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Mar 10, 2012
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Taxpayers, Beware: It's Time to Act on Bias!
After the publication of scholar Martin Kramer's ground-breaking 2001 book Ivory Towers in the Sand, the momentum has gradually built for Congress to take action to halt the use of federal money to subsidize programs where anti-Zionist bias is widespread.
The money is doled out under the aegis of the 1958 Title VI education bill to fund higher education. Title VI has been key to the creation of departments, such as the notorious examples at Columbia and Georgetown universities, where the works of Palestinian propagandists such as the late Edward Said were treated as gospel, and Zionism is seen as the main problem in the Mideast.
Advocates of more rigorous scholarship on the region have long complained about the uniformity of views voiced by the Middle East Studies industry.
Finally, Congress has finally acted to provide some accountability for the vast sums spent on this cause. The question is: Does the legislation that has just been approved provide real accountability, or will a key last-minute change in one version of the bill render its passage a meaningless exercise?
The change involved the dropping of a plan, included in a version of the legislation proposed in the House of Representatives, to create an advisory board that would help foster "diverse opinions" in the field of Middle Eastern studies. In this context, the phrase "diverse opinions" meant the inclusion of pro-Western and pro-Zionist voices, rather than the monolithic Arabism that currently dominates the field.
Instead of this board, a Senate version of a bill on the issue leaves it all in the hands of the Secretary of Education. The secretary would have the power to suspend federal funding to universities where bias is rampant. But after 60 days, the funding would be reinstated, no matter whether complaints had been resolved or not.
So while the passage of the Senate version is certainly a step in the right direction, as long as a powerful mechanism for holding bias in check is absent, the victory will be purely symbolic.
Those who oppose the more stringent measure worry about government interference in curricula and the heavy-handed use of the power of the purse. Some academic Arabists go further - and allege that the result of this legislation would be a form of "McCarthyism," in which independent voices would be squelched in a pro-Israel witch hunt.
But the bill's opponents have it backward.
If there is any danger of a "thought police" running amok in academia, it is under the present system, where anti-Zionist professors reign unchallenged. Those who would provide an alternate view are shunned, and generally chased out of the field. The result is an atmosphere for students that often borders on anti-Semitism.
And lest anyone think this is a purely esoteric controversy, the influence of the Middle Eastern-studies industry is not to be underestimated.
As the recent series of Jewish Telegraphic Agency articles on "Islam and Education" - published nationally and in this newspaper - proved, the pernicious influence of these academics now extends into American high schools, where textbooks and teacher education have been co-opted by the anti-Israel crowd.
We strongly urge that the final version of the legislation that's passed include an advisory board that will act to correct this imbalance. The anti-Israel bias currently ruling college campuses will not be defeated until the taxpayer dollars that fuel it are halted at the source. | <urn:uuid:bd5425fa-5518-4e6b-bc9f-10429797526a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jewishexponent.com/taxpayers%2C-beware-it's-time-to-act-on-bias | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957963 | 716 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Michael Behan, a senior in his last semester at Northeastern University pursuing a business major with a dual concentration in Social Entrepreneurship and Finance, was running in a small ultra marathon race. In order to get there he needed to drive about fifteen hours, the last six of which were on trials through the desert. Once there, he noticed a young man from afar with a Northeastern T-Shirt. What are the odds of finding a fellow Northeastern graduate in such a remote region? Mike started a conversation with him and discovered that his name was Sean Smith, a graduate from Northeastern. Sean Smith is currently an Investment Analyst and New Investment Manager at Invested Development, an impact investment fund that provides financial capital to for-profit social enterprises that work in mobile technology and alternative energy. After talking they also realized they had both take different sections of Professor Dennis Shaughnessy’s Social Entrepreneurship class during the same semester. The next day Mike and Sean ran together into Kenya’s desert.
During his undergraduate career at Northeastern Mike co-founded and continues to run Njabini Apparel, a social business that employs disadvantaged mothers in Kenya to create various products to be sold in the United States. His business has since evolved into Njabini Incorporated to address multiple income generating projects, including Wakulima Pamoja (Farmers Together), a hundred percent self sustaining agricultural program that plans to reach and double the income of five thousand families by 2015.
The Farmers Together agricultural program was modeled after One Acre Fund, a high impact NGO that focuses on agriculture development with a sustainable and efficient model. After six months of extensive research Njabini adapted this model for the cultivation of potatoes, a prevalent crop in the region. Farmers Together seeks to reach the full agricultural potential of the area through a service bundle given to producer groups of low-income families. This bundle includes: discounted high quality inputs on credit, financial education, crop management, and market linkages.
The cooperative Farmers Together collectively purchases inputs (potato seedlings, fertilizer, manure and hummus), thus reducing the cost and cutting out the middleman. These inputs are then lent to the farmers at the reduced price. On the training side of the service bundle, farmers receive both financial and agri-business training. Farmers learn to develop budgets, manage their debts, and are provided with incentives for saving. They also benefit from efficient crop management practices that allow them to increase their crops’ yields while still remaining environmentally friendly. Lastly, producer groups are able to greatly increase the productivity of their plots through a crop rotation schedule that accounts for climate patterns and market changes. Combined with collective harvesting schedule, this enables the different groups to harvest their crops at the same time, thus cost-effectively reaching wholesalers directly, reducing the intermediaries, and providing a much higher profit margin for the farmers.
When asked what was the key for Njabini’s success, Mike responded with: “The people. There is no hierarchy in Njabini, everybody takes ownership, and while there is a lot of give and take this only makes it that much stronger.”
The US branch (Njabini Apparel), is volunteered based; it is composed of driven and passionate individuals that deeply care about people in the world’s lowest income brackets. It is a student led venture in which campus groups run their own retail operations. The profits from these sales go to fund the expansion of the Farmers Together cooperative, in addition to employing disadvantaged Kenyan mothers. The Kenyan branch provides employment opportunities to local community members and works closely together with community leaders. In addition, Njabini also partners with the Ministry of Agriculture in Kenya, which provides the training aspect of the service bundle offered by Farmers Together.
Mike is an incredible example of what can be accomplished by a twenty year old who is driven and passionate about social change. After graduating he plans to continue his work with Njabini with a focus on agricultural development. His biggest piece of advice?
“Be confident in what a group of twenty year olds can accomplish. Don’t let age constrain you.”
For more information about Njabini, its programs, and its products please visit: www.njabini.org. If you are interested in becoming involved with Njabini’s efforts join the Social Enterprise Institute Student Association. For more information join us at OrgSync. | <urn:uuid:d12e92c7-2053-4ca8-b312-19f0df031cf4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northeastern.edu/sei/2013/02/njabini-incorporateds-newest-project-wakulima-pamoja-farmers-together/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960128 | 907 | 2.03125 | 2 |
The holiday season is the time when many New Jersey residents make a charitable donation to aid the needy and less fortunate among us. But even during the holidays, when good will and compassion abound, there unfortunately are scam artists at work.
Posing as charities, these scam artists lie and deceive to obtain donations for their own use and benefit. They do not seek to help their fellow man but only work to enrich themselves. The New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs offers resources to help residents make sure their contributions go to legitimate charities that provide valuable services and programs to their clientele. There also are warning signs that can tip you off to a potential scam being passed off as a charity.
Know your charity
There are over 1 million charities operating throughout the United States. Some of these charities may be familiar names to you, others may not. The Division of Consumer Affairs maintains a Charitable Registration Directory of more than 10,000 charitable organizations and 250 professional fund-raising firms that are active in New Jersey. You can research a charity through this directory and learn about its location, annual income by various sources and annual expenses. The database can be found on our website http://www.njconsumeraffairs.gov/charity/chardir.htm.
Know the warnings signs of a scam If you receive a telephone call from a charity asking for a donation:
If you are interested in making a donation
Solicitations by mail
When Making a Donation
Americans are a generous and caring people. In 2001, we donated over $200 billion to charities for a variety of causes. The Division of Consumer Affairs stands ready to help New Jersey residents make informed choices about charitable contributions. You can call the Division's Charities Hotline at 973-504-6215 for information and assistance.
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|DCA HomeComplaint Forms ProposalsAdoptionsContact DCA|
|OAG HomeContact OAGAbout OAGOAG NewsOAG FAQs|
|NJ HomeServices A to Z Departments/AgenciesFAQs| | <urn:uuid:39141d31-b839-485a-97bd-86bc6598102c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.state.nj.us/oag/ca/erdos/chargiving.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930533 | 426 | 1.765625 | 2 |
NASA World Wind: from visualization to mission operations tool
After the talk, I met NASA's Frank Kuehnel, Randy Kim, and Patrick Hogan. During the conversation, I asked about a few details of World Wind's architecture. First, while World Wind previously represented Earth as a sphere, Kuehnel said that the next version, due this fall, will be an ellipsoid. The team also has been working on a more flexible tiling structure, using polyhedral segmentation. World Wind tiles currently are composed of four-sided polygons. A major issue has been that these tiles become pinched near the poles. As the four-sided polygons approach the poles, the tiles effectively become triangles, causing awkward image texture distortions. With the large number of converging polygons, it also means that the geometry for the poles is quite complex. Kuehnel said the complex geometry and distortions are less problematic for Earth, since the poles are sparsely populated, but that they pose a larger problem for other bodies. Undoubtedly, he was referring to the fact that much of science on Mars and other planets involves research near poles. World Wind's upcoming architecture changes will minimize polar complexity and also allow the mapping of nonspherical bodies--like asteroids and comets.
- Also Wednesday at Where 2.0, Mark Lucas talked about OSSIM, a C++ open-source "high performance software system for remote sensing, image processing, geographical information systems and photogrammetry." As his closing slide, Lucas mentioned OSSIM's virtual globe, osgPlanet. Ossim.org has a page describing this virtual globe, including screenshots.
- As pointed out on Ogle Earth, Skyline Globe is not yet available for download. Both the website and a SkylineGlobe developer said the download will be available "shortly."
Image: A NASA World Wind 1.3.5 screenshot of the moon's southern pole. | <urn:uuid:0877eaed-a72e-489b-a897-90eee184825e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://geography2.blogspot.com/2006/06/nasa-world-wind-from-visualization-to.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937832 | 398 | 2.75 | 3 |
Modern and Classical Languages
Department Chair: Karen Erickson
Faculty: Margaret Cook, Nathaniel Dubin, Karen Erickson, Sophia Geng, Andreas Kiryakakis, Camilla Krone, Lisa Ohm, Sarah Pruett, Scott Richardson, Yuko Shibata, Wendy Sterba, Mark Thamert OSB, Charles Villette, Masami Limpert, Limei Danzeisen
The study of another language is an adventure, an exploration into the workings of minds both like and unlike our own. As human minds mold language, so language also molds human minds. A language is therefore not only a means by which we represent our thoughts; it is also a medium that presents the world to us in a certain way. When we learn a new language, we learn to see differently; we acquire a new perspective from which to view both ourselves and the world. In the literature of another language we encounter a culture revealed, extended, and tested by its most critical and inventive thinkers, who use the language to explore their society's limitations and possibilities. Because the study of language liberates us from bondage to a single cultural perspective and allows us to converse with members of another culture, it has from the times of the ancient Romans been considered central to a liberal education.
Students of the classical languages, Greek and Latin, strive to gain an understanding of the ancient peoples whose hard thinking about the perplexities of the human condition, preserved in literature of astonishing richness and beauty, has provided the foundation of modern Western civilization. In these languages the emphasis falls primarily upon developing the students' reading ability.
Students of modern languages seek to understand an intricate contemporary culture and explore the literature and traditions that give it life. The major in French, German, and Spanish, accordingly, consists of a balanced program of languages, literature, and civilization, and should ideally include one or two semesters of study abroad. Study of Chinese and Japanese, integral to Asian Studies, encourages participation in the study abroad programs in China and Japan.
For students whose first languages are ones other than English, courses are available in English as a Second Language (ESL). The focus in these courses is on improving language proficiency in listening comprehension, speaking, reading and writing, with special emphasis on the skills necessary for academic success in a university setting.
For information on the Spanish major, please see the Department of Hispanic Studies: http://www.csbsju.edu/hispanicstudies/
A major in a classical or modern language represents a verifiable skill within a broad liberal arts education, giving the student mulitiple options. A language major is multidimensional in nature and prepares students for teaching language, continued study in graduate school and for a wide variety of careers and professions, both in the United States and around the world. Moreover, the linguistic and cross-cultural competence associated with a language major is increasingly of interest to employers in business, service, and government fields.
The MCL department provides the courses that fulfill the common curriculum requirement in language proficiency for all CSB/SJU students. In order to fulfill this goal, all students should:
- Know the basic grammatical structures of the target language.
- In the modern languages, achieve balanced development of speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills.
- In the classical languages, develop reading and writing skills.
- Understand the relationship between language and culture.
- Acquire an inclusive perspective on the target culture(s), one which ranges from artistic accomplishments to details of everyday life.
- Demonstrate awareness of the intellectual discussion surrounding the learning of a world language above and beyond the language's practical usefulness.
The Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures conducts regular assessment of student learning in linguistic skills as well as in the literary and cultural components of the major. Methods of assessment include: language placement test for incoming students, regular review of skills in speaking, listening, reading, writing and cultural understanding according to proficiency guidelines, and a senior project written in the target language and presented in a public forum.
Modern Languages Basic Requirements for all Majors and Minors:
212 is a prerequisite for 300-level courses; it also fulfills a common curriculum humanities requirement (HM).
Students planning to major or minor in a language are strongly encouraged to take advantage of the colleges' semester-long and short-term study abroad options.
In order to ensure a well-balanced program, no student may apply more than 12 credits toward a major or minor in any one semester, whether on campus or abroad. Exceptions will be granted only in unusual circumstances and must be arranged in advance.
Up to 4 credits in a supporting field taught in French, German, or Spanish at a foreign institution may, with the approval of the chair, be counted toward a major or minor in that language.
Courses in literature in translation may not be counted toward a major or minor.
All majors must present a senior project in a public forum. In consultation with a faculty advisor students choose a project appropriate to their course of study and/or their individual goals (399 listing). | <urn:uuid:fdfcd66e-98a1-406f-a82d-21ecbe9014a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://csbsju.edu/Academics/Academic-Catalogs/2011-2012-Catalog/Academic-Departments/Modern-and-Classical-Languages.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923657 | 1,041 | 2.40625 | 2 |
- Environment & Infrastructure
- Strategic consulting
- Specialist consulting
- The Living City
- Happold Consulting
The site of the Sabah Al Ahmad Sea City development is adjacent to the Arabian Gulf coastline, 85km south of Kuwait City. From two environmentally impoverished hyper saline creeks, an ecologically rich waterway city is growing. The development of the city is expected to be delivered in up to 10 stages over the course of a 25 year period which started in 2002.
The primary objective of Sabah Al Ahmad Sea City is to create a unique and attractive water-based development that encompasses local cultural traditions, tempers the harsh environment with good quality construction, landscaping and recreation facilities; and sets a high standard for waterside development in the Middle East.
By any stretch of the imagination Sabah Al Ahmad Sea City is immense, occupying an area approximately 67 km². Much of it was classified as Sabkha: a very low lying salt encrusted land, prone to flooding and inhospitable to most flora or fauna. Due to sea level changes over the millennia much of the subsoil consisted of saturated silts and fine sands, virtually impossible to build on. Added to this, with sea levels predicted to change by an average of 50 cm this century, most of this land would have been lost to the sea. The challenge for the project’s multidisciplinary team of engineers and scientists therefore was how to create an economically feasible and environmentally sustainable development able to provide much needed beachfront property taking all these factors in to consideration.
With a project overview that currently consists of three complete phases and with a marine and landside planning concept agreed; the development is taking impressive shape.
Strategic schematic conceptualisation was carried out through to the detailed design stage of this multi-use development, which will include over 70km of inland waterways. Water quality was identified at the outset as a key ingredient to a successful development for our client. Marine science and engineering became a critical service which led to schematic and detailed modelling of pollutants, sediments, waves, tidal exchange and waves to maximise water quality and drive the value engineering design of the development.
With respect to water quality modelling methodologies were applied to each of the 5-year, 15-year and 25-year development phases with positive feedback to verify the models throughout. Careful consideration was given to environmental and economic issues prior to the creation of a masterplan. Initial environmental impact assessment took into account the existing topography, prevailing winds and tides, water quality and land and marine ecology – factors which all have a major bearing on the provision of site infrastructure, road transport and utility supply.
Settling basins, on site filter systems and pollution traps are to be provided at sufficient and regular intervals along the entire length of highways in order to protect local wildlife (both flora and fauna), and to provide a suitably clean and protected environment.
Our work on Sabah Al Ahmed Sea City is ongoing, but we have already contributed significant value to this impressive scheme. Our services have ensured the construction of waterside structures that tie in with the local cultural environment. By effectively planning the routes of the inland waterways and modelling the tidal effects that go with them, the development will be well served by water without risking its stability. As each phase has developed and further data becomes available from the successfully delivered work lessons learned have been reincorporated into the ongoing design and delivery process to ensure best value. | <urn:uuid:5f2a088b-ebc4-45f3-89d0-a21ada51fa39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.burohappold.com/projects/project/sabah-al-ahmad-sea-city-71/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947466 | 704 | 1.945313 | 2 |
I want to know more about finches, like how many eggs they lay, how many days they take to hatch, and how many times these birds lay eggs in a year. Can someone help?
Answers: Breeding Finches
Answer This Question
Add your voice to the conversation. Click here to answer this question. | <urn:uuid:30078ab0-0b1b-4e1b-bce7-3f6dd5464aa4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf78191521.tip.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944174 | 67 | 2.234375 | 2 |
A study by Indiana University sociologist Jessica McCrory Calarco found that working-class and middle-class parents often take very deliberate -- but different -- approaches to helping their children with their school experiences.
Working-class parents, she found, coached their children on how to avoid problems, often through finding a solution on their own and by being polite and deferential to authority figures. Middle-class parents, on the other hand, were more likely to encourage their kids to ask questions or ask for help.
These self-advocacy skills taught by middle-class parents not only can help the children in school -- because these parents know that in educational settings teachers often expect and reward such behavior -- but they could help later in life in other institutional settings.
"Youth who do not learn to advocate for themselves might have more difficulty interacting with social service providers, financial service providers, legal authorities and other bureaucratic institutions," said Calarco, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology in IU's College of Arts and Sciences.
Calarco will discuss her research on Sunday during the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in Denver.
Her study focuses on the interaction between parents, children and teachers during the students' fourth- and fifth-grade years at a public elementary school. Her school observations took place at least twice a week, and then she interviewed the students and parents the summer following their fifth-grade year.
Conducted while Calarco was a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, the study is among the first to provide evidence that parents from different social classes teach their children different lessons about interacting with institutions. It also shows that parents help to perpetuate inequalities not only through what they do for their children, such as equipping them with different resources or opportunities, but also through what they teach children to do for themselves.
Calarco characterized both working-class and middle-class parents as "relentless" when it came to teaching their children important lessons. This sometimes even involved role-playing, when the middle-class parents wanted their children to solve their problem on their own -- but couldn't quite leave it to chance. She also found the students very receptive.
"Even very shy middle-class children learned to feel comfortable approaching teachers with questions, and recognized the benefits of doing so," she said. "Working-class children instead worried about making teachers mad or angry if they asked for help at the wrong time or in the wrong way, and also felt that others would judge them as incompetent or not smart if they asked for help. These differences, in turn, seem to stem not from differences in how teachers responded to students -- when working-class students did ask questions, teachers welcomed and readily addressed these requests -- but from differences in the skills, strategies and orientations that children learn from their parents at home."
Calarco will discuss her paper, "Training Squeaky Wheels: Social Class and Parents' Development of Children's Self-Advocacy Skills," at 2:30 p.m. EDT Sunday, Aug. 19, during the Culture and Inequality section. The study was funded in part by the University of Pennsylvania, the Institute of Education Sciences, and the Otto and Gertrude K Pollack Foundation.
She can be reached at 484-431-8316 or JCalarco@indiana.edu. For additional assistance, contact Tracy James at 812-855-0084 or firstname.lastname@example.org.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system. | <urn:uuid:8949a166-7eb1-4297-8826-09f875a248ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-08/iu-mcs081612.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977459 | 758 | 2.75 | 3 |
Step aside, FDA. Sebelius says no to over-the-counter emergency contraceptive for girls. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius publicly overruled the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Wednesday, refusing to allow Plan B One-Step to be sold over the counter to teenagers under age 17. “After careful consideration of the F.D.A. summary review, I have concluded that the data submitted by Teva do not conclusively establish that Plan B One-Step should be made available over the counter for all girls of reproductive age,” she said.
No health secretary has ever publicly overruled the FDA. A political battle was brewing over the issue of Plan B for girls, and the move is likely to have political repercussions. A spokesman for President Obama said he supports her decision, but other democrats and women’s health groups aren’t pleased, to say the least.
Device stocks rebound. Shares of medical device makers including Boston Scientific, Medtronic and NuVasive have for the most part recovered from the beating they took last week when investors pulled out after the CMS unveiled a Medicare pre-reimbursement review program to be piloted in 11 states starting next month.
New tool for mobile diabetes management. Managing diabetes may get a little more convenient as the the first glucose meter for the iPhone has been cleared by the FDA and is ready to hit the U.S. market. The iBGStar Blood Glucose Monitoring System allows data to be collected, analyzed and shared through the iPhone or iPod touch.
Novartis closes neuroscience center. Novartis will close its neuroscience facility in Switzerland, where the company is headquartered, following similar moves by GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca. But it won’t completely abandon its neuroscience efforts — the company says it will study the genetics of psychiatric and cognitive disorders. Developing neurological drugs has become risky in a market saturated with cheap, generic drugs; many new candidates have failed after years of expensive trials.
Dabigatran’s safety review. Serious bleeding complications in patients has prompted the FDA to initiate a safety review of anticoagulant therapy dabigatran (Pradaxa). | <urn:uuid:6e77ca7c-44ac-4c57-99ab-0844b1803452> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://medcitynews.com/2011/12/hhs-secretary-sebelius-overrules-fdas-decision-on-plan-b-morning-read/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933668 | 459 | 1.640625 | 2 |
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Nobel Prize laureate Mo Yan, who has been criticized for his cozy relationship with China's Communist Party, has compared censorship to security checks at airports, suggesting it is unpleasant but necessary.
Mo says he does not believe censorship should stand in the way of truth, but that it can be used, or is sometimes even necessary, to stop rumors and defamation.
China's first writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature is in Stockholm, where he is set to receive the prestigious prize next week.
Mo dodged questions about fellow writer and compatriot Liu Xiaobo, who won the Peace Prize in 2010 but remains in prison. Mo has previously said that he hopes Liu will be free soon, but he refused to elaborate Thursday while meeting with journalists in Stockholm. | <urn:uuid:0e91e2ef-5c34-4d8e-96b3-f77063466ffe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/apexchange/2012/12/06/eu--sweden-china-nobel-literature.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972693 | 160 | 1.796875 | 2 |
An ordinance was introduced that would create property tax credits for new businesses that enter the Town of Indian Head and renovate existing property or build new property on Monday night. The idea of the proposal is to stimulate economic development in the town.
The tax credit is based on the increases of the assessment based on renovations, improvements or alternations based on real property tax terms, starting off at 100 percent of the difference in the first year and declining over a five year period by 20 percent each year. It’s described as a business improvement incentive.
“We introduced tax credit to try to get an enterprise zone established in the Town of Indian Head,” Mayor Dennis Scheessele said. “We want to pursue this incentive tax credit; the county has a similar one in municipalities. La Plata used it ten years ago to redevelop after the tornado. In order for the county to enact their tax credit in the town, we have to.”
The Indian Head Town Council also passed their FY-2013 budget on a 3-0 vote which sets the property tax rate at 30 cents per $100 of market value for individuals and a corporate tax rate of 80 cents per $100. It sets a Parks and Recreation tax at $750 for single family homes, a construction charge at $2,000 and trash collection fees at $80 quarterly with a commercial rate at $450. | <urn:uuid:64df1bc8-3f32-402b-abac-0d343a49f4a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thebaynet.com/news/index.cfm/fa/viewstory/story_ID/27506 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959257 | 282 | 1.695313 | 2 |
The International Energy Agency (IEA) wants more crude supplies released to prevent a reversal of the global economic recovery.
The call by the IEA, which represents the interests of 28 oil importers, comes three weeks before Opec ministers are scheduled to meet in Vienna to discuss production quotas.
"There is a clear, urgent need for additional supplies on a more competitive basis," the IEA said yesterday. "Additional increases in prices at this stage of the economic cycle risk derailing the global economic recovery."
It is the first time the energy watchdog has called on producers to increase output in such strong terms since 2008, when prices climbed to record highs.
Brent crude, the European benchmark, was trading yesterday at US$112.17 a barrel.
It surged earlier this year to more than $125 on the back of the conflict in Libya and the nuclear accident in Japan.
The IEA sits on a 1.6 billion barrel emergency stockpile, enough to provide the market with about 2 million barrels a day for two years. The last time it reached into those reserves was in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and hit oil supplies.
"We are prepared to consider using all tools that are at the disposal of IEA member countries," the Paris-based organisation said yesterday in a statement issued after a meeting of member countries and the European Commission.
Since a fall in Libyan output sent oil prices climbing, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which hold the majority of Opec's 4 million barrels per day spare capacity, have released some extra stocks.
But Opec has backed away from raising its production ceiling, which will come under discussion during its meeting in Vienna on June 8. Until yesterday the IEA and Opec's public views on global oil supply and demand had largely been in tandem.
But a steady rise in prices since September is "widening global imbalances, reducing household and business income, and placing upward pressure on inflation and interest rates", the IEA statement said.
"The governing board urges action from producers that will help avoid the negative global economic consequences which a further sharp market tightening could cause, and welcomes commitments to increase supply."
Dr Noe van Hulst, the secretary general of the International Energy Forum, an organisation that promotes producer-consumer dialogue, said the market should focus more on a long-term outlook than day-to-day fluctuations.
"Demand growth and supply growth are balanced. The IEA has even slightly revised downwards demand growth in the most recent oil market review," he said.
"In that sense I don't see where that's coming from. Obviously there is … concern in consuming countries about high price levels but … we are also seeing other kinds of complicated developments."
Dr van Hulst attributed the price volatility to fluctuations in the value of the dollar and the psychological "fear factor" that IEA and Opec officials have cited in the past. | <urn:uuid:4006c4c4-74e7-41b6-a109-e1534a6c10c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thenational.ae/business/energy/importers-ask-for-more-oil-to-keep-recovery-from-reversing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958519 | 597 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Father Ted Colleton
December 28th is the Feast of the Holy Innocents when we reverently remember the innocent babies who were murdered by the Herod of long ago. Every child who has reached grade five knows who Herod was for just one reason – he killed babies.
Most young people today could tell you about Adolf Hitler – that he killed people because he didn’t like their race, they didn’t come up to his standards of what a human being should be. So, he had the handicapped killed in order to produce a master race of Germans who would conquer the world.
In much more recent times, Idi Amin of Uganda has hit the headlines because of his penchant for getting rid of anyone he disliked or those opposed to his political views.
We regard these people, the Herods, the Hitlers, and the Amins as not really “human” themselves. They were “savages” who were not quite civilized. They are “blots” on the face of humanity.
More than Holy Innocents
But if you think that was all in the past, it couldn’t happen today, you are not keeping up with the news. Whether by coincidence of by chance on this Feast of the Holy Innocents, a friend handed me a report in the Toronto Sun of two days ago. Here is the heading, “Mercy kill call for disabled babies. France in uproar over proposed Bill.” The bill, if passed, would allow parents to withhold life support measures from handicapped newborns under three days old. I must say that the logic escapes me. Why three days? Why not three weeks, three months, thirty years? In principle I can’t see the difference. A person is not any more human at thirty years than at three days. It’s simply a question of size and development.
The Slippery Slope
Of course, it all started with abortion. Once society loses its respect for the sanctity of human life at any stage, it loses its respect for human life at every stage. Here is an interesting and terrifying quote from Dr. R.A. Gallop, “Once you permit the killing of the unborn child, there will be no stopping. There will be no age limit. You are setting off a chain reaction that will eventually make you the victim. Your children will kill you because you permitted the killing of their brothers and sisters. Your children will kill you because they will not want to support you in your old age. Your children will kill you for your home and estates. If a doctor will take money for killing the innocent in the womb, he will kill you with a needle when paid by your children. This is the terrible nightmare you are creating for the future.”
And here is an even more frightening quote from Dr. Christopher Hufeland (1762-1836). “If the physician presumes to take into consideration in his work whether a life has value or not, the consequences are boundless and the physician becomes the most dangerous man in the state.”
This is exactly what has happened. Many doctors who are trained to preserve life have become its greatest destroyers. According to statistics, fifty million babies are murdered by “legal” abortion every year. And all “legal” abortions are performed by doctors. Is it any wonder that, having made millions in the anti-life, they have now begun to gaze expectantly into the nursery? Truly, the abortionist doctor has become the most dangerous man/woman in the state.
Of course, the promoters of the proposed law in France are nationalizing their decision. The president of the Association for the Right to Die in Dignity and one of the proposers of the bill says, “If I had had a handicapped child, I would not have permitted him to live.” Notice that he does not consider what the child would have wanted. An American comedian, some time ago, facetiously made the remark on stage, “I notice that all those who are pro-abortion have already have been born.”
Yvonne Jegou, founder and president of the Association for the Prevention of Handicapped Children said that her motives for supporting the bill are “caring rather than murderous.” She states, “Far from being happy themselves, very often these children bring unhappiness to the households where they live.”
If being happy ourselves and spreading happiness where we live were the criteria for being allowed to live, there wouldn’t be too many of us left!
Of course, there are the voices on the other side. The Cardinal Archbishop of Paris has rallied the opposition. He says, “It is an incitation to murder. I feel personally insulted.”
So do I. If I compare my intellectual capacity with that of some of my professors or with some of the scientists and writers of today, I am definitely mentally handicapped. If I compare my physique with that of Ben Johnson or Wayne Gretsky, I am physically disabled. And, if I compare my lack of determination with the sterling commitment of Rick Hansen, I am simply a psychological wimp.
Man playing God
So, who decides who is handicapped and who is not? For any man or woman to decide who should live and who is not worthy of life is an insult to God who created not only the “decided upon” but also the “decider.”
During the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-46, one of the Nazi war criminals said – referring to the killing of “unwanted” people – “we never thought it would go that far.” The American Judge, Robert Jackson replied, “It went that far the first time you condemned an innocent human being to death.”
Once man sits in the judgment seat of God and decides that any human life is disposable, he decides that every human life is disposable. That is what happened in Nazi Germany; that is what has happened in France; that is what is happening in Canada! Make no mistake about it.
The Great Teacher
George Santayana (186301952), the humanist philosopher, once made a statement which has been quoted by people such as Sir Winston Churchill, “Those who do not learn from the errors of history are doomed to repeat them.” The quotation may not be verbally correct but the substance is. History is a great teacher. But unfortunately, people, particularly politicians, appear to be both blind and deaf to the lessons of the past.
What is not generally realized is that ideas are far more powerful than dynamite! Dynamite can blow up a building and kill a few dozen people. An idea, when it is a wrong one, can cause the deaths of millions. Kent Marx, who probably never threw a bottle at anyone, and spent much of his later life pouring over philosophical books in the British Museum, is an example. His ideas have been responsible for the liquidation of millions of human beings and the slavery of countless others.
Life devoid of values
Perhaps a more potent example might be that of Nazi Germany. In 1920, a book was published in Germany entitled “The Release of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value.” It was written by two prominent scientists, the jurist, Karl Binding and psychiatrist, Alfred Hoche. The book advocated that the killing of “worthless people” be released from penalty and legally permitted. The writers almost certainly had never heard of Adolf Hitler and Adolf Hitler probably never read the book. But the ideas expressed in the book had influenced a whole generation.
By the time Hitler came to power, the term “worthless people” had been translated into “useless eaters.” It has been put on an economic basis. In a famous sermon on March 8, 1941, the Bishop of Munster in Westphalia summed up the current situation in these words, “These unfortunate patients must die because, according to the judgment of some doctor or the expert opinion of some commission they have become “unworthy to live” and because according to these experts they belong to the category of ‘unproductive citizens.’
We usually think of murderers as evil-looking individuals with shifty eyes and unshaven chins. But that is not necessarily the case. Perhaps the ones who pull the trigger or plunge the knife often fit that description – especially in films. But when we are speaking of mass murder, such as happens in Russia, Germany, France and North America, today, murder finds its genesis in the minds of university professors.
Here are just a few examples from the Nazi period. At the Nuremberg Trials, one physician who had killed training school boys and girls, explained his actions in these words: “I see today that it was not right – I was always told that the responsibility lies with the professors from Berlin.”
And here is a quote from the well-known book by Fredric Wertham, M.D., entitled “The Sign of Cain.” In the latter part of 1939, four men, in the presence of a whole group of physicians and an expert chemist, were purposely killed with carbon monoxide gas. They had done nothing wrong, had caused not disturbance and were trusting and cooperative. They were ordinary mental patients of a state psychiatric hospital which was – or should have been – responsible for their welfare. This successful experiment led to the installation of gas chambers in a number of psychiatric hospitals – Graeneck, Bradenburg, Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Hadamar and Bernburg.” The same book tells us that “In 1939 about 300,000 mental patients were in psychiatric hospitals, institutions or clinics. In 1946, there were 40,000. It was discussed during the project that 300,000 hospital beds would be made available by ‘getting rid’ of mental patients. Eventually the crematorium of Grafeneck smoked incessantly.
Dr. Wertham continues, “The chief of the mental institution Hadamar, was responsible for the murder of over a thousand patients. He personally opened the gas containers and watched through the peephole the death agonies of the patients, including children. He stated, ‘I was, of course, torn this way and that. It reassured me to learn which eminent scientists partook in the action: Professor Carl Schneider, Professor Heyde, Professor Nitsche.’ When Dr. Karl Brandt, the medical chief of the euthanasia project tried to defend himself, he said, “We’re not the regular professors of the universities with the program. Who could there be who was better qualified than they?”
We can’t point the finger
So, the concept of “life devoid of value” or “life not worth living” was not a nazi invention, as is so often thought. It derived from the ideas, expressed in a well-written book by two brilliant intellectuals. One was a layer, the other a doctor. We have plenty of people of the same ilk right in our midst. If the French bill passes, as it may, the idea will not remain isolated in France.
The mere fact that it should be suggested ought to be a warning to us.
The Powell Report
With the Ontario Provincial Government busy implementing the infamous Powell Report, the object of which is to make the murdering of babies more convenient for the mothers, more acceptable for the public, and more lucrative for the doctors, why should they stop there? | <urn:uuid:1bdbb4cd-5950-4d36-86b3-f51d64e76b94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theinterim.com/issues/father-ted-colleton/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973535 | 2,409 | 1.851563 | 2 |
The first season of the Trayvon Martin reality show is finally over. George Zimmerman is behind bars 45 days after the shooting of an unarmed African American teen-ager which snowballed into a national soul searching crisis as to whether Americans are closet racists.
Activists, celebrities and ordinary citizens stepped up to express their outrage and demand justice. Tweets from Justine Beiber and Spike Lee along with thousands of irate phone calls flooded the airwaves; and civil rights politicians like Reverend Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson came out to denounce the act as an egregious example of racial hate crime. The Rainbow Push coalition held hands, singing “We Shall Overcome” and the “Million Hoodie March” rallied in cities across America. In a short period of time, over 2 million signatures petitioned for the arrest of George Zimmerman who continued to invoke self-defense under the “Stand-Your-Ground” law, which expands the rights of citizens to use deadly force in any public space if they feel threatened – albeit by a small framed, unarmed, skittles chewing minor like Trayvon.
The law which has been promoted by the National Rifle Association and Republican politicians have now been passed in 25 States and since its enactment in 2005, “justifiable” murders have increased several fold – 36 in Florida, up from 12 just 5 years ago. Had the other 24 been literally getting away with murder before the law, or are we getting jumpier as a nation?
Mayor Bloomberg says it is clear that the law has undermined the integrity of the justice system, made the country less safe, and that it is promoting a culture of impunity. Others call it “kill at will” or “shoot first”. The national debate is curiously timely considering the broader global context.
In the past ten years, since the attacks on the twin towers, the U.S. has been increasingly basing its foreign policy narrative on the concept of preventive and pre-emptive attacks. Dick Cheney even went so far as to make a case for action with as little as one percent probability of a threat clearly ruling out leaving his house in case of encounter with a discarded banana peel – a fear many of us wish he had heeded. Over the course of the past decade what started as a deadly attack by a handful of non-state loosely aligned actors in New York City, has lead to the invasion of several countries, the death of hundreds of thousand, and the displacement of millions in the Middle East and beyond as America consistently “stood its ground”.
George Bush rightly stressed his war on terror was not anti-muslim; no more than the Trayvon Martin case is anti black. Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and the proxy wars we wage in the horn of Africa and beyond are not about hate as much as they are about fear — fear that continues to get packaged and sold for political and economic gain by an increasingly violent America which uses violence as its principal currency as sure as it does its greenback. We use violence as currency for entertainment, casually feeding it to our children in ever more brutal video games and demanding more of it in our movies — more than our European counterparts who seem to prefer sex – thanks to their Mediterranean DNA; and we use it as the prime currency to define ourselves as individuals whether at home, in our neighborhoods; or on the world stage by “standing our ground”, resolute and uncompromising no matter how asymmetric, intransigent and one sided our demands.
We nurture violence through the exploitation of fear by the right wing with links to a multi billion dollar arms industry which brings jobs to constituents who fund their Washington representatives to preserve their livelihoods; by the political machinery where each side postures as the more patriotic by being hardest on crime – hardest on terrorism; and mostly we nurture fear and violence by a disconnected public who gladly consumes the messages of a lazy and complicit media who mostly amplifies the conventional narrative of power without trying to reframe the conversation.
The Iraqi WMD wild goose chase quickly became “support our troops”; a multi billion dollar military expansion across the globe was sold as “peace through strength”; and the “war on terror” became the catch all phrase for the pursuit of all things evil by our heroic forces whose patriotism bars them from asking why.
The result is a polarized world with a clear “us” versus “them” narrative framed by fear, resolved through force. As the Trayvon Martin story plays itself on an endless loop on national channels, another round of “negotiations” to stop Iran from enriching uranium is taking place so that we may get over the election hump before bombing yet another country. Who knew election season could be so hazardous to your health.
As others more astute than myself have observed, and Mark Twain’s powerful reminder we choose to ignore, the rhetoric rhymes alarmingly with the argument for the Iraqi invasion – the mushroom cloud was it? It is ironic how asymmetric “strength” can in fact lead to conflict rather than peace. Even more ironic that the citizens of the strongest, most powerful country should be so ruled by fear that they should seek to eradicate even the smallest, most minute possibility of harm to the point that they would be scared out of their wits by a hoodie, or see a country with no evidence of a weapons program an existential threat to themselves and their ally who, between them, own over 8,000 nuclear warheads.
Barack Obama has successfully fended off an Israeli attack for the moment even as he embarks on non-starter negotiations, demanding the unreasonable even as he ratchets up “crippling sanctions” against 70 million Iranians. Israel for its part is preparing for a strike by securing bases in Azerbaijan and unleashing AIPAC on the U.S. congress.
Following the tsunami of outrage against the injustice in the Trayvon Martin case, Mr. Obama finally broke his silence and offered this measured response: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin.”
Mr. president, in this election season as you walk the fine line between your Nobel Peace Prize and your second term, consider seeing beyond color – beyond borders, to see every child, every where, as your own. | <urn:uuid:b7abee98-db9c-47bc-b670-d64908c501b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.conflicttalk.com/tag/elections-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966038 | 1,293 | 2.078125 | 2 |
When compared to immunization with a control vaccine, infants (aged 6-12 weeks at first vaccination) vaccinated with RTS,S had one-third fewer episodes of both clinical and severe malaria and had similar reactions to the injection. In this trial, RTS,S demonstrated an acceptable safety and tolerability profile.
Eleven African research centres in seven African countries are conducting this trial, together with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), with grant funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to MVI.
Dr. Salim Abdulla, a principal investigator for the trial from the Ifakara Health Institute, Tanzania, said: “We’ve made significant progress in recent years in our battle against malaria, but the disease still kills 655,000 people a year—mainly children under five in sub-Saharan Africa. An effective malaria vaccine would be a welcome addition to our tool kit, and we’ve been working toward this goal with this RTS,S trial. This study indicates that RTS,S can help to protect young babies against malaria. Importantly, we observed that it provided this protection in addition to the widespread use of bed nets by the trial participants.”
When administered along with standard childhood vaccines,2 the efficacy of RTS,S in infants aged 6 to 12 weeks (at first vaccination) against clinical and severe malaria was 31% and 37%,3 respectively, over 12 months of follow-up after the third vaccine dose.4 Insecticide-treated bed nets were used by 86% of the trial participants, which demonstrated that RTS,S provided protection beyond existing malaria control interventions. The efficacy observed with RTS,S last year in children aged 5-17 months of age against clinical and severe malaria was 56% and 47%, respectively. Follow-up in this Phase III trial will continue and is expected to provide more data for analyses to better understand the different findings between the age categories.
Dr. Abdulla added: “The efficacy is lower than what we saw last year with the older 5-17 month age category, which surprised some of us scientists at the African trial sites. It makes us even more eager to gather and analyze more data from the trial to determine what factors might influence efficacy against malaria and to better understand the potential of RTS,S in our battle against this devastating disease. We were also glad to see that the study indicated that RTS,S could be administered to young infants along with standard childhood vaccines and that side effects were similar to what we would see with those vaccines.”
There was no increase in overall reporting of serious adverse events5 (SAEs) between the infants vaccinated with the RTS,S malaria vaccine candidate and infants in the control group, which received a comparator vaccine. Side effects primarily included local injection site reactions, which were less frequent following RTS,S vaccinations compared to the DTP-HepB/Hib vaccine. Fever was reported more frequently following RTS,S vaccinations than the control vaccine group (30.6% versus 21.1% of vaccine doses, respectively).
Two new cases of meningitis were reported in the 6-12 week-old infant age category in addition to the 9 reported last year; one in the RTS,S group and one in the control vaccine group. Further analysis revealed a bacterial cause of the meningitis in 7 of the 11 cases.
Sir Andrew Witty, CEO, GSK said: “While the efficacy seen is lower than last year, we believe these results confirm that RTS,S can help provide African babies and young children with meaningful protection against malaria. They take us another important step forward on the journey towards having a new intervention available against this disease, which is a huge burden on the health and economic growth of Africa. We remain convinced that RTS,S has a role to play in tackling malaria and we will continue to work with our partners and other stakeholders to better understand the data and to define how the vaccine could best be used to provide public health benefit to children in malaria endemic areas in Africa.”
David Kaslow, Director of the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, said: “Determining the role of RTS,S in Africa will depend on analyses of additional data. We are now an important step closer to that day. Success in developing malaria vaccines depends on many factors: at the top of the list are partnerships and robust evidence, coupled with an understanding that different combinations of tools to fight malaria will be appropriate in different settings in malaria-endemic countries. My congratulations go out to the team at GSK and to the African research centres for their exemplary conduct of this trial.”
“This is an important scientific milestone and needs more study,” said Bill Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “The efficacy came back lower than we had hoped, but developing a vaccine against a parasite is a very hard thing to do. The trial is continuing and we look forward to getting more data to help determine whether and how to deploy this vaccine.”
The vaccine is being developed in partnership by GSK and MVI, together with prominent African research centres1*. The collaborators are represented on the Clinical Trials Partnership Committee, which oversees the conduct of the trial. An extended team of organisations work on RTS,S, including scientists from across Africa, Europe, and North America. Major funding for clinical development of RTS,S comes from a grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to MVI.
Follow-up in this Phase III trial will continue to provide more data for analyses to better understand the different findings between the age categories. These data and analyses should also provide insights into the vaccine candidate’s efficacy in different malaria parasite transmission settings. More data on the longer-term efficacy of the vaccine during 30 months of follow-up after the third dose, and the impact of a booster dose are expected to be publicly available at the end of 2014.
The data and analyses will inform the regulatory submission strategy and, if the required regulatory approvals are obtained and public health information, including safety and efficacy data from the Phase III programme, is deemed satisfactory, the World Health Organization (WHO) has indicated that a policy recommendation for the RTS,S malaria vaccine candidate is possible as early as 2015, paving the way for decisions by African nations regarding large-scale implementation of the vaccine through their national immunisation programmes. An effective vaccine for use alongside other measures such as bed nets and anti-malarial medicines would represent a decisive advance in malaria control.
GSK and MVI are committed to making this vaccine available to those who need it most, should it be approved and recommended for use. In January 2010, GSK announced that the eventual price of RTS,S (also known as MosquirixTM) will cover the cost of manufacturing the vaccine together with a small return of around 5% that will be reinvested in research and development for second-generation malaria vaccines or vaccines against other neglected tropical diseases.
RTS,S is a scientific name given to this malaria vaccine candidate6 and represents the composition of this vaccine candidate. RTS,S aims to trigger the immune system to defend against Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasite when it first enters the human host’s bloodstream and/or when the parasite infects liver cells. It is designed to prevent the parasite from infecting, maturing, and multiplying in the liver, after which time the parasite would re-enter the bloodstream and infect red blood cells, leading to disease symptoms. In the Phase III efficacy trial, RTS,S is administered in three doses, one month apart. A booster dose administered 18 months after the third dose is also being studied in the trial.
The vaccine, based on a protein first identified in the laboratory of Drs Ruth and Victor Nussenzweig at New York University, was invented, developed, and manufactured in laboratories at GSK Vaccines in Belgium in the late 1980s and initially tested in US volunteers as part of a collaboration with the US Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
In 2001, the MVI entered into partnership with GSK to study the vaccine candidate’s ability to protect young children in sub-Saharan Africa. Over time, the partnership expanded to include the 11 African research centres and, in some instances, associated scientific institutions from Europe and the United States.
With more than US$200 million in grant monies from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, MVI contributes financial, scientific, managerial, and field expertise to the development of RTS,S. GSK takes the lead in the overall development of RTS,S and has invested more than $300 million to date and expects to invest more than $200 million before the completion of the project.
About the study
The first complete set of results in children aged 5 to 17 months and combined data for severe malaria in the first 250 cases from those aged 6 weeks to 17 months were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in November 2011. The Phase III trial has been designed in consultation with the appropriate regulatory authorities and the WHO. It is conducted in accordance with the highest international standards for safety, ethics, and clinical practices and is overseen by an independent data safety monitoring committee.
About GSK Vaccines
GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines is active in vaccine research and development. Headquartered in Belgium, GSK Vaccines has 14 manufacturing sites strategically positioned around the globe. Of the 1.1 billion doses of our vaccines we distributed in 2011, over 80% went to developing countries, which include the least developed, low- and middle-income countries.
GlaxoSmithKline – one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies – is committed to improving the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer. For further information, please visit www.gsk.com.
The PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) is a global program established at PATH through an initial grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. MVI’s mission is to accelerate the development of malaria vaccines and ensure their availability and accessibility in the developing world. MVI’s vision is a world free from malaria. For more information, please visit www.malariavaccine.org .
PATH is an international nonprofit organization that transforms global health through innovation. PATH takes an entrepreneurial approach to developing and delivering high-impact, low-cost solutions, from lifesaving vaccines and devices to collaborative programs with communities. Through its work in more than 70 countries, PATH and its partners empower people to achieve their full potential. For more information, please visit www.path.org. | <urn:uuid:6ab3fdf5-c49c-41cc-90ca-23f062fb1d8b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20033877 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94739 | 2,222 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Over the course of their combined careers, Dallas Drake and Doug Zmolek played in nearly 1,500 games in the National Hockey League.
Along the way, they played for countless coaches who helped to shape their games as they progressed from youth hockey, through the college ranks and into the NHL. And now that they’ve retired, it’s time for them to give back to the game and help the next generation of young hockey players.
Despite growing up thousand of miles apart, Drake in Trail, British Columbia, and Zmolek in Rochester, Minn., both credit their rise to the highest levels of the game to coaches who nurtured their skill development rather than the physical aspects of their games.
Still, when it came time to play in the NHL, both earned reputations are hard-nosed players – Drake, as a tenacious checker, and Zmolek, a strong and steady defensemen.
So when USA Hockey’s board of directors passed the Progressive Checking Skill Development Program at its 2011 Annual Congress, both men knew it was the right thing to do for their own kids and youth players around the country.
“The checking had gotten out of control,” Zmolek, who coaches his son, William's team in Rochester, wrote in an email to USA Hockey.
“With body checking taken out, its more about good angles and gap control. The refs still let them play through the hands and bump an opposing player, but the running around, hammering players is gone.
“I find the game is a little faster, but the biggest change with the no checking has been that there's a lot more freedom on the ice.”
“Today’s Peewee game is about who skates better, who is able to maintain good gap [control], who is better at angling an offensive scoring chance into a non-scoring chance.
“I hope that the skating skills and the mind-set [the proper way to position your body to check] they are learning at Peewee will carry into to the older levels of play.”
The decision to delay the start of legal body checking was designed to enhance skill development consistent with the American Development Model and its long-term athlete development principles. An important byproduct is to reduce the potential risk of injury and make the game safer.
It encourages more body contact in younger age levels by providing more training and support for coaches and officials so that by the time a player reaches Bantams he is ready for legal body checking.
Not everyone was in favor of the change when the rule was adopted, but the ranks of detractors has dwindled dramatically as the season progressed and parents and coaches saw how much fun their young players were having now that they no longer played in fear as they carry the puck through the center of the ice.
“I find the game is a little faster, but the biggest change with the no checking has been that there’s a lot more freedom on the ice,” said Drake, whose son, Jakson, is now a Bantam and his daughter, Delaney, is a third-year Peewee.
“There’s nobody going out of their way to hit somebody. I just think it allows kids to do things with the puck that normally they wouldn’t do. In years past, kids were more concerned about being hit or finishing their check, and now they’re more concerned about how they’re going to get the puck back without running someone through the boards.”
The key component of the program is not that checking has been delayed until Bantams, it’s for coaches to begin teaching the important elements of body contact, positioning and angling at younger age levels, so that when players do reach Bantams they are ready to give and take a check.
“Checking is about learning how to take away time and space, and not running an opponent over,” said Roger Grillo, ADM regional manager for New England.
“We strongly encourage coaches at all levels of the game to teach the correct concepts to allow for a safer and more productive form of body contact and checking, starting at Mites. That is at the core of the rule change.”
Drake said he has adapted new drills into his practice plans that will lay the foundation for his players to be successful once they make the leap to the Bantam ranks.
“I still encourage kids to bump into one another, but the first thing we teach is stick on the puck and taking the proper angles, especially the defensemen in the defensive zone,” said Drake, who won an NCAA title at Northern Michigan University and a Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings.
“We emphasize that a lot, especially early in the year, that if you just keep your stick on his stick it makes the game a lot easier.”
Still, based on comments on USA Hockey Magazine’s Facebook page, there are a number of detractors who have their doubts that this is the right thing to do, but those in the know are confident that over time the critics will become converts and it will be the kids who benefit by playing a faster, safer and more fun game.
“Who knows, maybe this will bring back checking the way it was suppose to be,” Zmolek said. “Think of the great skating skills our kids have the potential to develop if they have to learn to control another player by using correct body positioning.
“I think [USA Hockey is] on the right track. All I know is that it’s a hell of a lot more pleasant going to the rink this season.” | <urn:uuid:a50bb656-0e86-4696-bccb-082e03111651> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usahockeymagazine.com/article/2012-03/peewees-playhouse | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97515 | 1,196 | 1.609375 | 2 |
International civilian policing is, without question, an issue of growing importance in human rights work.
We have seen the difficulties encountered in southeastern Europe by those who were earlier displaced and now seek to return to their original homes. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, where minority returns have generally increased, the rate of return to Republika Srpska has remained far too low, and those who do return are sometimes greeted by violence and intimidation. The local police offer little protection in this regard. Indeed, last May when Muslims sought to rebuild the destroyed mosques in Banja Luka and Trebinje, they were attacked by organized mobs. The police not only failed to protect the workers and the Bosnian and international officials who accompanied them, there were indications that the police had colluded in the attack.
The peacekeeping forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina, known as SFOR, are not equipped or trained to provide the day-to-day security of law enforcement officers. The events in April of this year in Mostar demonstrated this, when civilians stood in the peacekeepers’ way as thugs attacked and beat international auditors trying to uncover criminal banking activity. No doubt, Mr. Chairman, there is a law-and-order gap which needs to be bridged.
That gap in law-and-order was among the items members of this Commission and other Members of Congress discussed with General Ralston, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, this past July. The General noted the particular threat posed by organized crime in Bosnia and felt that doing more to establish the rule of law in that country will be a critical component of any exit strategy.
Bosnia is not alone in its problems. Virtually no minority returns have taken place in Kosovo, and protecting those that did not leave is a challenge for the UNMIK police and KFOR. Earlier this year I met with young people from Serbia who were from Otpor, or resistance movement. These courageous men and women seek legal action against those police officers who intimidated, detained and sometimes beat them during the Milosevic years. In Macedonia, not only the ethnic makeup of the police but their treatment of private citizens has been a major concern.
Indeed, law enforcement problems go beyond southeastern Europe; they exist in many OSCE States. In Northern Ireland, the U.K. Government has used the overwhelmingly Protestant police force – the Royal Ulster Constabulary – as an instrument in responding to the Protestant-Catholic conflict there. The police have been implicated in many human rights abuses and have rarely been held accountable. As a result, rather than being a police service that serves all sides of the community in Northern Ireland, the RUC became a direct target for nationalists opposed to the U.K. Government’s policies. I have chaired more than a half-dozen hearings on human rights problems in Northern Ireland and have heard consistently that root-and-branch reform of the RUC, including the vetting of officers who have engaged in past abuses, is a critical factor in securing a lasting peace in Northern Ireland. I expect that many of the principles of civilian policing in the Balkans which our witnesses will discuss today will be equally applicable in Northern Ireland.
Similarly, I am quite disturbed by reports that local police in several countries do little if anything to stop the trafficking of human beings. The police are often part of trafficking network. In some countries, the police continue to be used as instruments of the state to quash dissenting voices, even with the use of torture. Elsewhere, members of the Roma minorities have been harassed and sometimes killed by police officers for no reason.
Of course, there are incidents of police abuse in this country which is of great concern to all of us. At the same time, the outrage rightly expressed over such incidents stems in large part from the understanding, expectation and common experience in the United States of having faithful and dutiful local police officers serve the public, protect the innocent and arrest the lawbreakers. The police officer standing on the corner should be seen as the protector of civil liberties, not the abuser.
I strongly support efforts to provide countries in transition with assistance and expertise in democratic governance, and I look forward to the testimony about your efforts to train civilian police and how to improve their effectiveness. | <urn:uuid:908102e4-919f-4dd5-bc53-d7c941a5c862> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csce.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContentRecords.ViewWitness&ContentRecord_id=195&ContentType=D&ContentRecordType=D&ParentType=H&CFID=9122161&CFTOKEN=43372433 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969076 | 872 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996
From: Jim Naughton
Subject: violence in sports
Re the proposal to discuss violence in sports: Perhaps this is not quite on point, but I am gathering string for a story on acts of violence (or other instances of criminal behavior) by college athletes. I'd welcome any tips, be they from the police blotter or the scholarly literature.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996
From: Eric Kam
If you are compiling literature on college athletics and violence, you must examine what occured at a collegiate hockey game in eastern Canada. Although I cannot remember the two universities who participated in the game, the result was that a poor call by the referee resulted in virtual gang violence by the injured team against the official. They swarmed around the referee in a circle and began to taunt and assualt him both verbally and physically. This resulted in a massive investigation by both the Police and the CIAU executive. In fact, Ken Dryden, the former Montreal Canadiens goaltender and an attorney, was brought in to learn of the behaviour and render a verdict against the schools in question.
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996
From: Tom D. Lee
In your recent querry, you not only asked about recent stories, but scholarly works dealing with violence in sport. Have you looked at Robert J. Higgs' "God in the Stadium: Sports and Religion in America"? While the book may not be exactly what you had in mind, Higgs attempts to create an overarching view of sport and culture that weaves together religion, sport, professionalism, the university, and the basic threads of American history, including violence. If not immediately useful for your purposes, Higgs' book might spur your thinking on the subject of violence or move it in new directions.
While on the subject, would anyone else who has read Dr. Higg's book care to comment? Without reviewing it, I will say that I appreciated the effort to bring so many themes together into one study, and Dr. Higgs deserves credit for many of the insights included in his attempted synthesis. However, I fear that the overarching paradigm -- the knight/shepherd dichotomy -- may be too simplistic, and as an historian in training, I do have reservations about the evidence. Often supporting broad generalizations, Higgs' evidence seems better suited to the support of more restricted pronouncements about specific times or regions. For instance, I do not believe that most contemporary historians of the frontier would accept the idea that the American frontier was monolithic or that any one time or place was truly representative of the frontier experience elsewhere, yet Higgs relies heavily on evidence from the Old Southwest for his argument about America at large. Still, I found the work well worth reading, and having studied under Dr. Higgs, I appreciate the effort he has made.
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996
From: Tim Morris
I'd suggested this topic to Judy Hakola a while ago and I should probably elaborate: I'd like to get the ideas of others interested in sport literature on the prevalence of violence in sport-related texts. It seems to me that violence-- deliberate or accidental--appears in novels and other texts about sport in great disproportion to its occurrence in actual sport, particularly in North America, where our sporting events are relatively mild, innocuous, and highly policed / undersurveillance compared to other parts of the world.
In particular, violent events are endemic in baseball stories. While baseball has much potential for accidental mayhem, it's becoming rarer in the sport all the time as equipment and safety consciousness gets better. Yet in baseball *novels* people are simply slaughtered left and right. To cite one recent example-- the story "Zanduce at Second" by Ron Carlson, which appeared in *Harper's* in May 1994, where the whole plot revolves around the tendency of a star ballplayer to kill fans with line drives. (I, myself, am mortally afraid of line drives. I always sit in the center field bleachers, and even then I'm nervous when Juan Gonzalez comes up :). But people actually *don't* get killed by baseballs and they don't even get hurt very often. In baseball fiction, though, it's the most natural thing in the world.
I'd like to discuss: WHY is there all this bloodshed in writing about our peaceful pastoral sport and HOW do you deal with it (some is pretty gruesome) in teaching literature? Which might lead to discussions of how one teaches the literature and/or film of graphic violence generally.
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996
From: Joyce Duncan
Dr. Higgs' book has already been sent out to a list member for formal review and should appear on H-Arete within 90 days. It should be noted that the book was also nominated for a Pulitzer prize last year, and is the culmination of many years of extraordinary scholarship.
On the topic of reviews, anyone on the list who is interested in reviewing for H-Arete with a possible reprint in _Aethlon_ should send pertinent information and areas of interest to email@example.com. There is a very good possibility of procurring review copies for your use. Additionally, anyone who subscribes to other lists that cite new books in the field should pass those along to this list, thus, we can get the review cycle moving along. Thanks. Joyce Duncan, SLA
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Click Here for an Internet Citation Guide. | <urn:uuid:276a3d60-475c-489c-9d00-0644a09f4c17> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.h-net.org/~arete/archives/threads/violence.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959542 | 1,160 | 1.804688 | 2 |
The other day I asked as many of you as can spare the time to go watch the Internet version of a short animated video called "More," and (so far) six of you did, and thanks. Adding your interpretations of it to kukla_tko42's, and my own fragmentary interpretation of it, I think I sort of understand. Like all bits of Terribly Meaningful Art, it means something a little different to each person. My primary concern was to try to understand what it meant to Kukla, and why she (mistakenly, this time) thought it would be powerfully meaningful to me.
The opening scene is of what we're given to understand is a dream of a happy memory from childhood that haunts our hero. He wakes from the dream into an ugly room in a dreary city, rides a dreary bus to his dreary job, where his screaming boss bullies him to make the only non-gray object in his whole gray world, a popular consumer product called Happy, faster and faster. Our Hero fancies himself an inventor, and eventually finds a way to design something even better than Happy, into which he's invested some of his own happy memories and his own spirit, which he calls Bliss. Bliss is so much better than Happy that he becomes wealthy and famous, and he takes over the Happy company. Now the same screaming boss pesters the same workers (plus his replacement) to make more Bliss, faster and faster. And in the CEO's office, our hero suddenly realizes that while everybody else is buying Bliss, his original source of bliss, the happy memories inside him, has gone out; he no longer has any joy of his own. Gazing out the window, he sees in the distance a group of children playing ... just like he was, in the happy memories he can no longer reach.
Now, here's the part that seems to be the point of confusion: just what the heck is Bliss? Bliss looks like a high-tech pair of binoculars, and when you look through it, the gray and ugly world stop-motion animated world disappears and is replaced by a bright, cheerful, rainbow-colored cell animated world. Bliss is a product that lets people step out of their ugly world for a while and live in a beautiful world. And the point of contention between Kukla and me was over whether or not that's a good thing. As someone who remembers the time, fairly long ago, when I used to make approximately annual use of LSD, she assumed that I would share her opinion that seeing the world as a beautiful thing instead of as an ugly thing, and feeling momentary bliss, was a good thing. She saw our hero as a man who'd made a messianic sacrifice to share his bliss, the energy he got from his uniquely-preserved memory of happy childhood, with a needy world. To the extent that I have any opinion at all (because the whole thing left me strangely unaffected, truthfully, the way that most non-"doggerel" poetry does), it's that what he's done is a monstrous thing. Because when I compare the world as seen through his manufactured Bliss to the real world, he's doing people a horrible disservice by encouraging them to see the world other than as it is.
Isn't that what I took LSD for? God's teeth and miserable dentures, no. This goofball idea that hallucinogens make you see things that aren't there is a popular media misunderstanding. In my youth, even on the rare and mostly regretted times when I didn't take the sacredness of the drug as seriously as I should have, and even when I've taken far more than the recommended dosages, and regardless of which drugs I've taken, I've never seen anything that wasn't actually there. I took those drugs to learn from them. I took those drugs not to muddle my thinking, but to clarify it. I valued those drugs for their unique power to call my attention to things, both inside me and outside of me, that I had been ignoring. Some of those things were beautiful, and the drug taught me much about the beauty in my world that I might otherwise not have known to look for. (But mostly not. I've always been inclined to see beauty in the world around me.) Some of those things were ugly things that I'd been half-consciously overlooking because I wasn't ready to face them. But all of them were there before the drug showed them to me, and are still there decades later.
She thought that I took the drugs to revel in the roughly 15 to 20 minutes of intense bliss that happens at the peak of the experience. That would be foolishness at best and insanity at worse if it were true. It's an 8 to 14 hour experience. Setting aside 8 to 14 hours of my life, incapacitating myself for 8 to 14 hours, for 15 minutes of artificial mood elevation? God's teeth, I'd never do that. It's what I learned and saw and felt in the roughly 4 to 10 hours of the most powerful parts of the non-peak experience that I valued enough to do it again and again until it had taught me as much as it had to teach me. When Those Who Have Seen It came back to Eleusis for their chemically-enhanced experience, as some of them did several times to serve as volunteer guides to the new initiates, you can't tell me that they put themselves through all that work just for the 30 seconds or so of intense experience at sunrise; I believe that they must have valued the whole experience. As intense as the brief peak from that weak hallucinogen was, the experience of it was repeated from year to year; it had nothing new to show them after that first time. It's the rest of it, and the sharing of that other many hours with a hundred or a thousand other new and returning initiates, that brought them back.
It deeply disappointed Kukla, I think, that I would have preferred to see the gray real world in "More" and to find the beauty in it, than to have paid money for a consumer product that let me escape into artificial hallucinations of beauty that isn't actually there. For this, she called me a bitter pessimist. Would a bitter pessimist think that there was beauty enough in the real world to look for it? I don't need to ignore any ugliness or pettiness or ignorance or casual negligence or even the infrequent actual malevolence in my real world to know that there is more beauty in it than has any right to be there, and to take comfort therein. I'm not an optimist, if by optimist you mean someone who doesn't see the ugliness and pettiness and ignorance and negligence and cruelty. And if there are only optimists and pessimists in the world, and no third or fourth or nth alternative, then I guess not being an optimist makes me a pessimist. And yet, somehow, I don't feel pessimistic.
I make frequent recourse to the joke about the Thirteenth Beatitude: "Blessed are they who expect the worst, for they can be pleasantly surprised." I don't, truly, expect the worst. (One could say that I aspire to that blessed state, but that would be being silly.) But I know that I live on a planet that only evolved intelligence a few hundred thousand years ago, that only evolved even rudimentary civilization perhaps twenty thousand years ago, and among a species to whom the blessed gods who live forever only revealed to us the happiest and best way of life (perhaps because they had only just learned it from some of us) and began to reward it less than three thousand years ago. I know, with the certainty of mathematical proof, that it is hard for human beings to do the right thing some times, that the temptation to cheat each other and war against each other for short term personal gain is part of our biological heritage. Knowing these things doesn't make me a pessimist. It makes me someone who is delighted every day to see, every day and everywhere I look, the vast majority of people doing more or less the right thing, doing not only the best that they can but sometimes even doing better than there is any reason to think that they could. And I refuse to call someone like myself who sees that and delights in it on a daily basis a pessimist. | <urn:uuid:b8cf94e8-1bad-470e-a3b0-1ae517e4c48b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/212558.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983682 | 1,730 | 2.015625 | 2 |
First West Nile Virus-Infected Bird Confirmed in New York
Officials Stress There is No Imminent Health Risk; Encourage Mosquito Reduction Strategies
Albany, NY, May 16, 2002 – New York has its first confirmed finding of West Nile virus for 2002, State Health Commissioner Antonia C. Novello, M.D., M.P.H., Dr. P.H., said today.
A crow collected in the city of Albany, Albany County, on May 1 was infected with the mosquito–borne virus, according to results from the State Health Department's Wadsworth Center laboratories. The infected crow is the first among 400 birds collected and submitted to the State Health Department since January 1, 2002 to test positive.
"The Albany County Health Department has been extremely vigilant about collecting and submitting bird specimens for testing, so finding an infected bird in the Capital Region is not unexpected and does not indicate an imminent human health risk," State Health Commissioner Antonia C. Novello, M.D., M.P.H., Dr. P.H., said. "However, this finding should remind all New Yorkers that West Nile virus has not gone away and that we must continue to work to reduce the potential for serious illness. Help protect yourself by cleaning up standing water and leaf debris around your yard where mosquitoes may breed."
Albany County Health Commissioner James Crucetti, M.D., said, "Residents of Albany County or the Capital Region should not be overly concerned with this finding. It does call attention to those simple, preventive measures that we can all take to reduce exposure."
Crows are more likely than birds of other species to die if they are infected with West Nile virus. Data collected in New York during the past two years indicate that West Nile virus primarily circulates between birds and mosquitoes this early in the season. Infected mosquitoes bite birds, which subsequently transmit the infection to other mosquitoes, as the cycle continues. Last year, West Nile virus was confirmed in birds and/or mosquitoes in 17 of New York's counties.
Human health risk from West Nile virus only occurs when the amount of virus intensifies in a particular location. Therefore, all New Yorkers are urged to help interrupt the infection cycle by taking steps to reduce areas of standing water around their properties where mosquitoes can breed.
Dead birds, particularly crows, continue to be an excellent indicator of the presence of West Nile virus. Persons who notice dead birds, especially dead crows, are encouraged to report the sighting, including details about where the bird is located, to their local health department.
Even if the bird is not collected and tested, the report itself will provide vital information.
Starting June 1, dead birds also may be reported to a toll–free number: 1–866–537–BIRD.
The following strategies are recommended to reduce mosquito breeding sites:
- Dispose of tin cans, plastic containers, ceramic pots and similar water–holding containers.
- Remove all discarded tires on your property. Used tires have become the most common mosquito breeding ground in the country.
- Drill holes in the bottom of recycling containers that are kept outdoors.
- Make sure gutters drain properly, and clean clogged gutters in the spring and fall.
- Turn over plastic wading pools and wheelbarrows when not in use.
- Change the water in bird baths.
- Clean and chlorinate swimming pools, outdoor saunas and hot tubs.
- Drain water from pool covers.
- Use landscaping to eliminate stagnant water that collects on your property; clean up leaf litter and similar organic debris.
To keep mosquitoes from getting inside the home, persons should make sure that all their doors and windows have screens and that the screens are in good repair.
Of Northeastern states, only New York and Pennsylvania are have reported West Nile virus infection in birds thus far during 2002. No human cases have been reported. The virus sometimes causes mild, "flu–like" symptoms but can also produce serious complications, including encephalitis (inflammation of the brain). Persons at greatest risk of becoming seriously ill from West Nile virus are individuals over the age of 50. During 2000, two New Yorkers–both from Long Island–died after being infected with West Nile virus.
The New York State Department of Health has many informational materials about West Nile virus and how New Yorkers can help to "Fight the Bite." Those materials are posted on the Department's website. | <urn:uuid:59d22bf1-5445-4b0f-9d71-d1900a322f82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.health.ny.gov/press/releases/2002/2002_first_west_nile_virus.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940651 | 917 | 2.859375 | 3 |
As Rick noted in his news, the first eight 'UFO files' (of 160!) from the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) have been released to the public via a specially created website at the National Archives. The files are downloadable PDFs, but also on site you'll find extra information and context from Nick Pope (via a vodcast) and Dr David Clarke (a podcast and introductory PDF guide). Only trouble is that you might find accessing the website (and/or material on it) rather difficult - the server appears to be getting hammered, no doubt a consequence of being a news story across the globe (do a Google News search for 'British UFO' and you'll find around 350 articles from today...who says ufology is dead?).
In this story for the BBC, David Clarke sums up the released material:
As I leafed through hundreds of official UFO report forms it became obvious the vast majority of sightings could easily be explained. For example, staff and customers at a pub in Tunbridge Wells reported seeing a UFO with "red and green flashing lights" moving across the sky. When asked to describe the direction of movement their answer was "Gatwick".
Aircraft, bright stars and planets, satellites and space debris all stand out as the most common explanation for UFO reports. A small number have been revealed as hoaxes or hallucinations.
But a hard-core of 5-10% continues to defy explanation. Despite the mystery that continues to surround those that remain "unidentified", the papers reveal how little time and effort was spent by the MoD to investigate them.
I'll post in a little more detail once these PDFs have inched their way down the Intarweb pipes and onto my computer. | <urn:uuid:62673c0e-12fd-440b-a70c-58ff38fda239> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dailygrail.com/news/the-british-x-files | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958227 | 355 | 1.546875 | 2 |
I was going through HTML5 Canvas Kinteticjs tutorial for adding image. I want to add multiple images and layer them.
The example below has two images but both are the same.
The question: How do i load 2 different images?
You will have to create two image objects instead of one, and on load of both, you can put both images onto the canvas.
As you may already know, Image is not a KineticJS object, but Kinetic.Image is.
So, as long as you make one-to-one connection between Image and Kinetic.Image, you are ok with it.
The example on the html5canvastutorials.com uses Image.onload function to create Kinetic.Image. This confuses so many people. However you don't need to do that if you preload images.
The purpose of creating Kinetic.Image when Image is loaded is not to have invalid(broken) images on canvas. So, if you make all you Images valid, by preloading those, you don't need to use image.onload, which make you confused, at all.
To preload iamges, | <urn:uuid:159b09a3-996b-4e71-b9fa-df3c6aa8e5d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15112286/add-multiple-images-on-canvas-with-kineticjs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930054 | 246 | 2.046875 | 2 |
The Basics of Ethics
“The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 2:11; 21:25).- Judges 2:11; 21:25
Yesterday, we were reminded that our culture believes in moral relativism. Today, most people assume that we have a “right” to do whatever we want to do. Ironically, this idea is held as if it were absolute. Vociferous objection is raised anytime someone defines immorality objectively. If indeed all have the “right” to believe what they want, the relativist has no basis to object when relativism is condemned.
The book of Judges evaluates moral relativism and shows its consequences. In 2:11, the author asserts that Israel did what was evil in the days of the judges. But what led to this evil was the same moral relativism in our society today. Judges also tells us that in those days everyone did what was right in his own eyes (21:25). Instead of submitting to God, the Israelites embraced individual autonomy. Each person became a law unto himself, and widespread evil resulted.
The author of Judges deems this autonomy evil because he understood God’s Word. According to Scripture, ethics are theonomic — determined not by the self but by the Lord. God’s standard alone provides the absolutes for our conduct.
This standard exists outside of us and is binding upon all, regardless of whether or not one believes Scripture. All men, because they are in Adam (Rom. 5:12), are bound by the covenant of works and will be judged according to their obedience. We may choose to disregard this relationship’s obligations, but we cannot destroy them.
Scripture reveals to us a transcendent law that remains binding upon all and is based on our Creator’s holy character. These stipulations do not exist outside of Himself; they are part of His eternal nature. This law, often known as the moral law in the Reformed tradition, is the “law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2) and can be found in the Ten Commandments and in the ethical imperatives of the apostles.
Finally, when we say all Christians are theonomic, we are not endorsing theonomy, a movement that says the old covenant’s civil penalties remain in force. Believers may legitimately debate this issue, but all must be “theonomists” in the sense of affirming the permanent validity of God’s moral standards (1 Cor. 6:9–10).
Many Christians think that there is no law in the new covenant. Yet lawlessness is precisely that which characterizes condemned people (Matt. 7:23). In Christ we have been enabled to obey God and to fulfill His law (Rom. 8:1–8). When we love others as we love ourselves, we will do what is required of covenant keepers (13:8–10). Spend time today reviewing the Westminster Larger Catechism, Questions 91–153, so that you might know what the moral law requires of us.
Passages for Further Study
1 Tim. 1:8–11
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Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: From Ligonier Ministries, the teaching fellowship of R.C. Sproul. All rights reserved. Website: www.ligonier.org | Phone: 1-800-435-4343 | <urn:uuid:7879ecd2-fc33-4789-a4f2-e97d8ec6d31f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/basics-ethics/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94951 | 830 | 2.96875 | 3 |
MEXICO CITY, Nov. 1 (UPI) -- Incoming Mexican President Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa opposes the Bush administration's plans to build a long border fence.
MISNA news agency reported Oct. 28 that Calderon, who won a bitterly contested election against Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in July, said during a visit to Canada: "The decision to build a wall at the northern border undoubtedly complicates the most important bilateral relations for Mexico, that with the United States; it is an added complication, which is entirely useless, inopportune and damaging for relations between the two peoples and the two governments."
Calderon replaces outgoing President Vicente Fox Quesada, who enjoyed close relations with Washington, in December.
Even as he denounced the proposed border barrier Calderon urged Mexicans to "work hard" to try to restore friendly relations between the two nations.
On Nov. 9 Calderon will meet with U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington.
Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs Luis Ernesto Derbez has a more pragmatic view of the proposed barrier, noting dryly that the barrier will not be completed, as current White House proposed appropriations only cover 25 percent of the wall's estimated costs.
|Additional Security Industry Stories|
ALGIERS, Algeria, May 24 (UPI) --Algeria's government is under pressure to ease its foreign energy investment laws after BP warned it may delay important projects in the North African state.
ARLINGTON, Va., May 24 (UPI) --BAE Systems has received a two-year contract extension from the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command to support its Future Warfare Center. | <urn:uuid:b4fb5f5d-9c42-4281-92f1-a6774aeea3d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2006/11/01/Mexico-opposes-border-fence/UPI-37221162395333/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947366 | 354 | 1.523438 | 2 |
For a start, the use of ShowMan at a show is optional. ShowMan has provision to record the results from any Show by transcribing from
a hard or soft copy of the Jury results. This increases the risk of transcription errors, but it is an essential part
of the design, particularly for overseas shows. Some very small Shows may elect to do their own thing and the results from such
Shows can be entered by the APF after that Show has finished.
for a show is collected once only by data entry, and is then re-used
as required throughout the process. Thus, when entries are received, the details are recorded, and are used initially
to print the Catalogue listings. The same data is then used to print the binroom documentation, the Exhibitor's
Envelopes and the Judging sheets, record the results of the judging,
print the critique sheets, the award lists and the certificates,
and finally to generate the Web pages that can be used unaltered
on any web-site. Transcription errors can no longer exist. Human errors are of course never entirely eliminated, but are minimised.
rules for FIP and APF classes are encapsulated in ShowMan, so that
the judging process can be checked for inconsistencies, like errors
of addition, or errors in determining the medal level awarded. As these rules change, so the data that determines the way the rules are applied
can be changed, without any need for programming.
finally, at least some of the labour involved in completing documentation
(exhibitor's names, exhibit titles, etc) is avoided, as the documentation
is delivered with all known data pre-inserted. | <urn:uuid:4e1e635d-0a38-4abc-9e67-cd25c7512267> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.apf.org.au/advantages.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922401 | 352 | 1.664063 | 2 |
SECURITY: Landmine casualty rate dropping
HALO Trust deminers briefed before starting work on minefields close to Mozambique's Cahora Bassa dam (2009)
JOHANNESBURG, 29 November 2012 (IRIN) - Amid the odd relapse, progress towards a world free of antipersonnel mines is inching forward. A decade ago, the weapon was responsible for at least 32 casualties daily; by 2011, the casualty rate had dropped to about 12 per day, the Landmine and Cluster Munitions Monitor
(LCMM) said in its 2012 report, published on the 29 November.
The report was launched ahead of the 12th Meeting of State Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty (MBT), which will take place on 3 December in Geneva.
The report announced that mines and explosive remnants of war had caused 4,286 casualties worldwide in 2011, the year under review. In 2011, three states - Israel, Libya and Myanmar, none of them party to the MBT - used antipersonnel mines. The use of the weapon by armed groups and militias was seen in six countries in 2011 - Afghanistan, Colombia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Thailand and Yemen - an increase over the previous year, in which the landmines use by armed groups was recorded in only four countries.
Thus far in 2012, the only state known to use antipersonnel mines has been Syria, another non-MBT signatory.
Fewer are factory-made
Mark Hiznay, a senior researcher in the arms division at Human Rights Watch, told IRIN, “It is of course a concern that non-state armed groups (NSAG) continue to use the weapon as well as victim-activated improvised explosive devices, which function in the same way.
|We are seeing many, many fewer factory-produced mines in circulation and more and more improvised or craft mines in use
“This last point is subtle, but important, wherein we are seeing many, many fewer factory-produced mines in circulation and more and more improvised or craft mines in use,” he said.
The LCMM said in a statement, “Active production of antipersonnel mines may be ongoing in as few as four countries: India, Myanmar, Pakistan and South Korea,” although there has been no recorded export of these weapons in recent years.
Eight countries - China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Singapore, the US and Vietnam - reserve the right to produce antipersonnel mines.
Hiznay said the “continued naming and shaming is the primary vehicle where the stigma can be applied. India, Pakistan and South Korea each have some form of export moratorium on antipersonnel mines, so at least the proliferation aspect of their continued production is contained. It would be good to get Myanmar to start taking steps in this direction.”
Armed groups are excluded from the MBT. But Swiss-based NGO Geneva Call, which engages armed groups to abide by humanitarian law during conflicts, works to get non-state actors to sign “Deeds of Commitment”, such as abandoning the use of antipersonnel mines
Since 2000, Geneva Call has reached agreements with 42 armed groups banning antipersonnel mine use. Katherine Kramer, Geneva Call’s programme director for landmines and other explosive devices, told IRIN that no armed-groups signatories to the Deed of Commitment
were known to have reverted back to using the weapons.
Kramer said that armed groups see antipersonnel mines as cheap and effective weapons, which they believed to compliment the effectiveness of their smaller forces. The argument can be difficult to counter, so instead the NGO uses humanitarian reasons to convince armed groups to sign the Deed of Commitment. This tends to be more effective on armed groups working closer with affected populations during conflicts.
There is an element of volatility to working with armed groups. Some may splinter while others might become governments, in which case they become eligible to sign the MBT.
“There are currently 24 [Deed of Commitment armed group signatories] still active – [in] Burma/Myanmar, India, Iran, the Philippines, Somalia, Sudan, Turkey, Western Sahara - although seven of the signatories from Somalia
are in the process of integrating into the Federal State of Somalia,” she said.
Mine contamination and clearance
The LCMM said, “Some 59 states and six other areas were confirmed to be affected by landmines. A further 13 states have either suspected or residual mine contamination.”
It noted that “steady decreases in annual casualty rates continued in some of the most mine-affected countries, such as Afghanistan and Cambodia, but these were offset by increases in countries with new or intensified conflicts, such as Libya, Pakistan, Sudan, South Sudan and Syria.”
About 190sqkm of mined areas was cleared last year, and more than 325,000 antipersonnel mines and nearly 30,000 anti-vehicle mines were destroyed. “The largest total clearance of mined areas was achieved by programs in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Croatia and Sri Lanka, which together accounted for more than 80 percent of recorded clearance,” the LCMM statement said.
“An additional 233sqkm of former battle area was reportedly cleared in 2011, destroying in the process more than 830,000 items of unexploded or abandoned ordnance, as well as 55sqkm of cluster munition-contaminated areas, with the destruction of more than 52,000 unexploded submunitions,” the statement said.
The mine action budget in 2011 was about US$662 million, the largest annual total to date. Hiznay said, “Much of the increase in support is coming from mine-affected states themselves - countries dedicating national resources to deal with their problem - which now accounts for about 30 percent of global funding. Croatia is good example of this.”
The dirty thirty
However, there were setbacks for victim assistance, the LCMM said. “Direct international support for victim assistance programmes through international mine action funding declined by $13.6 million, an almost 30 percent decrease from 2010.”
But the “dirty thirty
”, the moniker used for 36 states resisting membership of the mine ban club - including three permanent members of the UN Security Council; China, Russia and US - is gradually being eroded. The Marshall Islands and Poland have recently signed, but have yet to ratify, the treaty.
|It is clear that the stigma against the use [of mines] is as strong as ever
But the power of global consensus
has had an influence on those left out in the cold. States “outside the ban treaty have taken intermediate steps that are in line with the norm set by the treaty, be it through policy reviews, like the US, extension of export moratoria, like Israel, destruction of stockpiles, like Vietnam and Russia, and the apparent cessation of use by Myanmar,” Hiznay said.
“Some long term hold-outs have joined, namely Finland, and hopefully Poland will, too, by the end of this year. It is clear that the stigma against the use [of mines] is as strong as ever,” he said. | <urn:uuid:891e9e04-8ebc-49a2-8d6b-f694831bde6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.irinnews.org/Report/96927/SECURITY-Landmine-casualty-rate-dropping | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96045 | 1,511 | 1.984375 | 2 |
Agence France Presse
Friday 3 August 2012
Last Update 3 August 2012 11:27 am
PARIS: Scientists said Friday they had developed a revolutionary “spray-on skin” treatment for venous leg ulcers — a common ailment involving a shallow, open and stubborn wound on the ankle or lower leg.
Using a spray of skin cells suspended in a mixture of proteins that aid blood clotting, the team treated 228 patients in the United States and Canada and found it greatly improved and accelerated wound closure.
“The treatment we tested in this study has the potential to vastly improve recovery times and overall recovery from leg ulcers without the need for a skin graft,” said researcher Herbert Slade of Healthpoint Biotherapeutics in Texas.
The patients also had their wounds bound with compression bandages, the standard treatment.
Venous leg ulcers affect about one person in 500 in the UK, but the rate increases sharply with age to one in 50 over the age of 80, said a media statement on the report published in The Lancet medical journal.
The ulcers develop when persistently high blood pressure in the veins of the legs damages the skin. They affect mainly people who are unable to move properly like the old and obese, and those with varicose veins.
Standard treatment involves compression bandages, infection control and wound dressing, but not all the wounds heal.
Skin grafts are sometimes used, but these result in a new wound at the spot where the graft is taken from.
In a comment that accompanied the paper, scientist Matthias Augustin of the University Medical Center Hamburg said it was crucial to find new therapies as venous ulcers were common and burdensome to patients.
“Non-healing ulcers are a substantial economic burden,” he wrote. “In Germany, for example, annual total costs of venous leg ulcers amount to about 10,000 euros per patient.”
Spending more on treatment by including cell therapy would pay off in the long run by improving patient healing, he argued.
Arab News is not responsible for the view points, opinions and actions expressed by online commenters. Individual posts do not reflect Arab News' points of view or opinion, and abusive content will be removed | <urn:uuid:2da8202f-c637-4f96-99bb-af5f8f3e6bd7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.arabnews.com/scientists-treat-ulcers-%E2%80%98spray-skin%E2%80%99 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947795 | 467 | 2.515625 | 3 |
United Nations Electoral Roster
The United Nations Electoral Roster is administered and maintained by the Electoral Assistance Division in accordance with General Assembly resolution A/46/137. The Roster includes individuals who can provide specialized technical assistance on relatively short notice to governments and national election administrative bodies. Such individuals may be recruited to participate in electoral missions ranging in duration from one week to several months, depending on the assistance requested.
Fields of expertise
To be registered on the United Nations Electoral Roster, a candidate must have several years of experience in a variety of technical electoral fields and preferably in more than one country. Experience as an election observer does not automatically qualify individuals for inclusion on the roster.
Electoral assistance activities focus primarily on electoral administration and planning and include such fields as: electoral systems, operational planning, electoral law, election organization and budgeting, boundary delimitation, voter registration, civic and voter education, computer technology applications, candidate/party relations, media assistance, logistics, procurement of election materials, training of election officials, polling and counting procedures, election security and fraud, electoral dispute resolution and the coordination of international observer.
How to apply
Electoral positions in field missions are published on the United Nations Careers Portal within the job network "Political, Peace and Security" under the job family "Electoral Affairs".
United Nations Volunteers (UNV)
The Electoral Assistance Division also works closely with UNV in selecting personnel for volunteer posts in electoral field missions. Persons registered with UNV are eligible for a variety of volunteer positions in electoral field projects and operations. | <urn:uuid:cad17a26-fcb8-4cfa-a1d3-30aa2b325d9d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.un.org/wcm/content/site/undpa/main/issues/elections/un_electoral_roster | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923698 | 317 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Like it or not,
professional athletes are role models for our children. Sometimes this is a
good thing, and, well, sometimes it’s not. (Ahem, Lance.) Thankfully, inspiration is
a two-way street: Young athletes can teach us what it means to try our hardest,
practice true sportsmanship, and play for all the right reasons.
We’d all do well to take a cue from Connor and Cayden Long, whom Sports Illustrated named Sports Kids of the Year in 2012. The brothers, now nine and seven, have spent the last year and a half competing together in youth triathlons up and down the East Coast. Cool story, but here’s the hitch: Cayden, 7, who has hypertonic cerebral palsy, can’t walk or swim or
ride a bike. His brother, Connor, helps him through the whole course: pulling
him on a raft during the swimming leg, towing him on a bike trailer during the
cycling leg, and pushing him in the trailer during the run.
Food for thought, at La Montanita Co-op. All poems courtesy of Snow Poems Project, Santa Fe.
It didn’t exactly come as a shocker: 2012 was the hottest and driest year on record. But winter isn’t dead yet. Literally or metaphorically. There’s fresh stuff under the boards from the Sierras to Maine, and in Santa Fe, a cool new creative venture is turning snow into art.
The Snow Poems Project uses spray-on fake snow to stencil poetry on windows around Santa Fe. For the past two weeks, poems written by local residents have been popping up on schools, galleries, government buildings, restaurants, libraries, and yoga studios in town. The poems are short—one or two lines of blocky, uppercase type—and most of them aren't even about snow, but the feelings they convey are the feelings of winter itself: stark, pristine, and wild. Reading them is a little like watching your breath turn to steam on a frigid morning, or following a single pair of footprints across a high meadow blanketed in powder. Dazzling.
Poetry is beautiful at Body Santa Fe.
The idea came out of the Cut + Paste Society, a group of Santa Fe women artists and writers, as a way to illuminate public spaces in the darkest of seasons. It's a creative statement as much as an environmental one: "Winter is a time for reflection and the incubation of ideas," says Cut + Paste president Edie Tsong, who partnered with the Santa Fe Art Institute for this project, "and poetry reflects this." Many of Cut + Paste's members are mothers, so it’s also a parent’s effort to bring art into the everyday and to turn cities into “living books,” written from the perspective of the people who live there. Tsong and her team vetted 175 poems submitted by locals (nearly half of which were from students) and winnowed them down to 40, including this one by 12th-grader Pedro Tena:
Drive-by art at the Solana Center.
Putting a poem on glass is harder than it looks. Tsong hand cut letters from cardstock, used them to trace the stencils, and then held a stencil-cutting party at Whole Foods. To install, she and her team of volunteers lay lines down with dry erase marker, yardstick and level, and then tape letters and words backwards, so the poem can be read from the outside. Next, the faux frosting: The spray-on snow is squishy until it's dry (when it just becomes chalk). Finally, they remove and wash the letters to reuse again. "People may wonder if it's worth it, but think of the amount of hours of training athletes will do to compete," says Tsong, "and you never forget a race or some physical challenge."
Poems will grace the windows of Santa Fe for the rest of winter; by the first day of spring, they'll begin to fade out, like melting snow.
FalconGuides just announced the first 12
titles in a new line of interactive outdoor guides the company developed in
partnership with Inkling, a platform for interactive learning.
For the price of the download, readers get
expert content optimized for iPhone, iPad, and Web, with features that bridge
the gap between apps and ebooks: slideshows with high-res images not found in
the print editions, guided visual tours, hyperlinks, and smart search that makes
it quick and easy to get to the information you need, from a list of dog-friendly
hikes to a river name. Hiking guide
users can give tips to other readers and share trail notes on washed out bridges, best photo ops, bees nests to watch out for, or anything else. An animal tracks feature lets you click through a series of questions that narrows down which animal tracks you’ve spotted based on pattern, shape, and size. Rock climbing instructional guides have stop-motion animation
illustrating specific techniques.
If we Americans still relied on human muscles to generate all the energy we happily consume, we'd each have 150 dedicated "energy slaves" working for us, all day, every day. Instead, we've been exploiting other forms of energy—mostly non-renewable and emissions-generating fossil fuels—for the past 150 years. But it takes increasingly more energy to make fossil-based energy, since the "easy" fossil fuels have largely been depleted and attention is now turning to sources such as oil sands. Compounding this problem is the growing sea of humanity that demands power.
Actually, there are many compounding factors, as author and Post Carbon Institute fellow Richard Heinberg lays out in the introduction, below, to Energy: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth, a new book from PCI and the Foundation for Deep Ecology. We can't just keep feeding the machine, he argues. When it comes to energy, less is more—but becoming more efficient with our energy is not enough to turn this boat all the way around.
The book also includes essays from a long list of leading thinkers and writers on energy, emissions, consumption, efficiency, and the energy economy, including Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, James Hansen, and Amory Lovins. In Part I of this series we spoke with the book's editor, Tom Butler, about green power's dark side, the power (and possible pitfalls) of energy ruin porn, and the population problem.
Energy is at the core of the human predicament in the 21st century. Extracting fossil fuels poisons landscapes, fragments habitat, and destroys beauty. Burning those fuels is changing the chemical composition of the global atmosphere and accelerating climate change. At the same time, spiraling fossil fuel prices—resulting from depletion of the highest-grade and most easily accessed hydrocarbon resources—have contributed to a worldwide financial crisis that threatens global stability. Not only are transport costs rising, threatening globalized supply chains, but soaring energy prices also drive up food prices, leading to increasing social unrest around the world.
As conventional oil and gas deplete, energy companies are forced to spend more and more to search for and produce resources that are farther afield, that are more technically challenging to access, and that pose serious risks to ecosystems. In their increasingly desperate search for “extreme energy,” oil and gas companies must operate at the margin of their technical capabilities. Under these circumstances, accidents are not only more likely to happen, but are often far more disastrous when they do: Recall the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, and imagine a similar or larger accident happening hundreds of miles off the coast of Alaska in rough arctic seas. Indeed, the entire project of globalized industrial civilization—which took root and dramatically expanded during the 20th century as cheap energy drove production, trade, and population growth—now seems imperiled as energy and ecological limits come into view.
It’s tempting to take the micro-view and look for ways to target each of our energy problems with a technical fix. Can’t we improve the energy efficiency of vehicles, insulate our buildings, and develop renewable energy sources? Yes, of course. Can’t we regulate the fossil fuel industry better, and allow the vast, recently unlocked North American reserves of shale gas and shale oil to be produced responsibly? Possibly. We could do all of those things, and many more besides, to lessen the current energy economy’s impacts on natural and human communities—and still there would remain serious obstacles ahead.
Adventure Ethics spoke with the book's co-editor, Tom Butler, about the value of beauty, the potential of energy ruin porn, the population problem, and the importance of energy literacy. In Part II of this series, we'll offer an excerpt from the book.
How did this large format art book come about?
The germination was in an earlier project that the Foundation for Deep Ecology's publishing group had produced and that was about mountaintop removal coal mining, called Plundering Appalachia, which George [Wuerthner] and I co-edited. We had immersed ourselves in that particular and specific part of energy economy, this horrific act of blowing up mountaintops to get at coal in the most ancient mountains and biologically rich forest type in North America. So that book we produced with a coalition of environmental groups that are fighting that practice. After that, we started talking about a similar project about tar sands.
George was up there in the tar sands, taking aerial photos and researching that problem, and when we started talking about it we realized it's just another very small part of an energy economy that is fundamentally toxic to nature and to people. It diminishes biological diversity, it diminishes beauty. Pulling out a single narrow slice of the bigger subject, by just talking about tar sands, didn't make sense to us. So we decided to open it up and try to do a project that makes the invisible visible to people—and that is, the systemic impacts of the current energy economy. Let's explore what is behind the light switch when you flip it on, what's behind the gas pump when you fuel up, and make it visible to people in an art book—a large photo format book.
If people are going to be engaged in reorienting our currently toxic energy economy and transferring to an energy economy that is more friendly to nature, to people, to beauty, to human health, biodiversity and all these things we care about ... [that] is only going to be possible if people are thinking about it and understand these key principals of energy. So energy literacy is really the focus of the project. The introductory section on energy literacy we spent quite a bit of time on. We want it to be very accessible and very easily understood because we think it's so important for people to understand net energy, and embodied energy, and how energy props up the entire scaffolding of civilization and in the converse how the entire scaffolding of civilization is required to produce the energy that supports it, so it's sort of a feedback loop. | <urn:uuid:59418b9a-e934-4259-8e32-4a93ffb5bf86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.outsideonline.com/blog?category=Media | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953263 | 2,326 | 1.507813 | 2 |
5 Creative Uses for: Baking Soda
The following conversation happens a lot in my house:
Me: I'm making cookies. Do we have baking soda?
The outcome is always the same. I'm too lazy to go on an archaeological dig through our bursting cupboards, so I spend a buck or so on another Arm & Hammer. And the orange boxes multiply. AltUse.com readers clearly have this problem, and they've figured out how to put all that sodium bicarbonate to use:
1. Fix a bad battery connection: Create a paste of three parts baking soda to one part water and brush onto corroded battery posts and cable connectors. Rinse and dry. Coat with petroleum jelly to keep terminals trouble free.
2. Soothe a sunburn: Mix some baking soda with water and apply to your burn. Quite cooling.
3. Clean your oven: Sprinkle soda on the bottom of your oven until it's about 1/4 inch thick, then mist with a spray bottle until damp and let sit. Mist again a few hours later. Once it has dried a second time, scrape out. Wipe clean with a wet sponge.
4. Keep fruit flies off plants: Create a solution of four teaspoons baking soda and one gallon of water. Spray on plants when fruit first appears. Spray once a week for two months, and after each rain. Can also be used on rosebushes against black spot fungus.
5. Remove car oil stains from concrete: Wet the stain, then sprinkle soda. Scrub. | <urn:uuid:ba4a3a14-9467-462f-8714-fa913cc86127> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/09/5-creative-uses-baking-soda | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91494 | 318 | 2.015625 | 2 |
|Tawny Owl Strix aluco ©Andy Bright http://digiscopingukbirds.homestead.com/Index.html|
Another excellent area for wildfowl, waders and gulls.
Carrick RoadsSatellite View
Between the confluence of the Truro and Fal rivers and the open sea, good for winter sea-duck, divers and grebes, including the county's largest concentration of Black-necked Grebe.
Crowdy Reservoir and Davidstow AirfieldSatellite View
Exposed moor land sites near Camelford which between them attract Nearctic waders every autumn.
First stop for transatlantic waders in autumn and good for winter gulls and wildfowl.
Good all-year round general birding site, nearly always providing something unusual.
A small pool near Bude which produces a staggering number of rare birds amongst its spring and autumn migrants. Also good in winter. Recent rarities: Upland Sandpiper, Citrine Wagtail.
Annually reliable for Spotted Crake and Aquatic Warbler in August/September. Recent rarities: Citrine Wagtail, Paddyfield Warbler.
Par Beach and PoolSatellite View
An excellent winter gull site, regularly hosting Ring-billed. Also good for waders and terns.
Popular autumn sea-watching location in strong west/north-westerlies. Often scores higher counts than St. Ives, but views usually more distant.
This magical valley hosted Britain's first Veery and American Redstart. Also the most reliable place in the country for late summer Cory's Shearwaters. If there are no birds, just enjoy the beautiful scenery. Recent rarities: Booted Eagle, Little Swift...
Rame PeninsulaSatellite View
Just across the sound from Plymouth, this promontory is Rame Head and Penlee Point. Good for spring and autumn migrants, sea watching and winter seabirds. Hosted Britain's one and only Wilson's Warbler, whilst recent rarities include Red-flanked Bluetail and Gyrfalcon.
St Ives IslandSatellite View
On its day the best autumn sea-watching site in Europe. Ideal conditions are strong north-westerly following south-westerly gale.
Excellent sheltered valleys for migrants (Nanquidno, Cot, Kenidjack). Britain's only Varied Thrush and Yellow-throated Vireo were found here.
Has probably declined as a wader site due to lack of mud, but still attracts many interesting birds. Recent records: Pied-billed Grebe, Lesser Scaup, Baillon's Crake and Caspian Tern.
The LizardSatellite View
There are many good valleys for migrants around this huge peninsula. Probably the best known are those at The Lizard village at the southerly tip Recent rarities: Little Bustard, Hume's Leaf Warbler and Red-eyed Vireo.
Number of bird species: 433
County Bird - Chough Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax
[moreover it has recently started to breed in Cornwall again]
Annual Bird ReportsAnnual bird report Birds in Cornwall are available from the Editor, Derek Julian 12, Dunveth Road, Wadebridge, Cornwall PL27 7XD - email@example.com - 01208 816779
Best Birdwatching Sites in Cornwall & The Scilly Islesby Sara McMahon and Nigel Hudson - Buckingham Press 2008
Buy this book from NHBS.com
Birds of CornwallTrevor Beer, Endymion Beer Paperback - 32 pages (11 March, 1999) Tor Mark Press
Buy this book from NHBS.com
Secret Nature of CornwallIn preparation...
Buy this book from NHBS.com
Shadows in the Skyby Pete Cross - It tells the story of the chough’s return to Cornwall, through the eyes of the birds, against a backdrop of the county’s history, heritage and humans’ tempestuous relationship with nature.
Buy this book from NHBS.com
The Birds of Cornwall and the Isles of Scillyby Roger Penhallurick, published by Browser Bookshops
Buy this book from NHBS.com
Where to Watch Birds in Devon and Cornwallby David Norman and Vic Tucker, published by Christopher Helm 2001
See Fatbirder Review
Buy this book from NHBS.com
Google Map of Hotspots
Thanks to Simon Ashley for creating this map!
Welcome to the home page of the Cornwall Bird-Watching and Preservation Society dedicated to the study and conservation of birds in the county of Cornwall, in the far south-west of England. The Society, which celebrates its 75th Anniversary in 2006: owns or manages six nature reserves, runs weekly field meetings, publishes a comprehensive annual report, issues four annual newsletters, Palores, supports conservation-led initiatives in Cornwall...
Cornwall Wildlife TrustWebsite
The Cornwall Wildlife Trust - founded in 1962 - fulfils a role occupied by no other countryside organisation. We are concerned solely with Cornwall and deal with all aspects of conserving the county's wildlife and habitats. We have already established over 40 nature reserves, covering 3,000 acres (1,2000 ha); in which examples of each of Cornwall's habitats give refuge to nationally rare and endangered species.
The Chough has only been bred in captivity in Cornwall by Paradise Park, and cannot be seen anywhere else in the Duchy. In the late 1980s we collaborated with other organisations and individual conservationists to form Operation Chough. This has been funded mostly by Paradise Park, and this included financing a three-year research project conducted by Dr. Richard Meyer. His thesis helped to solve the mystery of the Chough`s disappearance, and we are getting closer each year to being able to reintroduce this important bird to the Cornish cliffs where it belongs...
RSPB - Cornwall Local GroupWebsite
Cornwall Members' Group arranges guided walks, many aimed at newcomers to birdwatching, throughout Cornwall all year round and holds indoor meetings, mainly in the Truro area, between September and April...
RSPB Reserve - Hayle EstuaryWebsite
Wading birds such as dunlins, curlews and grey plovers spend the winter here and if you are very lucky you might see a rare North American wader!
RSPB Reserve - Marazion MarshWebsite
In August and September, two special rare birds visit on migration - the spotted crake and aquatic warbler. Over-wintering bitterns are now regular visitors...
St Gothian Sands Nature ReserveWebsite
St Gothian Sands NR was officially opened in 2005. The reserve was created when the old Sand works at Gwithian closed down leaving some great habitat, attractive to birds. This blog will hopefully keep you up to date with whats been seen and whats happening on the reserve…
2007 [March] – David & Amanda MasonReport
Started overcast and cool, quite ideal really for our five and a half hour journey to the south west of England. We took our time and arrived at our destination The Ship Inn at Lerryn, near Lostwithiel at around 4.30pm. The village car park is situated on the bank of a small tributary to the River Fowey and as we parked we noticed 3 Little Egret feeding in the shallows nearby along with a few ducks and gulls. The Ship is less than a one minute walk from this car park and has no off road parking of its own...
2008 [September] - Edward LeaReport
In September this year my family and I had a holiday in Cornwall. We stayed in a holiday home in Crantock near Newquay. In this article I relate the birds that I (we) saw during our 2 week stay, this was not an intensive birding holiday (Nathalie may disagree), rather a family holiday with much time spent on the beach building sand castles with Samuel (aged 3)...
Local birders willing to show visiting birders around their area...
Bosavern House is ideally situated for access to the key birdwatching sites of the Lands End peninsula, which is renowned for migrants and, in particular, the number of unusual species which arrive at different times of the year.
Cape Cornwall Country clubAccommodation
Handy for Sennan Cove
Chy Carne Camping ParkAccommodation
Chalets, Caravans or your own gear....
Coach House Cottage - MarazionAccommodation
A typical Cornish 200 year old stone 3-Bedroom Cottage with a modern interior, just 50 yards from the beach in Marazion. Available for Holiday letting and suitable for 4 adults and 2 children...
Set in a quiet country lane and surrounded by farmland, the Mill lies within easy reach of many beautiful sandy beaches and has convenient road access to all parts of Cornwall. Hawksland Mill is three miles from the town of Wadebridge, which has good shopping facilities, and five miles from the ancient fishing port of Padstow.
Lindford House Holiday CottagesAccommodation
Self catering holiday cottages, set in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the Coverack and Helford River areas, on the Lizard Peninsula, in picturesque South Cornwall UK.
Mount Haven HotelAccommodation
The Mount Haven Hotel & Restaurant is situated in its own grounds on the outskirts of the ancient market town of Marazion, overlooking the sea, and just a few minutes` walk from the beach. There are superb panoramic views over Mount`s Bay and the world-famous St. Michael`s Mount from the gardens and car park, as well as from most of the bedrooms.
Mullion Cove HotelAccommodation
Mullion Cove Hotel stands in a spectacular position on the cliffs above the working harbour of Mullion Cove. Built at the behest of the Cornish Railway at the turn of the century, it commands spectacular views along thirty miles of glorious coastline. From the lounge, look down to the harbour with its jetties, fish cellars and sandy beaches and along the dramatic coastline of Britain`s most southerly peninsula.
Old Primary School (The) - Ludgvan villageAccommodation
Self Catering Accommodation in a beautiful Cornish village - The Old Primary School was formally a Victorian School for infants dating from 1875 and was converted in 1985 for residential use. The Old School Cottage forms part of The Old Primary School and is completely self-contained, having its own entrance and parking area and comprising lounge/diner, double bedroom and bath/shower room. What is now the lounge used to be the Headmaster`s study and is fitted with a kitchenette, complete with microwave, electric cooker and fridge. The comfortably furnished lounge area also has colour TV and a bed-settee for those families with children. The lounge window offers views towards St Michael`s Mount and the surrounding countryside.
Parc an GrouseAccommodation
Parc an Grouse is a B&B situated overlooking the ocean just a short walk from St.Keverne village in Cornwall. Ideal spot for Birding on the Helford river or walking the coastal path...
Pencubitt is somewhere special... a beautiful Victorian Country Mansion secluded in its own mature Cornish garden just outside the traditional market town of Liskeard, close to Looe and Polperro on the picturesque South Cornish Coast.
We are the largest provider of self-catering properties throughout the beautiful Roseland Peninsula. We offer modern waterside homes to quaint secluded country cottages deep in the Roseland...
Special Places CottagesAccommodation
Special Places is family run, and began eight years ago with our own two cottages. We now offer a collection of lovely holiday homes in this recognised area of outstanding natural beauty.
The Cartwheel offers Luxury Cornwall holiday accommodation in Millbrook Cornwall on the fabulous Rame Peninsula. The Cartwheel is a newly refurbished Luxury Cornish holiday bungalow featuring....
Wolf Rock Holiday Flat - PorthcurnoSelf-Catering
Wolf Rock is a lovely self catering holiday apartment only a few minutes walk from the beautiful sandy Porthcurno Beach in Cornwall. It is close to the coastal path which leads to further, remote, sandy beaches...
...Before we started this blog we had a GS Woodpecker visiting the garden. We've been in this house a few years and later in 2008 he/she started to visit...
Blog form a Cornish birder
Paul 'Cardinal' Kilmurray - Birding & Bugging Somewhere in CornwallBlog
Birding & bugging in deepest darkest Cornwall. Armed with the bird bible, bug bible, flask full of char and dressed like an AWOL Kremlin's elite soldier, this is surely Cornwall's answer to Johnny Kingdom...
St Austell BaywatchBlog
Natural World. Birds, Animals, Flora, Fauna and Fungi around St Austell Bay. Black Head to Gribbin Head...
Birdlife of the River CamelWebsite
I hope that the following information will be of use to the 90,000 birdwatchers who visit the area each year. (Cornwall County Council, Camel Trail Survey, supported by Port Isaac Visitors Survey]. I have been involved with the River Camel ever since I came to live in Wadebridge in 1984. Much of the information has been amassed through personal experience and any opinions that I have expressed, in the interest of peace and harmony, should be treated as personal.
Birdwatching in West CornwallWebsite
Welcome to our Birdwatching Page. West Cornwall is renowned for rare birds, and several top birders live in the area. We are developing this site daily, and intend to provide a comprehensive Internet resource for birding in West Cornwall. We will be restricting the area covered to the District of Penwith - but will bring hot news from outside! When a rare bird is found in the area, location details and travel directions will be put on this site, together with weather and - as and when possible - images. Any bird reports from the area will be most welcome, and will be included in the round-ups.
This website is dedicated to the Natural History of the Camel Estuary in North Cornwall – includes latest bird sightings.
Cornish Birds of Prey CentreWebsite
The Cornish Birds of Prey Centre is situated on the A39 at Winnards Perch, halfway between St. Columb Major and Wadebridge and approximately 12 miles from Newquay in Cornwall. We have here at the Centre over 50 birds of prey for you to see, many of which take part in regular flying displays and participate in hands-on experiences. We are able to cater for all ages and disabilities, as the Centre is set on open ground with a gentle slope and stunning views...
Cornwall Bird AtlasWebsite
For many years there has been no way of bringing together the diverse records relating to many of the breeding and non-breeding bird species. Randomly collected records of common breeding and wintering species have been a particular cause for concern and there has been much discussion about the best way to handle such records...
Welcome to Cornwall Birding, the website dedicated to Birds, Birders and Birding in Cornwall. We aim to provide up to date information and images of rare birds when they occur and support important ornithological projects in the county. We welcome photos and articles to do with birds and birding in Cornwall as well as your sightings and trip reports...
There are many sites around Cornwall which are of great interest to birdwatchers. These include: Marazion Marsh and Hayle Estuary, both of which have RSPB Reserves; Porthgwarra and many of the valleys on the Land`s End peninsula; Stithians Reservoir; the creeks of the Truro and Fal Rivers; the Camel Estuary with the Walmsley Sanctuary near Chapel Amble; Goss Moor; and Dozmary Pool. Christmas 2002 sightings in West Penwith included: Rosy Starling; 3 Cranes; Gyr Falcon; Ring Billed Gull; 2 Black Redstarts; Brent Goose; Little Egret...
Scillonian Pelagic TripsWebsite
Warmed by the Gulf Stream, buffeted by the Atlantic, relying on sea and air links with the mainland, the unique Isles of Scilly are a world apart. Populated by a friendly community of just over 2000 islanders, sub-tropical Scilly has tranquillity and a quality of life long lost to less isolated places. Exotic plants and wild flowers, ancient cairns and crumbling castles, sparkling white sands by an azure sea - all just 28 miles from Land`s End in the south-west corner of the UK.
Screech Owl SanctuaryWebsite
The sanctuary provides care and rehabilitation for wild sick and injured owls within Cornwall, and where possible ensures their safe release back to the wild when they are fully recovered, and if permanently disabled a comfortable home shall be provided in a suitable environment.
Artist - Ian Griff GriffithsGallery
Wildlife paintings; mainly birds of artist Griff, who lives and paints in Cornwall originally from Yorkshire. He will be featured in Birds illustrated, Wildscape and Artists and illustrated magazine…
Artist - RB TreleavenGallery
Landscape and Bird Painting by RB Treleaven...
Photographer - Mark Whittaker - Fat Wagtail PhotographyGallery
Mark Whittaker, St.Austell, Cornwall, United Kingdom - I'm 27 years old and very much into wildlife especially birds. I currently work as a Falconer & Owl Welfare Officer at the Screech Owl Sanctuary at Indian Queens and have been doing so for 8 years. Very much into photography and hoping to incorporate this passion into my blog…
Photographer - Richard M BirchettGallery
Pictures taken of Wildlife from around Cornwall and just beyond! By Richard M Birchett...
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This site was last updated on Monday, 29th April 2013.
|Feedback/Contact/Advertising Info ::| | <urn:uuid:46c6ecd9-c330-4ea8-9340-6b7083046ce3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fatbirder.com/links_geo/europe/england_cornwall.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924312 | 3,779 | 1.796875 | 2 |
fetid whiskey barrel ponds
I have started a couple of half-whiskey barrel "ponds" on my patio, and am experiencing a problem. Here is the setup:
The barrel-halves are unlined, and have the charred wood layer on the inside which is used in the whiskey aging process. They were pretty fresh when I got them, and hold water without a problem. Both barrels are in a place where they get about 6 hours of direct sun and then are shaded by the house in the afternoon.
In one, I have a small clay pot with a pond lily (Nelumbo lutea). In the other, I have about 15 mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) and some coontail (Ceratophyllum demersum) and southern naiad (Najas guadalupensis) to help oxygenate the water (free-floating). I don't have any kind of aeration device in either one.
In both barrels, after about 2 days, the water takes on a fetid odor, becomes cloudy, and is obviously very low in DO. the Gambusia start gulping air at the top of the water.
I have tried changing the water, but after two days, I'm back where I started.
Any ideas what is going on? I would like to put goldfish in both of them, and keep the gambusia (to control mosquitos). | <urn:uuid:ec3e20d0-606b-4bab-bd13-864b461a49cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f135/fetid-whiskey-barrel-ponds-200737.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960413 | 303 | 1.539063 | 2 |
For information geeks like me, the St Louis Fred has premiered a brand new toy, namely, the ability to perform mathematical functions on one or more data series and generate a graph of the result. Taking it for a test spin, I decided to find out how big the housing bubble really was on a population weighted basis. I divided housing permits by population, and this is the surprising result I got:
On a per capita basis, the housing boom of a few years ago doesn't look that outlandish at all! In fact, at least 3 prior booms in the last 40 years were bigger. On the negative side, the current housing bust is even more clearly the worst in the post WW2 era.
Since I had previously done the calculations, I was able to take the comparison further back in time. Last July, I posted about Housing during the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression. Here's the graph from a 1954 text that I started with:
I found the Department of Labor source data or "non farm housing starts," and generated the following chart, which also in the last column converted the housing starts by multiplying the data proportionate to the population for each year compared with our modern population of 300 million. All data is in 1000's:
|Year||Nonfarm housing starts||2009 equivalent|
Note that this chart is for nonfarm housing starts only. In 1930, 25% of the US population lived on farms, compared with only 2% today. So if anything, the 1920s boom was much more of a bubble than the recent one. Similarly, the population adjusted 221,000 housing starts from 1933 is considerably worse than the April 2009 bottom of 498,000.
So, contrary to most prevailing opinion, is the housing bust creating pent-up demand? Certainly there is an oversupply of houses - at current asking prices - on the market now. Nevertheless, in a long term secular sense, I believe the answer is "Yes."
While the US population is growing by about 1% a year, new home buyers are what drives that market, and that is very age sensitive. First time home buyers are generally younger persons who have formed a new household and are ready to move from an apartment or their parent's home to their own. In other words, the number of first time homebuyers over time ought to be proportionate to the number of persons who are entering the stage of their lives where they are ready to form their own household and buy their first home. That number isn't static or growing smoothly, as this graph of immigration adjusted births by year by the Harry S. Dent Foundation (whose investment advice based on it may not have been so hot) shows:
The Baby Boom peaked at 5 million births a year in the late 1950s, and the Gen X baby bust reached a nadir of less than 4 million in the early 1970s. The echo boom of Gen Y/Millenials peaked at about 5 million again in 1990. The data used in this graph is corroborated by the demographics information supplied in the 2000 Census.
In other words, the number of people at the right age to buy their first house would have contracted by 1 million a year as the Boomers gave way to Gen X, and then rise again by up to 1 million as the Millenials enter house buying ages. What we need to know is, at what age range do people typically form a new household, and at what age range do they typically buy their first house?
Although the data isn't available for use at the St. Louis Fred site, the Census Bureau does break down population by quintile, and from this we can obtain information about the average age that new households are formed, and here it is:
Not surprisingly, young people begin to move out of their parents' homes at about age 20. Those who married very young form their own household, while young singles live with roommates. By age 25, new household formation rapidly accelerates, and continues through age 35, by which time close to the maximum percentage of people are living in their own or spouse's household.
Of course, while some people may move directly from their parents' home to a house of their own, many if not most will go through a period of living in an apartment. The median age of first time homebuyers is therefore a little older than the median age of forming a new household. This information is very difficult to obtain, but a survey conducted in 2006 found that the average age of first time homebuyers in the Gen X and Boomer eras was 29 years old. (The survey found that Millenials were buying at age 26 on average, but since they include persons born as late as 1994 in that group, I think we can safely ignore that anomaly.) For our purposes, we can round to age 30 as the average age of first time homebuyers, which is also the median age of 2009 first time home buyers as found in a survey by the NAR.
Interestingly, the National Association of Home Builders reported that at the peak of the housing bubble in 2005, the Census Bureau found that the median age of home buyers was up to 33 years old, perhaps reflecting the unaffordability of housing at the market's peak.
Applying this information to housing, we would expect the Boomer generation's impact on first time home buying to begin shortly before 1976 and to have reached its peak first home buying years around the late 1980s. After that, the pool of young first time homebuyers would gradually shrink until about 2005, and then begin to rise again. Obviously I'm not suggesting a perfect fit to the data that begins this post. Mortgage interest rates obviously play are role, as do home buyers expectations about whether prices for houses will be stable, go down, or rise during the period of their ownership. For example, as the first Boomers entered the housing market, prices began to rise with demand (and 1970s inflation and interest rates), making housing much more expensive for later Boomers. Similarly, in essense the housing bubble of 2004-6 borrowed future demand for housing. The nadir we should have had then, we are having now.
So, what is the condition of the Millenial generation? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job losses during the Great Recession have been particularly concentrated among the youngest cohort of the workforce. A smaller share of 16- to 24-year-olds are currently employed--46.1%--than at any time since the government began collecting such data in 1948. Thus, at the moment, the "echo boomers" may be the "Boomerang" generation, moving back in with their parents to save money in a dismal job climate:
According to a recent Pew Research Center study [conducted in October 2009], one in 10 adults between the ages of 18 and 34 said the poor economy has forced them to move back in with mom and dad.... In addition to those who have moved home, another 12 percent scurried to find a roommate to scale down living expenses.
Young adults are altering their behavior in other ways too. About 15 percent of adults younger than 35 say they have postponed getting married because of the recession, according to Pew.
Not only can they not afford a big wedding, but they don't have the money to buy a house or take care of a child, the study said. Fourteen percent of young adults say they have put off having a baby.
"They are delaying important decisions, perhaps indefinitely. We hope it's temporarily, but that's contingent upon the economy improving," said Richard Morin, a senior editor at Pew and the study's author. "These aren't slackers. These are people who are in transition, and their lives are on hold."
As this graph of the most recent Case Schiller house price index by Calculated Risk shows, housing prices still have a way to go to fall to their longer term mean:
so the Boomerang generation is going to have a difficult time buying their first home for a few years to come.
I'm not saying that housing is set to take off this month or this year. Nevertheless, in a secular sense, a long term bottom in the housing market is taking place now. Thirty years ago it was 1980, and the Baby bust of Gen X was giving way to the echo boom of Gen Y/ Millenials. This means that every single day, there is more and more demographic pressure building up on the demand side of the housing market, and that pressure is going to continue to increase for the next 10+ years. | <urn:uuid:42b99fef-74bb-4b9c-b3c0-8f14a718cde4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bonddad.blogspot.com/2010/01/pent-up-housing-demand.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97395 | 1,761 | 2.671875 | 3 |
The Isaac Homestead WMA was purchased by Montana Fish, Wildlife, & Parks (MFWP) to provide hunting opportunities while also maintaining wildlife populations and the unique riparian ecosystem in a viable and healthy condition. The pastures in the proposed project area currently contain stands of rank, minimally productive vegetation that is too thick to provide ideal nesting and brood rearing habitat for pheasants and other bird species. The proposed action is to temporarily allow grazing during the winter season (Jan 15 – Mar 15), when usage of the WMA is at its lowest. Grazing will allow plants to restore vigor and seedlings to establish. The result will be healthy plant communities that are diverse, provide excellent nesting and brood rearing cover for birds, and improved forage for a variety of wildlife species. Utilizing the EA and public comment, a decision must be rendered by FWP which addresses the concerns and issues identified for this proposed action. FWP’s analysis supports the agricultural lease of Isaac Homestead WMA as proposed. We find there to be no significant impacts on the human and physical environments associated with this project. Therefore, we conclude that the Environmental Assessment is the appropriate level of analysis, and that an Environmental Impact Statement is not required. After review of this proposal, it is our decision to accept the draft EA as supplemented by this Decision Notice as final, and to recommend the continuation of the grazing lease for Isaac Homestead WMA.
Jeremy Banfield FWP Wildlife Biologist P.O. Box 428 Forsyth, MT 59327 | <urn:uuid:e1620cd4-b5ce-4026-9260-b0ae01d1a631> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fwp.mt.gov/news/publicNotices/decisionNotices/pn_0624.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945772 | 317 | 2.03125 | 2 |
One of the South’s most notable characteristics is the language. It’s not just an accent or how slow one talks.
It’s the words themselves.
I got reminded of that this week when a friend told a story about listening to a church choir where he claimed “none of them could carry a tune in a bucket.”
That got me pondering those expressions native to this region that folks over 50 remember hearing so much from parents, and other adults when growing up. So many of these phrases younger folks haven’t heard. For some of us, they bring back memories of certain characters and times.
So, at the risk of sounding like I grew up in Mayberry, I thought I’d explore the subject.
Certain sayings described the mental abilities of others. They went something like “his elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top,” or “the light’s on but nobody’s home,” or even bluntly “he’s as dumb as a box of rocks.”
Others in this vein were “she's as nutty as a fruitcake,” or that someone “wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.” Somehow, Forrest Gump’s “stupid is as stupid does” seems to belong here as well.
A lot of friends gave me some of the most memorable phrases that were handed down to them.
Around athletics, I always remember former Shelby football coach Jim Taylor calling some of his young players “green as a gourd.” Another Taylor gem was telling players, in reference to the hard work needed to excel, “you have to get past the thorn to get to the rose!”
And Sid Bryson recalled former Gardner-Webb coach Norman Harris saying “have a hunch, bet a bunch!” frequently. Also, athletes in a variety of sports were called “as slow as molasses.”
Many had to do with the weather. How many times have you heard “it’s gonna come up a cloud” or that was “a toad-strangling rain” or a “gully-washer.”
Words of astonishment included “Well I’ll be John Brown!” or as Sheriff Andy Taylor would say “if that don’t beat all.”
Another reaction we hear from some folks was “Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise…” And someone who was in trouble was “…up the creek without a paddle.”
We used to call someone doing well financially “living in high cotton.” I once heard an older gentleman compliment a pastor on a sermon, telling him “Preacher, you were walking in tall timber today.”
In describing someone, one friend said they were “so bowlegged she couldn’t hem a hog in a ditch!”
There are hundreds more of these, and it’s a shame they seem to be falling by the wayside. To outsiders, such expressions may sound a little backwards but hey – we’re the ones who know exactly what they mean.
So to finish, maybe the reminder “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” is appropriate. | <urn:uuid:2afdeb4f-bbb5-4222-a3fd-b888fea89653> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shelbystar.com/news/local/along-route-74-old-expressions-liven-up-the-language-1.113003 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9754 | 724 | 2.109375 | 2 |
NARRATOR: In this case, you’ll see four magazines featuring O’Keeffe. They range from 1960 to 1968. As portraits of an artist, the photographs here are extremely different from the ones we saw earlier.
BARBARAHASKELL: Beginning in 1929, as O’Keeffe began to essentially reassert her own independence. She realized that the perception of herself through Stieglitz ’s photographs as a sexual being was detrimental to the critical reading of her work, and she began to reframe her public persona.
NARRATOR: By the 1960s, that transformation was complete. She had carefully crafted her image as a solitary, independent artist, identified with the landscape of the American west. These magazine spreads bear witness to her transformation into an American icon. She had achieved a level of fame and celebrity achieved by few artists. | <urn:uuid:c0213d29-d3d0-42f9-b574-85cf6792f5c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://whitney.org/WatchAndListen/Artists?context=Artist&context_id=962&play_id=249 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975242 | 182 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Ever wanted to rule an empire? Well now you can, virtually at least. Register with Historvius and you can be the king of the castle, or the emperor of the Colosseum! Sign up now and start uploading comments and photos to historic sites you've visited. You'll get points for your activity and those with the most points on any historic site get to rule. Don't get complacent though, as any ruler knows, there's always someone waiting in the wings to usurp your crown…
- The Erechtheion
- Alt Name:
- Ancient Greece
- 500BC - 401BC
- The Acropolis, The Parthenon,
The Propylaia , The Beule Gate,
about The Erechtheion
The Erechtheion is a well preserved ancient temple within the Acropolis complex where its believed namesake, the legendary Greek king Erechtheus, is thought to have come to worship.
Immersed in myth and legend, the Erechtheion was home to several cults, including those of Poseidon, Athena and, of course, Erechtheus himself.
Completed in around 406BC, the Erechtheion is a distinctive building whose large columns are statues depicting women. These statues are known as Karyatides, derived from the fact that they were inspired by the women of Karyes in Lakonia.
Four of the original six statues are now on display in the adjoining Acropolis Museum having been replaced by copies in the Erechtheion itself. Of the remaining two statues, one is in the British Museum as part of the Elgin Marbles. Only a few fragments of the final statue survive, also displayed in the Acropolis Museum.
Just as empires rise and fall so do entry fees and opening hours! While we work as hard as we can to ensure the information provided here about The Erechtheion is as accurate as possible, the changing nature of certain elements mean we can't absolutely guarantee that these details won't become a thing of the past. If you know of any information on this page that needs updating you can add a comment above or now.
Address: The Erechtheion, 2-4 Makrygianni St., Athens
Phone: 210 9238175, 210 9238724
The Erechtheion is open 8am-8pm in summer, 8am-6pm in winter (sometimes earlier). Closed 25-26 Dec, 1 Jan, 25 March, 1 May. Full €12, Reduced €6. Valid (for 48hrs) for Acropolis Museum, Acropolis of Athens, Ancient Agora of Athens, Archaeological Museum of Kerameikos, Kerameikos, Museum of the Ancient Agora, North slope of Acropolis, Olympieio, Roman Agora of Athens, South Slope of Acropolis
Historvius is not responsible for the content of external sites.
?The Erechtheion is ruled by
Emperor : -
King : -
Prince : -
Duke : -
Lord : - | <urn:uuid:192ac6e6-389e-42a4-91bb-9c5962a8d786> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.historvius.com/the-erechtheion-1131/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915185 | 650 | 2.046875 | 2 |
The Center for Gender in Organizations (CGO) serves as a leadership forum for scholars and executives determined to improve organizational effectiveness by strengthening gender equity and diversity in the workplace. Our work has four powerful dimensions:
- Action — We are delivering a call to action that is helping executives understand that gender issues truly matter and that dealing strategically and systematically with gender equity in work practices improves organizational performance.
- Research — We conduct rigorous original research that serves to advance thinking and practice in our areas of specialization and to give our members, sponsors and the public important strategies, tools and metrics for building gender equity.
- Outreach — We serve as speakers, consultants, trainers, authors and respected experts for the media as part of a highly focused dissemination program.
- Membership — We are a membership organization helping scholars, practitioners and others benefit from and contribute to a growing body of important work.
CGO is an integral part of Simmons School of Management, which serves as a center for teaching, research and discourse on women and leadership. | <urn:uuid:36e12dbb-9b31-4e7a-8e36-fe3c845d47b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.simmons.edu/som/research/centers/cgo/about/mission.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946785 | 206 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Getting experience in your field BEFORE you graduate is crucial
Benefits of an Internship
An internship is one of the most important things you can do in your college career:
- The percent of interns that convert to full-time employment is nearly 50%.
- Students from internship programs are “more successful as employees”
- Interns receiving full-time job offers has increased more than 10% in the last 7 years
Internships provide you the opportunity to:
- Establish professional contacts within your field
- Receive on-the-job training and experience industry firsthand
- Make informed career decisions
- Apply new skills and experiences to classroom instruction
- Gain academic credit toward graduation
- Enhance resumes, references, and work experience
- Develop professional skills
- Use specialized facilities and equipment on the job
Required versus Optional Internships
- At Davenport, all Allied Health programs in the College of Health Professions require a practicum
- The colleges of Business and Technology require internships in some academic programs
- Internships are highly recommended for all students in these colleges
To learn more about internships in each of DU's colleges, visit the link below:
Credit v. Non-Credit Internship
- Credit and non-credit bearing internships help students gain experience
- Some DU academic programs require internships and they are optional electives in all programs.
- Regional Employment and Internship Managers can assist students to develop non-credit and credit bearing internships. | <urn:uuid:412739e5-337c-4c5e-9e98-4cf3ac34cf1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.davenport.edu/internships/students | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929689 | 308 | 2.21875 | 2 |
This little guy is “Ace”. Ace was found near an Ace Hardware store in Detroit last Friday, unbelievably emaciated and near death. He was turned over to Detroit Animal Control who operate under a Detroit law that says they must hold him for four days unless the owner retrieves him. After that, he will be euthanized because adoption of pit bulls to non-owners is not allowed in the city.
Ace’s story has taken off like wildfire. A Facebook page was created. The page had around 4,000 likes this morning. As I type this Tuesday evening, it has almost 7,300 (300+ just while I was writing it.) An online petition was put up. It currently has over 5,700.
Why the hue and cry? Because there are animal rescuers ready, willing and able to take Ace and rehabilitate him back to health. These are certified, trained dog lovers who have reached out to take a personal interest in helping Ace. The group, the K9 Stray Rescue League, has volunteers speaking with media and working with the Detroit City Council in an effort to resolve this situation in a way that prevents the animal shelter from killing Ace. The Detroit Humane Society and the Detroit Dog Rescue have also offered to rescue him. The Facebook page is filled with offers of people willing to bring this dog in and nurse him back to health.
Right now, things don’t look so good. At a City Council meeting today, City Council President Charles Pugh took up the cause of Ace and asked that a resolution be drafted that would shield the city from any liability and allow Ace to be adopted. Because of a law, an exception will need to be made.
The fate of Ace the dog is still up in the air. Tuesday, Detroit City Council drafted a resolution to save the stray’s life, but it may not be enough.
“It seems like a simple request. If we can make sure that we are not liable for what happens with the dog if we were to transfer it to this rescue league, then why is that such a big deal?” City Council President Charles Pugh said. [...]
Tereasa Michalak showed reporters a license from the Department of Agriculture to prove her group, K-9 Strays, is legitimate. They’re asking for Ace to be transferred to their care, taking cost and liability away from the city. [...]
Later Tuesday, Michalak and her group met with a representative from the Health Department.
“They told me they would not be breaking any of the procedures that are currently in place, that they will not release any kind of pit bull, including Ace,” Michalak told us.
The group is now considering legal action against the city. For now, the city’s policy sticks. Thursday will be the end of four business days. Friday, Ace is scheduled to be euthanized.
Ace’s compelling story is resurrecting an on-going debate about breed-specific bans of particular types of dogs. Earlier this year, Rep. Timothy Bledsoe (D-Grosse Pointe) sponsored a bill, Michigan House Bill 4714, that would ban ownership of pit bull breeds (and mixes) in Michigan within ten years. Outside of simple common sense, there is ample evidence and significant studies that show that aggressive dog behavior toward humans is not related to breed but to how the dog is raised.
Fortunately, Bledsoe’s bill is going nowhere. Rep. Hugh Crawford (R-Novi), chair of the Michigan House Regulatory Reform Committee where Bledsoe’s ill-informed bill sits isn’t having it.
It was assigned to my committee and I have no intention of running the bill through the committee, particularly at this time…As a politician, I’ve learned never to say never, because some day there may be a compelling reason to take testimony on this.
But I don’t think it’s necessary for our state to be in the dog policing business. We don’t need a ban on a particular breed for life here in the next 10 years, which is what the bill was. I have no intention of hearing it.
There are numerous municipalities across Michigan that do have pit bull bans or where there are restrictions against adoption that ensure the destruction of strays. As unfortunate as Ace’s situation is, it is having the desirable impact of bringing the conversation back into the forefront. Council President Pugh, at least, is bringing some common sense to the table:
“We don’t want our policy to get in the way of the dog’s life,” Pugh said. “If we can save the dog, then let’s save the dog.”
Council is expected to vote on a resolution during today’s session and members said they’d like to re-examine the pit bull policy at a later date.
Ace’s plight is also giving folks like Tereasa Michalak and her group the opportunity to advocate for changing the law that destroys animals who could be saved. Her group is meeting with Detroit Mayor Bing and “will be sitting down after the holidays with the city to try to change the policy and allow shelter to shelter rescues”.
This is a tough story for my wife Anne and I to follow. This past summer we lost our pit bull mix, Hara (pictured on the right.) I had never been a pit bull-lover before I met her but she soon became my biggest fan and I hers. I came to love her probably more than any other pet I’ve ever had. Gentle around people, loving, affectionate and obedient, Hara won me over.
I understand the argument and even fear that some have about specific dog breeds. For many years it was German Shepherds. Then it was Doberman Pinschers. Then it was Rottweilers. Now its Pit Bulls. But, in every case, the desire to ban these animals arises from the fact that they happen to be the “attack dog du jour” for the group of people that desire to have powerful, vicious, aggressive dogs. The dogs aren’t inherently aggressive toward people; they are trained from birth to be that way. The fault lies with those that bring them up to be vicious and not with the dogs themselves. Banning these animals does not address the root cause: humans who raise attack dogs. Pit bulls aren’t the first breed to bred this way and they most certainly will not be the last.
I am hopeful that the animal rescue groups working on behalf of Ace will ultimately be successful and that he will not be killed by the City of Detroit this week. He seems to me to be the Poster Dog for moving past breed-specific laws to a more sensible approach that actually saves dogs of all breeds. Wouldn’t it be amazing if this little guy was the catalyst for that?
This story has been updated HERE. | <urn:uuid:0d5a44ef-36e7-4178-a47f-017403152b85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eclectablog.com/2011/11/detroits-latest-hero-ace-pit-bull-will.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969481 | 1,467 | 1.5 | 2 |
The Georgia Department of Transportation in Cartersville is gearing up for possible winter weather in northwest Georgia. Here's a press release from District 6, which covers Bartow, Cherokee and Paulding counties:
The first batch of the 2013 winter weather is expected to hit Northwest Georgia late this afternoon and evening with the mountains getting some snow accumulation. This fast approaching winter weather episode is a reminder for the state that despite the relative warm weather of the last two weeks, Old Man Winter is here and may stay for some time. For crews with the Georgia Department of Transportation in Northwest Georgia, that means the potential for long days and even longer nights keeping the roads clear and safe for the traveling public.
Georgia DOT workers in Northwest Georgia are busy this afternoon gearing up for this potential winter weather event. They are getting their trucks mounted and ready to respond if and when the time comes for clearing the roads from snow and/or ice. “Our road clearing crews always hope for the best, but train and prepare for the worst,” said Ken Howard, maintenance engineer at the DOT office in Cartersville. “These crews will be happy if winter weather never hits Northwest Georgia. That way they can continue to work on the roads, instead of clearing them. But when inclement weather comes, our main concern becomes road conditions. Keeping the roads safe and open for emergency vehicles is our first priority. We monitor changing weather conditions and treat roads as needed. Interstates are cleared first, and then state routes from the most heavily traveled to the least traveled,” Howard explained
The state Department of Transportation in northwest Georgia has the following resources to deal with any winter weather event:
- 270 employees on call, covering 5,117 lane miles;
- 4,885 tons of salt;
- 6,370 tons of gravel; and
- 120 pieces of snow-removal equipment
GDOT is currently monitoring the weather forecasts and road conditions and will respond accordingly and specifically target areas vulnerable to freezing, like hills, ramps, bridges and interchanges.
However, motorists are urged to:
Slow down and stay behind the snowplows. The road behind the plow will be the safest place to drive. Allow at least ten car lengths between your vehicle and snowplows or hopper spreaders.
Do not pass. The plows are wide, and sometimes a group of trucks will work in tandem to clear snow quickly, especially on major highways.
Be particularly aware of black ice conditions on surfaces such as bridge decks and entrance and exit ramps late tonight and the early hours of tomorrow morning.
Remember that technology helps, but only to a point. Four-wheel drive, anti-lock brakes and traction control are beneficial advancements in today's cars, trucks and SUVs, but they can't take the place of good driving habits and the need to reduce speed on snowy or icy roads.
Call 511 or visit www.georgia-navigator.com to get current information on road conditions. Georgia 511 is a free phone service that provides real-time traffic and travel information statewide, such as traffic conditions, incidents, lane closures, and delays due to inclement weather. Callers also can transfer to operators to request assistance or report incidents 24 hours a day, seven days a week. More information is available at www.511ga.org
Motorists can access real-time, statewide, route-specific information on accidents, road work, traffic and weather conditions through Georgia 511—a free phone service—or online at 511ga.org.
On its Facebook page, GDOT urges motorists to be especially aware of potential hazardous situations, including:
- Bridges, as black ice forms there first and can reform quickly;
- Fallen trees, with root systems weakened by drought and saturated by recent heavy rains, the potential exists for strong winds to cause trees to fall onto or adjacent to roadways;
- Traffic signals not operating because of power outages; and
- High-profile vehicles, as they can be difficult to control in high winds. | <urn:uuid:0b8009e3-3329-4f1d-aa02-b1f9dace2277> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://canton-ga.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/gdot-gears-up-for-snow-ice-with-salt-gravel-aa6045c7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943269 | 829 | 1.757813 | 2 |
The Idea in Brief
The average company has gone too far in cutting back on administrative help. Skilled executive assistants can boost productivity, assist in on-boarding new managers, provide reverse mentoring, and act as the airtraffic controller of an office, particularly for managers who travel frequently.
Not every manager makes good use of an assistant. This is a particular problem for younger managers, who’ve grown up with technology that’s increased their self-sufficiency. The two keys to maximizing the value of an assistant are delegating wisely and encouraging the executive assistant to stretch and add responsibilities.
Hiring a good executive assistant can be more difficult than filling other management jobs. Personal chemistry is paramount. The job requires emotional intelligence, good judgment, and capacity for foresight.
Artwork: Xavier Veilhan, Man on the Phone, 2006, painted polyester resin, 27.25' x 11' x 7', permanent installation, Cité Internationale, Lyon
Among the most striking details of the corporate era depicted in the AMC series Mad Men, along with constant smoking and mid-day drinking, is the army of secretaries who populate Sterling Cooper, the 1960s ad agency featured in the show. The secretary of those days has gone the way of the carbon copy and been replaced by the executive assistant, now typically reserved for senior management. Technologies like e-mail, voice mail, mobile devices, and online calendars have allowed managers at all levels to operate with a greater degree of self-sufficiency. At the same time, companies have faced enormous pressure to cut costs, reduce head count, and flatten organizational structures. As a result, the numbers of assistants at lower corporate levels have dwindled in most corporations. That’s unfortunate, because effective assistants can make enormous contributions to productivity at all levels of the organization.
At very senior levels, the return on investment from a skilled assistant can be substantial. Consider a senior executive whose total compensation package is $1 million annually, who works with an assistant who earns $80,000. For the organization to break even, the assistant must make the executive 8% more productive than he or she would be working solo—for instance, the assistant needs to save the executive roughly five hours in a 60-hour workweek. In reality, good assistants save their bosses much more than that. They ensure that meetings begin on time with prep material delivered in advance. They optimize travel schedules and enable remote decision making, keeping projects on track. And they filter the distractions that can turn a manager into a reactive type who spends all day answering e-mail instead of a leader who proactively sets the organization’s agenda. As Robert Pozen writes in this issue: A top-notch assistant “is crucial to being productive.”
That’s true not only for top executives. In their zeal to cut administrative expenses, many companies have gone too far, leaving countless highly paid middle and upper managers to arrange their own travel, file expense reports, and schedule meetings. Some companies may be drawn to the notion of egalitarianism they believe this assistant-less structure represents—when workers see the boss loading paper into the copy machine, the theory goes, a “we’re all in this together” spirit is created. But as a management practice, the structure rarely makes economic sense. Generally speaking, work should be delegated to the lowest-cost employee who can do it well. Although companies have embraced this logic by outsourcing work to vendors or to operations abroad, back at headquarters they ignore it, forcing top talent to misuse their time. As a longtime recruiter for executive assistants, I’ve worked with many organizations suffering from the same problem: There’s too much administrative work and too few assistants to whom it can be assigned.
Granting middle managers access to an assistant—or shared resources—can give a quick boost to productivity even at lean, well-run companies. Firms should also think about the broader developmental benefits of providing assistants for up-and-coming managers. The real payoff may come when the manager arrives in a job a few levels up better prepared and habitually more productive. An experienced assistant can be particularly helpful if the manager is a new hire. The assistant becomes a crucial on-boarding resource, helping the manager read and understand the organizational culture, guiding him or her through its different (and difficult) personalities, and serving as a sounding board during the crucial acclimation. In this way, knowledgeable assistants are more than a productivity asset: They’re reverse mentors, using their experience to teach new executives how people are expected to behave at that level in the organization.
Getting the Most from Assistants
Two critical factors determine how well a manager utilizes an assistant. The first is the executive’s willingness to delegate pieces of his or her workload to the assistant. The second is the assistant’s willingness to stretch beyond his or her comfort zone to assume new responsibilities.
The most effective executives think deeply about the pieces of their workload that can be taken on—or restructured to be partially taken on—by the assistant. Triaging and drafting replies to e-mails is a central task for virtually all assistants. Some executives have assistants listen in on phone calls in order to organize and follow up on action items. Today many assistants are taking on more-supervisory roles: They’re managing information flow, dealing with basic financial management, attending meetings, and doing more planning and organizing. Executives can help empower their assistants by making it clear to the organization that the assistant has real authority. The message the executive should convey is, “I trust this person to represent me and make decisions.” | <urn:uuid:80b74ac8-7daf-42ad-8447-e62984585105> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hbr.org/2011/05/the-case-for-executive-assistants/ar/pr | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953293 | 1,165 | 2 | 2 |
Full-fledged, high-quality document and CAD/GIS renderings take advanced technology. Our newly-developed print head has two nozzle lines instead of just one. This increases the number of nozzles by a factor of two. The high-density, high-speed and high-quality print head comes with 2,560 nozzles per color (6 colors) with a total of 15,360 nozzles in total. The addition of a second nozzle line to the print head means that speed is increased dramatically; this is due to twice as many nozzles firing droplets of ink during one pass of the print head, thus applying more ink to the media. The addition of the second nozzle also means that the print head may travel faster across the media. | <urn:uuid:dd401cf8-212f-4f8d-b3d2-58128ac615c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/office/imageprograf_series/imageprograf_ipf500/imageprograf_ipf500?selectedName=Features&fileName=0901e02480037004_feature7.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960582 | 157 | 1.515625 | 2 |
RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is one of the technologies that helped blogging grow hugely. By offering a simple method for others to subscribe to or otherwise access the content of a dynamic site, it made blogs, with their rapid pace of updates, more accessible and approachable.
For a time, an RSS feed literally determined, to many, whether a site was a blog or not. RSS was even touted as the future of content reading on the Web and was widely adopted by various mainstream media outlets in a variety of ways. Soon enough, RSS was everywhere: forums, social networks and more were all using the format and, since it was an open standard, developers were building a wide variety of products on it.
However, RSS came with its own set of problems. For content creators, it enabled scraping and other forms of content theft, kept visitors off the site and discouraged discussion on posts. For readers, though it enabled them to read more blogs and sites than would have otherwise been possible, there was still a serious problem with information overload and most people found that their RSS readers were filled with garbage.
For years, bloggers and others have been encouraging readers and friends to skip on using an RSS reader, instead using tools like Twitter and Facebook to keep on top of the news that’s relevant to them.
However, RSS may be in worse shape than previously thought. Recently both Facebook and Twitter disabled RSS functionality in their services, favoring a complete “walled garden” approach.
The future of RSS is starting to look pretty bleak and, though it likely won’t “die” anytime soon, it’s already lost much of its relevance.
That, in turn, could have a drastic impact on the future of the Web, perhaps bigger than anyone realizes right now.
Burying the Open Standard
Although RSS was never a perfect standard, it has always been an open one. More than that, it’s easy for developers to either add into their existing products, such as blogging platforms and CMSes, or to create new products, such as RSS readers.
We’re talking more than just Google Reader here. Yahoo! Pipes, for example, enabled users to create and build applications on RSS with nothing but a few clicks, while FriendFeed, especially during the early days, relied on RSS to make its product run.
However, with both Twitter and Facebook shifting away from RSS, the usefulness of the technology as an aggregation tool is severely limited. With so much of the average user’s data now locked up behind walled gardens, RSS simply can’t provide the “all in one” experience it was thought to be ideal for.
To make matters worse, with so many blogs and other sites already using Twitter and Facebook as their main forms of syndication, RSS just isn’t that critical to bloggers either. After all, when most of your “subscribers” are on RSS-free social networks, the standard starts to become less important.
RSS is rapidly becoming less useful for readers and less important for bloggers. As such, it’s likely just a matter of time before it starts to slip into the sunset, a forgotten technology that is barely used.
Looking Ahead to an RSS-less Web
Most “average” Web users won’t notice much difference if RSS disappears. Although they’ve seen the icons and maybe clicked on them a few times, most people never really used RSS, finding it too complex or not seeing how it met any of their needs.
For most, the shift to walled gardens like Facebook and Twitter had been happening for a long time and the loss of RSS as a competitive standard doesn’t really change anything.
One thing that does change, however, is who can develop applications for these gardens. Previously, anyone could have build tools and services for Facebook and Twitter using RSS (or at least tools to read and parse them). However, without it, Twitter and Facebook get to control who build upon their platforms, making sure every tools meets their standards.
This has the potential, depending on how Twitter and Facebook use this power, to severely limit what users can do with their services. That, in turn, can greatly impact how bloggers, webmasters and companies interact with their fans as many of them rely on Twitter and Facebook as part of their marketing.
What was important about RSS wasn’t that thousands used it to subscribe to blogs or that people built cool applications using it; instead, what was important was that it was there, preventing lockdown and ensuring companies had open platforms. RSS was, and for many sites still is, a way to retrieve content when all else fails, a way to avoid being trapped or tied down needlessly to a service or site.
Without RSS, that option is no longer there and it may wind up being a technology we don’t fight for or even miss until it’s far too late to do anything about it.
All in all, RSS is in jeopardy and few people seem to be interested in doing anything about it. RSS’ problems may have pushed it to the backseat, but its importance and usefulness should mean it has a place, even if it’s only as an open protocol for development.
Just because it never caught on with the public doesn’t mean that RSS isn’t an important part of the Web. Letting RSS go quietly into the night is a very dangerous proposition and one that may cause problems even for those who have never heard of RSS or looked at a reader.
Unfortunately, the dangers to RSS are greater than I thought. If RSS isn’t dying, both as a means of subscription and as a protocol for development, it is certainly very sick and has seen much better days.
For all of its flaws, the Web needs RSS (or something like it) to ensure that we can’t be boxed in needlessly and that sites can’t simply locks users and developers down. It’s an escape hatch from walled gardens and, without it, the Web is just one step closer to being a virtual prison for our data.
While this is the way the Web’s been going for a long time, the loss of RSS may mark a major turning point in that process – a turning point few are going to notice as it happens.
Missed These Awesome Posts?
Get exclusive content, deals & much more when you join our weekly newsletter. Simply enter your email address below and hit the [Submit] button. | <urn:uuid:0eabe7cf-dcfa-471e-9d57-dae8a4365fc2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2011/05/11/death-rss-endangers-internet/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967374 | 1,358 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Unemployment among youth, Summer 2007
August 26, 2007
In July 2007, 2.6 million youths aged 16 to 24 years old were unemployed—not working, but actively looking for work and available to take a job.
The youth unemployment rate (10.8 percent) was little different from July 2006.
The July 2007 unemployment rates for young men (11.1 percent), women (10.4 percent), whites (9.3 percent), Asians (7.7 percent), and Hispanics (11.8 percent) showed little change from a year earlier. The rate for black youth (20.5 percent) decreased over the year.
These data are a product of the Current Population Survey. The data are not seasonally adjusted. Find out more in "Employment and Unemployment Among Youth—Summer 2007," (PDF) (TXT) news release USDL 07-1284.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Editor's Desk, Unemployment among youth, Summer 2007 on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2007/aug/wk4/art02.htm (visited May 23, 2013).
Spotlight on Statistics: Productivity
This edition of Spotlight on Statistics examines labor productivity trends from 2000 through 2010 for selected industries and sectors within the nonfarm business sector of the U.S. economy. Read more » | <urn:uuid:b7c75869-e095-45db-82dd-cffb67b4abac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stats.bls.gov/opub/ted/2007/aug/wk4/art02.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913258 | 291 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Studies Dissect Depression’s Circuitry
12 January 2013. With its wide range of symptoms and variable severity, depression might seem hopelessly complicated. But a spate of recent studies suggests that this complexity is resolvable at the brain circuit level. A trio of papers in Nature—two from Karl Deisseroth's group at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and one from Ming-Hu Han's laboratory at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City—uses optogenetics to dissect the serotonergic and dopaminergic contributions to depression-related behaviors in rodents. A fourth paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry led by Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin in Madison reports that antidepressants help sustain activity in the nucleus accumbens (NAc), as well as connectivity between frontal cortex and the striatum
The results offer a more refined picture of the brain basis of depression by piecing together how various brain regions already implicated in the disorder might interact. For example, brain imaging studies have found an underactive medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in depression, and stimulating it has antidepressant-like effects in humans and rodents alike (e.g., Mayberg et al., 2005; Hamani et al., 2010). As the place where high-level cognition happens and goal-directed behaviors are hatched, however, the mPFC projects widely throughout the brain, making it hard to discern the relevant pathways.
The optogenetics studies, with their ability to switch specified neurons on and off (see SRF related news story) help resolve this—in rodent models of depression, at least. The first study finds that activating connections between mPFC and the serotonin-containing neurons of the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) can shake rats out of passive states that have been related to depression. The second and third optogenetics studies center on the midbrain dopamine neurons, and find roles—albeit contradictory—for their phasic activation in depression-related phenotypes, and parse the involvement of ventral tegmental area (VTA) connections with mPFC and NAc. The fourth paper, a human brain imaging study, looks more closely at the time course of activation of the NAc, and frontal-striatal connectivity before and after antidepressant treatment.
At the serotonergic source
In the first study, published online 18 November, first author Melissa Warden and colleagues monitored how rats reacted to the forced swim test, a common measure of depression-related responses. Rodents are placed in a tank of water from which they cannot escape, and they respond to this undesirable situation with either swimming (considered a proactive response) or immobile floating (a passive response). At the very least, the test is predictive of antidepressant response, with antidepressants swaying behavior toward more swimming (Cryan et al., 2005).
Using rats made to express the light-sensitive channel channelrhodopsin-2 in mPFC neurons, the researchers found that illuminating mPFC did not alter the rats’ behavior during the forced swim test. Noting that the antidepressant-like effect of mPFC stimulation requires intact serotonin systems (Hamani et al., 2010), the researchers next tried a more selective mPFC activation, targeting only those mPFC neurons projecting to the serotonin-containing DRN. Activating this pathway boosted swimming, which tracked with the on/off pattern of light. When the mPFC-DRN connection was activated on dry land, however, no light-induced movement emerged, suggesting that this connection promoted a proactive behavioral state rather than simply driving locomotion.
The researchers also targeted mPFC projections to the lateral habenula (LHb), a subcortical region implicated in depression that connects to dopamine and serotonin-containing neurons. Selectively activating mPFC-LHb projections decreased the amount of swimming, suggesting that passive states are also actively driven by mPFC neurons (see SRF related news story).
Dopamine bursts onto the scene
In the second paper, published online 12 December, first authors Dipesh Chaudhury and Jessica Walsh of Han’s lab focused on the dopamine-containing neurons of the VTA, which were made to express channelrhodopsin-2 in mice. Previous studies have found that the pattern of spiking in these neurons matters, with phasic, high-frequency bursts encoding reward signals and phasic activity more commonly found in mice susceptible to the ill effects of a social-defeat stress model of depression. This paradigm places a mouse in the same cage as an older mouse, which attacks the younger mouse for two minutes. After repeated bouts of this bullying, “susceptible” mice begin to show a lack of interest in social interactions and sucrose, whereas “resilient” mice do not.
The researchers found that phasic activation of the VTA dopamine neurons during the social defeat paradigm increased susceptibility to its depression-like effects, but tonic, evenly spaced patterns of activation did not. In fact, phasic activation could convert resilient mice to susceptible mice: those mice who had normal social interaction and sucrose preference after 10 days of social defeat stress could suddenly lose interest in other mice and sucrose upon phasic activation of their VTA dopamine neurons.
Next, the researchers parsed the dopamine pathways contributing to susceptibility. Phasic activation of the VTA’s connection with the NAc produced decreases in social interaction and sucrose preference, whereas inhibition of this connection promoted resilient responses. In contrast, phasic activation of the VTA’s connection with the mPFC had no effect, but inhibiting it produced susceptibility. This suggests that the VTA participates in complementary circuits that produce opposite effects on depression-related behaviors.
Or dopamine for depression relief?
In the third paper, first authors Kay Tye, Julie Mirzabekov, and Melissa Warden of Deisseroth’s lab focused on the role of dopamine neurons of the VTA in producing a collection of depression-like behaviors in rodents. Optogenetically inhibiting these neurons resulted in an abrupt decrease in escape-related behavior in the tail-suspension test, and a decrease in sucrose preference. When these behaviors were induced with chronic mild stress (e.g., overcrowded housing, white noise, and continuous cage illumination), phasically activating VTA dopamine neurons could reverse these depression-like behaviors.
Though this indicates that the depression-like responses in the chronic mild stress paradigm recruit the same dopamine VTA circuitry, it is not consistent with the findings from Han’s lab, which related increased phasic activation to depression-like outcomes. The authors note that both increased and decreased dopamine VTA firing have been related to depression, and they suggest that this may reflect the different models used. “It is important to emphasize in this context that the effects of stress on the mesolimbic dopamine system are highly complex, as different stressors can cause opposite responses from VTA neurons depending on pre-exposure and severity,” they write.
Antidepressants sustain brain activation
The fourth study, published online 7 December, examined the time course of brain activation in people with depression as they tried to boost their positive feelings in an emotion regulation task. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), first author Aaron Heller and colleagues asked whether depression was related to an inability to engage the relevant brain regions, or rather an inability to sustain their engagement. Their previous study had suggested the latter, with people with major depressive disorder lacking the sustained activation of NAc and frontal-striatal connectivity found in healthy controls (Heller et al., 2009). Building on this, the new study asked whether taking antidepressants helped sustain this activity. It did: two months of either venlafaxine or fluoxetine treatment increased the sustained activity in 21 depressed patients, and those with the largest gains also reported the largest increases in positive affect.
Together, the studies give rise to a picture of multiple, interacting circuits that contribute to the assortment of symptoms that characterize depression. Future research may reveal how one circuit could be favored over another, or how the tone of activity that normally runs through a circuit is determined. In the meantime, the studies suggest that new strategies for depression treatment may do well to be circuit specific, and temporally precise.—Michele Solis.
Warden MR, Selimbeyoglu A, Mirzabekov JJ, Lo M, Thompson KR, Kim SY, Adhikari A, Tye KM, Frank LM, Deisseroth K. A prefrontal cortex-brainstem neuronal projection that controls response to behavioural challenge. Nature. 2012 Nov 18. Abstract
Chaudhury D, Walsh JJ, Friedman AK, Juarez B, Ku SM, Koo JW, Ferguson D, Tsai HC, Pomeranz L, Christoffel DJ, Nectow AR, Ekstrand M, Domingos A, Mazei-Robison MS, Mouzon E, Lobo MK, Neve RL, Friedman JM, Russo SJ, Deisseroth K, Nestler EJ, Han MH. Rapid regulation of depression-related behaviours by control of midbrain dopamine neurons. Nature. 2012 Dec 12. Abstract
Tye KM, Mirzabekov JJ, Warden MR, Ferenczi EA, Tsai HC, Finkelstein J, Kim SY, Adhikari A, Thompson KR, Andalman AS, Gunaydin LA, Witten IB, Deisseroth K. Dopamine neurons modulate neural encoding and expression of depression-related behaviour. Nature. 2012 Dec 12. Abstract
Heller AS, Johnstone T, Light SN, Peterson MJ, Kolden GG, Kalin NH, Davidson RJ. Relationships Between Changes in Sustained Fronto-Striatal Connectivity and Positive Affect in Major Depression Resulting From Antidepressant Treatment. Am J Psychiatry. 2012 Dec 7. Abstract | <urn:uuid:8765602c-2f04-4e43-a407-e4942650fefc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://schizophreniaforum.org/new/detailprint.asp?id=1843 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908184 | 2,057 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Math Science Innovation Center's 18th Annual Richmond Metro Science Fair
The 18th annual Richmond Metro Science Fair happened Saturday at Powhatan High School.
Andrew Sylvester of Mills Godwin and Saumil Bandyopadhyay from the Maggie Walker Governor’s School were the grand prize winners at the event presented each year by the Math Science Innovation Center.
Vogel: The first place in each senior division category becomes a finalist for one of two trips to the International Science Fair, which will be in San Jose, California this year in May.
The Center’s Martha Vogel is coordinator of the Metro Science Fair. The winners were selected from 13 finalists chosen after a day of presentations and judging.
Vogel: And what's kind of interesting this year is none of the finalists has been a finalist in the past. It's not -- they're all new to senior division first place winners.
Winners of this science fair have traditionally done well at the national events.
Vogel: We had two winners from last year who went to Reno, Nevada, competed. We had one student won a third place in his category. And a $1,000. And the other won a first place in his category for the first time for any of our Metro Richmond students.
Vogel pointed out that the Math Science Center is especially grateful to the judges.
Vogel: The judges are amazing. They are giving their time just for food; on Saturdays to come out and spend time with the students and they are coming from all over the area. We’ve got people from all the universities in the area, community colleges, we have people from large corporations and small companies and some people are retired, some are self-employed, and they just are interested in science and they are interested in seeing people come and do well. And they can try to encourage them in science.
Enthusiasm is obvious when you talk to the students about their projects.
Student One: Samuel Wojcicki, Powhatan High School, sophomore year. I’ve done this before in the Junior Division, but never in the Senior Division. I actually tested the impact of negative social incident on student’s ability to test and testing scores.
Student Two: I’m Meghan Melia from Deep Run High School, ninth grade. My project is the effect of texting on math homework accuracy.
Student Three: Kieran Raphael. I’m from Clover Hill High School Math Science Center. I did the effect of color on the stimulation of hunger. Basically I tested to see if color would affect how much chickens ate.
Student Four: I’m Joelle Halle. I’m a freshman at the Math Science Center at Clover Hill High School. My experiment question is paw preference in cats, gender specific.
All four competitors agreed that they were a little nervous when the judges first came to talk to them, but concentrating and explaining a project that they’d been working on in some instances since last summer helped them to relax.
Vogel explained that the preliminary round began at 9am. The finals mean another round of judging.
Vogel: It is a different set of judges. The finalists will meet with five judges that have been selected to have a broad knowledge of categories and they have been briefed by the category judges as to why that student should win. And then the students will have about eight minutes with the finalist judges to have them determine who is gonna be the ones to win and go to San Jose.
As far as those four project mentioned earlier, Sam found evidence that negative social incidents can impact test score; Meghan discovered texting had a negative effect on math homework accuracy; Kieran found that chickens in red rooms eat more; and Joelle discovered more right-pawed cats.
John Ogle, WCVE News | <urn:uuid:06e84a12-3857-4633-bf51-df6a0dcf5abe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ideastations.org/radio/archive/2010-03-29-math-science-innovation-centers-18th-annual-richmond-metro-science-fair?quicktabs_radiostorytabs=description | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96865 | 806 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Hello everybody. I need some help with this. Since I'm new to programming, I don't want anybody to actually do the program for me, but if you could just name some terms or subjects I could research to figure it out I'd really appreciate it.
This program I'm working on has basically has 2 roles. It reads a very confusing file spit out by a computer that's recording rat movement through a maze, and organizes it and removes unnecessary info and creates a new file with the organized values. That part was completed by much more knowledgable person than me. It's the 2nd part that I have to do and am stuck at.
Now I need to enhance the program the other guy made so that itreads the new organized file (attachment) it just created. And I basically have to make a program that does what this researcher was doing by hand:
"2) I create a new column titled “ARM” after the last column in the spreadsheet, which is usually Column: AJ, Row 7.
3) In this column, I start with the first counter that gets to “3”, and whichever arm it corresponds to, I write down in the new column. For example, if “Reinforcement Counter for ArmFlag # 4” is the first counter to reach 3, then I would enter the number “4” in the new column, at whatever row you found the “3”.
4) I then scroll down until either the first ArmFlag counter to reach 3 has reached 5, OR, until another ArmFlag counter has reached 3. Whichever Arm this is, is recorded into the “ARM” column, in the corresponding row.
5) I then scroll down until either a) A different ArmFlag counter reaches 3, or, b) One of the same ArmFlag counters increases to the next odd number. Whichever of these happens first, is the arm that I write in the “ARM” column.
a. For Example, if the “Reinforcement Counter for ArmFlag 3” is “5,” and the next thing that happens as I scroll down the spreadsheet is that the “Reinforcement Conter for ArmFlag 3” increases to “7” in Row 25, then in Row 25 I would write “3”. However, if the next thing that happens is that the Counter for ArmFlag 2 increases from nothing to 3, then I would write “2” in the corresponding row.
6) Next, I repeat step 5, looking for the counters to increase to the next odd number (i.e 3,5,7,9,11…etc), and record which Arm it was in the “ARM” column. Thus, I follow the instructions in Step 5 precisely until I have examined the entire spreadsheet."
Like I said, you don't need to get too specific if you don't want to. I have a few books on C++, so if you could just give me some pointers I could go research them.
I'll attach the organized file.
Thanks a lot. | <urn:uuid:193c88f9-bfcd-43f8-96a3-62a13f9eb26a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cboard.cprogramming.com/cplusplus-programming/68928-reading-values-chart-creating-new-one.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966328 | 659 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Please note: This is NOT the most current catalog.
A permanent academic record of courses and grades is prepared for each student who registers in the regular academic programs of St. Olaf College. An unabridged transcript of this record is maintained in a vault in the Registrar’s Office.
Upon graduation or withdrawal from the college, a student’s academic record continues to be stored on a permanent basis at the college with a second copy deposited out of state.
A copy of the permanent record may be released only upon the written consent of the individual student or in conjunction with “Academic Records,” and “Transcripts of Academic Records” defined in The Book. Corrections of errors on the academic record must be reported to the registrar within one year.
Questions concerning transcripts and academic records should be directed to the Registrar’s Office.
Procedures affecting St. Olaf’s academic records are in accordance with the U.S. Family Privacy Law of 1974.
ACADEMIC RECORDS: FAMILY educational rights and privacy
St. Olaf protects student academic records in accordance with the U.S. Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974. Permanent records may be released only upon the written consent of the student. While the college does not send grade reports to parents or guardians, such information can be made available to eligible individuals upon special request. The provisions of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prohibit the college from releasing grades or other information about academic standing toparents unless the student has released such information in writing or unless the student is a dependent as defined by FERPA. (Essentially, a student is considered a dependent if he or she is legitimately claimed as such on the parent’s most recent IRS income tax form, or if the parent(s) is paying a portion of the stu-dent’s college expenses.) Forms are available in the Office of the Dean of Students for parents who request this information. Further information concerning St. Olaf College procedures in compliance with FERPA is available online at http://www.stolaf.edu/offices/registrar/ferpa.html.
The St. Olaf College Academic Catalog is updated once each year on paper and on the St. Olaf College website. Beginning in the summer of 2007, the St. Olaf College Academic Catalog will be available only on the website. Students must meet the graduation requirements outlined in this catalog in the year they first enter St. Olaf as degree candidates. Academic regulations and procedures as they apply to students may change during students’ time at St. Olaf, but graduation requirements remain those in effect at the time of entry.
The Registrar’s Office certifies many forms including insurance forms and student loan papers. Certifications requiring the release of a grade point average or rank in class must be accompanied by a written request from the student. Facts of public record are confirmed without written request. These include dates of attendance, graduation, and major.
A degree audit is a computerized review of a student’s course transcript matched against the college’s requirements for a degree. Except for progress in the major, the senior residency requirement, six courses with grades of C or higher in the major, and the 21-outside-course requirement, it tells the student where he/she stands relative to graduation at a given moment.
Students should report an error found on a degree audit to the registrar immediately. The student alone is responsible for understanding and meeting degree requirements.
Students have immediate access to their degree audit online and may print a copy of it at any time. Along with the deans and other academic officers, advisers and students may request printed audits on a need-to-know basis.
Copies of the degree audit are available to students free of charge on a next-day basis at the registrar’s window. Students must pick them up in person by presenting a picture identification and signing a receipt.
Like transcripts, degree audits are private documents. The Registrar’s Office cannot provide copies to third parties inside or outside of the college, including to other students acting as proxies. As is the case with all academic records, St. Olaf’s procedures regarding student degree audits are administered in com-pliance with the U.S. Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974.
CURRICULUM AND EDUCATIONAL POLICIES COMMITTEE
The Curriculum and Educational Policies Committee (CEPC) is a standing faculty committee. In addition to its curricular policy responsibilities, the CEPC:
- Establishes academic regulations, recommends
procedures and sets policy for the academic calendar.
- Hears and acts upon student petitions for
exceptions and adjustments to academic regulations, deadlines
and fees. Decisions of the CEPC are final and subject to no
Students have the right to appeal petitions denied or fees assigned by the registrar to the committee by re-submitting the petition to the registrar. If the committee has completed business for the semester or year, decisions may be delayed over a vacation break or summer. Decisions made by the committee are final.
Permission to register, as well as the release of an official transcript or a diploma, will be denied to students who have outstanding financial obligations to the college. Questions should be directed to the Business Office.
petitions, ACADEMIC HANDLING FEES
Students may petition for waivers to academic regulations, fees, and college deadlines at any time during the regular academic year. Petition forms are available from, and are to be returned to, the Registrar’s Office. A student will be notified by e-mail when a petition has been acted on. The petition remains in the student’s file in the Registrar’s Office.
Petition forms must be completed in full with appropriate faculty signatures where applicable. The petition form must be accompanied by a written explanation setting forth the circumstances of the student’s case under petition/appeal.
The Registrar’s Office assigns a handling fee for special services such as late course adds or drops and other changes in registration or appeals done by petition.
In cases where a petition is denied, or a fee charged by the registrar, the student may appeal to the Curriculum and Educational Policies Committee by resubmitting the original petition to the registrar.
Decisions of the committee are final. If the student submits an appeal after the committee has finished business for the semester or year, a decision may be delayed until after a vacation or summer break.
REFUND POLICY (WITHDRAWALS)
Tuition and fee refunds for anyone leaving within
five weeks after the beginning date of any semester will be determined
according to the following scale:
One week or less — 90% refund
Two weeks or less — 80% refund
Three weeks or less — 60% refund
Four weeks or less — 40% refund
Five weeks or less — 20% refund
Over five weeks — no refund
Students who enroll for the year but who elect to omit an Interim are not entitled to a refund of Interim tuition and room. Students not participating in an Interim program are eligible for an Interim board refund through application at the Business Office. If a student drops a performance studies course (lesson) after the fifth day of class, no refund of music lesson fees is made.
The transcript is a complete and unabridged course record. In addition to courses and grades, the transcript reports the grade point average. The student’s rank in class along with major, honors, or other distinctions are recorded on the transcript once they are fixed immediately prior to Commencement.
Transcripts of the academic record are available in three formats: official transcripts, unofficial transcripts, and transcript/degree audits. Students may print their own unofficial transcripts, accessible via the registrar’s website.
Upon written request, official transcripts may be received in person, by mail, or sent to third parties. Official transcripts are printed on college-designed paper with appropriate signatures. See the Registrar’s Office website for current transcript fees and rush fee. Only official transcripts can be mailed. Regardless of a student’s location — on or off campus — telephone requests for transcripts cannot be accepted under any condition. Under special conditions, the Registrar’s Office will accept a faxed request for an official transcript: contact the office [507-646-3015, fax 507-646-3210, e-mail: email@example.com)] to be informed on the steps.
A copy of the transcript may be released only upon the written consent of the individual student or in conjunction with “Academic Records and Transcripts” defined in The Book. For example, faculty advisers receive issues of the transcript/degree audit each year but, along with deans and other academic officers, may request them at other times. Parents may not receivestudent transcripts independent of the student’s written request unless approved in advance by the dean of students. Current students can have access to their transcripts through St. Olaf’s pages on the World Wide Web. St. Olaf’s transcript/records policy is administered in accordance with the U.S. Family EducationalRights and Privacy Act of 1974. | <urn:uuid:91a4d878-3807-433c-b95e-9fc3a1d69941> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stolaf.edu/catalog/0607/academicregs/records-policies.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926203 | 1,945 | 1.523438 | 2 |
2 to 4½ Semester Program
Program Coordinator and Instructor: Edwards
One Technical Certificate and one Associate of Applied Science degree are available.
The Law Enforcement Training Program provides classroom, laboratory and cadet practicum instruction enabling students to enter the general field of law enforcement.
The Law Enforcement Program is designed to prepare graduates to enter the law enforcement field. The Law Enforcement Program has been duly approved by the Idaho Police Officers Standards and Training (POST) Council, thus eliminating the graduates' need to attend the basic police academy before taking the certification exam. Because the Law Enforcement Program is driven by POST standards for certification into the law enforcement field, applicants to the program must meet POST standards for admission. These admission standards include a background check into the applicants' criminal, driving and psychological record.
Prerequisite for cadet practicum
Applicants must meet the general ISU College of Technology requirements for entry into the second semester of training by successful completion of the first semester of coursework and acceptance into the Cadet Practicum by the program's Advisory Committee Board. This board is composed of participating agency representatives and applies the minimum standards for employment as listed by the Idaho Police Officers Standards and Training Council (POST).
Students must pass a physical agility test to be accepted into the program. This test includes running, push-ups, sit-ups, and jumping.
Law Enforcement Certificate
Grading System: Each module within a session must be successfully completed with a minimum grade of "C" to continue to the next session.LAWE 170 Detention Procedures I 3 cr LAWE 171 Cadet Practicum 3 cr LAWE 172 Health & Fitness I 3 cr LAWE 173 Detention Procedures II 3 cr LAWE 174 Human Relations 2 cr LAWE 175 Health & Fitness II 1 cr LAWE 176 Investigations I 3 cr LAWE 177 Investigations II 3 cr LAWE 178 Law I 3 cr LAWE 179 Law II 3 cr LAWE 180 Patrol Procedures I 3 cr LAWE 181 Patrol Procedures II 3 cr TOTAL: 33 cr
Law Enforcement Associate of Applied Science Degree
Grading System: Each module within a session must be successfully completed with a minimum grade of "C" to continue to the next session.LAWE 170 Detention Procedures I 3 cr LAWE 171 Cadet Practicum 3 cr LAWE 172 Health & Fitness I 3 cr LAWE 173 Detention Procedures II 3 cr LAWE 174 Human Relations 2 cr LAWE 175 Health & Fitness II 1 cr LAWE 176 Investigations I 3 cr LAWE 177 Investigations II 3 cr LAWE 178 Law I 3 cr LAWE 179 Law II 3 cr LAWE 180 Patrol Procedures I 3 cr LAWE 181 Patrol Procedures II 3 cr LAWE 200 Law Enforcement Internship I 2 cr LAWE 201 Law Enforcement Internship II 3 cr
General Education Requirements:Goal 1 6 cr Goal 3 3 cr SOC 101 Intro to Sociology 3 cr SPAN 101 Elementary Spanish I 4 cr SPAN 102 Elementary Spanish II 4 crplus six (6) credits from the following:CIS 101 Intro to Computer Systems 3 cr MANT 121 Essentials of Management 3 cr MANT 250 Front Line Supervision 3 cr OT 170 Intro to Computers 3 cr POLS 248 Politics & the Administration of Justice 3 cr POLS 249 Intro to Criminal Law 3 cr PSYC 200 Child Abuse 3 cr SOC 231 Juvenile Delinquency 3 cr TOTAL: 64 cr
Based on your keyboarding skills, you may be required to take a 1 credit Keyboarding class in order to meet the competencies of the program.
ACAD 102 First Year Seminar 1 credit. Provides an extended orientation to the university for new students. Utilizes presenters from various campus support systems, collaborative learning activities, and written assignments which involve students in resources and activities on campus. F, S
LAWE 170 Detention Procedures I 3 credits. This course is designed to teach officers the knowledge and skills necessary for P.O.S.T. certification in the Idaho Detention System. Courses are specifically designed for learning procedure and techniques specific to the needs of detention officers. Courses include Idaho minimum jail standards, legal issues, jail medical issues, practical skills, detention techniques, incident procedures, and emergency procedures. F, S
LAWE 171 Cadet Practicum 3 credits. This course is designed to help the cadet put all skills and practical knowledge to use in the working environment. The cadet rides with a full-time uniform police officer within the department where they are evaluated, trained, and allowed to put new skills and ideas into practice. The cadets do fifty(50) hours of patrol time, fifty (50) hours of detention time, twenty-five(25) yours of dispatch time, and twenty-five (25) hours of other time which may include directing traffic, security, or crowd control at a specific event. F, S
LAWE 172 Health and Fitness 3 credits. This course is a practical physical fitness program tailored to the specific demands of the police profession. Lectures include nutrition, fitness lifestyles, and health. A first aid course for police officers including cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is included in this series of instruction. F, S
LAWE 193 Detention Procedures II 3 credits. This course a continuation of LAWE 170. PREREQ: LAWE 170. F, S
LAWE 173 Detention Procedures II 3 credits. This course is a continuation of LAWE 170. PREREQ: LAWE 170. F, S
LAWE 174 Human Relations 2 credits. This course provides officers with better understanding of their roles in the community and how the public responds to the police officer. Courses focus on the abilities of the officer to communicate with the public in a professional manner with respect to the task at hand. F, S
LAWE 175 Health and Fitness II 1 credit. This course is a continuation of LAWE 172. PREREQ: 172. F, S
LAWE 176 Investigations I 3 credits. A series of basic courses in preliminary investigations designed for the initial officer responding to a crime scene. Introduction to scientific aids and examinations, laboratory procedures, and the collection of evidence. Applications of specific investigative techniques for specific offenses are studied. F, S
LAWE 177 Investigations 3 credits.. This course is a continuation of LAWE 176. PREREQ: LAWE 176. F, S
LAWE 178 Law I 3 credits. This course is an orientation to methods, practices, and procedures in Idaho Criminal Law. Course work includes instruction in basic laws and powers derived from the U.S. and Idaho Constitutions, classification of crimes, punishments, and procedural law dealing with search and seizure and rules of evidence.
LAWE 179 Law II 3 credits. This course is a continuation of LAWE 178. PREREQ: LAWE 178. F, S
LAWE 180 Patrol Procedures I 3 credits. This series of courses prepare the officers for patrol operations in their communities. Varied facets of patrol procedures including the sensitive handling of citizen crisis situation as well as the technical aspects of police patrol are studied. Several courses have practical application sessions following classroom instruction allowing the officer time to put new skills and ideas into practice. F, S
LAWE 181 Patrol Procedures II 3 credits. This course is a continuation of LAWE 180. PREREQ: LAWE 180. F, S
LAWE 199 Special Topics (variable) 1-16 credits. This course is designed to address the specific needs of individuals. It will enable students to upgrade their technical skills through part-time enrollment in units of instruction that are currently available through the program's full-time pre-employment curriculum. Permission of the instructor is required.
LAWE 200 Law Enforcement Internship I 2 credits. This course includes assignments in jail activities, records management, communications, detective division, and other assignments with a Field Training Officer. PREREQ: Law Enforcement certificate and criteria as a Reserve Level 1 Officer.
LAWE 201 Law Enforcement Internship II 3 credits. This course is a continuation of LAWE 200. PREREQ: LAWE 200.
|IDAHO STATE UNIVERSITY
Revised: July 2001 | <urn:uuid:20351d05-8347-412b-bdb8-c35dc434c6d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.isu.edu/academic-info/prev-isu-cat/ugrad01/sat/slawenfr.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902934 | 1,653 | 1.609375 | 2 |
A study published this month suggests popular baby washes cause newborns to mistakenly test positive for exposure to marijuana.
Researchers studied the phenomenon after doctors at University of North Carolina (UNC) Hospitals noticed a spike in false positive results for THC — the active ingredient in pot — during routine urine tests.
The study found commonly used baby washes, such as Johnson and Johnson’s Head-to-Toe and Aveeno Soothing Relief Creamy Wash, are to blame for the faulty test results.
Scientists say they don’t know what is causing the faulty results, but did identify some of the detergents in the washes that are to blame.
Study researcher Dr. Catherine Hammett-Stabler, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill, said correctly identifying illegal drug exposure in newborns “is critical to ensure both protection of the child and support for the family.”
The authors said the purpose of the study is to inform health-care providers and laboratory technicians, and to advise that positive urine screens for THC need to be confirmed.
The study was published in the journal Clinical Biochemistry. | <urn:uuid:d40adba9-fda7-4eb0-9e82-20ba2ec18d6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://weirdcrime.net/2012/06/15/baby-wash-causes-newborns-to-test-positive-for-pot/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93604 | 240 | 2.375 | 2 |
The Cacos’ insurgency occurred in two distinct phases. The first, in 1915, was a spontaneous reaction to the American occupation, more of a wide-spread crime wave than an organized campaign, it was badly coordinated, widely scattered and most of all lacked the guidance of a recognized leader. The Wilson administration acted swiftly to contain it, dispatching two additional regiments of Marines whose aggressive patrols succeeded in putting the lid back on…temporarily.
More alarmed by what the first wave of Caco violence MIGHT have become than by what it WAS, the United States took several important steps to assure the movement remained quiescent. First, the State Department strong-armed through a new treaty with the feeble central government in Port-au-Prince, which gave the Marine occupation force full authority over internal security issues. The Marines, armed with this new mandate, took an important first step: they disbanded what remained of the “official” Haitian Army, whose assistance in containing the 1915 Caco disturbances had been “less than minimal”. Reduced to a rump remnant of 9,000 men, (of whom 370-odd officers had managed to buy their way to the rank of “general”), it had become useless for any serious operations.
To replace that failed institution, the Marines started with a clean slate, forming a new force designated the “Haitian Constabulary” or “Gendarmerie d’Haiti). Administration and training were turned over to tough, no-nonsense Marine officers and NCOs; recruiting standards were high, discipline rigorous, and training was, if not quite up to Paris Island standards, sufficiently tough to turn the new recruits into a reasonably honest and competent paramilitary force.
As it happened, they didn’t have long to wait before going on active duty.
For the second and far more dangerous wave of Caco activity broke out in mid-1918, and this time it proved far more organized and dangerous. The reason was simple: the insurgents had found a leader who possessed both charisma and a sure instinct for waging guerrilla war. His name was Charlemagne Peralte, and he adopted the bombastic title of “Chief of the Revolutionary Forces Against the American Occupation of Haiti.” He imposed fierce discipline, mixing it shrewdly with elements of “voodoo” superstition.
He told his increasingly numerous followers that any Caco warrior who returned from action with traces of a white man’s brains on his rifle barrel would be granted excellent marksmanship; that if they cooked and ate the hearts of their victims, they would acquire lion-like courage, and if they barbecued the livers, they increased physical strength. By mid-1919, Charlemagne’s rag-tag bands had become a ferocious, wily, and unspeakably cruel opponent, motivated by the same mixture of black-magic-theater and patriotic fury that would later characterize the Mau Mau rebels in Kenya.
Arson, pillage, and murder were the Cacos chosen tactics of spreading fear and expanding their influence throughout the rural population, and Charlemagne compensated for his inferior numbers (vis-à-vis the 1500-man Marine brigade, augmented with growing effectiveness by an auxiliary force of 2500 Gendarmes), by methodically developing a superb intelligence system among the civilian population in the regions where he operated. The columns sent out to hunt him were invariably spotted long before they got anywhere near one of his jungle camps; this enabled the Cacos to avoid forces they couldn’t hope to beat in a stand-up fight, and to ambush isolated patrols and small garrisons where they could bring overwhelming numbers to bear.
His strategy was later and very perceptively described by a Marine veteran, and it bore an eerie resemblance to the Viet Cong methods a later generation of Marines would confront in Vietnam:
The Caco is basically a bandit, but his status is more subtle and more ambiguous than that designation would suggest. He is regarded either as a Robin Hood figure with the agenda of a revolutionary, mainly disturbing the property and forces of an oppressive regime, or as a murderous outlaw, depending on your point of view. The Haitian agitators and nationalists have their reasons for resenting the American presence and have often hailed the Cacos as gallant fellows. But to the to the small farmers in the hills, who comprise the majority of the population, the Caco is viewed without romantic sentiment, yet also without violent opposition, for he rations his actions to petty thievery and only burns or loots in lightly or undefended places owned by the rich or created for the benefit of remote authorities who have, for many decades, shown no interest in bettering the lives of the common peasants.
In his style of warfare he is untrammeled by any of the restraints of convention. He will not stand and fight unless the odds in his favor are at least ten-to-one, and he will not attack unless he can bring even heavier odds to bear. Too closely pressed, and his armed bands simply dissolve, so that a pursuing column finally catches up to his presumed location, it finds not an armed rebel but a peaceful farmer, scratching with his machete at his vegetable plots, and surveying the newly arrived Blancs with naïve and seemingly innocent curiosity, even though his rifle is hidden nearby in the bush.
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"Core" is a suggested minimum set of courses in important subjects. Taking these courses in high school will give you the best chance to succeed in college.
These courses include:
When you think about what courses you should take, consider the content, level, and challenge of those courses, too.
Successfully completing additional courses like Speech, Trigonometry, Calculus, Physics, and advanced history courses can result in higher ACT scores.
Higher ACT scores tell colleges you're more likely to do well in typical first-year college courses. | <urn:uuid:35bc0844-b136-497f-ac68-e37e9c7cebfa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://act.org/explorestudent/future/core.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952332 | 111 | 2.875 | 3 |
PATRIARCHAL RESIDENCES. From the time of Saint MARK, the first patriarch of the Egyptian church, the Coptic patriarchs resided at Alexandria, the cradle of Egyptian Christianity. This was the first patriarchal seat in Egypt, but there were also others, depending on historical circumstances.
Eutychius (877-940), Melchite patriarch of Alexandria, in his masterwork, the Annales (PG 111, cols. 1068-70), placed the seat of the Coptic patriarch at DAYR ANBA MAQAR. Certainly Evelyn-White (1932, pp. 236ff.) gave no credence to this isolated testimony. However, it would give a basis for the medieval custom, otherwise unwarranted, according to which patriarchs had to be enthroned not only at Alexandria or Cairo but also at Dayr Anba Maqar. According to that custom, the patriarch had to spend Lent, or at least the week preceding Easter, at Dayr Anba Maqar, during which period he often solemnly consecrated the chrism, surrounded by numerous bishops. These reports attest the number and localization of these Egyptian bishops. This was in all probability the second seat of the Coptic patriarch.
For the decade 965-975, the patriarchal seat was at the village of Mahallat Danyal in the district of Tidah, probably with some interludes at Alexandria. The village has now disappeared, and today the district is known as Kafr al-Shaykh, so it is difficult to specify the dates of the patriarch's sojourn. A good judge of the history of the vicissitudes of these patriarchal residences, Kamil Salih Nakhlah (1943, pp. 89ff.), vaguely indicates these different residences: MINA II (956-974) resided in the Delta and then at Mahallat Danyal. His successor, ABRAHAM (975-978), lived at the CHURCH OF AL-MU‘ALLAQAH in Old Cairo, but his successor, Philotheus (979-1003), is said to have resided at Damru. Philotheus was persuaded to establish the seat of the patriarchate there by Macarius, secretary of the synod, who had a brother living there, as was Menas, the bishop of Tanah. This patriarchal seat at Damru began with him and lasted until the departure for Old Cairo around 1061. There were, however, exchanges with al-Mu‘allaqah of Misr (Old Cairo), the first capital of the Muslim occupation. The small town of Damru in the Delta (about 10 miles north of al Mahallah al-Kubra) remained the seat for nearly a hundred years.
If, as seems likely, the patriarchs had left their residence in Alexandria for different towns in the Delta because of a severe famine, they probably chose to establish themselves at Misr to be closer to the political heads of the country. One may consider Misr as a whole, even if the patriarch resided now in al-Mu‘allaqah, now in the Church of Abu Sayfayn (Saint Mercurius), although one cannot set a term to such residence in each of them. The Church of Saint Sergius (Abu Sarjah), without being regarded as the residence of the patriarch, had the privilege of being the site of certain solemn ceremonies (such as patriarchal consecrations), which created animosity between the clergy of al-Mu‘allaqah and Abu Sarjah. Nakhlah conjectures that the residence at al-Mu‘allaqah began under the patriarch KHA’IL III (880-907), with sojourns at the Dayr Anba Maqar and in the Delta. But it was the patriarch CHRISTODOULOS (1047-1077) who definitively transferred the patriarchal residence to Old Cairo. Despite the difficulty in stating the limits of each patriarchal residence in al-Mu‘allaqah and Abu al-Sayfayn, Nakhlah dates the seat at al-Mu‘allaqah from Christodoulos (about 1061) to Michael V (1145-1146), who also resided at Abu Sayfayn. His successor, John V (1147-1167), is said to have resided at Abu Sayfayn, while his successor Mark III (1167-1189) once again chose al-Mu‘allaqah as the patriarch's place of residence, which it remained down to Theodosius II (1294-1300), who resided first at al-Mu‘allaqah, then at Abu Sayfayn, although at what date the transfer took place is uncertain. The following patriarch, John VIII (1300-1320), moved the patriarchal residence to HARIT ZUWAYLAH.
In Greater Cairo are Harit Zuwaylah and Harit al-Rum. It appears that the desire to be nearer to the civil power led to the move to the new capital, Cairo, founded in A.D. 969 by Jawhar al-Siqilli. At first the residence was at Harit Zuwaylah, adopted by the patriarch JOHN VIII (1300-1320) at a date impossible to determine, a decision adhered to by his successors down to MATTHEW IV (1660-1675), who began (at an unknown date) to reside at Harit al-Rum. The residencies in Harit Zuwaylah and Harit al-Rum were briefly interrupted by the sojourn of the patriarch MATTHEW III (1634-1649) at TUKH, of which he was a native.
The Murqusiyyah Church was the sixth location of the patriarchal residence. The patriarch MARK VIII (1796-1809) transferred the patriarchal seat from Harit al-Rum to the Murqusiyyah.
The present residence is within the compound of the new Saint Mark's Cathedral at Anba Ruways in the quarters of Abbasiyyah in Cairo. This residence is on the site of the ancient DAYR AL-KHANDAQ, which included several churches in the Middle Ages.
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Likens NATO War to Soviet Union's Failed Occupation
An internal report from the British Defense Ministry has concluded that the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan is “unwinnable in military terms,” ruling that the NATO goals have largely failed and the survival of the Karzai government cannot be guaranteed.
The report says that whenever international troops leave, they will be leaving Afghanistan with a “very weak economic base,” and NATO will be on the hook for “large-scale support” of the government for many years.
It goes on to compare the NATO occupation for Afghanistan to the previous attempt by the Soviet Union, saying there are “an extraordinary number of similar factors” surrounding the two wars, and that commanders should learn the lessons of the Soviet war.
Elaborating, they say both wars aimed at imposing “an ideology foreign to the Afghan people” and that both eventually abandoned it in favor trying to secure relative support for their respective propped-up governments as the only alternative to the mujahedin, adding that the historical estimate of the NATO war would be, as with the Soviets’, linked entirely to how long the government survived after they leave.
The Defense Ministry downplayed the importance of the research report, insisting that the determination that the war is unwinnable does not change the official government position, which is that continuing the war is vital to British national security.
Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz
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- Suicide Bomber Kills 14 Afghanistan's Baghlan Province - May 20th, 2013
- Pentagon Seeks Another $79 Billion for Afghan War - May 20th, 2013 | <urn:uuid:7a44d705-21ea-4b3b-9fce-f4b683158d77> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.antiwar.com/2013/03/14/british-dm-report-afghanistan-an-unwinnable-war/ | 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 | 0.942441 | 389 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Some of these swimmers went a little further and swam four times each week, about 45-minutes per swim. They got better, too. I don't have any statistical data, but my take on it was that as the swimmers added a workout each week, they got better. Three swim workouts each week was better than two workouts, and four swim practices was better than three swims. What about doing five or six workouts - or even more swimming - each week?
Elite or Olympic swimmers practice one to three times a day, 6 to 7 days each week. These are not all in-water, swimming workouts, but they are probably swimming at least once every day they have a workout. Most of us do not have that level of skill or that much time to workout every day - that's OK, we can still get a lot of benefit out of less swimming!
Most of the swimmers I work with can maintain a good level of fitness at three workouts each week, and most even improve their swimming. They often have a bigger magnitude of improvement if they swim four to five times each week, but many of them don't have time to do that many workouts. I believe that three swims per week is the minimum number of swim workouts needed to feel some improvement in your swimming, to get in swimming shape, and to make progress with swimming fitness and swimming technique or skill. With three workouts per week you are touching the water often enough to keep a good feel for the water, and you are working out enough to have substantial fitness benefits. At four workouts per week this continues, but the differences between two and three swims per week compared to three and four per week are smaller. The magnitude of the benefit gets a little smaller as you add more workouts.
Why does it seem to be better to swim more often, to do more workouts in a week, than to do longer but few workouts? Swimming is a highly skill-focused, repetitive motion sport. The more movements you can make the correct way, the better you get at swimming. When you swim for an hour, you may be getting tired toward the end of that workout and start to practice bad habits. If you swim more often but for shorter workouts, you are probably able to maintain better stroke technique for more of each workout. Voilà! Better swimming. | <urn:uuid:20216dab-5186-4d91-b8ab-328f8a590214> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://swimming.about.com/od/swimworkouts/qt/Want_To_Be_A_Better_Swimmer_Then_Swim_More_Often_.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989222 | 479 | 1.804688 | 2 |
This post is an attempt to communicate some of the feel of Banach space theory to those who aren’t familiar with it. I once tried to explain my research to a six year old using Jenga blocks, but fortunately only got as far as the triangle inequality. Near the end of my Phd, at my supervisor’s suggestion, I started to explore the complicated Banach space that is Timothy Gowers’ solution to Banach’s hyperplane problem. These experiences inspired the following explanation of one relatively simple observation (that I included as an example in my thesis) through the delightful medium of building blocks.
Our object of study are towers of good old-fashioned building blocks. Each block has a number written on its side, so each tower built from these blocks gives a sequences of numbers . These don’t have to be positive natural numbers, but you won’t lose much by pretending, in this post, that they are. There are innumerably many different brands of towers, but we’ll concentrate on one particular brand: the ‘Gowers Towers’. Let’s say the number written on each block represents how heavy the block is, and is inversely proportional to the length of the block. So we’d represent the sequence with the Gowers Tower pictured.
It’s worth mentioning that the Gowers Towers include every individual tower of finite height that you can build with your unlimited set of Gowers branded building blocks (and lots of infinite height, but you don’t really need to worry about those here).
Let’s pretend we’ve got a measure of the instability of a tower (the norm of the sequence), and whenever we increase the instability beyond a certain threshold, , the tower collapses.
Blocks with higher numbers are heavier, as well as narrower and perhaps inherently more unstable. How the blocks of different weights at different heights affect the stability of the Towers of Gowers is extremely complicated. However, the towers do have some nice, intuitive properties. | <urn:uuid:7766601d-ab1d-4a94-93e4-54a0cb9aa1ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://outofthenormmaths.wordpress.com/2012/04/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957054 | 422 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Do workers’ co-operatives help or hinder the building of a libertarian communist society?
workplace struggles |
opinion / analysis
Tuesday June 12, 2012 15:19 by Sean Matthews - Workers Solidarity Movement
Workers’ co-operatives have always been championed by sections of the left and wider labour movement - from their advocacy by 19th century Welsh social reformer and utopian socialist Robert Owens to Proudhon through to their existence in various state capitalist countries today such as Cuba. While workers’ co-operatives can provide a small example of anarchist ideas based on self-management, direct democracy and mutual aid in action, we should not be blinded by their contradictions and should query their effectiveness as a strategy for real revolutionary transformation. [Italiano]
Support for workers’ co-operatives has always been a long standing feature of anarchism both as theory and in revolutionary practice since its emergence within the workers’ movement. Anarchists have always stressed the importance of building and supporting schools of struggle and education such as modern schools, ‘social centres’ and workers’ societies - a vibrant public sphere, a kind of counter-spectacle with its own values, ideas, organisations and practices, or, in Gramscian terms, a counter-hegemonic project challenging the dominant ideology of the ruling class. This would be seen as complementing and in tandem with building a wider revolutionary movement that aims to abolish capitalist exploitative relationships and domination.
In short co-operatives can be a ‘germ of the future’ and can provide a glimpse of what type of social organisations anarchists favour. As Bakunin argued, “the co-operative system. . . carries within it the germ of the future economic order.”
What are co-operatives?
There are many different types of co-operatives - from housing co-ops to credit unions and a more business-based model such as the co-operative supermarket which has stores across Ireland. In the North the sector has over £2 million in assets and up to 350,000 members, providing employment to perhaps 4,500 people. On a global level the sector employs nearly 1 billion people while 3 billion people secure their livelihood through them.
In theory co-operatives are based on one worker, one vote. In other words those who do the work manage the workplace within which they do it (i.e. they are based on workers’ self-management in some form). In addition, they are an example of working class self-help and self-activity. Instead of relying on others to provide work, co-operatives show that production can be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of order takers.
There has been a dramatic increase in the number of producer co-operatives in most Western countries in recent years. Italian co-operatives now number well over 20,000, many of them large and having many support structures as well (which aids their development by reducing their isolation and providing long term financial support lacking within the capitalist market).
The Basque country is home to the world’s largest worker co-operative, the Mondragon group, which is effectively a multi-national corporation employing more than 80,000 people across 256 companies including a university and has expanded into 18 countries. The company has bounced back from the recession producing a €240 million profit last year and to become an owner worker you have to invest €20,000. While the senior manager’s pay is capped at 9 times the salary of the lowest paid worker, the fact that the world’s largest co-operative model has become fully integrated within the capitalist system becoming a form of state sponsored self-managed exploitation highlights its limitations as a sustainable revolutionary alternative.
As Joseph Kay a regular contributor to the popular libcom blog remarked ‘Workers’ co-ops are often seen as hotbeds of radical, anti-capitalist thought. Images of hippies, earnest vegetarians or executives in blue overalls could not, however, be further from reality.’
Indeed far from challenging capitalism, many workers’ co-operatives are actually an important sector of modern economies on the basis of promoting a more ‘ethical capitalism.’ Workers’ co-operatives may provide a catalyst for change and glimpse of what is possible but their gradual and reformist nature must be resisted as not only futile but an abstraction from the important battles that need to be waged in our workplaces and communities . In the case of Israel, for example, the co-operative movement formed the backbone of the early Zionist project of colonial expansionism and military occupation.
Yugoslavia under the leadership of Marshal Tito broke with Soviet style state capitalism in 1949 introducing a more ‘decentralised’ version of ‘workers’ self-management’ with the state as the guarantor. Rather than providing real workers’ control of production and direct democracy, Tito’s reforms provided an illusion and smokescreen for his iron grip on power. This contradiction was exposed in the 1970s following neo-liberal restructuring resulting in mass unemployment, massive international debt, declining real wages, triple digit inflation and ethnic conflict becoming rife.
Like Cuba, the Venezuelan government has also appropriated and expanded the co-operative sector. Writing in the latest edition of the Spark (the magazine of ICTU Youth) Stephen Nolan points out, ‘In 1998 there were 800 cooperatives ….in 2006 there were 100,000 involving 1.5 million citizens operating under either state, co-operative or mixed ownership.’
However, the reality between fact and fiction in terms of lip service to ‘participatory’ democracy and incompatibility between the state and genuine self-management is revealed in an article by Shawn Hattingh of the South African Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front: ‘Far from being havens that are nurturing worker self-management, state-owned enterprises in Venezuela are marked by relations of domination, oppression and exploitation. The state has even, at times, tried to undermine the ability of workers to challenge bad working conditions and poor wages. It, consequently, matters little whether the state or a capitalist owns a factory, workers still do not have power or direct democracy in the workplace. ‘Co-management’ and other state schemes have often become a way for the state to exploit workers even further, including pushing through aspects of lean production, casualisation and outsourcing. Such relations and practices are not marginal matters. In a society where there is a hierarchical and oppressive pattern in the relations of production, genuine socialism does not and cannot exist. Oppressive relations of production are a common denominator in all class based societies, including Venezuela.’
Workers’ co-operatives depend on wider market forces to survive and grow and cannot exist outside of capitalist social relations due to the pressures of market forces and competition. Like private enterprises, co-operatives are also subject to the same pressures such as layoffs, price rises and reduction in wages in the process reducing any resemblance of ‘workers’ democracy.’
In examining the question of co-operatives, it is worth noting Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) who argued that:
“The various forms of co-operation are incontestably one of the most equitable and rational ways of organizing the future system of production. But before it can realize its aim of emancipating the labouring masses so that they will receive the full product of their labour, the land and all forms of capital must be converted into collective property. As long as this is not accomplished, the cooperatives will be overwhelmed by the all-powerful competition of monopoly capital and vast landed property; … and even in the unlikely event that a small group of cooperatives should somehow surmount the competition, their success would only beget a new class of prosperous co-operators in the midst of a poverty-stricken mass of proletarians”.
Using his observation and study of the co-operative movement in post-apartheid South Africa, Oliver Nathan, from the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front pointed out the dilemma between the ideals of the co-operative and the market realities of the day, ‘Most co-operatives then have faced high levels of degeneration from their initial goals, those of market success-paying their membership a living wage - and internal democracy. Worker co-operatives in the post-apartheid dispensation should be understood to be survivalist in that they are often only able to pay their members a marginal wage at irregular intervals, due to their often marginal presence in the market. Members often have to find alternative sources of employment or rely on family and community networks to support them.’
The role of social centres
Although mutually exclusive, workers’ co-operatives and social centres are often part of the same political furniture sharing the same space and project. For example Na Criosbhealí café in Belfast takes its inspiration from the popular Youth Houses in the Basque country and grew out of Belfast youth assembly.
Aiming ‘to politicise, educate, and self-empower the people of Belfast and Ireland so that they are not held hostage by the arms of capitalism and right wing thought. The Co-Op organises events which try to enhance culture, political thought, awareness and to raise money for certain causes or other events. We see the space as social and open to all comrades who would like to take advantage of it. We have had different political groups, Unions and other organisations organise events and fundraisers. The space has held film showings, AGM’s and language classes, we aim to improve these events and also to organise a library and other educational aspects with a future view of having a functioning outreach section of the Co-Operative.’
While Na Criosbhealí provides a positive space to organise and agitate, it remains unclear whether it can replicate the success and influence of the Basque and wider Iberian model. Especially given the contrast in political and social circumstances in relation to the lack of a social movement here and the confusion of ‘progressive left-wing politics’ with everything from Leninism to Stalinism.
While it is essential to retain an internationalist perspective, the fetishment for every ‘anti-imperialist’ struggle under the sun should not be at the expense of building links and solidarity with workers and communities here across the sectarian divide.
On the other hand the Just Books Collective have more of an established presence in Belfast stretching back to the opening of the original shop in Winetavern Street (located deliberately between the bottom of the Falls and Shankill), by the Belfast Anarchist Collective, in June 1978 without any state subsidy. While the shop closed in 1994 it still continues to provide stalls at events and in the future aims to establish a working class resource and solidarity centre including a centre for community and labour education. Now a worker co-operative run on a self-managed basis it is currently piloting a labour and education project - Just Learning - in communities across Belfast believing it is important to promote alternatives based on mutual aid, class politics, self-help and co-operation.
The social centre concept has taken root most successfully in Italy, beginning in the 1970s. Large factories and even abandoned military barracks have been “appropriated” for use as social centres. There are today dozens of social centres in Italy and worryingly several fascist social centres have emerged such as Casa Pound.
Social centres have taken different political and cultural dimensions including both squatted and rented, and are located in most European cities and all corners of the globe. I have visited social centres in Barcelona, Israel, New Zealand, Australia, Greece, Basque Country to name a few providing me with a degree of knowledge and experience.
In Ireland, apart from the Warzone centre and Na Criosbhealí in Belfast there is the Seomra Spraoi autonomous social space in Dublin which hosts WSM offices and Solidarity Books in Cork.
After the death of Franco in the late 1970s, there was an explosion in social radicalism and youth rebellion in the Basque country. Squats, free radios and youth assemblies resulted in the formation of Youth Houses (Gaztetxeak) and provided an expression of this struggle for change through building a Basque political culture combining an anti-authoritarian radicalism with values of self-organisation and self-management. According to Eoin O’Broin who has written extensively on Basque youth movements, ‘Despite great energy on the part of the state to crush this movement, twenty years on it survives, stronger and more sophisticated than ever.’
The emergence of social centres in the late 1970s can be linked to the political/social circumstances of the era and the potential for revolutionary change. Social centres can be rooted to an even earlier period of workers’ and union clubs which spread across Europe at the turn of the 20th century providing a pivotal role and function within the emerging militant workers’ movement.
The formation of ateneu (athenaeum) in Barcelona during this period added to the growing grassroots social infrastructure, comprising the influential anarchist union of the CNT (National Federation of Labour), newspapers, cultural associations and social clubs moulding a working class culture built on mutual aid and direct action in just one example of this process. These popular cultural and social centres increased in number to 75 by 1914 and provided a genuine need for workers in their locality in terms of social agitation. Each ateneu offered a range of services and leisure including talks, library and education; providing tuition in writing and grammar schools, conveying a culture of action and mobilisation rather than reliance on local authorities.
To some extent today’s social centres mark a departure from this radical labour tradition in terms of their composition, locality and outlook. These new social centres often come across as insular ‘activist ghettos’, divorced from the concrete needs and experiences of the class, becoming divorced from the essence of social centres which should be about providing an open and accessible space and a forum for education and agitation.
While Ireland is yet to develop the same dynamic and level of a co-operative movement as their counterparts in the rest of the world, it is important that we reflect and analyse this avenue before we embark along this path. Workers’ co-operatives do play a useful function in highlighting the possibility of workers’ co-operation without bosses, providing a forum for debate and a temporary relief from unemployment but this does not mean we should be blind to their ultimate futility in challenging the capitalist system. The building of a workers’ co-operative movement cannot be a substitute for a revolutionary strategy based on collective working class action and the ultimate expropriation of the power and wealth of the capitalist class.
Where we realise our own class power, we can finally take control of our lives, our communities and workplaces free from exploitation, alienation and oppression, based on the principles of libertarian communism. We cannot self-manage capitalism in our own interests as it is automatically weighted against workers. The only way we can really live without exploitation and bosses is not by internalising them but by abolishing capitalism and its protector the state. In the North and across Ireland this means working within the workers’ movement and community struggles, building an infrastructure of social centres, cultural associations and propaganda outlets arming ourselves with the rich traditions of class struggle anarchism; with a revolutionary class struggle libertarian movement that will bury the politics of the past and build the politics of the living.
The Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 385
Matxinada: Basque Nationalism & Radical Basque Youth Movements
From the Irish Anarchist Review 5 - Summer 2012 | <urn:uuid:d3f21e73-84ba-482b-8bfb-643c14f5d5b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.anarkismo.net/article/23103 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954357 | 3,264 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Online School Recruiting in Tucker
Virtual education is coming for local students, if they want it.
Georgia Connections Academy, an accredited provider of virtual K-12 schooling, will open enrollment for the 2013-2014 school year on March 4 with an information session in Tucker.
“The good news is that we have 1000 additional student slots, scattered across all grades, which will be open for the coming academic year,” said Principal Heather Robinson. “Nevertheless, due to the fact we have a waiting list as we open enrollment, we encourage parents to get their applications in now.”
The session takes place on Thursday, March 21, from 6:30 p.m. until 8 p.m., at the Doubletree Hotel, 4156 LaVista Road in Tucker.
Enrollment is limited by the State Board of Education to 3,000 students at the academy for the 2013-14 academic year, said Robinson. At the information sessions, parents can learn about the Connections Academy curriculum, and thoroughly explore the program. Online enrollment can be done here.
Robinson encourages families considering virtual school to attend an information session because virtual education, while a great choice for many families, may not be a good fit for some. “Virtual school requires parents to make a commitment to be involved in their child’s education,” she said. “At our information sessions, we let families know what they can expect in the virtual school setting, and what it takes to succeed. We want students to thrive at Connections Academy and understanding how it all works is essential.”
Would you prefer your children to be educated at home? Is this a good idea? Tell us in the comments below- | <urn:uuid:e3a7f797-9b90-40b0-b299-c41f584a0124> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tucker.patch.com/articles/cvb-h | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951404 | 355 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Just when you think you have seen it all, something unexpected happens. Here are a few actual play situations that have occurred this year. Let’s see if you can make the call.
Play One — Following a touchdown, the offense lines up to kick the extra point. The kick is short and caught by a defender in the back of the end zone. He takes two steps and throws a forward pass to a teammate. The teammate carries the football to midfield before he is tackled. What is the result of this play?
Answer — This is an illegal forward pass. If this occurred during a regular play from scrimmage, the result would be a safety, but since it occurred AFTER the defense gained possession during an extra point attempt, the penalty is declined by rule. We move on to the kickoff.
Play Two — Speaking of the kickoff, a short “pooch” kick lands on the receiving team’s 40-yard line and rolls to a stop. A kicking team player falls on the football in an attempt to recover it. The football squirts out of his hands and rolls out of bounds at the 38-yard line. What is the result of this play?
Answer — Since the football was not touched by the receiving team, this is a kickoff out of bounds. The receiving team can elect to have the kicking team re-kick after a 5-yard penalty, take the football 30 yards from the spot of the kick or take the football at the 43-yard line (the out-of-bounds spot plus a 5-yard penalty).
Play Three — On fourth-and-15, the offense punts from its own 30-yard line. The punt is caught at the receiving team’s 40-yard line. The runner makes a long return to the kicking team’s 25-yard line, where he is hit and fumbles. The loose football is picked up by a kicking-team player who runs to the 38-yard line and, when he is about to be tackled, kicks the football downfield where it rolls out of bounds at the 50-yard line. What is the result of this play?
Answer — This is “pull-your-hair-out time!” This is an illegal kick that kills the play at that point. The penalty is 5 yards from the 38-yard line and it is first-and-10 for the kicking team at its own 33-yard line.
Play Four — Here’s your chance to be the official and the coach. With one minute remaining in the fourth quarter and trailing 20-14, the extra point kick is wide. The defense is flagged for running into the kicker and for leaping onto an offensive lineman. Consider the situation when determining the enforcement.
Answer — The coach elected not to retry the extra point attempt. He declined the penalty for running into the kicker and accepted the 15-yard penalty on the kickoff for the leaping foul. The ensuing onside kick was not successful.
Lee Grace is a member of the Texas Association of Sports Officials. E-mail your rules questions to him at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:46a235ef-6c8b-4b57-87d0-ea3fe778b2fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timesrecordnews.com/news/2010/oct/28/expect-the-unexpected-when-officiating/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976548 | 650 | 1.9375 | 2 |
The story was written for a prompt of three words. Gossip, Station, Naive were the words. They just rang a bell for me.
Our heroine, Etta, was not as careful about her appearance as she should have been. She was a very important person with two homes and never could remember what she left at the other place. She found that what she wanted was always "there" and not "here". Disorganized and rebellious were words used to describe her. In truth, she thought her station in life put her "above it all". In fact Etta might have been a little naive to believe that gossip would not spread.
Coming back home without anything normal to wear was a mistake. Etta knows that now. She had chosen to fly empty handed and so she had to dress like a clown. She was fine as long as she did not leave the house but a trip to the grocery or to the neighborhood restaurant required a big coat, one that could be worn through dinner or up and down aisles at the grocery. A coat that would cover her unusual ensembles.
They were wondering if she was ill, cold, uncomfortable. Could they hang her coat on the rack. Would she please quit knocking the cereal off the shelves when she shopped.
So one day she just gave in to the whole uncomfortable situation. The coat hung in the closet. She went out wearing her old New Years Eve velvet skirt topped with a Hawaiian t-shirt. Etta was a beach bum on the top and a tango dancer on the bottom. She decided that it was more important to be perfectly comfortable eating her lunch and shopping for beets than it was to keep up appearances.
They stared and went tsk, tsk but at least no one mentioned her coat and she did not leaves oranges rolling down the aisle behind her at the grocery store. Yes, Etta finally realized there would be talk..."dementia", "nuts", and "she shouldn't be out in public" would be whispered behind her back. She had ceased to care.
She should have known from the start that she was not above gossip. She had been naive to believe that they would not talk and would have some respect for her station in life. | <urn:uuid:7727a21a-99fa-4616-883e-0312c5eea669> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewshortstory.asp?AuthorID=76831&id=32003 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.995122 | 460 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Most Don’t Know Glaucoma Not Preventable
December 31, 2012 by UPI - United Press International, Inc.
ST. LOUIS (UPI) — The American Eye-Q consumer survey on eye health indicates 90 percent of U.S. respondents say glaucoma is preventable but it isn’t.
Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness in the United States but awareness is relatively low. The American Optometric Association’s American Eye-Q survey indicated 86 percent of those asked didn’t know what part of vision glaucoma affects — deterioration to peripheral vision making it hard to see.
Seventy-two percent of respondents said glaucoma has early warning signs — it does not — but only an exam that dilates the eyes can show whether a person is at risk.
Regular eye exams are the first line of defense for early detection of glaucoma, which is treatable, officials at the American Optometric Association said.
The disease often strikes without pain or other symptoms, so it is crucial for patients to receive a dilated eye exam where their eye doctor can thoroughly examine the pressure and nerves inside the eyes for potential signs of the disease.
Eighty-six percent of American Eye-Q respondents said they were unaware a person’s race places them at a higher risk of developing glaucoma. The Glaucoma Research Foundation said glaucoma is six to eight times more common in African-Americans than Caucasians. Other risk factors include those who have a family history of glaucoma, hypothyroidism, people age 60 and older, or individuals who have had severe eye trauma.
The survey of 1,009 U.S. adults was created and conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates May 9-16. Margin of error at 95 percent confidence level. | <urn:uuid:ae344b5c-e7ec-4fab-9641-2787ddc045f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://personalliberty.com/2012/12/31/most-dont-know-glaucoma-not-preventable/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=20ee2ea151 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937199 | 396 | 2.421875 | 2 |
The Good We Do
To educate people,
give them the latest,
most reliable information
so they can make
decisions for their
own or their loved
A Message from Thelma King Thiel, Chief Executive Officer, Hepatitis Foundation International...
Wellness Works –
Engaging Employees in Promoting Prevention
Healthy employees are more productive and help to control medical costs related to preventable illnesses. Empowering individuals to make healthy behavior choices depends on understanding how they can easily participate in staying healthy and avoiding chronic illness that could have been prevented... if they had only known how.
The missing piece in efforts to engage individuals in taking responsibility for their own health care is information about the body’s internal power plant and chemical converter...the liver.
Why do you eat three meals a day? You are providing the fuel required to keep the liver processing vitamins for strong bones, proteins to make muscle, carbohydrates and sugar to provide energy, nutrients that create enzymes and immune factors to protect you from the sea of germs that surround you, hormones, clotting factors, and orchestrating hundreds of chemical reactions that keep you alive each day.
How well are you taking care of your liver?
Apparently millions of people are feeding their liver too many fatty foods and/or simply too much food. Obesity and fatty livers are causing an ever increasing number of debilitating health problems and untold deaths related to overeating and overworking the liver. One in every 5 Americans has a fatty liver that can lead to cirrhosis.
The liver controls the production of cholesterol that is involved in heart attacks. It processes the sugar/carbohydrates and foods that can lead to diabetes. The chemicals in drugs and alcohol that must be processed through the liver can cause liver cells, the workers in the liver, to die. This is called cirrhosis.
Additional major trouble makers for the liver are hepatitis viruses. These insidious troublemakers enter the blood stream through broken skin or mucous membranes and travel to the liver where they multiply, attack and kill liver cells. Exposure to contaminated blood of infected person through shared needles, tooth brushes or razors, unprotected sex, or through an open cut, are easy ways one can become infected.
Your liver takes care of you every minute of every day.
How did you treat your liver today?
Simple blood tests can tell you how healthy your liver is or if it is in trouble. Give your liver a break. | <urn:uuid:a98c01ab-7710-459c-8a30-9020d29c8d65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hepatitisfoundation.org/ABOUT/about.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939955 | 502 | 2.5625 | 3 |
As you may know, the Up series is a series of eight fascinating documentary films that has tracked the lives of fourteen English schoolchildren since 1964, when they were seven years old. Every seven years, the director Michael Apted releases a new documentary that checks in on their increasingly varied lives (when they're aged 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49...). The children all came from very different socio-economic backgrounds, and the director, Michael Apted, wanted to see how this would affect their futures.
The documentary films are wildly compelling—you follow these people as they graduate from school, move cities, find jobs, lose jobs, have children, get married, have affairs, dash their dreams, find happiness, lose their way, face whatever life brings. Each episode, you think you know where their lives are headed, but I've been shocked, thrilled and devastated to see certain updates. The most recent installment—56 Up—came out in England this past May, and I've been waiting with baited breath for it to reach the United States.
Well, 56 Up is finally released today! (Right now I see showtimes for just New York, but it should be hitting more cities on January 18th.) Film critic Roger Ebert called the films, "Brilliant! The 'Up' series is on my list of the 10 greatest films of all time." He also wrote a great overview here.
Will you see it? I highly, highly recommend the series.
P.S. 19 more fantastic documentaries... | <urn:uuid:7f0ba1c0-22f3-4f59-82fd-0234f5ab3182> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://joannagoddard.blogspot.com/2013/01/56-up.html?showComment=1357325176237 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973316 | 320 | 1.585938 | 2 |
I have restarted updating my Arctic Update Page which went into hibernation in late September, 2010 after the Sea Ice minimum was reached. I continue to be concerned about the rapid Arctic Sea ice decline, I see it as one of many threads of evidence on the serious consequences of global warming.
After a break, I have restarted daily updates to my Arctic Update page. I will start slowly,with just 4 charts and limited discussion. I will be adding additional charts and analysis as the year unfolds.
Arctic SIE Trend for Latest Month
December, 2010 showed the lowest SIE in the1979-2010 period.
The January, 2011 SIE is lower than 2007, the previous low year.
Current Month Daily Arctic Sea Ice Trend
Cryosphere Today Sea Ice Area Anomaly Trends
The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC)’s The Cryosphere Today (link) tracks Arctic sea ice extent and area on a daily basis, They maintain a chart called of daily sea ice area anomalies extending back to 1979. They call it the Tail of the Tape. Since it is so long, it can be difficult to read (link).
I have developed this chart to display the data in a single window so that readers can see the entire record in one glance. The Cryosphere Today chart shows the data in more detail, my chart gives a better overview of the long term SIA anomaly trends. (Click to enlarge) | <urn:uuid:4c29d3e9-d332-401c-a0ae-382f6bdc18ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/arctic-update/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919571 | 296 | 2 | 2 |
On Sunday morning in the early thirties, after the family was safely off to church, the boys of the Hamilton area would reach under their beds and pull out a couple of boxes. To the uninitiated, they would appear to contain scraps of wire and odd shaped bottles, nothing but junk. But in a few minutes, the 80 and 160 meter bands would suddenly co me alive with chirps, scratches and eve a few T9 signals. The gang was in session.
Such calls as 3JU, QU, YR, CJ, KM, VZ, IA, HP, and many others were distinguishable. Those requring help, asked for it, and got it. They would visit each other’s QTH, giving assistance in getting those notes cleaned up and coaxing all possible electrons to head for the antenna.
Shortly after Christmas of 1932, they decided they should all get together regularly and iron out their problems. Back to the ether went the gang, advertising the fact that they were going to organize a radio club.
The first meeting was held at the home of VE3KM, Webb Clemence, and a turn out of forty-five amateurs was recorded. Thus, the Hamilton Amateur Radio Club was born and VE3HP, Art Ferguson, was elected president.An except from The Canadian Amateur — March 1959 by Stu Graves VE3EIK | <urn:uuid:62c92b1b-2d4d-4a43-b3ef-e2d94ae51819> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hamiltonarc.ca/ourclub/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982075 | 289 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Extraterrestrial Life On Jupiter's Moon, Europa?
Life may bloom in depths of Europa's ocean
By John Nance
Jupiter will rise at 7:14 this evening about six degrees south of due east. Although the eastern sky will be dominated by the full moon, Jupiter will be its second brightest object, much brighter than anything else nearby.
Look at Jupiter with a small telescope or good binoculars anytime before 10:48 p.m. and you will see all four of the moons discovered by Galileo in 1610. Europa will be about three Jupiter diameters above and to the right of the planet.
In one version of classical myth, Europa was the daughter of Aegenor, king of Phoenicia. Zeus, who had an eye for young women, was attracted by her beauty. Taking the form of a white bull, he abducted her and carried her away from Phoenicia to Crete. Minos, one of the three sons she bore him there, later became the island's king.
Europa is slightly smaller than our moon and nearly twice as far from Jupiter as our moon is from Earth. Europa orbits the giant planet once every 85 hours.
Like nearby Io, Europa's interior appears to be mostly silicate rock, but it probably lacks the iron core responsible for Io's significant magnetic field. Before the 1979 Voyager flyby, terrestrial telescopes had shown that Europa's surface was covered mostly with water ice.
Astronomers were nevertheless surprised by the Voyager photographs of Europa's face. This moon of Jupiter turns out to have the solar system's flattest surface, with features that appear strikingly similar to those of the pack ice covering Earth's Arctic Ocean. Moreover, instruments carried by the Galileo spacecraft detected weak and variable magnetic fields around Europa, fields of the type that might be generated by electric currents flowing through salty water.
It turns out that everything we have so far seen or measured on Europa is consistent with the existence of a relatively warm and salty subsurface ocean of liquid water, perhaps 50 to 100 miles deep, lying at most a few miles beneath its icy crust. It is this ocean's surprising presence that makes Europa rival the planet Mars as a possible haven for extraterrestrial life.
But getting down there to look for it is not going to be easy.
Jon Nance is a professor emeritus at Southwest Missouri State University. | <urn:uuid:a7019915-529f-46cd-b0b7-e72780616150> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theufochronicles.com/2005/03/extraterrestrial-life-on-jupiters-moon.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959191 | 492 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Forcing entrepreneurs to account for stock options is unappetizing, say some members of Congress and entrepreneurs. That's why a House subcommittee passed legislation (H.R. 3574) in May restraining the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) from finalizing a standard it proposed in March until two federal agencies complete an economic impact study. The Stock Option Accounting Reform Act also contains small-business provisions if and when FASB finalizes a rule. Current policy allows companies to choose whether to include stock options in their balance sheets or just as footnotes that do not count against financial bottom lines.
Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), sponsor of the Senate version (S.1890) of the House bill, believes businesses will have trouble understanding the proposed FASB standard. "This proposal is a game of hide-and-seek for a small business trying to find the appropriate accounting standard," Enzi said at a Senate hearing in April. At the hearing, Keith Carron, founder and president of CC Technology, a small business in Laramie, Wyoming, spoke out. He said if his startup had a stock option plan at the time it sought a working capital loan, "The loss on our income statement due to expensing stock options would have resulted in our application being refused."
The FASB proposal provisions aimed at making compliance easier for small businesses include letting entrepreneurs measure compensation costs using a simpler "intrinsic value method," rather than the fair-value-based method that would be required for most public enterprises. Also, nonpublic enterprises would have until 2006 to comply.
Stephen Barlas is a freelance business reporter who covers the Washington beat for 15 magazines. | <urn:uuid:af46b237-b1b6-4e53-8886-2f62bcec818d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/71748 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948206 | 347 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Carnivorous animals are a group of meat eating animals. They have powerful jaws and teeth to enable them to eat and kill other animals.
Leopard is another most ferocious animal which feeds on meats. It can run very fast and its track is always not being able to detect by its prey. It is one of the most dangerous predators in the food web for animals which dwelt in the jungle or forest. There have been numerous incidents of farmland’s people in the central part of India being attacked by the leopards. Among them, one of the leopard which was given a name as “Pago Shinawatra” had killed at least 100 innocent people. However, this leopard was shot death by Jim Corbett in 1910. By the following year, Corbett shot another female leopard which was called “Qinpawate” as it used to attack and feed on human flesh.
Lion and Tiger
Lions and tigers do not normally attack people. They usually attack people in groups, but there were reports that they attacked people in solitude. In October, 1943, one lion was shot death in Zambia as it became a threat to human. Before the shooting, it was found to have been eaten 40 people.
Although it is very rare to have heard of a tiger fish attacking people, the indigenous in South Africa remarked that the tiger fish had eaten fingers, toes and shoulders of the people while they were enjoying bathing in the river. There are many types of tiger fish. Among them, the biggest tiger fish may have a head as big as 24 inches in length. Its jaw is short yet it is powerful enough for it to attack its prey with its saw-like sharp teeth. The blood appears to be the great attraction for it to attack its prey cruelly and ferociously. A shoal of tiger fish can get the fresh of one adult crocodile thoroughly tearing off within 5 minutes.
There are approximately 200 to 250 kinds of shark species in total, of which only 18 types of them are considered dangerous to humans. The famous carnivorous shark is Great White Shark. Blood in the water can tempt this shark into a feeding frenzy by using its teeth to bite cruelly on everything that moves in the water.
The best coverage of shark attacking people was reported on 12 July, 1916, when a 12-year-old child was attacked by the Great White Shark while bathing in the river in New Jersey. This shark had allegedly said to have eaten the child including a person who came to rescue this child. In the next 16 days after this incident took place, 4 persons were found to be eaten by the similar shark 10 miles within the coastal area of New Jersey. However, this shark was caught alive by someone two days later.
From 1903 to 1911, within 8 years of this time frame, a Himalayan tiger dwelled in Nepal killed 438 people with its sharp claws. The local people had regarded it as the evil tiger which brought threat and disaster to their lives. In fact, tiger does not usually capture a human as its prey except it has a breath of human blood to tempt it to attack human frantically.
The Box Jellyfish (also known as a Sea Wasp) is a cube-shaped invertebrate found in Australia, the Philippines and Hawaii, Vietnam and other tropical areas. Not all species of Box Jellyfish are dangerous to humans but the Indo-Pacific or Australian box Jellyfish (Chironex Fleckeri) is regarded as the most venomous marine animal known to human as its sting is often fatal.
This creature has up to 60 tentacles with 15 feet in length each but sometimes they may reach up to 80cm long. The toxins present in its tentacles plus each tentacle has 5,000 stinging cells is powerful enough to enable it to kill 60 people. Its severe sting is extremely venomous, painful and can lead to necrosis of the infected tissue. It is an extremely poisonous creature ever as people who come to contact with its poisonous tentacles may have their cardio-respiratory functions stopped for at least 3 minutes. It has been reported that this Box Jellyfish is responsible for more deaths in Australian in the coast of the Great Barrier Reef and Australia’s northern oceans as compared to snakes, sharks and salt water crocodiles.
The Asian Cobra refers to the Indian Cobra which has caused 50,000 deaths each year. It is also responsible for thousands of deaths in India each year. Its length seldom reaches up to 6 feet. Nevertheless, its hood is much larger than that of the King Cobra. Its venom delivers significant amounts of deadly Neurotoxic resulting in necrosis and respiratory collapse. Its venom is said to result in human fatality as little as 30 to 60 minutes, calculating from the time of being attacked. | <urn:uuid:2e5e5944-593b-4786-9e16-78df3be3239f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scienceray.com/biology/zoology/terror-and-shock-top-10-deadliest-animals/2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984086 | 982 | 3.1875 | 3 |
The day after Queen Elizabeth celebrated her diamond jubilee she has decided to abdicate – and wants Prince William to be king.
Queen Elizabeth took her coronation vows in 1952 and vowed to be Queen “ALL the days of my life.” The Queen has always taken her royal duties seriously and will honor her vows.
BUT, times have changed. Queen Elizabeth shocked royal watchers when she reportedly told insiders at Buckingham Palace that in the next few months she will step down as Queen – because she would like to see Prince William (not Charles) crowned King before she dies.
This report sent shock waves around Great Britain – and the world. It would be the first time a sitting Queen – still with all her mental faculties – abdicates the throne.
“She want to make sure the monarchy survives as she wants it to, and if she is alive she can ensure that Prince William will become King,” said the insider.
But how can Prince William leapfrog his father to the throne?
“The Queen has a plan, and she knows it will work, while at the same time following royal family traditions and customs.”
Actually, the person she would most like to see on the throne is Princess Kate, who already has the hand wave down cold:
Queen Elizabeth has already spoken to her grandsons, William and Harry, about her wishes and Prince William seems pleased with her decision and is ready to take the throne:
This week Great Britain celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. The celebrations include parades, concerts, and community get-together’s on all scales, from small community picnics to enormous events for thousands of people.
In a colorful salute to the island nation’s maritime past, an armada of skiffs and sailboats, rowboats and paddle steamers joined a flower-festooned royal barge down a 7-mile stretch of London’s river.
With a crowd of rain-soaked spectators estimated by organizers at 1.25 million cheering from the riverbanks, the pageant was the largest public event in four days of celebrations of the monarch’s 60 years on the throne. On Monday, the queen will join thousands of revelers at an outdoor concert beside Buckingham Palace, headlined by pop royalty including Paul McCartney and Elton John.
The 86-year-old queen wore a silver and white dress and matching coat – embroidered with gold, silver and ivory spots and embellished with Swarovski crystals to evoke the river – for her trip aboard the barge Spirit of Chartwell, decorated for the occasion in regal red, gold and purple velvet.
When exactly will Queen Elizabeth abdicate?
“It will be after the Olympics, but before the new year,” said a royal insider. ”The Queen is happier than she has ever been and is thrilled with her decision.”
Long Live the Queen.
Long Live the new King! | <urn:uuid:2fec616f-7789-48f2-87a0-d60cd9c20a2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/48866/queen-elizabeth-to-give-up-the-throne/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=019c5482d9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955874 | 616 | 2.09375 | 2 |
About the Sun
Scientists tackle Antarctic mold
Study contributes to effort to restore historic buildings around the continent
Posted February 4, 2007
Even mold is tougher in the Antarctic.
Microbiologists from the University of Minnesota are still learning just how hardy several recently discovered species of molds are as part of an effort to preserve historic structures around the continent.
Principal Investigator Robert Blanchette and his team at the Forest Pathology and Wood Microbiology Research Laboratory have found that indigenous Antarctic fungi have quite an appetite for wood introduced here by the explorers and expeditions of the early 20th century.
Working with New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust, Blanchette and his team are studying the molds, in part, to understand what makes them thrive in order to stop their advance at historic structures, particularly the huts of Ross Island. (See the Feb. 5, 2006, issue of The Antarctic Sun at antarcticsun.usap.gov)
“These organisms tend to be found in extreme environments … in areas that exclude other organisms,” explained Blanchette during a phone interview from his office at the university.
One of his graduate students, Brett Arenz, embarked on a special mission in January to remote Stonington Island in the Antarctic Peninsula area. The island is home to East Base, the oldest extant U.S. Antarctic station.
Built in 1940, East Base was only used for a couple of seasons, including the privately funded Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition of 1947-48. This was the first expedition to include women to winter over on the continent.
Three East Base structures still remain, according to Arenz, and include a bunkroom, laboratory and a building used by the base commander. The site is designated as Historic Site and Monument No. 55 under the Antarctic Treaty system.
Arenz joined a conservation team with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the United Kingdom’s counterpart to the U.S. Antarctic Program. He traveled aboard the HMS Endurance, a British Royal Navy research vessel, to assess the microbes at East Base. He also worked alongside the BAS conservators at a number of historic British structures, including Base E, located a couple hundred meters from the American structures and also designated as a historic site and monument.
“It’s really a collaborative effort [with BAS],” Arenz said shortly before the five-week cruise.
Based on their work on Ross Island and sites around Palmer Station, the scientists say the same handful of mold species are likely attacking the wooden structures at East Base, perhaps with even more gusto thanks to the climatic ambience that the molds prefer when they dine.
“Since it is warmer and more humid there, there should actually be more microbial deterioration of the wood,” Arenz explained, “because the environmental conditions should be more conducive to that, but no one has investigated that up until now.”
The last report on the condition of the structures at Stonington Island date back to 1992, according to Blanchette. Some activity took place then to fortify the buildings against the elements.
“In the 15 years since then, there has apparently been some extensive deterioration that has occurred,” Arenz said, based on information from one of the BAS conservators. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to document that in more detail using photos and videos so they’ll be able to make a plan about more [conservation] work that needs to be done.”
Certain molds, such as this growing on a boot in the historic hut at Cape Evans, seem to thrive even in the harsh environment of Antarctica.
Added Blanchette, “We have great interest, of course, in historic preservation with the work that we’re doing with the historic huts in the Ross Sea region, especially on Ross Island.”
Scientists do not know much about Antarctic fungi at this point. It appears they live in the nutrient-poor Antarctic soils, feeding on what organic material they can find such as dead lichen, moss or penguin carcasses. The introduction of wood by early expeditions offered the molds something of an all-you-can-eat buffet.
“They started to colonize it and use it,” Blanchette said.
The molds cause an unusual decay that the scientists call a “soft rot,” penetrating the cell walls of the wood and other materials in the historic buildings such as textiles. They then grow inside the cells, protected from toxic substances, such as salt, that would normally kill them. Similar species are found in the Arctic as well as hot, dry desert regions.
“They seem to be especially well suited for survival in the extremes,” Blanchette noted. “They appear to be circumpolar in their distribution.”
At the Ross Island huts, the molds become active during the brief summer season, perhaps for only a couple months, and then remain dormant through much of the year. Moisture created by ice melting on the outside of the huts increases the fungal blooms. That’s particularly true at Cape Evans, where preservation work involves removing the ice and snow from around the hut and drying out the building as much as possible.
“There’s a lot to do at Cape Evans,” Blanchette conceded.
While conservationists may view these particular fungi as pests, they do play an important role in the Antarctic ecosystem for decomposing organic material, according to Blanchette. To better understand those processes, the team runs several biodiversity studies on Ross Island and around Palmer Station on the Antarctic Peninsula. The researchers buried sterile wood, cotton and similar materials to see how the microbes in the soil would react.
Any microbes found on the material has to have been since they were buried in the soil, Arenz said. “We’ve found very high concentrations of the same kind of fungi that we’ve found in the huts, indicating that these organisms are in the soils.”
The studies should help the microbiologists learn more about the organisms’ growth, behavior and survival strategies.
“We’re just trying to find out what these unusual microbes are and learn more about their biology and ecology in the polar environment,” Blanchette said.
NSF-funded research in this story: Robert Blanchette, University of Minnesota. | <urn:uuid:15f240ac-38e1-4a25-8daf-ba901b64ac9a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://antarcticsun.usap.gov/science/contenthandler.cfm?id=1243 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955201 | 1,342 | 3.078125 | 3 |
With a worldwide recession on, my impression is that the carnage in research has not been as severe as might be feared, at least in the United States. I know of two notable negative impacts:
- It’s quite difficult to get a job this year, as many companies and universities simply aren’t hiring. This is particularly tough on graduating students.
- Perhaps 10% of IBM research was fired.
In contrast, around the time of the dot com bust, ATnT Research and Lucent had one or several 50% size firings wiping out much of the remainder of Bell Labs, triggering a notable diaspora for the respected machine learning group there. As the recession progresses, we may easily see more firings as companies in particular reach a point where they can no longer support research.
There are a couple positives to the recession as well.
- Both the implosion of Wall Street (which siphoned off smart people) and the general difficulty of getting a job coming out of an undergraduate education suggest that the quality of admitted phd students may increase. In half a decade when they start graduating, we might have some new and very creative ideas.
- The latest stimulus bill includes substantial additional research funding. This is particularly welcome news for those at universities, because it will compensate for other cutbacks which may be necessary there as endowments or state funding fall. It’s also particularly good for young researchers at universities who just got a position or succeed this year, as the derivative on research funding particularly impacts them.
There are two effects going on: Does a recession cause us to refocus on other possibly better ideas? Or does it cause us to focus on short term survival? The first effect helps research while the second effect does not. By far, most of the money invested by governments to fight the recession has gone towards survival, but a small fraction in the US is going towards other possibly better ideas, with a portion of that going towards research.
We could hope for a larger fraction of money heading towards new ideas, rather than rescuing old, but there is a basic issue: the apparatus for creation and use of new ideas in the US is simply too small—it may not be able to effectively use more funding. In order to justify further funding for research, we may need to be more creative than simply “give us more”.
However, this is easy. Throughout much of the 1900s, Bell Labs created many inventions which are fundamental to modern society, including the transistor, C(++), Unix, the laser, information theory, etc… In my view the vital ingredients for success are:
- Access to cutting edge problems. Even extraordinarily intelligent researchers can simply end up working on the wrong problem. Without direct access to and knowledge of such problems researchers can end up inventing their own, which occasionally works out well, but more often does not.
- Free time. This is both obvious and yet a common failure mode. Researchers at universities have many more demands on their time, including teaching, fundraising, mentoring, and running a university. Similarly, researchers at corporations can be sucked into patching an existing system rather than thinking about the best way to really solve a problem.
- Concentration. Two researchers working together can often manage much more than one apart, as each can bring relevant expertise and viewpoints necessary to solve a problem. This remains true up to the point where communication becomes a substantial overhead, which in my experience is about 5, but which we might imagine technology helps improve.
Bell Labs managed to satisfy all three of these desiderata. Some research universities manage to achieve at least access and concentration to some extent, but hidden difficulties exist. For example, professors often don’t work with other professors, because they are both too busy with students and they must make a case for tenure based on work which is unambiguously their own. I’m not extremely familiar with existing national labs, but I believe they often fail at (a)—at least research at national labs have had relatively little impact on newer fields such as computer science.
So, my suggestion would be funding research in modes which satisfy all three desiderata. The natural and easy way to do this is by the government partially subsidizing basic research at those corporations which have decided to fund basic research. In computer science at least, this includes Microsoft, IBM, Yahoo, Google, and what’s left of Bell Labs at ATnT and Alcatel. While this is precisely the conclusion you might expect from someone doing research at one of these places, it’s also what you would expect of someone intensely interested in research who sought out the best environment for research. In economic terms, these companies have for reasons of their own decided to provide a public good. As long as we are interested, as a nation, or as a civilization, in subsidizing this public good, it is desirable to do this as efficiently as possible.
Some people might think that basic research done at a university is inherently more desirable than the same in industry. I don’t see any reason for this. For example, it seems that patentable research is about as likely to be patented at a university as elsewhere, and hence equally restricted for public use over the duration of a patent. Other people might think that basic research only really happens at universities or national labs, but that simply doesn’t agree with history.
Given this, it’s odd that the rules for NSF funding, which is the premier source of funding for basic science in the US, generally requires university participation on proposals. This restriction naturally makes it easier for researchers at universities to acquire grant money than researchers not at universities. I don’t understand why this restriction is desirable from the viewpoint of a government wanting to effectively subsidize research. | <urn:uuid:1d04730d-2384-4cd2-97de-0c651dec9f75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hunch.net/?p=601 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96652 | 1,191 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Those who know me, know that I love children’s books. I’m a huge advocate for the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling and I also a fan of the classic children’s stories such as Mary Poppins, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Black Beauty. So when I heard that J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was going to become three major motion pictures within the next three years, I was totally stoked.
Most people who have read J.R.R. Tolkien have read The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. This mystifying, adventurous story of a group of misfits come together in order to destroy the Ring of Power and save their people from ultimate destruction is truly epic. It literally took me an entire year to read all three books through and I cheated a little by skipping some of the songs and poems.
In contrast is the prequel, The Hobbit. This is a children’s story and takes a more whimsical approach to Middle Earth and its inhabitants. The story line is pretty simple. Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit of The Shire is solicited by his wizard friend Gandalf to join a group of dwarfs who are setting out to steel their treasure back from a dragon named Smaug. Along the way, this group of unlikely companions encounters many adventures including escaping the custody of three trolls, being stalked by a giant spider, facing off with a dragon and meeting the creature called Gollum. Bilbo ends up defeating the dragon and out-smarting Gollum in the end and going away with the one thing that Gollum treasures most, the Ring of Power or his “Precious.”
This is an excellent book for ages 10 and up. (I’m over 30 and still read it from time to time.) There are some lessons of tolerance, wit, self-confidence and companionship that are presented in the story and it should be a good read for boys – something I always appreciated with the Harry Potter Series.
Now all we can do is wait for the movie to come out, which will not be for children. I believe it’s going to be rated PG-13 and therefore you’ll need to make your own decision if your kid is mature enough to view the violent scenes of the movie. I am having a hard time wrapping the fact that this short story is going to be produced in three parts. We’ll have to respect director Peter Jackson’s decision that this was the best way to present the piece to a film audience. I’m expecting it will clean up at the box offices come December 14th.
Are you looking forward to the film version of this classic children’s story? | <urn:uuid:8d2fab45-ff41-43e5-8242-7c18861eaa7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thehippiebookworm.com/?p=355 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967986 | 571 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Feb. 6, 2007 Many human proteins are not as good as they might be because the gene sequences that code for them have a double role which slows down the rate at which they evolve, according to new research published in PLoS Biology.
By tweaking these dual role regions, scientists could develop gene therapy techniques that produce proteins that are even better than those found in nature, and could one day be used to help people recover from genetic disorders.
The stretch of DNA which codes for a specific protein is often interrupted by sections of apparently useless DNA – known as introns – which need to be edited out in order to produce a new protein.
Recently it has been discovered that some of the instructions on where to splice and re-splice the DNA in this editing process are contained in the coding section, or exon, of the DNA itself.
So, as well as spelling out which amino acids are needed to produce a specific protein, the part of the exon immediately next to the intron contains information that is essential for the gene editing process.
This means that these parts of genes evolve particularly slowly, making the proteins they encode for not as good as they could be had evolutionary processes been more able to improve them over time.
“Our research suggests that a gene with many exons would evolve at under half the rate of the same one that had no introns, simply owing to the need to specify where to remove introns,” said Professor Laurence Hurst from the University of Bath (UK), who worked with colleagues from the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) on the project.
“This is one of the strongest predictors of rates of protein evolution known, indicating that this dual coding role is vastly more influential than previously believed.”
The finding could have major implications for medicine and the development of gene therapy techniques in which people with a defective gene are given the correct version.
“Our results suggest that we could make the replacement gene even better than the normal version,” said Professor Hurst, from the Department of Biology & Biochemistry at the University of Bath.
“We would just need to remove the introns and tweak the protein at the sites that were dual coding.
“We also found that genes that have lost their introns many millions of years ago evolve especially fast near where the introns once resided.
“This indicates that this tweaking of the dual role sections of genes is also what evolution does when introns are removed.”
The research was funded by the Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council, the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Center for Integrative Genomics at the University of Lausanne.
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Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead. | <urn:uuid:655c3770-026e-4012-909e-5226dc36adbe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070206095832.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966502 | 574 | 3.5 | 4 |
Islamic Morality And Today’s World
;Alhamdulillah, and salaat and salaam upon Rasoolillah Muhammad and upon his family and followers until the end of time, ameen.
In case you hadn’t noticed, we live in very dangerous times. No doubt there are many areas where this statement applies. The proliferation of wars, civil strife, economic sanction, takeovers and forced expulsion, genocide, natural disaster, environmental pollution, political oppression, street crime, you name it. At this time however, we would like to offer a few words on a dangerous situation regarding one of the most fundamental aspects of human behavior that if abused can lead to an insidious form of genocide. Namely, the destruction of people through immoral sexual relationships.
This is a vast topic indeed, so we will not in any way attempt to give it a full treatment. We hope now only to make several points by looking at what the situation is today and how Islam and Muslims are viewed with regards to it. We pray that we will be able to academically deal with the Islamic morale code in detail in the future, in shaa Allah. It can neither be denied that any given society may undergo trends nor that these trends usually have an underlying cause or source and they don’t just suddenly “turn up” but rather develop over time.
In the west in particular, sexual relationships are generally viewed as the private preference of each individual. No one has the right to determine with whom, or how one conducts one’s sex life. What occurs between consenting adults, no matter what sex or how many, is usually condoned. We believe that these beliefs and principles (along with others) have chiefly contributed to the following realities of today's world.
The Current Reality
Premarital sex between heterosexuals is considered quite acceptable, normal, well within the bounds of morality, and indeed desirable. It has been this way for a long time and could honestly be said to be part of the "American Way". Dating begins at a very young age and every socially well-adjusted youngster is expected to have several girlfriends and boyfriends by a certain age. Couples are expected to live together and getting married has long ceased to be considered as a major aim in life. Those who grow up in the West are weaned on sex in both subtle and not so subtle ways. It is quickly learned through T.V. shows, commercials, movies, advertisements, songs, you name it, that being sexy is a desired goal and aim in life.
Even comic books abound with superheroes and heroines with fantastically well-proportioned bodies and they lead sexually active private lives where little is left to the imagination. Animated cartoon characters from Betty Boop to Jessica Rabbit make the message crystal clear about what makes a female desirable. The top selling video and computer games feature female characters with sexy bodies whose biggest audiences are adolescent boys and young men. Females are intensely focused on being sexually attractive and are conditioned to be so from the time they get their first Barbie. This is what makes the fashion, cosmetic and entertainment industries thrive.
Countless young girls admire and aspire to be 'superstar' beauty queens, models, singers, or actresses. There is a phenomenal proliferation of ‘fan’ or entertainment magazines that feature the hottest entertainment stars who are known precisely for their sex appeal. Romance novels (some affectionately termed "bodice rippers") are the number one sellers among young women around the world and have made many a writer rich even before they have sold the film rights. The most popular "rap artists" regularly feature sexually explicit 'lyrics' in their 'songs' that would disgust some of the crooners of love songs in the 'old days' (the 70's & 80's). The highest rated T.V. talk shows are those that commonly feature people who expose their most intimate and outlandish sexual behavior.
Fashion, health, and women's magazines must feature tips on how to be a sexual master of all things. An ideal of being a sexual "tigress" in bed is constantly reinforced. Nevertheless, while promiscuous men are often termed as 'studs' practically complementing their masculine virility, such women are most often derided as 'bimbos' or 'sluts'.
In Middle Eastern Muslim countries, including areas where most of the native women cover their entire bodies (face, hands…everything), newsstands and bookstores are filled with magazines with covers featuring the faces of gorgeous Arab (dare we say Muslim) women in the latest fashions, not to mention what is within the pages.
In the U.S. alone, pornography of all types and levels is a multi-billion dollar industry having increased in leaps and bounds within just the last decade. The amount of sexual activity that the average person, including children, may view on prime time national television is farabove that which one may have had to search for less than a decade or two ago. Sexual innuendo or titillating banter is ever present in situation comedies and other dramas and films. Daytime soap operas make their ratings on the number of affairs the characters are having and how sexually bold the beautiful, young and restless co-stars are on screen. Cable television is full of sexually explicit programming that can be seen at nearly all times. Video stores are stocked with plenty of films that anyone can rent to view in their own home what they were too embarrassed to go to the theater to see, or just missed the first time around, or who want to see their favorites over and over again. The latest compact disks are easily available, as are satellite dish transmissions of the same fare in the seemingly staunchest Islamic countries. Indeed, satellite broadcasts based in the heart of the Muslim world feature music videos, films, models and everything else from Hollywood to 'Bollywood' that sends a clear message that being desirable, attractive and sexy is of paramount importance.
Despite these realities, the entertainers and their producers, advertisers, writers and the like will claim that they don't adversely affect the habits of people at all. They insist that they don’t negatively influence society in any way. At the very same time most of them will say that one of the most gratifying rewards of their professions is the effect they have upon people!
The Destructive Consequences
After all that liberation, a woman's worth is still tied to her level of physical beauty which is still considered her greatest asset and one to be exploited in the worst way. Males are increasingly judged in this way but not to the degree as are females. Even the modern ‘super-woman power-executive’ who is supposed to be respected for her intellect and authority still wears a mid-thigh skirt. She expects... no demands, to be viewed as absolutely equal to her male counterpart, yet does she really believe that when dressed this way her worth is not at all being judged based on her looks by even the unemployed vagrant she passes by on the way to work? Indeed, it is commonplace, normal and in no way embarassing for a woman to wear the tightest and most revealing clothing in public and walk virtually nude at public beaches and swimming pools.
People are not at all embarassed or inhibited with public displays of sexual passion. It is not at all uncommon for couples to have intercourse in classic "make-out" spots like dark theaters, the beach, parks, their cars, and in one well-reported incident, on a commuter train in full view of the public who were more upset at the couple smoking afterwards than they were by their brazen display!
Prostitution in all its forms is increasingly open and given a "blind eye" by law enforcement who have their hands full with "real" crimes. It is even legal in some countries despite what would seem the relative easy availability of sex otherwise. There are places that are world famous for their open markets of female, male and child prostitutes. Legal statutes forbidding sex between minors, or certain other sexual practices are often not applied until and unless a formal complaint is brought against one party by another and may then even be found to be so outdated that they are wiped out completely. Adultery and fornication are no longer viewed as the deadly crimes and sins they really are and are in fact commonplace. Married men are expected to have several mistresses in some places.
It is the odd parent who does not expect their child to become sexually active at some point long before getting married or even before getting out of junior high school! Indeed, it is the odd person who values virginity until marriage even in these times of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Condoms are being handed out for free in several public school systems. A heavy price is being paid in unwanted unmarried teenage pregnancies, 'fatherless' children and resultant economic, health and psychological problems.
Homosexuality has now become accepted by a large number of people particularly in the West as well as in other circles that are "westernized". An indication of this changed attitude is the fact that homosexuals are no longer portrayed as they sterotypically were in past Hollywood films and television as ‘flaming faggots’ who were silly, lisping, cowardly weaklings or sexually promiscuous. That is and was considered offensive by homosexuals and is now ‘politically incorrect’ among the ‘mainstream’ heterosexual populace. Recent portrayals are now often of the homosexual as sensitive, level-headed and responsible members of society. Perhaps it could be accurately stated that homosexuality is accepted by a majority of Americans and Europeans even if they personally do not practice it. Accepted in so much as no one will report or condemn or discriminate against a homosexual in most areas unless they are flagrantly offensive in their mannerisms and behavior. This in no way implies that there aren't many people who still find homosexuality abhorrent and even react violently to it. However, it is considered absolutely politically incorrect in 'mainstream' circles to imply that homosexuals are any less moral and have any less right to practice what they practice than any heterosexual.
Even worse are reports in recent years that it has been statistically proven that a staggeringly high percentage of American females have been and can expect to be not only harassed but sexually assaulted in their lifetimes - even by family members! Violent sexual crimes are no longer shocking and rapists are given relatively light sentences if convicted. Child sexual abuse and "date rape" is a major problem and who knows how many incidences go unreported? "Stalking" is another type of crime that an amazingly high number of women have experienced and more can expect. Even wealthy and powerful men face being sexually assaulted or threatened (see Steven Spielberg).
Every man, no matter how rich or powerful faces a high risk of being accused of being a perpetrator of sexual harassment or even assault (see Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton). Literally millions of people, especially women, are victims each year of sexually related disasters from rape and assault to divorces and crimes of passion, and from sexually transmitted diseases to psychological and emotional disorders.
Refusal To Face The Need For Change
Even in the face of this staggering toll in human suffering and degradation, the disbelievers and doubters in Islam still incredulously ask: You Muslims say that Islam wants women to be all covered up?! They can't wear whatever they please shouldn't go out perfumed?! The opposite sex shouldn't even shake hands with those who are not their close relatives or spouses nor should an unrelated man and a woman be in a room alone together even if they are engaged?! You're not supposed to go out on dates? You shouldn't listen to music, especially the romantic, sexy, and sexually explicit songs!? No swimming or visiting the public beaches in the summer?! Not even the same sex should see each other in scanty, skin-tight, or see-through clothing or even shower together at the gym?! You're against co-educational institutions?! You're supposed to lower your gaze when the opposite sex comes along and if you must speak to them it should be in a no-nonsense tone?! You really place great value on chastity, modesty and virginit until marriage?! You encourage that men be jealous for and protective of their wives?! Premarital sex is a punishable crime and adultery is a capital offense?! No sex unless you are married to your partner?! You can marry up to four women?!!!
They call the genuine, devout, practicing Muslims extremists (equating them with terrorists in the mind of the average person), yet they don't (or refuse to) recognize the ugly realities described earlier as outrageous and extreme! They label Muslims fundamentalists, but they don’t admit that the present situation calls for a major and fundamental revision of their principles! They say we are strange but we don't mind. As the Prophet (sallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam said:
Islam began as something strange and it will again become something strange. Therefore, may Allah bless the strangers! | <urn:uuid:171c5a26-a529-4468-a2f9-5a15f7c14b1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tamilislam.com/ENGLISH/misunderstand/Islamic%20Morality%20And%20Today%20World.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969712 | 2,681 | 1.71875 | 2 |
My name is Ricky Sharples, and I love the guitar. This blog is offering info on how to play a guitar for free.
It’s like a cake mix. You can find the ingredients here, but YOU need to supply your own heat. To take advantage of free guitar lessons and tools you need to be aware of what kind of guitar playing you really want to do. Who do you want to sound like? What kind of guitar sound turns you on?
Here is an introduction to my collection of free guitar lessons in the form of some of my most popular posts:
Take all the time you want to browse the posts on my blog. You will find links to free guitar tuners and tab editors, reviews of paid guitar courses, free video guitar lessons and lots of other stuff you will need to learn to play the guitar for free.
The conventional wisdom for teaching guitar is to give the student a wide background of theory and practice that he can draw from later in his career as a professional guitarist. The end result is a well-rounded musician who can play and improvise in many styles of guitar playing and be able to step into a recording studio and provide backing for a singer at short notice. This is an ideal view of teaching guitar but it doesn’t suit everybody and if you look at the procession of guitar innovators of the past four or five decades, there are almost no “well rounded” musicians amongst them.
Learn To Play A Guitar For Free is aimed at helping you to use your own musical tastes and whatever small amount of self discipline you have to begin exploring your interest in the guitar. The blog is like a smorgasbord – you can choose from any genre as your interest takes you and if you wind up being a guitarist who is happy to play a small repertoire of music using techniques you have chosen to work with, then that’s better than an enthusiastic amateur being discouraged by a teacher who insists that he “needs” to learn to read music or be master of a number of techniques. | <urn:uuid:d4237ae2-39ff-4d18-9c6d-4b95e444df75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://playaguitarforfree.com/about/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971164 | 420 | 1.546875 | 2 |
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Local history course starting at The Hive in Worcester
8:30am Thursday 3rd January 2013 in Local
AN opportunity has opened up for Worcestershire residents to find their place in local history through a course starting at The Hive in Worcester this month.
In Find Your Place in Local History, residents can study a topic of their choice using archives and sources held by Worcestershire Archive & Archaeology Service.
Experienced tutor and historian Pat Hughes will provide help and guidance for learners in their research. The course will run in the Explore The Past area on Thursday evenings for 10 weeks, beginning on January 10, 2013 between 7.30-9.30pm, at a cost of approximately £75 for the full course.
This has been a popular course running over many years, with some students returning each year. The course is attractive because of its flexibility – learners can choose to focus on their own interests, often including study of the history of their own house, church, village or town.
For more information, call 01905 766352, or phone Pat Hughes directly to discuss possible topics for study on 01905 424892. | <urn:uuid:6ae5eb46-ce9c-47bf-a12c-b0b937d5672f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.droitwichadvertiser.co.uk/news/local/10136000.Local_history_course_starting_at_The_Hive_in_Worcester/?ref=nt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955562 | 260 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Almost four decades ago, a young filmmaker named Steven Spielberg asked established composer John Williams to write music for his film.
As of next year, they will have worked exclusively together for 40 years.
One of the greatest honors that I have ever received in my life, Spielberg says in a new program looking back at their partnership, was the first time that John said yes to the movie that I wanted to score which was the (1974) Sugarland Express.
The American Film Institute and Turner Classic Movies AFIs Master Class The Art of Collaboration, starring Spielberg and Williams, will debut Tuesday on TCM.
In a cozy setting at the AFI Conservatory and with an audience of aspiring AFI Fellows filmmakers, Spielberg and Williams discuss their collaborations. After so many years, they still greatly admire each other, professionally and personally.
Hes never once said to me, I dont like that, or this wont work, Williams says of his music for Spielberg, Hes enjoyed everything, even the mistakes.
Along with the discussion, clips are shown from their favorite movies, leading to a discussion of the power of the appropriate music for creating unforgettable scenes.
Williams choices tie with his memories of the music, not film. He remembers clearly the music in a scene in 1954s On the Waterfront, scored by Leonard Bernstein (better known from West Side Story) but not the specific scene.
One of his favorites is from E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, when Elliot (Henry Thomas) soars through the night air elevated by E.T., which Williams always loved for its sense of innocence and sense of gravity.
Spielberg cites the love scene in Hitchcocks Vertigo, where he felt the music made the scene, and Alex Norths score for the 1960 sand-and-sandal film Spartacus.
Both love Amadeus which was, of course, scored by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Williams says his Spielberg favorite is Schindlers List. He was so overcome after viewing the film that he took a small walk, came back to the meeting with Spielberg, and said, Steven, you really need a better composer than I am for this film. Spielbergs reply: I know. But theyre all dead.
Along with the discussion of collaboration and trust, a major element in making any movie, they give insights in the business of film creation.
The master class that we both attend is the script which becomes the movie. And it is the movie that we both are devoted to serving, says Spielberg of his working style. In a question-and-answer session with the Fellows, Spielberg advises, Just remember to learn your craft. Even before you start to think of yourself as an artist, learn your craft.
MORE FROM MCCLATCHY | <urn:uuid:0f9b0e47-d2eb-40ee-8777-1a436f1974e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/11/11/130065/afis-master-class-the-art-of-collaboration.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963398 | 571 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The Republican Party has always been about disguising a lust for economic plunder with phony ideas about “freedom,” “Christianity,” “equality,” “civilization,”and other nice-sounding words.
For the past century and a half the Republican Party has gratuitously labeled itself as “The Party of Great Moral Ideas.” The Party of Great Moral Frauds is more like it. The party began as the party of mercantilism, corporate welfare, protectionist tariffs, constitutional subterfuge, central banking, and imperialism. Its 1860 presidential platform promised not to disturb Southern slavery; its first president supported the Fugitive Slave Act and the proposed “Corwin Amendment” to the Constitution that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with Southern slavery; the party committed treason by “levying war upon the states” (the precise definition of treason in the Constitution) and murdering hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens in order to destroy the voluntary union of the states that was established by the founding fathers. It refused to do what Britain, Spain, France, the Dutch, Denmark, Sweden, and the Northern states in the U.S. had done about slavery and end it peacefully. Instead, it used the slaves as pawns in a war that was about consolidating all political power in Washington, D.C. in general, and in the hands of the Republican Party in particular.
Three months after the War to Prevent Southern Independence ended the Republican Party commenced a twenty-five year war of genocide against the Plains Indians, killing as many as 60,000 of them, including thousands of women and children, and putting the rest in concentration camps. It did this, according to General Sherman who orchestrated this horribly immoral crusade, to “make way for the railroads” that were being heavily subsidized by the Republican Party. It also plundered the conquered South with exorbitant taxes and the legalized theft of vast tracts of property by party hacks for a decade after the war (so-called “reconstruction”), while doing virtually nothing for the freed slaves. It did nothing while as many as 1 million former slaves died of disease shortly after the war in the worst public health disaster in American history.
The Grant administrations were most known for the colossal corruption associated with the building of the government-subsidized transcontinental railroads that was finally made public during the Credit Mobilier scandal.
The Republican Party has always been about disguising a lust for economic plunder with phony ideas about “freedom,” “Christianity,” “equality,” “civilization,”and other nice-sounding words. The War to Prevent Southern Independence allowed it to finally usher in the Hamiltonian “American System” of high protectionist tariffs for the benefit of Northern manufacturers at the expense of everyone else; a nationalized money supply with its Legal Tender and National Currency Acts; and vast amounts of corporate welfare, starting with the government-subsidized railroad corporations. It created the internal revenue system, invented dozens of new taxes, created the military/industrial complex, ran up historically high levels of debt, and destroyed the founders’ system of federalism or states’ rights as a check on centralized governmental power.
The war of genocide against the Plains Indians was a way of socializing the cost of building the government-subsidized railroads. Having succeeded in eradicating the Indians, the Republican Party next turned to tiny little countries like Cuba and the Philippines to plunder under the usual phony excuse of spreading “freedom” and “the American way” around the globe. The Republican Party claimed to embrace the message of Reverend Josiah Strong’s 1885 book, Our Country, which proclaimed a supposedly sacred American duty to “civilize and Christianize inferior peoples.” They portrayed themselves as one big gang of Mother Theresas, selflessly sacrificing endlessly for the benefit of strangers in foreign lands.
A particularly galling example of this spectacular hypocrisy and dishonesty is the conquest of the Kingdom of Hawaii. By the early 1890s American businessmen had been in Hawaii for many years as corporate sugar and pineapple growers. Encouraged by the Republican Party’s aggressive and imperialistic foreign policy, they sought to get the Party to overthrow the government of Hawaii and make it an American province under their political control. They wanted to turn it into the perfect Hamiltonian corporate welfare state, in other words. As described by Gregg Jones in Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream (p. 23):
On January 14, Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani attempted to curb the power of U.S. commercial interests in the kingdom’s legislature by promulgating a new constitution. A thirteen-member coalition of Americans called the Committee of Safety angrily resisted. Two members, Judge Sanford Dole and businessman Lorrin Thurston, met secretly with U.S. envoy John Stevens and plotted to overthrow the monarchy. The committee’s armed militia promptly seized key buildings, triggering the landing of American troops. The group set up an ad hoc government headed by Dole . . .
The “Committee of Safety” employed a paramilitary organization called the “Honolulu Rifles” who were allied with its puppet political party in Hawaii known as the “Missionary Party.” (Sanford Dole was the son of New England Yankee missionaries who migrated to Hawaii from Maine). The Honolulu Rifles forced the king of Hawaii to sign a new constitution that was known as the “bayonet constitution” because the King was literally threatened with being gutted by bayonets unless he signed the document, “Godfather” style. The new constitution disenfranchised all Asians (considered part of an “inferior race” by the Republican business elite) and most everyone else except for affluent landowners, most of whom were Americans and their business associates. It imposed Sanford Dole as puppet president. His cousin James Dole shortly thereafter founded the Dole Fruit Company which prospers to this day.
But before the Republican Party could get the U.S. Congress and the president to formally annex Hawaii, Democrat Grover Cleveland took office (in March of 1893) and killed their proposal, condemning “the lawless landing of the United States force at Honolulu.” Grover Cleveland was the last Jeffersonian president of the United States and the last good Democrat. This, however, led to the political rise of the bloviating idiot and Master Race theorist Theodore Roosevelt (TR), the favorite president of today’s neo-conservatives. “It’s difficult to write a bad book about Theodore Roosevelt,” neocon Charles Kessler of the Claremont Institute wrote in that organization’s book review tabloid in 1998. To fellow neocons William Kristol and David Brooks, Kessler wrote approvingly, TR “figures as a patron saint of American nationalism and energetic government.”
In October of 1895 TR proclaimed to the Republican Club of Massachusetts that “I feel that it was a crime not only against the United States, but against the white race, that we did not annex Hawaii three years ago” (Jones, p. 24). He said this in response to the complaints made by his close friend and fellow Republican, Henry Cabot Lodge, that the Spanish and British empires had been conquering “all the waste places of the earth” and Americans were missing out on the fun since they were not yet sufficiently imperialistic.
As president, TR perfected the Republican Party’s policy of economic plunder through imperialism disguised by humanitarian rhetoric. He denounced the Jeffersonian-minded advocates of peace as “senile,” “idiots,” and “unhung traitors” (Green, p. 162). As discussed in Jim Powell’s excellent book, Bully Boy: The Truth About Theodore Roosevelt’s Legacy, TR essentially declared the U.S. government to be the world’s policeman; warned against what he called “the menace of peace”; and targeted for war Cuba, Hawaii, Venezuela, China, the Philippines, Panama, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Canada. None of these military interventions or planned interventions had anything to do with national defense. “He asserted that the United States must intervene . . . when a nation failed to behave,” wrote Powell. “All the great master races have been fighting races,” Teddy Roosevelt the master race theorist proclaimed. It was in this way, writes Powell, that Teddy Roosevelt reinvigorated the “Party of Lincoln.” I was Lincoln’s secretary of state William Seward, Powell reminds us, who wanted the U.S. to intervene if not conquer Canada,, Mexico, parts of Asia, the Caribbean, Cuba, Haiti, Culebra, French Guiana, Peurto Rico, and St. Batholomew.
U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler knew what he was talking about when he wrote in his famous monograph, War is a Racket, that “War is a racket. It always has been.”
Thomas J. DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland. | <urn:uuid:8a049e7f-eb58-477d-8429-033b0583b18b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://qwstnevrythg.com/2012/07/the-party-of-great-moral-frauds/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959941 | 1,948 | 2.25 | 2 |
The road up the river runs along through a very fine section of farming county. The growing crops look fine. The grass is already fast falling before the rapid click click of the mowers. Farmers are evidently living up to the old saying, "Make hay while the sun shines." Corn is looking splendid and promises a bountiful yield. The grain sways back and forth, staggering under its precious load, fast ripening for the golden harvest time. All through the trip we saw the fruitage about to be garnered to gladden the sturdy, honest farmer in the joyous harvest home. But enough of this, The county is full of just such life, just such homely joys, just such sturdy toil, just such abundant rewards.
Oswego is a fine little town, just back from the river on a bluff. It is without a railroad, and quiet. Neither screaming whistle nor rushing iron steed disturbs its serene repose. There is underneath the surface, life. Oswego is not one of those do nothing dead towns. Business is active. Stocks are above par. Life, and with it, trade runs quietly but surely.
There is not yet that enterprise which should mark every western town. There is not that launching out into new channels of business which might be. There is not that go-ahead attentiveness which builds up a town. Thus Oswego remains what it was yesterday and will be tomorrow, unless its people wake up and work more earnestly to build up their own interests. It is not always wise to venture, but to venture nothing is to have nothing. These country villages may do a big trade, may live fast, may see their streets teeming with activity, but they must first take the right steps to secure the desired results.
When our merchants furnish as good quality goods, and as great a variety as can be obtained in Aurora, then the trade will be diverted from Aurora and stop nearer home. It will take capital. It will take business enterprise, but it will guarantee success. Let our merchants determine to keep this county trade at home. Let them sell quality goods. Let them make their wares known to the people and let them grow rich.
Oswego has recently shown a commendable enterprise in erecting a fine large brick block. This block contains six large elegant stores. All of these but one are already in successful operation, their occupants are undoubtedly getting rich fast.
As an evidence of what may be done we mention an instance. Mr. D. M. Haight came to Oswego in April and occupied one of the new stores. The first month he did a small trade. The second month his trade amounted to nearly $2,000. The third month, June, it was increased more than a thousand dollars. Mr. Haight is a gentleman and understands his business. He keeps a splendid assortment of goods and, is well repaid. One gentleman informed us that his trade, amounting to about $500 per year, formerly went to Aurora. Since the recent enterprise facilities have opened it has stopped there. Others will do likewise.
Oswego now offers fine inducements for trade. The Goldsmith Brothers in the clothing line are not to be excelled, and are perfect gentlemen. They have a large stock of goods and keep up with the times.
L. N. Hall has one of the neatest and most commodious drug stores outside of Chicago. Such enterprise as he has managed must meet with abundant success.
Across the way Mr. J. A. Kenney keeps a well-selected stock of dry goods, groceries, boots and shoes. Mr. Kenney knows how to wait upon his customers in a gentlemanly manner.
Return to Oswego Index
Return to Town Sketches
Return to Table of Contents | <urn:uuid:a4ca3f80-80cd-4e45-89d9-ee1fb73d6c38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ilkendal/TownHistories/Oswego/OswegoIn1868.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971076 | 781 | 2.140625 | 2 |
McDonald's restaurant to grab a quick snack. At the counter there was a sign advertising two apple pies for 99 cents. It sounded like a good deal until I looked up at the big menu board and noticed that the price for one apple pie was only 49 cents. I wish I had taken a picture of the two signs. When I shared this story on Twitter, Danny Nicholson replied with a link to his Bad Maths Flickr group.
The Bad Maths Flickr group contains lots of examples of bad math stopped in stores and other public places.
Applications for Education
The Bad Maths Flickr group could be a good place to find some images that contain simple mathematics problems for your students to solve. For example, ask students to find the flaw in the math of this grocery store offer or this offer for cat food. | <urn:uuid:14f97083-9842-47f1-a6f8-d9d2b6bb2f3c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2012/07/bad-math-in-real-world.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94852 | 165 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Isabel Muñoz studies human forms, which she analyzes in her images of body parts and snapshots of soldiers, bullfighters and dancers. Added to this is her mastery of developing techniques, a process she carries out in a meticulous, artisanal manner. Her motivation to do research has led her to travel the world, portraying movement and bodies to construct a style in which sensuality, pleasure and desire are captured by her snapshots.
Made possible by an artists grant from the Community of Madrid Photography Award in 2006, the exhibition addresses two main themes: love and ecstasy in her photographs of Dervishes. The showing portrays the state of ecstasy reached through spiritual dance performed by Nomadic Syrian Dervishes and in the ceremonies of Iranian Dervishes.
Christian Caujolle, co-curator of the exhibition, explains some of its key points at PHE.es
How did you start out in the world of visual arts? How has your work evolved to where you are today?
I started out as a critic for Libération in 1979, after having finished my studies that didnt have anything to do with journalism or visual arts, since I studied Spanish and Latin American literature. Aside from writing, they put me in charge of photo editing as chief redactor in 1981. Then in 1986, I created Agence VU and, years later, the gallery by the same name. I left it two years ago to dedicate my time to teaching at the Louis Lumière School, to write more and curate exhibitions and festivals.
During my time at Libération and Agence VU, I curated exhibitions and festivals and published many photography books on both famous photographers (Klein, Lartigue, Peter Beard, Stromhölm, Salgado, Petersen and more) and young photographers (Bernard Faucon, unknown at the time, Engström, Lars Tunbjörk, Laurence Leblanc, Depardonhis first important book
Hugues de Wurstemberger, Laurence Leblanc, Mathieu Pernot
). And on many Spaniards, from Cristina García Rodero to Chema Madoz, Ouka Lele, Ricard Terré, Joan Fontcuberta, Isabel Muñoz, which is to say Ive done quite a few
Together with Blanca Lleo, you have curated the exhibition Love and Ecstasy by Isabel Muñoz. What works have been selected for this showing?
Were co-curators for the new exhibition on Isabel Muñoz: Blanca Lleo, whos an architect, which is very important in a space like Canal de Isabel II, a wonderful space but very difficult, and myself. Its been a true collective dialog, with each of us contributing our skills.
The exhibit consists of two series related to Sufism, the mystic tradition of Islam. On the one hand, we have the Dervishes, who have been photographed in Turkey and Syria, and on the other, the secret ritual meetings of its Kurdish followers in Iraq and Iran.
Made possible by an artists grant from the Community of Madrid Photography Award in 2006, the exhibition addresses two main themes: love and ecstasy shown in photographs of the Dervishes. What is the main curatorial narrative for this exhibition?
The idea, which is also tied to the characteristics of this space and the fact that the images are very impacting, is to try to make us perceive and understand what mysticism is: the will to ascend towards the divine light. To achieve this, one must free oneself from the bodys burden. The Dervishes do this by dancing in an obsessive manner, twirling with one hand pointed towards the heavens, and the other towards the ground to create a link between both worlds, dreaming that they will be lifted towards the light. The followers of the brotherhood, exclusively men, do this when they mutilate themselves with nails, razors and metallic objects when in a trance, outside themselves.
The exhibition progresses from the followers preparing themselves, praying to the sound of drums as they get ready for their trance, which takes us through the most spectacular moments with images of bloodletting. Then it moves to the Dervishes until we reach a video in the upper dome, which has still images taken frame-to-frame to obtain the best possible quality. There are few works: some 45 large format frames, four videos, and two more videos that more so occupy the space than truly form part of the exhibitions content. Weve also worked with lighting in a way that evolves from a dark atmosphere to a highly lighted space.
It was also important to underscore the iconographic, painterly quality that relates Isabels work to that of the Baroque. There is a Christ figure, a foot, a detail of a bloodied chest that look like paintings by Ribera, as well as others that remind us of Zurbarán. An enormous reprint of the most Christ-like image occupies a central role in this space. It was important for us to highlight that mysticism has produced comparable practices (if not the same). For example, some months ago the Vatican revealed that Pope John Paul II wore a penitent haircloth during the last ten years of his life. Practices like fasting, whipping oneself as punishment, as well as its reference to Saints and Martyrs, references to the love of God that speaks to the body (St. John of the Cross, for example, and St. Theresa of Avila), and theres a classic, very violent and bloody iconography that we often dont want to see in this way.
Beyond appreciating her work and its power, we hope the exhibition proposes a reflection on the themes of mysticism, the Baroque, faith and the body.
Isabel Muñoz studies human forms, which she analyzes through images of body fragments and snapshots of soldiers, bullfighters and dancers. How would you define the anthropological study that can be seen in Isabel Muñozs work?
I dont believe it offers a truly anthropological perspective. Rather, I think that Isabel, who for years has displayed her work representing Flamenco, tango, Turkish wrestling and bullfighting, is totally fascinated by bodily practices for the beauty of bodies (her photographs of African bodies bear an incredible nobility, beauty, and an impressive eroticism to them), for the multitude of corporeal expressions when moving, dancing, painting themselves, mixing together, making love, caressing, eroticizing, capable of radically transforming themselves. She considers them at once basic and a mystery. And she tries to explore this point. For more than twenty years
She can have very high quality, professional works, as we know, but her profound work continues to be and always will be tied to that mystery for her, the body. And this is something that can even be seen in her most impacting portraits.
In your opinion, what specific characteristics do her photographs of Dervishes in this exhibition have in relationship to Isabel Muñozs prior work?
Well, I think she continues her quest in a very logical manner, and as always, with incredible determination. What she has done in Iraq and Iran, being the first to do soand also a woman!was very daring and dangerous. The most reportage parts will seem strange to people because its not part of her work thats known or seen. But here, carefully chosen in large format, they take on a force that goes well beyond all the anecdotes theyre based on. Even though its highly original for its point of view and manner of focus, its cropping and framing, the subject of Dervishes is more related to her previous work. Its more aesthetic in a certain way, in search of how to transcribe movement into a still image.
I should note that its Isabels first exhibition thats entirely in color, without any platinum prints...
Could you share with us the projects you are currently working on?
Well, there are many
At the end of June, I have an exhibition from part of my collection of prints in the city of Niort, on the occasion of a very special award organized by the Pour Voir Association, which every year invites eight young photographers to a two-week workshop with a photographer. Its my turn to be the teacher in 2010 (though I wont take photos
). Itll take place in the final weeks of August and the first week of September.
Ill have to go to be a jury member at Vevey School in Switzerland, and then Ill present an exhibition in Arlés on the photography collection of Martin Karmitz, with a 340-page book published by Actes Sud.
Then, in Sao Paulo (Brazil) theres a pre-planning meeting for a new festival to begin in Autumn 2011, called Cidade Galeria, with giant photos (between 150 and 300 square meters) on empty advertising billboards. The festival is entirely free and all of it is outdoors (or almost all of it), and not only on photography: there will be other kinds of artists.
At the beginning of November, I have an exhibition on German reporter Kai Wiedenhoefer, who won the Carmignac Photojournalism Prize, at the Musée dArt Moderne de la Ville in Paris. Its about his work on Gaza.
And then Ill go to Cambodia for the third edition of the Photo Phnom Penh Festival to take place from November 28th to December 7th, with exhibitions until November 20th.
Added to this are some contests, writings for Internazionale in Italy and artnet.fr in France, plus some others for books and exhibitions. And the Ojo de Pez Encounters in Barcelona. And some long-term projects, like one for Fotonovela in 2012, and another on professional studio artists. | <urn:uuid:6c769600-2602-46b3-b2ad-1d97172dc4ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=39092&int_modo=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96067 | 2,028 | 1.546875 | 2 |
- "Happiness is knowing yourself, loving yourself, and being yourself, F**** anyone who doesn't get you"
- "Surprising. Obama did not claim Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh as dependents even though their income totally dependent on him."
- "If queue numbers in the Store are correct, Blizzard is making over half a million dollars an hour on the Celestial Steed."
The US government is paying good money to archive tweets such as the above for posterity, but why?
Those "top tweets" from the past week will join billions of others—every tweet since Twitter launched in 2006, in fact—in a new archive at the 210-year-old Library of Congress. There, they will reside in air-conditioned comfort on servers that also hold the Library's current 167TB archive of Web data.
This was big news—so big that when the Library of Congress blogged about it last week, traffic to the site brought down the entire loc.gov server.
To find out exactly why the government cares about what you had for dinner last night, we spoke with Martha Anderson, the director of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program at the Library. Anderson has already seen the full gamut of responses, which she outlines with a laugh.
- Oh, I'm going to be in the Library of Congress because I tweet! Awesome!
- Um, I'm going to be in the Library of Congress because I tweet? Creepy.
- Wow, what a terrific resource for research.
- What a complete waste of taxpayer money.
Anderson herself takes the pragmatic view. "We don't think the whole thing is the most precious treasure" on earth when you drill down to individual tweets, she says, but looked at in the aggregate—yes, it will be a terrific resource.
The Library sees Twitter as a "technology change" in the way we communicate. Those don't happen often, and the Library has an interest in documenting each major new communications platform.
For instance, "one of the things we see emerging is that Twitter is a news distribution medium now," she says. Issue a press release, especially on paper, and response is minimal. But when the library tweeted about its plans, feedback was immediate and overwhelming.
Not that the Library went after this archive, though; the initiative came from Twitter, which approached the Library about taking a custom data dump of its complete public archive (private tweets will not be included).
After "long discussions with Twitter over this," Anderson and other LoC officials agreed to take on the data with a few conditions: it would not be released as a single public file or exposed through a search engine, but offered as a set only to approved researchers.
Details on how the data will be provided are still being worked out. Anderson expects that it will eventually come through in XML markup, but the two groups are still working out formatting issues for the data.
Challenges exist, of course; for instance, how should the Library handle shortened URLs? Decades from now, such shortening services may be gone and the URL will leave no trace of what was originally linked in the tweet. That's a major part of Twitter's importance, and it shows what links are being shared. One can imagine the terrific charts that could be drafted based on which Twitter communities linked to which sites with what frequency.
And pictures—how should they be handled? Twitter itself currently does not host photos, so Anderson doesn't envision the Library trying to crawl beyond Twitter in order to get copies of the pictures. "We don't normally go beyond the domain" that's being archived, she says; the same approach will probably be taken here.
As far as "format rot" goes, the Twitter data set should be easy enough to use, even decades from now. It's not locked up in some custom and ancient video or audio codec; this is XML-structured text, so preservation should be a straightforward matter. (The bigger problem may be parsing the sometimes cryptic slang used to cram tweets into 140 characters; while some academics now study the medieval handwriting of scriptorium monks, one can imagine a future in which people specialize in interpreting early 21st century TXTSPK.)
Twitter has just announced a major new feature: arbitrary metadata can be associated with tweets in the future, opening up new opportunities for location awareness, etc. The LoC will also gain access to this data.
Who wants to read this? Your grandkids
For researchers, this could prove to be a tremendous archive. Imagine delving into Elizabethan England and wanting to know more about daily life—what did people eat and drink, what jokes did they tell, how mobile were they? This data exists in limited forms, like personal journals or letters, but it's fragmentary and limited largely to the elites.
Now imagine how much we would know with a Twitter archive from the period:
This sort of thing is a gold mine of local information, rather than just "the documents of courts or the documents of legislators," in Anderson's words.
As geo-tagging of tweets become common, the possibilities multiply. Anderson recently saw one researcher generating digital maps of 17th century Spanish smuggling networks to analyze how they worked; similar maps could be applied to tweets. One could plot the use of the word "hoagie" on a US map, for instance, or track "soda" vs. "pop" across time. Political and social trends could be mapped, as could the mobility of Twitter users.
"We're not really looking at these as individual tweets," says Anderson.
But there could be a future use even for the individual tweets: geneaology. Imagine reading the complete archive of your grandmother's Twitter stream and what a window into her life it might provide. (This being Twitter, that window can sometimes be cracked a little too wide for comfort, of course.)
As one of our chief national archives, it can be hard for the Library to draw lines around what content should be maintained and which left free to blow away in the digital breeze. Given the new arrangement with Twitter, I ask Anderson if Facebook might be next.
There's a laugh. "If Facebook became something that was really useful or needed [by us], then we might, but there are no plans," she says. | <urn:uuid:10b2e522-aff8-4982-82f4-2890d0efb5eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/04/why-is-the-us-govt-archiving-your-tweets-we-ask-them/?comments=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956155 | 1,297 | 1.601563 | 2 |
President Barack Obama is defending nuclear power as an important source of energy in the U.S., even as new questions are raised about its safety following radiation leaks from an earthquake and tsunami-damaged nuclear plant in Japan.
In an interview with Pittsburgh television station KDKA, Obama says nuclear facilities in the U.S. are closely monitored and are designed to withstand certain levels of earthquakes.
However, Obama says all energy sources have downsides and none are foolproof. He says the U.S. learned that last summer during the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Obama says he has been assured that Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast will not be affected by radiation released from the damaged plant in Japan.
Previous post in News | <urn:uuid:38c5a7bf-b1a6-47a6-82db-aff8bd016ff8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wbez.org/story/scitech/energy/president-obama-defends-use-and-safety-nuclear-power | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982006 | 153 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Letter to Editor: Build Dunes That Can Pass the Test of Time
Ocean City resident Peaches Lukens asks the city to consider forming a research committee to plan for a durable dune system.
To the editor:
The city and state's plan to spend $10 million more of taxpayers money on beach replenishment is as unrealistic as building a sand castle on the beach today and expecting it to still be there a year from now.
The nature of barrier islands seems to be completely overlooked for far too long. Though "city" by all appearances, this city is built basically on a seven-mile-long sandbar. Sand moves.
Tidal currents and wind move it. Some areas of the island collect this moving sand, while other areas lose it. It's the way all barrier islands work, past and present.
All kinds of contraptions and superficial remedies cannot compare to the way nature dictates. Instead of dumping more sand, we need to rebuild what was once here. Dunes!!
Not measly dunes built on top of gargantuan sand bags or dotted with some grass, but dunes thick and wide with ample shrubs and dwarf trees whose root systems hold sand in place.
A healthy barrier island beach consists of about 9 "zones." Five of them make up various parts of an island's vital dune system. We barely have one of those important zones, let alone five that are needed. Avalon and Cape May Point are great models for dune development and the protection they serve. We can easily see the repercussions of duneless islands such as the sad devastation of Seaside Heights. Funtown Amusement Park sat like a sitting duck on a defenseless beach, only feet from the ocean. It was only a matter of time a storm would wash it away.
Developing adequate dunes unfortunately paints a dismal picture for all those first-floor home owners seeking an ocean view, but those days are gone if we really want to find some long-term solutions for our eroding beaches. The whole island depends upon such a line of defense. Hindsight is 20/20.
If we knew back then, what we know now, we hopefully wouldn't have built so close to the ocean or ground floor homes on the beach. We cant tear down homes to widen the beaches, but we can begin to reconstruct some of the natural order of barrier island ecology, by building adequate and healthy dunes one row at a time. Once one row is well-established, sand collects in front of it and another dune line can be established. Building out as we go. This also provides food, habitat and shelter for a host of native wildlife that migrate through or live alongside us on this wee li'l island.
Long-lasting solutions are at hand and fairly easy to put in motion, so why aren't we considering these?
How many more years are we going to throw money away and sand on the beach thinking that's the best we have?
I encourage the administration alongside their Environmental Commission to create a research and planning committee to get going on these dunes before the next Big One ... which could come our way again sooner than we think and right now we have virtually no dunes to protect us! | <urn:uuid:fb9fcd97-b90f-44c8-9a92-5bd7a73d7b9b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oceancity.patch.com/articles/letter-to-editor-build-dunes-that-can-pass-the-test-of-time | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951808 | 662 | 2 | 2 |
"Bhishma said, 'In this connection, viz., the method by which a king should fill his treasury, persons acquainted with the scriptures of olden days cite the following verses sung by Brahman himself. The wealth of persons who are given to the performance of sacrifices, as also the wealth dedicated to the deities, should never be taken. A Kshatriya should take the wealth of such persons as never perform religious rites and sacrifices as are on that account regarded to be equal to robbers. All the creatures that inhabit the earth and all the enjoyments that appertain to sovereignty, O Bharata, belong to the Kshatriyas. All the wealth of the earth belongs to the Kshatriya, and not to any person else. That wealth the Kshatriya should use for keeping up his army and for the performance of sacrifice. Tearing up such creepers and plants as are not of any use, men burn them for cooking such vegetables as serve for food. 1 Men conversant with duty have said that his wealth is useless who does not, with libations of clarified butter, feed the gods, the Pitris, and men. A virtuous ruler, O king, should take away such wealth. By that wealth a large number of good people can be gratified. He should not, however, hoard that wealth in his treasury. He who makes himself an instrument of acquisition and taking away wealth from the wicked gives them to those that are good is said to be conversant with the whole science of morality. A king should extend his conquests in the next world according to the measure of his power, and as gradually as vegetable products are seen to grow. As some ants are seen to grow from no adequate cause, even so sacrifice spring from no adequate
cause. 1 As flies and gnats and ants are driven off from the bodies of kine and other domestic cattle (at the time of milking them), even so should persons who are averse to the performance of sacrifices should be similarly driven off from the kingdom. This is consistent with morality. As the dust that lies on the earth, if pounded between two stones, becomes finer and finer, even so questions of morality, the more they are reflected upon and discussed, become finer and finer.'" | <urn:uuid:dae1c2e6-c01d-41f1-95fb-27f7a4bb6283> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bharatadesam.com/spiritual/mahabharata/mahabharata_12a135.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980068 | 462 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Over the past couple few decades, Apple has come from nowhere to totally dominate and define the consumer electronics market with products such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad. The company has built up a global reputation for outstanding quality and service, but there are still areas where the company could significantly improve its offering to customers.
Here are five areas that Apple could focus on if it wanted to go that extra mile and help make things better for its customers.
Without a doubt the one thing that Apple could put effort into fixing that would help millions of its users is iTunes. When iTunes was just a media player and a conduit into the iTunes Store, I was happy because I could ignore it. I didn't use it, and I pitied anyone who did.
That changed with my first iPod. Now I was tied to iTunes and there was nothing I could do.
It was a slippery slope.
I have iPhones, iPads and iPods which all rely on iTunes in one way or another, so I'm more tied into iTunes than ever. Work that Apple put into iOS 5 means that I need iTunes less than I once did, but there's a long way to go before iOS devices are truly standalone.
If it were just one big thing that was wrong with iTunes then it would be easy to offer suggestions on how to fix it. Problem is, iTunes is one big mess. It's a mess because Apple has bolted-on so many new features and support for new devices without putting much effort into the underlying architecture. It's resulted in a bloated, slow, buggy, unreliable, cumbersome, hard-to-use application.
This is a product that needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch.
Both my iPhone and my iPad have a connection to the web. They both have a built-in web browser. You'd think that the web browsers would be tuned to give me the best possible experience when I'm on the move, especially when I'm paying for every byte I'm consuming?
Visually, Safari Mobile is a fantastic browser and does a brilliant job of rendering websites on a tiny screen. It's quite an achievement that I can visit and use a website that is designed for a big screen on a 3.5-inch screen. That's very impressive, and a feat of programming that we would have once thought impossible.
But that doesn't mean that Safari Mobile is perfect. It's far from perfect. The biggest and most glaring problem with the browser is its inability to handle multiple tabs without periodically deciding that it has to reload all the pages. On a Wi-Fi connection, this is an annoyance -- but on a 3G connection, it's actually costing me money.
While sometimes the browser seems to be loading the pages from cache, other times it reloads them from the server. A mobile web browser should strive not to do this. There are always going to be times when it has to take a trip back to the server for a variety of reasons, but in an ideal world these trips shouldn't happen often. I'm seeing this behavior far too often on my iPhone and iPad, especially when I have multiple tabs open, and Apple needs to fix it.
Take for example the MacBook Pro. Why does Apple want to charge $200 for a bump up from 4GB of RAM to 8GB -- effectively charging me $200 for 4GB, because the first 4GB is in the base price -- when I can buy 16GB of RAM from a vendor like Crucial for $240? It's crazy.
This is just one example of many that you'll come across if you compare upgrade prices on the App site to the true cost of the hardware.
I understand that companies need to turn a profit, but some of Apple's upgrade prices are truly outrageous.
OS X security
Over the past few weeks, we've seen the Flashback malware take control of over 600,000 Macs by leveraging a flaw with the Java platform that Oracle had fixed, but Apple continues to drag its feet, leaving OS X users vulnerable.
Mac users have enjoyed the longest period without having to worry about malware, but that's now changed. The bad guys are eyeing the platform, and users need to be aware of this. We need to put aside these "my OS is better than your OS" squabbles and help get the word out to average users that there's an emerging threat out there. It's time to accept the fact that if you can write code for a platform, it's possible to write malware for that platform.
Apple could do three things here. Firstly, the company needs to get serious about patching vulnerable code in a timely fashion by not leaving it to fester on systems for months. Patching is the first line of defense against malware. Secondly, Apple should build more malware protection into the platform, perhaps by adding full antivirus protection direct to the operating system. Finally, Apple needs to better inform users of the risks that malware presents to their Macs.
iOS Wi-Fi Sync
It's a great bit of technology -- when it works.
Wi-Fi Sync in my experience works perfectly with the iPad, but doesn't work for the iPhone. Why? I wouldn't know. It used to work but then all of a sudden decided it wasn't going to work any more. I've been through all the help documentation that Apple has produced and none of the suggestions have helped.
I'm not alone. Wi-Fi Sync either doesn't work, or has stopped working with no real reason, for a lot of people.
The problem is that the mechanism is too simplistic. I'm supposed to check a box and it's meant to work. But when it doesn't work, or it stops working, that one check box doesn't offer any feedback or diagnostics. All I know is that the function doesn't work. I wish it did, but Apple is no help in getting it to work.
Wi-Fi Sync is a great feature, but right now it seems far too fragile, with it breaking for people and they not having a clue as to why it no longer works.
Image credits: Apple.
- Why the new iPad battery meter is behaving just as it should
- Tim Cook visits Foxconn, meets Chinese VP to broker intellectual property agreement?
- Apple investigating, replacing problematic iPad 3 Wi-Fi tablets
- Apple: Apps using contact data are in "violation"; fix coming soon
- Batterygate: Apple's dysfunctional iPad 3 battery charger
- Yes, BYOD, but fix it yourself | <urn:uuid:0860675d-c401-4023-b12c-9f77243d129f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/five-things-apple-needs-to-fix-now/19675 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971232 | 1,340 | 1.507813 | 2 |
[Enter SIR TOBY BELCH, SIR ANDREW, and FABIAN]
- Fabian. You must needs yield your reason, Sir Andrew.
- Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Marry, I saw your niece do more favours to the
count's serving-man than ever she bestowed upon me;
I saw't i' the orchard.
- Fabian. This was a great argument of love in her toward you.
- Fabian. I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of
judgment and reason.
- Sir Toby Belch. And they have been grand-jury-men since before Noah
was a sailor.
- Fabian. She did show favour to the youth in your sight only
to exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to
put fire in your heart and brimstone in your liver.
You should then have accosted her; and with some
excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you should
have banged the youth into dumbness. This was
looked for at your hand, and this was balked: the
double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash
off, and you are now sailed into the north of my
lady's opinion; where you will hang like an icicle
on a Dutchman's beard, unless you do redeem it by
some laudable attempt either of valour or policy.
- Sir Andrew Aguecheek. An't be any way, it must be with valour; for policy
I hate: I had as lief be a Brownist as a
- Sir Toby Belch. Why, then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of
valour. Challenge me the count's youth to fight
with him; hurt him in eleven places: my niece shall
take note of it; and assure thyself, there is no
love-broker in the world can more prevail in man's
commendation with woman than report of valour.
- Fabian. There is no way but this, Sir Andrew.
- Sir Toby Belch. Go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief;
it is no matter how witty, so it be eloquent and fun
of invention: taunt him with the licence of ink:
if thou thou'st him some thrice, it shall not be
amiss; and as many lies as will lie in thy sheet of
paper, although the sheet were big enough for the
bed of Ware in England, set 'em down: go, about it.
Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou
write with a goose-pen, no matter: about it.
[Exit SIR ANDREW]
- Fabian. This is a dear manikin to you, Sir Toby.
- Sir Toby Belch. I have been dear to him, lad, some two thousand
strong, or so.
- Fabian. We shall have a rare letter from him: but you'll
- Sir Toby Belch. Never trust me, then; and by all means stir on the
youth to an answer. I think oxen and wainropes
cannot hale them together. For Andrew, if he were
opened, and you find so much blood in his liver as
will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat the rest of
- Fabian. And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no
great presage of cruelty.
- Maria. If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourself
into stitches, follow me. Yond gull Malvolio is
turned heathen, a very renegado; for there is no
Christian, that means to be saved by believing
rightly, can ever believe such impossible passages
of grossness. He's in yellow stockings.
- Maria. Most villanously; like a pedant that keeps a school
i' the church. I have dogged him, like his
murderer. He does obey every point of the letter
that I dropped to betray him: he does smile his
face into more lines than is in the new map with the
augmentation of the Indies: you have not seen such
a thing as 'tis. I can hardly forbear hurling things
at him. I know my lady will strike him: if she do,
he'll smile and take't for a great favour. | <urn:uuid:0e81226b-cca4-4324-b735-b9901d1dfab1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=12night&Act=3&Scene=2&Scope=scene&LineHighlight=1455 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939633 | 953 | 1.632813 | 2 |
The A and B rolls are made by the negative cutter in a synchronizer or sync block. There must be at least three gangs on the synchronizer. The cut workprint? (with the edge number code) is put in the first gang, and the A roll is started in the second gang, and the B roll started in the third gang. The negative cutter assembles the film, matching the code and length of the workprint with the corresponding original film, which has been left intact after the initial workprint was made. The sync block insures that all three rolls match with accurate to the single frame.
The negative cutter copies the workprint with the original film, alternating from A roll to B roll, with the blank (black) leader filling the space on the B roll when the A roll has picture, and visa versa.
The A and B rolls are both printed on the same roll of print stock. First the A rolls is set up at the "printer start" mark, the lights are turned off in the room, and the A roll and the printer stock are run through the contact printer. In this first pass, the shots on the A roll are exposed on the print stock. The print stock is then re-wound in to the feed magazine, and set up again with the "printer start" mark matched to the printer start on the B roll, and the print stock is exposed again.
Everything depends on the accuracy of the sprocket system to keep the two rolls in their proper orientation. For example, if in the setting up the B roll, the technician made a single frame mistake at the printer start mark, the B roll would overlap the A roll picture one frame at one end of the shot and there would be a single frame of black at the other end.The whole job would have to be done over on new print stock.
<!-- media object --> <div class="media"> <object type="image/svg+xml" data="/vafp/media/svg/VAFPABRoll-540x400.svg" width="540" height="400"> </div>
The split reels holding the A & B rolls are separated by a plastic core which creates space between the reels so that they match the spacing of the sync block gangs. | <urn:uuid:50be97df-3385-4939-8318-853b6f3d3439> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://folkstreams.net/vafp/wiki/Main/AAndBRolls16-mm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916758 | 475 | 2.34375 | 2 |
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classification of Austronesian languages
...to a common ancestor through recurrent similarities in the forms of words. Van der Tuuk’s central achievement in comparative linguistics was the establishment of what later came to be known as the RGH law, or van der Tuuk’s first law; it describes the recurrent sound correspondence of Malay /r/ to Tagalog /g/ and Ngaju Dayak /h/, as in Malay urat, which corresponds to Tagalog...
What made you want to look up "RGH law"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:e82aae7d-c98b-45d8-8512-103ef5c985fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/500902/RGH-law | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926514 | 158 | 3.3125 | 3 |
For the Many or the Few: The Initiative, Public Policy, and American Democracy
The initiative process is a direct democracy device that allows ordinary citizens to propose and pass laws without the involvement of their elected representatives. The process has long been controversial, with a main point of contention whether it promotes the interests of the majority or allows wealthy special interests to subvert the popular will. The book examines a century of fiscal data in order to discover whose interests are promoted by the initiative. The core of the book is evidence showing how the initiative affects fiscal policy (for example, it cuts spending and taxes), and what voters think of these effects. The evidence indicates that a majority of voters favor the policy changes brought about by the initiative, which suggests that it promotes the interests of the many rather than the few.
Download Chapter 1 (Introduction): [PDF]
Download Table of Contents: [PDF]
"Prop. 1A won't cure state's overspending" (Sacramento Bee, May 15, 2009)
"Budget crisis is built on spending gone wild" (Sacramento Bee, August 15, 2008)
"Where does all that state money go?" (Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2008)
"Disentangling the Direct and Indirect Effects of the Initiative Process" (June 2007/updated March 2013) [PDF]
"Shareholder Empowerment: The Right to Approve and the Right to Propose," with Oguzhan Ozbas (2012). [PDF]
"Direct Democracy and Social Issues" (May 2007) [PDF]
"Aggressive Enforcement of the Single Subject Rule," with Richard L. Hasen, Election Law Journal, 2010.
"Popular Control of Public Policy: A Quantitative Approach," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2010.
"Disobedience and Authority," with Anthony Marino and Jan Zabojnik, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 2010. [PDF]
"When Are Outside Directors Effective?," with Ran Duchin and Oguzhan Ozbas, Journal of Financial Economics, May 2010. [MS PDF]
"50+ Years of Diversification Announcements," The Financial Review, 2010.
"Direct Democracy and Public Employees," American Economic Review, December 2009. [PDF]
"From Families to Formal Contracts: An Approach to Development, Journal of Development Economics, with Krishna B. Kumar, September 2009. [MS PDF]
"Direct Democracy and the Executive Branch," Direct Democracy's Impact on American Political Institutions (Palgrave Macmillan), 2008. Manuscript version: [PDF]
"The Eclipse of Legislatures: Direct Democracy in the 21st Century," Public Choice, July 2005.
"Direct Democracy Works," Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2005.
"Decision Processes, Agency Problems, and Information: An Economic Analysis of Capital Budgeting Procedures," with Anthony M. Marino, Review of Financial Studies, Spring 2005.
"Direct Democracy: New Approaches to Old Questions," with Arthur Lupia, Annual Review of Political Science, 2004. [Selected by Thompson Scientific as an "Emerging Research Front" for April 2006 as "one of the most recently cited papers" Read interview and comments.]
"Budget Referendums and Government Spending: Evidence from Swiss Cantons," with Lars P. Feld, Journal of Public Economics, December 2003.
"Direct Democracy," in Encyclopedia of Public Choice, edited by C. Rowley and F. Schneider (Kluwer), 2003. Manuscript version: [PDF]
"Initiative and Referendum," in Encyclopedia of Public Choice, edited by C. Rowley and F. Schneider (Kluwer), 2003. Manuscript version: [PDF]
"I&R in American Cities: Basic Patterns," in Initiative and Referendum Almanac, edited by M. Dane Waters (Carolina), 2003. Manuscript version: [PDF]
"Corporate Diversification, Value Maximization, and Organizational Capabilities," Journal of Business, October 2001. [Winner of Merton Miller Prize for "most significant paper"]
"Deviations from Constituent Interests: The Role of Legislative Structure and Political Parties in the States," with Thomas W. Gilligan, Economic Inquiry, July 1995.
"Consumer Confidence and Economic Fluctuations," with Argia M. Sbordone, Economic Inquiry, April 1995.
"Explaining Voter Turnout Patterns: An Information Theory," Public Choice,1995.
"Takeover Motives during the Conglomerate Merger Wave," Rand Journal of Economics, 1993.
"Target Profits and Managerial Discipline during the Conglomerate Merger Wave," Journal of Industrial Economics, 1993.
"The Downsian Voter Meets the Ecological Fallacy," with Filip Palda, Public Choice, 1993.
"Economics of Direct Legislation," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1992.
"Explaining the Market Price of the 'Tribute Penny': Evidence from 132 Auctions," The Celator, March 2004. | <urn:uuid:1d259b48-9c2b-4686-862a-8baabfdb907e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~matsusak/research.htm | 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 | 0.91003 | 1,048 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Spreading Sensible Economics to the Students of Indiana University
Mar 5, 2013 at 4:49 PM
Here at Indiana University we hit the semester off strong with our Free Markets 101 activism. With the resources provided from YAL National, we tabled inside the largest academic building on campus which created great dialogue with interested students.
While tabling we set up our "Rags or Riches" chart and asked students to guess the correct order of ten countries from most to least economically free. Most students didn't guess correctly and were intrigued by the correct order. Many people believed that the United States was the most economically free, and were surprised when they learned otherwise. By using this chart we were able to show people the benefits of having a free economy. We collected several new sign-ups and met a lot of new faces.
We followed up the tabling and conversations by inviting everyone to attend our next weekly meeting to learn more about free markets. We prepared a power point which included the foundations of free markets and the benefits that come from it. We used a great video from Learn Liberty to help explain why economic freedom leads to a better life. Overall we had good success while tabling and successfully educated students on free market economics. | <urn:uuid:b053bfbb-2fca-4843-8d30-1498f7b1b476> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yaliberty.org/posts/spreading-sensible-economics-to-the-students-of-indiana-university | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969263 | 250 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Aruvis: The Aruvi are very resemblant of dragons in body shape and appearance, however, do not have a 'breath weapon' not armored scales, not to be under-estimated regardless. They are highly intelligent Feathered beasts, capable of remaining in flight for days on end when needed, bearing incredible stamina and physical strength comprable to a dragon, along with razor sharp talons, on both their paws and wings, as well as blade like protrusions amongst the featered tuft on the end of their tails. Their mouth's are more beak-like than a dragon, with the jaw strength crush steel as though it were paper. The most simplistic method of identifying the different betwen Aruvi and Dragons from a great distance is that the Aruvi's Sillouhette appeared to have 3 parellel tails due to the gigantic string feathers that grow from beneath both wings. It's quite a status symbol to wear Aruvi Feathers, the larger the feather the greater the achievment, but is only possible for those who have 'earned' it, as when forcibly ripped out, the feathers shrivel and turn to dust, and can only be 'preserved' when willingly shed by the Aruvi.
It's a very confusing occurance when one Dies, as the internal factors of the body seem to vanish as if they were always made of air, and the Feathers form into a strange Grave Marker like Fashion. Those who attempt to 'grave rob' Aruvi feathers are unlikely to survive, as for some strange reason, forcibly ripping the feather from the grave, rather than turning it to dust, causes it to burst into a caustic acid, as though it punishes the travesty of defiling it's host's grave.
The Greatest power of the Aruvi however, is their ability to use Wind magic to great degree, though no other form of magic obviously, and can often be miscontrued as a 'breath weapon' when they regurgitate whirl-winds at threats, occaisonally making people theorize that they may be 'Wind Incarnate'.
They are actually responsible for the appearance of 'Wind stones', Enchanted chunks of stone that float as though gravity never existed in the first place, and are easily shapeable into unique types of equipment [such as a piece of clothing that renders the user 'lighter' than they normally would be] or beautiful statues that float weightlessly where they are placed. The method of their creation is unknown, but it is theorized that they Aruvi are responsible for Arianus' floating island being capable of 'floating'. [and will remain solely a 'theory' and not truth unless the GM decides to use that himself XD]
They are also the only one's capable of easily retrieving certain strange plant types that grow in mid-air and react to the approach of artificial vessels by floating away on wind disturbance created by their momentum, making trade with them the only replenishable source of these plants for use by alchemists and the like. | <urn:uuid:97fc8b63-73f2-4cc9-a65b-34750baa0a56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://roleplayerguild.com/showthread.php?195716-The-Sundered-Earth-(A-Death-Gate-Cycle-Rp)-OOC&p=8463150&viewfull=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970833 | 641 | 1.835938 | 2 |
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What does the Spending Review mean for me? :
Page 4 of 7
- Multi-page article
26 October 2010
We are maintaining the commitment to full participation and to raise the participation age.
16-19 provision will be funded to allow schools and colleges to manage the increase in the number of young people who want a place in learning.
To live within this settlement schools and colleges will have to make unit-cost reductions in the 16-19 participation budgets. There is also scope for achieving savings from back office costs and by raising all provision to the level of the most efficient.
The Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) is going to be replaced by an enhanced discretionary learner support fund. Decisions about which young people should receive financial support will be made by schools, colleges, and training providers who are in a better position than Government to determine the needs of individual students. This new fund will be better able to target those young people who face a real financial barrier to participation.
Young people currently receiving the EMA will continue to receive it for the rest of the academic year. They will not receive it in the next academic year.
The EMA scheme will close to new applicants from January 2011.
You may also be interested in | <urn:uuid:1db31824-abf2-4aba-a9fe-1e88ea48fd2a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.education.gov.uk/aboutdfe/policiesandprocedures/spendingreview/b0065551/what-does-the-spending-review-mean-for-me/16-19-education | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960589 | 259 | 1.5 | 2 |
Traffic violations are also referred to as traffic infractions. If you are cited for a traffic infraction, the citation number usually begins with a prefix of DTI.
Traffic violations are traffic offenses that are not punishable by incarceration. Traffic violations have been “decriminalized” and therefore considered to be civil matters typically punishable by a fine or community service. Other possible penalties for traffic violations include:
- Court fees
- Community Service
- Course in driver retraining (291C-161(f))
- License suspension or revocation (291C-170)
- SR-22 (administrative process requiring a person holding a driver’s license to provide proof of “high-risk” insurance or have their license suspended)
- While not a court imposed penalty, being found to have committed any traffic violation can possibly increase auto insurance rates.
Traffic violations often do not require you to appear in court, and can be resolved through the mail by either submitting payment or writing a written statement. If you wish to contest a traffic violation in court, there are usually instructions on the back of the citation informing you how to request a court date. However, if your traffic citation indicates the term “court” and gives you a court date, time and location to appear, the ticket cannot be resolved through the mail and you should appear in court or risk having a bench warrant issued for your arrest.
Because traffic violations are considered civil matters and are not punishable by incarceration, you do not have a right to be represented by a public defender. You must contest the violation on your own or hire an attorney to represent you. Also, because traffic violations are civil matters, you will not be found guilty or not guilty. In the case of traffic violations, judgment will be held either for you or against you.
Common types of traffic violations:
- 291-11.6 Mandatory Use of Seatbelts
- 291C-32 Traffic Control Legend
- 291C-49 Driving on Roadways Laned for Traffic
- 291C-50 Following too closely
- 291C-102 Noncompliance with Speed Limit
These are examples of some of the most common traffic violations. However, there are many traffic crimes which resemble traffic violations and vis versa, therefore you should consult with an attorney to determine whether you have been charged with a traffic violation or a traffic crime.
Note: Directions and instructions for contesting violations, paying fines, etc. are usually located on the back of the citation. Read the citation carefully so you do not miss important deadlines or procedures.
If a law enforcement officer has probable cause to believe that a traffic crime has been committed, he or she has the option of either arresting the individual or issuing them a citation with a court date. The citation number for traffic crimes usually begin with the prefix “DTC”.
Common types of traffic crimes:
- 291C-105 Excessive Speeding
- 291E-61 Operating a Vehicle Under the Influence of an Intoxicant (DUI)
- 291C-13 Fleeing the Scene of an Accident Involving an Attended Vehicle or Property
- 291-12 Inattention to Driving
- 291-2 Reckless Driving
Again, you should consult with an attorney to determine whether you have been cited for a traffic infraction/violation or a traffic crime. Many violations resemble traffic crimes and vise versa.
Traffic crimes are primarily classified as petty misdemeanors and misdemeanors.
Definition of a misdemeanor: Hawaii Revised Statutes section 701-107 states, “A crime is a misdemeanor if it is so designated in this Code or in a statute other than this Code enacted subsequent thereto, or if it is defined in a statute other than this Code which provides for a term of imprisonment the maximum of which is one year.”
Definition of a petty misdemeanor: Hawaii Revised Statutes section 701-107 states, “A crime is a petty misdemeanor if it is so designated in this Code or in a statute other than this Code enacted subsequent thereto, or if it is defined by a statute other than this Code that provides that persons convicted thereof may be sentenced to imprisonment for a term not to exceed thirty days.”
The Initial Court Date
Your initial court date is called arraignment and plea. At arraignment and plea, you will be told what you are being charged with. The judge will likely enter a not guilty plea on your behalf and set a future court date. While attending multiple court dates can be a great inconvenience to you, the presiding judge will usually not allow you to plead guilty or no contest to an offense on your initial trial date if you have been cited for a traffic crime because:
- All traffic crimes carry a potential jail sentence and you have a right to be represented by an attorney for any offense that exposes you to the possibility of incarceration.
- Many traffic crimes can be defended and you should be advised of any possible defenses you have prior to pleading guilty or no contest to a traffic crime.
- Pleading guilty or no contest to a criminal traffic crime or being found guilty of a traffic crime will result in a criminal conviction on your record.
Generally, if you have been charged with a misdemeanor traffic crime, the maximum possible penalty is one year of incarceration in addition to possible fines. Any offense that carries a maximum possible penalty of 6 months of incarceration or more vests you with the right to a jury trial. Requesting a jury trial or waiving your right to a jury trial should only be done after consultation with an attorney as there are pros and cons to each. If you choose not to have a jury trial, you may still request a trial before a judge who will render a decision on your guilt or innocence in place of a jury.
**This website is for informational purposes only. Nothing on this website is meant to be or should be construed as legal advice. Before making any decisions about your case, please consult with an attorney as the facts and circumstances of every case is different. | <urn:uuid:6c1051e1-a321-491f-838b-565ff82bc851> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hicriminaldefense.com/traffic-tickets/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93565 | 1,238 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Women are so sensitive!
You poke somebody with a stick enough times, and they’re eventually going to lash out at you. That’s kinda how human beings react to things, and it has nothing to do with gender.
The problem is, that it’s a vicious cycle. A lot of women, especially feminists, have their sexism-radar heightened due to our awareness of sexism around us in the first place, so things bother us that wouldn’t bother us if we weren’t aware of sexism. Round and round it goes!
Think about it. How many of the following would bother you if you had never heard them before, or any stereotypes or history related to them?
“Get back in the kitchen.”
“Women are so over-emotional.”
“Cover yourself up; you’re not treating yourself with respect.”
“You look like a slut.”
Frankly, if I had never heard those or any other generalizations about women before, my reaction would be more of amused shock, and I would possibly chuckle. After all, it’s obviously absurd, and not related to anything. Nobody would have ever told me that women are over-emotional before, so I would laugh it off and assume it was a joke. It would be like me saying, “Men wear socks too much.”
Now, imagine it’s all you hear. Or all you see on the internet. Sexism is much more prevalent here in cyberspace due to anonymity. Women were treated like domestic slaves for centuries, waiting on men hand and foot. The fact that this isn’t the norm in many places anymore is evidence of feminism’s strengths, of how hard women have fought for equality. But we are still told to keep our mouths shut, and that our opinions don’t matter. In fact, men on the internet who say feminist things are often mistaken for women, so they get the brunt of some of this sexism, too.
We are not allowed to object to sexist culture. Even if I want to point out sexism, it is best that I hold my tongue, because I will start a shit-storm that will no doubt eventually involve the words, “women are so sensitive!” Instead, a lot of women who wish to point out sexism resort to sarcasm and aggression, because we feel like it is hopeless and we are pissed off.
I have had the following things said to me, both on the internet and in real life, during conversations ranging from gender dynamics to evolution to buying sunglasses:
“STFU and get back in the kitchen. Make me a sandwich.”
“You’re only saying that because you’re a woman.”
“All women believe that.”
“Curvy women are better, cause you have something to grab onto.”
“Do you have PMS right now?”
“Wow, you’re smart for a woman.”
“Women are like delicate flowers.”
“Women are all so over-sensitive.”
“Women are too irrational for science.”
“Men have better spatial reasoning than women, so that’s why there are more men in science.”
“All men cheat on their partners. If you believe he hasn’t, he’s just a really good liar. Good for him! Women are just so naive.”
“Women can’t drive.”
“Women don’t have the same reasoning capacity as men, which is why there are so few women in philosophy.”
(The last two were said to me by an ex-partner). This has all been said to me during conversation, so I am not including the thousands of examples of full-blown sexual harassment that were random and done by a stranger or passerby.
Now, imagine that you’re bombarded by this kind of gendered thinking all the time. Now imagine that you also are aware of more general cultural problems regarding women, such as rape culture, body shaming, slut-shaming, income and job inequality, and the general tendency for women to be seen as inferior to men*, and for (white) men to be seen as the default for human. Perhaps, then, even the most mundane comments might make you want to punch a wall? How about this one:
“Women are so hopelessly imprecise.”
This was in response to me commenting on my partner’s picture. A picture…of coffee. I said that my partner was odd, and the person who responded wanted to know who I was referring to.
How absurd, right? I mean, there is no stereotype that I know of that says that women are imprecise. Obviously it was just a silly joke.
Except not. Why was it necessary to bring gender into it at all? A conversation about photographs of coffee? Why is it that the vast majority of the time, other equally absurd comments generalizing about a gender are about women? Because you cannot separate statements about gender from our culture. If you have heard negative generalizations about women all your life, you might be fed up with people who want to be “edgy” and “ironic” and who make up yet even MORE statements about women. What was he thinking? Probably that it was so silly that nobody would take it seriously. But I wonder if he had said the same thing about Black people or Jews, if it would have gone down that way.
Now imagine a couple of goyim** talking, and a Jewish person chimes in. One of the goyim says, “Wait, who were you talking to again? Jews are so imprecise.” In real life, I imagine he would look knowingly at the other goy. There are no stereotypes about Jews being imprecise – yet, it is still highly inappropriate. Why? Because he is – jokingly – generalizing about an entire group of people who have been oppressed on a regular basis, and – this is the important part – their oppression was legitimized by stereotypes. Generalizations. And if a goy said something like that, many Jews, and even goyim, would be able to feel it in their bones: That was not okay. So why is it okay to apply it to women?
One of the big problems with stereotypes is that it reduces individual people to their gender/race/etc. Suddenly, I wasn’t a person making a comment. I was a woman, a representative of all women, a homogeneous group of people who have a hive mind. I was being reminded that this is the way I am seen much of the time. When I speak, it’s a woman speaking, not an individual. When I have thoughts, they’re a woman’s thoughts. Never mind the fact that there is more variety between individual women than there is difference between men and women.
*All of these problems are even worse for Women of Colour
**Goy = Non-Jew; goyim is plural
~ by owlcat on 2 September, 2012. | <urn:uuid:62dd970d-16c9-4818-93e0-f8f229c6077a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://owlcat.org/2012/09/02/women-are-so-sensitive/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978055 | 1,531 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Not All Health Websites Are Created Equal
If you are looking for medical information online these days, you are not alone.
A 2009 by the Centers for Disease Control found that 61% of adults use the Internet to find health and medical information, and the majority of these are women.Unfortunately, not all health information websites are credible. Some may push certain health agendas for advertising purposes or are just reflections of personal opinion. Even credible health websites, if not updated, might contain information that is out of date, inaccurate, or even dangerous
How to be a smart online health consumer.
So, how do we decide which sites to trust and which ones to avoid? Here are some questions to ask:
- From where is the information coming? Domains tell you a lot about a website’s source: .gov, .mil, .us are US government sites; .edu is for educational institutions; .org is mostly used by non-profits (but can now be used commercially); and .com is for general and commercial use. I recommend starting with .gov, .edu, and .org websites.
- Who wrote the content? Are the authors medical experts themselves, or have medical experts reviewed the content? Only use sites where the author or organization’s credentials are easy to find and clearly displayed.
- What is the purpose of the website? Always check the “About Us” section to learn about the group publishing the information. Be sure that the website publishers are open about who they are and from where their funding comes. Be wary of sites that are advertising or selling products to improve your health.
- Does the site provide source materials? Reliable health sites will cross-reference their information with credible medical literature like scientific journals or the National Library of Medicine. You can’t rely on claims from just one website.
- How old is the content? Medical research is discovering new things all the time. Be sure you are looking at current information. Check the date the website was reviewed or published (usually located at the bottom of the page).
- Does it have HONcode certification? If yes, this means the has reviewed the site and tested it for quality health information.
What sites do I recommend? Here are my top five favorites for heart health information:
It’s an information jungle out there, but if you follow your instincts and these few guidelines, you’ll be far more likely to find the reliable information you’re looking for. Happy surfing!
- : A public education initiative from the U.S. government that is packed with updated information about women’s health, including sections on women and heart and vascular disease.
- : Founded by three women who had heart attacks while in their 40s and found little information or services for women with heart disease, this site contains up-to-date women’s heart health information that is very patient- and family-friendly.
- ™: This national initiative aims to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes over five years and includes resources from the CDC, The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), American Heart Association (AHA), American College of Cardiology (ACC), and many others.
- ®: A nicely organized patient portal that includes tools, videos, podcasts, and other resources about cardiovascular disease and stroke.
- Texas Heart Institute Heart Information Center: Of course, I encourage you to visit our own website which includes more than 170 heart-health topics, as well as special sections for women's health and for kids and educators. But we're not just tooting our own horn. I am proud to say that The Center for Women's Heart & Vascular Health website was honored in the Web Health Awards competition for being one of the nation's best digital health resources.
Until next time!
Stephanie Coulter, MD
Want to get straight talk about women's heart health in person? See Dr. Stephanie Coulter free of charge at The Health Museum on Thursday, September 20, 2012 at 6:30 pm. is required and seating is limited.
Do you have a topic that you would like to learn more about from Dr. Stephanie? Send us an email at email@example.com and your question may be the next Straight Talk topic!
For additional ways all women can take care of their hearts, visit the Straight Talk archives
on the Texas Heart Institute website.
We are saving hearts and trees. The Women's Heart Health E-News is sent via e-mail and posted online. Sign up using the form on this page.
Visit the Center for Women's Heart & Vascular Health at www.texasheart.org/women. | <urn:uuid:84d09db3-4a39-493c-8297-df230a28acb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://texasheart.org/HIC/WomenHeart/director2012-08.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931767 | 969 | 2.78125 | 3 |
(Greek apotheosis, from, and theos, deify).
Deification, the exaltation of men to the rank of gods. Closely connected with the universal worship of the dead in the history of all primitive peoples was the consecration as deities of heroes or rulers, as a reward for bravery or other great services. "In the same manner every city worshipped the one who founded it" (Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City, III, v). Because of the theocratic form of their government, and the religious character which sovereign power assumed in their eyes, the peoples of the great nations of the Orient Persia, Chaldea, Egypt paid divine honours to living rulers. Hero-worship had familiarized the minds of the Greeks with the idea that a man by illustrious deeds can become a god, and contact with the Orient made them ready to accept the grosser form of apotheosis by which divine honours were offered to the living (Boissier, La religion romaine I, 112). Philip of Macedon was honoured as a god at Amphipolis, and his son, Alexander the Great, not only claimed descent from the gods of Egypt, but decreed that he should be worshipped in the cities of Greece (Beurlier, De divinis honoribus quos acceperunt Alexander et successores ejus, p. 17). After his death, and probably largely as the result of the teaching of Euhemerus, that all the gods were deified men, the custom of apotheosis became very prevalent among the Greeks (Döllinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, 314 sqq.). In Rome the way for the deification of the emperors was prepared by many historic causes, such as the cult of the manes or the souls of departed friends and ancestors, the worship of the legendary kings of Latium, the Di Indigetes, the myth that Romulus had been transported to heaven, and the deification of Roman soldiers and statesmen by some of the Greek cities. The formal enrollment of the emperors among the gods began with Caesar, to whom the Senate decreed divine honours before his death. Through politic motives Augustus, though tolerating the building of temples and the organization of priestly orders in his honour throughout the provinces and even in Italy, refused to permit himself to be worshipped in Rome itself. Though many of the early emperors refused to receive divine honours, and the senate, to whom the right of deification belonged, refused to confirm others, the great majority of the Roman rulers and many members of the imperial family, among whom were some women, were enrolled among the gods. While the cultured classes regarded the deification of members of the imperial family and court favorites with boldly expressed scorn, emperor-worship, which was in reality political rather than personal, was a powerful element of unity in the empire, as it afforded the pagans a common religion in which it was a patriotic duty to participate. The Christians constantly refused to pay divine honours to the emperor, and their refusal to strew incense was the signal for the death of many martyrs. The custom of decreeing divine honours to the emperors remained in existence until the time of Gratian, who was the first to refuse the insignia of the Summus Pontifex and the first whom the senate failed to place among the gods.
PHELLER, Römische Mythologie, 770-796: BOISSlER, La religion romaine, I, 109-186; MARQUARDT-MOMMSEN Römische-Staatsverwaltung, II, 731-740; VI, 443-455; BEURLIER Essai sur le culte rendu aux empereurs romains (Paris, 1890).
APA citation. (1907). Apotheosis. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01650b.htm
MLA citation. "Apotheosis." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01650b.htm>.
Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by the Cloistered Dominican Nuns of the Monastery of the Infant Jesus, Lufkin, Texas. Dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. March 1, 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.
Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads. | <urn:uuid:b66a9d4d-fc12-49a6-ba9d-ba00e0b47fc2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01650b.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944039 | 1,041 | 3.265625 | 3 |
2010 OPEN FORUM Abstracts
AEROSOL PAUSE TIMES ASSOCIATED WITH VIBRATING MESH NEBULIZER.
Patricia A. Dailey, Kyle Walsh, Ploypan Thongpradit; Respiratory Care, Baystate Medical Center, Springfield, MA
INTRODUCTION; Vibrating mesh technology with drop by drop aerosol delivery has created a new paradigm in continuous aerosol delivery. Aerosol production occurs intermittently when solution is dropped on to the vibrating mesh with some pauses between aerosol. The pause varies based on the delivery rate of the solution. Our objective was to determine the pause time at varying rates and determine if they exceeded inhaled epoprostenol sodiums minimum 6 minute half life. In addition we were curious whether the use of a tapered aerosol tip would shorten pause times. METHOD: A pulmonary infusion pump (CME America 575 BodyGuard) with a dedicated infusion set was used to deliver solution (nss) to a vibrating mesh nebulizer (Aerogen® ProX & Aeroneb Solo). We compared a control group, utilizing an exposed vibrating mesh surface without the medication cup, with the experiment group, Solo at varying flow rates of 1 ml, 2ml and 4 ml per hour. Droplets formed and were observed. The length of the aerosol was timed as well as the length of the pause. RESULTS: Mean pause times for control group at 1ml, 2ml and 4 ml were 226±34, 111±15, and 54±8 seconds. Mean pause times for experiment group at 1ml, 2ml and 4 ml were 276±75, 179±103, and 50±16 seconds. CONCLUSIONS: The term continuous aerosol can be confusing when associated with this new paradigm in inhaled medication delivery. We determined that it does not necessarily refer to continuous aerosol production but rather intermittent aerosol production at a set delivery rate, volume/time. In this model pause times for both groups were significantly less than 6 minutes, the half-life of epoprostenol sodium. Most inhaled medications have a half-life greater than 6 minutes and should not be affected by the pauses that were observed in this study. Sponsored Research - None | <urn:uuid:e311a1c4-cb1e-4082-9429-5fc1b5829ff0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rcjournal.com/abstracts/2010/?id=919786 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937004 | 472 | 1.757813 | 2 |