search in the cities of Caen or Bayeux, then explore the drop-down box which will show other nearby towns. All will be less than ½ hour drive to the beaches.
Prices can vary quite a bit depending on the type of hotel you want. In Caen, the smaller properties include the 25-room Rex Hotel at $73 a night, or the 50-room Hotel Clarine at $86 a night. In Bayeux, accommodations can go all the way up to the Chateau de Bellefontaine at $226 a night.
The food in the Normandy region of France reflects the abundance of seafood and dairy livestock. Mussels (moules) and sole are favorites from the sea. Many dishes come in rich butter or cream sauces. Be sure to try the local dishes, since they are very different from what you’ll find in Paris and other regions of the country.
Photos copyright Lyle J. Ek, 2008 | <urn:uuid:629409cc-0b9c-49ae-87a9-8e1f1a6641ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://travelblog.priceline.com/web/guest/home/-/blogs/visiting-the-d-day-beaches-of-normandy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955368 | 1,699 | 2.046875 | 2 |
DEL MAR — Now there’s entertainment everywhere at the fair. Not so when money to put on the event was limited and it went primarily for community exhibits, agriculture displays and commercial booths.
But there was the organ grinder and his little monkey of the Capuchin species stationed near the entrance to the ground. The monkey was outfitted in a colorful suit, tie, hat and wore an apron with a big pocket. As the grinder played music that sounded like a calliope from a box like instrument the monkey would work the crowd, sit on a kid’s lap, doff his hat, and stick out his tiny hand and collect pennies and other coins. He squealed with delight when he received paper money and would stuff the money into the pocket until it sagged.
The organ grinder was known to enjoy a nip or two of the grape and when he had too many nips the monkey could sense it and refuse to work.
In the 1800s organ grinders were common on street corners of New York and were also popular at fairs. Now they have disappeared almost completely. In some areas they wouldn’t be able to perform because of animal rights laws.
Organ grinders migrated to this country primarily from Italy.
No related posts.
Filed Under: EyeWitness | <urn:uuid:c2322e39-5188-4b48-9fac-8aa8b6bdce9b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theranchosantafenews.com/2010/07/organ-grinder-monkey-delighted-children-at-fair/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984209 | 273 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Firearm-related violence: the impact of the Nationwide Agreement on Firearms
Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 116
ISBN 0 642 24106 6
Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, May 1999
The preliminary findings outlined in this paper seem to indicate that there has been a decline in firearm related death rates (essentially in firearm related suicides) in most jurisdictions in Australia. There is also preliminary evidence that firearms may be being displaced by other methods or weapons. Despite this, however, Mouzos concludes it is too soon to determine definitively whether Australia's uniform firearms laws have achieved their aim in reducing firearm related violence and misuse.
Media release: Firearms related deaths | <urn:uuid:552f82a2-81db-496f-b71d-5e798057e1e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/101-120/tandi116.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913642 | 142 | 1.703125 | 2 |
|Vol. V, No. 2, Fall 1991|
By Carolyn Reno
Carolyn Reno is the Registrar of the Shiloh Museum in Springdale, Arkansas.
The Shiloh Museum is dedicated to the preservation of the history of Northwest Arkansas including Ozarks culture and crafts. The Museum's sheep-to-shawl program is a hands-on experience with a traditional Ozarks craft.
The Museum has been holding sheep-to-shawl programs since 1987. The first one attempted to follow the traditional sheep-to-shawl event where guilds competed to produce a shawl, beginning with the shearing of the sheep and following through the washing, carding, and spinning of the wool to the weaving. The event has since evolved into a program whereby school children and the public are exposed to the handwork involved in a traditional method of cloth production.
A visit to sheep-to-shawl begins at the shearing station. The shearing station is set up in a shaded area in the Museum complex, and is surrounded by a nineteenth century log cabin, general store, and doctor's office.
Sheep for the demonstration are provided by local ranchers. Stan and Caye Mort of Hogeye and Ann Smitherman of Winslow brought their Cheviot and Romney sheep to the first sheep-to-shawl. Since 1988 Clair and Cheryl Driggs of the Antioch area (Washington County) have been bringing their Cheviot lambs to be sheared. The Driggs, who have raised sheep in Oregon, have been in the Ozarks for nine years and believe "it is ideal country for raising sheep." They take great pleasure in the program and the fact that it exposes so many people to an experience that is rarely seen these days.
The shearing is done by Paul Ahrens, one of a handful of professional shearers operating in northwest Arkansas. Ahrens, a graduate of the University of Arkansas, talks visitors through the technology of shearing, demonstrating first with hand shears, then shears operated by a hand crank, and finally with modem electric shears. How the sheep are held for shearing, how the wool comes off as a fleece, fascinates the viewing public.
From the shearing station, visitors proceed to the Museum's 19th century general store building where the Wool and Wheel Handspinners Guild and the Northwest Arkansas Handweavers' Guild demonstrate the crafts of carding, spinning and weaving.
The Handspinners Guild is a new organization but its membership consists of experienced as well as novice spinners. Some of these spinners once belonged to the Ozark Mountain Yarn Spinners, the group that first approached the Museum about the program. The Handweavers' Guild was originally organized as the Benton County Rug Weavers Association in the 1920s. They became the Northwest Arkansas Handweavers Guild in the late 1940s and their workshops, held at the War Eagle Mill, evolved into the War Eagle Arts and Crafts Fair in 1954. Both guilds have been highly committed to the Museum's sheep-to-shawl program since its beginnings.
The program is held for two days in early October. While the program is open to the public at all times, scheduled tours of school children make up the bulk of visitors to the program. Demonstrators speak to about 450 children over the two days. The program has been enthusiastically received by area teachers who say it fits in well with studies of pioneer life and culture. Many teachers begin calling the Museum in early September to reserve a tour time.
Sheep-to-shawl has become a major autumn event at the Shiloh and is one way that the Museum is working to preserve traditional Ozarks crafts.
Copyright -- OzarksWatch
Next Article | Table of Contents | Other Issues | Keyword Search
Local History Home | <urn:uuid:ae718a5d-c898-4e81-9da2-bf37e4f93da5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/ozarkswatch/ow502g.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958401 | 789 | 2.40625 | 2 |
More than 100 million children below the age of five will be vaccinated against polio in a synchronized campaign covering 20 countries in West and Central Africa starting on Friday.
Tens of thousands of health workers and volunteers including Rotarians are uniting with health ministries, UN Agencies, and communities during four days of door-to-door vaccinations. Nigeria, one of three remaining polio-endemic countries along with Afghanistan and Pakistan, is aiming to get the two drops of oral vaccine into the mouths of 57.7 million children.
This year’s progress in India has proven what is possible when we focus on the task at hand. In Africa, the end of polio is in sight, but we still have hard work ahead. Failure is not an option. | <urn:uuid:bcc2265a-e0e7-465f-966c-88b8383e231e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.rotary.org/2012/03/22/polio-vaccination-campaign-to-immunize-millions-in-africa/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=d22f799ecb | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936666 | 153 | 2.296875 | 2 |
One in Christ for the Sake of All
Representatives of the churches and organizations of Christian Churches Together in the United States assembled in Memphis, February 14-17, 2012, to respond to one question:
How might the Holy Spirit use the witness of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his Letter from the Birmingham Jail to help the church live the Gospel more fully and proclaim it more faithfully?
In our time together, our hearts and our minds have been engaged by Jesus’ announcement that:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
Companions of Dr. King have shared with us their first-hand experience in the Civil Rights movement and of their continuing work. We reconnected with the story of the students on the Freedom Ride. We journeyed to Slave Haven Museum and confronted the national memory of the slave trade, the millions of Africans who lost their lives or their freedom in the forced journey from Africa to the New World. We visited the Lorraine Motel and the National Civil Rights Museum, coming face to face again with the things that necessitated the Civil Rights movement and the Poor People’s Campaign. We recognized our call to the “fierce urgency of now” that Dr. King named.
We declare unequivocally that racism, extreme wealth disparity, injustice and poverty, and violence are inextricably linked together. Dr. King said that “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered” when “profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people.” We call upon the church to say and act unambiguously for people. An anti-racist church advocates for equity, pursues justice and embodies non-violence. We know this. We have experienced the reality of God’s in-breaking kingdom in our relationships with each other. Gathered by the Spirit, as children of Our Father, in the name of Christ Jesus, we have known both truth and trust in the presence of each other. From the perspective of an outsider looking in on our gathering, we may seem like unlikely partners – Christians of African, European, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific, Native American, and Middle Eastern descent meeting in friendship; Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Catholics, Orthodox, Historic African American, and Historic Protestants exchanging ideas and living in mutual hope. We belong together. We have heard God’s “Yes” to our relationships and we say “Amen to the glory of God.”
Our gathering as Christian Churches Together is a joyful fellowship for which we give thanks and pray is pleasing to God, for in gathering together we experience Christ tearing down the walls that otherwise divide us.
With Dr. King, we affirm: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
From our unity in Christ, we say to everyone in the United States that there is room for people from any land or language in this country. The color of one’s skin is a gift from God; to welcome the other is an act of our common humanity. The relationships that one has and the possibilities that one is extended are how we each realize what God promises for all. There are many ways in which our society limits the kinds of relationships people have and the possibilities for advancement people are given. We who met together in Memphis call upon the church to resist these socially imposed limits by engaging in new relationships with those who seem different and creating possibilities for people in poverty to acquire equity and experience economic security.
Our common humanity and our witness to the Christ of all peoples summons our churches to act for the wellbeing of all, to advocate for equity for the poor, to pursue justice, and to practice the love and nonviolence that Jesus teaches. Therefore we commend to our churches and organizations that they:
Examine their participation in the structures and personal choices that ignore the reality of poverty and perpetuate the effects of racism.
Embrace one or more of the initiatives from the CCT Statement on Poverty as a church wide priority which seek the elimination of poverty in this nation.
Partner with another church who is representative of being an "unlikely partner" in our anti-poverty work, so that our common witness may be to the God who reconciles us in Christ.
Proclaim publicly, in their own ways and in alliances of joint action, that the new forms of racist and unChristian behavior toward the immigrant, the impoverished and the non-Christian are abhorrent to God and a denial of the grace which God in Christ Jesus offers to everyone.
Seek ways to collaborate in their anti-racism and cross-cultural ministries and to share their resources and experiences in this work with each other and, as appropriate, with multi-religious partners.
Be mutually accountable to each other by regular reporting of their actions on these recommendations through a forum identified by Christian Churches Together.
Finally, working in collaboration through Christian Churches Together, develop an appropriate public witness and presence in Birmingham on April 16, 2013, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of The Letter from the Birmingham Jail and publicly report what the church is doing to overcome the sin of racism and to ensure economic “justice for all.”
For information contact:
Dick Hamm, Executive Director of CCT | <urn:uuid:b8f4427d-cfcf-4bda-a112-cfbd5368a86f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://johnharmstrong.com/?p=41 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949119 | 1,164 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Prior to kickoff:
The kickoff is determined by a coin toss. The captain of the visiting team calls
it in the air. The winner chooses which goal they will defend or they may elect
to choose kickoff in the first half. If the second option is chosen, the captain
of the opposing team decides which goal they will defend.
The kickoff is kicked from the center point on the center line. The ball must
roll one complete revolution before any player on either team can touch it.
After this, it is free to the first player that gets to it.
A hand ball is when a player other than the goalie touches the ball with any
part of their arm from the shoulder to the fingers. Sometimes the call will not
be made if the player that committed the hand ball, or his team, did not get an
advantage or possession.
These calls are made very seldom. Obstruction is
when a player stops another player from getting the ball by running in their way
purposely without any intent of going for the ball.
A foul, as in basketball or football, is an illegal play. Knocking a player
down, tripping them, or grabbing their jersey are all examples of fouls. They
can result in free kicks as well as a yellow or even red card if the play is
A yellow card is issued when a player commits a foul that is considered
dangerous to the opposing player. If two of these
cards are accumulated during the course of one game a red card will be issued
and the player must leave the game. A yellow may also be issued if the player
holds the ball out of bounds too long in order to waste time at the end of the
game if their team is winning. There is no set limit of time that can be spent
holding the ball. The referee is in charge of
deciding how much time is enough.
A red card is the most serious punishment in the game of soccer. The player
that receives the card will be kicked out of the game. In high school soccer the
referee has the final say in whether or not player
must miss the next game. The coach of the team may also enforce a team issued
code of conduct that says the player will miss a set number of games. Red cards
can be issued to a player that has already received a yellow card and commits
another foul. Excessive arguing may also be grounds for a red card. Purposely
hitting the ball with your hand or hitting the ball while the goalie has it in
his hands are also red cardable
An offsides call will be made if an attacking player
has two or less defending players between him and the goal he is attacking. The
call will not be made if the player that is in the offsides
position does not interfere with the play. A player cannot be offsides
on their own half of the field.
Any time that any foul or handball is committed, the other team receives a free
kick. When taking these the other team must be at least ten yards away. After
three or four warnings the player closest to the referee
that is not far enough away may get a yellow card. If the kick is awarded close
to the goal, 25 to 30 yards away from the goal, the other team will usually form
a "wall". Sometimes the ball will be sent directly
into the wall on the first kick and after that the players in the wall will be a
little more cautious in the forming of their "wall".
This is the direct result of a foul in the large box, or penalty box. The referee
will mark off 12 paces from the center of the goal line. The goalie of the team
that committed the foul will have to try and stop the kick from the person that
the other team chooses to take their free kicks. These can also be the result of
a hand ball. The goalie cannot move until the kicker takes their first step.
When the ball is kicked over the end line by a player attacking that end a goal
kick is awarded. This means that the goalie of that end may kick the ball from
the box in front of the goal.
This is awarded when a player kicks the ball over the end line that he is
defending. There are four corner flags on the corners of the field. A player
from the other team kicks the ball from the corner closest to where the ball
went out at.
This means that a free kick can go directly into the goal off of a free kick.
This means that a player cannot kick the ball directly into the net. It must be
touched by at least one other player from either team before the ball can be
kicked into the net.
Out of bounds:
Unlike basketball, the ball does must be completely over the line to be called.
The call can be made before the ball even touches the ground. A player can be
standing out of bounds and not be called if the ball is still not out. | <urn:uuid:1fedcd5d-1d51-44cf-b2bc-6ae256266b51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.siusoccer.com/parents/linked/soccer_terms.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967553 | 1,046 | 2.78125 | 3 |
I am excited about the one-day Agricultural Biomass Heating Seminar that is coming up on March 21 in Saratoga Springs! The seminar is being held in conjunction with the Northeast Biomass Heating Expo 2012. For full details and registration information, go to: http://www.heatne.com/program.html . This seminar will provide a major opportunity to advance the development of grass energy by bringing together leading players in the agricultural biomass arena. It is our big chance to bring many good but independent efforts together into a coherent whole.
Here is a sketch of the day’s agenda. The seminar will open with a keynote address from Christopher T. Wright, Ph.D., Manager, Idaho National Laboratory, Biofuels & Renewable Energy Technologies. The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has been a leader in bioenergy research and development. Chris will describe INL’s expertise, capabilities and desire to work with and enable industry to make bioenergy a reality, with a focus on the Northeast.
Following the keynote address will be a succession of four panel presentations.
The first is on Agri-Biomass Performance Characteristics, moderated by Sid Bosworth. His panel will draw from regional knowledge of the variety of agricultural biomass crops being converted to fuel. The focus will be on viable biomass crops for the Northeast and which ones are the most promising. The panelists will speak to a range of performance characteristics i.e. ash, chlorine, production costs, land use, time of harvest, fertility mgmt, etc.
The second panel, starting after lunch, deals with Processing Agri-Biomass, moderated by Matt McCardle. Case studies will give examples of different methods being used in the region to process grass as a commercial biomass fuel including mobile units and stationary systems. Quality standards, storage & handling, and improving efficiency will be covered.
The third panel will examine Combustion & Emissions, moderated by Jon Montan. Case studies will give examples of successful ag biomass or multi-fuel heating systems. The session will conclude with the results from current NYSERDA-funded grass combustion research. The suitability of grass fuels for different scale systems, how fuel variety affects combustion, emission profiles and additional research needs will also be featured.
Then, after a break, the fourth and last panel will look at the Cost of Production, moderated by Dan Conable. What does it cost to produce ag biomass fuel? Participants will hear two examples of different cost & breakeven scenarios, based on current enterprise models. What costs and which variables have the biggest opportunity for savings?
The culminating session at the end of the day will bring together the points of information, challenges and consensus from each of the earlier panel sessions under the goal of developing the market. The product will be a Research and Development Action Plan.
We need your input, experience and ideas, so don’t miss it ! | <urn:uuid:c104a6a0-023d-477d-9ac0-9a2cffa0f040> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://grassenergy.wordpress.com/2012/02/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917755 | 605 | 1.507813 | 2 |
A Bill in the Queen’s Speech will, hopefully, speed up the process of letting some more sunlight into Northern Ireland’s rather musty justice system.
Measures to allow cameras in courts in England and Wales will be introduced during the course of the next Parliament. The Crime and Courts Bill will annul the ban on filming that currently exists.
Scotland has already taken steps in this direction. The new UK Supreme Court is televised, but as it was previously linked to Parliament (the ‘Law Lords’) it is somewhat different.
It’s not exactly revolutionary stuff — it’s likely that, initially at least, filming will be restricted to the judge’s comments, so it will probably be summing up and sentencing in criminal trials that will generally be broadcast.
There are few voices arguing, at this stage, in favour of the filming of witness testimony, or cross-examination. But I do hope that it won’t be too long before comments made by both judges and lawyers can be broadcast — which will greatly aid the ability of the media to cover both criminal and civil courts. Quite frankly, there is not enough coverage of important legal cases and developments.
Indirectly, I hope the Crime and Courts Bill will send a wake-up call to the system in Northern Ireland.
We lag behind in open justice and transparency measures. It would be a positive development if the Belfast Telegraph could broadcast court proceedings on its website, accompanied by serious analysis and comment.
So, why has there not been a full debate on filming in courts here? Why does the PSNI not fully implement the Association of Chief Police Officers’ guidelines on the release of images of suspects and defendants, in particular routinely post-conviction?
Or why does the Public Prosecution Service here not adopt similar protocols on publicity that have been in operation across the water since 2005?
It’s legitimate to ask why the criminal justice system should be opened up to greater transparency in the first place.
Quite simply, it’s important in any democracy that not only is justice done, but that justice is seen to be done. Greater public engagement and understanding of the legal system can only be a good thing. Confidence in the administration of justice is absolutely critical to acceptance of the rule of law (surely a key point, given Northern Ireland’s history?)
Deterrence, the prevention and detection of crime, reassurance of the public, understanding of sentencing decisions and, yes, understanding of the sentencing constraints on judges — there is a raft of reasons why greater openness matters and why we should be taking strides towards it. | <urn:uuid:4e37e2ee-13e2-4756-852d-554d57ed0d87> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/readers-editor/seeing-is-believing-when-it-comes-to-the-justice-system-28747994.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950249 | 543 | 1.90625 | 2 |
To use all functions of this page, please activate cookies in your browser.
With an accout for my.chemeurope.com you can always see everything at a glance – and you can configure your own website and individual newsletter.
- My watch list
- My saved searches
- My saved topics
- My newsletter
Hydridic Earth theory
The Hydridic Earth theory is a theory proposed in 1968 by Soviet geologist Vladimir Larin. The theory contradicts the generally accepted views on the Structure of the Earth. The theory makes certain predictions that can be falsified or proven through experiments.
Starting with the first principles, Dr. Larin proposed an explanation for the observed distribution of elements throughout the Solar system. Solar wind in the primordial system pushed elements away from the center. The elements with lower ionization potentials were trapped by the Sun's magnetic field and held closer to the sun, the elements with higher ionization potentials were pushed to the outer fringes. Assuming that the primordial abundance of the elements was similar to the current composition of the sun, the scheme accounts for the present rocky and metallic inner planets and gaseous outer planets.
The described distribution scheme suggested that Earth must contain orders of magnitude more hydrogen than actually observed. To account for it, Dr. Larin made the most controversial suggestion of metallic composition for the middle and lower mantles in the form of metal hydrides. He suggested that the silicate-oxide composition is confined to the upper mantle and crust primarily.
The theory made some predictions that were later found to be correct, such as predicting metal particles in Siberian lava fields. It can also naturally explain hydrogen venting from the ocean floor, and answer some questions in the isotope dating of the Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, and U-Pb systems.
The theory also makes a prediction that, if proven correct, may have the most profound implications for energy production and a hydrogen economy. There are a few places on Earth where mantle comes sufficiently close (5-8km) to the surface to make drilling practical. Such a well could be used for "mining" hydrogen, much like mining for natural gas or oil.
|This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Hydridic_Earth_theory". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.| | <urn:uuid:db2e450a-e325-4834-b618-c51cc44e97c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chemeurope.com/en/encyclopedia/Hydridic_Earth_theory.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916954 | 490 | 2.8125 | 3 |
There’s a small but memorable photo in the National Portrait Gallery’s “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” on display until February 13, and billed as “the first major museum exhibition to focus on sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture.” The photo, a portrait by George Platt Lynes, shows a man examining himself in a mirror with cracks that become scars across his reflected face. This thoughtful, haunting exhibit has several major themes, but this particular image, which suggests that we come to know ourselves only through others’ flawed perception of us, is perhaps the best emblem for the exhibit’s public reception.
“Hide/Seek” aims to reshape our understanding of the American artistic canon, placing gay aesthetics at its center rather than its margins. The show opened on October 30, but managed to avoid controversy until a November 29 story on the conservative Web site CNSNews.com slammed it: “Smithsonian Christmas-Season Exhibit Features Ant-Covered Jesus, Naked Brothers Kissing, Genitalia, and Ellen DeGeneres Grabbing Her Breasts.” The case for the exhibit was not helped by the curators’ bizarre decision to organize a child-oriented “Family and Friends” event around such a sexually provocative and death-haunted show. (For the record, this event was held not in the rooms where the exhibit is shown, but in the National Portrait Gallery’s atrium.) The ensuing controversy led the museum to pull one piece from the show, David Wojnarowicz’s video “A Fire in My Belly,” better known online as the Ants on Jesus Video.
The conservative coverage of the show would lead one to expect a blasphemous saturnalia, fueled by lust and contempt; and some of the art is angry—or silly and tendentious. Yet the show is basically elegiac and introspective. Although the art is arranged chronologically, death hangs in the air long before viewers reach the art of the AIDS era. Almost half the pieces are memorials to lost lovers and friends, from Marsden Hartley’s abstract tribute to a German officer killed in World War I to Félix González-Torres’s pile of brightly-wrapped candies—as viewers take the candies, the pile dwindles like the body of the artist’s AIDS-stricken partner.
Both gay people and devoted friends—at least in the modern era, which has reduced the importance of friendship—have often been unacknowledged mourners. Their grief at the loss of a lover or friend wasn’t socially recognized, in the way the grief of spouse and family was, and so society added a cruel and specific burden of silence to the universal silence of the grave. The need to break this silence with art inspired many of the most striking works in this exhibit.
Often this mourning is expressed through abstraction and allusion. There’s the painting of a nude young man walking along a deserted city beach with his back to the tenements and spire-tipped church he’s left behind. It’s a memorial to someone who committed suicide in front of many of his friends by jumping from a window. There’s the photograph of Marsden Hartley, a year before his death, with a shadowy military officer in the background to represent both Hartley’s lost love and a beloved friend of the photographer, who had been killed in World War II. There’s also a Hartley painting commemorating Hart Crane. The controversial Wojnarowicz video is an attempt to unite the suffering of those dying of AIDS with that of Jesus on the cross, complete with the eucharistic imagery of a needle suturing a loaf of bread. In the video’s soundtrack, Diamanda Galás’s singing underlines the identification of AIDS with leprosy. She keens, “It is—unclean!” Wojnarowicz’s video is angry, yes, but it’s the kind of artwork that depends for its impact on a bone-deep response to Catholic imagery, in which suffering is not a sign of divine rejection and the Eucharist is the ultimate image of life and hope.
The paintings in this exhibit frequently refer to poetry. David Hockney swipes Whitman for “We Two Boys Together Clinging,” and Robert Rauschenberg wryly paints his own foot into an illustration for the “sodomites” canto of Dante’s Inferno, in which the sinners must run barefoot over burning sand. Among the portraits, there’s Thomas Eakins’s photo of Walt Whitman and a picture of Frank O’Hara by Larry Rivers.
The show invites us to reinterpret “American Gothic,” the Arrow Shirt Man, and many other cultural icons from the perspective of sexual minorities. Overall, this is one of the most thematically coherent exhibits I’ve seen, managing several different concepts (elegy, artistic influence, marginalization, abstraction vs. naturalism, the search for self) quite gracefully by having most of the artworks exemplify more than one of the show’s motifs. Not all of the art is of a quality equal to the show’s thematic sophistication. In any case, this is the kind of exhibit you want to discuss rather than the kind you want to wander through in sublime silence. It is an exceptionally nuanced portrayal of gay experience. To reduce it to clichéd narratives of heroes and villains—whether one’s villains are postmodern smut-peddlers or philistine Bible-thumpers—is to miss the point, as well as the beauty.
Art credits: First, Frank O’Hara, Alice Neel, 1960, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of Hartley S. Neel © Estate of Alice Neel. Second, Eight Bells Folly: Memorial to Hart Crane, Marsden Hartley, 1933, Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota. Gift of Ione and Hudson D. Walker. Third, Walt Whitman, Thomas Cowperthwaite Eakins, 1891 (printed 1979), National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. | <urn:uuid:46aa5538-003c-4a31-ac10-eb2042c0b6ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/flawed-reflection | 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 | 0.933071 | 1,335 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Retinoblastoma is a malignant tumor in the retina of a child’s eye. While it’s not common to find hospitals that specialize in this rare cancer the pediatric ophthalmology specialists at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center do, diagnosing and treating retinoblastoma using the latest treatment options, as well as discovering new treatments and therapies to comprehensively care for our patients. These ophthalmologists work in tandem with Kellogg’s newest service: the Orbital and Ocular Oncology Service.
Most often, retinoblastoma is diagnosed early in life, often by a pediatrician examining a child who notes a “white pupil” known as leukocoria – a white pupil due to reflection of light off a tumor located behind the lens of the eye. Sometimes a parent notices something is wrong when the white pupil is seen in a flash photograph. Retinoblastoma can occur randomly or it can be hereditary. When retinoblastoma occurs in only one eye, it is usually not hereditary. When the disease occurs in both eyes, it is always hereditary.
Once the symptom is noticed, the child is referred to a pediatric ophthalmology specialist at the Kellogg Eye Center. The ophthalmologist will perform a fundus examination, which means examining the interior lining of the eyeball that includes the retina. Once retinoblastoma is diagnosed, the pediatric ophthalmology specialist will order tests to determine the size of the tumor and whether it has spread to other parts of the body. Tests may include an MRI or CT scan, bone marrow test and/or a spinal tap. Our multidisciplinary program combines the efforts of Pediatric Ophthalmology, Ocular Oncology, Radiation Oncology, Hematology/Oncology and the Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Typically, the survival rate for a child with retinoblastoma is greater than 90 percent. The type of treatment given depends on the extent of the disease within the eye, whether the disease is in one or both eyes, and whether the disease has spread beyond the eye. Treatment options consider both cure and preservation of sight, and include the following:
- Enucleation – surgery to remove the eye
- Cryotherapy – the use of extreme cold to destroy cancer cells
- Laser photocoagulation therapy – the use of laser light to destroy blood vessels that feed the tumor
- Radiation therapy – the use of high-energy radiation from x-rays and other sources to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors
- Chemotherapy – a systemic treatment where drugs enter the bloodstream, travel through the body, and kill cancer cells throughout the body
Cutting-edge clinical trials are available to patients who qualify through the Children’s Oncology Group.
Because of the hereditary factor, brothers and sisters of children with retinoblastoma should be examined to find out if they may develop the disease.
Retinoblastoma survivors can also pass this form of cancer on to their children. If your child has retinoblastoma, particularly the hereditary type, there is an increased chance that he or she may develop a second cancer in later years. We offer genetic counseling to answer all your questions about inherited diseases, providing comprehensive evaluation, education, and support.
Schedule an appointment by calling us at 734-764-7558. | <urn:uuid:51f84d34-0a93-4297-921e-d81e09e01ad0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mottchildren.org/medical-services/eye-cancer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917831 | 698 | 3.375 | 3 |
Maintaining proper drainage, especially around the perimeter of your foundation, is one of the simplest yet most cost-effective ways of preventing foundation damage. Prioritize installing proper drainage systems in your property. Poor drainage, if not resolved early, could lead to structural damage, which is much more expensive and complicated to repair.
Request a drainage inspection.
The following are typical indicators of water intrusion:
You'll find this on concrete or block walls.
This white, chalky substance is in itself harmless, but because it indicates the presence of excessive moisture, you should not take it lightly. Water intrusion, in the long run, may eventually cause your home's concrete or block walls to crumble.
Due to poor drainage resulting in the presence of excessive moisture, the soil around your foundation can become heavier. This increases the pressure exerted by the soil on your foundation walls and this, in turn, can cause your foundation walls to bulge, lean or crack.
The moisture trapped in the soil around your foundation, if not drained off properly, can freeze and turn to ice crystals during winter. These ice crystals exert additional pressure on your foundation and its members. Your foundation walls can bulge, lean or crack in result.
Excess moisture in the soil around your foundation can cause the soil to sink, therefore causing your foundation to settle. Foundation settlement, in turn, causes cracks in the walls of your foundation, sloping floors and doors/windows that stick or are misaligned.
One or more of the following may be installed to improve drainage and prevent long-term foundation damage:.
A sump pump is installed to pump water out of the basement, crawlspaces and other areas where long-term water pooling can cause the most structural damage. This may be the homeowner's first line of defense against water accumulation around the foundation.
Sump pumps come in two basic types: upright (also commonly called the pedestal sump pump) and submersible.
Upright pump: The upright model's motor is on top while the pump mechanism is found at the base, which sits at the bottom of the sump. A ball float turns the pump on and off. In this type of pump, the motor should not get wet.
Submersible pump: The submersible sump pump model is designed to be entirely submersible and sit at the bottom of the sump. The on/off switch can be either a ball float connected to an internal pressure switch or a sealed, adjustable, mercury-activated float switch. The sealed, mercury switch is generally more reliable than the pressure switch.
Things to check on your sump pump:
Grading is the process of contouring the ground (i.e. making sure it's sufficiently sloped) to ensure that water is channeled away from the building, particularly from the building's foundation.
To ensure that water will not pool around the foundation, drainage devices like gutters, downspouts, catch basins, area drains, and/or trench drains may have to be installed.
Gutters and downspouts that empty water onto or very near the foundation have to be corrected or repositioned so they can take water farther away from the foundation.
French drains attract, collect and divert underground water away from areas which could be damaged by water accumulation and excessive moisture. They are usually built around the exterior wall of the foundation. French drains are also used behind retaining walls to relieve ground water pressure.
The following are the typical steps of French Drain construction:
"Sinai Construction redefines professionalism in the Los Angeles construction business! Of all the construction companies I've called to evaluate the repairs needed for our home's foundation, only Sinai Construction took the time to inspect the actual foundations, take pictures, make a detailed report and explain to me not just the repairs needed to be done but what caused the damage in the first place."
Esther A., Echo Park | <urn:uuid:9d97cba5-b7d4-4599-8303-682bf91b28c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sinaiconstruction.net/services/yard_drainage.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937454 | 807 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Flu season is in full effect and the sound of sniffles and sneezing are in the air.
The virus doesn't discriminate but Doctor Josh Rankin with First Care Clinic in Bentonville says there are groups at a higher risk than others, like children, the elderly, pregnant women and people with chronic conditions.
If you're scared of getting sick, there are some simple steps to prevent the illness.
Dr. Rankin says something as simple as washing your hands, coughing into your elbow can help prevent the spread of influenza.
If you are allergic to eggs, be sure to talk to your doctor before receiving a flu shot. That allergy could cause a serious reaction to the vaccine.
Click here to find an interactive flu tracker. | <urn:uuid:be8aa669-24f0-4da8-89b3-61a7f8080189> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://arkansasmatters.com/fulltext/?nxd_id=623882 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967332 | 153 | 2.328125 | 2 |
This was an interesting book. A memoir of her life, Fun Home describes what it was like in Alison Bechdel’s life from around age 10 to when she was in college. From discovering she was a lesbian and coming out to her parents to understanding her relationship with her father and his death, Bechdel weaves a story of self-discovery and -acceptance. It is kind of graphic at times (she is not shy about describing, very specifically through words and illustrations, her personal life), but I really thought it was well written and illustrated, and had a nice, almost philosophical feel to it. She describes her relationship with her family in such a cold and distant way, but then shows how her and her father become close in their own, rather odd way. The memoir she writes and draws is quite a detailed account of her life and really makes you connect with her and want to understand the process she went through to learn how to trust herself so she could start trusting others. I could not relate to her coming out problem, but the ideas she had of self-acceptance and understanding was beautifully written. | <urn:uuid:f54bafe4-e394-4b34-80a2-dc3c616a8f83> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mrrl.org/read/index.php/fun-home/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.99441 | 229 | 1.765625 | 2 |
My recipe called for 250g of chestnuts, blended with 125ml of cream and 125ml of milk that you then blended together to make a puree. When i went to the supermarket I discovered they had tinned "Chestnut puree" so I grabbed that instead I am now wondering how much of that I should add ?
Assuming the chestnut puree is just chestnuts, well, use 250g of it.
If it has other ingredients... I guess you'll have to try to figure out how much of them. You might be able to deduce it from the nutrition facts and the nutritional content of the chestnuts themselves, especially it's just chestnuts and water.
Edit: To be clear, I'm telling you how to replace the chestnuts. You still need the rest.
Given that it's chestnuts and water, it's trivial to figure out how much of it is chestnuts. (It would be difficult if there were other ingredients providing nutritional content.) Just use enough paste to account for 250g of chestnuts, then remove a mL of milk for every extra gram of paste you've added. If it's a substantial amount, replace some of the remaining milk with cream to keep it as rich as the original, if you like.
For example, according to the data I linked to, chestnuts are about 10% sugar, so you want enough paste to provide the 25g of sugar your 250g of chestnuts would've provided. So if the paste contains only 8g of sugar per 100g of paste, then you'll want about 300g of paste, and you can remove 50 mL of milk to balance the extra water you'll have added as part of the paste. (At that point it probably wouldn't be worth bothering to rebalance the milk and cream, since it's such a tiny difference.) | <urn:uuid:39914366-55cc-439e-9f81-93ce8676ac48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/23990/chestnut-puree-quantity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970498 | 378 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Poet: Emily Dickinson
You cannot put a Fire out --
Volume: Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Year: Published/Written in 1955
Comment 8 of 8, added on September 12th, 2010 at 10:58 PM.
sabrina lin from Canada
Comment 7 of 8, added on August 10th, 2010 at 11:36 AM.
finance personal software
Thank you for Posting & I got to read nice information on your site.
business finance software from United States
Comment 6 of 8, added on August 4th, 2010 at 1:28 PM.
Thanks for best news!
free registry cleaner from United States
Are you looking for more information on this poem? Perhaps you are trying to analyze it? The poem, You cannot put a Fire out --, has received 8 comments. Click here to read them, and perhaps post a comment of your own. | <urn:uuid:8bc039a8-11c7-4e02-a7a2-66623b570a2b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/emilydickinson/10482 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917689 | 188 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Klein, GWRTC 103
GWRTC 103 Final Essay Prompt: Argumentative Essay
Overview: Now that you have researched an issue, you are ready to write an argument. The argument you write for this assignment will be an academic, source-based argument. You may use the sources you found, but you should continue to find new sources to support your argument and represent the conversation on the issue. Furthermore, your argument should add something unique or new to the conversation and not just repeat someone else's argument.
Purpose: The purpose for this assignment will depend on your intended audience. It will most likely fall into one of the following general categories:
Audience: The audience for this argument is your general academic audience who expect a clear, logical argument that remains focused on proving a thesis. These readers expect that an argument is well researched and that the argument is supported with reasons and evidence. They want to see that you are familiar with the conversation on the issue and how your argument contributes to that conversation. In addition, such readers require full citations for all sources you use. Your audience also expects your writing to be free from errors. You’ll need to consider these readers' expectations as you write your argument.
Issue & Sources: Write your argument about the issue you just investigated. You may use the sources from your inquiry essay, but you should continue to find sources to fit the rhetorical situation (which will change as you make rhetorical choices about purpose and audience specific to this assignment). You should include at least five sources, three of which must be peer-reviewed scholarly sources.
Author: Present yourself as a knowledgeable, fair-minded, credible and, as appropriate, empathetic person. You do not need to be an expert on your issue to write an argument, but you do need to have confidence in what you do know and believe about it. Show that you approach the issue with enthusiasm, intellectual curiosity and an open mind.
Strategies: An effective argument achieves its purpose with its audience and is appropriate for an academic context. To achieve your purpose with your audience, be sure to: | <urn:uuid:d3fb09e7-0376-4f18-8876-81b070913acc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jmu.edu/evision/Volume10/Christyassign.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934668 | 432 | 2.828125 | 3 |
New Article: Internet Explorer 6: What Have We Learned?
Internet Explorer 6: What Have We Learned?
IE6 shipped more than 10 years ago, but its non-standard implementation of the shifting standards of 2001 still haunts today's developers. As the Web shifts to HTML5, and new versions of IE, Firefox and Chrome debut, have we learned the lessons of IE6?
This site is associated with HTMLGoodies.com. We have posted some new HTML5 articles on the site and will be cross linking here in case you are intersted in reading. We area also linking the forum closer to HTMLGoodies. | <urn:uuid:2d3c125b-257f-4c1e-99ea-7020308247d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?246146-New-Article-Internet-Explorer-6-What-Have-We-Learned&mode=hybrid | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903018 | 129 | 1.507813 | 2 |
HOUSTON (FOX 26) -
Chronic back pain is one of the most common medical complaints. FOX 26 News met with Dr. Saqib Siddiqui from The Spine Center in Houston about the symptoms of a problem that is often misdiagnosed.
“This is a particular form of back pain called sacroiliac pain and has different words, like Sacroilitis. It’s really quite undiagnosed! About 25 percent of chronic back pain sufferers may have pain coming from this joint, and it’s often forgotten about by the diagnosing physician. Unless you look for it and do the proper exam or diagnostic injection, you may not know that the sacroiliac joint is causing their chronic back pain,” explains Dr. Siddiqui.
Let’s get right to the point about the symptoms. Dr. Siddiqui says the typical signs that this could be your problem would be low back pain, on the left or right. He adds that sometimes that pain radiates down the buttock or leg.
Dr. Siddiqui also says the problem is often misdiagnosed, because it seldom shows up on imaging results (like x-rays and CT scans). That’s why he says it’s important to undergo the right diagnostic testing.
“There are six different current physical exams of them lying down on the couch, and we do a sacroiliac injection under sedation at a surgery center or hospital. We inject the joint under fluoroscopy, using an x-ray machine, to make sure they’re in the right place. Then within a few hours, the patient should get relief of pain.”
Options are available to treat the pain. Dr. Siddiqui says he always prefers to begin with non-invasive treatments like physical therapy. He says cortisone injections and chiropractic treatments can often help ease the pain. His last resort is surgery, but a fairly new procedure has really made it a lot easier on patients.
“In the past, the surgery for this was really quite extensive. It was a 12-inch incision, and required several days in the hospital. It was similar to what you’d have if you were in a severe car wreck with a broken pelvis. We had to expose all of that! Now we have a technique which can fuse the sacroiliac joint using a small incision, that’s 2-3 inches long. Now we can (make an incision through the side), and put in three implants,” explains Dr. Siddiqui. He also says most patients walk within an hour of surgery and feel relief of pain within a few days. They’ll be on crutches for about three weeks.
As far as the ideal candidate is concerned, it would be someone who’s had chronic back pain for six months or longer, who has failed physical therapy, injections, and chiropractic treatment for this joint.
Dr. Siddiqui says the patient would need to have had two positive injections, so that he’s sure of the diagnosis. He tells us the incision heals in a week, and most people are back at work after a few days.
“This will take six months to fully heal, but within three weeks, they can return to full weight-bearing and within two to three months, full sport and contact activities,” says Dr. Siddiqui.
“I’ve been doing this (procedure) since September, and patients are happy with their outcome, and we have more patients on the way,” says Dr. Siddiqui.
For more information, visit http://www.surgicalspinesolutions.com/.
Read more: http://www.myfoxhouston.com/story/20495428/2013/01/03/new-procedure-to-ease-that-aching-back#ixzz2HWWj2I4j | <urn:uuid:cb3341e1-0849-46bd-89f0-ca2ef3a7d3c5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spinecenter.net/media-center?Itemid=90 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959935 | 841 | 1.632813 | 2 |
The Police Department is identifying and photographing the city's homeless population, estimated to be about 200, to establish a catalog to help them.
The information, which will include details such as next-of-kin and mental-health issues, will make up a database placed at officers' fingertips, said Capt. Dan Hughes, the acting police chief.
A homeless women waits to be assigned a cot outside the National Guard Armory in Fullerton in this 2009 photo. Fullerton police are in the process of creating a database with details on each of the city's homeless individuals.
ROD VEAL, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
"If an officer comes across that person, he (or she) might be able to better help them in terms (of) their needs being met," Hughes said. "This is a segment of the community that we don't have a lot of information on."
Corporals John DeCaprio and Dan Solorio, the department's homeless liaison officers, began the yearlong project five months ago. A county mental-health clinician goes on patrols with the officers.
A 27-year veteran of the force, including the past 10 years as a homeless liaison officer, DeCaprio said the transients come from a variety of backgrounds and range in age from 17 to 78.
"Honestly, everyone's got somewhat of a different story," DeCaprio said.
There are trends, however.
Nearly 40 percent have some form of mental illness, DeCaprio said.
"If I'm ever going to be able to help an individual, I've got to know who they are and where they are coming from," he said. "It just makes sense to find out who they are, and if they have any known mental-health issues."
Another common scenario, DeCaprio said, is that of part-time transients – those who receive some form of monthly financial subsidy that may only cover a motel room for a couple of weeks. The rest of the month is spent on the streets.
In many cases, family members long ago lost touch or want nothing to do with the relative on the streets, he said. Other transients are plagued with substance-abuse issues and not willing to get help.
"Some might not be ready today but maybe six months from now," DeCaprio said.
Police might be able to refer those who want help to programs.
Popular congregating spots for transients include the Fullerton Transportation Center, the Downtown Plaza and Richman Park.
The proliferation of groups providing meals and clothing to the needy in Fullerton make the town a popular habitat for transients, DeCaprio said, and the lack of a year-round shelter results in homeless living on the streets.
The National Guard Armory on Brookhurst Road provides shelter for the homeless but only during winter months.
A task force – formed in the wake of the July 2011 confrontation between police and mentally ill transient Kelly Thomas that led to Thomas' death and criminal charges against three officers – has recommended establishing year-round shelters in town.
Plans to provide year-round shelter are in the works, City Manager Joe Felz said.
If that happens, the number of homeless on the streets will likely decrease, DeCaprio said. | <urn:uuid:41bb9a72-f4c9-4959-bdde-935270419342> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ocregister.com/news/decaprio-382435-homeless-transients.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962832 | 674 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Reformatted with chapter links.
1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
1:29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
1:30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
2:2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
2:3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested fro
I love the KJV; it is beautiful. But for the OT, it should be read in addition to a good translation of the TANACH (Old Testament) and realized that the Hebrew used then and today is largely guesswork as to meaning. Spinoza estimates that 18 % of the words in the original are unknown as to exact meaning. Lev. has the line: "Thou shalt not stand against the blood of your neighbor." The Stone version of TANACH says loosely, You shall not stand by the blood of your fellow. The difference is key. The KJV, in Judges 19 follows the practice of saying the girl, the Concubine, played the whore upon her "husband" the Levite. Yet this is based upon the way something is said, not what it means. The Stone version takes this out.
Nothing can top the KJV for beauty. I wish all copies would have the dedication to James I, which praises his predessor, Elizbeth I, who had killed James's mother. Ironic.
The completion of the King James Version of the Bible in 1611 is a high-water mark of Western Civilization--really in the history of human culture, and this is no overstatement.
Remarkably, we don't have the names of the translators commissioned to create an English language version of the ancient Hebrew and Greek writings. Yet their work is transcendent, still beloved after 400 years and still regarded as reasonably accurate in translation from the oldest of the known manuscripts. Yes, our language has evolved; some would say devolved. We have more modern, more accessible translations of the Scriptures, but never more beautiful.
I read the Bible on a daily basis. Even if if my life had not been enriched by it, the sheer poetry on each of its pages would delight me. Take in the emotional resonance of the Psalms; the sheer loveliness of 1 Corinthians 13; the narrative power and tragedy of Kings and Chronicles. It has been said that you don't read the Scriptures as much as they read you.
"The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of God endureth forever." Isaiah 40:8
I've been reading the writings of Josephus (Jewish historian from the first century A.D.) and these writings piqued my interest in the Bible once again.
Readers are advised not to think too literally when it comes to dragons and such (this is not a western book - it is an eastern book full of eastern symbolism). In fact I recommend you read along with a commentary as you study. And a study it is.
For example, Ecclesiastes is a fantastic complement to many of the philosophies manifest in modern Buddhist texts. Take this verse:
"Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh: for childhood and youth are vanity."
The equation of evil with vanity is really a key to moving from childhood to adulthood. In other words, we stop acting like children (live less selfishly, act less out of jealousy, etc.) so that we can live a more fulfilling life. This is one small key to feeling like we really *are* progressing in life.
What the coming of Jesus Christ adds to this is the promise of overcoming physical death ("oh death, where is thy sting?") through his resurrection, and of overcoming spiritual death (mistakes, misdeeds) through his work of atonement. We learn that man is not perfect, nor need he be to achieve happiness in his life.
While the simpler, more "self help"-like verses of the Bible are easy to swallow in small chunks and go down quite easy, a full study of the book is rewarded with a more general consciousness of the purpose of our life and the promise of an eventual reconciliation that takes into account our troubles, sorrows, mistakes, achievements and aspirations.
"To this end was I born" -Jesus Christ | <urn:uuid:28a19c72-9a96-4256-bfce-456113e270f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://manybooks.net/titles/variousother08KJV.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969436 | 1,098 | 1.84375 | 2 |
As mercury dips, used clothes sell like hot cakes in Pakistan
Islamabad: With a cold wave gripping most parts of Pakistan, people in the garrison city of Rawalpindi are thronging weekly bazaars to buy used warm clothes.
A survey conducted by the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) news agency found that many shoppers, the majority of them women, were buying second-hand apparel - cardigans, sweaters, jackets, and even socks, caps, mufflers and gloves.
Heaps of used quilts, blankets and rugs are also up for sale in the markets of Rawalpindi.
People said that the number of shops selling used garments have decreased this year, but many places were selling clothes made in other countries.
"Foreign clothes are in greater quantity than local clothes. But thanks to the weekly bazaars, poor people can buy imported used clothing of reasonable quality to pass through the hardships of winter," a customer told APP.
Temperatures in the neighbouring city of Islamabad have dropped to around 2 degrees Celsius.
Thick fog has covered the capital and adjoining areas, forcing many roads to be closed. | <urn:uuid:0bd4ff2d-d013-4b3e-bb2b-58aa5845a6bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://zeenews.india.com/print.aspx?nid=821294 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967465 | 238 | 1.65625 | 2 |
It's a depressing fact of life that we all age, and as We age we tend to deteriorate through general wear and tear. This is just as true for chemical plants as it is for people. 'Plants are getting older and they're not being replaced, by and large,' says Martin Goose, a former process safety specialist at the UK Health and Safety Executive(HSE) and now consultant and adviser to the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE). 'Other than the new LNG (liquefied natural gas)import terminals and associated plant, I can't think of any really major new chemical plant built in the UK for several decades.'
Over the past few years, the HSE has become increasingly concernedabout the ageing of the UK's industrial plants, releasing several reports on the issue. Its main concern is that plants can become more prone to accidents as they age and their infrastructure starts to degrade. An HSE report on ageing plants published in 2010 revealed that ageing was an important contributory factor in 96 major accidents occurring in European chemical plants between 1980 and 2006, representingalmost 30% of all major industrial accidents over that time.
As plants age, pipework and reaction vessels corrode and crack, support structures crumble, mechanical components wear away, and electrical systems begin to fail, all of which could potentially lead to a major accident. The explosions and major fire that occurred at the Buncefield oil storage depot in Hemel Hempstead in 2005 have been blamed on a faulty level gauge and safety switch that allowed oil to overflow from a storage tank.
To make matters more complex, chemical plants all age differently,again like people, which makes defining an ageing plant quite difficult. Most chemical plants are designed to operate for around 25 years, meaning that most chemical plants in the UK are now operating beyond their original design life and can therefore be objectively classedas ageing. But just because a plant is old doesn't automatically mean it's in danger of failing or that an accident is imminent.
The classic ageing profile for a piece of mechanical equipment is time-dependent, with the chance of failure changing in a defined way over time. The chance of failure may rise steadily as the mechanical equipment ages or it might be highest at the beginning and end of theequipment's lifetime, forming the so-called bathtub curve. But this isn't what actually tends to happen in the real world.
'You think that plant equipment is going to fail linearly, but it doesn't,' says Mike Burrows, managing director of the UK maintenance monitoring company, Monition. 'Only 11% of failures occur in a time-dependent manner, 89% of all mechanical failures are random in nature.' As a consequence, it is very difficult to predict how long a piece of equipment will keep operating.
This was demonstrated by SKF Group, a Swedish industrial maintenance company, which measured the time to failure of 30 identical bearing elements placed under the same operating conditions. The company found that while some bearings failed within 15 hours, others lasted 10times longer or more, with one operating for 300 hours.
But it is not just inherent physical differences between seeminglyidentical bits of equipment that determines how long they last; it'salso differences in how they're used and managed. 'Some equipment, if properly managed, has an unlimited lifetime,' says Richard Gowland,technical director of the industry-funded European Process Safety Centre.
Much of the time, though, equipment is far from properly managed. 'Quite often, what we find is that probably 80% of failures are a result of operational conditions,' says Burrows. 'Most machines are stop-started under load, they may not be lubricated properly, they'll be tampered with, they'll have things dropped on them.'
This combination of physical and operational differences ensures that not all old plants are ageing and not all ageing plants are old; you can't define an ageing plant purely based on its age. As a consequence, the HSE has adopted the following definition for an ageing plant: 'Ageing equipment is equipment for which there is evidence or likelihood of significant deterioration and damage taking place since new, or for which there is insufficient information and knowledge available to know the extent to which this possibility exists.' The significance of deterioration and damage relates to the potential effect onthe equipment's functionality, availability, reliability and safety.Just because an item of equipment is old does not necessarily mean that it is significantly deteriorating and damaged. Ali types of equipment can be susceptible to ageing mechanisms.
So ageing plants are not necessarily old plants, but plants that are adversely affected by corrosion, wear and tear, and general deterioration. It is this deterioration that can put a plant at risk of equipment failure and accidents. Inevitably, the rate of deterioration can be very different. Chemical plants that work with naturally corrosive substances, such as acids or chlorine, are going to be more at risk of corrosion than those that work with more benign substances. External conditions, such as exposure to wind and rain, will also affectthe rate of deterioration.
No matter how fast a plant deteriorates, however, it doesn't causea problem as long as that deterioration is well managed, which meansregular maintenance. But maintenance costs money and may involve shutting down parts of the plant. All of this adds to operational expenses, so that maintenance can account for as much as 40% of a plant's total operational budget. Not surprisingly, owners of chemical plants try to walk a fine line between keeping maintenance activities to a minimum while also ensuring that the plant operates safely.
'Maintenance is something that companies don't want to spend more money on than is necessary,' says Goose. According to a recent surveyconducted by the conference organiser easyFairs ahead of the UK maintenance conference MAINTEC 2012, while two-fifths of interviewed maintenance managers said their boards saw maintenance as an invaluable part of the business, one-fifth said their boards saw it as merely a 'necessary evil'.
Keeping maintenance activities to a minimum doesn't just make sense from a financial point of view, but also from a health and safety point of view. Maintaining a chemical plant can be rather risky, whichisn't surprising when you think it often involves working with pipesand reaction vessels that usually house hazardous or explosive materials. A study by the Belgian Maintenance Association found that maintenance technicians were more then twice as likely to suffer an accident resulting in disability than the average chemical company employee.
Historically, there have been two basic types of maintenance: reactive, which involves fixing equipment after a failure, and periodic, which involves conducting maintenance on some kind of fixed schedule.
Reactive maintenance can be very costly because it may require replacing an expensive piece of equipment and shutting down the plant while the equipment is being fixed or replaced. Periodic maintenance isdesigned to fix or replace equipment before it fails, therefore removing the need for reactive maintenance.
The downside with periodic maintenance is that it runs the risk ofreplacing equipment that doesn't need replacing. So a bearing designed to operate for 10 years will be replaced after 10 years, even if it is still working perfectly well. 'In the chemical industry, there'sa hell of a lot of maintenance done that is unnecessary,' says Burrows.
Now there is a third option: predictive maintenance. This utilisesa variety of non-destructive testing (N DT) technologies to monitor equipment and infrastructure to determine whether it is still in goodworking condition. These technologies allow maintenance managers to focus their maintenance activities on equipment that is faulty or close to failure. As a result, they can fix or replace equipment before it fails, while leaving equipment alone that is still operating perfectly well, even if it has exceeded its normal operational lifetime. In the long term, predictive maintenance can prove to be much cheaper than other forms of maintenance.
Studies have shown that refining and petrochemical plants that have adopted predictive maintenance have been able to reduce their maintenance budgets by up to 50%. Mike Burrows at Monition, which offers its predictive maintenance expertise to chemical plants around the world, says that they have also been able to cut maintenance costs in chemical plants by up to 50%.
As well as reducing costs, predictive maintenance can also help toimprove productivity, by both reducing the amount of time that a plant needs to be shut down and by helping to make equipment run more efficiently. According to the easyFairs survey, even in these tough economic times, 55% of maintenance managers were planning to increase their investment in predictive maintenance in 2012.
The simplest form of NDT used in predictive maintenance is vision,albeit enhanced with cameras and microscopes. Tiny cameras and videocameras are sent down pipes and into reaction vessels to look for cracks and corrosion. Other NDT technologies can monitor the state of mechanical equipment and infrastructure without physically interactingwith it, allowing the equipment to be studied while still operating.
For example, ultrasonic analysis monitors the high frequency soundwaves released by mechanical equipment, which can be an indicator ofcomponent wear, fluid leaks and growing cracks. Vibration analysis monitors the vibrations in mechanical equipment generated by the movement of its component parts, with abnormal vibration indicating component wear. Thermal analysis monitors the heat generated by mechanical equipment and can thus be used to detect component wear, corrosion and electrical faults.
In addition, a variety of analytical techniques, including infra-red spectroscopy, can be used to analyse the oil used to lubricate mechanical equipment. Such analysis can determine the condition of the oil, ensuring that it is providing sufficient lubrication and doesn't contain a high level of contaminants. It can also help to determine the wear of the machine by measuring the concentration of metals, suchas iron and copper, released into the oil by wear.
These tests can be used as part of a regular monitoring programme to highlight equipment not working properly or in danger of failing. In this case, it's important to keep accurate long-term records of the analyses, so that it's easy to see if some mechanical equipment is releasing more heat or emitting a different range of sound frequencies than normal. 'If a plant has an adequate amount of inspection and tests done on it, as long as the records have been kept properly, thenyou do get a good idea of the trends,' says Goose.
Equally, the tests can be used to diagnose why a piece of equipment isn't working properly. Oil analysis, for example, will give early warning that some of the components in a piece of mechanical equipment are wearing, while abnormal vibration indicates that the componentsare closer to failure; and if they are generating lots of heat, thenthey are just about to fail. The tests can also reveal that the reason the components are wearing is because the machine isn't sufficiently lubricated.
Chemical plants tend to carry out their own regular tests, but call in a company, such as Monition, to determine why a piece of equipment isn't working properly or to do a more detailed analysis of the plant. Plants also often operate a combination of predictive and periodic maintenance, using the findings of predictive maintenance to alterthe schedule for periodic maintenance. So rather than service a piece of mechanical equipment every year, predictive maintenance may showthat it's perfectly safe to service it every two years.
In this way, although the chemical plants in developed world countries like the UK are getting older, they aren't necessarily ageing.
* The UK Health & Safety Executive reports that ageing infrastructure was a contributory factor in 96 major accidents occurring in European chemical plants between 1980 and 2006
* But chemical plants age differently and not necessarily on a predictable time-scale
* Whatever its cause, deterioration of mechanical components need not be a problem if the plant is regularly maintained
* Predictive maintenance, which uses a range of analytical tests, combined with routine maintenance can stop the ageing process
Jon Evans is a science writer based in Chichester, UK
Copyright 2012 Gale Group, Inc.All Rights ReservedASAP LNWPCopyright 2012 Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) | <urn:uuid:1765bab4-ff9d-4402-b8b7-365a70d6be4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.downstreamtoday.com/(S(wbk3n2nizooir3ac34zsesal))/news/article.aspx?a_id=36315&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961965 | 2,443 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Political ideologies – filling the current void
Seems to me that most political ideologies are on the shelf at the moment. Or maybe they have just gone on leave? Many social scientists currently consider political ideologies dead, but I wouldn’t go that far because it would imply the end of innovative and creative development in the intellectual world. And that wouldn’t only be an unlikely but also disastrous development.
Capitalism and individualism, for instance, are alive and kicking, but then again, they have been since time immemorial, and always will be.
But sure, communism is dead in all but name and socialism today lacks innovative, new ideas. Its proponents keep on repeating the same old slogans that are no longer relevant. And where can you find true conservatism today?
Liberalism or center right politics has been the name of the game for quite some time. But even those ideologies are now being questioned after the global crisis hit and leading economists couldn’t agree on how it could have happened, why it wasn’t spotted and, worse, can’t agree on how to fix it.
Ideologies make politics lively and exciting so it’s most likely just a question of how long it will take before new ideologies take shape. Actually if we don’t, politics will be even more of a status quo than it is, so some new political ideologies would be most welcome.
Maybe it would be an idea to concentrate on globalism for the time being instead? The original use of the word in business context goes back to Harvard Business Review in the 1940′s. The idea signified the freer movement of goods, services, ideas and people around the world. My father was an international entrepreneur already in the 1950′s, leading his life and businesses in global ways that were unusual then. In those days airports were like small clubs where they all knew each other, unlike today when everybody’s flying. How often do we meet people we know at an airport nowadays? Unusual, even in first class lounges. With a father like that it probably makes sense that I’m as international as I am.
In some ways politics is actually getting more and more global. Look at the G20, ASEAN and the EU, for instance. We are more and more taking part in multinational, multicultural alliances attempting to align national politics with international aims for the greater good. The problem is that there are, and has been for a long time, far to many vested interests resulting in agreements only benefitting one group. And as we all know, agreements, or business deals for that matter, that don’t benefit all interests don’t last. So maybe it’s time to try and find long lasting solutions that will increasingly create better terms of living for more people on a global scale?
It is in everybodys interest that we elaborate the global perspective even further and work towards a world where everybody can eat three meals a day, have basic schooling and access to health care. That doesn’t mean that we should leave free markets and the ability to earn a lot of money behind. Cultural and national differences will always be there thankfully, since it would be seriously boring if all human being were all the same.
International issues should be a more important part of new political ideologies. We are just one big integrated global market. Even Coca Cola nowadays considers themselves an international and not just an American company. So why shouldn’t politics follow suit? After all where would Coca Cola be today if they had concentrated on only the US?
(Re-published on request)Google+ | <urn:uuid:676e8dff-4f1e-46c1-9a3d-aae7f5b14eeb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://catarinasworld.com/political-ideologies-%E2%80%93-filling-the-current-void/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958063 | 749 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Interviews and Profiles
How I Write
Do you ever wonder how other writers make it happen? In this series of interviews, we take a peek into the writing process behind bestselling and beloved novels.
Lives of Famous Writers
What are the habits of highly successful writers? What did their career arc look like? And what can you take away to help you in your writing life?
Interviews with Novelists
Other writers are ultimately the best source of information on writing and publishing. Here, published writers from Vikram Chandra to Lemony Snicket share their experiences.
Advice from Editors
One of the best sources of information on publishing is obviously the people who decide what gets published and what doesn't. Hear what people from St. Martin's Press, HarperCollins, and Random House have to say.
On Teaching Creative Writing: An Interview with Alan Ziegler
Alan Ziegler, the author of the Writing Workshop Note Book, offers valuable advice on teaching creative writing workshops.
Publishing Advice from Jeanette Perez
Jeanette Perez offers publishing advice culled from her time in the editorial department of HarperCollins Publishers.
The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist
Thomas McCormack, the former CEO and editorial director of St. Martin's Press and author of The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist, shares publishing stories and advice on getting your novel into the right hands.
The Leap to Fiction: An Interview with Marlys West
Poet Marlys West, author of Notes for a Late-Blooming Martyr, discusses the experience of switching from poetry to fiction, particularly to the novel.
Literary London Tour
For lovers of English-language literature, few places are as full of literary landmarks as London. This literary tour of London points out just a few of the many places where you can commune with your literary heroes.
Profile of the British Library
No writer's trip to London is complete without a stop at the British Library, the national library of the UK and Ireland. This profile includes all the information you'll need to make a visit.
Profile of the Edgar Awards
Named for Edgar Allan Poe, the Edgar Awards are the Oscars for mystery writers. Each year, the award honors the best fiction, non-fiction, television and film published or produced in the previous year.
Profile of Mystery Writers of America
The top organization for mystery and crime writers, Mystery Writers of America has been serving the interests of those associated with the genre since 1945.
Writers' Conferences Advice
An Editorial Director at Random House Children's Books offers advice on how to present your ideas in a professional way during high-pressure writers' conferences pitch sessions.
For the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, we're taking a look at the author's life and her most important work.
To Kill a Mockingbird -- Write about To Kill a Mockingbird
How did Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" influence your life? Celebrate the 50th anniversary of its publication by sharing your thoughts here.
Interview with Sara Gruen
In May, we spoke with writer Sara Gruen, author of Ape House and Water for Elephants. See what the bestselling novelist had to say about her writing habits and about her latest work. | <urn:uuid:198d83a3-96c3-4696-b670-0ef957cd2c7a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/interviews/Interviews_and_Profiles.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940407 | 684 | 1.65625 | 2 |
God is doing amazing things around the world in children's
ministry. Look, listen, and learn 10 important lessons from our
Christian brothers and sisters who minister to children in other
parts of the globe.
As a young child in Sunday school, the adventure stories of
courageous missionaries serving in foreign, exotic lands thrilled
me. The missionaries were always daring North Americans (with a few
British-born exceptions). Some of the scenarios in my chiIdhood
Sunday school classes stiII take place, but as our world changes,
so do the challenges facing the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). Many of the problems
confronting long -- established North American churches are now the
same ones faced by our sister churches abroad.
God's work in children's ministry throughout the world reveals
that the picture of missions has changed. It's time for North
American churches to take a look at our sister churches around the
world and learn from them.
A new generation of Singapore Christians has grown up and
brought their children to church, reports May Lim Chong, who's
currently a graduate student at Dallas Theological Seminary with
her husband Gary.
"Because the church in Singapore is young, vibrant, and willing
to innovate, it has the potential and attraction to draw many young
lives to Christ," says May. "The church portrays a generally
positive image -- disciplined, yet fun; relaxed, yet respectful of
God and individuals."
Lesson #1: Adapt your curriculum and facilities to meet
your learners' needs--and not the other way around.
There are congregations with long histories of service, but many
churches are just getting started and use temporary facilities in
public buildings and hotels. Because culturally-relevant curriculum
is hard to find, many teachers must adapt lessons from American
publishers. Although the Singapore classroom is usually very
traditional in its methods, May's church encourages teachers to use
more active learning.
Lesson #2: Be flexible.
Singapore's churches are coping with inadequate facilities,
curriculum that must be adapted to meet special needs, and
opposition to new teaching methods. These are all challenges
familiar to most people who minister to children.
Koh Siang Kiang lives and ministers in Jalan Keria, Singapore.
She reports that the educational system in Singapore, which starts
children in school at the age of 3 and encourages private tutoring
during evenings and weekends, leaves little time for children to be
involved in church programs.
"Can you imagine: there are examinations for kindergarten kids!
Talk about stress! And once they reach first grade, they must do a
second language," writes Koh.
Lesson #3: Go where the kids are.
To accommodate the children's demanding schedule, Koh's church
has extended its children's ministry beyond the traditional Sunday
school time and location. Her church has reached out into
neighborhoods of unchurched children through parachurch programs,
clubs, correspondence courses, and camps.
Lesson #4: Teach to change lives
Philip Co is the pastor of the United Evangelical Church of the
Philippines in Manila. Philip says that his church's children's
ministry recently set this goal: "To nurture children to have
assurance of salvation, having an in-depth and holistic knowledge
of God, living a well-balanced Christian life, understanding the
meaning of worship, experiencing the power of prayer, continuously
growing in the family of God, to become a true Christian soldier
manifesting the beauty of Christ for the glory of God."
Philip's church employs a traditionaI Sunday schooI format using
Taiwan's Toh Kuang Sunday school curriculum. This curriculum is
designed to take children through the entire Bible in six years.
Philip's church is currently innovating by experimenting with a
team-teaching approach. To expand their children's ministry, his
church uses vacation Bible schools and camps.
"We're not just going around doing activities," Philip says.
"We're hoping and praying that the children will really be reached
and affect our society now as well as in the future." | <urn:uuid:2fa46ff6-cf71-460b-b217-32d8984bcb1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://childrensministry.com/articles/where-in-the-world-is-god | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949039 | 885 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Being Nice Thru Riceby Pramit Pal Chaudhuri | April 13, 2012
Recently, in a conversation discussing what India and Pakistan could do together on the economic front, the chief executive of Pakistan’s Trade Development Authority proposed the two countries once again seek a common geographical protection on basmati rice.
Recap: the World Trade Organization provides geographical intellectual property right protection for certain products. Thus it ensures no one can call their sparkling wine “champagne” except those who make stuff in the Champagne region of France.
The Indian and Pakistani Punjab was originally seen as the home of this long-grain aromatic rice. The two countries had once sought to jointly get basmati registered with the WTO as geographically specific to certain parts of their respective countries. Both sides had been rattled by an attempt by a US firm to register a patent for its own hybrid basmati strand.
In the mid-1990s, this joint effort fell apart. I vaguely remember that the Indian side blamed the Pakistanis for trying to tie it to Kashmir or something on those lines. Whoever was to blame, the two went their separate ways when it came to basmati’s geographical protection.
This was unfortunate because it precluded defence through the WTO, easily the most sensible way to do so as it would be global and be defended by a tribunal system with punitive powers.
So basmati protection became and remains a patchwork of local and bilateral agreements, one set by Pakistan and the other by India. It has done well, but India’s Agricultural and Processed Food Export Development Agency spends Rs 40 to 50 million a year defending the sacred name of basmati — most recently against a cafe in Morocco. Presumably some Pakistani agency does the same.
Fortunately the biggest importers of basmati in the world, mainly Persian Gulf Arab states, have local definitions of the rice that all but guarantee most of the global market remains reserved for South Asia.
But this is a piecemeal solution. The WTO would be so much more final. And that would require a common India-Pakistan petition to have basmati listed with the WTO. Also the battle is endless, and you only have to lose once. Tilda, an Indian exporter, nearly lost a case against a Thai firm claiming to grow basmati.
I also think that having a joint definition would help freeze or at least make it more difficult to change the parameters of basmati. Today, at least in India, basmati is said to grow in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Last year Madhya Pradesh asked for its aromatic rice to be defined as basmati. Bangladesh also claims to grow the stuff.
Adulteration is rampant. A study in the UK in 2005 found half the basmati sampled was, well, not basmati. A new rules regime was put in place, but another survey showed adulteration had only been reduced.
Time for a joint Indo-Pakistani task force to save basmati from others, and each other.
Copyright © 2012 the Hindustan Times. | <urn:uuid:32dc995f-9b88-43e8-ad10-a9b0b29519f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rhg.com/articles/being-nice-thru-rice | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959762 | 641 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Web edition: December 17, 2010
Print edition: January 1, 2011; Vol.179 #1 (p. 35)
Thank you for great reporting. I’m a longtime subscriber to Science News (since the 1970s) and want to compliment your reporters, writers and editors on the high quality of your articles, which often involve material that is difficult to explain. They make the news of science understandable, informative and entertaining. Hopefully, publications like yours, together with good science education in our schools, will inspire our youth and combat the politicized science and the pseudoscience now prevalent in our society.
Leon R. Pacifici, Underhill, Vt.
Viral infection and obesity
The correlation between obesity and adenovirus-36 antibodies (SN: 10/9/10, p. 5) is interesting, but what is causing what? The article says 22 percent of obese children and 7 percent of normal-weight children in the study carried the antibodies. For a virus as “common” as the common cold, these seem like low exposure rates. Is it possible that many people are exposed but either never develop or stop producing the antibodies? Or that obese people produce more of the antibodies than nonobese people?
Tom Lippe, El Cerrito, Calif.
It’s true that cause and effect can’t be established by association studies, such as the one by Jeffrey Schwimmer and colleagues showing a link between adenovirus-36 infection and childhood obesity. But this study is just one of many, including research showing that more body fat accumulates in animals infected with AD-36. Researchers now plan to follow groups of people to see whether body-fat patterns change after infection with the virus. As for exposure rates, the common cold is caused by many different types of viruses, not just adenoviruses, so the rates in the study aren’t necessarily low. Adenoviruses account for only about 8 percent of viral illnesses, including respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses, Schwimmer says. In people with normal immune systems, viral infections lead to antibody production, although it may take a few days or weeks. If anything, obese children might make fewer antibodies than nonobese children do, since obesity is linked to suppression of the immune system. — Tina Hesman Saey | <urn:uuid:34e9e438-3d8d-439e-a795-02afb1e02ee0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/67725/description/Letters | 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 | 0.937817 | 480 | 2.703125 | 3 |
|how can you catch hepatitis?
Jun 30, 2010
how can you catch hepatitis?
| Response from Dr. McGovern
Hepatitis A is transmitted through contaminated food or water.
Hepatitis B is mainly transmitted easily through sex and shared injection drug use.
Hepatitis C is mainly transmitted through injection drug use. Traumatic sex can also lead to HCV transmission, which has occurred in several well-described studies of men who have sex with men. Sexual transmission between monogamous couples occurs, but infrequently.
Shared injection drug use means not just sharing needles....You can also get hepatitis viruses through sharing cookers and cotton....
Get Email Notifications When This Forum Updates or Subscribe With RSS
This forum is designed for educational purposes only, and experts are not rendering medical, mental health, legal or other professional advice or services. If you have or suspect you may have a medical, mental health, legal or other problem that requires advice, consult your own caregiver, attorney or other qualified professional.
Experts appearing on this page are independent and are solely responsible for editing and fact-checking their material. Neither TheBody.com nor any advertiser is the publisher or speaker of posted visitors' questions or the experts' material. | <urn:uuid:b0a0f2e6-8ec4-4cb1-9209-ad9da9ba0e1f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thebody.com/Forums/AIDS/Hepatitis/Q209471.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928491 | 259 | 2.40625 | 2 |
this War, and the Next:
Waging Peace for the Long Haul
is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit,
and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing
clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation... We
will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies
without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American
life and policy."
Luther King Jr., April 4, 1967
international peace movement to prevent a preemptive U.S. war against
Iraq has achieved spectacular results in the past six months, results
which 10 years ago would have been utterly inconceivable. Despite the
fact that the U.S. will have its war regardless of international opinion,
despite the propaganda which will blare from our TV screens 24 hours a
day as the attack begins in earnest, despite the vicious hatred heaped
on the peace movement by those who worship the gods of preemptive violence,
we must always remember that we are the people who, for a moment, caused
the war beast to hesitate in surprise. Yet, as we both recognize our successes
and mourn our short-term failures, we should take to heart Martin Luther
King's words of 36 years ago. This war, and the next, and the next, are
all symptoms of a spiritual and intellectual poison in America, a poison
which is slowly killing us all. The U.S. peace movement must channel the
energy and organizational cohesion generated by the Iraq peace protests
into a new set of long-term goals: the creation of the institutions, programs,
and political power that we need to rescue the nation from the killing
vice grip of totalitarian neo-conservative ideology, an ideology which
dominates all major channels of political discourse and the contemporary
In the spirit of putting flesh onto the bones of Dr. King's 36-year-old
call for a revolution of values, I suggest here five foundational needs
for the U.S. peace movement - five objectives which we must pursue as
part of a multi-decade process to build a society grounded in the equality
of all human beings and a belief in the futility of violence as a long-term
means of conflict resolution.
1. Get active in electoral politics
Progressive activists must enter, in the thousands, into volunteer and
paid positions in local and state Democratic Parties to give progressive
candidates a fighting chance, to ensure that pro-war, WTO-supportive neo-liberal
Democrats are punished in the primaries, and to provide an army of Democratic
election campaign volunteers working overtime to take seats away from
Republicans in swing states. It was precisely this type of citizen influx
during Pat Robertson's 1988 presidential campaign which set the stage
both for Republican electoral gains in the 1990's and for the Republican
Party's dutiful obeisance to the Christian Right. As Sojourners magazine
contributor Vicki Kemper wrote in the wake of the 1988 election, "thousands
of Robertson supporters - most... of them right-wing evangelicals or charismatics
- have flocked to precinct, county and state organizations of the Republican
Party. ...The goal... is to reshape and reorient American politics completely
by systematically infiltrating and taking over its basic political structures."
Progressive activists must do the same with the Democratic Party, in equal
or greater numbers. Yes, I've heard of the Greens, I donate to the Greens,
and I value the Greens as a voice challenging the Democrats to be true
Democrats, but we need both outsiders and insiders, and today our greatest
need is for thousands of progressive insiders within the Democratic Party
system. An easy way to begin is to sign up for the Swing
State Project, a 2004 election initiative organized in cooperation
with Dorris "Granny D"
2. Establish and strengthen media watchdog and advocacy organizations
The peace movement needs a member-supported media organization which plans
and coordinates offensive and defensive national media campaigns, and
which offers media training to activists. A model example of this type
of organization is GLAAD
(Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), the leading media advocacy
group of the gay rights movement, which strategically targets specific
newspapers, journalists, and talk show hosts in a relentless effort to
ensure fair and balanced coverage of gay and lesbian people and issues.
A peace movement version of GLAAD would, as an example, organize a relentless
grass-roots campaign to pressure the Associated Press to stop writing
"caught in the crossfire" as a euphemism for "shot by Israeli soldiers."
It would coordinate mass letters and phone calls to major newspaper editors
when the U.S. press prints historical lies such as "Iraq ordered the U.N.
weapons inspectors out of the country in 1998" instead of the truth, "the
U.N. ordered its weapons inspectors out of Iraq due to the threat of potential
U.S. airstrikes." Most major newspapers, when they get their wrists slapped
on the same distortion by several thousand readers, do take steps to adjust
their coverage in the future. As GLAAD's successes have amply demonstrated,
the ability to promote undistorted press coverage, applied over a period
of many years, can pay off handsomely for a movement.
3. Create a national network of student-led public school nonviolence
The peace movement need not wait for public schools to introduce nonviolence
and peacemaking material into the curriculum - we can have a strong presence
in the public schools right now. Thanks to the Federal Equal Access Act,
passed in 1984 under pressure from the evangelical Christian lobby out
of its hunger to host Bible studies on school property, secondary schools
must grant to any student-run club, regardless of its subject matter,
the same right to meet on school property granted to any other student
organization. Within the gay rights movement, the Equal Access Act has
led to the formation of hundreds of "gay-straight alliances" (GSAs), student-led
clubs which offer support and information to gay and gay-supportive students,
and which initiate local projects to fight school homophobia. Within California,
over 100 GSAs are linked by an independent umbrella nonprofit GSA
Network, which offers a host of resources to school GSAs throughout
the state, including information about how to start a local GSA, tips
on how to build membership, access to student leadership conferences,
and online crash courses in meeting facilitation and strategic planning.
The peace movement can and should create a similar infrastructure to promote
public school "nonviolence alliances" (NVAs), with an umbrella "NVA Network"
organization that offers discussion topics, suggests school education
campaigns, and provides access to content and resources suitable for use
at NVA meetings. School NVAs would engage in a wide variety of activities
depending on local student interest - possibilities include showing and
discussing videos such as the civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize
and the nonviolence documentary A Force More Powerful; conducting nonviolent
conflict resolution role-playing exercises; planning counter-recruitment
events to offset the influence of ROTC; and inviting guest speakers from
local minority and religious communities. School NVAs, in other words,
would serve as training grounds for the next generation of peace activists.
Any public secondary school student can walk into school tomorrow and
start a nonviolence alliance, but without an umbrella nonprofit, the NVAs
will be isolated and short on resources. The peace movement must "bell
the cat" by generating seed funds and a board of directors to create an
NVA Network organization.
4. Establish and strengthen progressive think tanks
Social progressives must create a network of think tanks to offer a strong
counter-voice to the scores of think tanks on the right, particularly
the well-known "fatal five": Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, American
Enterprise Institute, Hoover Institution, and the Center for Strategic
and International Studies. Peace activists unfamiliar with how these right-wing
institutions have skewed political discourse in America should browse
through a copy of the National Center for Responsive Philanthropy's 1999
report, "$1 Billion for Ideas: Conservative Think Tanks in the 1990s."
As the press release announcing the report notes, "The absence of a mainstream
or left-of-center parallel to the critical mass of conservative policy
institutions currently operating in the U.S. today has allowed conservative
policy entrepreneurs formidable power to define, direct, and dominate
policy and ideological debates."
One early-stage effort to create a progressive antidote to the fatal five
is the California-based Commonweal
Institute, a multi-issue think tank involved in research, education,
and communication. Social progressives must make a commitment to fund
think tanks like Commonweal and to create new multi-issue and specific-issue
think tanks to counter today's overpowering influence of think tanks on
5. Invest heavily in leadership training
The old saw about teaching a man to fish instead of giving him a fish
holds true in spades for the peace movement. The U.S. is planted thick
from coast to coast with well-meaning but organizationally dysfunctional,
under-funded, message-poor, anemic would-be social change groups. You
may know the type - the six to ten people who meet once a month, thrash
from one short-term reactive project to another with no focus, and spend
much of their meeting time commiserating about how awful the world is.
The peace movement must create and strengthen training organizations whose
mission is to engage the leadership of these grass-roots organizations
and teach them the skills they need to bring about lasting social change.
Fundraising. Meeting agenda and facilitation skills. Strategic planning.
Membership growth. Volunteer management. Media communication, press conference,
and spokesperson skills. Inter-group conflict resolution. Equip a few
thousand leaders with these skills, and we plant the seeds for future
A limited number of progressive training organizations exist today, including
but we need dozens more, and we need a broad awareness within the progressive
community that every dollar, every hour spent on training today will pay
off a hundred-fold in the future. The neo-conservative movement took precisely
the same approach to training in the late 1970's: New Right architect
Morton Blackwell has commented that "we set about quite systematically
to identify [fundamentalist Christian] leaders, to teach them how to become
effective, how to organize, how to communicate, how to raise funds, how
to use direct-mail technology - skills that would make them more effective."
Social progressives must offer the same types of training, and make a
commitment to keep at it for the years it will take to build a critical
mass of skilled leaders.
The institution-building we must engage in over the next quarter century
won't be easy, nor will it be cheap. Hundreds of thousands of social progressives
must be prepared to commit a minimum of ten hours a month and 3% of our
gross yearly income to the support of progressive media watchdog organizations,
think tanks, school nonviolence groups, and leadership training, and to
involvement in Democratic Party politics and support of progressive candidates.
We must shift our energies out of a reactive "protest mode" and focus
on a 25-year effort to build the core infrastructure that we need to redirect
the nation's priorities. New Right architect Paul Weyrich accurately recognized
the need for such a shift within the neo-conservative movement decades
Coalition people followed the advice of those of us... who said, 'Train
people and deploy them effectively, if you're going to have an impact.'
The Randall Terry group [Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group] didn't
want to hear this. They thought of everything in terms of mass rallies
and confrontation, and not in terms of building an infrastructure of
support that will make sure laws aren't passed that do you in."
Today, of course, the Christian Coalition stands as one of the most successful
of the New Right organizations, while Randall Terry's Operation Rescue
protest group lies in the "where are they now?" ashcan of history. In
similar fashion, Rev. Jim Lawson, the "godfather of nonviolence" who organized
the 1960's Nashville lunch-counter sit-ins, recently issued this admonition:
"On April 4,
1967, Martin King said that if we could not create a spiritual or moral
revolution in the United States, a revolution of values, a revolution
of spirit, a revolution of priorities... then he said that fifty years
from now, we'll be picketing over South Africa, we'll be marching on
Central America... And that is my pitch to the peace movement and the
people of good will in the United States. We have been antiwar for fifty
years or more. We haven't changed the policy. Now how long are we going
to continue to march?"
The road ahead will be costly, laborious, and at times agonizingly slow,
yet we can do nothing less. Sign up for the Swing State project. Write
a check to the Commonweal Institute. Encourage your children to start
school nonviolence clubs, and join together with other parents to form
a nonviolence club network. Get yourself and the leaders in your social
circles the training that you need to maximize your social change skills.
Commit ten hours a month and 3% of your income for the next quarter century
to waging peace... because the future depends on all of us. Perhaps Martin
Luther King Jr. said it best in the closing words of his April 1967 speech:
let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter --
but beautiful -- struggle for a new world."
Bruce Hahne is a Christian gay rights activist and nonviolence trainer
who lives in Sunnyvale, California. He can be reached at email@example.com.
- Morton Blackwell, Paul Weyrich, and Sojourners quotes taken from William
Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America,
Broadway Books, 1996.
- Martin Luther King Jr. quotes taken from "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to
Break Silence," April 4, 1967, speech given at Riverside Church in New
- Jim Lawson quote taken from interview in Fellowship magazine, September/October
2000, available in online
Copyright (c) 2003 by Bruce Hahne.
Nonprofit, noncommercial redistribution
of this essay in its entirety is permitted and encouraged.
| Our Mission | What
We Believe | FAQ | Issues
| Prayer Requests | TeleSeminars | Daily Devotions | Religion Dispatch Blog | Audio Whosoever | Whosoever Podcast | Resources
| Letters To The Editor | Reverent
Responses | Seeds of Hope | Reader
Survey | Bookstore
| Contact Us | <urn:uuid:15aa579a-565b-4b56-8f8d-7f7685fe110e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://whosoever.org/v7i6/war.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913777 | 3,170 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Some in the Republican Party would argue that free trade is holding off a U.S. recession, and criticize Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) for his opposition to free trade agreements (FTAs) with South Korea and Colombia. What do you say to those who view trade as a lifeline for the U.S. economy?
It's true that exports have been a relatively bright spot in an otherwise pretty bleak picture over the last twelve months. But I would point out that the bright spot is not bright enough to erase the problems facing manufacturing. The United States is obviously, given how large it is, much less dependent on international trade than any of the other major economies. And so the most important thing facing manufacturing industries in the United States is how the U.S. economy is doing. Now on trade, the Bush administration—now followed by the McCain campaign—has been pushing a false choice in which they say either you're going to back everything that they call a free trade agreement, no matter how many loopholes are in it, no matter whether it addresses the basic concerns of people who have been left out in the opening of markets and globalization, or else you're a Smoot-Hawley protectionist [the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 raised U.S. tariffs to record levels]. It's completely inaccurate.
Obama's position has been extremely consistent over the many years that I've known him. If you go back and look at his book, or if you look at what he's saying now, it's the same, and that is, trade is not bad. Trade is good. And the opening up of markets and access to the fast-growing markets of the world is one of the key ways that many of our industries have grown.
At the same time, if we are not mindful of the great many people who have been left out of the bounty of opening of markets, all the political will and favor of globalization is going to dry up. You're not helping globalization if you subscribe to the Bush view that we ought to try to jam through trade agreements by a 50-49 margin by pulling out the stops and giving pork to whoever needs it in order to get them to vote for it. That strategy is dried up.
So Obama's approach has been, we ought to put labor and environmental standards—enforceable, the basic standards from the ILO [International Labor Organization] and regarding the environment, into the core of our agreements, and that we should work as much as possible to remove the loopholes and special interests, because if you look at these free trade agreements, they're a thousand pages long and 980 pages of that are giveaways to individual companies and monopolies, and very little of it looks like the economist's case for free trade.
And more broadly, to promote globalization we have to build a new consensus, and that consensus has to be built around making sure that America is ready to compete, that we can't build a moat around the country, and so we shouldn't try to. But we should invest in the capabilities of our own industries and we should be mindful of the concerns of the people who have been left out—that we can look after the health of workers, and still be pro-market. It's in the interest of developing countries too. I don't think there's any contradiction in that.
Republicans have been calling for increased domestic drilling as part of the solution to U.S. energy and economic problems. What is your response to the focus on domestic drilling and to the larger question of energy independence?
Look, you don't need a PhD in petroleum engineering to figure out that the United States consumes 25 percent of the world's oil and has 3 percent of the world's reserves. You can't drill your way out of this problem. I mean, it's like you're getting bills that you can't pay, and you're saying, "Oh, well, I'm going to scrounge through the cushions and see what coins I can find down in my couch to try to pay them." The United States is not Saudi Arabia, and we can't solve the problem that way.
Further, drilling, by all expert accounts, is going to take many years before any additional oil would come on the market. That's why the two things that we need to do are, work on energy efficiency and reducing our consumption, which is what we've done in the last month. People have been changing their habits. And that's what reduced the price of energy. And two, we need to finally start making a real energy policy for the long run which weans us from our addiction on oil. That means investing—in the Obama plan it's $150 billion over ten years—in the research and development and deployment of alternative and renewable energies, alternative fuels, and things of that nature. While doing that, we can generate up to five million green jobs.
You mentioned nuclear energy. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has said he's going to build forty-five new nuclear plants by 2030. Where does Obama come down on nuclear energy?
Obama recognizes we've got to have a portfolio of all kinds of energy, especially in the short run—that consumers need relief. He's for nuclear [conditioned on sorting out] how we dispose of, safely, the toxic nuclear waste. Building forty-five nuclear plants and shipping all of the toxic nuclear waste to within an hour of greater Las Vegas [to the proposed waste facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada], in his view, that's not going to work. So it's clear we've got to put the research in to figure out a safe way to do the disposal. | <urn:uuid:60dab048-de6e-4773-8f3e-301a0ccdf460> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cfr.org/energy/obama-economic-adviser-says-reform-trade-policy-diversify-energy-choices/p17103 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973195 | 1,166 | 1.625 | 2 |
Social Media Marketing
Social media has changed the business world. Suddenly, marketing a business isn't just about talking to people, it's about talking with people. The one-sided sales pitch is now a multi-directional community conversation. The power to control the brand message has largely been removed from a business' hands.
Social media marketing, or SMM, is all about engagement. It's a business's opportunity to connect with clients and build a long-term customer relationship built on communication and trust. Today, the customer-business power relationship is skewed toward the customer, with every individual able to publicly voice concerns and garner media attention, as every person is now a media publisher.
As a result, businesses must do their best to keep the conversation positive through their participation. A business can't quell all public displays of dissatisfaction; however, by following SMM strategies, a business can promote a message that speaks to its customer service successes through attentive awareness and genuine dedication to serving customers' needs.
This is why SMM is a powerful and necessary tool for all brands today. Education and services provided by SMM professionals can help a business improve their presence and develop a positive reputation online.
Making Social Media Work for Your Business
A business that is not interacting with clients through social media may be hurting their brand in several ways: the risk of fading away from their customer base's top-of-mind recall; missed opportunities to reach new clients; and falling out of public favor by missing important conversations taking place online. So what's a business to do?
With the help of qualified SMM experts, a company can optimize their social media presence. Social media marketing is executed through many platforms, with a few of the popular platforms being a blog, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and YouTube.
However, before a business engages in any particular platform, research must be put into locating the places where the intended audience is active online, and creating a social media strategy to reach them in relevant spaces. SMM services begin with research to identify those social media platforms where participation will produce the greatest pay off.
Developing a Social Media Strategy
An SMM company must tailor SMM strategies to the needs of the individual business. Take a local bakery, for example. A bakery may do well to optimize their presence in Yelp and invite customers to review their cakes and pastries on the social review network. The bakery may also find value in Twitter by tweeting a word of the day that will get the first 10 customers a free cupcake if they come to the shop and say the "magic" word.
In this SMM strategy, Yelp is used as the platform for building up reviews that reflect the brand as an established business with reliable products and services. Yelp has the added benefit for the business because it's a trusted signal for the local map service of Google, the most popular search engine. Meanwhile, Twitter is used to entice people to visit the shop via rewards. Furthermore, Twitter is a conversation driver, encouraging people to become friendly with the brand's representatives and share worthy tweets with their connections.
Users of social media platforms use each differently, and the rules of engagement are largely defined by the users themselves. This is why SMM professionals understand that SMM services are not one-size-fits-all. SMM experts at Bruce Clay, Inc. help you navigate a community's expectations and the value of brand presence as you decide how to devote resources to social media platforms. A strategic SMM company can help you develop and execute social media policy and practices that aid in community outreach, reputation management and brand loyalty for your business. | <urn:uuid:9710a368-ddd3-4d50-8c2c-8782d11160d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bruceclay.com/smm/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958077 | 736 | 1.96875 | 2 |
ABOUT THIS RELEASE
Estimates of percentage change in key business performance indicators obtained from a sample survey of business in all industries except general government and agriculture, forestry and fishing. Expected aggregate percentage change and percentage weighted net balance (percentage of businesses expecting an increase minus the percentage of businesses expecting a decrease) is provided with respect to the next quarter (compared with the current quarter), and the current quarter of the following year (compared with the current quarter). The following indicators are provided: operating income; selling prices; profits; capital expenditure; inventories; employment; wage costs; non-wage labour costs; other operating expenses; and total operating expenses. The data are presented by Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC) divisions and by size of business.
More detailed information is available as a special data service on request.
This page last updated 20 June 2006 | <urn:uuid:26a9df39-fd02-4652-8554-96d0b889d383> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/ProductsbyReleaseDate/8650E70A5E05BA2DCA2570AF0003A702?OpenDocument | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925406 | 181 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Join for Just $16 A Year
- Discounts on travel and everyday savings
- Subscription to AARP The Magazine
- Free membership for your spouse or partner
D.W. Griffith’s landmark film will never live down its glorification of the Klu Klux Klan, but the scene of Lincoln’s assassination, filmed within living memory of some who knew Lincoln, seems almost like a newsreel.
Newly minted lawyer Abe — skeptical of his own intelligence but resolutely affixed in his moral firmament — defends two brothers accused of murder. The scene where our hero talks down a lynch mob could be a textbook lesson for crisis counselors everywhere.
20th Century Fox/Everett Collection
Massey got his Lincoln nailed down on Broadway in Robert E. Sherwood’s play, then brought him to the screen in this adaptation. For decades, when people thought of Lincoln, it was Massey they envisioned. He returned in a cameo as Abe in the 1962 Cinerama epic, How the West Was Won.
Perhaps the most handsome of screen Lincolns, Robards reintroduced Sherwood’s play to the nation in this Hallmark Hall of Fame production (and got an Emmy nod). Nearly 30 years later, Robards returned to TV as a war-wearied Abe, writing the Gettysburg Address, in The Perfect Tribute.
The man who immortalized Mark Twain sometimes seems to have been born a century too late, so of course he’s a perfect Lincoln. Holbrook won an Emmy playing Abe in the 1974 TV miniseries based on Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln biography. He played him again in North and South, Books I and II, in 1985 and 1986.
NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images
He played towering figures like King David, Captain Ahab and General Douglas MacArthur, so it was just a matter of time before long, lanky Peck got his turn as the 16th president in this TV miniseries.
CBS / Photofest
Waterson is one long drink of water, and he puts his physique to good use here. This TV bio is noteworthy for the way it takes time to explore Abe’s relationship with his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, played by another famous Mary T: Mary Tyler Moore.
"Be excellent to each other," Lincoln exhorts a late '80s high school assembly, thus ensuring a passing history grade for our time-traveling heroes. Tall, gaunt Barron also played Abe on the TV shows Get a Life, Out of This World and Love, American Style.
Well, this is as revisionist as it gets, but after a century of watching movie Abes pensively stroll across the screen, hands clasped behind their backs, there’s a certain release in watching the 16th president kick bloodsucker butt.
20th Century Fox/Everett Collection
Few actors have managed to capture, as Day-Lewis does, a Lincoln uncomfortable in his own skin, betrayed by his own physical frailties, struggling to raise his reedy voice above the din of a nation tearing itself apart.
Courtesy Dreamworks Studios
Steven Spielberg is the latest director to place Abraham Lincoln on the screen. According to reports, he asked that release of the film wait until the U.S. presidential election was over, lest anyone claim that he was pointing fingers or taking sides. Our Lincoln portraits above span nearly 100 years, from Joseph Henabery in Birth of a Nation to Benjamin Walker as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Daniel Day-Lewis as just plain Lincoln. Who's your favorite?
From companies that meet the high standards of service and quality set by AARP.
Members can earn exclusive points with Balance™ Rewards from Walgreens.
Members save every day at participating Denny's locations. Conditions apply.
Members enjoy exclusive savings on dining, travel, tech & more at AARPdiscounts.com.
Members receive exclusive member benefits & affect social change. Join Today | <urn:uuid:40efdc60-3034-47fd-8fd5-5bb08a7bb9b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aarp.org/entertainment/movies-for-grownups/info-11-2012/abraham-lincolns-in-hollywood-photos.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948211 | 830 | 1.585938 | 2 |
All about LouisvilleDaniel Boone and other frontiersmen settled in Kentucky, the "Bluegrass State," in 1769. Its name comes from the Iroquois Indian word "Ken-tah-ten," or "land of tomorrow." Admitted into the Union in 1792, Kentucky is the 15th state and the first state west of the Appalachian Mountains. Today, Kentucky is associated with coal mines and horse farms and racing. America's most prestigious horse race, the Kentucky Derby, is held in Louisville annually. The state flower is the goldenrod, the cardinal is the state bird and Frankfort is the capital. | <urn:uuid:e9eaa8ee-18bf-40b9-a7ed-169170e0c8d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.basictraininggraduation.com/Fort_Knox-KY-bootcamptravel-guide.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950238 | 125 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Water has been the major issue of the year, writes Federated Farmers president Bruce Wills.
It is nearly Christmas again and I cannot believe I am almost 18 months into my term as president of Federated Farmers. It is a bigger job than I envisaged, but I know we are making good progress. Federated Farmers has achieved strong membership growth this year and the job of supporting farmers to achieve sustainable and profitable farming is more important than ever.
I am continually humbled by the enormous effort so many farmers commit to our organisation, in many cases at considerable cost. Your efforts are noted and very appreciated.
This year's number one issue was water, particularly our efforts on the Land and Water Forum (LaWF). LaWF is about compromise and the collaborative process has been long and arduous, but my hope is the outcome will be more enduring for it all.
Decisions about how we farm with water are better made by affected communities than distant judges. Yes, we have given some ground, but so have those who have rallied against us. Our over-riding focus has been that farming must remain profitable and must be allowed to grow.
Yes, we must do better at excluding stock from water, put more effort into ensuring our soils stay where they are supposed to and yes, we need to better manage animal effluent.
None of this is new and many farmers already meet these obligations, but we will need to collectively 'up' our efforts. Sustainable farming is in all our interests.
As we head toward the summer holiday season there are a few clouds on our horizon. Our determinedly high currency and the economic weakness in our major trade partners is having a negative effect on farm-gate returns. There is little the Federation can do to alleviate this, but we are fighting for farmers in areas where we can make a difference.
The Federation remains committed to reducing the regulation and unreasonable restrictions to the way we farm, such as the Manawatu-Wanganui regional council's One Plan.
Hopefully, with the end-of-year holidays coming up, there will be enough sunshine to be able to make the most of the summer, with just enough rain to keep those pastures growing - the ideal Christmas present for all! I wish you all the very best for a happy and prosperous New Year. | <urn:uuid:8e6a7213-c0e9-4295-babc-098168968ac4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.times-age.co.nz/news/progress-made-on-water/1648538/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972427 | 472 | 1.507813 | 2 |
There are so many times when children die from circumstances out of our control like incurable disease and freak accidents that no one saw coming. So I think that's what makes deaths that could have been prevented so incredibly tragic. Like the case in Utah this past Sunday in which toddler Richard Moore was killed while riding on his father's motorcycle.
I'm sure Shannon Moore, 48, had only the best of intentions when he took his 1-year-old son out for a ride on his motorcycle. I'm sure he was looking to do some fatherly bonding and figured they'd be fine since they were just riding around their apartment complex parking lot. But they weren't.
According to ABC, the boy was riding between his father and the handlebars; neither was wearing a helmet. They were going more than 10 miles an hour and took a corner too sharply, when Shannon lost control of the vehicle. The boy was thrown from the motorcycle, hit the pavement, and the motorcycle landed on top of him. He died at the scene.
Neighbors said it wasn't the first time they'd seen the father and son on the motorcycle, but tragically this will be the last. While there is no law that prohibited what they were doing, there should be. Police Department Detective Levi Hughes told the station:
Even though laws don’t regulate the age of the passenger of a motorcycle, common sense has to dictate that kind of decision. If the passenger’s feet can’t reach the pegs and he can’t wear a helmet, he shouldn’t be put on a motorcycle. If you don’t listen to your own better judgment you will pay the ultimate price.
The fact is there aren't always rules and regulations telling us what to do with our children, but there are some things we should just know as parents not to do. Of course, while the father may or may not deserve the criminal charges he possibly faces, I'm sure he'll punish himself more than the law ever could, and there's nothing he can do to change what happened. At this point the best we can hope for is that his story serves as a warning to others, and perhaps prevents a similar, senseless tragedy from taking another innocent life.
Would you ever let your children ride on a motorcycle? What other senseless risks do you see people take with their children's lives?
Image via Elvert Barnes/Flickr | <urn:uuid:922a9cae-970c-4d4c-9164-2d660d977a61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thestir.cafemom.com/toddler/141610/1yearold_dies_after_being_thrown?next=41 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987697 | 494 | 1.984375 | 2 |
Plymouth State University
Two central (linked and overlapping) goals for the FYS (as I see it, anyhow):
- Develop critical thinking skills by exploring a particular question/subject
- Develop a sense of community and engagement as a part of the First Year Experience
- Use informal writing to help students introduce themselves to the professor and one another; also to reinforce community and connection:
- Day one freewrite connected to the course question
- Writing throughout to share ideas and listen to one another
- Ungraded freewriting used to warm up for discussion
- Freewriting as a “release valve” for bias, irrationality, etc.
- Short papers (a paragraph to two pages, formal and/or informal) to practice specific writing/thinking tasks related to the course’s question and to critical thinking goals; such short pieces might be connected and/or sequenced to result in a final, more formal and lengthier paper or project:
- Writing to reflect
- Writing to question
- Writing to speculate
- Writing to compare/contrast
- Writing to summarize
- Writing to critique
- Informal and/or formal writing to assess course goals, student performance, etc.:
- Use freewrites to take the pulse of the class — ask them what they’re learning
- Practice essay exam questions to see if students are getting what they need to be getting
- Ask students to reflect, in short writing, on the course goals
- Formal writing to demonstrate learning in the course — breaking down the traditional research paper:
- Writing about the question/topic (see number 2, above)
- Research journals/correspondence to document the process of researching and thinking critically
- First draft and final draft
Expressive and Transactional Writing In The First Year Seminar
“Most people’s relationship to the process of writing is one of helplessness.”
– Peter Elbow, Writing Without Teachers
WAC theorists, such as Toby Fulwiler, find it useful to draw a distinction between expressive writing and transactional writing. Expressive writing is writing to learn — the writer is exploring thoughts, feelings and ideas, discovering what he or she knows or about a topic. Be cause the purpose of this kind of writing is to discover, the writer doesn’t have to worry as much about writing convent ions (spelling, punctuation, organizational structure, style). Expressive writing is often done quickly and freely. Transactional writing, or more “public” writing, is writing for an audience — it communicates; it persuades — convention becomes important, since rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling exist to add precision to communication. An important goal in learning to write well is gene rally learning to master transactional (public) writing, but expressive writing can be an important step in the process of learning transactional writing, just as it can be in the process of learning other skills and disciplines.
Another way to distinguish these two types of writing is to think about them as “writing to know” versus “writing to show what you know.” In the First Year Seminar, one might use either or both kinds of writing: expressive when the goal is to stimulate student thinking, transactional when the goal is to have students communicate what they have learned in a scholarly, performative context. In assessing student writing, be sure to take into account what kind of writing you are asking students to do and why.
- Expressive Writing
write to know
focus on discovery
writing as thinking
writing for yourself
- Transactional Writing
write to show what you know
focus on mastery
writing as communication
writing for an audience other than yourself
Possible Types of FYS Writing Assignments
- Freewriting The basic rule of freewriting is that t he writers keep writing until the instructor tells them to stop. Usually the instructor will ask a question or give a prompt to guide the freewrite and will announce how long the write will be. It is best for the instructor to write, too.A freewrite at the beginning of class is often a good way to stimulate discussion — the freewrite question might be one of the central ones the class meeting is designed to explore, e.g., “Why do we have General Education requirements?” or “What have you learned so far about how to prepare for exams?” or “What made you choose this section of the FYS?”A freewrite at the end of class may bring the whole meeting together and increase the likelihood that students will remember what they learned. An end-of-class freewrite can help students practice t he skills of synthesis and summary.
- Focused Listing Again everyone writes in response to a question or other prompt, but this time continuous writing is not required. The guiding question is one that has many answers or an answer with many parts — the writer lists as many answers as possible in the time allowed. Usually the group then pools information and makes a composite list.Focused listing is a good way to find out what a group of students remembers about what they have read or what they already know about a new topic.
- Journals Various instructions or questions might be used to guide the journal. You might ask students to write for ten minutes once a week about what they have learned t hat week about being a critical thinker. You might ask them to write weekly about their perceptions of the University, or their perceptions of how they are developing. You could ask them to reflect on what ever reading has been assigned. Or you could give them a different specific question each week to answer.
Mapping a Belief (Mapping a Self)
“If you simply assert something you are likely to forget that a reader, a worthy reader, needs not just your random speaking out, but an experience of sharing the source of values, the evidence for values, the adventures inherent in the finding and maintaining of values. In short, a direct assertion is a most limited offer of experience for a worthy reader.” (William Stafford, “The Poet as Religious Moralist”)
Objectives: To help students understand how experience shapes belief; in other words, to help them make bias visible and perhaps useful. To get students to think about where their assumptions and beliefs come from, and therefore to get them to start thinking of themselves as socially constructed beings. To allow students to acknowledge biases so it’s a little easier to move past them in later work.
Examples of beliefs:
- abortion (pro-choice, pro-life)
- political parties (democrat, republican, etc)
- the death penalty (pro or con)
- faith/religion (why are you Catholic?)
- what you think is important (art, culture)
- drugs (prohibition/legalization)
- political beliefs regarding gender, race, class, etc
[The above examples are the kinds of subjects students often choose to write about when they are working on "argument" in first year composition courses. In the First Year Seminar, this might be a good exercise to do after the question has been "broken down" a bit into different issues or perspectives. I'm curious to see how folks might tailor this exercise.]
Articulate your belief in a sentence.
Put the belief aside for now. We’re going to map out a landscape of self. Where should we start? What makes us who we are, most essentially? First, of course, we are human, but what comes next? Gender? Race? Here are some other categories to consider as we make maps of our constructed selves:
- Books, Film, Etc.
- Influence of Friends
Map these out on the board. There will be dissention about what goes in what order, and it’s good to notice how any hierarchy chosen won’t be satisfying to all. People should be taking their own notes about how the map works for them.
Now, return to the belief sentence. Acknowledge that this is a personal belief, one that can be mapped out somehow on the map of self.How did you come to this belief? (talk about the root of option)
Assignment: Write an informal piece, two to three pages, about your belief and how you, in particular, came to it. This should not be a persuasion paper — you don’t need to convince anyone of anything — but rather a “history” of this belief in your life. | <urn:uuid:d90cd79d-9aba-408f-8117-201b1d67343d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.plymouth.edu/office/writing-center/wac/recources-for-writing-instructors/using-writing-activities-to-meet-the-broad-goals-of-the-first-year-seminar/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94877 | 1,785 | 3.0625 | 3 |
The Denver Zoo has to deal with a lot of waste. A good deal of that waste comes from visitors, but the zoo also produces hundreds of thousands of pounds of animal poo each year. Now, zoo engineers have found a positive use for it: They rigged up a poo-powered tuk-tuk. (A tuk-tuk is a motorized rickshaw.)
“We want to show people that we’re not crazy for wanting to take elephant poop and turn it into energy,” one engineer told the Denver Post.
And indeed, they are not crazy! In the past, the zoo used some of its waste to power a margarita machine. The tuk-tuk, a 20-year-old model from Thailand, shows they can power a slightly larger and more practical machine (which should not be combined with the earlier achievement — don’t drink poo-powered margaritas and drive poo-powered tuk-tuks, kids). Ultimately, the engineers aim to convert 1.5 million pounds of human and animal waste into electricity that will cover 20 percent of the zoo’s needs.
That sounds like a potentially gross and smelly source of fuel, but it’s not like the tuk-tuk’s driver needs to be shoveling elephant poo into the engine all the time. The zoo collects the waste and turns it into pellets that, when heated without oxygen, produce syngas. Burning that gas then drives a generator that charges the tuk-tuk’s battery. So by the time the tuk-tuk’s out on the road, it’s quiet, clean, and smell-free. | <urn:uuid:c8692f78-c330-4656-bd5d-34301fc92ee5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://grist.org/list/denver-zoo-test-drives-elephant-poop-powered-vehicle/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927075 | 360 | 2.703125 | 3 |
A powerful magnitude 7.8 earthquake rocked the South Pacific near the Vanuatu archipelago Thursday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey reported, triggering a regional tsunami alert that was later canceled.
The quake struck 183 miles northwest of the Vanuatu island of Santo, and 354 miles northwest of the capital of Port Vila, at a depth of 21 miles. An aftershock with a 7.1 magnitude also was reported.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center immediately issued a regional tsunami warning for 11 nations and territories, including Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Fiji and Kiribati. Officials expanded the tsunami warning to include Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia. But that warning was cancelled about two hours later with NBC News reporting the tsunami wave generated was less than 4 inches.
There were no immediate reports of injury or damage from officials in Vanuatu, a chain of 83 islands. It lies just over 1,400 miles northeast of Sydney, Australia.
"We have no damage reports yet, but we have had no contact with Santo so far," Vanuatu police spokesman Take Rakau told The Associated Press.
While the quakes were not felt in Port Vila, he said Santo, with its capital of Luganville, "most likely could have felt them."
Authorities in New Caledonia, a French territory, were evacuating people from the island's eastern shore and from the nearby Loyalty Islands to higher ground, local police said.
A police spokesman in the capital, Noumea, said the nation was bracing for a tsunami to hit around 8:15 p.m. EDT on Thursday.
The latest warning comes just less than two weeks after a quake of magnitude 8.3 struck the South Pacific near Samoa, sparking tsunami waves that killed at least 178 people and devastated coastal villages in Samoa, American Samoa and in northern Tonga.
Video: Earthquakes rattle south Pacific Adrian Mourges, a member of a European Union delegation visiting Vanuatu's capital Port Vila, told NBC News he felt shaking for about 20 seconds. He said he had not heard if authorities in Vanuatu had issued a tsunami alert.
The islands of Vanuatu have a disaster prevention system administered by the government — usually for the typhoon season, which is just starting, Mourges said. There has been a lot of building along the shorelines around Port Vila, which is protected from the ocean by a large bay, he told NBC.
'Running into the hills'
A resident of Luganville on the southern coast of Vanuatu's Espiritu Santo island said the quake had shaken the town, but there were no reports of damage or change in sea level.
"People were frightened and some ran out of the building onto the street because it was so strong," a Florence Cari, receptionist at the Hotel Santo told Reuters by telephone. "The sea has not changed but we don't know if something will happen."
A reporter at the Daily Post newspaper in Port Vila said people on Vanuatu's Espiritu Santo island were running for higher ground. "We have had reports that the kids are running into the hills," she said.
Vanuatu is a chain of 83 small volcanic islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean, between Fiji and New Caledonia, with a population of roughly 235,000. Its land area is about the size of Connecticut.
Sulu archipelago shakes
Meanwhile, the U.S. Geological Survey reported a strong earthquake struck south of the Philippines on Thursday morning local time.
The epicenter of the quake, which struck at 5:41 a.m., was located 184 miles southeast of Jolo on the Sulu archipelago, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
"It was too deep to affect the Philippines," Renato Solidum, head of the Philippine Institute of vulcanology and Seismology, told Reuters. He said there was no likelihood of a tsunami.
This is a developing story. Check back for more details.
© 2013 msnbc.com | <urn:uuid:ba3b70bb-685b-45b2-ad34-f083fa7992a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbcnews.com/id/33215983/ns/world_news-asiapacific/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97094 | 855 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Organic Certification for Professional organic producers, processors and distributors
If you are interested in converting your holding to organic production or in processing, retailing or distributing a product to be labelled as ‘organic’, then follow this link for 5 easy steps and your application will be underway.
The Organic Trust is the centre of excellence when it comes to organic inspection and certification in Ireland. The very broad range of organic technical expertise available within our organisation is at your service.
The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food offers a range of financial incentives to assist those interested in getting involved in organic production. In addition capital grants are available for the purchase of specific equipment
From Dr Charles N Merfield, Teagasc, Johnstown Castle
We are delighted to present the following which is the first part in a 2 part article by Dr Charles Merfield
This work gives an overview of soil nitrogen (N) phosphorus (P) potassium (K) and pH management in Irish organic agriculture and horticulture. As for many other aspects of organic agriculture it is not ‘a recipe’ of how to grow organic crops, but more of a guide on ‘how to farm’. It must therefore be combined with other sources of organic production information as well as your own experience and tailored to the climatic conditions and soils of your own farm or holding to determine the best approach to meeting your farm’s optimal nutrient and agricultural management.
This work will also be the basis for a future Teagasc booklet and an organic section in Teagasc’s third edition of the ‘Green Book’ officially called ‘Nutrient and Trace Element Advice for Productive Agricultural Crops’. These future publications will include more detailed information and cross referencing to national and international legislation and environmental protection schemes and should be used in preference once they have been published.
The organic dichotomy: law of return vs. closed cycles
Organics contains something of a dichotomy regarding nutrient management, which reaches all the way back to its earliest founders. One view is the ‘law of return’ where it is considered essential that any nutrients removed in crops or livestock must be returned to maintain fertility i.e., a balanced nutrient budget. The other view considers the farm to be a ‘closed system’ for nutrients and that they should be carefully (re)cycled within the farm and the need to ‘import’ nutrients is considered a system failure. However, the latter approach does not consider the removal of nutrients in crops and livestock or losses from leaching or to the atmosphere. The scientific evidence is now overwhelming that both must be followed: the law of return (balanced budgets) must be coupled with efficient cycling of nutrients around the farm. However, most English language standards are based on the ‘closed system’ concept which has resulted in standards setting high barriers for importing ‘non-gaseous’ nutrients such as phosphorous and potassium, even though ‘importation’ of the gaseous nutrient nitrogen via legumes is considered indispensable. The scientific evidence is clear that it is equally essential to replace P, K and other ‘non gaseous’ nutrients using approved substances such as biological materials and mineral fertilisers. Therefore, modern organic agriculture takes a similar high-level position to non-organic agriculture in that all nutrients removed or lost from the farm system have to be replaced, the differences are in the details of what forms of fertiliser are appropriate, the emphasis placed on maximising on-farm nutrient cycling and whether nutrients should be used to optimise soil quality and health or used to directly feed crops.
Feed the soil to feed the plant
The aim of fertilisation in organic farming is to ‘feed the soil to feed the plant’. Soluble fertilisers must be avoided as the nutrients they contain can be directly absorbed by plants, which can result in excessive uptake with resulting problems, e.g., lodging, reduced dry matter content, lower nutritional quality and increased susceptibility to pests and diseases. Soluble fertilisers are also more prone to leaching from the soil than less soluble fertilisers, leading to eutrophication of water bodies and atmospheric N pollution. The unprocessed (raw / rock) forms of mined mineral fertilisers (P and K) also contain small amounts of some minor and trace elements which are removed during processing into the more ‘pure’ soluble forms. This means that minor and trace elements often have to be applied separately when using processed fertilisers while they are supplied as part and parcel of unprocessed mineral fertilisers.
The aim for organically approved fertilisers is to allow biological soil processes (microbial activity) to progressively release the nutrients contained in the fertiliser so plants get a more balanced and continuous supply. Many of these biological processes are temperature dependent, so more plant available nutrients are released during the growing season when the soil is warmer and when plants need them, while less are released in the cold of winter when there is a greater risk of nutrient leaching and most plants are hardly growing. This also means that it is not normally possible to get a ‘quick response’ from organic fertilisers, so if deficit occurs it will take some time to correct. This means that it is essential to have a long-term nutrient strategy, which is also a requirement under organic certification standards. In a nutshell, a nutrient strategy is based on regular, ongoing soil nutrient analysis, coupled with nutrient budgets, which are used to determine the need for the application of manures, composts and permitted fertilisers.
The wider aim of soil management in organics is to create a ‘healthy’ biologically active soil flora and fauna by maintaining a high level of soil organic matter and minimising soil disturbance caused by tillage. Changing from a synthetic fertiliser regime to one based on legumes for N fixation, manures and mineral fertilisers can have a considerable impact on soil biology. There is considerable scientific evidence and farmer experience that this change takes several years, even decades, and can result in an initial drop in some crop yields until the soil biological processes have adapted to the new types of fertilisation and yields increase again. This effect has also been well documented when changing other production practices, for example from tillage to no-tillage.
Soil analysis is your best guide
Whatever type of fertiliser is to be applied, e.g., mineral or manure, application rates must be guided by soil analysis coupled with field-by-field nutrient budgets. It is not appropriate to just apply fertilisers ad hoc, as this has the potential to waste valuable and sometimes expensive fertiliser resources, cause leaching or run off which pollutes waterways, and cause an imbalance of soil nutrients e.g., a high K index with a deficient P index. Soil tests should be viewed as a long term strategy with each field being tested every 3-5 years depending on intensity of production. They should be taken at the same time of year, ideally at the same stage in the rotation. These should be cross referenced with nutrient budgets for each field which will give a useful double check if excessive or insufficient amounts of nutrients are being applied. If the soil tests and nutrient budgets are in agreement, e.g., more K is being applied than removed and K soil levels are increasing then the action required is clear (don’t apply any more K until the index drops and budgets balance). If they are at odds, e.g., more P is applied than removed but the P index is decreasing, this may indicate loss from the system which requires further investigation.
Soil testing is not however a totally precise science. There are a range of tests for the same soil nutrient, they often give different results and they also vary in their suitability for different soil types. Therefore swapping among soil tests or testing laboratories will result in unusable information. Consistency is the watchword: choose your soil testing laboratory and nutrient advisers / consultants and stick with them. Only change if you are seriously dissatisfied.
There are also considerable differences in how well different soils provide nutrients to plants, what their optimal pH is, and how they respond to fertilisers and lime. There is also wide disparity across Ireland on minor and trace element availability with some soils being deficient while others are at potentially toxic levels. In all cases it is essential to have the tests and advice tailored to your particular soils, which re putable testing services and advisers will do automatically. Where you have a number of different soil types on your farm, especially if some are mineral and others peat (organic) based, then individual soils types are likely to require quite different fertilisation and liming programmes and this must be taken into account when working out a soil sampling strategy.
‘Advanced’ soil and plant analysis
Internationally, particularly in the United States and Australasia, considerable emphasis is given by some organic famers, their advisers and scientists to trace elements, cation exchange capacity and the ratios between specific nutrients. There are also specialist soil testing laboratories which undertake highly detailed soil tests and give very comprehensive fertiliser advice, often for an equally comprehensive fee. While there is scientific consensus that exchange capacity and the ratios of various nutrients (and pH) are real and important aspects of soil quality and performance, what the optimum exchange capacity, nutrient balances, etc. are, is hotly contested among the various proponents. In addition, the importance of these effects compared with ‘just’ optimising NPK and pH is even more contentious. To further confuse matters, many of the soils on which the research has been undertaken are quite different to Ireland’s soils and climates. Until such ideas are authenticated under Irish conditions it is recommended Irish organic farmers and growers continue to use the same nutrient indexes as non-organic producers and focus on optimising major nutrient levels and pH while ‘keeping an eye’ that minor and trace nutrients are within prescribed ranges.
Organic, national and international compliance rules
Organic certification has three ‘classes’ that it puts farm inputs into, ‘permitted’, ‘restricted’ and ‘prohibited’. Permitted are allowed to be used without restriction. Restricted are allowed to be used but normally only after permission has been given by the certification body, and prohibited are completely banned.
It is equally important to check that all planned fertilisation activities comply with national and European Union (EU) legislation and environmental protection schemes, e.g., the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS). Many of these policies are now enacting the types of environmental protection that the organic movement has been advocating for many decades. With the rapid advancement of some of these policies compared with the comparative slowness in progressing EU organic standards, national and EU legislation can now have stronger environmental and societal protection than organic standards, i.e., meeting organic standards does not guarantee cross-compliance with legislation.
In any situation, if you are unclear if an activity is allowable under organic or other regulatory systems, it is essential to consult with the appropriate authorities before undertaking the activity.
The sources of the main and minor plant nutrients for organic farms depend on the nutrient that needs to be replenished. Most are applied as biological material such as manures and composts and/or approved types of ‘mineral’ fertiliser. Most of the mineral fertilisers are minimally processed, mined, fertiliser rock, for example, ground phosphate rock (GPR). Normally chemical processing is not allowed, but the rock is ground to a sufficiently fine particle size that biological soil processes can release all the nutrients over a few years.
Nitrogen (N) Introduction
The main source of N in organic farming is the fixation of elemental atmospheric N into ammonia by the bacterium Rhizobium which live in the root nodules of leguminous plants and also in the soil. Ammonia is rapidly converted into other mineral N forms, e.g., ammonium and nitrate, by other soil microbes before its ‘final’ conversion to nitrite which is the only form plants can take up N. The mineral forms are also converted into organic matter, by both microbes and plants, which is the form in which N is ‘stored’ in soil. Therefore, growing legumes, in pasture, as green manures and as cash crops is essential for successful organic N management. For example, red clover can fix up to 450 kg N/ha/year and white clover 420 kg N/ha/year. A balance therefore has to be struck between exploitative and restorative phases of the rotation to ensure that while soil N will be reduced through the exploitative cropping phase it is replaced by restorative crops and pasture so maintaining N levels averaged over the rotation as a whole.
There are legislative and other national and EU level restrictions on the total amount of N that can be applied to the soil as manure, compost and other biological and mineral forms. This is currently 170 kg of N per ha per year of agricultural area used, which includes both applied manures and that produced by livestock while grazing. Figures are provided by government agencies and in organic standards detailing the amount of manure and its nutrient content produced by different livestock types which when combined with stocking rates and amounts of manure applied give the total N application. These are likely to be revised and updated so it is essential to use the most recent versions.
Organic certification also limits the amount of biological material brought onto holdings to replace N. Greater leeway is made for smaller dedicated horticultural units where the lack of livestock reduces the ability to move nutrients from the restorative phase to the exploitative phase via manure. However, horticultural units still face the same national and EU application limits as less intensive operations. There is also the possibility of using more soluble forms of N in intensive horticultural operations, for example, seaweed meals, where a proven need can be proven to the certification body. However, such products are also often expensive so their use is only viable on high value crops and the most economical long term strategy is likely to be a restorative clover and pasture phase as part of a rotation.
In all cases if you are uncertain if what you plan to apply is within the limits please consult a qualified agricultural adviser, your certification agency and/or government body as appropriate.
Nitrogen sources Mixed clover and grass pastures / leys
In mixed and livestock only farming systems, the main source of N is the mixed ley, which is typically based on grass and white clover due to its persistence under regular grazing. A two or more year mixed ley is far more effective at accumulating N and increasing soil organic matter, plus
improving soil structure than any alternative, e.g., green manures. For high quality silage production red clover can be a better option, however, it does not perform so well when grazed as it is less persistent than white clover when regularly defoliated. Teagasc has conducted extensive research into white clover management in pastures the results of which along with detailed practical guidelines can be found in the “Moorepark Dairy Research Update: A Guide to Management of White Clover in Grassland” most of which is directly applicable to organic farms.
A key issue not addressed in the white clover guide is the destruction of the pasture at the start of the cropping phase to retain as much N as possible. A vigorous pasture can accumulate considerable amounts of N, e.g., 400 kg N/ha/year, over its lifetime so considerable care must be taken when terminating the pasture that large N losses do not occur. A typical scenario to cause this would be tillage using a mouldboard plough followed by several secondary cultivations in early autumn when soils are still warm and biologically active but freely draining water, and then leaving fallow over winter. Losses of 150 kg N/ha or more could be expected under this situation. Better options include leaving the pasture overwinter, then shallow cultivated in spring and planted to crop as soon as possible. If cultivation at the end of the season is unavoidable, then the cultivations should be minimal and a nutrient trap crop (cover crop), e.g., a winter cereal or cereal and legume mixture should be sown. There are national restrictions on autumn ploughing aimed to address this exact issue and these must be complied with.
How does the Organic Trust ensure the integrity of organic food?
10 Reasons for choosing to buy organic food
Organic or Free Range - Is there a difference?
Organic Trust Submission re GM - February 2008
GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and Organic Production
Soil Nutrient Management for Irish Organic Agriculture
A flavour of the type of articles and items you are likely to find in Clover magazine - the quarterly magazine for the professional organic producer - published by Organic Trust. | <urn:uuid:32a471bf-d8b8-42fa-aefd-3a88d9006b53> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.organic-trust.org/info/detail/soil_nutrient_management_for_irish_organic_agriculture | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93988 | 3,454 | 1.90625 | 2 |
In northern Chile
The Desert in Bloom: a natural wonder
This year the driest place on earth is expected to turn into a carpet of colors. It is without doubt an expedition not be missed for those visiting Chile.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Over 200 types of flower embellish the arid Atacama landscape
Can a desert become a flowery garden in a matter of just a few hours? It can in Chile. It is a climate-related phenomenon called the Desert in Bloom (Desierto Florido), which takes place in the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert, in the northern part of the country.
This natural wonder happens occasionally, in years with higher than normal precipitation, mainly between July and August. But the results can be seen a few months later, between September and November, when there is a mass flowering of native species that color the dry sands with intense tones of purple, green and yellow.
Though as such the Desert in Bloom has not taken place since 2008, last year it happened on a smaller scale in Coquimbo Region, where thousands of tourists took advantage of the occasion to take photographs. This 2010 the natural spectacle is expected to come earlier, thanks to the unusual and frequent rains of May. In fact, according to the National Forestry Corporation (Conaf), the first shoots can already be seen in Huasco Province, southern Atacama Region, in July.
This immense garden has become a unique tourist destination in the world, which is why numerous agencies have programmed trips to observe this phenomenon from different parts of northern Chile, such as Vallenar, Copiapo, Caldera and La Serena.
An immense garden
Over 200 types of flower embellish the arid Atacama landscape, where lilies, suspiros, añañucas, goat’s horns and lions’ claws stand out. The trails can be visited from places like Caleta de Hornos, Juan Soldado, Quebrada Honda, or on the El Temblador beach near La Serena, or else in Totoral Bajo, Carrizal Bajo, Huasco and Caleta Barco near Vallenar.
You can also see a variety of birds, insects and other animals like lizards, the tamarugal tucotuco (a small rodent) and the four-eyed toad. This biodiversity in such an inhospitable place came to the attention of the French naturalist Claude Gay, who traveled to Atacama in 1831 to observe and study this rare phenomenon. But when he arrived he was unable to find anything more than cacti and rocks, as the country was going through a drought at the time and the desert did not flower. The scientist had to wait until 1840, when the phenomenon presented itself again in all its majesty.
To make the best of this trip across the Atacama Desert, it is recommended that you visit the Los Flamencos National Reserve, located 104 km from Calama, where you can also see part of the desert in bloom. In addition, the place stands out for its attractive fauna like the Andean condor, the vizcacha, the culpeo fox, and the vicuña.
In this area the Tara and Aguas Calientes salt flats stand out, as do the Miscanti and Miñigues lagoons and the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon), tourist attractions that are must-sees. It is also very captivating to admire the wild flora while walking along the trail in this reserve. The most popular of these include La Luna trail , Valle de la Luna, and the Tara salt flat.
What can you do in these places? The activities that tourists engage in the most in this area are photography, trekking, and observing the wildlife. The only restrictions are on the use of motorized vehicles and bicycles to preserve this wonderful phenomenon. | <urn:uuid:6ba619b8-5745-4406-88ba-87d29d7006c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thisischile.cl/Article.aspx?id=4368&sec=419&eje=&t=the-desert-in-bloom-a-natural-wonder&idioma=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937463 | 816 | 2.890625 | 3 |
|Family XXXVI. SCOLOPACINE. SNIPES.
GENUS III. LOBIPES, Cuv. LOBEFOOT.
|Genus||LOBIPES WILSONII, Sabine.
The habits of this beautiful species are little known, for so irregularly does it perform its migrations, and so rarely does it settle for any length of
time in any part of the United States, that at present few opportunities of
studying them occur. Although I have found individuals in various places along
our eastern coast, from Boston to New Jersey, as well as in Kentucky and other
portions of the Union, I have not seen its nest, nor even its eggs. Mr.
DRUMMOND, whose zeal as a student of nature must be known to every one devoted
to natural history, had the good fortune to find its nest in the course of his
rambles among the Rocky Mountains, but he has given no information respecting
its habits. A person who shewed me the skins of two specimens procured in July
near Cape May in New Jersey, assured me that he shot them near their nests, and
that they had four eggs. While I was in the same neighbourhood, in the month of
June 1829, a fisherman gunner, with whom I was at the time residing at Great Egg
Harbour, brought me a pair which he had just killed. He represented them as
very gentle and easily approached, and said that on going towards them they
affected to be lame, and opened their wings as if to induce him to run after
them; instead of doing which, however, he immediately fired and killed them
both. Having put away the birds in a safe place, he and I took to his boat and
went to the island where he had found them. He shewed me the spot on which they
had been shot; but although we searched most diligently for the nest, we could
not find it. On examining the birds when we returned, I saw that the female
must have been sitting. About the same period my son procured two specimens of
this Phalarope out of a flock of five, on the rocks at the rapids of the Ohio
below Louisville. Late in the summer of 1824 I shot three of them near Buffalo
creek on Lake Erie. My generous friend EDWARD HARRIS, Esq. presented me, at
New York, with a young bird in autumnal plumage, from which I made the figure in
the plate; and another, in a most emaciated state, was given me at Boston, in
the winter, by my young friend JOHN BETHUNE, Esq.
Those which I procured near Lake Erie were engaged in feeding around the borders and in the shallows of a pond of small extent. When I first observed them at some distance, I thought they were Yellow-shanks (Totanus flavipes), so much did their motions resemble those of that species. Like it, this Phalarope wades in the water up to its body, picks for food right and left, turns about, and performs all its motions with vivacity and elegance. They kept closer together than the Yellow-shanks usually do, but, like them, they would for a few moments raise their wings as if apprehensive of getting into too deep water and being obliged to fly. They preferred flying to swimming on such occasions, although from the general character of the tribe one might expect otherwise. After watching them about a quarter of an hour, during which time they did not utter a single note, I fired at them when they were all close together, and killed the whole. On opening them I found their stomachs to contain small worms and fragments of very delicate shells. The birds seen at the Falls of the Ohio flew in the manner of the Common Snipe, proceeding at first in an undulating or zigzag line, but more steadily after reaching a certain elevation, when they came pretty close together, wheeled a few times, and alighted again near the same shallow pools.
Dr. RICHARDSON, who found this species breeding on the Saskatchewan, says "it lays two or three eggs among the grass on the margins of small lakes: they are very obtuse at one end, taper much at the other, and have a colour intermediate between yellowish-grey and cream-yellow, interspersed with small roundish spots and a few larger blotches of umber-brown, more crowded at the obtuse end. The eggs measure sixteen lines and a half in length and eleven across."
I observed scarcely any difference in the colouring of the sexes, the female being merely larger than the male.
GREY PHALAROPE, Phalaropus lobatus, Wils. Amer. Orn., vol. ix. p. 72.
PHALAROPUS WILSONII, Bonap. Syn., p. 342.
WILSON'S PHALAROPE, Phalaropus Wilsonii, Bonap. Amer. Orn., vol. iv. p. 59.
PHALAROPUS WILSONII, Wilson's Phalarope, Swains. and Rich. F. Bor. Amer.,vol. ii. p. 405.
AMERICAN PHALAROPE, Nutt. Man., voI. ii. p. 245.
WILSON's PHALAROPE, Phalaropus Wilsonii, Aud. Orn. Biog., vol. iii. p. 400.
Adult, 10, 17 1/2.
Procured in Kentucky, New Jersey, and Boston. Breeds abundantly on the Rocky Mountains. Saskatchewan river. Winters in Mexico.
Bill long, very slender, flexible, flattened towards the end. Upper mandible with the dorsal line straight, the ridge flattened, the sides at the base sloping, but towards the end nearly horizontal, the edges obtuse, the tip narrow. Nasal groove linear, long; nostrils basal, linear, pervious. Lower mandible with the angle very long and extremely narrow, the sides slightly convex, the tip narrowed.
Head small, with the fore part high and rounded; eyes of moderate size. Neck rather long and slender. Body slender. Feet rather long, slender; tibia bare a considerable way above the joint; tarsus extremely compressed, narrowed before, very thin behind, covered anteriorly with numerous scutella, posteriorly with two series of scutella meeting with a sharp edge; toes slender, first very small, free, with a slight membrane beneath, second slightly shorter than fourth, third considerably longer; all scutellate above, margined on both sides with narrow, slightly lobed, crenate membranes, which are united at the base so as to form short webs, of which the outer is longer. Claws very small, compressed, arched, that of the middle toe with the inner edge sharp.
Plumage soft and blended. Feathers of the back and wings distinct. Wings long and pointed, primary quills tapering but rounded, the first longest, the second scarcely shorter, the rest rapidly graduated; secondary quills rather short, broad, obliquely rounded, with a small tip, the inner tapering and elongated, so as nearly to equal the longest primaries when the wing is closed. Tail rather short, nearly even, but with the two middle feathers longer, of twelve rounded feathers, of which the outer are incurved.
Bill black. Iris brown. Feet bluish-grey, claws black. The general colour of the upper parts is brownish-grey, the hind neck and upper tail-coverts greyish-white, the top of the head ash-grey. A white line over the eye; a band of black along the lore, under the eye, and down the side of the neck, on which it becomes broader and changes into chestnut-brown, when it proceeds along the scapulars of a brownish-red colour; another brownish-red band across the wing and including part of the inner secondaries. Quills greyish-brown, the outer primaries and their coverts darker. Tail-feathers pale brownish-grey on the outer, white more or less mottled on the inner webs. Throat and cheeks white; fore-neck orange-brown, fading below, and extending paler along the sides of the body; breast, abdomen and lower wing-coverts white; lower surface of wings pale grey, of tail white.
Length to end of tail 10 inches, to end of claws 11; extent of wings 17 1/2; wing from flexure 7 4/12; tail 2 2/12; bill along the back 1 7/12, along the edge of lower mandible 1 8/12; bare part of tibia 3/4; tarsus 1 1/4; middle toe 1 2/12, its claw (2 1/2)12. Weight 2 1/2 oz.
The female, which is somewhat larger, is in colour precisely similar to the male. Weight 3 oz.
Young in autumn.
The young bird after the first moult has the bill brownish-black, the iris brown, the feet greenish-yellow, the claws black. The upper parts are variegated with brownish-black and light greenish-yellow, the central part of each feather being of the former colour; primary quills brownish-black; tail-feathers as in the adult. The lower parts are white. | <urn:uuid:3ed5697a-dbb0-41ef-b22f-e389e2df236e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://web4.audubon.org/bird/boa/F36_G3b.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953921 | 2,007 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Dr. Emily Cartwright, Infectious Disease fellow at Emory University and former EIS Officer with CDC’s Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases discusses foodborne Listeria outbreaks. Created: 1/4/2013 by National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID).
Date Released: 1/8/2013. Series Name: Emerging Infectious Diseases.
[Announcer] This program is presented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[Mike Miller] Hello, I’m Dr. Mike Miller and today I’m talking with Dr. Emily Cartwright, Infectious Disease fellow at Emory University and former EIS Officer with CDC’s Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases. Our conversation is based on her study about foodborne Listeria outbreaks, which appears in CDC's journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases. Welcome, Dr. Cartwright.
[Emily Cartwright] Hello.
[Mike Miller] Let’s start by telling us about listeriosis.
[Emily Cartwright] Listeriosis is an infection with bacteria called Listeria monocytogenes. This infection is almost always caused by eating contaminated food; it can lead to serious illness, such as bacteremia, which means bacteria are in the blood, or meningitis, which is an infection of the lining of the brain. The CDC estimates that about 1,600 listeriosis cases occur each year in the United States, causing about 1,500 hospitalizations and 260 related deaths. So, it’s a rare bacterial foodborne disease, but nearly all patients are hospitalized and about one in six people with it die.
[Mike Miller] Well, who is most likely to get listeriosis?
[Emily Cartwright] Three groups of people are much more likely to get listeriosis. The first group is older adults. Over half of patients with listeriosis are adults aged 65 years and older. The second group is people with weakened immune systems. This group includes transplant recipients, people with leukemia and other cancers, people with AIDS, liver disease, end-stage kidney disease, alcoholism, and diabetes. Medicines that suppress the immune system, like chemotherapy and steroids, may also increase the chance of getting listeriosis. The third group is pregnant women and their newborn babies. In the mother, listeriosis causes fever and other non-specific symptoms, such as fatigue and aches. Listeriosis during pregnancy can cause a miscarriage, stillbirth, or premature labor. Some newborn babies become very ill and some die.
[Mike Miller] When was foodborne transmission of listeriosis first recognized?
[Emily Cartwright] CDC officials and Canadian colleagues investigated a listeriosis outbreak in 1981 that was linked to coleslaw. This investigation is considered to be the earliest report to show conclusively that human listeriosis is a foodborne disease, but several other investigations in the 1980s were linked to additional foods and reached the same conclusion about foodborne transmission.
[Mike Miller] How are listeriosis outbreaks identified?
[Emily Cartwright] In the United States, we use a laboratory-based system called PulseNet to identify outbreaks of listeriosis and other foodborne bacterial diseases. PulseNet was established in 1998 and has been revolutionary for outbreak detection. Public health laboratories throughout the country participate in making “DNA fingerprints” of Listeria strains from sick people. Laboratories can see if there is an unexpected increase in any particular strain. When several patients are infected with the same strain during a certain time period, it suggests that these infections came from a common contaminated food. In other words, the patients may be part of the same outbreak.
[Mike Miller] Well, how are listeriosis outbreaks investigated?
[Emily Cartwright] The goal of any foodborne outbreak investigation is to find a common contaminated food, and remove it from the food supply to protect the public’s health. To accomplish this, we use a surveillance system specifically designed for investigating Listeria outbreaks. It’s called the Listeria Initiative, and CDC started it in 2004. Like PulseNet, the Listeria Initiative’s success depends on the work of state and local health departments. Public health scientists all use the same uniform questionnaire to interview patients diagnosed with listeriosis about foods they ate before they became ill. Interviews are done as soon as the patient’s illness is reported to the public health department; in fact, the interviews often happen even before an outbreak is detected. During an outbreak investigation, information from PulseNet and the Listeria Initiative are used together. Scientists compare foods eaten by patients who are known to be part of the outbreak with foods eaten by patients diagnosed in the past – those who are not part of the outbreak. The large outbreak of listeriosis in 2011 is a good example. Many people remember this outbreak, which was caused by contaminated cantaloupe from a single farm. This outbreak could have been bigger, but public health investigators used PulseNet and the Listeria Initiative to help quickly identify cantaloupe as the source of illness and get the contaminated cantaloupe off the market.
[Mike Miller] Tell us about the reports of outbreaks in your analysis.
[Emily Cartwright] Sure. We analyzed the 24 listeriosis outbreaks that occurred between 1998 and 2008 and were reported to CDC. This time period starts when PulseNet began in 1998, and includes 2004 and later, when the Listeria Initiative was in place. So, it was an ideal period to review listeriosis outbreaks because these two systems had been established.
[Mike Miller] Do these outbreaks represent some kind of shift in the number and severity of outbreaks?
[Emily Cartwright] Yes, in fact, we did find some important shifts in foods responsible for outbreaks. Outbreaks that occurred later in the study period, after 2004, were generally smaller in the number of sick people and shorter in duration. We believe that these improvements reflect better detection of outbreaks through PulseNet and better investigation through the Listeria Initiative. In other words, rapid detection and response to listeriosis outbreaks, finding the contaminated food, and removing it from the food supply, resulted in fewer illnesses and ended the outbreaks sooner.
[Mike Miller] What types of foods cause Listeria outbreaks?
[Emily Cartwright] We grouped the types of foods that cause Listeria outbreaks into three categories: ready-to-eat meats, such as deli meats and hot dogs; dairy products, including cheese; and other foods. The other foods included some foods that have not been identified as causes of Listeria infection before, such as sprouts and taco salad.
[Mike Miller] And what were some of the trends in listeriosis outbreaks you identified?
[Emily Cartwright] Well, some of the most important trends related to the types of foods that caused listeriosis outbreaks. Ready-to-eat meats were the most common source of outbreaks early in the study period, from 1998 to 2003. But later in the study period, after 2004, they were associated with only one outbreak. We know that, after several multistate outbreaks caused by ready-to-eat meats in the late 90s and early 2000s, industry and regulatory agencies responded with interventions to prevent Listeria contamination in ready-to-eat meats, such as hot dogs and turkey deli meat. So this is an example of how findings from outbreak investigations can lead to enhanced efforts to control Listeria contamination, which has national benefits.
[Mike Miller] Apparently only five outbreaks were reported to CDC before 1998. Do you have any theories about the increase in reporting of outbreaks after 1998?
[Emily Cartwright] Great question. Our analysis focused on the 24 US outbreaks from 1998 to 2008. But we also compared this number, 24, with the number of outbreaks reported in the 20 years before our analysis. From 1978 to 1997, only five outbreaks were reported. We think that listeriosis outbreaks were probably just as common in these earlier years as in later years, but they just weren’t being detected.
[Mike Miller] Do you think that foodborne listeriosis is under control and we’ll start seeing fewer outbreaks?
[Emily Cartwright] That’s a tough question. We have made progress nationally in controlling listeriosis. Data from FoodNet, a system that tracks incidence rates of listeriosis, tells us that these rates have declined by about a quarter since 1996. But progress in the last decade has stalled. Outbreak investigations are opportunities to learn about gaps in the food safety system and ways to prevent Listeria contamination in food. If we continue to monitor infections using PulseNet and the Listeria Initiative, we can continue to find outbreaks, and to discover new foods that may be transmitting this deadly infection.
[Mike Miller] What can people do to protect themselves from getting Listeria infections?
[Emily Cartwright] The first step is to know whether you or someone you care for is in one of the three groups who are much more likely to get listeriosis. Those groups are older adults, people with weakened immune systems, and pregnant women and their newborn babies. Next, understand that food safety is important because listeriosis can be life-threatening. We caution people in these groups to not eat deli and lunch meats, cold cuts, or hot dogs, unless they are heated to an internal temperature of 165° Fahrenheit or until steaming hot just before serving. Also, they should not eat soft cheeses unless they are made from pasteurized milk. In fact, no one should drink raw milk or eat un-aged cheese or other products made from raw milk because many different pathogens are sometimes found in raw milk and can make people sick.
You can learn more about foods to avoid and how to safely prepare and store food by visiting CDC’s website cdc.gov/listeria.
Well, thank you, Dr. Cartwright. I’ve been talking with Dr. Emily Cartwright about her study, Listeriosis Outbreaks and Associated Food Vehicles, United States, 1998–2008, which appears in the January 2013 issue of the CDC’s journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases. You can see the entire article online at cdc.gov/eid.
If you’d like to comment on this podcast, send an email to firstname.lastname@example.org. That’s e-i-d-editor at c-d-c-dot-gov. I’m Dr. Mike Miller, for Emerging Infectious Diseases.
[Announcer] For the most accurate health information, visit www.cdc.gov or call 1-800-CDC-INFO. | <urn:uuid:575bd73c-378c-4942-af92-d147282dea2a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/player.asp?f=8626870 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959988 | 2,240 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Foreign policy entails making assumptions, making choices, and risk taking. The United States has been engaged in a long tiresome war in Afghanistan which apparently has no end other than future chaos. America and NATO forces will be leaving Afghanistan within a year or so and the prospect for peace after their departure is rather problematic. President Hamid Karzai has finally decided to allow a delegation to visit Taliban leaders held in Guantanamo prison. Five Taliban leaders apparently agreed to being transferred to Qatar.
Secretary of State Clinton hopes such a transfer MIGHT result in opening the door for negotiations with Taliban leaders in Afghanistan for a compromise solution and bring a halt to fighting. It is a risk. Naturally, Republicans in Congress oppose any negotiations. They want the war to continue so they can blame the war on President Obama.
Gee, as I recall it was a Republican president along with a Republican Congress that began this war. Oops, I forgot, it was all the fault of Democrats and that young community organizer in Chicago! | <urn:uuid:2cfcbfb4-5cd3-4929-b269-e1962fbf193a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theimpudentobserver.com/world-news/take-a-chance-on-taliban/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963494 | 200 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Get advice on how to prepare for the SAT and register online for the test. Among other features are a calendar of College Board test dates, information on community colleges and Profile, a program of the College Board's College Scholarship Service.
Search for colleges by region, college sport, tuition, major and other criteria; identify available scholarships; apply to universities and colleges; visit education related sites-and more.
See and compare profiles of nearly 7,000 U.S. colleges and universities. Search by location, program or major, size, religious affiliation, and other criteria. Site created by the National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education.
Review profiles of all accredited universities and colleges in the United States and Canada; take virtual tours of hundreds of schools; get advice from college admissions professionals; find out about scholarships and financial aid, career planning, and other college related topics.
A comprehensive site featuring information on loans, scholarships, military aid, grants, federal and state aid, and aid for specific courses of study or activities.
Oregon Student Assistance Commission
OSAC, the state student financial aid agency of Oregon, provides information on the Oregon, federal, and privately funded financial programs it administers and explains how to apply for them. Includes links to other scholarship sites.
Peterson's Education and College Center
Search for colleges and universities; find out about graduate programs and distance learning programs; investigate study abroad programs; explore summer academic, travel and employment opportunities; select a private secondary school; conduct a job search using Peterson's listing of 5,000 employers-and more.
Search for colleges using several criteria; find out about business, law, and medical schools; get career information including how to find an internship, write a resume, and interview for a job. Visit this site's Guide to the "Best 311 Colleges."
The Student Guide: Financial Aid from the U.S. Department of Education
Financial Aid from the U.S. Department of Education: "The most comprehensive resource on student financial aid from the Department of Education." Learn about the grants, loans, and work-study programs available through the federal Student Financial Assistance Programs and find out how to apply. Call a toll-free number provided by this site to get a hard copy of the guide.
U.S. News College Rankings
Review the top national universities, liberal arts colleges, and specialty schools as ranked by U.S. News, which categorizes colleges by their mission and region, gathers data on up to 16 indicators of academic excellence, and ranks each college against its peer group.
Bureau of Labor Statistics Career Information
Explore career opportunities that exist in a variety of interest areas.
Has job listings for national parks, amusement parks, resorts, ski resorts, and camps. Has listings especially for teens.
Occupational Outlook Handbook
Get the scoop on careers and occupations including education and training requirements, working conditions, salary, availability of openings, and a description of the actual work involved. Updated every two years by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor.
Purdue Online Workshops: Resume
This site includes resume styles, application letters, reference sheets and action words used for describing skills, after interview letter, acceptance letter, and more.
A database of summer employment opportunities. | <urn:uuid:dfd30560-3d86-4200-b858-13651d2a9d58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ci.oswego.or.us/print/12473 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910272 | 677 | 2.34375 | 2 |
December 02, 2010
Legal education is in a period of profound and much-needed change. That was the unanimous assessment of a group of experts at FutureEd2, a major conference at Harvard Law School that attracted more than 150 legal educators, practitioners, businesspeople and students from around the world.
Yet how, exactly, law schools will be different in five or 20 years is less clear, although there are many suggested paths, ranging from a greater emphasis on global education to more practical training for budding lawyers. And, at the same time, there are strong voices urging law schools to maintain what’s best about traditional legal education even as they undergo reform.
“The overarching theme was that this was really an important moment, and there’s a growing realization that legal education really needs to change in important ways,” said David Wilkins, the faculty director of Harvard Law School’s Program on the Legal Profession, which hosted the conference, the second in a three-part series co-sponsored with New York Law School to explore the current state of legal education and help shape its future.
Convening experts from around the world provided the opportunity to gather examples of reforms and innovations, as well as solicit recommendations for reform. “A number of things are already going on in law schools around the country,” said Wilkins, “ innovations around distance learning, around collaborations with other professionals, around accelerated legal education. There are a lot of things already going on that are quite exciting.”
View all conference videos here.
Some participants chose to submit proposals for improving legal education, ranging from more distance learning to more experiential learning in various forms. Of the 30 proposals, about five or six will be highlighted at the final conference in the series, which will be held next April at New York Law School. But, as HLS Dean Martha Minow urged during an address to the group, law schools should not abandon what they do so well: “Sharp analysis, teaching people to think hard through a problem by taking it apart, questioning assumptions, tracing consequences of potential avenues of response—these are the hallmarks of legal education.”
One theme, widely voiced by participants from many countries, is the need to provide even better practical training for new lawyers through clinical legal courses, apprenticeships, and other means. Leveraging new technologies to improve legal education and to support lawyers was also highlighted. A discussion moderated by Ashish Nanda, the Robert Braucher Professor of Practice at HLS, featured Jules Dienstag, Dean for Medical Education at the Harvard Medical School, and Rakesh Khurana, the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at the Harvard Business School, among others, who suggested ways that law schools could learn from their fields.
Driving much of the conference agenda was the rapid globalization of economic and government relationships, as panelists from law schools in India, China, Brazil, France, Japan, and other countries discussed how to best educate lawyers for an increasingly interconnected and interdependent international environment. Birte Gall, director of the International Exchange Program at Bucerius Law School in Germany, noted that her school requires students to spend a semester studying abroad, in order to understand the law of a different jurisdiction, develop personally by living in a foreign culture, and begin buildiing an international network of colleagues.
American Bar Association President Stephen Zack said that the global economy is of growing interest to lawyers in the U.S., including those in small firms. International law is ranked higher in importance each year in the ABA’s bi-annual Pulse report, which asks U.S. lawyers to rank their professional priorities, Zack said. “Ten years ago, a solo [practitioner] in Iowa could not get a piece of the international piece,” he said, but this is no longer true, due to new technology that levels the playing field between big- and small-firm lawyers, as well as the growing presence of multinational companies even in rural areas.
Wilkins agreed: “It’s a mistake to think of globalization as only being confined to certain parts of the profession. If you look at our economy generally, how many people thought globalization had nothing to do with them before current financial crisis? Anyone who shops at Walmart realizes globalization has a tremendous effect on them, and it’s only going to increase.”
Yet in a time of scarce resources – for schools and for students — is it practical to insist on globally focused training and courses in comparative law, especially for future lawyers who plan to hang out a shingle in a small town? “You could have different kinds of law schools that cost different amounts for different ends,” suggested Sophia Sperdakos, policy counsel at the Law Society of Upper Canada, the governing body of lawyers and paralegals in Ontario.
But Todd Rakoff ’75, the HLS Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and a key architect of the recent curricular reforms at HLS, warned against reducing budgets at the expense of quality education. “What you don’t want is to cut costs [through] the proliferation of poorly supervised externships,” he advised.
Other topics included the problem of retaining women in the legal profession, especially women of color; “cradle to grave” professional development, and Harvard Law School’s new model for a public service venture fund to support the launches of new public service careers in new ways and to encourage students to begin thinking about legal their careers in more entrepreneurial ways.
The United Kingdom’s decision to allow stockholders to purchase shares in law firms was highlighted by keynote speaker Chris Kenny, CEO of the U.K. Legal Services Board, which oversees the regulation of lawyers in England and Wales. Kenny noted that law schools are today educating people “for a world of collapsing borders and globalized markets,” with not only geographical borders falling away but also those between lawyers and other professional service providers, and between academic and clinical teaching. No matter how educational models are restructured, law schools must continue to emphasize ethics as the cornerstone of the profession, he urged.
Since American legal education is still widely regarded abroad as the best, other nations are looking to the U.S. to lead the way in legal education reform. “There are so many things to reform -- the curriculum, the structure of law schools, the genesis of legal education institutions – that we need the help of foreign law schools and foreign legal educators,” said Zhang Qi, a law professor at Peking University Law School who has been involved for years in Chinese judicial reform, and currently is a Fulbright visiting scholar of East Asian studies at Harvard Law School.
Many foreign law schools are seeking accreditation from the American Bar Association, a proposal that the ABA is considering. ABA President Zack—one of four ABA officers attending FutureEd2—asked panelists to explain why ABA accreditation was so important to them.
“The U.S. as a country, and its legal system, are profoundly influential around the world,” responded C. Raj Kumar, who spearheaded the effort to establish India’s first global law school, the Jindal Global Law School, and serves as its dean. “There is also great interest among lawyers around the world to measure up to the kind of ‘best standards’ that the legal profession has been fostering in the U.S.” Kumar added that it is important for the ABA to send the “right signal” to lawyers and governments around the world that the U.S. is not engaging in protectionism with regard to legal services.
Wilkins said the conference exceeded his expectations on many fronts, including the high level of engagement among the participants.
“I can’t claim to know what it was like when Christopher Columbus Langdell was operating, and maybe it felt like this at the beginning of the clinical legal education movement or other big changes,” said Wilkins, “but there is a willingness now to re-examine what’s happening in law schools in relation to tremendous changes in legal practice around the world, in a way I’ve never seen before.”
- Elaine McArdle | <urn:uuid:2194dd20-7083-4f19-b878-b590ab023351> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/spotlight/classroom/futureed-conference.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969812 | 1,716 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Introduction:The Rocky Mountains are home to the Black Bear. This opportunist is amazingly adaptable and can be seen in many different habitats, from the valleys to the upper reaches of the timber. The public perception of the Black Bear is one of Smokey the Bear from the National Forest Service encouraging us to “Stomp Out Forest Fires.” The Black Bear appears to be cute and cuddly and is portrayed as unintelligent. This could not be any further from the truth. The Black Bear is a highly developed master of his domain who knows how to survive in all seasons and will be able to adapt to seasons of plenty and seasons of little food.
In the fall, Black Bears can frequently be seen as they are focused on storing up food for their upcoming hibernation. Look for Black Bears as they feed on open hillsides near the edges of timber and along creek bottoms where they might be feeding on berries.
Please attach your Quality Black Bear photos.
Black Bear, Ursus americanus
As the smallest bear in North America the Black Bear is an adaptive opportunistic feeder that has a range throughout North America. Interestingly enough not all Black Bears are black. Black bears come in color phases including: black, brown, cinnamon, blonde and even a white-bluish color known as a glacier bear.
Distinguishing between a Black Bear and Grizzly is relatively easy when the following guidelines are considered. For more information go to the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks Bear Identification page.
1) Black Bears have a straight facial profile as compared to a dish-shaped face on a Grizzly.
2) Grizzlies have a pronounced hump on their shoulders, Black Bears do not.
3) Black Bear claws are sharply curved and seldom over 1½ inches in length compared to a longer (2-4 inches) and less curved claw of a Grizzly.
4) Black Bear ears are longer and pointy, Grizzly ears appear to be short and rounded.
5) Lastly a Grizzly rear molar is never less than 1 ¼ inches in length whereas a Black Bear rear molar is never more than 1 ¼ inches in length.
A typical male Black Bear, called a boar, will measure about 3 feet high at the shoulders, be about 6 feet in length and could weigh up to 400 pounds. Females, called sows, are smaller. Black Bears live up to 25 years in the wild but a normal lifespan is about 10 years of age.
Black Bears have an outstanding sense of smell; their hearing and vision is not outstanding.
Black bears are extremely adaptable and show a great variation in habitat types. They will eat pretty much anything that they find in their habitat. In the spring their diet is rich in new vegetation which helps get their digestive system going again after a lengthy hiatus due to hibernation. Bear will also feed on winter-killed animals. In the summer berries are another crucial food source. Insect larva, such as ants, hornets, wasps and bees, are also a source of protein for the Black Bear.
Black bears are loners except in the case of a sow with cubs.
Black Bears do not actually hibernate all winter. They have times when they stir for brief moments. Studies indicate that during the winter their body temperatures drop as does the metabolic rate. They also do not eat, drink, urinate or defecate.
Black Bears reach sexual maturity between 3 to 6 years of age depending upon habitat and other environmental factors. The breeding season for Black Bears occurs in June and July. The young are born in January or February after a 7 month gestation. They are born blind, almost hairless, and weigh less than 1 pound. The sow has rich milk that help the cubs grow rapidly.
By May, the cubs will weigh about 5 pounds and will have grown a nice coat of soft fur. They will remain under their mother’s care and tutelage until they are 1 ½ to 2 ½ years old.
The cubs are totally dependent on their mother for protection and education about their environment. Cubs quickly climb trees when their mother warns them of danger.
There are at least 600,000 Black Bears in North America. The Black Bear can be located in 41 of 50 other states in the United States. It is also widely distributed in Canada. There are a few scattered populations in Mexico as well.
Black Bears live in many different habitats. I have seen them on the ocean as well as near the tree line in the Rocky Mountains.
The Black Bear as a Predator:
Black Bears are omnivorous. They will kill small animals and any of the young ungulates, such as deer. They have also been credited with killing young elk and moose calves. The Black Bear boars are a threat to Black Bear cubs.
They normally kill by biting the neck and shoulders, though they may break
the neck or back of prey with blows from the paws.
In the spring, Black Bears occasionally prey on cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. This is usually a result of a poor supply of natural food sources. Livestock depredations by Black Bears occur mostly in spring.
They can also damage fruit trees and also wreck destruction on honey bee hives. They are incredibly intelligent and can avoid many traps that bee keepers set to foil the bear’s attempt to get the bee larva.
Black Bears seldom attack humans unless cornered, threatened, or wounded. In North American, 14 people have been killed by Black Bears since the year 2000, it is estimated that there have been only 56 documented killings of humans by black bears in North America in the past 100 years.
The Black Bear is an extremely powerful animal and is potentially dangerous to humans. If they are encountered with young or a source of food they can become aggressive and will defend their space. Use caution when you see a Black Bear. Sows with cubs must always be respected. A rule of thumb is never to come between or near a mother bear and her young.
Usually the bear will give a snort and leave the area, but sometimes they attack without provocation. Several people have been victims of these unprovoked attacks.
It is recommended to carry Bear Deterrent Spray as a defense against Mountain Lion and Bear attacks.
Safety in Bear Country:
Bear Safety Information from The US National Forest Service
Stay informed about recent bear activity in the area.
• Leave a travel plan with a friend, and sign in and out at the trailhead so that someone will know when to expect your return.
• If camping use Bear Proof Food Containers.
• Avoid sudden encounters and destruction of habitat. Stay on trails.
• Hike in groups to avoid surprising bears.
• Hike in daylight hours only.
• Make human sounds by talking, singing, or clapping your hands. Avoid high-pitched voices.
• Stay alert. Be aware of your surroundings. The potential for a bear encounter always exists. Look for paw prints, droppings, fresh diggings, torn-apart logs, and rocks that have been turned over. These may signal that a bear is active in the area.
• It is easy to become absorbed in photography, bird watching, or sightseeing. Stay alert.
• Bear food supplies such as berry fields, fish spawning areas, and animal carcasses should be recognized and avoided.
• Watch for noisy streams and wind directions that may mask your sound and scent.
• All bears have the ability to climb trees, some better than others.
• Just because you don't see a bear doesn’t mean they are not around. Grizzly bears hide or make daybeds in thick brush, often near trails.
• Always carry a used bandana, shirt, or parka that you can drop easily. Avoid dropping food, this will only encourage the bear's aggressiveness toward other hikers.
IF YOU ENCOUNTER A BEAR
• Carry Bear Deterrent Spray and know how to use it.
• If you see a bear, stay calm and give it plenty of room. Do not startle it; detour slowly, keeping upwind so it will get your scent and know you are there. If you can't detour wait until it moves away from your route before proceeding.
• When a bear first detects you, it may stand upright and use all of its senses to determine what and where you are. Once it identifies you it may ignore you, move slowly away, run, or it may charge. A wild bear rarely attacks unless it feels threatened or provoked.
• On four legs, a bear may show agitation by swaying its head from side to side, making huffing noises and clacking its teeth.
• A charge or retreat may follow. Flattened ears and raised hair on the back of the neck indicate aggressive intent. If a bear runs with a stiff, bouncing gait, it may be a false charge.
• Never run, and do not try to climb a tree unless you are sure you have time to climb at least 10 feet before the bear reaches you. Bears can run very fast.
• If attacked by a bear, do not run. Bears can easily outrun you. Try playing dead. Lie flat on your stomach, or lie on your side with your legs drawn up to your chest. Clasp your hands over the back of your neck. Bears have passed by people in these positions without harming them.
Threats from Mankind:
The main threats to the Black Bear are habitat loss, destruction of range land, human encroachment, road-kills, poaching and depredation kills. Once again humans are encroaching on the Black Bear’s habitat by building homes in the prime areas where the bears live.
Selective harvesting is also seen as threat by some and others consider it necessary for managing the population.
Black bears often cause damage at homesteads, construction camps, or even in towns and are destroyed as nuisance animals. These depredation kills can be minimized or eliminated if garbage and other food items which attract bears to camps or residences are eliminated.
Conservation:American black bears are listed as a threatened subspecies in Louisiana, eastern Texas. Although there were probably once as many as two million black bears in North America long before European colonization, the population declined to a low of 200,000 as a result of habitat destruction and unrestricted hunting. By current estimates, more than 800,000 are living today on the continent.
In four states Black Bears are state-listed as rare, threatened or endangered (Lousiana, Florida and within the historic range of black bears in southern Mississippi and eastern Texas). The Florida black bear subspecies is listed as threatened by the state of Florida. In most of the remaining states, black bears are classified as a game animal. In Canada the bears are classified as a pest species in the agricultural areas of Manitoba, while they are classified as a game animal and/or furbearer in the rest of Canada. In Mexico, the black bear is listed as Endangered by Mexican wildlife authorities.
The Future:The future for Black Bears seems bright in the Rocky Mountains. Thus far the habitat has been preserved and the species is more than holding its own against other predators.
Black Bears in other parts of the county appear to not be fairing as well. Hopefully, current conservation efforts will prove effective and these at-risk populations will also be saved. We all can help by asking our local legislators to set aside funding to help secure habitat and work together at increasing secure zones where Black Bears can thrive. | <urn:uuid:2260d8d9-7ee2-4793-b191-6fb2dd79486a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.summitpost.org/black-bear/405396 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956096 | 2,401 | 3.390625 | 3 |
The distinguished British historian and essayist Tony Judt died last August, having succumbed to Lou Gehrig’s disease. Quadriplegic near the end of life, Judt still managed to complete, by voice recording, one final book. He called it Ill Fares the Land.
Chris Patten, chancellor of Oxford and former Conservative Party chairman — who himself disagrees with some of what Judt argues — wrote of Ill Fares the Land:
“Judt’s book asks most of the better sort of questions about modern politics. How should we define the role of the state without assuming that the state itself should do everything? How can we restore an argument about values to political debates, which partly because of our straitened circumstances are usually simply about costs and utilitarian benefit? (Look at the present disgraceful treatment by the government of the humanities at our universities.) How can we engage younger citizens in politics, given how much the baby-boomer generation of leaders has discredited what was once seen as an honorable pursuit? Tony Judt himself encourages dissent from conformity, for which there is much to be said. Blessed are the troublemakers.”
If you don’t read another book during our long winter of 2011, read Ill Fares the Land. You may come away thinking that Judt is too hard on Thatcher and Reagan, or, for that matter Blair and Clinton, or the ’60s generation, or that he fails to deal with some of the emerging realities presented by globalization. But surely most will agree that his clarion call for a renewed civic life and narrative, for what he terms social democracy, is both timely and important.Judt argues that the problem of civic malaise isn’t new to America. While it has worsened over the past 30 years, driven by virulent materialism, Alexis de Tocqueville saw it coming 170 years ago. Our French visitor wrote: “As one looks deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in answer to this single question: How much money will it bring in?” If their early rhetoric is indicative, our new House of Representatives will only stoke the fires of America’s cultural bias: “Civic” will be out. “National” will become an even worse word. “Collective goods” will be viewed as synonymous with socialism. “Progressive” policies: unconstitutional.
Oh yes, the word “inequality.” That will disappear from the official rhetoric. Inequality? What inequality? Despite the most plutocratic income distribution pattern since 1929, House Republicans will tell you there is no such thing. Remember, greed is good. The idea tha inequality exists is just another socialist Trojan horse.
The bogey man du jour? The usual suspect: If only we could get rid of all that “waste, fraud and abuse.”
Expect their politics to play out mostly in the form of symbolic gestures. They will bring out the pitchforks in an attempt to destroy the tiny NPR budget, because NPR is “liberal,” aka “civic,” “collective,” and, well “national.” (Who cares that KBPX has graced our community for more than 30 years? You know, that radical Terry Gross — she has to go. And Performance Today — just part of an elitist, socialist plot).
While they prepare to stick those pitchforks into all things civic, swinging wildly at “national” anything, they have already announced their intention to protect defense spending. And isn’t this ironic? They’re standing tall for the military-industrial complex, half a century after Dwight Eisenhower delivered his famous farewell address in which he warned against just this. (By the way, defense spending has tripled since 2000.)
Oh, and let’s not forget their favorite “bring back the America we once knew” bit of anti-civic nonsense. I’m referring to their expected attack on health care reform. It begins, of course, with the unsupported assertion that “America has the best health care system in the world.” A collective good? No, they tell us. Health care isn’t even an “interstate” — let alone public — matter. Nor is it even a matter of intergenerational concern.
Case in point to the contrary: Last summer, our son had a very serious, life-threatening accident. He was taken to Harborview in Seattle. In his trauma care room were three other patients — one had a broken neck, another a broken back, and the third had attempted suicide. I’d bet that not one of these three had health insurance. Our son’s bill, for surgery and overnight stay, came to approximately $20,000. The insurance company paid almost all of it — we have an expensive policy.
These other three patients, who would spend much more time in the hospital? Somehow their costs will be passed on. And that’s not a collective concern? Not a civic problem? Not a justification to require that all contribute? Not a legitimate national issue? Oh yes, our collective premiums are going up 15 percent this coming year.
Judt might have written that this case provides further evidence that we are in desperate need of civic renewal, for discussions that get beyond demagogic symbol-mongering. We need to recognize, as does Judt, that while government isn’t always the solution, neither is the private sector, wedded as it is to the insupportable idea that self-interest is everything. This idea has bequeathed to us a destructive civic dogma, which a dying Tony Judt urged us to take on before it’s too late. | <urn:uuid:b8d38689-be4b-4dda-8e83-d7079a625a75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.inlander.com/spokane/article-16039-parting-words.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963068 | 1,224 | 2.078125 | 2 |
October 14 – National Chocolate Covered Insect Day
Posted on October 14, 2012
National Chocolate Covered Insect Day
National Dessert Day
Today’s Food History
1834 Henry Blair received a patent for a corn planter. He was the first African American to be granted a patent.
1926 ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ (the honey loving bear) by A. A. Milne is published.
1966 A hailstone 16 inches in diameter crashed through a truck windshield in Dodge County, Minnesota.
1972 ‘Everybody Plays The Fool’ by Main Ingredient is #1 on the charts | <urn:uuid:857f9347-9e59-4f51-a347-6d34cbc7e2f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://foodimentary.com/2012/10/14/october-14-national-chocolate-covered-insect-day/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928029 | 132 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Liszt collected his Beethoven Goethe settings from two different sets of songs and from the incidental music to Egmont
, opus 84. These are imaginative transcriptions which depart from Beethoven’s text only to avoid fussiness or to supply variety with repeated verses—to excellent effect in the ‘Song of the Flea’. Mignon’s Song (from Wilhelm Meister
) has been set too often to require much introduction: ‘Do you know the land where the lemons blossom …’. ‘With a Painted Ribbon’ exploits the conceit of a ribbon of flowers and leaves in the wind contrasted against the bond of love. ‘Joyful and Sorrowful’ (—a text which, like ‘Mignon’s Song’, Liszt also set—is the second of Clara’s songs from Egmont
, telling that happiness can only come from love. ‘Once upon a time there was a King’—Mephistopheles’ ‘Song of the Flea’ from Faust
Part I—deserves to be as well known in Beethoven’s setting as it is in Musorgsky’s. ‘Bliss of Sadness’ extols the tears of eternal love, and ‘Strike the Drum’—Clara’s first song from Egmont
sings of her wish to be a man so that she could join her beloved in battle.
from notes by Leslie Howard © 1991 | <urn:uuid:dbc8e35b-522e-4be3-8f20-f70cdf05023f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/tw.asp?w=W11146&t=GBAJY9148117&al=CDS44501/98 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940701 | 329 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Profiles In Versatility
Physicists Take The Plunge As Entrepreneurs
October 1, 2011
A cabal of cacophonic college kids inspired Shahriar Afshar to become an entrepreneur. It was 2004, and the physicist was serving as a visiting professor at a college, temporarily residing in the dorms. "It was summer, and the kids loved playing video games and listen[ing] to loud music, which shook the whole building. At the time I was in a fierce fight with colleagues, and writing response papers to their critiques of my work, and had to find a way to allow the kids [to] enjoy their games without shaking me out of my wits!"
Afshar "gave it a few hours of thought" and came up with a winning idea that would give people the opportunity to essentially "feel" the sensations of video games and music without the noise. The device, which he named KOR-fx, and around which he eventually formed the company Immerz, Inc., is worn over the chest and uses haptic feedback. Pulses from the apparatus "sync" up with audio waves, sending low-frequency vibrations into the chest cavity, giving the user the sensation of "rain, wind, bomb blasts, or the quaking of T-Rex's footsteps in Jurassic Park," according to a recent article in Delta Sky Magazine. In addition, the unit allows users to feel the bass line in music without "cranking up the stereo." KOR-fx debuted to rave reviews at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, and has been featured in Popular Science and Cnet as a way to experience music, television, and gaming in "4-D". "Frustration was indeed the mother of this particular invention," writes Afshar, who still holds a faculty position at Rowan University.
Andrew Leker, who received his bachelors in physics from the University of California at Berkeley, is another entrepreneur whose arena is gaming. Currently the CEO of Electrified Games, Inc., Leker has been obsessed with video games and programming since he was in 7th grade. When he was a junior in college, he and his sister formed a publishing company and started selling role-playing books that he designed and wrote. He was so focused on his business, that when a professor asked him if he wanted to work in his lab, Leker declined and the faculty member "looked at me like I was crazy," he says.
After graduation, rather than pursue an advanced degree, Leker immersed himself completely in the company, despite the fact that "we were good at the games, but not business and we were not financially sophisticated," he notes. But his brother-in-law, one of the founders of Autodesk, partnered with him to form a software development company based on the books he had been penning. Leker labored for five years to design and program the game that eventually became the flagship of his new enterprise, Electrified Games. In 1994, the video game, called Alien Logic, was published and was named the Best Role Playing Game of the Year by E3 Magazine.
Today, Electrified Games has 33 full-time employees and focuses on producing games for various brands such as Disney, Pokemon, Visa and the NFL, for various platforms such as Facebook and mobile devices.
Like Afshar, Leker, and many other entrepreneurs, Edward Flynn, a nuclear physicist who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory for 38 years, saw a problem and knew his unique skill set could help conquer it. His wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and he pondered whether he could develop a better detection tool using nanoparticles and magnetic sensors. He created a technique in which a patient is injected with iron oxide nanoparticles coated with antibodies, which adhere to specific cancer cells present in a tumor. The patient is then subjected to a small magnetizing field that aligns the metal nanoparticles and when the field is discontinued, the nanoparticles emit a magnetic signal. This emitted signal is detected by superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) sensors. The resulting signal measurement can show doctors "how many metal particles, and therefore how many cancer cells, are present, and where in the breast they are located," according to a recent article featuring Flynn by Shirley S. Wang in The Wall Street Journal.
Since Flynn's innovation requires only a very small number of cancerous cells to be present, approximately 100,000, as opposed to several million cells needed for a mammogram, it allows tumors to be detected much sooner. "The system can detect a breast cancer tumor with 100% accuracy up to three years earlier than a mammogram can," he states. It also enables treatment to be monitored more closely, as the number of cells present can be measured to assist the doctor in the detection of metastasis.
Flynn first fiddled with magnetizing coils in his garage, and eventually applied for a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grant, which is overseen by the US Small Business Administration. The SBIR program is designed to foster high-technology innovation and economic growth and is a common early funding source for technology-driven ventures. "When I got the funding, I realized this might work, based on all the physics I knew," he recalls. He founded a company, Senior Scientific LLC, in 1998 to begin the process of advancing the idea, and serves as its CEO. He is now working with Manhattan Scientifics to commercialize the technology and bring it to market.
Although the idea of having your own company or product line can be tantalizing for anyone, for physicists, there can be many surprises. "As an academic, your world of interactions is fairly well-defined, and tasks are pretty routine," notes Afshar. "As a businessman who also leads the R&D side, one minute you are solving multi-cavity resonance equations, and the next Skyping with an Asian manufacturer, all the while being cognizant of fundraising for the next phase of the expansion. Super-multitasking was initially a major challenge, but it seems I've got the hang of it now."
Starting your own company "is certainly a scary thing to do," notes Flynn, "but the rewards of using your knowledge for this purpose are great."
Edward Lipson, Professor of Physics and Kauffman Entrepreneurship Professor at Syracuse University, has experienced those rewards two times over. He is CEO of two companies, MindTel, LLC (founded in 1997) and SenSyr, LLC (spun off from MindTel in 2003). MindTel's main activity is in telemedicine and global humanitarian assistance. Recent projects involve disaster response and stability operations. The firm is supported by federal subcontracts and is currently active in Afghanistan, working with schools and hospitals to improve education, healthcare, and communications infrastructure, he says.
Lipson, whose background is in biophysics and whose current research involves medical imaging, explains that SenSyr's electronic interface technology was originally developed, under MindTel, as assistive technology for individuals with severe physical disabilities. "But now we are using the same approach in green and smart building technologies," he says, working closely with the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems. A true serial entrepreneur, Lipson co-founded, in April 2011, a third company, IndoorControls LLC, focused on environmental systems in buildings, to promote energy conservation and improved work performance and comfort.
For these entrepreneurs, a background in physics couldn't have been more helpful. "Physics provides one with the deepest level of understanding of natural processes," writes Afshar. "As theoretical physicists, we are used to coming up with hundreds of ideas and being an experimentalist allows one to test validity of those ideas. That's essentially what an inventor does. Of course, years of experience as a tinkerer helps enormously by having a good intuition as to what types of approaches may be more fruitful."
"The DNA of my company is solving some of the hardest problems in the industry," says Leker. And physics "was instrumental in helping me approach really hard problems."
Entrepreneurship is about risk and reward balance, Leker points out. "It means not always knowing how you're going to pay your rent or the salaries of your employees." So if you are going to take such a big risk, make sure it is for something about which you are very passionate, he warns. "My goal is to help people," says Flynn. "If all the things I've done can help cure cancer, that's my goal. I've put a lot of energy and time into this."
Successful entrepreneurship consumes the entrepreneur, not unlike how successful physics research consumes the physicist. "A physics professor should not just decide out of the blue to be an entrepreneur," cautions Lipson. "Learn about the risks and rewards of technology start-ups. Talk to other entrepreneurs. Have some innovative ideas and approaches, of course. Determine how best to balance and combine such activity with one's academic work." Stay abreast of the industry, trends, and competition, and know how to research and identify funding sources and networking opportunities.
You also must be knowledgeable about how the business and legal side of the enterprise functions, among many other tasks. "So much success is about who you know. I used to think this was bad–I actively didn't do it," admits Leker. But triumph in entrepreneurship is also about flexibility. "It requires a profound degree of adaptability," he says. But fortunately "physics creates the framework to be mentally adaptive."
Alaina G. Levine is a science writer and President of Quantum Success Solutions, a leadership and professional development consulting enterprise. She can be contacted through www.alainalevine.com.
About Manhattan Scientifics
Manhattan Scientifics Inc. (www.mhtx.com) is located in New Mexico, New York and Montreal. It is focused on technology transfer and commercialization of disruptive technologies in the nano medicine space. The company is presently developing commercial medical prosthetics applications for its ultra-fine grain metals and plans to commercialize the cancer research work and nano medical applications developed by Senior Scientific LLC, a unit of the Company.
This press release contains forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, assumptions and uncertainties that could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date made and are not guarantees of future performance. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements.
Manhattan Scientifics, Inc.
Marvin Maslow, Director of PR & IR, 917-923-3300
Herbert Strauss, +43-316-296-316
U.S. & Canadian Investor Relations
Hawk Associates: Frank Hawkins, 305-451-1888 | <urn:uuid:c60e7e56-d6a1-4c02-8487-a33ede232551> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mhtx.com/press-releases/profiles-in-versatility/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971276 | 2,246 | 1.773438 | 2 |
I am trying to be on my good behavior and not question someone as respected as "Self". While i would suggest that anyone actually interested in that approach to build it and compare it to even the bare RIAA stage...
Not to add a veer on top of a veer.. but looking at that circuit, reminds me of an old trick I used back in the late '70s. back then I sold a Tape Noise Reduction kit, and a common problem when recording companded record playback onto tape with the tape's reduced LF response, is that very LF energy from warped or not centered records, would get encoded into the envelope of the compressed signal, but when lost on the tape, this missing envelope information would cause a phantom very LF modulation in it's absence to the expanded playback.
The solution I came up with, was a sliding HPF, added to the encode compressor, where the pole frequency shifted with the gain, and therefore signal level hitting the compressor. At high level/low gain the compressor had full LF bandwidth, since warp energy was insignificant in the envelope then. At low level/high compressor gain the LF roll off was more severe, to keep warp energy out of the envelope when it was most likely to cause errors.
My actual circuit was much simpler than this long description. A pole was formed by an input capacitor, and shunt resistor connected to the overall inverted compressor output. This looks similar to Self's impedance trick but instead of running a fixed inverting gain, my inverted gain and therefore effective impedance varies with signal level, giving me high impedance at low gain, to lower impedance at high gain.
Does anybody really miss the LF issues with vinyl? | <urn:uuid:d9e0af3b-7958-4219-ac87-c764cec41a29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=48889.20;wap2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966239 | 342 | 1.976563 | 2 |
The organisers of the strike say they will sacrifice themselves if the government does not respond to their demands.
By Linda Karadaku for Southeast European Times in Tirana -- 15/10/12
Albania police guard tents where former political prisoners have been staging a hunger strike since September 22nd. [Ana Pekmezi/SETimes]
Albania's president is urging a group of former political prisoners not to take any more extreme actions after two allowed themselves to be set on fire because they've not received promised compensation from the government.
President Bujar Nishani on Friday (October 12th) met with 11 former prisoners who are on a hunger strike and living in tents in a developing neighbourhood in Tirana. He asked the protestors "to avoid extreme sacrifices," said Besnik Konci, a political adviser to the president.
"Problems should be solved through institutional dialogue, through respect for the law. The president has been showing his readiness to help," Konci told SETimes.
One of the representatives in the meeting, Fatmir Lamaj, told reporters that Nishani had shown readiness to help them.
"Nishani took note of our demands. He left the path to talks opened," Lamaj said.
About 20 former prisoners began a hunger strike on September 22nd, saying that they have not been paid benefits as required by law. The protest escalated on October 8th when former prisoner Gjergj Ndreca covered himself in oil and was set on fire by a fellow striker, Perikli Shqevi, according to police. He was taken to a hospital in Greece for treatment.
The next day, former political prisoner Lirak Bejko set himself on fire and sustained third-degree burns. He is being treated in a facility in Italy.
Police stopped a third protester, Gani Alia, from setting himself on fire.
Thousands of Albanians were executed or imprisoned in labour camps during the rule of Stalinist leader Enver Hoxha. An estimated 3,100 former prisoners still live in Albania.
Skender Tufa, organiser of the hunger strikes, spent 11 years in prison. [Ana Pekmezi/SETimes]
A law passed in 2007 entitles former political prisoners to 2,000 lek (11.5 euros) for each day they were in prison.
Skender Tufa, the 51-year-old organiser of the strike, told SETimes that the money has been slow to come, and fewer than 300 of former prisoners have received apartments promised to them. Tufa accused the government of abuses in the compensation system and in awarding apartments that are supposed to be dedicated to the former prisoners.
He said the protests would continue.
"There is a plan within the strike for concrete acts," said Tufa, who was imprisoned for 11 years. "A list of persons has been compiled, persons who would self-sacrifice voluntarily, if the government continues to stay silent."
Dorian Teliti, general secretary in the finance ministry, said the government has paid 5.6 billion lek (40 million euros) in compensation for political prisoners since January 2009.
The Albanian Socialist opposition said the hunger strike and acts of self-immolation are signs of desperation in an extreme situation.
"[They] and their families have suffered tremendous human rights violations under the Hoxha regime and in the 22 years of democratic transformation very little has been done to reintegrate this group and to grant them their dignified position in society," Elisa Spiropali, the chairman of the Youth Forum of the Socialist Party, told SETimes.
Spiropali said that the strike represents not only their economic needs, but largely the need of the Albanian society to assume responsibility and proclaim justice.
"It is unacceptable that the Albanian government ignores the strike even after the acts of self-immolation. The Albanian government needs to resume responsibility and negotiate with the strikers regarding their legal right for economic compensation, and most importantly for their human dignity," Spiropali said. | <urn:uuid:5725dc52-855c-4b4b-a7c0-cbc8af87d32c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2012/10/15/feature-01 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977881 | 844 | 1.648438 | 2 |
How to: Compete with Amazon S3 without Buying Hardware
You build a storage router.
Given a piece of customer data you want to store, replicate it 2x, and store half a copy's worth across four different raw storage providers. For example, Rackspace gets one half a copy, as does SoftLayer, GoGrid, and Storm on Demand. Keep in mind that you're buying raw storage from each of these guys, not redudant storage. Each provider is just selling you hard drives attached to the Internet.
Your customer's data will be available as long as two of the four raw storage providers are up.
(To be clear, you would use Reed-Solomon erasure codes. Thus, you could dial in any desired replication factor and any desired number of storage endpoints. The blocks in the diagram below are intended to represent the sizes of the data pieces, not how they are encoded.)
This design could provide more independent failure modes than Amazon S3.
More importantly, this design would create a marketplace for people selling raw storage. Whenever someone comes in with a better price, you seamlessly move customer data from the most expensive of your providers to this newer, cheaper one. Of course you would maintain appropriate quality controls , monitor uptimes, backbone redundancy, etc. You're a storage router.
Amazon S3 enjoys high margins today
Amazon's storage offering has built up high margins. Up until two months ago, Amazon S3 hadn't dropped prices since its launch in 2006, despite the fact that hard drive costs fall 50% per year.
In 2006 a 320 GB hard drive cost $120. Today (Thailand floods aside) that much money will snag you a 3 TB drive.
Those are real margins that Amazon has built up, and even after their recent price drop they're still leveraging a lot of pricing power. There's surprisingly little competition.
The Android strategy for the cloud storage market
Just as cell phone OEM's like Samsung and HTC didn't know how to compete with the iPhone, the guys left in the dust by Amazon (Rackspace, SoftLayer, and moreso the hundreds of small hosting companies out there) don't know how to compete.
What I'm proposing is the Android strategy because it gives them a way to compete, and they're competing on an axis that the new winner doesn't want to compete on: price.
And in this case, since you're running the service that routes customer data into and out of the right storage providers, you control the relationship with the customer, so you get the pricing power.
There are a couple of reasons why I'm not pursuing this idea (in increasing order of importance):
- Selling storage requires a brand that people trust. That could be built, but is a very big friction point at the most inopportune moment - the beginning.
- It's a low margin business, and you'd probably need a sales team eventually. Both of those are unfortunate.
- Amazon Web Services has revenue from a number of complimentary services (most importantly EC2) that they could use to make storage a loss leader, sucking all of the oxygen out of the room. Amazon did this in 2010 to diapers.com. They know how to run and compete in low margin businesses. Amazon would also compete by giving deep discounts to large customers who suggest they might use this service instead. Amazon's dominance and ecosystem is the most important weakness of this idea.
The world would be a better place with a service like this, possibly extending into a marketplace for compute as well. Someone like Rackspace or Softlayer could do it. Google could do it. A startup could do it. Or maybe OpenStack will adopt a model like this.
If this happens, though, I think it will be done by a startup.
What Rackspace, SoftLayer, and others should do now
The big hosting guys should launch a low priced "hard drive attached to the Internet" product. Such a move would pave the way for one or more startups to build the storage router, bringing a new type of innovation to cloud computing.
The replication doesn't need to be uniform, either. For example, if read performance is important maybe one storage provider has a full copy of the original data, and there's another 1.5 copies spread across three other providers for redundancy. The ideal setup depends on the customer's desired tradeoffs. This advanced level of control might also be a competitive advantage for some storage customers.
Update, Sept 2012: You could also consider using the new Amazon Glacier for end-of-line backup, in combination with hot copies hosted by others.
There are many types of quality controls to build. Use a provable data possession protocol to ensure that each storage provider still has its data without having to retrieve the whole thing.
This is strictly true for their first tier of storage customers. Over time they've published volume pricing for higher and higher volumes, though each tier's pricing never dropped. Amazon S3 pricing history: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.
Such a product should be designed for the storage router use case, so it should include all of the API's the storage router will need, including provable data possession. | <urn:uuid:d9c80ef0-f278-44fe-b498-9fd8ca2290ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://adamsmith.cc/how-to-compete-with-amazon-s3-without-buying-hardw | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951541 | 1,074 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Shanghai: The Vigor in the Decay
This is a story that sounds familiar, that we think we know or can imagine: old houses torn down for luxury malls, ordinary people poorly compensated, an intimate way of life replaced by highways and high-rises.
All of this is happening in Shanghai—and dozens of cities across China and around the world—but it’s not how Howard French and Qiu Xiaolong tell it in their unusual new book of photographs, poems, and essays, Disappearing Shanghai: Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life. We get no clichéd pictures of a beggar in front of a Louis Vuitton mural, no workers looking uncomprehendingly at a Bentley pulling into a five-star whatever. Instead we are thrust deeply into ordinary people’s lives, into their tiny living rooms with moldy walls and faded curtains. We see them living out on streets of cracked sidewalks and crumbling facades. We watch them sitting and waiting in poses of leisure. The transience and decay tells us that all this is vanishing.
French is a former New York Times correspondent in Shanghai and now a freelance writer and journalism professor. For this project, he joins forces with Qiu, a Shanghainese who lives in the United States and writes English-language crime stories about the exploits of the upright Shanghai cop inspector Chen Cao. Qiu adds poems next to some of the pictures, musing about the characters and what they’re doing. Interspersed are a couple of tiny vignettes about inspector Chen as part of the pictures or encountering this book.
The pictures are mostly portraits of people, some staring at the photographer, others caught in the middle of a laugh or conversation. One shows a woman selling paper money, which mourners burn at graves on certain holidays. The blurred stacks of otherworldly bills rise out in front of her like Shanghai’s new luxury towers, while she glances up, her face uncertain of where she is.
In Qiu’s words, she is
perhaps richer than numerous bankers
in the world, and all in cash,
for the underworld, shadows
and memories lurking around.
In another we are thrust into an elderly woman’s living room, where she sits motionless and expressionless next to a window, a giant character for “happiness” hanging from the ceiling.
Slowly we realize what really dominates the room; off to her right is a mourning picture of a younger man, probably her husband, and under it a small altar in his honor
with pots, bottles, medicines, ashtrays
(so he will never go hungry,
thirsty, nicotine-craving, or sick),
and an old-fashioned clock ticking
still like his heartbeat…
All the photos are black and white, emphasizing the grainy but sharp life of Shanghai’s backstreets. In one photo a young boy is sitting on a curb, looking like an old man, every flake of the rotting façade behind him in focus.
One doesn’t have to be a romantic to wonder where he is now—to which remote suburb have he and his family been banished?
French also takes us to a room shared by several migrant women caught laughing over a joke or a lover. In the accompanying text, Qiu imagines that inspector Chen has just interviewed them about the murder of one of their friends. The little story reminds us that many of the people left living in the old city are not Shanghainese but poor migrants willing to put up with the cramped conditions. And yet they also remind us of the city’s vigor: the women laugh; they are here to make money and participate in the boom and their aspirations are captured in the fake wedding picture hanging on the wall above them.
The lack of obvious markers of change—the wrecking balls, the towers marching forward and the construction sites gobbling up the old city—makes the people timeless: the urban poor in all of our cities, waiting for whatever comes next.
Disappearing Shanghai: Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life, photographs by Howard W. French and poems by Qiu Xiaolong, is published by Homa & Sekey Books.
September 24, 2012, 5:38 p.m. | <urn:uuid:d4846806-9ebc-48f3-9ca8-a1de709ca4e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/sep/24/shanghai-vigor-decay-photographs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940789 | 900 | 1.53125 | 2 |
This collection documents the activities of Local 192 of the Amalgamated Transit Union from 1930 to 2004, with the bulk of
the collection covering the years 1948-1986. The records provide insight into the activities of the union and its members,
as well as offering some documentation of working conditions and labor relations for transit employees. Highlights include
detailed grievance cases (Series IV) and arbitrations (Series V) that reveal the relationship between the union and employers
as well as the evolving relationship between Local 192 and other transit unions in light of Section 13 (C). Strike files document
particularly revealing moments in the history of the union (Series VII), while subject files document what issues and information
the union was interested in (Series VII). Meeting minutes (Series I), correspondence (Series II), and union publications (Series
VIII) reveal the official policies of the union as well as its internal dynamics. Similarly, election files illustrate the
internal politics of the local (Series X). The collection reveals some of the unique problems of transit unions working for
publicly owned employers like AC Transit and BART. Interestingly, during the span of this collection, Local 192 had only three
main bargaining relationships: with Key System and then AC Transit and BART. Another unique aspect of the collection is the
effect of the federal law on the bargaining relationship between union and employers, which is documented in many of the arbitration,
grievance, and legal cases in the collection.
Local 192 of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), the first ATU local in California, was founded in Oakland in 1901. The Local
192's parent union, the international ATU, is today the largest transit workers' union in North America, including 273 locals
in the US and Canada.
30.0 cubic feet
(24 record cartons, 2 oversized volumes)
Copyright has not been assigned to the Labor Archives and Research Center. All requests for permission to publish or quote
from materials must be submitted in writing to the Director of the Archives. Permission for publication is given on behalf
of the Labor Archives and Research Center as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission
of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader.
Collection is open for research. | <urn:uuid:a43e9839-86ba-4da6-8bfc-2a2f650ac784> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt6779r6r5/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920737 | 471 | 2 | 2 |
Amenities can offer cost and space solutions with our Roll Crushers that compact waste into 35yd and up to 50yd open containers, with compaction ratios between 3:1 and 7:1 depending on the type of waste.
The types of waste that are generally roll crushed are pallets/wood, general waste, green waste, metal (e.g. white goods).
We can offer a wide range of arms for the Roll Packer; these are available depending on the waste to be compacted. The Roll Packer is able to deal with most waste, from wood to washing machines. There is a pre-set running time option and continuous loading is possible, therefore reducing labour costs.
Typical example of cost savings:
A container filled with pallets with an uncompact weight of 2 tonnes, would result in a 10 tonne weight when compacted by a Roll Crusher. The ratio of 5:1 would reduce collections and associated costs by the same ratio offering vast savings.
Machines » Roll Crushers | <urn:uuid:d3b51af0-8560-49e0-9f86-07feb75f6b0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.amenities-ltd.co.uk/machines/roll-crusher | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93097 | 210 | 1.507813 | 2 |
For years, those bringing SF into the classroom have had to improvise their course materials from anthologies and collections not designed for classwork. Now, David G. Hartwell, award-winning anthologist, and Professor Milton T. Wolf, Vice President of the Science Fiction Research Association, present a carefully selected reading anthology reflecting the SF field in all its modern diversity. Here are Golden Age writers like John W. Campbell and Jack Williamson, and here also are towering latter-day titans like Gene Wolfe and Ursula K. Le Guin, along with today's popular writers such as Greg Bear, Robert Jordan, and Vernor Vinge.
Buyback (Sell directly to one of these merchants and get cash immediately)
|Currently there are no buyers interested in purchasing this book. While the book has no cash or trade value, you may consider donating it| | <urn:uuid:623d83a9-9d19-449c-8deb-55698e4abcdb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.campusbooks.com/books/sell.php?isbn=9780312852870 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952472 | 176 | 1.695313 | 2 |
View Full Version : VGM
12-30-2004, 12:40 AM
is anyone interested in VGM? if so how exactly is that kind of music produced? i know it uses old school devices and the instruments taken from things such as Gameboys, but how is calculated sound outputed from them?
12-30-2004, 12:49 AM
Video Game Music isn't limited to bleeps and bloops, you know... Only the older systems and the GBA use synthesized sound. All of the next-gen systems use CD-quality audio. And the PSX and N64 can kinda do that with Redbook audio.
I have no idea how you would create music that sounds like it was composed on an NES or Gameboy, nor do I see why you would want to. The oldschool systems have very catchy music, but the hardware used to design them is EXTREMELY limited. Take, for example, the Super Mario Brothers theme, something that roughly 60% of the population of the Earth recognizes. That song has 4 whole tracks. Only through extreme manipulation of the hardware or special soundchips were developers able to get more than 4 tracks per song on the NES. Not to mention that the quality of the sound was extremely limited. The SNES actually has a very, very good soundchip, however, allowing for much higher-quality sounds with many more tracks. The SNES actually has a better soundchip than the PSX; however, the PSX can utilize Redbook audio, enabling it to stream CD quality music at the cost of a chunk of disc space. Well, that was a giant ramble.
In conclusion, there is absolutely no need to compose music in that style... music made in that style is nothing more than fake nostalgia for trendwhores to think is cool. Not to say that the music isn't good, it's just that the format of it is so limited that no one should ever want to compose on it. That's why sites like OC Remix exist.
Why yes, I do know a bit too much about video games, thanks for asking.
I have to agree. Don't try and emulate that sound quality. Emulating the STYLE seems alot more interesting.
12-30-2004, 03:53 AM
My friend remixed the Tetris theme song using a gameboy hooked up to a synthesizer. He was actually playing the game during the track. It was mighty rad.
I suggest checking out http://www.8bitpeoples.com/ Free tracks all done with the C64.
also check out:
12-30-2004, 05:38 PM
There are vsti's around that emulate atari and nintendo sounds. I don't know where or what they are called but i've heard of them.
Moogy, half the stuff you said was incorrect. I dunno about you, but games like FF7, 8, and 9 have much better music sample quality than anything I've heard on the SNES and they are the same sequenced sample 'midi' type soundtracks. And also, a lot of ps2 games still use this method for music (FFX did) rather than redbook audio. You can get plugins for winamp so that you can play 'emulated' music from games that use this method and the song files are very very small even compared to mp3. check out http://www.zophar.net/music.html They've got stuff for nes, snes, genesis, ps1, ps2 and other stuff.
12-30-2004, 06:01 PM
wow, im glad to get so much feed.
im aware that i could easily reproduce much of the noise of VGM, simply zoink up a few squares and ramps, but i was mainly wondering about the process. it just amazes me that someone could produce fresh arps and such smooth bass and synthlines from a gameboy soundchip. do they plug the chips into midi players?
01-2-2005, 01:10 AM
theres a program that can rip the original samples off snes roms. after all that was how the snes produced sounds it manipulated the same set of samples to very great lengths to produce a variety of sounds. i dont remember the name of the program but the soundchip is called SHVC, just google and im sure it can be easily found.
You can do it with SNEStool as well. There are also zounds of soundfonts with full SNES banks on them. You can get either at Zophar.net.
vBulletin® v3.8.1, Copyright ©2000-2013, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. | <urn:uuid:a837b537-bd9a-4dea-94bf-644964ed14fe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/vbz/archive/index.php/t-19624.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962392 | 983 | 1.875 | 2 |
Since 2006, NFPA has partnered with Scholastic, Inc., the popular producer of educational literature and programs for children, to develop and distribute lesson plans and activities tied to NFPA's Fire Prevention Week (FPW) themes. The two organizations plan to address this year's theme, "Have Two Ways Out," and reach an estimated 10.6 million children via take-home packages, activity sheets, and other materials produced in both English and Spanish that highlight escape planning.
Judy Comoletti, NFPA's division director of Public Education, underscores the successes of such a partnership in the September/October issue of NFPA Journal. "Typically, our program receives high praise, with more than 90 percent of the teachers rating the program very to extremely useful," she says. "Teachers like the interactive aspects of the program."
Learn about these tools and other aspects of FPW in NFPA Journal. And watch the following video of Comoletti giving an overview of all the free content: | <urn:uuid:f71dbc3c-2d02-41d3-abaa-e47b8b573565> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nfpa.typepad.com/nfpablog/2012/09/scores-of-schoolchildren-will-hone-fire-safety-messages-during-nfpas-fire-prevention-week.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935054 | 203 | 2.546875 | 3 |
July 25th, 2004 07:17 PM
ping stats in VB
hi to all
i need a make a program in any language (vb,c)to ping google and to calculate the result like the average time , etc,etc
normally in dos we use
D:\WINDOWS\Desktop>ping -t www.google.com
Pinging www.google.akadns.net [188.8.131.52] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 184.108.40.206: bytes=32 time=643ms TTL=238
Reply from 220.127.116.11: bytes=32 time=487ms TTL=238
Reply from 18.104.22.168: bytes=32 time=448ms TTL=238
Reply from 22.214.171.124: bytes=32 time=445ms TTL=238
Reply from 126.96.36.199: bytes=32 time=412ms TTL=238
Reply from 188.8.131.52: bytes=32 time=404ms TTL=238
Reply from 184.108.40.206: bytes=32 time=399ms TTL=238
Reply from 220.127.116.11: bytes=32 time=420ms TTL=238
Ping statistics for 18.104.22.168:
Packets: Sent = 8, Received = 8, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 399ms, Maximum = 643ms, Average = 457ms
i need to make a program in VB preferrably and to display the results in a seperate window ,so any bright ideas as to how it can be done??
July 25th, 2004 07:23 PM
I would start by looking at RFC's involving ping. http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2925.html
From there I really don't know. There's probably some library for vb that makes it really easy, check around.
July 26th, 2004 07:08 PM
i also gotta make that program ping any site my lecturer wants to , must also have a variable feild
thanx for the link hertic, useful ,very useful!!
July 27th, 2004 06:35 AM
Not really helping, but I hope your lecturer doesn't want you to ping a a host which blocks ping :P. I guess in that case you could show him with the ping that comes with your operating system that the host doesn't respond to ping, and that way he won't try and pin it on your program. Good luck and sorry I'm not really of any help on the actual programming part of the project. Normally any projects you do for a class use techniques covered in the classes leading up to that date. When doing projects for a class generally you'll be the best help for yourself as you attend the class for which you are doing the project. If you get in a bind check out irc.freenode.net #c or #vb (you will need to download an IRC client such as xchat www.xchat.org). Again, best of luck.
July 27th, 2004 11:03 AM
Since this is Code Review forum, we actually expect a piece of code to review. For starter, why don't you make a skeleton program that do nothing but display a dialog box where a user can enter the hostname (and prolly ping count)?
Always listen to experts. They\'ll tell you what can\'t be done and why. Then go and do it. -- Robert Heinlein
I\'m basically a very lazy person who likes to get credit for things other people actually do. -- Linus Torvalds | <urn:uuid:8656c319-fd4a-49f2-89a2-1bd12488f6ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.antionline.com/showthread.php?257769-ping-stats-in-VB&p=773476 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912522 | 789 | 2 | 2 |