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A hearty congratulations to the paleontologists of Britain's Natural History Museum, who have just discovered a new species of dinosaur! And in what exotic location did they uncover its bones? The wild Gobi desert? The harsh terrain of the Badlands? No! No, they found it in the fucking basement.
Yep! Good job to the brave scientists who took the bold steps of walking downstairs and looking at the bones in their own goddamn museum, only to discover horned herbivore Spinops sternbergorum:
The remains of the herbivores, from the same family as the Triceratops, were excavated from a quarry alongside a large group of fossils in a so-called "bone bed" in Alberta, Canada in 1916.
But the bones were described as "rubbish" by the Museum's Keeper of Geology at the time, and lay unnoticed for almost 100 years before experts realised they belonged to an undescribed species.
They were rediscovered by a current group of researchers who decided to take another look at the fossils and realised that they were unlike any others known to science.
Research leader Dr. Andrew Farke calls the "discovery" of the museum's basement "exciting." Sure, buddy. I don't even think this is a new dinosaur, to be honest. Are you sure you didn't just put an old dinosaur together wrong? | <urn:uuid:0247e9b7-b2e6-48f6-9124-a638c12dffa2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gawker.com/5865651/moron-paleontologists-find-new-species-of-dinosaur-in-their-own-museum | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972668 | 282 | 2.1875 | 2 |
The sheer gritstone faces of Stanage Edge, Froggatt Edge and Curbar Edge draw climbers from afar – they offer real challenges for the hardened climber or ‘starter’ climbs for the less experienced. A number of outdoor pursuit companies offer equipment and expert guidance and there are a number of indoor climbing walls in the Peak District and Sheffield to get to grips with the techniques before tackling the real thing. Over in the west of the Peak District (to the north of Leek) are the Roaches, another gritstone outcrop popular with climbers.
Cycling and Mountain Biking
Explore the spectacular countryside of the Peak District by bicycle on quiet lanes and traffic free trails (former railway lines) and really enjoy the views. The Tissington Trail, the High Peak Trail and the new Monsal Trail are popular, the latter featuring four tunnels recently opened up to allow walkers and cyclists through. Bring your own bike or hire one at one of the cycle hire centres. Or if mountain biking is your sport, you will find an unrivalled choice of routes, with varied terrain from tough, exposed moorland to green lanes and bridleways. The Dark Peak in the north and the Goyt Valley in the west offer the most challenging routes, whilst the softer White Peak offers a network of tracks that once served the area’s lead mines.
Walking is the one of the best ways to get out into the countryside (not to mention keeping fit and healthy) and the views here are unrivalled. From the challenge of a stretch of the Pennine Way to a gentle riverside ramble, there is plenty of choice. The Dark Peak’s high moorland of Kinder Scout and Bleaklow offer real challenges, whilst the gritstone edges offer some of the best views. But if you prefer a more rolling landscape then head for the limestone White Peak – a patchwork of green fields, stone walls and lovely river valleys. Dovedale (north of Ashbourne) and the valley of the River Wye (between Buxton and Bakewell) are favourites. There are also pleasant woodland walks – such as Padley Gorge (Grindleford), Manners Wood (Bakewell) and Linacre Reservoir (Cutthorpe) to enjoy.
The high ridges and hills of the Peak District are a dream for lovers of airsports – whether it’s hanggliding, parascending, paragliding or microlighting. But if you have never experienced any of these exhilarating sports, try one of the airports schools which offer expert tuition and equipment. Or, if you fancy something more leisurely and serene, there is a number of hot air ballooning companies that regularly fly in the area, nothing beats this for a birds-eye view of the landscape with tiny villages, church spires and grazing cattle below.
If you prefer to tackle the hills on four legs rather than two, the Peak District has a network of bridleways, old packhorse routes, quiet lanes and traffic free former railway lines to explore. Some cottages (mainly those on farms) have their own grazing, by prior arrangement with the owner, so you can bring your own horse – please enquire at the time of booking. The Pennine Bridleway starts in the Peak District and there are special facilities for horse riders at Hartington station on the High Peak Trail. However if you just fancy a couple of hours in the saddle there are pony trekking centres (e.g. Ladybooth Farm at Edale and Northfield Farm at Flash) where you can enjoy a trip into the hills on a sure-footed pony.
Caving and Potholing
For experienced pot holers there are cave systems and caverns to explore below the central limestone plateau of the Peak District. For beginner a number of outdoor pursuit centres offer courses with equipment and tuition provided. However the underground world is not just reserved for those prepared to undertake such a challenge – four show caves/caverns at Castleton (Peak Cavern, Blue John Mine, Speedwell Cavern and Treak Cliff Cavern) welcome visitors, plus the spectacular Poole’s Cavern at Buxton.
Carsington Water (near Ashbourne), Redmires Reservoir (near Sheffield) and Tittesworth Water (near Leek) are some of the main stretches of water for watersports, plus Errwood, Dovestones and Ogston reservoirs all have sailing clubs. So if you fancy sailing, windsurfing, kayaking or canoeing there are places in the Peak District you can learn or hone your skills surrounded by spectacular landscapes. Further south on the edge of the National Forest is Staunton Harold, another popular venue. Outdoor pursuits centres offer tuition and equipment if you are not planning to launch your own boat. Or perhaps just enjoy rowing a boat along a calm stretch of the River Derwent at Belper River Gardens?
The area’s flagship swimming pools are at the superb Arc Leisure Centre at Matlock (opened in 2011) and at the internationally acclaimed Ponds Forge at Sheffield. However there are nice pools (some quite unusual) in other towns – don’t miss Buxton’s natural spa water pool, the Victorian swimming pool at Glossop (with its impressive vast ceiling) and the outdoor heated pool at Hathersage.
Many towns in the Peak District have tennis courts which may be hired for a couple of hours. However for all year round playing don’t miss Graves Tennis Centre, Sheffield’s large specialist centre with both indoor and outdoor courts. It is located close to the Peak District on the south eastern edge of the city, easy to reach from Chesterfield and the surrounding villages as well as the central Peak District. | <urn:uuid:16998265-a2df-4b0f-bb8b-b9a99d455945> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.peakcottages.com/what-to-see-and-do/activites | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934343 | 1,187 | 1.515625 | 2 |
For years, smoking has been allowed in designated areas on the Everett Community College campus. Soon, that will no longer be the case. On July 17th the Everett Community College’s Board of Trustees unanimously voted to prohibit tobacco use on college property. According to a press release issued by the college today, the changes will take effect Sept. 1 at all college properties. Violators may face fines or disciplinary action.
“The new policy will make the college a healthier place to work and study and contribute to improving the long-term the health of our community,” said Pat Sisneros, EvCC Vice President of College Services. The college, which allowed smoking and other tobacco use in designated areas, has considered the policy change since 2009.
In a 2010 survey of EvCC faculty, staff and students, nearly 60 percent of the more than 800 respondents favored a smoking ban on campus. Of students who took the survey, 61 percent were in favor of a ban. EvCC shared information about the proposed ban with students via the college newspaper and class schedule and with neighbors at a Northwest Neighborhood Association meeting.
EvCC is not the first college to ban tobacco use. Several other Washington state schools, including Clark College in Vancouver and Lower Columbia College in Longview, are tobacco free, More than 280 schools nationwide ban tobacco use, according to the American Lung Association. | <urn:uuid:5d45b4ff-fdb2-438d-84ff-42f9203d77ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://myeverettnews.com/2012/07/18/everett-community-college-to-kick-smokers-off-campus/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959428 | 279 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Use Neck Cranks or Chokes to Fight an Adversary
In single combat, we can confuse the enemy by attacking with varied techniques when the chance arises. Feint a thrust or cut, or make the enemy think you are going to close with him, and when he is confused you can easily win. This is the essence of fighting, and you must research it deeply.-Miyamoto Musashi
It’s important to have both a “standing” game as well as a “ground” game, as you never know where a fight will lead. Chokes and neck cranks are very effective, particularly on the ground, but also very dangerous.
Security guards generally don’t use these techniques. In many cases, the techniques are categorized by law enforcement as being at the same level as lethal force on the force continuum or banned outright by policy. The reason for this is the same reason that the guillotine made such an effective means of execution during the “Reign of Terror” that followed the French Revolution in the late 1700s. These are all methods of separating the control system (brain) from the supply system (heart/lungs) of the body, because they attack the neck, the “super highway” between these two systems.
Ways to Effectively Choke an Opponent
There are different ways to choke someone effectively. You must either close off his carotid arteries or compress his trachea.
The carotid arteries run down both sides of the neck. By restricting the blood flow in those arteries, you can impede the oxygen flow to the brain. After a short time in an oxygen-depressed state, the brain effectively goes to sleep. A carotid choke is relatively safe because if you let off shortly after the other guy loses consciousness, he should revive.
When that happens, it no longer has any control of the body. Brain goes to sleep, bad guy passes out, and you win. You can see this kind of thing happen in martial arts tournaments all the time. Medical intervention is rarely necessary. However, if you continue to compress the carotid arteries after the other guy has passed out, you can cause brain damage or death.
Compression of the trachea or the windpipe is another way of doing a choke. The trachea is on the front of the neck directly underneath the chin. You can stop or restrict the flow of air to the lungs by compressing the trachea. This causes suffocation, a condition that if left untreated will rapidly lead to unconsciousness, brain damage, and death. This is a more dangerous technique than a carotid choke, because you can damage the trachea in a manner that simply releasing the choke won’t often restart the flow of oxygen to the brain. Consequently, carotid chokes tend to be safer than tracheal chokes.
Architecture of the Neck
You can look at the neck as a pentagram. It has five points that are important for martial applications. The two-trapezium muscles at the back of the neck form the first two points and the carotid arteries form the second two points. The carotid arteries are located along side the sternocleidomastoid and the trachea. The trachea forms the fifth point.
Chocking Weapons-the Arms and Hands
The techniques listed here are those that we believe are the easiest to learn and apply using the forearms and hands.
Arms: When using the arms, it is helpful to think of them as propeller blades. Airplane propellers have a leading edge and a trailing edge. Look at the palm of your left hand. The edges of your arm, to the left and to the right are the leading and trailing edges that are used to perform the techniques. Those hard, bony edges give you solid leverage for performing chokes. The flat parts of your arms, directly in front of you and directly on the backside, are not used in these applications because they are softer and provide less mechanical leverage.
Hands: The grips you use with your hands are very important. The interlacing of the fingers, as if in prayer, is never to be used. Your fingers can be crushed and/or dislocated if you grip that way. The correct position is to clasp your hands together as if clapping, and then to grip a forefinger and thump around your opposite hand’s thumb.
Be Subtle While Applying a Choke
Being subtle while attempting a choke is the beginning of a path to success. Both authors, having trained with champion judoka Kenji Yamada, can attest to the subtlety that he used while choking.
Wilder says, “The first time Yamada Sensei choked me, I had no real concept of what was taking place. I wasn’t really able to feel his intention until he had the choke applied. I remember the technique too: it is called ‘The Hell Choke.” By the time I realized what was happening it was too late.”
Kane has had similar experiences. The first time he was choked-out in a judo tournament, he did not realize what the other guy was doing until he woke up afterward.
An attack to the neck is perceived as life threatening. While you might be choking to knock the other guy out, he is bound to think you are intent on killing him. Once he feels the choke, he is going to switch on his “fight or flight” reflex immediately and instinctively. You’ll be in for a wild ride. You need to be sneaky and subtle. Not showing your intent until it is too late is the key to getting a successful choke or crank begun.
Once it’s on properly, an untrained opponent will very unlikely get away from your technique until you choose to release him. An important ingredient in successful choking is control. In most cases, this means controlling your opponent’s hips with your legs. If you have a solid hold, he cannot buck you off of him or find some way to squirm away and break your chokehold.
In a standing choke, this might simply mean dragging him backward so that he cannot get his feet under him or achieve any leverage to take the pressure off and continue the fight. In groundwork, that typically means controlling his hips with your legs. | <urn:uuid:9ce6c5a3-9d9a-4518-a6b5-ef82c9152cc8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ymaa.com/articles/use-neck-cranks-or-chokes-to-fight-an-adversary | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961116 | 1,330 | 2.78125 | 3 |
1st June 2012
In the overlap between academy and industry, Nik Wootton has found his strength. Now just a little less than halfway through his M.A.Sc in civil engineering, the variety of skills required by Wootton’s thesis project has revealed project management as an unexpected professional passion for the young researcher. With his co-supervisors, Dr. Mark Green and Dr. Amir Fam, Wootton is part of a team exploring the advantages and disadvantages of reinforcing concrete with fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) as an alternative to rebar (steel-reinforced concrete) in the construction of a new monorail test track in Kingston. Queen’s collaboration with transportation industry leader Bombardier Transportation has meant a unique educational opportunity for Wootton. “Most students’ research projects are done more in-house, or if they involve partnerships, the student’s interaction with industry can be limited” says Wootton, “But in this case, I’m learning what it’s like to work with businesses in the community.” In addition to cooperating with Bombardier, these structural engineering researchers have been working closely with Anchor Concrete. “Queen’s Department of Civil Engineering has always been concerned with its students’ professional development, but it is truly a unique experience to be gaining such good industry experience and to have it all so integrated,” Wootton reflects appreciatively.
What led Wootton down this path into industry and experimentation? The answer, in large part, had to do with knowing where he wanted to be rather than knowing what he wanted to research. “I did my undergrad here and I made the decision to stay at Queen’s because I couldn’t picture myself going anywhere else,” explains Wootton with a relaxed certainty. The native Albertan enjoys the “student town” feel of Kingston and the environment of the Queen’s community. You’d be surprised, he insists, how tight-knit a large group of engineering grad students can be. As for the cutting edge structural technologies his research is helping to shape, Wootton recalls: “I had experimented a little with fiber reinforced polymers on a design team in undergrad. I didn’t fully understand its potential back then, but now it seems I’m finding out something new about this technology every month.”
When I ask him what it’s like stepping from the campus lab into the middle of a high profile business world – and if it meant getting a new power suit – Wootton laughs and explains that “everybody is very professional” but when most of your meetings are in construction settings, ‘work appropriate’ still means steel toed boots. “There was a period of time when I was working closely with Anchor at their production facility. They set me up near the concrete beams they were building for our guideway so I could do some instrumenting and preliminary testing. Most of the ‘business’ stuff happens electronically,” he describes.
In the longstanding relationship between Queen’s and Bombardier, academy and industry are also learning from each other by incorporating each others’ most effective strategies. “Aside from other research, I do reporting to Bombardier, site testing, and research design. All of this being done by the same person is typical of scholarly work. But in this context it’s a matter of integrating research with exacting levels of corporate quality assurance,” elaborates Wootton. “That means there’s nothing left to chance. It also means that you create archives more so than you might as an individual researcher, which is good for accountability and continuity.”
In the coming months, Wootton anticipates rising to more practical challenges because the scope of the project is up to him. “It’s not a traditional internship and it’s not just like being an employee. It’s more like being a contracted researcher.” After the monorail is built this winter and testing is done, Wootton expects he’ll move on in the working world. “I was excited to do my Master’s in engineering because Queen’s is so research intensive and I saw as an undergrad that there was a strong research base among the faculty; I wanted to be on the grad side of things. After my thesis is done, though, I’m looking forward to going back out West and getting a job.” Wootton envisions himself doing project management for just about any firm in Canada. For the time being, Wootton’s collaborative research with Bombardier is proving to be an integrated learning experience beyond anything he expected. “I haven’t anticipated every challenge, but it’s been great. And that’s a testament to good organization and a good partnership.” | <urn:uuid:4369a586-936b-43a2-b4ce-c18ce39b93f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.queensu.ca/sgs/forstudents/stories/students-perspective/wootton.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964515 | 1,039 | 1.554688 | 2 |
To recap: At the time, DEET was still considered to be the single-most effective insect repellent and was vastly superior to any natural-based repellent. But DEET isn't perfect. Its most unfriendly property is its ability to eat away at plastics and polyester; smear some on your sunglasses lenses and you'll likely be shopping for a new pair for the next trip. DEET also has a distinctive odor, which some consider unpleasant. (The vast majority of medical research indicates that it is safe to use health-wise.)
There was an upstart alternative that was just beginning to reach the market in 2006, however: picaridin. Like DEET, picaridin is a synthetic chemical—in this case developed by Bayer in the 1990s (DEET was created by the US Army in 1946). Available in Europe since 2001, picaridin is also marketed overseas under the names Icaridin, Bayrepel, and KBR3023. And unlike DEET, picaridin is odorless and will not eat plastic.
Studies indicate that picaridin is as effective as DEET in protecting against mosquitoes, though the amount of protection time correlates closely with concentration. With DEET, as concentration increases from 5-7 percent up to 20-30 percent, protection times per application roughly doubles from 60-90 minutes to 2-3 hours. As you increase concentration to 50 percent, protection extends to as much as 6 hours; concentrations higher than 50 percent appear to provide little additional protection. (The New England Journal of Medicine did a great study on this in 2002.)
It's a little bit unclear if the same trends apply for picaridin. In the U.S., picaridin was approved for sale in 2005. However, the EPA initially prohibited bug dope manufacturers from producing repellents with picaridin in concentrations greater than seven percent. In 2008, the rules were relaxed and insect repellents began appearing with picaridin concentrations of 20 percent.
Here's a couple of seemingly objective studies I've been able to track down in terms of picaridin studies/endorsements, all of which seem to indicate that picaridin truly is an equal of DEET:
Round-up of several studies in Australia: Concludes that picaridin in concentration of 19.2 percent was as effective as the same concentration of DEET.
Consumer Reports: Found that 7 percent picaridin is as effective as 10 percent DEET.
You can find picaridin-based repellents from the following manufacturers:
Cutter: The Cutter Advanced line features picaridin in concentrations of 7 percent (Cutter Advanced) and 15 percent (Cutter Advanced Sport).
Sawyer: The Sawyer Picaridin Insect Repellent and Sawyer Premium Insect Repellent offers concentrations of 20 percent. (For some reason, Sawyer doesn't have these listed on their website, hence the links to REI.com.)
Tender Corportation: Makers of the Natrapel line, which offers concentrations of 20 percent in both pump spray and wipe versions.
Both the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control endorse picaridin as an effective repellent and safe alternative to DEET.
Have you tried picaridin against the biting baddies of the Northeast? If so, please let me know! | <urn:uuid:85d7d44e-5353-484c-b767-3cfad51177f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://equipped.outdoors.org/2009/06/picaridin-vs-deet-face-off-of-buzzer.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954585 | 707 | 2.25 | 2 |
All livestock keepers are required to keep on farm records of all livestock moves both on and off the holding,. We issue free of charge movement books to any keeper based in the county borough. If you require a movement book please contact the Animal Health Team. Movement records may also be recorded on computers and other record books provided that statutory information is inserted.
Sheep Flock/goat herd register
All sheep and goat keepers in the UK are required to keep a flock/herd register. Copies of a blank flock book are available to download on the Welsh Government website.
Alternatively you may contact our Animal Health Team on 01495 235291 who will be happy to send you a copy.
Cattle Herd Register
It is a requirement under European Law that keepers record in their herd register the details of every birth, every movement on and off the holding, and every death of their cattle.
The register must contain all of the following details:
- the ear-tag number
- the date of birth
- the sex
- the breed
- the dam identity
- the date of movement on and off your holdingthe details of where the animals had moved to or from
The Register may be paper or computer based. A copy of the Farm Register is available for download from the DEFRA website.
Within 36 hours of any movement on or off, the keeper must record the following information in the on-farm record book, which must be kept for 6 years from the end of the year in which the entry was made:
- The date
- Eartag/tattoo/slapmark/temporary mark
- The number of pigs
- The name, address and CPH number of the departure and destination premise
An example of a Pig Movement Record id available to download below:
Pig Movement Record (PDF 10kb) | <urn:uuid:9025b795-31bb-4598-8238-eba37f508d33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.caerphilly.gov.uk/site.aspx?s=Pla6rTn0HJ29TJW4ITnFYWTd5bEuFr5Lb2boEPo7SDXvHUER2yZLtw== | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919799 | 383 | 1.90625 | 2 |
NPR - Russia by Rail - Freeze Frame-Photographs by David Gilkey/NPR
When photographing the Trans-Siberian railway, which has a history dating back a century, it was natural to drift back in time and imagine taking a trip like this while carrying tripods; big, heavy cameras; and lots of film — and not just throwing a couple of extra memory cards in your bag.
Taking pictures in the first part of the 20th century required packing a lot of unwieldy gear, complete with shiny wood, fragrant chemicals and a bit of magic. But in our digital age, are we trading convenience for the romance of the journey?
To help answer that question, we approached some folks at The Impossible Project, a group that describes itself as “producing new instant film materials for classic Polaroid cameras.” Their film works just like the old SX-70 Polaroids you may recall from your youth — if you are old enough. When Polaroid stopped making film for those cameras a few years ago, The Impossible Project stepped in and created their new film from the ground up.
The look of their film has more in common with photography of the 1920s and ’30s than with the polished and perfected Polaroid film packs of the late ’90s. But this film proved challenging to transport: It required lead-lined bags to protect it against damage at airport X-ray machines. And it wasn’t convenient to use — it turns out the film gets balky when the temperatures are below zero degrees Fahrenheit. Still, it was picture-perfect for this epic trip.
The wintry landscapes, rendered in muted blacks, browns and grays, evoke an earlier time; one before computer-driven cameras and picture-taking cellphones. These are photographs you can touch and smell and share, hand to hand, among your new traveling companions. | <urn:uuid:871535af-289f-4abf-8e94-a97e7fa148a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nprradiopictures.tumblr.com/tagged/David-Gilkey | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941431 | 387 | 2.25 | 2 |
The Danish clerics who spread the 15 Muhammad cartoons have been evasive about where they got the three most offensive ones, ones that had never been published by Jyllands-Posten or media in any country, at least before the dispute arose.
As NeanderNews revealed, the second extra "cartoon," supposedly showing Muhammad with a pig snout, is a crude forgery, not even a picture of Muhammad at all. It is rather an altered photo of a “contestant at the French Pig-Squealing Championships” in France. In the comments to an earlier post on the Volokh Conspiracy, a poster who identified himself merely as “K” raised an interesting issue:
I am not a graphologist, but a student who had a chance to attend very interesting lecture two years ago — a part of it was about the fact that whatever alphabet you learn to write the first influences the way you write in all the other alphabets you later learn. Hence you can identify, if sometimes with difficulty, that an individual learned to write Cyrillic or Arabic before they learned to write Latin [Roman letters].
Such individuals often never receive any instruction in writing in the “new” alphabet, and so they are:
1. Drawing the letters and not writing them
2. Maintaining the habits they have acquired when learning their first alphabet. – eg. the letters have their normal shapes but look as though the have been written backwards (someone has started to write the letter from the wrong end)
Now look closely at the writing on the caricature that shows Mo[hammad] as a pedophile, and ask yourself doesn’t it look a bit strange?
The more I considered K’s comment, the more troubled I became. These extra three cartoons were presented as evidence of what non-Muslim Danes thought of Muslims, but what if all the cartoons were created by Muslims themselves, just to garner sympathy or to inflame anti-western sentiment? The pig “cartoon” has already been shown to be a hoax, though the perpetrator of the hoax has not been determined.
Maybe the manner in which the letters in the “demon pedophile” cartoon were written would reveal whether they were most likely written by someone who first learned to write in Arabic.
2. Analysis of Lettering in the “Demon Pedophile” Cartoon.
From the following picture, I deleted the actual drawing of Muhammad as a demon pedophile, retaining just the caption above the crude drawing:
(click to enlarge)
I was struck by two letters that seemed (to my untrained eye) to have been drawn in an unconventional way. The first was the first “M” in Muhammed. In writing a capital “M,” it is common to start with a downstroke at the left side of the “M,” then go back to the top left of the “M” and complete the rest of it without a break. It appears that the person who composed the demon pedophile cartoon did much the same thing, but instead started with a downstroke on the top right, and then returned to the top right to complete the letter “M” without a further break. In other words, it appears that he was writing that capital “M” from right to left, not from left to right as most westerners would have done. The first website on Arabic writing that I went to, not only confirmed my understanding that Arabic letters are written from right to left, but showed that there is a standard Arabic letter (alif) that consists of a single downstroke, so such a downstroke may well have been a natural movement for an Arabic writer.
The second letter that struck me as odd was the placement of the capital P in the word “PROFET.” Note that the top of the P is not on the same level as the rest of the capital letters in the word or the note. I wondered whether there were any letters in Arabic that are commonly written with a tail below the line and a body that does not reach the top of the adjacent letters. In the second website I looked at, I saw this example of a font called “Hasan Al Quds Open Type”:
(click to enlarge)
Shockingly, not only did I find a letter with (1) a body below the letters adjacent and (2) a tail below the line, I saw that (3) the letter looked remarkably like a Roman “p” and (4) it was placed on the left edge of the word, just as in the “demon pedophile” cartoon. Note the first and last words on the first line both have a letter resembling such a “p” on the left edge of each word. A word on the third line has the same letter resembling a “p” on its left edge.
These two oddly drawn letters raise a question in my untrained mind whether the author of the "demon pedophile" cartoon was brought up writing some form of the Arabic alphabet.
3. A Call for Help.
Obviously, I lack the expertise to evaluate the evidence I have raised on any but the crudest level. We need graphologists or other experts on how Arabs who learned to write first in Arabic eventually write Roman letters in the West, particularly in Denmark or Scandinavia. I am calling for the help of “An Army of Davids,” using the “distributed intelligence” of the blogosphere to examine the questions that K raised in his comment to an earlier post of mine and that I have explored here. Much as in the CBS/Dan Rather forgeries, perhaps bloggers can contact the best experts in the field to determine whether the person who originally created this reprehensible cartoon was brought up writing Roman letters or Arabic ones.
Even if it should be determined that the creator of the “demon pedophile” cartoon was probably brought up writing Arabic, that does not necessarily mean that any Danish cleric forged the cartoon himself. It would still remain possible that some Muslim-hating person who was brought up writing Arabic created this cartoon, but it would definitely make it highly unlikely that these cartoons reflected typical Danish society (as they were originally supposed to do).
UPDATE: Because of the length of this post, I have updated it in a new post above. I found the comments below intriguing and highlight one of them in my update above. I also link some of the other bloggers who have spread the call for help.
All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:
- Daily Illini Fires Editor Who Published the Mohammed Cartoons:
- President of Bar Association in Pakistan, Plus Major Pakistani Party, Supports Murder of Danish Cartoonists:
- The Twelve Mohammed Cartoons, in Detail:...
- A Second Look at the Second Extra Cartoon.--
- Another Possible Hoax of a Cartoon; Call for Graphology Expertise.—
- More on the Canadian Professor and the Cartoons:...
- U.S. State Department on the Cartoons Depicting Mohammed:
- Bush Cabinet Member Condemns Anti-Christian Blasphemy, and Points to Laws Restricting Incitement to Hateful Expressions:
- Suppressing Anti-Religious Speech -- an Emerging International Law Norm? | <urn:uuid:952674c7-d24c-4ecf-acb0-f9f585db58de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.volokh.com/posts/1139559700.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966735 | 1,521 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Back in the 1993 federal election, then-Prime Minister Kim Campbell was quoted as saying that elections are no time to discuss serious issues. (If memory serves, her comment was actually much more nuanced, but was dumbed down to that pithy, sensational and damaging phrase – which kinda proved her point.)
Last week, Barack Obama challenged that idea – with a scope and, yes, audacity that was nothing short of breathtaking – in a speech that seemed entirely out of place in a North American election. Chances are you’ve heard or read excerpts, but as a speechwriter, I can’t urge you strongly enough to read and watch the whole thing.
This was not a speech made for sound bites, although it has one or two choice ones. (“I can no more disown him than…”) Instead of rejecting nuance, this speech embraces it – as any honest, positive contribution to the conversation about a complex and highly charged topic must.
There is a passage of particular interest to communicators, where he delivers a challenge that may prove even more difficult to meet than that of America’s racial divide: a call for a civil, mature discussion of the issue.
We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
And he continues, suggesting that the dialogue can be about issues that actually make a difference to people – and that this is what Americans really want.
Heady stuff. Heady enough that I wondered if commentators in the media – who are usually quick to condemn the politics of sound bites and cheap attacks, while consigning any politician who fails to deliver them to thorough obscurity – would rise to it.
The early metrics aren’t promising. Those fine folks at TechPresident used online service TagCrowd to create tag clouds of Obama’s speech and of the “editorial responses of the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal“.
And here are America’s flagship newspapers:
Micah Sifry concludes the TechPresident post this way:
At a first glance, it seems as if our editorial guides can’t help but view the speech as a political ploy, first and foremost. Considering how rarely politicians choose to grapple in depth with hard and divisive issues like race, it’s hard to see how that is the best frame through which to view it. But that is the frame our media system uses to evaluate political speeches, no?
Personally, I think Obama’s speech is a great test of the following question: Are we still living in the age of sound-bite politics, where the sharp attack line, even taken out of context, can become the “truth” of an event or a person thanks to the amplifying and distorting effects of broadcast media? Or are we entering the age of sound-blast politics, where a 37-minute speech can actually be watched, read, and digested by millions of people (a million views already on YouTube!) using the abundant spaces of the internet–and the themes and meanings they encounter and absorb will be not about the “politics” of a speech, but its actual content?
In other words, are we entering an age when politicians can be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?
Maybe, and I really want to think so – but that age is going to take a while to arrive. I don’t expect a single speech, no matter how great, to change decades of ingrained behaviour. It will take a determination by politicians to consistently respond with courage, substance and integrity to challenges such as the one Obama faced with Rev. Wright’s comments – and a willingness by leaders in the media to stop complaining about politicians who lack substance on Monday and punishing those who don’t on Tuesday.
But when the week starts with Fox News asking if Bill Richardson is playing the race card by growing a beard, the situation doesn’t look all that hopeful. | <urn:uuid:4c59c116-b577-41ee-9705-98b1f48f5008> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://robcottingham.ca/2008/03/barack-obamas-speech-on-race/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964014 | 1,156 | 1.875 | 2 |
The Chief Coroner is backing proposed law changes to crack down on "cyber-bullying" because of concern that it is helping to fuel New Zealand's high rate of youth suicide.
Judge Neil MacLean says bullying by mobile phone texting or on social media such as Facebook is "often a background factor" in suicides coming before coroners.
"We know it's certainly a risk factor for suicide, and we know that adolescents often talk about interpersonal problems when investigators are looking into not necessarily completed suicides but self-harm."
He said recent Law Commission proposals to create new offences of incitement to suicide, maliciously impersonating another person, and publishing intimate photos without consent all "deserve the attention of the legislature".
The commission also recommended amending the Harassment, Telecommunications and Human Rights Acts to make it clear that they covered internet-based racial, sexual and other harassment and using a computer "for the purpose of disturbing, annoying or irritating any person" - an offence which now applies only to using a telephone. "I think they are simple, practical steps that could help," Judge MacLean said.
Today, the Herald launches a campaign to raise awareness of bullying in schools and investigate what more could be done to reduce it.
One survey of 9-year-olds in 35 countries found that New Zealand has the world's second-highest rate of school bullying.
It also has the world's highest suicide rate of young males aged 15 to 24 and the second-highest overall death rate of young people aged 10 to 24, reflecting a high road death toll as well as suicide.
A long-term study of 1265 people born in Christchurch in 1977 found that both adolescents who were bullied and the teenagers who bullied them were up to three times more likely than others to attempt suicide before age 30.
Judge MacLean has called several times for more public discussion of the reasons for New Zealand's high youth suicide rate, which is still unexplained.
Health Ministry figures published last month show the rate dropped from a peak of 29 suicides for every 100,000 young people in 1995 to 18 per 100,000 in 2009. But this was still the highest in the world for males and third-highest for females.
The youth suicide rate was below all older age groups for 40 years until 1985, then almost doubled in three years and has stayed above all older age groups in most years since 1987.
"Its nature tells us it's probably to do with the high youth unemployment rate, the high dropout rate of certain youth from education, disproportionately represented in the Maori population," Judge MacLean said. "You can look at your own life experience - perhaps society was more supportive of young people, family links were stronger, teenagers didn't have the disposable income, the ability to keep things from their parents via the internet ...
"When I was a kid, my parents knew what I was doing. Increasingly with the technology available today, and the way adolescents live, many parents despair of ever keeping track of what the kids are up to."
Internet advice agency Netsafe told the Law Commission that it was concerned about a "proliferation of anonymous Facebook pages used to publish derogatory and often sexually explicit rumours about students".
The commission reported: "The first of these gossip pages to come to their attention included 'extremely derogatory' comments about students and ultimately is thought to have played some part in the suicide of a young girl."
It suggested creating a new commissioner or a tribunal with powers to order internet providers to take down such pages if they breach any law and are likely to result in psychological or other harm. | <urn:uuid:0e13f55b-dfcf-4950-855c-1d9bd70d99c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10803980 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971769 | 734 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Being on the search committee for a new school leader has made my bookmarks and bookshelves grow with various leadership books and writings - yet two of them seem to get the most feedback.
The second most-discussed premise about leaderships came from the work of Jim Collins, author of classic #1 bestselling book, Good To Great, where he coined the terms "Level 5 Leaders" and "The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity of Three Circles)" which is about "transcending the curse of competence." One quote in particular as it relates to school, business and school leaders, which addresses a very heated national debate:1) Your School Must Be For All Kids 100 Percent of the
If you start making decisions based on avoiding conflict, the
students lose. . .
2) Create a Vision, Write It Down, and Start Implementing It
Don't put your vision in your drawer and hope for the best.
Every decision must be aligned with that vision. The whole
organization is watching when you make a decision, so
consistency is crucial.
3) It's the People, Stupid
. . . Hire people who support your vision, who are bright, and
who like kids.
4) Paddles in the Water
. . . At King, in times of crisis, everyone responds with paddles
in the water.
5) Find Time to Think During the DayThey pay me to worry. . . . . . . .So, me, I am never going to
have a good day --- just get over it.
6) Take Responsibility for the Good and the Bad
If the problems in your school or organization lie below you and the solutions lie above you, then you have rendered yourself irrelevant. The genius of school lies within the school. The solutions to problems are almost always right in front of you.
7) You Have the Ultimate ResponsibilityHave very clear expectations. . . . Autonomy is the goal, though you still have to inspect.
8) Have a Bias for Yes. . . The only progress you will ever make involves risk: Ideas that teachers have may seem a little unsafe and crazy. Try to think, "How can I make this request into a yes?"
9) Consensus is OverratedTwenty percent of people will be against anything. When you realize this, you avoid compromising what really should be done because you stop watering things down. If you always try to reach consensus, you are being led by the 20 percent.
10) Large Change Needs to be Done QuicklyIf you wait too long to make changes to a school culture, you have already sanctioned mediocre behavior because you're allowing it. That's when change is hard, and you begin making bad deals.
What would YOU add to the list?
"We must reject the idea--well-intentioned, but dead wrong--that the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become "more like a business." Most businesses--like most of anything else in life--fall somewhere between mediocre and good. Few are great. When you compare great companies with good ones, many widely practiced business norms turn out to correlate with mediocrity, not greatness. So, then, why would we want to import the practices of mediocrity into the social sectors?
I shared this perspective with a gathering of business CEOs, and offended nearly everyone in the room. A hand shot up from David Weekley, one of the more thoughtful CEOs--a man who built a very successful company and who now spends nearly half his time working with the social sectors. "Do you have evidence to support your point?" he demanded. "In my work with nonprofits, I find that they're in desperate need of greater discipline--disciplined planning, disciplined people, disciplined governance, disciplined allocation of resources."
"What makes you think that's a business concept?" I replied. "Most businesses also have a desperate need for greater discipline. Mediocre companies rarely display the relentless culture of discipline--disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and who take disciplined action--that we find in truly great companies. A culture of discipline is not a principle of business; it is a principle of greatness."
Later, at dinner, we continued our debate, and I asked Weekley: "If you had taken a different path in life and become, say, a church leader, a university president, a nonprofit leader, a hospital CEO, or a school superintendent, would you have been any less disciplined in your approach? Would you have been less likely to practice enlightened leadership, or put less energy into getting the right people on the bus, or been less demanding of results?" Weekley considered the question for a long moment. "No, I suspect not."
That's when it dawned on me: we need a new language. The critical distinction is not between business and social, but between great and good. We need to reject the naive imposition of the "language of business" on the social sectors, and instead jointly embrace a language of greatness."
Previously published The Daily Riff August 2010 | <urn:uuid:7da4df99-d481-4175-a134-de36228c627c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedailyriff.com/articles/great-school-leadership-a-hedgehog-with-paddles-221.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959132 | 1,050 | 2.15625 | 2 |
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- One of Northeast Ohio's oldest manufacturers has launched a hostile bid to take over another venerable company in the region.
Akron's A. Schulman, a company founded in 1928, offered $855 million to buy Mayfield Heights' Ferro Corp., a troubled company that dates back to 1919. Plastics additives company Schulman said it thinks it can do a better job of growing the business at specialty materials company Ferro.
"We have tremendous respect for Ferro and its people," A. Schulman Chairman, President and Chief Executive Joe Gingo said in a statement. "However, cash flow is required not only for the restructuring efforts already publicly identified by Ferro, but also for growth, the capacity to be opportunistic in the marketplace, and the ability to create value for shareholders."
Gingo noted that Schulman has generated more than $400 million in cash flow to fund growth in the past five years while Ferro has generated $60 million. Schulman sent a letter to Ferro's board last month, offering to buy the company, but the board rejected the proposal. So Gingo said Schulman is taking its offer directly to Ferro's shareholders.
Ferro executives acknowledged that they received a takeover bid from Schulman but said their existing turnaround plan should provide more long-term value to its investors.
Ferro has been struggling in recent months, missing analysts' earnings expectations and posting large financial declines. In October, the company fired Chief Executive James Kirsch and has been operating on interim management ever since.
And as the company tries to find new leadership and turn around its operations, an increasingly vocal group of dissident shareholders have been staging a proxy fight, trying to put members on Ferro's board of directors.
Lyman Johnson, a law professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, said Ferro is a fairly obvious takeover target.
"Frequently, when companies are in turmoil, you'll see some weakness in their share price," Johnson said. That low stock price can make a purchase cheap, bringing out potential bidders. "If they have an active shareholder base, those people will be putting a lot of pressure on the board to do a deal."
But that doesn't mean Schulman will have an easy time in snatching up Ferro.
Ohio law gives Ferro's board a lot of control over the situation. If the board rejects the deal, Johnson said all that Schulman and dissident shareholders can do is buy enough stock to put its own members on the board of directors.
Getting enough directors on the board to swing the vote could take years as Ferro's board terms are staggered. Instead of electing an entire slate of directors each year, shareholders vote on three members at a time each year. So winning a board majority could take two years.
Don Margotta, a finance professor who has written extensively about hostile takeovers at Northeastern University in Boston, said that staggered board structure "is very effective in fighting off takeovers, or at least slowing them down."
On top of that, Margotta said, are Ohio laws that prevent investors from buying more than 20 percent of a company without permission from other shareholders. That law could stop Schulman from getting enough votes to win seats on Ferro's board.
Still, with an offer on the table and shareholders howling for change, Margotta and Johnson said the board will be under pressure.
If the board can't convince investors that it can turn Ferro around, it could try to get Schulman to sweeten its offer or look for other bidders.
Schulman offered $6.50 a share in cash and stock for Ferro. That amounts to $563 million for the stock and an agreement to absorb more than $300 million in Ferro debt.
On Monday, Ferro's stock shot up to $6.95 a share during the day and closed at $6.80, a 31 percent gain and 30 cents above the Schulman offer. Johnson and Margotta said that with an offer on the table, investors may be expecting a bidding war for Ferro.
"They're expecting a deal," Johnson said. "Not necessarily the deal on the table, maybe something with a higher price, but they're going to want a deal."
If the Schulman deal were to go through, it would likely mean job losses in Northeast Ohio. Gingo was clear in his statement that he believes Schulman could cut $35 million in costs at Ferro by merging headquarters operations, the two companies' plastics businesses and through greater purchasing power with suppliers.
Schulman is in the process of moving to a new headquarters building in Fairlawn, so that probably doesn't mean consolidating operations to Mayfield Heights.
Ferro plans to report its fourth quarter and full-year earnings Tuesday, and it will hold what promises to be a lively conference call with reporters and analysts to discuss its future. | <urn:uuid:1b199580-18d3-4b3b-924a-7c4476d05d58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2013/03/a_schulman_launches_855_millio.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969345 | 1,028 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Test your marine life "Eye-Q" and get to know some of the critters that rely on thriving ocean ecosystems.
Check out THE GREEN SQUAD to learn how to make your school safe for the environment, and your health!
See what you can do to help SAVE THE POLAR BEAR AND THE NORTH POLE, in our Polar Action Guide (pdf). And learn more about Global Warming.
Explore WILDLIFE ON THE BRINK to learn about wildlife that may be in danger of extinction.
Read about the problem of mercury contamination of fish, and see how much TUNA it's safe for you to eat.
See lots more links to ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION for kids. | <urn:uuid:ecc2156d-2cfc-4ef9-a0a2-3118d984212b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nrdc.org/makewaves/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903679 | 150 | 2.671875 | 3 |
The author and illustrator Maurice Sendak died recently at the age of 83. He was best known for his picture book “Where the Wild Things Are”, but there was much more to his life and work than that book alone. He was devoted to the art and craft of children’s books and their illustration. Read a little more about him here, and see a display of his work at Gilmerton Library this month.
How Jewish Poland met Walt Disney and Hans Christian Andersen in Brooklyn; and how the result was a Wild Rumpus which echoes still.
Born in 1928 to parents of Polish-Jewish origin (more Jewish than Polish, in his own assessment), Maurice Sendak grew up in Brooklyn during the Depression and the New Deal. Childhood illnesses frequently obliged him, like R.L. Stevenson, to observe the street scene from his bedroom window. When health permitted, he was part of the action. He recalled entire summer days lived on the street, with children allowed back into the tenements only to use the toilet or to staunch bleeding. Often, he was entrusted to the fierce care of his older sister. During these years, he had the impression that Brooklyn was Poland, the old country of his parents and relatives. New York - America – was an enticing but foreign land which lay beyond the Brooklyn Bridge.
Sendak was captivated from an early age by the book as object – something to be gazed upon, hefted, smelled, even tasted, before being merely read. (His contempt for the e-book was characteristically uncompromising). By the age of twelve, he had been enchanted by Walt Disney’s feature-length film “Fantasia” which choreographed cartoon animation for orchestral music. Mickey Mouse (Sendak had an extensive collection of “Mickey Mousiana”) was the Sorcerer’s Apprentice; tutu-ed hippos danced “The Sugar Plum Fairy”; the rise and fall of the dinosaurs was played out to Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”. Sendak was later to liken the art of illustrating a text to that of musical accompaniment.
From his early teens, Sendak was drawing characters and incidents from his surroundings. A dominant and extrovert neighbourhood child named Rosie, who would dragoon her playmates into re-enacting “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” whilst hogging both principal roles for herself, became the template for the heroes and heroines of Sendak’s picture books. From Martin in “Very Far Away“ (1957) to Max in “Where the Wild Things Are” (1963), these protagonists are no cautionary models of decorum. Children or not, they know the score. The world isn’t a safe or a comfortable place, and you may find yourself thrown back on your native resources of courage, cunning and intelligence. Initiative and boldness, rather than insipid “goodness”, will be your friend when the going gets tough. Max, in “Where the Wild Things Are”, is thinking on his feet when it occurs to him to stare out the yellow gaze of the Wild Things and command them to “Be still!” – but it pays off. Like Rosie, this boy knows “how to get through a day”.
Sendak’s own carnaptious unsentimentality – he railed against the “Kiddiebookland …next to Neverneverville and Peterpanburg” – was rooted in an understanding of the fragility of life and security. Ill health dogged him into adulthood – he suffered a coronary thrombosis in his late thirties. Although his immediate family was safe in America, he was aware of the grief of his parents and relatives as it became clear to them how many known to them had been murdered in Nazi Europe. He was deeply affected by the case of the kidnap and murder in 1932 of the infant son of the American national hero Charles Lindbergh. A famous Press photograph of the kidnapper’s ladder set against the wall of the Lindbergh mansion was echoed in one of the illustrations in “Outside Over There“(1981).
Sendak was a scholar of storytelling, book-making, and illustration. He immersed himself in their history, theory and practice. He had a deep appreciation of the masters and mistresses of these arts – Hans Christian Andersen, Randolph Caldecott, Herman Melville, Beatrix Potter, Edward Ardizzone, Laura Ingalls Wilder – and felt himself a bearer of their tradition. Successfully to illustrate a text – his own, or another writer’s – was to “quicken” it, and it was a demanding but high calling. A student and master of many styles, he regarded the temptation to cultivate a particular style as a grave error: “If you have only one style, then you’re going to do the same book over and over, which is, of course, pretty dull.”
Neither Sendak nor his work was ever dull. The man was complex, thrawn, and disconcerting. He resented his Bar Mitzvah being blighted by parental grief at news of anti-Semitic atrocities in Europe. His Wild Things were modelled on rusticated and snaggle-toothed relatives who visited, smelled odd, and ate the family food. But he was “interested in the …dilemmas …the often neglected pain…in the simple heroism of children”; and it showed in his work. | <urn:uuid:7575f655-750d-4a08-b0bf-862e9bfa9eae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://yourlibrary.edinburgh.gov.uk/blogs/2012/06/wild-thing-maurice-sendak-1928-%E2%80%93-2012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97966 | 1,170 | 2.78125 | 3 |
The level of Lake Erie, as with the levels of all the other Great Lakes, undergoes a natural cycle of changes throughout the year. Typically, the lake level is highest during the early summer months and lowest during the dead of winter. These fluctuations are related to seasonal changes in the amount of water flowing into and out of the lake. In-flow for Lake Erie includes drainage from the upper portion of the Great Lakes basin through the Detroit River, water from rivers flowing directly into the lake, contribution from ground water, and also from precipitation falling directly into the lake. Out-flow includes discharge to Lake Ontario through the Niagara River, evaporation, and any diversions or other withdrawals.
For a monthly bulletin on Lake Erie levels from the US Army Corp of Engineers click here OR go to US Army Corp of Engineers Great Lakes Water Levels page.
Long Term Fluctuations
In addition to this annual fluctuation, the levels of the Great Lakes also exhibit long-term fluctuations that cycle between a much wider range of levels. These fluctuations result from cumulative effects of a prolonged and persistent deviation from average climatic conditions. Several successive seasons or years of above or below normal precipitation are usually required before a reversal of the current general trend can begin.
The level of Lake Erie generally ranged above normal for the last 30 or so years of the 20th century. These persistently high water levels reflect the above-normal precipitation that consistently fell in the Great Lakes basin, especially during the 20-year period prior to the record-high level year of 1986. During this 20-year period, precipitation accumulated to nearly 39 inches above normal, and for individual years was below normal in only four of those twenty years. The high levels reached during 1985-87 surpassed the previous high levels set in the early 1970s. Following drier years, most notably 1976-77 and 1987-89, lake levels declined to near normal during the late winter and early spring months, but quickly rebounded to above-normal by the summer months following spring runoff. In early 1996, lake levels again approached normal before rising sharply following above-normal precipitation in the upper Great Lakes basin. However, below normal precipitation and increased evaporation during late 1997 and 1998 resulted in Lake Erie level falling to below normal during spring 1999 for the first time since the late 1960's. The level of Lake Erie declined nearly 3 feet from the middle of 1998 until early 1999, a significant drop in water levels in the Great Lakes.
Typically, the level of Lake Erie fluctuates about 14 inches during a given year. During 2002, the Lake level fluctuated quite a bit more than this amount, about 20 inches. After its steep decline from near record-high levels in 1997, the level of Lake Erie generally remained below average from early 1999 through mid-2004. However, a combination of favorable hydrologic conditions in late 2001 and early 2002 resulted in a marked recovery of lake levels, which hovered around average through the first half of 2002. The recovery was short lived as a rather hot and dry summer during 2002 negated these earlier improvements and lake levels fell back below average through mid-2004. Lake levels during the next 6 years reflected precipitation patterns, rising following extended periods of above normal precipitation and declining following prolonged periods of below normal precipitation. Following above normal precipitation, lake levels rose to above average from June 2004 through May 2005, from October 2006 through May 2007, from February 2008 through July 2008, and again from January 2009 thorugh December 2009, while levels declined to below average during most of the remainder of this 6 year period following extended durations with below normal precipitation across the Great Lakes basin. The level of Lake Erie was below normal from January 2010 through April 2011 as precipitation was below normal during late 2009 and much of 2010.
Short Term Predictions
Notably above normal precipitation has fallen in the Lake Erie basin from February 2011 through December 2011. During this period, precipitation in the Lake Erie basin has averaged about 16 inches above normal. This precipitation and the combination of other hydrologic factors such as evaporation, have resulted in a rise of 25 inches in the level of Lake Erie during this period. Historic mean lake levels for the months of February and December are typically the same. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers predicts that, based on the hydrologic condition of the Great Lakes basin at the end of December 2011 and anticipated future weather conditions, the level of Lake Erie is expected to remain above normal for the foreseeable future. Deviations from the expected weather patterns could result in the level of Lake Erie ranging from 12 inches above normal to as much as 7 inches below the normal seasonal average.
Ohio Department of Natural Resources
Division of Soil and Water Resources
Water Inventory Section
2045 Morse Rd., Bldg. B
Columbus, Ohio 43229-6693
Phone: (614) 265-6742 | <urn:uuid:ce529c6b-1533-4502-b354-48a694759172> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ohiodnr.com/ContentApproval/GWPPMetaDataButtonScript3227/lake_erie/levelhistory/tabid/3775/Default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953994 | 993 | 3.96875 | 4 |
There is a saying that "when your only tool is a hammer all your problems look like nails." It seems the only tool of some of the Islamists is bringing death to somebody.
The latest act of some religious nutcase is to send a death threat to the Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid. His fault? Leading the formulation of a proposed "national education policy for Bangladesh" and posting the draft on the ministry website [bn].
The salient features of this new education policy which is set to be enacted this December:
- Increase primary education from 5th to 8th class.
- It will integrate Madras education and vocational education into the general education
- It will establish mandatory core subjects for primary-level education: Bangla, English, mathematics, Bangladesh Studies, social environment and climate change, and information technology and science.
- Every School will have a mandatory library equipped with necessary books
- More scholarships for the poor
- No physical punishments
- Arrangement of lunch for the students
- Education for indigenous students in their mothet tongues
- Facilities for the disabled
- Standardization of teachers qualifications
- More training for the teachers and promotion will be connected with experience and training and many more
In a nutshell the national education policy will make changes at the grassroots levels of the education system.
Nirmal Gomes, a specialist in Educational Administration & Policy Studies, wrote in E-Bangladesh about this new education policy. He discussed the importance of a complete education system and this policy is close to that:
A holistic education policy implementation is most essential in the reality of Bangladesh. Every students need to be developed their emotional, physical, social, and intellectual growth. The education policy must acknowledge and emphasize the spiritual, intellectual, social, physical, and psychological needs of young children from the beginning of its establishment and this will continue to foster growth in each child. Besides promoting skill-based education, the policy must encourage children to learn and nurture the social and cultural values, integrity, tolerate, respect and love others, service to others, and to be a responsible person. The students can learn all these good values from schools.
Now it seems a quarter is not liking the idea of a unified education system. The idea of introducing Science and mathematics to Madrassa students seem to be detrimental for some people's agenda. They think this policy is not emphasizing on religious education. It seems this idea is fed by the Islamist political parties as if they lose control on Madrassas then their politics will be difficult.
I think this education policy is not the ultimate solution for Bangladesh, but its a start. Lets not derail this road of change paying heed to threats of some religious fanatics. The policy needs your support. | <urn:uuid:1ab85db1-64ae-4c45-8ce0-1318b1d93963> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rezwanul.blogspot.com/2009/11/proposed-education-policy-in-bangladesh.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943368 | 559 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Acid prevent reflux Acid reflux and your womanly parts are totaly different, they odn t play a role in you getting pregnant or not now when you do get pregnant, you will probably have really bad acid.
There are also two alginic acid and antacids that place a layer of foam over the stomach acidic juices to prevent reflux these tablets need to be chewed well so that the chemicals. Acid reflux disease is in condition in which gastric juices back up from the stomach and the ic agents aid in the emptying of the stomach to prevent it from overfilling. Revealed! why stress isthe single mon cause for acid reflux and what you must do to prevent reflux from happening again!.
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There are also two alginic acid and antacids that place a layer of foam over the stomach acidic juices to prevent acid reflux these tablets need to be chewed well so that the. In this re the upper part of the stomach is wrapped around the les to strengthen the sphincter and prevent acid reflux and to repair a hiatal hernia.
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Baby acid reflux your baby suffers from acid reflux how to cure your baby s acid reflux and prevent its recurrence foods to eat with acid reflux. Stomach acid into the esophagus the large diaphragm muscles and a band of muscles at the junction of the stomach and esophagus normally act together as a barrier to prevent reflux. This is the description for the index page of your site and so should include some appropriately keyword rich copy. Finally, sucralfate or carafate can help heal and prevent esophageal damage that is caused by acid reflux disease keep in though, you should remember to take it several times a.
Acid reflux can t be cured, but it can be treated for relief there are many ways to these must be taken at least hour before meals since they can only prevent acid from. I get acid reflux due to my small diet i used to eat big, like to serving per meal, but now, i eat almost less than serving per meal. However, acid reflux may require a different type of medication that will either treat the heartburn for a longer period of time or prevent it from occurring in the first place.
What the latest news about alternative health treatments the myths you are constantly being told about acid reflux treatment and, what you can do now to stop and prevent your acid. Surgical acid reflux treatment - millions of people are suffering from indigestion and acid reflux all over the world in fact, it is referred to as one of the mon condition. If you are reading this you are searching for an answer to reflux i am not a medical expert, nor am i a recognized authority but what i m going to share with you has never.
In a person d acid reflux disorder the les does not close firmly enough to prevent the acid and food from rising up into the esophagus. As a result, not only will you be relieved from acid reflux, but this will also prevent it ing back in the future it is important to be aware about acid reflux so as to.
Revolutionary ic bead ring use for severe acid reflux, this bead ring is the first of a kind invention, which can rectify this physical problem associated with the patient s. Learn how to prevent acid reflux while you exercise and what can cause it substitute exercises the type of exercising that you are doing could be making the acid reflux symptoms. Laryngopharyngeal reflux disease (lprd) laryngopharyngeal reflux disease and mendations to prevent acid reflux what is laryngopharyngeal reflux disease (lprd)?.
You will always have the acid reflux disease but you can at least reduce and in many cases prevent the symptoms of acid reflux by making several lifestyle changes.
What c eat to prevent or relieve heartburn? food does help or hurt your acid reflux by frank hagan. Causes anyone who a large amount of acidic foods can d and editor s picks assess your acid reflux treatment needs; prevent acid reflux. Acid reflux and your womanly parts are totaly different, they odn t play a role in you getting pregnant or not now when you do get pregnant, you will probably have really bad acid..
©2009 Acid Prevent Reflux • | <urn:uuid:7818e088-ee78-4ef3-9c26-93a3a9f70b95> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://members.multimania.co.uk/pgjjeoo/purchased7/nsheccher.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936996 | 1,044 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Now that the hype surrounding the government's overhaul of the scandal-tinged federal student loan program has settled, students and parents seeking loans for the 2010 academic year are getting some surprisingly good news: Many 2010 federal education loans will be cheaper, easier to get, and easier to repay than they've been in recent years.
Starting July 1, the federal government will lower the interest rates on many student and parent loans.
In addition, to save billions of taxpayer dollars and eliminate incentives for private companies to give kickbacks to colleges, the federal government will stop paying banks for making federally backed educational loans. No longer will those wanting a federal loan to help pay for tuition have—or have the opportunity—to shop for a student Stafford or parent PLUS loan. Starting July 1, students and parents will just fill out the standard applications, and tell their college they want a loan. Colleges will send all federal loan applications straight to the government, which will make all the loans directly. That will reduce the steps and confusion for many, if not most, borrowers.
The change will mean a some extra minor hassles, however, for a few million students and parents who took out federal loans from companies like Sallie Mae or Citibank previously and who need new loans after July 1. Those borrowers will have to sign a new loan contract, called a Master Promissory Note. But that's not much of a problem, says Jan Brandow, director of financial aid and scholarships at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Most borrowers will simply click over to the studentloans.gov website, and spend a few minutes filling out a form. After graduation, students caught in the transition might also have to sit through two different exit counseling sessions, and will likely receive two different sets of student loan bills: one from their first lender and one from the federal government. However, Brandow notes that most borrowers end up consolidating their federal college loans into a single debt after graduation anyway, and so end up getting only one monthly bill.
The rule changes are requiring many college financial aid officers to work out kinks, which means they may take a little extra time to respond to parents and students over the next couple months, says Sharon Hassan, director of financial aid at Goucher College in Baltimore. "This will be temporary...please be patient," she says, adding colleges are doing the work so that, for students, "the process will be easier."
Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of America's Best Colleges. | <urn:uuid:43d1eac9-1284-49fd-87a7-ae864027d6d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/student-loan/articles/2010/06/14/federal-student-and-parent-loans-are-getting-cheaper-and-easier | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963941 | 513 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Method of making a commutator for small-sized electric motor
Small electric motor Patent #: 4322650
ApplicationNo. 06/477110 filed on 03/21/1983
US Classes:310/233, Commutators310/42With assembling, metal casting or machining feature
ExaminersPrimary: Skudy, R.
International ClassesH01R 39/04 (20060101)
H01R 39/00 (20060101)
Foreign Application Priority Data1982-03-23 FR
The present invention relates to a commutator for a miniature electric motor of the type comprising: an insulating core for mounting on the shaft of the rotor of the motor and having a cylindrical outer surface; a plurality of conductive sectorsapplied against said surface, each sector being provided at the rear end thereof with a terminal which projects radially and is cut out from a part of the width of the sector and defines at least one tab which projects axially with respect to the base ofthe terminal, said tab circumferentially positioning the sector; and a ring for retaining the sectors against the core.
Owing to the increasing miniaturization of electric motors, attemps have been made to find means for fixing the conductive sectors on the core in a manner more appropriate than by the conventional moulding assembly employed for commutators oflarger size, and this has resulted in commutators of the aforementioned type employed for example in automobiles.
In the known commutators of this type, the axial tabs of the conductive sectors are inserted in arcuate slots provided at the base of a flange which projects from the rear of the commutator. These slots are very shallow and correspond to punchesof the moulding die which are of very small section and consequently fragile. Moreover, the shape of the core is too complicated to permit the use of thermosetting plastics material, while these materials would be highly desirable to ensure thestability of the core when producing the connections by the simple insertion of the wires of the armature in the hooks of the terminals of the sectors and followed by a radial "hot pressing" thereof.
An object of the invention is to provide a commutator of the same type which is easier to produce.
The invention therefore provides a commutator of the aforementioned type, wherein the tabs are interposed between projections which are circumferentially spaced apart and project from the cylindrical surface of the core.
In particular, in order to effect the hot pressing operation more conveniently, each projection may have a parallelepipedic shape and each terminal may terminate in a portion in the shape of a hook located in the region of one of the projections.
In an embodiment which ensures high reliability as concerns the retention of the sectors against the core without increasing the overall size of the commutator, the core has at the rear of the projections a flange of smaller height which iscontinuous or discontinuous and behind which claws of the retaining ring hook, which claws extend between the projections.
In this case, a particularly firm retention of the sectors is achieved when the height of the flange is less than the thickness of the sectors and the claws are applied resiliently against the tabs of the sectors.
The invention isdescribed hereinafter in more detail with reference to the accompanying drawings which show only one embodiment thereof. In the drawings:
FIG. 1 is a partial exploded perspective view of a commutator according to the invention;
FIG. 2 is a perspective view of the assembled commutator;
FIG. 3 is a plan view of the commutator;
FIG. 4 is a sectional view taken along line 4--4 of FIG. 3;
FIG. 5 is an end elevational view in the direction of arrow 5 in FIG. 4;
FIG. 6 is a sectional view taken along line 6--6 of FIG. 4, and
FIG. 7 is a detail view of the core of a modification of the commutator according to the invention.
The commutator shown in FIGS. 1 to 6, which has an overall length of less than 1 cm, comprises five parts: a central core 1, adapted to bemounted with a drive fit on an armature shaft (not shown) of an electric motor, three conductive sectors 2 (only one of which is shown in FIG. 1), and a gripping retaining ring 3.
The core 1 has a cylindrical tubular body 4 of insulating material, preferably of a thermosetting plastics material, at the end (rear end, ie. the end adjacent to the armature) of which radially project three parallelepipedic projections 5 whichare circumferentially spaced 120° apart. At a small distance to the rear of the projections 5, a continuous flange 6 also projects from the core and has a distinctly smaller height and is defined by two planar surfaces 7 and 8. The frontsurface 7 is connected to the rear surface of each projection 5 by a longitudinally extending strip 9 which has the same width as the projection and the same height as the flange 6 so as to facilitate stripping the core from the die.
Each conductive sector 2 has the general shape of a cylindrical sector which has an angular extent of a little less than 120° and corresponds to the outer surface of the body 4 of the core. Cut out from the rear end portion of the sectorin the central part and having a width which is about one third of the width of the sector, is a strip portion which initially projects axially from the sector and is folded outwardly at a right angle and then rearwardly at a right angle and thenforwardly at about 45° so as to form a connection terminal 10 which terminates in a hook 11. On each side thereof, the terminal 10 defines a tab 12 which projects axially from the radial part 13 of the terminal to a position slightly beyond thehook 11. The distance between the confronting parallel surfaces 14 of two tabs 12 is equal to the width of the projections 5 (FIG. 6).
The retaining ring 3 is of insulating material and, as the core 1, it is preferably moulded from a thermosetting plastics material. It comprises a ring 15 having a rectangular cross-sectional shape, from the rear surface of which ring projectthree longitudinally extending claws 16.
As can be seen better in FIGS. 3 to 6, the outside diameter of the ring 15 is roughly equal to the outside diameter of the radial part 13 of the terminals and its inside diameter is slightly less than the inside diameter of the body 4 plus twicethe thickness of a sector 2.
Internally, each claw 16 extends the inner surface of the the ring 15 in a direction parallel to the axis of the latter. Externally, the claw extends from the outer surface of the ring 15 and is mildly convergent towards the axis of the ring 15. The claw has at its end a nose portion 17 which defines a radially extending hooking shoulder 18 and a rear ramp 19. The circumferential width of the claws 16 is distinctly less than the space between the projections 5.
In order to assemble the commutator, the sectors 2 are applied against the body 4 with a small mutual circumferential spacing therebetween (FIG. 6), the projections 5 being in confronting relation to the terminals 10, and the sectors are shiftedrearwardly.
The projections 5 fit themselves exactly between the pairs of associated tabs 12 and the radial parts 13 apply themselves against the front surface of these projections, while the hooks 11 bear against the radially exterior planar surface of theprojections 5.
The ring 3 is then fitted with a drive fit on the three sectors 2 until it abuts against the three radial parts 13 of the terminals. In doing so, the nose portions 17 slide along the sectors 2, pass between the projections 5, travel beyond theflange 6 and clip themselves behind the latter, their surfaces 18 being hooked against the rear surface 8 of the flange. This is made possible by the radial resilience of the claws 16 and by the ramps 19 of the nose portions 17.
When the commutator is assembled in this way, the hooking of the nose portions 17 guarantees that the ring 15 exerts a permanent axial thrust which applies the parts 13 of the terminals against the projections 5. Further, as can be seen in FIG.4, the height of the flange 6 is less than the thickness of the sectors; consequently, the claws 16 radially press the tabs 12 against the body 4 throughout the length of these tabs, each claw 16 overlapping two tabs 12 pertaining to two adjacentsectors. In this way, an excellent positioning and an excellent positive maintenance of the sectors 2 are achieved in all directions irrespective of the speed of rotation of the motor.
Further, the simple shape of the core and of the ring 3 enables them to be produced without difficulty from a thermosetting plastics material. Consequently, when the connection wires (not shown) are inserted in the hooks 11 and the latter arethen radially compressed by a hot pressing operation, these hooks are provided by the projections 5 with a large support surface which does not deform under the effect of the heat. Likewise, the ring 3, whose annular portion 15 is in the neighbourhoodof the heated region, is not deformed in the course of this operation and consequently continues to perform its maintaining function perfectly.
By way of a modification, as shown in FIG. 7, the flange 6 and the strip portions 9 may be replaced by three segments 6A of a flange which are inserted, when viewed from the end of the core, between the projections 5. Indeed, this in no waychanges the hooking of the claws 16 or the conditions of the stripping of the core 1 from the die. | <urn:uuid:f49dc7f4-48b9-4dd3-aa72-73657a72c417> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/4469972/description.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932103 | 2,032 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Want a gig (1000 megabits per second) of Internet access bandwidth? Google says you could have it by the end of next year “from Manhattan to rural North Dakota (sic, I think they meant Vermont)” if their proposal to the FCC is accepted forthwith according to CNET’s newsblog. Not only a gig but a mobile gig, accessible by cellphone or roaming computer – no fiber required. Sound too good to be true? – it isn’t, IMHO!
Engineering is not the problem (more below). Politics, entrenched interests, and bureaucratic inertia, however, make it unlikely this dream’ll come true as quickly as it ought to despite the fact that America could lead the world in broadband penetration and accessibility within two years if the FCC accedes to the request Google made yesterday to open up “whitespace” for use by broadband devices. Rural areas – most deprived of broadband service to day – would be the biggest beneficiaries; but urban America has plenty to gain as well. Google also has plenty to gain by FCC agreement – nothing wrong with that.
How’s this possible? In short, open spectrum. But I’ll explain.
A huge swath of frequencies is reserved for over the air use. Even after TV stations give up a relatively small amount of spectrum in February of next year by switching to all digital broadcast format, there will still be enough spectrum available for channels 2 through 51 in every market in the United States; there is also unused space between channels which modern technology makes safely usable. In rural areas, as much as 300Mhz of spectrum may be completely unused; even in rural areas there are unused swaths and the space between the channels can now safely be used thanks to modern technology. In the recently completed FCC auction, Verizon promised to pay over $4.7 BILLION dollars for just 22Mhz of spectrum so 300Mhz is a really big deal.
Although this whitespace is nominally reserved for television use, no one has paid for a license to use any of it. It’s fallow, as we say in Vermont. It’s time it was grazed.
Unlike the 22Mhz band which Verizon just bought, the whitespace is a patchwork. Different frequencies are available in different places. Radios, whether in cellphones or attached to computers, which use this spectrum have to either know where they are (trivial with GPS) or have some way to listen to see what frequencies are usable locally and be able to change their frequency as you drive down the road much as you change radio stations to adapt to local conditions. Mobile phones already do this within a narrow range of frequencies; wifi has much of this technology. Google is suggesting that only radios which have passed FCC licensing criteria for safe operation be allowed to operate.
Despite the fact that the radios will be licensed, the operators will not! A cellular operator has to get a license to use a specific frequency from the FCC; a WiFi operator does not. Google calls its proposal WiFi 2.0 for this reason. Google is proposing that these frequencies b made available for UNLICENSED use (albeit with licensed radios). Experience has taught us that much more signal will be crammed into a given swath of spectrum if the spectrum is unlicensed than if it is licensed. (BTW, some smart people disagree on this and point to real instances of wifi congestion. I think this is a consequence of the relatively tiny slivers of junk spectrum wifi shares with microwave and cordless phones and will not be a serious problem in the wide open whitespaces).
Moreover, innovation thrives in unlicensed spectrum. From Google’s letter to the FCC:
“In short, FCC rules should specify only what is allowed, not how that result is to be achieved, or by whom. Much like the Internet itself, the agency’s specifications should as much as possible enable “innovation without permission” (although with necessary technical constraints). For example, the Part 15 rules permitting WiFi were written years before the IEEE 802.11 technology was even contemplated, much less existed. If those rules had been contingent on the pre-existence of WiFi, one of the most successful and efficient uses of spectrum in the history of wireless communications likely never would have happened.”
Google is not asking for any special privilege. However, the availability of open spectrum would not only create a huge opportunity for their proposed Android phone design but also protect them from the threat of the established carriers finding a way to establish toll booths which divert revenue from Google’s coffers to those of the carriers. Because Google has such a large stake in making open spectrum a success, they’re offering help to those who will do the actual implementation:
“Google also would be willing to provide, at no cost to third parties, the technical support necessary to make these plans happen; this could include intellectual property and reference designs for underlying technologies, open geo-databases maintained by Google, and other supporting infrastructure.”
Why won’t this happen?
Remember Verizon just promised to pay $4.7 billion and change for the 22Mhz C block; how much is that 22Mhz worth if huge blocks of unlicensed spectrum with similar propagation characteristics become available around the country? Google made a pass at this spectrum and probably forced the Verizon bid up. Was this rope-a-dope?
Don’t feel to sorry for Verizon though; they cited the upcoming rulemaking on the whitespaces as a reason why the spectrum they bought at auction should be auctioned rather than released for unlicensed use.
Americans pay more for less Internet access bandwidth than people in most developed and many developing nations. These prices will plummet per megabit when over-the-air competition becomes available. Those who benefit from this pricing will not be happy to see the competition – and they have lobbyists.
Cellphone calling costs much more than the price of providing the service. Control of spectrum lets the major carriers keep these prices up. What happens if spectrum is open? There goes another rubber tree plant.
I’ll be speaking at David Isenberg’s always worthwhile F2C conference next Monday morning at 8:30AM. Even though it’s only the day before April Fool’s Day, I’ll be giving a history lesson from a 2018 perspective of how almost all spectrum got unlicensed. The Google proposal is a milestone in that “history”.
More on open spectrum:
Internet 2.0 is Open Spectrum
Backstory of Open Spectrum Epiphany
Google’s Brilliant Proposal (this one wasn’t adopted) | <urn:uuid:73d1a624-3ad4-4e47-b1e6-02afcdb6e7e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.tomevslin.com/open_spectrum/page/2/ | 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 | 0.944892 | 1,380 | 2.40625 | 2 |
A report from DisplayMate Technologies yesterday noted that Apple's latest iPad is not fully charged when it shows that it's 100 percent juiced up, and today the creator of that report says the problem is due to bad math.
In a note sent to CNET and other media outlets this morning, DisplayMate President Ray Soneira said the iPad's behavior here can be attributed to the calculations that go into determining how far along the recharging process is based on battery health and other factors:
The charge indicator on all mobile devices is based on a mathematical model of the charge rates, discharge rates, and recent discharge history of the battery. It uses this information to estimate how much running time is left. It's actually rather difficult to do because most batteries degrade slowly as they discharge and then tend to surprise with a precipitous decline near the end.
So there is something wrong with the iPad's mathematical model for recharging. It should not say 100 percent charged until it stops recharging and goes from the full recharging rate of about 10 watts to a trickle charging rate of about 1 watt. Otherwise the user will not get the maximum running time that the iPad is capable of delivering, which is listed in my article.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
DisplayMate's original report -- based on its own testing -- found that the full power draw while charging Apple's latest iPad continued for about an hour after the on-screen display said the battery was at 100 percent. That meant those who unplugged the device at that point were potentially getting less of a charge than if they let the device keep charging, the firm said.
After additional testing, Soneira said it takes an additional 2 hours and 10 minutes after the battery reports 100 percent for the recharging cycle to "fully" terminate.
Apple's latest iPad has a considerably more powerful battery than its predecessors, jumping from a 25-watt-hour lithium-ion battery to a 42.5-watt-hour battery. That change came in order to power a display with four times the number of pixels as previous generations, a dual-core processor with a quad-core graphics chip, and 4G LTE wireless networking on some models. All told, that's led to battery life that's about the same as the iPad 2, while adding extra weight and thickness to the unit itself.
Apple has tweaked the mathematic formulas behind its on-screen indicators before, primarily the one that told users what kind of reception they had on the iPhone 4. Following its 2010 press conference centering on the performance of the antenna on that device, Apple said it was adopting a new formula for calculating how many bars were displayed on screen based on signal strength. That change came in the form of an iOS software update, which also made the first three bars of that signal range taller. | <urn:uuid:d7c383b6-7bf4-44db-a180-e06f0e1b2f4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-57403359-248/researcher-says-new-ipads-charging-math-is-wrong/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96349 | 581 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Business News of Tuesday, 7 August 2012
Source: Economy Times
The resurgence of pirate attacks in African waters is now a subject of serious concern to African states and the international community. For the last decade, piracy in African waters is concentrated in three main regions, namely the Somali coast/the Gulf of Aden along the East African Coast; Nigeria’s territorial waters in West Africa; and the Mozambique Channel/Cape sea route in Southern Africa.
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. However, the term can include acts committed on land, air or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. Since 2007 when African waters overtook waters off Southeast Asia – Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Philippines – as the traditionally dangerous hotspots of global piracy, much of the international attention and efforts at countering piracy in Africa have been on Somali maritime piracy.
This is understandably so, because piracy off the Somali coast accounts for more than half of pirate attacks recorded annually in Africa, if not globally. For instance, there were 439 piracy attacks worldwide in 2011, more than half of which were attributed to Somali pirates operating in the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea.
The International Maritime Organisation (IMO), a global maritime watchdog, estimated that in 2011, West African countries lost nearly over $1 billion in oil due to piracy. The increase in ship hijackings off West Africa also shows that the region could emerge as a new piracy hotspot, International Maritime Organisation (IMO), a global maritime watchdog has warned.
The good news however is that Pirate attacks worldwide have witnessed a sharp decline in the first half of 2012 as international naval efforts played a key role in "frustrating" the menace posed by Somali pirates, a global maritime watchdog has said.
Overall, 177 incidents of sea piracy were reported in the first six months of 2012, compared to 266 incidents for the corresponding period in 2011, the International Maritime Bureau said in a report warning that these numbers were offset by a worrying increase of attacks in the Gulf of Guinea.
The report showed 20 vessels were hijacked worldwide, with a total number of 334 crew members taken hostage. There were a further 80 vessels boarded, 25 vessels fired upon and 52 reported attempted attacks. At least four crew members were killed.
The decrease in the overall number is primarily due to the decline in the incidents of Somali piracy activity, dropping from 163 in the first six months of 2011 to 69 in 2012. Somali pirates also hijacked fewer vessels, down from 21 to 13. Nonetheless, Somali piracy continues to remain a serious threat. Somali pirate attacks cover a vast area, from the Southern Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Gulf of Oman to the Arabian Sea and Somali Basin, threatening all shipping routes in the North West Indian Ocean.
Ghana has not experienced any serious pirates attack over the years. This could be that there was not much that attracted the attention of pirates although the country exports cocoa and other valuable items. However, with the discovery of oil and the current economic growth in the country, Ghana is in a state of insecurity when it comes to pirate attack. Ghana’s oil and gas industry is highly at risk if proper measures are not taken to secure the producing grounds and the exportation process if the country begins to export.
The question however is: is Ghana positioned to deal with this canker? Recently, a seminar was held by the Ghana Shippers’ Authority in collaboration with the Ghana journalists’ Association to educate the media on the current trends and updates in the shipping and transport industry.
At the seminar, it was stated that the country generated over 70 per cent of its revenue from the shipping industry. Also, over 90 per cent of Ghana’s international trade is sea borne.
“It’s therefore becomes imperative for the country to highly secure such areas to prevent economic losses should a thing like that happen. The costs involved in rescuing hijacked vessels are high. Lives are put at risk and peaceful global trade is disrupted,” Chief executive officer of Ghana Shippers’ Authority, Dr. Kofi Mbiah, who presented an overview of Ghana’s shipping industry has sated.
He continued: “Thus for Ghana to command her maritime trade and the riches accompanied by it, there is the need to ensure proper safeguarding of our oil and gas manufacturing site and our territorial borders on the sea to include proper security in the exportation and importation activities.” | <urn:uuid:1bcd6e8d-91e0-42a5-b342-058760c6371d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=247047 | 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 | 0.958811 | 913 | 2.453125 | 2 |
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SOURCE Marilyn Coffey
Author releases 40th anniversary edition of Marcella -- controversial autoerotic story that paved the way for novels like Fifty Shades
OMAHA, Neb., March 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- When American feminist Gloria Steinem reviewed the groundbreaking novel Marcella by Marilyn Coffey in 1973, she said, "We are beginning to speak of subjects we have been taught are unspeakable. This book is an important part of the truth telling by and for women." Today, Marcella turns 40 in an environment where erotic romances like Fifty Shades of Grey have become mainstream.
Marcella is the story of a 13-year-old girl who is blossoming into womanhood. Coffey flawlessly defined what it meant to be a growing teenage girl while intricately weaving themes of discovery, sexuality, religion and inexperience. Marcella paved the way for the acceptance of the now booming erotic genre by introducing once taboo subjects to American audiences.
"Today I consider Marcella the most daring book I ever wrote," says Coffey. "I believe the autoeroticism described in my novel is lyrical and often funny. In today's popular literature, the sexuality in Marcella would be considered tame. I doubt that my book would have earned the distinction of being banned today, like it was in the '70s."
Marcella was hailed as the first book published in English to use autoeroticism as its main theme, and more broadly as the first book to venture into the sexual taboos of American readers.
Marcella was highly successful in the '70s amid much controversy. It was published by Charterhouse in New York, and then by Quartet in London. For the 40th anniversary edition of Marcella, Coffey opted to publish under her own imprint, Omega Cottonwood Press.
Read more about the interesting history of Marcella at: http://tinyurl.com/MakingofMarcella.
Marilyn Coffey is a retired associate professor of English, having taught at Boston University, Pratt Institute, and Fort Hays (Kansas) State University (tenured at both Pratt and FHSU). The University of Nebraska named her a Master Alumnus for distinction in writing. Her manuscripts, letters, journals and papers are archived in The Marilyn Coffey Collection in the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries. Coffey is celebrated for her contributions to literature and women's issues.
Marcella: 40th Anniversary Edition is available through Amazon.com and www.marilyncoffey.net.
Contact: Krystal Sidzyik
This press release was issued through eReleases® Press Release Distribution. For more information, visit http://www.ereleases.com.
©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:1014422b-9bff-42a5-8cf4-51607b9cd6a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wset.com/story/21434751/taboo-novel-shocked-america-40-years-ago | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946842 | 633 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Every town has at least
one...Jim Fair counted for ten. This decorated World War II hero
returned to Tampa after the war to start Tampa's premier discount
"Get It For You Wholesale" Center on South Franklin
Street, just north of where the Crosstown Expressway would eventually
pass by. That was long before skyscrapers made their appearance
Jim was Tampa's beloved eccentric and political
gadfly, a nut who started the Salvation Navy at the three story
brick building on the east side of Franklin Street. There, Fair
sold novelties and useful items to people who didn't have much
money...and he gave street people a place to hang out for the
night. He was friendly, always had a smile on his face, but was
quick to file lawsuits about almost anything. He often said he
"never met a lawsuit he didn't like."
Fair was often jailed for contempt of court
for mouthing off at judges and witnesses in open court. If he
had something to say, he'd say it no matter what the rules were
or who was present...and he was always willing to accept the consequences
and sue to have them changed.
He ran dozens of advertisements in every issue
of The Tampa Tribune with his famous phone number, 2-2222 which
later changed to 229-2222. He had to sue the phone company to
get that particular number. He tried to get the courts to give
him 1-1111 but didn't get a favorable ruling. Each advertisement
he placed boasted that FAIR could "Get It 4 U Wholesale,"
whatever it was you wanted.
Ironically, he filed many lawsuits against
the newspaper for not getting its facts straight and his love-hate
relationship with reporters was legend. If there was a slow news
day, and there often was in the fifties and sixties, Fair could
always be counted on for a weird turn or two that would entertain
Jim Fair was part of the local and well-respected
Farrior family of lawyers and doctors but changed his name in
the fifties as a symbol of his disowning the establishment he
felt they were a part of. He despised anything "government"
yet ran dozens of times for everything from mayor to county commissioner
to state senator.
One year, he ran for Tampa mayor and as a publicity
stunt rode his bicycle off the Platt Street bridge before a crowd
of hundreds who came to see if he would drown. "Not a chance
of that happening," Fair declared.
When he ran for each office, he always sued
to have the filing fees declared unconstitutional. Failing at
that, he found other loopholes to get his name on the ballot.
After multiple failures at office seeking, a tired electorate
finally voted him into the Supervisor of Election's Office in
1964. By 1966, he had screwed the operations of the rather obscure
office up so bad that then Governor Claude Kirk had to remove
him and appoint a successor. But he did put it on the map.
Fair spent nearly a decade of his post political
years in Tampa filing lawsuits, many directed at the Florida Public
Service Commission and local utilities alleging corruption and
lack of public interest.
In the mid-seventies, Hillsborough County took
Fair's Salvation Navy property by condemnation to make way for
entrances to the soon-to-be built Crosstown Expressway. He sued
to keep his property but lost. In protest, he never picked up
the check for nearly $300,000 in payment that remained for him
with the Clerk of the Circuit Court. He once directed WFLA-TV
reporter Tony Zappone to go pick up the check and then called
the clerk not to release it to him.
In 1976, as part of an agreement with a local
court who had held him in contempt for numerous violations of
conduct, he left Hillsborough County for the state capitol.
He wasn't in Tallahassee five minutes when
he became the same center of media attention he had been in Tampa.
He made speeches everywhere people would listen and sometimes
he even made sense. In 1980, he ran unsuccessfully against State
Senator Dempsey Barron (D-Panama City), again protesting the qualifying
Fair remained in Tallahassee, fighting the
utility companies and big business in local and state courts.
He lived modestly in an apartment until his death in the early
He seldom made sense, he was weird but he was
loved and his passing left a big gap in the collective souls of
Tampa and Tallahassee when he was around no more. | <urn:uuid:c4e99344-30d0-49f8-b1b8-2a3a8855fb39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.teddwebb.com/legends/jim_fair.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98356 | 984 | 1.609375 | 2 |
To endow is to enrich, to give to another something long lasting and of much worth. The temple endowment ordinances enrich in three ways: (a) the one receiving the ordinance is given power from God. "Recipients are endowed with power from on high." (b) A recipient is also endowed with information and knowledge. "They receive an education relative to the Lord's purposes and plans." (c) When sealed at the altar a person is the recipient of glorious blessings, powers, and honors as part of his endowment.The word "endowment" is also closely related to the idea of putting on clothing. While they were in the Garden of Eden, the nakedness of Adam and Eve signified innocence. However, in mortality, nakedness symbolizes the fallen and sinful condition of those who have not yet accepted the blessings of the Atonement. While the coats of skins "covered" the direct effects of Adam and Eve's transgression (corresponding to the idea of justification), additional clothing worn over the first garment represented their being endowed with glory, holiness, and godliness (i.e., sanctification). Nibley further explains that "the white undergarment is the proper preexistent glory of the wearer, while the [outer garment of the high priest] is the priesthood later added to it."
While the authority of the priesthood "comes by way of ordination; power in the priesthood comes through faithful and obedient living in honoring covenants." Similarly, it is one thing to wear white clothing as a symbol of priesthood power, and yet another to be in actuality endowed or clothed "with power from on high." Connecting the endowment of power with the idea of putting on glorious clothing is Elder James E. Talmage's discussion of what he calls the Parable of the Royal Marriage Feast in Matthew 22. Referring to the wedding garment required of all legitimate guests at the feast, he observes:
The Greek original in the mention of the wedding garment is enduma...The noun is related to the Greek verb enduein, "to put on, as a garment."... | <urn:uuid:e287f934-292c-4107-a3fe-86381f660184> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.templethemes.net/2012/06/what-is-endowment-becoming-sons-of.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952188 | 434 | 2.515625 | 3 |
BRUSSELS – When the armored car set off for the Brussels airport carrying $50 million worth of precious stones from Antwerp’s diamond district, eight gunmen knew all about it.
One of the biggest diamond heists in recent memory was about to go down.
The thieves surely knew it would be too risky to make their move in Antwerp, the world capital of diamond-cutting, 27 miles from the airport. The city’s diamond industry has about 2,000 surveillance cameras, police monitoring and countless identity controls to protect its $200 million in daily trade of rough and polished gems.
“We are just about the safest place in Belgium,” said Antwerp World Diamond Center spokeswoman Caroline De Wolf.
And the thieves no doubt realized that once Swiss Flight LX789 was airborne Monday night on its way to Zurich, the diamonds tucked in its hold, it would be too late to get their hands on the gems.
But the airport’s 15-mile fence and the transfer of the diamonds from the armored car on the tarmac to the hold of the Fokker 100 twin-engine jet – now that held potential.
After weeks of lashing rain, snow, sleet and black ice, Monday evening was as good as it gets in late winter in Belgium. Crisp, cold air meant dry roads for a perfect getaway, and winter’s early darkness was a blessing for those needing stealth. About 20 minutes before the flight’s scheduled 8:05 p.m. departure, the robbers hid in a construction site outside the airport fence. Then, in two black cars with blue police lights flashing, they drove onto the tarmac, speeding straight to pier A, where the armored car had just finished transferring the diamonds to the plane.
Dressed in dark police clothing and hoods, the thieves whipped out machine guns and stopped the pilots and security crew in their tracks.
“They saw nothing,” Anja Bijnens of the Brussels prosecutor’s office said Tuesday. The thieves “never fired a shot. They never injured anyone.”
With speed and precision, the thieves opened the plane’s hold, picked out 120 parcels, loaded them into the cars and sped away.
By late Tuesday, investigators had found the charred remains of a van most likely used in the heist but little else.
And embarrassed airport officials were left to explain how thieves could so smoothly get in, stage a robbery and make a clean getaway. | <urn:uuid:8d7fd04e-6df4-448d-a17c-3942b94b965b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130219/WORLD/130219102/1040 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954503 | 519 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Become A Fan
Aluminium foil is aluminium prepared in thin metal leaves, with a thickness less than 0.2 millimetres. Foil is a valuable, versatile product since it can be used for both hot and cold foodservice applications. When selecting aluminum foil, be sure to consider the dimensions and thickness so you know it will work for your needs. Many people use aluminum foil for a hot cooking surface, such as for baking cookies or covering a hot casserole dish while it is cooking in the oven. Aluminum works as a great insulator without absorbing heat, so that it is cool to the touch in a matter of seconds after it is removed from a hot oven.
Any restaurateur knows that hiring the wrong employee can be very costly for business. Not only will a bad employee cost you literally, by spending the money to hire and train them and the employee that eventually replaces them, but the level of work they bring to the table in your restaurant can also be very costly. | <urn:uuid:236203db-cef0-4b81-8b7e-fa220a97ec57> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.etundra.com/Food_Foil_And_Film-C45238.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953063 | 201 | 1.75 | 2 |
Every American president has a defining moment that shapes his presidency. Washington had the American Revolution; Nixon had Watergate; George W. Bush had 9/11.
I would argue that Barack Obama's defining moment was getting elected as the first African-American president. After eight years of war, an economy in shambles and deep partisan bickering, many people believed that Obama would bring healing to our nation because of the very nature of his election and the broad appeal of Obama's presidency. But Barack Obama has yet to play the role he seemed destined for: pastor-in-chief.
Although I do not intend to stereotype, I think Obama was destined for this role because so many African-American political leaders in our nation's history have also played important clerical roles. Whether it is Frederick Douglas, Al Sharpton, Cornel West or Martin Luther King Jr., these public figures are more than just transformative players on the public stage, they are pastoral leaders deeply rooted in Christian social ethics.
We assume that Barack Obama is no different. If you listen to many critics of Obama, especially progressives/liberals, their one complaint is this: He simply is not present. And when he is present, he appears cold and aloof. In 2008, Obama's even-keeled personality allowed him to rise above the partisan, media-saturated fray; but now that same even-tempered demeanor is disconnecting him from both his constituents and the American people.
In the face of tragedies such as the West Virginia mine and Deepwater Horizon oil rig accidents, and a New Orleans still in deep disrepair, we can't help but ask: Where is our president? This is an implicit question of, "Where is our pastor?" No wonder people think that President Obama is a Muslim; Muslims are not known for providing a pastoral presence, either.
Not all people would agree with this assessment. Friend and local pastor, the Rev. Leonard Perryman of Living Stone Church, argues that Obama's strength as a leader exists precisely because he is not a pastoral civil-rights leader. According to Perryman, "Obama never ran as a religious civil-rights leader. He is a politician and a well-informed one. The historical elevation of the preacher being the primary spokesperson for the African-American community has been waning for years and may have been put to rest with the election of Obama. I don't think we have nor should we desire a pastor-president. As a pastor, I like my sacred space as an opportunity to call President Obama into question as both citizen and pastor advocate. Let's not give him both roles."
In other words, the fact that Obama was not a religious figure was one of the reasons he became president in the first place. Unlike civil-rights leaders in the community, Obama garnered a broad range of support during his election because of his political appeal; if he were a religious leader, the sectarian nature of his leadership would have threatened his very character and skill as a legislator.
Nevertheless, a personal anecdote may be appropriate here: My daughter takes piano lessons in the home of an elderly woman, Mrs. Mable (not her real name), in the Chapel Hill area. While my daughter learns piano, I usually relax in Mrs. Mable's parlor.
One of the pictures in Mrs. Mable's parlor is of the First Family with the caption, "A family that prays together stays together." It's an important picture for Mrs. Mable because it communicates a significant aspect of Obama's leadership in the midst of a secular, and many times ambivalent, society.
Almost two years into his term, Barack Obama might still be following through on his legislative promises, but I question whether Obama is failing Mrs. Mable and so many Americans by not doing the one thing that he seemed destined to do: Be a healing, stable presence in a time of division and uncertainty.
The Rev. Joe LaGuardia is pastor of Trinity Baptist Church and chaplain to Clairmont Oaks Inc., retirement communities. He writes a weekly column on religion for the Citizen. Visit his website at www.joelaguardia.com. | <urn:uuid:2551318b-7b30-417d-864a-629659cc674e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rockdalecitizen.com/news/2010/sep/07/laguardia-obama-needs-to-channel-his-inner/?features | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97676 | 846 | 1.984375 | 2 |
Long before you hit the dealership, sit down and go over some important variables. First, determine your budget and what you can realistically afford. Remember, your car payment may be the largest consideration, but it’s only one part of the total monthly cost of owning a new vehicle. You must factor in gas, insurance premiums and regular maintenance to get an accurate amount. Once you know your magic number, stick to it so you don’t get in over your head.
After you have a general idea of what you can afford, you should check your credit to see if you are a good candidate for a loan before you start shopping. A good first step is to check your credit reports. Is everything accurate? What is your debt-to-credit ratio? Are there items you want to work on before applying for a car loan?
While proactively reviewing what’s on your credit report is one of the fundamental ways to get a loan with preferable terms, it doesn’t tell you what your credit score is. To obtain your credit score and stay on top of your financial health, become a member of TransUnion Plus. TransUnion Plus gives you access to your credit report, your credit score, and the ability to track all your finances, such as your checking, savings and 401(k) accounts, so you can manage your money seamlessly, plus you get credit and identity theft protection.
Once your credit score and credit reports are in order, and you can feel confident about your ability to get a loan, there is another thing that financially savvy drivers should do: research financing options. Many people find the car they want and finance through the dealership, but these drivers may be missing out on other options that could save plenty of money. Shop around to see who has the best interest rates, determine how much you want to put down and decide what length of loan term works best for you. Also, remember to ask about pre-payment penalties – you shouldn’t be punished for paying your loan off sooner than promised.
Before you take your first test drive, take some time to decide between new and used vehicles. While a brand new vehicle with a great warranty has its appeal, it also has a high level of future depreciation. Because the rate of vehicle depreciation tends to be steeper during the first year or two, purchasing a slightly older car may be a better value in the long run, depending on how long you plan to own it. Research your options before making any decisions, including certifications and extended warranties.
If you’re young or are recovering from poor credit, you may find that even after going through all these steps, you still don’t qualify for a car loan, or if you do, it’s not enough or the interest rates are incredibly high. One option for people in these situations is to get a co-signer for the loan. Consumers should be cautious when co-signing a loan because a co-signer accepts the same responsibility for the loan, so if one person defaults, it can affect both people’s credit. Make sure if you need a co-signer, or even if you’re asked to be one, that you know the person well and he or she is trustworthy and reliable.
After you get yourself in shape financially, it’s finally time to hit up the auto shows and car dealerships to negotiate a deal. The only thing better than driving your new dream car is having the ability to pay for it without extra financial stress. | <urn:uuid:45493c9e-dce1-4ed3-b4b0-9d6cfb49dcab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hudsonreporter.com/view/full_story/21787322/article-Spring-car-shopping--Take-care-of-financing-first?instance=all_articles_widget | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956559 | 724 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Lesbian Lives in Pakistan
Produced by Habiba Nosheen
Aired on January 17, 2011 on NPR’s Morning Edition
LISTEN TO THE STORY: Click Here to Listen to the NPR Story
The names in this story have been changed to protect the women’s identities out of concern for their safety.
Five years ago, Fatima was 23 and studying law in Lahore, Pakistan. She wore blue jeans and a loose shirt and sported short boyish hair. That was the first sign she wasn’t a typical Pakistani woman.
She leaned in to share a secret she had revealed to only a few other people before: “I’m lesbian,” she said hesitantly.
“I think I knew since a very early age,” she said. “It felt quite isolating, I feel. Like, I didn’t see people or kids around me feel the same way.”
In an Islamic country like Pakistan, lesbians can be imprisoned for life. However, Fatima says, it is not the law that gays and lesbians fear — it’s family and neighbors, whom she suspects murder many gays and lesbians in honor killings.
A Secret Teen Romance
Fatima grew up in a house with sisters who were always obsessing over boys, a reality that Fatima says she could never relate to.
“From the time that I’ve known this about myself, every day that I’ve felt that I’d wish I was just like everybody else,” she says.
But her attraction to women became undeniable when she found herself in love with her best friend in high school. She was 18. And she finally worked up the nerve to tell her.
“What was really surprising, I really didn’t expect her to like me back. I really didn’t,” Fatima says. “It was one of the best surprises in my life. I just thought, ‘I am going to tell her and she’s just going to be like, ‘Are you crazy? What’s wrong with you?’ And the fact that she didn’t say that just blew my mind.”
The two dated for years, but always in secret. They would hold hands walking down the street as many women do in Pakistan — it’s simply regarded as “sisterly love.”
And that idea of “sisterly love” allows female lovers to stay under the radar, even more easily than in the West — until they reach the age of marriage. That’s when a lesbian relationship comes into conflict with the very fabric of Pakistani society.
After years of a secret romance, Fatima’s girlfriend suddenly left her, saying there was no future for them in Pakistan. She married a man. Fatima says she can understand why her girlfriend made that decision. “I think from the time that you’re born you’re socialized into believing that homosexuality is unnatural,” she says. “It is a disease, and it is completely prohibited.”
That sense of abnormality, Fatima says, haunts her.”My insides are at war with each other,” she says. “There are days I wake up and think I should just embrace myself. And there are days I think I should just kill myself.”
Leaving the country, Fatima says, is not an option. She says she thinks it’s her calling to be a human rights lawyer in Pakistan, to change the country, which is in severe crisis.
‘I Hated That Girl’
Fatima recounts the day when she decided to tell her grandmother that she had been in love with her best friend. Her grandmother said, “That’s why I always hated that girl. I just hated that girl.”
“But miraculously, when she came back from work, my grandmother was completely fine — as if that discussion never had taken place,” Fatima says. “The way I looked at it, she was in complete denial of the whole thing.”
Shortly after, Fatima married a man, in an attempt to conform to Pakistani values. She told him before the wedding that she was attracted to women, but like so many others in her life he had assumed it was a phase that she’d get over. But two months into her marriage, Fatima met another woman, Kiran, and the two fell in love.
After months of begging, Fatima’s family finally agreed to let her get a divorce. “I said, ‘I am a lesbian. I am in love with a woman. I need to get out of this marriage, please,’” she says. “All hell broke loose, essentially.”
But Fatima won her battle for a divorce. She says meeting Kiran gave her the strength to fight — gave her something to fight for.
They’re now living together, and Fatima is a human rights lawyer. But now there were other problems for the couple, Kiran says.”There were security concerns in that her husband, who was in a bad place, was freely talking about this situation to other people,” she says.
Kiran says that made them scared for a while, with so many people knowing their secret. But, Kiran says, “it would take some doing” for people to really imagine they are lesbians.
“Yeah, it’s not within the realm of possibility,” Fatima says, holding her girlfriend’s hand as the two giggle. “People don’t usually contemplate two women living together, that they are into each other. Good for us.”
Kiran agrees.”Because in our society, women don’t have sexual needs, desires, drives, whatever. And those that do, run brothels,” Kiran says. “Either you are a nice girl, or you are a fast girl. So if we are fast girls, it means that men come and visit us. If we are nice girls, it means that girls come and visit us, which works out.” | <urn:uuid:0bf19ff9-2cfc-4f04-9da4-eb1640aa0b98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kitchensisters.org/girlstories/the-series/lesbian-lives-in-pakistan/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985041 | 1,332 | 2.03125 | 2 |
INSIGHT: The writer highlights two books to help readers understand Islam
AS always in my trips to Malaysia I often buy books, or on those lucky occasions, I am given one as a gift. My friends and colleagues know that I like books, so I am fortunate in this respect that when they think of me, books also come to mind.
I must attest to the fact that whenever I receive a gift of a book, a great feeling of joy and thankfulness comes over me. I cannot explain why exactly but of all the things people can give me, a book always seems to resonate with me the most.
Two books that I received lately seem to be worthy of drawing my readers attention to. In later columns I intend to draw upon the themes and concerns of these books in more detail.
However, for the moment I want to suggest that these two books pursue and articulate interests and themes that are of relevance not only to Malaysian concerns but universal ones as well.
The first book is authored by Professor Chandra Muzaffar. Its title is Muslims Today: Changes within, Challenges without. The first chapter of the book starts with a discussion of The Concept of Equality in Islamic Thought.
This way of beginning the book is an excellent opening to the critical importance of social justice in Islam. The opening lines of the chapter are instructive.
According to Chandra: "Equality as an idea is deeply embedded in Islamic philosophy. Its sociological manifestations are also lucidly expressed in both the Quran and the Sunnah (the way of the Prophet Muhammad) on the one hand, and in other Islamic traditions, on the other (see Chandra Muzzafar, Muslims Today, Emel Publications, 2011, page 3)."
The quest for equality is, according to Chandra, a critical aspect within Islam since it informs the concept of universal justice. Suffice it to note for readers concerned about the concept of equality, it does not mean the sacrifice of difference or diversity in the world.
The beauty of Chandra's discussion is that it is deeply informed by a spiritual understanding of the universalism of Islam and its unwavering commitment to justice.
Other concerns of the book relate to the manner in which Islam can help shape and contribute a global ethic and the ways in which the universal message of Islam is being distorted by those whose knowledge of Islam is either deficient or perhaps whose agenda is more cynical.
Either way, my opinion is that those readers who are interested in Islam should avail themselves of this important and illuminating book.
Those readers who have negative views on Islam should read this book as well. Perhaps, the result may be a more informed and considered understanding.
The second book is titled One Kaabah, Two Mosques and the Quest for Sustainability. This book is published by Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) (2012).
The project editors for this book are Ilias Said, Mohd Wira Mohd Shafiei and Mohamad Abdullah. In this book, we are introduced to the work that USM is spearheading in partnership with its collaborative partners in Saudi Arabia, Al-Qassim University and Umm Al-Qura University. All three tertiary institutions have worked on the Haj Research Projects with the aim of "infusing sustainable practices into the holy pilgrimage activities (see ibid. page iv)."
The research itself began with a joint project between Professor Mohd Omar Abd Kadir from USM and D. Sultan Al-Sultan, a researcher from Al-Qassim University. Later Professor Kamarulazizi Ibrahim led the team.
The research and projects are now growing and expanding to include topics such as Intelligent and Integrated Haj Mobilisation Systems, Training and Education for Haj Pilgrims; Creating Awareness with the Support of Multimedia and Virtual Reality Systems; Solid Waste Management in the Holy City of Makkah and, finally and very importantly, the Evaluation of Facilities for Women during the Haj Pilgrimage (see, ibid. page 48).
Despite the obvious importance of these research projects and the significance of the international collaboration between Malaysia and Saudi Arabia through the auspices of their respective educational institutions, I also want to draw readers' attention to the beauty of the book itself. For Muslims and non-Muslims alike, this book through the beauty of the images is an elegant and eloquent introduction to the beauty of faith and the holy pilgrimage.
I think that the words of Senator Major General Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom capture my sentiment when in the foreword to this book he writes: "This book transcends the boundaries of religion and race as it is merely a frank and forthright depiction of man's struggle in bettering himself for both the present and future generations (see ibid. page v)."
These words also capture what I feel unites the two books. The common commitment to human betterment is what ties together them together and animates them.
I think that, understood and engaged in an informed way, these two books provide a stimulating and inspiring insight into both the philosophical and practical issues that characterise our universal search for a better and more just and sustainable world.
My sense is that reading these books can help us to understand Islam and the good work done in its name in a fuller and more informed light.
Reading, understanding and engaging with an open mind the positive contribution that Islam makes to universal principles of decency, justice and human betterment is critical for all of us, irrespective of our differences in faith or creed.
Both books in their different ways provide such reading material which can contribute to a fuller, better and more informed understanding that may help enlighten many of us and help us transcend our narrow bigotry and ignorance.
These books also provide practical examples of engagement with the project of human betterment.
In these respects and many others, they are worth directing my readers towards. | <urn:uuid:c7d9e3bc-7d1f-4921-8ec8-d466bfc971b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nst.com.my/channels/learning-curve/comment-journey-to-understanding-1.104045 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94798 | 1,200 | 2.328125 | 2 |
How Are Books Organized on the Shelves?
We arrange every book, video, DVD, CD, map, or magazine on the shelves in the library by subject. Like other academic libraries, we use the Library of Congress Classification System to assign Call Numbers to our materials so that books, etc. on similar topics are next to each other on the shelves.
You need to know a book's call number in order to get it off the shelf in the library. This CSU, Los Angeles guide entitled, Understanding Call Numbers provides a useful introduction to the organizational scheme. Call numbers are a book's address on the shelves, they tell you the subject of the book, and make sure that books on the same subject are shelved together.
Need Books from Other Libraries?
If you're looking for a book that the MJC Library doesn't have either in print or electronically, don't worry; we can have it sent to you here from another library. This service is called, Interlibrary Loan, and it allows us to locate and get copies of library materials sent here from other libraries around the country or around the world for you to check out and return here.
Find out more about this service and request to borrow materials from other libraries on the Library's Web site.
How Do I Place a Hold?
You can place a hold on an item that is currently checked out; when it is returned, you will be notified by email. You can also place a hold on an item in Columbia's library and it will be sent to MJC for you. Or even place a hold from home on an item on MJC's shelf so it doesn't get checked out by anyone else before you get to the library. | <urn:uuid:d2cea8bf-6c14-497c-9cdf-5dc1c3b93e27> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://libguides.mjc.edu/HowDoI | 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 | 0.939801 | 350 | 2.046875 | 2 |
As awesome robot projects go, this DIY transforming ‘bot takes some beating. Apparently created for a robotics class by “Kevmag 2000″, the roughly 12-inch high robot can go from a motorized truck to an upright, walking ‘bot in seconds.
Video after the cut
It can also right itself should it be toppled over (either accidentally or on purpose), flipping its legs around until it’s lying on its front and then pushing itself up with its arms. Those arms flip around and backward to move out of the way while in truck mode.
We’re guessing that the robot is at least partially controlled via the laptop you can also see on the table. We’d love to know more about the robot and what went into making it, so if you know of any links to a build-log or similar, leave them in the comments. | <urn:uuid:305f28d1-50c0-44b6-bc68-86bb0284e32a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.slashgear.com/diy-transformer-robot-video-3048291/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951706 | 182 | 2.046875 | 2 |
By Nicola Salvatico, Consulting Teacher
In this activity your child uses fruit to learn about fractions.
To review fractions with your child, read a book about fractions such as Eating Fractions by Bruce Mcmillan, Ed Emberley's Picture Pie: A Circle Drawing Book by Ed Emberley, Fraction Action by Loreen Leedy, Give Me Half by Stuart J. Murphy or Hershey's Fractions by Jerry Pallotta.
Then take an apple or orange and cut it in half. Have your child put it together to show a whole, then one half and two halves. Reinforce how two halves make a whole. To extend the activity, cut the halves into fourths and do the same having your child put it back together to show a half, then a whole. You can then have your child eat a fourth or a half or a whole of the fruit. You can also extend this activity beyond food by having your child cut a paper plate into halves and quarters. | <urn:uuid:2d907589-34fb-4852-acf4-6cd8617f7d5f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greatschools.org/print-view/students/activities/332-fruit-fractions.gs?fromPage=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923312 | 200 | 4.125 | 4 |
For those trying to obtain managerial buy in for security control, the stages in the process can often parallel the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
The need for a firewall was at one time a common and hotly contested debate. Given persistent beliefs of individual anonymity and doubts as to the probability of any one business being of sufficient interest as to attract would be attackers, justifying their purchase or upgrade required a healthy dose of persuasion and available funds. Today, the thought of being without one is uncomfortable and strange.
Why was it once so difficult to convince business leaders of the necessity of a firewall to protect their network infrastructure? Unfortunately, security control procurement efforts frequently seem to align with the five stages of grief.
Stage 1: Denial
At first security controls appear to be paranoid and without sufficient basis as to prove relevant to the current threat environment. Sure, that Advanced Persistent Threat thing sounds like it could be trouble, but I’ll worry about it when I start to hear of practical exploits.
Stage 2: Anger
When the need for a given security control is repeated often enough to management or post-incident lessons learned processes solidly prove that the proposed control may have prevented the incident, anger ensues. Didn't we already discuss that? Why didn't anybody make that a priority?
Stage 3: Bargaining
As support for the procurement of a security control first gains momentum, questions as to the viability of cheaper alternatives begin. Can we write a script that will do the same thing? Is there an open source solution? Let’s pilot it with a smaller user base first as a proof of concept.
Stage 4: Depression
Upon determination that a given security control must be procured and that processes to support its use will affect daily operations, depression is a common response. We don’t have enough resources to manage what we already have…
Stage 5: Acceptance
Once the identified security control is successfully procured and implementation has completed without crippling the business, acceptance and unspoken wonder as to the cause for original concern is experienced. We should get another at our secondary data center!
Too often resistance to change and insufficient understanding of the risk posed by the absence of a given control results in inaction. To some degree, this may be due to security controls being largely perceived of as depreciable technology assets that are easily confused with the comparable value of other infrastructure. Yet in actuality these critical systems are designed to protect organizations and their sensitive information from risk of compromise.
To better determine whether or not a security control appropriately mitigates organizational risks, assessment of the current threat environment and the probability and severity of impact must first be performed. Thereafter, given analysis of business priorities and risk tolerance, appropriate mitigation strategies may better be determined with strategic direction made apparent.
The result of such efforts may identify yet another technical control is needed. However, it may also identify more efficient uses of existing solutions or modified process as proving of sufficient mitigation. Should the former be concluded though, review of existing process and control state should be as important as is the product analysis to determine procurement source.
For example, when a security event manager need is identified, quantification of current log review efforts and inefficiencies and the forecasting of productivity gains can prove invaluable to effectively supporting the procurement request. Additionally, when successful, analysis of post-implementation metrics to actualize forecasted gains and baseline performance can provide further comfort to those business leaders who may not have at first supported the purchase decision.
In the end, persistent and qualified communication of security control value as it aligns to business priorities and risk mitigation needs more easily receive support. With any luck, acceptance is then just around the corner.
Image courtesy of Sergey Nivens (Shutterstock)
Editor's Note: To read more of Peter's thoughts on security, check out Enterprise Security: Your Biggest Risk is You | <urn:uuid:d0548222-9be6-4792-9a3f-6a49b80d2903> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cmswire.com/cms/information-management/the-5-stages-of-security-control-procurement-getting-to-acceptance-019867.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945326 | 797 | 1.59375 | 2 |
I think the answer can be found in the study of Ansel Adams, unquestionably one of the greatest, most famous, and most popular photographers of nature. Not only was Adams a great photographer and writer, this question is one of the essential parts of his life's work: the legitimization of photography as an expressive art form, not merely a mechanical recording medium.
From a 1984 interview:
I think of Stieglitz's definition of photography — a paraphrase of what I heard him say many times. In the earlier days, when people were very scornful of what he called "creative photography" or "photography as art," they would ask: "Mr. Stieglitz, how do you go about making the creative photograph?" He would answer, "When I have a desire to photograph, I go out in the world with my camera. I come across something that excites me emotionally and aesthetically. I'm creatively excited. I see the picture in my mind's eye and I make the exposure and I give you the print as the equivalent of what I saw and felt." The word "equivalent" is very important. It's two things — what is seen and what is felt about it. That's why the naturalistic element in photography is very important. When you intentionally depart from the natural situation you can get into trouble. Unless you depart far enough.
(A video of a similar interview from around the same time is available on youtube. Skip the first minute to get right to Adams directly.)
Adams' "zone system" is a technique for exposure, but it's also a technique for taking the scene before you and producing a final print which shows these two elements, the seen and the felt; both, as you say, "the scene which was there", and an artistic interpretation of the emotional impact of that scene.
Your comment that "To me it sounds as if the scene was there and [the photographer]" reminds me of an oft-repeated but apocryphal Adams quote: "Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter." But even then, one has to have the technical skills — the craft — to make that click happen just right. More often, taking a successful a landscape or nature photograph requires more initial effort than the final result may indicate. For some people, in fact, getting that feel of an effortless capture of natural beauty is a goal, even when it actually took a great deal of work to get into the exact right place at the right time.
So, this isn't a literal how-to answer, but I hope it points in the right direction to a larger, more comprehensive answer. I think that by carefully observing the work of some of the great nature photographers, and by reading what they have written, you can set yourself on the path where you can find the answer. Adams has a trilogy of books, The Camera, The Negative, and The Print which in this digital age can be seen as partially obsolete in a technical sense, but which are full of wisdom on photography in a timeless way. (And they're an easy, conversational read — and you can skim the parts that you don't find helpful or interesting.)
To distill what I can, though:
- Understand the process of turning a visual idea into a final image, from camera to post-processing to print (or online display).
- Find something that appeals to you emotionally or aesthetically — have something to say, even if it is just "these are pretty flowers".
- Visualize the result of that something — how are you going to say that something? — and use your practiced skills to turn your idea into a photograph which can be shared with others. | <urn:uuid:722486f2-5a3a-417b-9638-c35020768843> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/22004/how-to-make-a-nature-photograph/22011 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973965 | 767 | 2.1875 | 2 |
HOW TO CONTACT OSHAYou can get help from OSHA by:
Table of Contents
You have the right to a safe workplace - En Español - Tiếng Việt Nam
You have the right to a safe workplace. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH Act) was passed to prevent workers from being killed or seriously harmed at work. The law requires employers to provide their employees with working conditions that are free of known dangers. The Act created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which sets and enforces protective workplace safety and health standards. OSHA also provides information, training and assistance to workers and employers. Workers may file a complaint to have OSHA inspect their workplace if they believe that their employer is not following OSHA standards or that there are serious hazards.
Contact us if you have questions or want to file a complaint. We will keep your information confidential. We are here to help you.
Workers' Rights Booklet [PDF*]
Workers' rights under the OSH Act
Workers are entitled to working conditions that do not pose a risk of serious harm. To help assure a safe and healthful workplace, OSHA also provides workers with the right to:
Who OSHA CoversPrivate Sector Workers
Most employees in the nation come under OSHA's jurisdiction. OSHA covers private sector employers and employees in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and other U.S. jurisdictions either directly through Federal OSHA or through an OSHA-approved state program. State-run health and safety programs must be at least as effective as the Federal OSHA program. To find the contact information for the OSHA Federal or State Program office nearest you, see the Regional and Area Offices map.State and Local Government Workers
Employees who work for state and local governments are not covered by Federal OSHA, but have OSH Act protections if they work in a state that has an OSHA-approved state program. Four additional states and one U.S. territory have OSHA approved plans that cover public sector employees only. This includes: Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and the Virgin Islands. Private sector workers in these four states and the Virgin Islands are covered by Federal OSHA.Federal Government Workers
Federal agencies must have a safety and health program that meet the same standards as private employers. Although OSHA does not fine federal agencies, it does monitor federal agencies and responds to workers' complaints. The United States Postal Service (USPS) is covered by OSHA.Not covered by the OSH Act:
OSHA standards: Protection on the Job
OSHA standards are rules that describe the methods that employers must use to protect their employees from hazards. There are OSHA standards for Construction work, Agriculture, Maritime operations, and General Industry, which are the standards that apply to most worksites. These standards limit the amount of hazardous chemicals workers can be exposed to, require the use of certain safe practices and equipment, and require employers to monitor hazards and keep records of workplace injuries and illnesses. Examples of OSHA standards include requirements to: provide fall protection, prevent trenching cave ins, prevent some infectious diseases, assure that workers safely enter confined spaces, prevent exposure to harmful substances like asbestos, put guards on machines, provide respirators or other safety equipment, and provide training for certain dangerous jobs.
Employers must also comply with the General Duty Clause of the OSH Act, which requires employers to keep their workplace free of serious recognized hazards. This clause is generally cited when no OSHA standard applies to the hazard.
Workers can ask OSHA to Inspect their Workplace
Workers, or their representatives, may file a complaint and ask OSHA to inspect their workplace if they believe there is a serious hazard or that their employer is not following OSHA standards. A worker can tell OSHA not to let their employer know who filed the complaint. It is a violation of the Act for an employer to fire, demote, transfer or discriminate in any way against a worker for filing a complaint or using other OSHA rights.
You can file a complaint online; download the form [En Espanol*] and mail or fax it to the nearest OSHA office; or call 1-800-321-OSHA (6742). Most complaints sent in on line may be resolved informally over the phone with your employer. Written complaints that are signed by a worker or their representative and submitted to the closest OSHA office are more likely to result in an on-site OSHA inspection.
When the OSHA inspector arrives, workers and their representatives have the right to:
Where there is no union or employee representative, the OSHA inspector must talk confidentially with a reasonable number of workers during the course of the investigation.
When an inspector finds violations of OSHA standards or serious hazards, OSHA may issue citations and fines. A citation includes methods an employer may use to fix a problem and the date by when the corrective actions must be completed. Workers only have the right to challenge the deadline for when a problem must be resolved. Employers, on the other hand, have the right to contest whether there is a violation or any other part of the citation. Workers or their representatives must notify OSHA that they want to be involved in the appeals process if the employer challenges a citation.
If you send in a complaint requesting an OSHA inspection, you have the right to find out the results of the OSHA inspection and request a review if OSHA decides not to issue citations.
Employers have the responsibility to provide a safe workplace. Employers MUST provide their employees with a workplace that does not have serious hazards and follow all relevant OSHA safety and health standards. Employers must find and correct safety and health problems. OSHA further requires employers to try to eliminate or reduce hazards first by making changes in working conditions rather than just relying on masks, gloves, ear plugs or other types of personal protective equipment (PPE). Switching to safer chemicals, enclosing processes to trap harmful fumes, or using ventilation systems to clean the air are examples of effective ways to get rid of or minimize risks.
Employers MUST also:
You Cannot be Punished or Discriminated against for using your OSHA Rights
The OSH Act protects workers who complain to their employer, OSHA or other government agencies about unsafe or unhealthful working conditions in the workplace or environmental problems. You cannot be transferred, denied a raise, have your hours reduced, be fired, or punished in any other way because you used any right given to you under the OSHA Act. Help is available from OSHA for whistleblowers
If you have been punished or discriminated against for using your rights, you must file a complaint with OSHA within 30 days of the alleged reprisal for most complaints. No form is required, but you must send a letter or call the OSHA Area Office nearest you to report the discrimination (within 30 days of the alleged discrimination).
What to do if there is a Dangerous Situation at Work
If you believe working conditions are unsafe or unhealthful, we recommend that you bring the conditions to your employer's attention, if possible.
You may file a complaint with OSHA concerning a hazardous working condition at any time. However, you should not leave the worksite merely because you have filed a complaint. If the condition clearly presents a risk of death or serious physical harm, there is not sufficient time for OSHA to inspect, and, where possible, you have brought the condition to the attention of your employer, you may have a legal right to refuse to work in a situation in which you would be exposed to the hazard.
Additional Information for WorkersHas my employer ever been inspected by OSHA?
You can research your employer's inspection history through OSHA's Establishment Search. Type in the name of your company and choose the dates you want to cover.What is the most commonly cited hazard in my industry?
You'll need to know your employer's Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Code. Once you know your four-digit code, visit OSHA's Frequently Cited OSHA Standards page, enter your SIC code and view the information for last year.Does OSHA provide technical information on hazards?
OSHA provides technical information to assist workers, employers, and safety and health professionals in reducing occupational injuries and illnesses. Find information on bloodborne pathogens, machine guarding, ergonomics or fall protection, for example.What materials does OSHA have of interest to workers?
OSHA publishes a variety of publications on a range of subjects. Some of the most useful publications for workers are listed below. See OSHA Publications for a complete listing of agency printed materials or to order publications online.
OSHA Approved State Programs
If you work in the following twenty-two states or territory, you are covered by a State run workplace safety and health agency:
OSHA Regional Offices
* These states and territories operate their own OSHA approved job safety and health programs and cover state and local government employees as well as private sector employees. The Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Virgin Islands plans cover public employees only. States with approved programs must have standards that are identical to, or at least as effective as, the Federal OSHA standards.
Note: To get contact information for OSHA Area Offices, OSHA approved State Plans and OSHA Consultation Projects, please visit us online at www.osha.gov or call us at 1-800-321-0SHA.
* Accessibility Assistance
Contact the Office of Communications at (202) 693-1999 for assistance accessing OSHA PDF materials. | <urn:uuid:b95ae155-87a4-4e6a-b492-992084b6f2d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.osha.gov/workers.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935613 | 1,988 | 2.265625 | 2 |
On an April morning in 2001 Christopher Bono, a clean-cut, well-mannered 16-year-old, approached Jackie Larsen in Grand Marais, Minn. His car had broken down, and he needed a ride to meet friends in Thunder Bay. As Larsen talked with him, she came to feel that something was very wrong. “I am a mother, and I have to talk to you like a mother,” she said. “I can tell by your manners that you have a nice mother.” Bono replied: “I don’t know where my mother is.” After Bono left, she called the police and suggested they trace his license plates.
On July 1, 2002, a Russian Bashkirian Airlines jet’s collision-avoidance system instructed its pilot to ascend when a DHL cargo jet approached in the Swiss-controlled airspace over southern Germany. Nearly simultaneously, a Swiss air traffic controller—whose computerized air traffic system was down—offered an instant human judgment: descend. The Russian pilot overrode the software, and the plane began to angle downward.
This article was originally published with the title The Powers and Perils of Intuition. | <urn:uuid:5ee4d9bb-2622-4644-b84b-c869ffe864c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=powers-and-perils-of-intuition | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97696 | 256 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Millions of our citizens do not now have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. Millions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness. The time has arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity…The poor have more sickness, but they get less medical care. People who live in rural areas do not get the same amount or quality of medical attention as those who live in our cities.
The above quote wasn’t taken from an Obama administration policy proposal. These words are from a 1945 speech by President Harry Truman. It is astonishing that over 60 years later, the health care crisis is not only still with us, but is slowly smothering us. How many years of oxygen do we have left until health care in America is entirely asphyxiated? Each year, the challenges deepen and multiply, which pushes necessary solutions and reform further out of reach. The financial costs of simply maintaining the current system are sailing beyond the stratosphere. The ‘reform’ strategies in my adult lifetime have been to promise, procrastinate and pray, methods which provide politicians with short term gains at our long term expense.
As I write this, Democrats and Republicans are arguing on reforms to preserve and protect Medicare, even though the contours of the solution are well known to all. Politics is a poison pill.
Last year, about 17% of the GDP was devoted to health care, compared with about 15% in 2003. It is projected that 20% of GDP will be spent on health care in 2017. Medical economists agree that the current rising medical costs are unsustainable. The present government will be under enormous pressure to reduce costs of healthcare. Do we believe that costs can be cut while maintaining, or even improving medical quality? Will budget slashers swing their axes so wildly to drive down costs that medical quality will be crippled as collateral damage? Will the country be satisfied with medical mediocrity as a side-effect of cost control?
Operating on the health care system requires major surgery. The fear is that the government will declare that the operation was a success, even though the patient died. President Obama has stated repeatedly that health care reform is one of his highest priorities. While he didn’t create the mess, once his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed, he now owns it. Although I oppose Obamacare, and have explained my views throughout this blog, I congratulate the president for taking on this radioactive issue. This was a promise kept. Nevertheless, I hope that many of its damaging provisions will be repealed.
Will Obamacare ultimately sink from its own ponderous weight? If it does, or is watered down, the president may be tempted to start spreading blame around. President Truman, who worried about health care in America before President Obama was born, can offer our new president some advice on leadership. Remember his famous homespun maxim the buck stops here? Let’s hope President Obama remembers it also. | <urn:uuid:252aaa2c-a53e-4b1e-9317-dcd7a7620edb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mdwhistleblower.blogspot.com/2011/07/health-care-reform-and-obamacare.html?showComment=1310641383770 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97296 | 603 | 1.953125 | 2 |
New London — Months of practice and Saturday study sessions have paid off.
Statewide academic performance scores were released Thursday, and last year's 10th-graders have posted the highest scores in more than five years in all categories of the Connecticut Academic Performance Test.
The class nearly eliminated the reading achievement gap between African-American and white students, and surpassed the statewide achievement level for African-Americans by more than 20 percentage points.
They shattered the 5 percent reading and math improvement goals set by the district for their grade. So did the special education student and English language learner subgroups.
Meanwhile, student performance on the Connecticut Mastery Test, given to third- through eighth-graders, was uneven. Third- and fourth-graders showed overall improvement over last year, while sixth-graders' scores decreased from last year in reading, writing and math.
While a higher percentage of fifth-graders met the state standard known as "goal" in reading, writing, math and science, the percentage of students who met the federal standard of "proficient" in writing and math declined from last year.
Administered in March, the CAPT covered four subjects in nine sessions over nine days. It tests a student's ability to read text, and understand, interpret and refer to it to explain his or her thinking.
New London High administrators are reveling in the success of the incoming junior class.
"I can't help but think that we have just changed the trajectory of our scores and that the work we've done all year, and in the past couple of years, is increasing these kids' life prospects," Principal William "Tommy" Thompson said. "This wasn't luck. This was very intentional. This is a victory for the kids, the teachers and the community. This is something that we all wanted and needed and it's the result of a real team effort. There wasn't just one individual who made this happen."
Thursday's report shows double-digit percentage point improvements in reading, writing, math and science over last year.
Classes from September to March practiced intensively. Some students questioned whether the constant CAPT exercises would help or hurt their scores.
Thompson said the "intense" focus on supporting the individual learning needs of each student and the level of support services provided to the staff created "highly effective teachers, and, in turn, better scores."
Last school year, every English, math and science class focused on CAPT. Practice was embedded in students' elective classes in the form of writing reflections. Students were asked to answer questions on their classwork, quizzes and tests the way they would on the CAPT, and teachers scored students' answers with CAPT rubrics.
Superintendent of Schools Nicholas Fischer on Thursday credited the district's revised teacher evaluation system with creating a sense of increased accountability.
The most significant increases are in the percentage of students who met the national standard of "proficient" set by the No Child Left Behind law in reading and writing. School districts must meet yearly progress measures that are based on how many students achieve reading and math proficiency on the CAPT and CMT.
This year, 70.7 percent of New London 10th-graders were CAPT proficient in reading, a jump of 33.3 percentage points from last year. There was an increase of 17.7 percentage points in the number of students who tested at or above the state goal level in reading. "Goal" is a standard set by the state; it is higher than the federal standard of "proficient."
In writing, 77.1 percent of students tested at or above proficiency, an increase of 24.6 percentage points above last year. There was also an increase of 17.7 percentage points in the number of students who tested at or above goal level in writing.
Across the state, 59.7 percent of African-American students scored as proficient or above, whereas in New London, 81.3 percent of African-Americans achieved proficiency — nearly equal to the 82.1 percent of white students who reached that level.
Students who tested at the below-basic level in reading dropped from 28 percent last year to 5.7 percent this year, and the number of students testing at below basic in writing dropped from 22.6 percent to 3.8 percent.
In science, the number of students achieving goal level increased 11.8 percentage points.
Mathematics showed the least improvement toward achieving the state goal level. Still, the district showed increases in all four areas of math and met its 5 percent improvement goal, with 21.7 percent of students testing at or above goal level.
"We're setting the bar higher, and students are reaching it. My premise is that you're going to get what you expect, and our students are proving how bright and capable they really are by showing these significant improvements," Fischer said.
Although CMT scores in grades three through eight do show improvement, Fischer is setting his sights on improving instruction at the elementary levels.
"We have to look at two things," he said, "how well a kid is being prepared in fourth and fifth grade for what they're facing in sixth grade, and what we need to do to improve articulation between the grades about what skills and knowledge they have, and what skills and knowledge they need."
The district's recently state-appointed special master, Steven Adamowski, said the scores are a "great first step."
"The gains are very encouraging. I think that there are other steps ahead in the future in order to close the achievement gap for New London students," Adamowski said.
He said the test scores reflect the need to retain the district's teachers.
"These results in some ways point out the need to stabilize the staff, the leadership and the people who have worked hard to produce these results. ... This is a first step in a much longer journey, and it of course does not address the threats to the district posed by the governance and financial situations."
New London's budget woes threatened 68 teaching positions this spring. Earlier this month, all the positions were restored, but it's unclear how many teachers have in the meantime found jobs elsewhere.
A year ago, New London's 10th-grade class had the lowest reading scores in the state. Only 37.4 percent of sophomores reached the "proficient" level, and only 8.9 percent reached "goal."
"What this proves is that when you raise expectations at any grade level and improve the quality of instruction, academic achievement will go up," Fischer said. "The kids in New London are just as capable as they are anywhere else in this country." | <urn:uuid:fbdf988b-4141-4111-b727-5117b90bb09e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theday.com/article/20120719/NWS01/120719666/New-London-students'-CAPT-scores-reach-new-heights | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967812 | 1,366 | 1.789063 | 2 |
I'm going to make a snake remake with SDL library and right now I'm thinking heavily about the object-oriented design.
I can imagine that I will have classes like
Food, but the interesting part is - how shall they interact between each other? How shall the game logic be designed?
For example, let's imagine here are some of the possibilities:
- Every class except of
GameEnginewill hold only it's data (position of snake, food, etc.). All the game logic will be done in engine's
Update()function. Therefore this function will be very big and every other part of the program fairly small.
GameEnginewill only call appropriate functions of every object with the reference to
Boardand these individual functions will take care about the game logic.
- something other
So I would like to know your opinion - what approach do you think is the best? I'm not aiming at low number of lines the game will have, but at the quality and "modularity" of the game object design. | <urn:uuid:652cd8ef-3631-4b15-8d2d-7cfafbf2f077> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/29644/object-oriented-snake-game-design | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92991 | 215 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Colloquium with Rick Baldoz, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Oberlin College
Based on a newly-published book, this lecture will highlight issues of empire, migration and transnational relations between the Philippines and the United States in the first half of the twentieth century.
Rick Baldoz is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Oberlin College. He is the author of The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in Filipino America, 1898-1946 (NYU Press) and co-author of The Critical Study of Work: Labor, Technology and Global Production (Temple University Press). His work has appeared in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Du Bois Review, and American Studies. His current project focuses on Filipinos and Puerto Ricans who served in the United States armed forces during World Wars I and II.
Cost: Free and open to the public.
Sponsor(s): Center for Southeast Asian Studies, UCLA Migration Studies Group
© 2013. The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:1b9ba48a-a616-4909-9ed1-2ce423c08d39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.international.ucla.edu/calendar/showevent.asp?eventid=8570 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907101 | 211 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Move aside traditional
flavors, trends favor new
twists on old stand-bys.
Look for twists on traditional flavors in the bakery aisle this fall. Bakers are fusing tried and true flavors with spices to give products a special kick. Instead of vanilla, it's vanilla-cardamom, and cocoa-chili flavor replaces ordinary chocolate. And in place of a traditional pretzel, pretzel-flavored breads and crackers are appearing in supermarkets.
“Cheese isn't just cheddar anymore, it's asiago and feta,” says Mariano Gascon, vice president, R&D, Wixon, St. Francis, Wis. In addition, Mexican-themed flavors now include specialized chiles, such as ancho and chipolte, he adds.
Additional trends include emphasis on health and wellness flavors, such as hibiscus tea varieties; superfruit flavors, including mangosteen, acerola, yumberry, goji and açai; and antioxidant-rich nuts. “While some superfruit flavors are simply delicious, others are a bit less palatable. For those that are less tasty, and due to the fact that many are still so unfamiliar to consumers, we recommend blending with complementary flavors, such as strawberry, cranberry, blueberry and so on,” says Erin Kate O'Donnell, marketing manager David Michael & Co., Philadelphia.
Trends also favor indulgent flavors, such as caramels, toffees and liqueurs; and natural flavors. “We are being asked for natural flavors in products that typically would contain natural and artificial. This trend has necessitated an increase in the quality of flavor types available as natural,” says Michelle Huber, flavor creation manager, sweet and beverage flavors, Kerry Ingredients and Flavours, Americas Region, Hoffman Estates, Ill. Bakery items also are taking cues from popular flavors in the beverage industry.
Flavor technology is advancing as flavor demands change. “One of the biggest advancements in flavor technology across the baking industry during the past few years is the process and improvement of micro-encapsulation,” says Mindy Edwards, senior flavor chemist, Wixon. Micro-encapsulation is a process where tiny particles are encased by a coating, which allows for the controlled release of the flavor, protection against oxidation and improvement in the release of volatile compounds. “The most effective method to retain the flavor in a baked good is micro-encapsulation,” Edwards adds.
“Encapsulated powders deliver the flavor better than liquid flavors because they are not as volatile as liquid flavors and hold up better through the baking stress,” agrees Arthur Redondo, Symrise, Teterboro, N.J. However, oil soluble flavors do offer a cost-effective way to include flavor, especially in applications such as icings. Water soluble flavors also can be a cost-effective choice for glazes. However, encapsulates or powders, offer a much longer shelf life than oil soluble flavors, which can become rancid, he adds.
Rather than only adding flavor to products, more bakers are opting to add flavors via inclusions, such as bits, fruit preps and coatings, a trend commonly seen in ice cream. “We are seeing an increase in multiple inclusions in one product, such as you see in ice creams where you have the use of ice cream bases, variegates and multiple inclusions,” Huber says.
Spray drying is the most popular flavor delivery method. It controls the release of the flavor and is resistant to the heating process, but still results in some loss of volatile flavor during the baking process.
To create a well-balanced baked product, Gascon suggests using liquid flavoring with a high water-vapor volatility in addition to an encapsulated or spray dried flavor. When heating a bakery item, “the evaporated water can cause ‘steam distillation’ of the flavor components,” Gascon says. “The lower the molecular weight and the more water soluble the individual ingredients are that make the flavor, the more losses you will have in the flavor due to heating.” Still, the compounds with low molecular weight are more volatile and therefore create an ideal strong aroma during baking. “If the flavor contains a high amount of highly water soluble ingredients, for example fruit and sweet flavors, they will flash off during baking, creating an intense aroma, but it will have very little contribution to the product itself,” he adds.
When incorporating a new flavor, bakers must decide how to balance the flavor to make it compatible with the formula by adding or reducing sweetness, saltiness or acidity in the product, Huber says.
Communicating formula needs to a supplier can help the process go smoothly. Edwards uses a cookie to explain how to begin the process of rebalancing. “If you were to add a bacon flavor to a sugar cookie, you would be facing an intense sweetness in the sugar cookie that may or may not go well with the bacon flavor.” If lowering the sugar content does not balance the flavor, bakers can turn to taste modifiers to mask the sweetness, so the bacon flavor comes through.
Flavors also can help build back sweetness in reduced-sugar formulas that do not use artificial sweeteners. “Sugar is a functional ingredient as well, so when reducing sugar by 25 percent in pound cakes and sugar cookies, we've been adding back polydextrose for the functionality and add sweetness through flavor technology. We have been successful in sugar reduction up to 25 percent in some baked products,” Redondo says.
Bakers also can face challenges if a flavor has a reverse effect on the rheology or flowability of the dough, especially as it endures a variety of temperature and humidity changes on the production line. Garlic, for example has an adverse effect on dough consistency, but when the garlic is encapsulated, the rheology of the dough is unharmed, Redondo adds. Encapsulation also protects products during extrusion.
Flavor suppliers can assist bakers in navigating the challenges of rebalancing a formula to maintain dough rheology, functionality and achieve the desired flavor profile, when adding new and trendy flavors. Suppliers also can help you find the best method of adding a spicy flavor for your product and budget.
Flavoring with extracts adds high-end appeal
Extracts provide another flavor option. Because natural extracts are expensive, they are ideal for use in high-end baked products where they are more likely to yield a return on investment. In addition to adding premium appeal, natural extracts can help achieve a natural label claim.
If using natural extracts in bakery products, the first step is to find one that is heat stable. Bakers can determine if an extract is heat stable by looking at what solvent was used to make the extract. To make vanilla extract, the most popular extract flavor, vanilla beans are ground to a fine powder, the flavor is extracted with an alcohol solvent and the resulting liquid is diluted to the desired strength, resulting in an ideal flavor profile, but not a heat stable product, notes Pietro Re, Ph.D., technical sales manager, North America, Prova Inc., Danvers, Mass. “The most common solvent used is a water-ethanol blend,” he adds.
Prova created an oil soluble, heat-stable natural vanilla extract by using an alternative solvent instead of an alcohol solvent. Oil soluble extracts can be mixed in with the shortening, or added in powder form with other dry ingredients. The strength of extracts are measured in “fold” i.e., 1 fold, 2 fold, etc.
Different elements of the flavor are extracted depending on the solvent used, Re notes. “Alcohol is the best solvent for vanilla. If you use a blend of alcohol and water, you get a different profile where the yield is not as high, but you get a good vanilla extract excellent for ice cream. For bakery, that's not suitable because it's not heat stable, so you use a different solvent that extracts a portion of the vanilla that is heat stable. Vanillin, an artificial vanilla, is the most widely used flavor substitute.” Prova's cocoa extract uses a water-alcohol blend as a solvent and also is heat stable in its liquid or powder form for baking.
“The only solvent you can use for coffee is water,” Re says. “Coffee is not heat stable, so normally you would use a flavor rather than a natural extract.”
Artificial flavors offer a different flavor profile, but are more heat stable and less expensive than their natural counterparts. Expense is the reason many companies opt for artificial flavors, although vanillin prices currently are high.
“Most bakery products cannot justify a natural extract flavor because natural extract flavors are not as strong as artificial ones. So when you use a natural flavor, you use much more to get the same intensity, which is expensive,” Re says. Another option is to combine a natural extract for the superior flavor profile with an artificial flavor in order to lower the cost. In addition to vanilla, popular flavors include strawberry and chocolate. | <urn:uuid:0842a470-9066-4acd-946f-4e3a4b433616> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://modern-baking.com/archive/bakery-flavors-get-spicy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935316 | 1,925 | 1.703125 | 2 |
If you chew gum with sugar in it, you need to chew for twenty minutes or more in order to produce enough saliva to wash away a significant amount of the sugar residue. Even then, it’s a good idea to brush your teeth afterward.
What is RSS? RSS makes it possible to subscribe to a website's updates instead of visiting it by delivering new posts to your RSS reader automatically. Choose to receive some or all of the updates from A Moment of Science: | <urn:uuid:5c5ad96e-2ffe-4c24-a15c-dddce1e8f0cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/tag/experience-headaches/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903438 | 96 | 2.203125 | 2 |
May 19, 2008|
By Dr. Peter Salamon
SDSU Math Department Wins Exemplary Partnership Award from San Diego Unified School District
In the Fall of 2007, the San Diego Unified School District honored the partnership between the SDSU Department of Mathematics and Statistics and Pershing Middle School.
The partnership was designated "exemplary"; one of eight so honored out of several hundred partnerships. The citation called the partnership exemplary because all sides truly benefit. The idea of forming this partnership was to help reduce the shortage of mathematics teachers by exposing undergraduates to tutoring middle school mathematics in the expectation that some of these students would find that they enjoyed the work and would consider teaching as a career.
Pershing is a nearby school of 1000 students, with a diverse student body. About half of the students qualify for free or reduced meals. Pershing's principal explained the power of the partnership as "Education is about belief systems as much as it is about subject area content.
The palpable enthusiasm for the subject matter by the clearly 'cool' college student does wonders for enhancing the allure of math content." Allison Yoder, one of the tutors opined, "This opportunity can really help a student decide if teaching is the right choice for their career path." In recent years Pershing's academic scores have risen dramatically, due in part to the SDSU support of their mathematics program.
Several SDSU faculty members contributed to this exemplary and successful partnership.
Susan Nickerson is a main force behind the entire program. She obtained external grants to pay for the math tutors, and she is also the main recruiter of the tutors. Peter Salamon helps recruit the tutors, and also serves as the main contact point between the SDSU Math Department and the Pershing Middle School. | <urn:uuid:8aae544f-6895-4dab-a300-64d4b04f805f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/cos/news/cos_news_051908_math_epa.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964351 | 368 | 2.375 | 2 |
Published on 25-Feb-2011
Validated on 19 Nov 2012
"For every minute of every flight we can view performance of the network from both the air and from the ground so we can predict the next issues and get there ahead of time." - —Joe Yackee, Network Performance Engineer, Aircell
IBM Business Partner:
Aircell, a leading provider of inflight connectivity, is chartered with enabling communications for customers under exceptionally demanding circumstances—on an airplane traveling at an altitude of 35,000 feet at speeds of up to 500 miles per hour.
Provide in-flight Internet access; but maintaining service reliability was challenging with silo-based management.
Aircell engaged IBM and IBM Premier Business Partner generationE to implement an Integrated Service Management solution that enables administrators to view end-to-end performance of the entire network, both cellular and terrestrial, in real time and in business context via a network topology map unlike any other.
Ability to support 50x growth in first year; 50 percent reduction in mean time to repair; ability to spot service-affecting problems before they occur and rapidly identify the root cause of issues when they do occur
How can organizations derive the greatest business value from their complex technological infrastructures? For many companies, the answer lies in shifting their focus from technology to service levels, particularly as seen from users’ perspectives. By delivering services that closely align to customer needs and interests, and continually assuring that target performance levels are met, many companies are achieving business outcomes that would otherwise not be possible.
Consider Aircell, a leading provider of inflight connectivity. The company is chartered with enabling communications for customers under exceptionally demanding circumstances—on an airplane traveling at an altitude of 35,000 feet at speeds of up to 500 miles per hour.
Founded in 1991, Aircell originally focused on satellite based telephone communications on planes. The company has experienced considerable success in this arena, winning more than 30 patents and developing solutions deployed in more than 6,000 airborne installations.
As interest surged for anywhere, anytime Internet access, Aircell responded with its Gogo® Inflight Internet service that turns commercial airplanes into Wi-Fi hotspots. Gogo is currently available on all AirTran Airways and Virgin America flights and on select Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, US Airways and United Airlines flights. With Gogo service, passengers can surf the web, check email, instant message and access corporate virtual private networks from their laptops, smart phones and PDAs. Passengers can select to pay for service via a per-flight, daily, monthly or yearly subscription. Today, Gogo is available on over 1,000 commercial aircraft on more than 3,500 daily flights in the continental United States.
“With our Gogo Inflight Internet service, we’ve found a way to make air travel go faster for passengers,” said Gary Sahagun, Aircell’s Network Performance Manager. “But to do this we need to make sure our network performs. The better the performance and throughput, the more passengers can access the network and the happier they are with the service.”
Technical intricacies led to extraordinary project requirements
Delivering complex, data-based services on a moving airplane creates a unique set of challenges. As airplanes move rapidly from departure to destination, they continually change radio access towers to provide the best connection. In delivering its data service, Aircell had managed the underlying technologies in three logical groups: the patented broadband equipment on the planes, a national network of ground-based cell towers, and the Aircell data center, with its servers, routers and the base station controller.
However, leveraging this infrastructure to deliver full high-speed Internet access required that the company move from a silo-based approach that focused on each of these groups separately to an Integrated Service Management model in which administrators could view real-time, end-to-end performance of the entire network.
IBM and generationE provide an effective combination
Aircell had set a goal of completing this project within an 18-month timeframe. Any delays could affect the company’s success in this new market. Such an accelerated schedule meant that Aircell had to select carefully, choosing best-in-class technologies and technology partners with proven expertise and deep knowledge of the wireless industry.
After considering HP and others, Aircell turned to IBM and IBM Premier Business Partner generationE Technologies to implement IBM Integrated Service Management solutions for service quality management. These solutions help Aircell to ensure a high-quality customer experience by providing the necessary visibility, control and automation for delivering enhanced services.
IBM and generationE integrated IBM® Tivoli® Netcool® software with a custom-built Google Earth application to create a network topology map unlike any other. This map delivers a three-dimensional view of the overall Aircell network from the ground, air and across the nation with event and performance data delivered in business context to give it real-world meaning. On the map, aircraft icons change color from green to yellow when minor issues arise, and to red when critical problems occur. As the status changes, Network Operations Center (NOC) staff can simply click on the icon to view the latitude, longitude, altitude and flight number for the aircraft along with event information. Because the solution automatically collects and correlates technical data, administrators can quickly isolate the root cause of problems to minimize the business impact. In cases when network equipment on the planes require repair, Aircell can dispatch technicians to a plane’s destination so that once the plane lands they can fix the problem. This has been critical in instances in which the turnaround time between a plane’s arrival and departure is less than an hour.
“Other vendors couldn’t figure out a way to track the aircraft in graphical format,” said Mike Moderski, Aircell’s Network Operations Center Manager. “When we presented the idea to IBM and generationE, they created a solution and have gone the extra mile to help us achieve our goals.”
A 50 percent reduction in mean time to repair
While customers perceive their experience as that of a traditional Wi-Fi hotspot, a far more complex situation occurs behind the scenes. IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus continually draws network event data from the company’s integrated network environments in real time, and then automatically filters and analyzes faults to eliminate event storms. IBM Tivoli Network Manager automatically “polls” network equipment to identify in real time any errors, such as an out of memory condition on a router. IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Transactions enables staff to run synthetic transactions—such as the purchase process—to identify problems from the user perspective. And IBM Tivoli Monitoring monitors more than 90 percent of the company’s network servers.
IBM Tivoli Netcool/Impact software then correlates this data and feeds it into the topology map to deliver a comprehensive, business-centric perspective on service quality and the business impact of problems. Through this integrated view, Aircell can take swift, efficient and informed action to address problems on a prioritized basis.
“MTTR [mean time to repair] is reduced by about 50 percent because we can arm our vendors with event data and metrics they need to isolate the issue,” commented Moderski. “We also save time because the solution proactively alerts us of any degradation before it results in an outage. For example, with IBM Tivoli Network Manager, we don’t have to wait for an event to transpire or take time to log into a piece of equipment to see what its status is.”
Real-time insight drives growth
At the same time, the IBM Tivoli Netcool Performance Manager for Wireless application collects and processes thousands of performance-based metrics—such as packet air rate, bytes transmitted and received, data rate and number of users—from the Aircell Broadband System located on each plane along with data from each of Aircell’s hundreds of cell towers across the country to help operations staff view trends and identify emerging problems. For example, in one instance, administrators found that transmission rates at one cell tower slowed as more planes that flew in the area adopted the Gogo Wi-Fi service. Using this information, operations staff was able to adjust software parameters on the transmission equipment to accommodate the increased demand—before any passenger service was affected.
“For every minute of every flight we can view performance of the network from both the air and from the ground so we can predict the next issues and get there ahead of time,” said Joe Yackee, Aircell’s Network Performance Engineer.
Moving forward the company expects to leverage network usage information, such as the percentage of passengers logging in each flight and the types of devices used, to tailor its services and improve the passenger experience.
“With hundreds of thousands of data points a day, there was no way we could have managed the network without Tivoli Netcool software,” said Sahagun.
For Aircell, this ability to understand service delivery at every level from its passengers’ perspective rather than a technology perspective has been key to its enormous success. Recent surveys have shown that more than 90 percent of respondents were satisfied with their experience using Gogo Inflight Internet service. More than 60 percent of the people who log onto Gogo each day are repeat users, and that figure is climbing daily.
“We achieved a 50-fold increase in service usage in the first year,” said Moderski. “With Tivoli software we can keep up with this rapid expansion and ensure customer satisfaction without having to substantially increase our operations staff.”
For more information
To learn more about IBM Tivoli software, please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com/tivoli
You can get even more out of Tivoli software by participating in independently run Tivoli User Groups around the world. Learn about opportunities near you at: www.tivoli-ug.org
For more information about Aircell, visit: www.aircell.com
For more information about generationE Technologies, visit: www.generationetech.com
Products and services used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Tivoli Composite Application Manager for IMS Transactions, Tivoli Network Manager Entry Edition, Tivoli Netcool Performance Manager for Wireless, Tivoli Netcool/Impact, Tivoli Monitoring, Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus
STG Lab Services: Other
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2011 IBM Corporation Software Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America February 2011 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com and Tivoli are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates. TIC14168-USEN-00 | <urn:uuid:2a190c38-f3e6-4ca6-a861-9ec0dc87b6b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www-01.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/CS/LWIS-8EE7LG?OpenDocument&Site=default&cty=en_us | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910634 | 2,424 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Each personality type has a different relationship with time
Everyone manages time differently. Some people need to plan ahead, to organize their lives and to feel efficient by making the most of their time. Other people are just the opposite: they like to do things at the last minute, and always try to keep their options open. There are as many ways to manage time and priorities as there are colours on the ComColors diagram.
There is not one way to manage time. Instead, there are different ways to improve personal efficiency by being aware of the way you operate. What works well for one person might be counter-productive for another. The ComColors model offers you the keys to understanding the relationship we have with time and how to best manage it. You will also understand the importance of time for some people, and will learn to consider this information when planning a project or working in a team. | <urn:uuid:3bcad2d3-2e02-445d-bf76-fdc874f29d8d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.comcolors.com/zeitmanagement-87-de.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978805 | 181 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Report: Ohio Power Plants among Dangerous “Fish Blenders”
August 10, 2011
COLUMBUS, Ohio - An Ohio power plant is among those being singled out as a "fish blender" in a new report detailing the damage caused by water-intake cooling systems.
The systems, such as the one used at the Bayshore Power plant near Toledo, suck water out of rivers and lakes, along with billions of fish and organisms. Sandy Bihn, executive director of the group Lake Erie Waterkeeper, says this takes an enormous toll on the health of waterways and the jobs that depend on them.
"The fish kills are really important, but the waters are also important. Lake Erie is a driving force and many, many jobs are impacted by having great waters - and great fish just add onto that economic benefit."
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency last week issued a new wastewater permit for the Bayshore plant, but Bihn says it contains glaring errors that will allow the plant to continue to kill billions of fish and larva every year. The Sierra Club report says the new federal EPA standards now under review for these water-intake systems also fall short of what is needed to protect fisheries and waterways.
According to the report, some areas face devastating economic effects from water-intake systems. Bayshore is not being held accountable, says Nachy Kanfer, who represents the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, who is encouraging Ohioans to voice their concerns.
"The Ohio EPA needs to do a better job of regulating this terrible facility in northwest Ohio that's doing so much economic damage to the community."
Kanfer says the economic damage caused by the Bayshore plant from fish kills alone is estimated at $30 million a year.
The report is online at sierraclub.org. | <urn:uuid:769b1e96-9bb1-4d58-b2a6-9de8de915954> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/21633-2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960058 | 381 | 2.421875 | 2 |
"Your books and articles are excellent resources for stimulating lively and insightful class discussions, and also give our students exposure to international issues that directly impact their lives." -Keith Cooper, Dean of Research, Cook College, Rutgers University
Chapter 9. Feeding Eight Billion People Well: Action on Many Fronts
In this new food era, ensuring future food security depends on elevating responsibility for it from the minister of agriculture’s office to that of the head of state. The minister of agriculture, no matter how competent, can no longer be expected to secure food supplies. Policies in the ministry of energy may affect food security more than those in the ministry of agriculture do. Efforts by the minister of health and family planning to accelerate the shift to smaller families may have a greater effect on food security than efforts in the ministry of agriculture to raise crop yields.
If ministries of energy cannot quickly cut carbon emissions, as outlined earlier, the world will face crop-shrinking heat waves that can massively and unpredictably reduce harvests. A hotter world will mean melting ice sheets, rising sea level, and the inundation of the highly productive rice-growing river deltas of Asia. Saving the mountain glaciers whose ice melt irrigates much of the world’s cropland is the responsibility of the ministry of energy, not the ministry of agriculture.
If the world’s ministers of energy cannot collectively formulate policies to cut carbon emissions quickly, the loss of glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan Plateau will shrink wheat and rice harvests in both India and China. If ministries of water resources cannot quickly raise water productivity and arrest the depletion of aquifers, grain harvests will shrink not only in smaller countries like Saudi Arabia and Yemen but also in larger countries, such as India and China. If we continue with business as usual, these two countries, the world’s most populous, will face water shortages driven by both aquifer depletion and melting glaciers.
If the ministries of forestry and agriculture cannot work together to restore tree cover and reduce floods and soil erosion, then we face a situation where grain harvests will shrink not only in smaller countries like Haiti and Mongolia, but also in larger countries, such as Russia and Argentina—both wheat exporters.
And where water is a more serious constraint on expanding food output than land, it will be up to ministries of water resources to do everything possible to raise the efficiency of water use. With water, as with energy, the principal opportunities now are in increasing efficiency on the demand side, not in expanding the supply side.
In a world where cropland is scarce and becoming more so, decisions made in ministries of transportation on whether to develop land-consuming, auto-centered transport systems or more-diversified systems, including light rail, buses, and bicycles that are much less land-intensive, will directly affect world food security.
Now in our overpopulated, climate-changing, water-scarce world, food security is a matter for the entire society and for all government ministries. Since hunger is almost always the result of poverty, eradicating hunger depends on eradicating poverty. And where populations are outrunning their land and water resources, this depends on stabilizing population.
And finally, if ministries of finance cannot reallocate resources in a way that recognizes the new threats to security posed by agriculture’s deteriorating natural support systems, continuing population growth, human-driven climate change, and spreading water shortages, then food shortages could indeed bring down civilization.
Given that a handful of the more affluent grain-importing countries are reportedly investing some $20–30 billion in land acquisition, there is no shortage of capital to invest in agricultural development. Why not invest it across the board in helping low-income countries develop their unrealized potential for expanding food production, enabling them to export more grain? 81
One way to quickly reverse this deteriorating political situation is for the United States to restrict the use of grain to produce fuel for cars. Given the turmoil in world grain markets over the last three years, it is time for the U.S. government to abolish the subsidies and mandates that are driving the conversion of grain into fuel. That would help stabilize grain prices and set the stage for relaxing the political tensions that have emerged within importing countries.
And finally, we have a role to play as individuals. Whether we bike, bus, or drive to work will affect carbon emissions, climate change, and food security. The size of the car we drive to the supermarket and its effect on climate may indirectly affect the size of the bill at the supermarket checkout counter. If we are living high on the food chain, we can move down, improving our health while helping to stabilize climate. Food security is something in which we all have a stake—and a responsibility.
81. Money going to land acquisitions from Joachim von Braun, IFPRI, cited in Joe DeCapua, “Food Crisis Triggers Land Grab in Developing Countries,” Voice of America News, 29 April 2009.
Copyright © 2009 Earth Policy Institute | <urn:uuid:ed9b97d4-6338-4dc2-9730-441281bd3756> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.earthpolicy.org/books/pb4/PB4ch9_ss7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922781 | 1,042 | 3.140625 | 3 |
IF YOU are tempted to grumble about the rigours of your own daily commute, spare a thought for the poor souls caught up in this month's monster of a traffic jam on China's National Highway 110 and its tributaries in the north-western outskirts of Beijing.
State media have reported extensively on a sprawling blockage that stretched for 100 kilometres. It lasted nearly two weeks, and was expected to last into September. Almost as remarkable as the scale of the congestion is the seeming suddenness with which it has broken up. By the morning of August 26th, journalists travelling the affected highways reported that the tie-up had vanished into thin air—perhaps with a whoosh, trailing behind a plume of evil-smelling smoke?—and that vehicles were moving again.
The mess began August 13th when road works cut capacity on the main artery for coal and other freight traffic from north-western China into the capital. Within a day, the traffic volume had become unmanageable. At its peak the snarl stretched for about 100 kilometres, authorities said. When they were not standing still, drivers could advance at what literally approximated a snail's pace: ranging from one half kilometre to two kilometres per day. Adding to stranded motorists' frustration was the price-gouging undertaken by local merchants and the impromptu salesmen who set up shop nearby. They were quick to take advantage of the captive market.
Having long planned to take a trip along those very roads to Inner Mongolia, your correspondent counts himself lucky that he did not make the journey this month. Opting for discretion rather than valour, he has also resisted the temptation to drive anywhere near the mess for a first-hand look.
But having driven in China for more than two decades, he has seen his fair share of nasty tie-ups, and spent far too many hours staring at the rear ends of coal trucks. Traffic lock-ups remain a distressingly common occurrence in China, even as the causes have changed. Road capacity and vehicle volume have both increased dramatically in recent years.
Some optimists have endeavoured to find reasons to celebrate it. With so many new cars in the mix, average vehicle quality is far better than it used to be, so breakdowns on one-lane roads no longer trigger gridlock automatically, the way they once did.
Unfortunately, many of the people driving all these shiny new cars are themselves new to the practice, and not yet very good at it. Minor fender-benders have displaced breakdowns as a most common cause of traffic jams. Authorities report that such accidents were a significant factor contributing to this month's muddle on Highway 110. Meanwhile, the good news about its mysterious disentanglement comes tempered with the ominous warning from officials that much road work remains to be done on Highway 110 in the coming month, and that more traffic jams are likely. | <urn:uuid:15adffd4-6988-46c7-97cb-ffd91bfd4e98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.economist.com/blogs/asiaview/2010/08/great_chinese_traffic_jam | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978728 | 587 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Muslims are taught not to respect women; they are no more than possessions to be toyed with at their pleasure. It's their culture.
Some time ago I shared about my experience living in the Middle East as a pre-teen, but I'll share it again. Out of three females in my immediate family, two of us were approached inappropriately by Middle Eastern men. I was walking with a friend down some steps in Beirut, Lebanon, and some man came out of nowhere and grabbed me between the legs, but quickly ran off when my friend came charging at him with her purse. I froze out of fear; I was only 12 or 13 years old.
My mom was forced to feel a man's erection against her back side as she was standing in a crowded Beirut airport.
Hey, what can I say; it's the way of their culture. That's a 67% sexually harassment percentage just for my family; not very good odds, if you ask me.
Here's the latest out of Cairo from journalist Natasha Smith, via Atlas Shrugs: | <urn:uuid:b93e0959-1a9e-49dd-a481-83ee9449295e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://exposingliberallies.blogspot.com/2012/06/lara-logan-all-over-again.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988506 | 216 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Medium sized green sea turtle with FP tumors and fishing lines wrapped around the neck and front flippers.
I was able to cut away about 60% of the line before she decided she had enough of me and swam off.
Green sea turtle with considerable FP tumors. One eye appeared to be completely covered with tumor growth. Visible algae growth on the shell. Turtle was resting inside an underwater cave, surfacing about every 20mins to breathe.
A medium sized (about 3ft nose to tail) female green sea turtle with several small tumors on the face, neck and flipper. One of two turtles with FP tumors observed within 20 feet of one another.
Second of two turtles with FP tumors at this location. Another female, slightly smaller in size than the first with smaller tumors around the eyes: a small one on the rearmost portion around the right eye, a larger one around the left eye, that was blocking vision to the left side and left rear of the animal. Unlike many turtles that I have seen with FP tumors, this one was having it's shell actively cleaned by several species of surgeon fishes.
Possibly the same turtle that I observed at the same location on 4/25/12 (obvs#70433). | <urn:uuid:d708f5c3-73e5-48f7-ba37-ec978011aff2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.inaturalist.org/identifications/ttoddjones | 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 | 0.977013 | 254 | 1.648438 | 2 |
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32.2 Sources and Practice of International Law
- Explain what a treaty is and how it differs from a convention.
- Understand that a treaty can be a voluntary relinquishment of some aspects of sovereignty.
- Describe customary international law, and explain how it is different from treaties as a source of international law.
- Describe some of the difficulties in enforcing one nation’s judicial judgments in another nation.
In this section, we shall be looking at a number of different sources of international law. These sources include treaties and conventions, decisions of courts in various countries (including decisions in your own state and nation), decisions of regional courts (such as the European Court of Justice), the World Trade Organization (WTO), resolutions of the United Nations (UN), and decisions by regional trade organizations such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). These sources are different from most of the cases in your textbook, either because they involve parties from different nations or because the rule makers or decision makers affect entities beyond their own borders.
In brief, the sources of international law include everything that an international tribunal might rely on to decide international disputes. International disputes include arguments between nations, arguments between individuals or companies from different nations, and disputes between individuals or companies and a foreign nation-state. Article 38(1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) lists four sources of international law: treaties and conventions, custom, general principles of law, and judicial decisions and teachings.
The ICJ only hears lawsuits between nation-states. Its jurisdiction is not compulsory, meaning that both nations in a dispute must agree to have the ICJ hear the dispute.
Treaties and Conventions
Even after signing a treaty or convention, a nation is always free to go it alone and repudiate all regional or international bodies, or refuse to obey the dictates of the United Nations or, more broadly and ambiguously, “the community of nations.” The United States could repudiate NAFTA, could withdraw from the UN, and could let the WTO know that it would no longer abide by the post–World War II rules of free trade embodied in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The United States would be within its rights as a sovereign to do so, since it owes allegiance to no global or international sovereign. Why, however, does it not do so? Why is the United States so involved with the “entangling alliances” that George Washington warned about? Simply put, nations will give away part of their sovereignty if they think it’s in their self-interest to do so. For example, if Latvia joins the European Union (EU), it gives up its right to have its own currency but believes it has more to gain.
A treatyAn agreement between two or more nation-states. In US law, a treaty has the same standing as a federal statute. is nothing more than an agreement between two sovereign nations. In international law, a nation is usually called a state or nation-stateUnder international law, the common term for a country or a nation.. This can be confusing, since there are fifty US states, none of which has power to make treaties with other countries. It may be helpful to recall that the thirteen original states under the Articles of Confederation were in fact able to have direct relations with foreign states. Thus New Jersey (for a few brief years) could have had an ambassador to France or made treaties with Spain. Such a decentralized confederation did not last long. Under the present Constitution, states gave up their right to deal directly with other countries and vested that power in the federal government.
There are many treaties to which the United States is a party. Some of these are conventionsMultilateral treaties that are sponsored by an international agency or institution (e.g., the United Nations)., which are treaties on matters of common concern, usually negotiated on a regional or global basis, sponsored by an international organization, and open to adoption by many nations. For example, as of 2011, there were 192 parties (nation-states) that had signed on to the Charter of the UN, including the United States, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Uruguay (just to name a few of the nations starting with U).
The most basic kind of treaty is an agreement between two nation-states on matters of trade and friendly relations. Treaties of friendship, commerce, and navigation (FCN treaties) are fairly common and provide for mutual respect for each nation-state’s citizens in (1) rights of entry, (2) practice of professions, (3) right of navigation, (4) acquisition of property, (5) matters of expropriation or nationalization, (6) access to courts, and (7) protection of patent rights. Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) are similar but are more focused on commerce and investment. The commercial treaties may deal with a specific product or product group, investment, tariffs, or taxation.
Nation-states customarily enter not only into FCN treaties and BITs but also into peace treaties or weapons limitations treaties, such as the US-Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) treaty. Again, treaties are only binding as long as each party continues to recognize their binding effect. In the United States, the procedure for ratifying a treaty is that the Senate must approve it by a two-thirds vote (politically, an especially difficult number to achieve). Once ratified, a treaty has the same force of law within the United States as any statute that Congress might pass.
Custom between nations is another source of international law. Custom is practice followed by two or more nations in the course of dealing with each other. These practices can be found in diplomatic correspondence, policy statements, or official government statements. To become custom, a consistent and recurring practice must go on over a significant period of time, and nations must recognize that the practice or custom is binding and must follow it because of legal obligation and not mere courtesy. Customs may become codified in treaties.
General Principles of Law, or Customary International Law
Even without treaties, there would be some international law, since not all disputes are confined to the territory of one nation-state. For example, in In re the Bremen, a US company’s disagreement with a German company was heard in US courts. The US courts had to decide where the dispute would properly be heard. In giving full effect to a forum-selection clause, the US Supreme Court set out a principle that it hoped would be honored by courts of other nations—namely, that companies from different states should honor any forum-selection clauseIn a contract, national or international, the parties may specify the court where any disputes between the parties will be settled. See the Bremen case. in their contract to settle disputes at a specific place or court. (See the Bremen case, Section 32.5.1 "Forum-selection clauses"). If that principle is followed by enough national court systems, it could become a principle of customary international lawRules of law derived from the consistent conduct of nation-states acting out of the belief that the law required them to act that way.. As an example, consider that for many years, courts in many nations believed that sovereign immunityA long-standing doctrine under customary international law that recognizes a nation-state’s immunity from legal claims. Although absolute sovereign immunity was widely held through the greater part of the twentieth century, a more restrictive doctrine began to take hold after World War II, one that denied sovereign immunity for a sovereign’s commercial or private acts. was an established principle of international law.
Judicial Decisions in International Tribunals; Scholarly Teachings
The Statute of the International Court of Justice recognizes that international tribunals may also refer to the teachings of preeminent scholars on international law. The ICJ, for example, often referred to the scholarly writings of Sir Hersh Lauterpacht in its early decisions. Generally, international tribunals are not bound by stare decisis (i.e., they may decide each case on its merits). However, courts such as the ICJ do refer to their own past decisions for guidance.
There are many international tribunals, including the European Court of Justice, the ICJ, and the International Criminal Court. Typically, however, disputes between corporations or between individuals that cross national boundaries must be resolved in national court systems or in arbitration. In other words, there is no international civil court, and much complexity in international law derives from the fact that national court systems must often choose from different sources of law, using different legal traditions in order to resolve international disputes. For example, a court in one nation may have some difficulty accepting the judgment of a foreign nation’s court system, as we see in Koster v. Automark (see Section 32.5.2 "Due process in the enforcement of judgments").
Due Process and Recognition of Foreign Judgments
Issues surrounding recognition of foreign judgments arise when one nation’s courts have questions about the fairness of procedures used in foreign courts to acquire the judgment. Perhaps the defendant was not notified or did not have ample time in which to prepare a defense, or perhaps some measure of damages was assessed that seemed distinctly unfair. If a foreign state makes a judgment against a US company, the judgment will not be recognized and enforced in the United States unless the US court believes that the foreign judgment provided the US company with due process. But skepticism about a foreign judgment works the other way, as well. For example, if a US court were to assess punitive damages against a Belgian company, and the successful plaintiff were to ask for enforcement of the US judgment in Belgium, the Belgian court would reject that portion of the award based on punitive damages. Compensatory damages would be allowed, but as Belgian law does not recognize punitive damages, it might not recognize that portion of the US court’s award.
Concerns about notice, service of process, and the ability to present certain defenses are evident in Koster v. Automark. Many such concerns are eliminated with the use of forum-selection clauses. The classic case in US jurisprudence is the Bremen case, which resolves difficult questions of where the case should be tried between a US and German company by approving the use of a forum-selection clause indicating that a court in the United Kingdom would be the only forum that could hear the dispute.
Part of what is going on in Bremen is the Supreme Court’s concern that due process should be provided to the US company. What is fair (procedurally) is the dominant question in this case. One clear lesson is that issues of fairness regarding personal jurisdiction can be resolved with a forum-selection clause—if both parties agree to a forum that would have subject matter jurisdiction, at least minimal fairness is evident, because both parties have “consented” to have the forum decide the case.
The idea that a forum-selection clause could, by agreement of the parties, take a dispute out of one national court system and into another court system is just one step removed from the idea that the parties can select a fair resolution process that does not directly involve national court systems. In international arbitration, parties can select, either before or after a dispute arises, an arbitrator or arbitral panel that will hear the dispute. As in all arbitration, the parties agree that the arbitrator’s decision will be final and binding. Arbitration is generally faster, can be less expensive, and is always private, being a proceeding not open to media scrutiny.
Typically, an arbitration clause in the contract will specify the arbitrator or the means of selecting the arbitrator. For that purpose, there are many organizations that conduct international arbitrations, including the American Arbitration Association, the International Chamber of Commerce, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law. Arbitrators need not be judges or lawyers; they are usually business people, lawyers, or judges who are experienced in global commercial transactions. The arbitration clause is thus in essence a forum-selection clause and usually includes a choice of law for the arbitrator or arbitral panel to follow.
An arbitral award is not a judgment. If the losing party refuses to pay the award, the winning party must petition a court somewhere to enforce it. Fortunately, almost every country that is engaged in international commerce has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Arbitral Awards, sometimes known as the New York Convention. The United States adopted this convention in 1970 and has amended the Federal Arbitration Act accordingly. Anyone who has an arbitral award subject to the convention can attach property of the loser located in any country that has signed the convention.
Treaties and conventions, along with customary international law, are the primary sources of what we call international law. Disputes involving parties from different nation-states are resolved in national (federal) court systems, and one nation’s recognition and enforcement of another nation’s judicial orders or judgments will require reciprocal treaties or some review that the order or judgment was fairly obtained (that there was due process in the determination of the order or judgment).
- At the US Senate website, read about the history of treaties in the United States. What is an “executive agreement,” and why has the use of executive agreements grown so fast since World War II?
- Is NAFTA a treaty or an executive agreement? What practical difference does it make if it is one rather than the other? | <urn:uuid:2ec6eb97-e451-4c67-ac13-000b681fd85b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/reader/5725?e=mayer_1.0-ch52_s02 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953671 | 3,062 | 3.375 | 3 |
his report is my recent analysis of the EH antenna using the Pspice program and considering the antenna as a set of circuit elements. The antenna can be considered as a set of circuit elements because it is electrically small-meaning that the phase delay that occurs as a wave travels the maximum length of the antenna is a small fraction of an RF cycle. This means that all voltages and currents set up in the circuit can be considered the same anywhere on a particular wire in the antenna that one might test with a voltmeter or ammeter. If it were electrically large, one would need a Smith Chart to calculate the voltages and currents on its wires.
The analysis below generates and uses many curves. These curves are full of data, but the real INFORMATION is contained in the changes in the curves as some parameter in the antenna is changed. I often use a sort of "differential analysis" where I hold everything in a system constant except one parameter, which I then tweak about while watching the system response. This is a natural way of learning about somethingjust watch how a 2 year old approaches a mysterious new object in his/her world: the object is tweaked, wiggled, tasted, etc., until its properties are understood. So, I recommend the reader sort of defocus, stand back a bit and try to watch the movement of the curves as circuit element properties are changed. The EH's basic component, the Isotron, is simply a large inductor and small capacitor with a long physical spacing between plates wired as a series-tuned circuit. Energy stored in the inductor as 1/2*inductance*(current)squared is stored in the capacitor as 1/2*capacitance*(voltage)squared a quarter of an RF cycle later. The voltage is very high, which is why these devices might be called "Tesla coil antennas".
Essentially, the EH antenna consists of two "Isotron" style antennas in parallel across the transmission line. The radiation comes from the capacitors, which are in the form of two cylinders separated by the cylinder diameter and pasted on a 4inch PVC pipe (click for metrics conversion). The length of each cylinder is 1.5 x pipe diameter. The spacing between the cylinders is equal to the pipe diameter. The coils are wound near each other below the cylinders on the pipe. The tuning capacitor for 40 meters (7.0 MHz) is given as 63 pF. This information was taken from Ted Hart's "almost book" about the EH antenna.
This analysis starts with the characteristics of a single Isotron-type series tuned circuit. It then shows how the characteristics change when the second Isotron circuit is added. Finally, the effect of capacitive coupling and resistance between the radiating capacitors is shown. It is then noted that the coils are near each other with a common axis, so they must inductively couple. The independent coils of the first part of the analysis are exchanged for a transformer of the same inductance and variable coupling and the analysis repeated. The coupled coil configuration is the same as the "DLA" antenna that has been written up previously-the variable coupling curves are similar to the DLA data and it is hoped that the changes in the series of tuning curves versus coupling throws some light on the DLA operation.
This modeling shows that increasing the mutual coupling between the two Isotrons changes the tuning by making the lower frequency Isotron tuning drop in frequency and lower in Q while the upper frequency Isotron tuning rises in frequency and the Q increases. This makes sense since mutual coupling increases the voltage in the one and decreases the voltage in the other, as the Isotrons and coils are connected in opposite directions across the cable. Very small values of coupling cause large changes in the behavior of the combined Isotron system.
The analysis also shows there are three regions of importance for the phase of the voltage between the radiating capacitors. The frequency range below and above both resonant frequencies shows 180 degrees between ends . The frequency range between the resonant frequencies shows a phase of zero degrees between ends of the antenna. The phase shifts rapidly between the two values at the circuit resonance (not the combined resonance, which moves around. The voltage on the end connected to the higher frequency Isotron is in phase with the drive in all regions. This rapid change at the resonant frequency and constant value at all other frequencies was a surprise to me, as I had been expecting the gradual phase change seen in the single Isotron.
The Isotron itself is a series-tuned circuit and is a low impedance load on the cable, near resonance. Two isotrons in parallel are a high impedance in the frequency region between individual resonant frequencies. In that frequency region, one Isotron is operating above its resonant frequency and is inductive. The other Isotron is operating below its resonant frequency, and appears capacitive. The net result is a parallel tuned circuit of an inductor and a capacitor-a high impedance load to the cable.
Since the EH antenna is electrically small, there cannot be any directivity due to the effects of aperture. The point source may vary in power in different directions because of variation in the projected E and H fields in a plane perpendicular to the direction. In the EH antenna, the E fields are either from end to end, or both ends in phase to ground. Small spacing changes between the end cylinders may adjust the capacitance, capacitive coupling, and the resultant tuning caused by the coupling between isotrons, but the changes will not vary the directivity.
A SINGLE ISOTRON
The Figure 1 group shows a single series-tuned circuit or "Isotron". The circuit is in Figure 1a: L1 and C1 are the Isotron. Point 3 is the cable and R1 is the cable impedance of 50 ohms. Ignore the other circuit elements in the Figure 1 groupthey are all grounded groups of elements such as the other Isotron and the coupling between the two antennas. It was easier to place the elements in the schematic and ground them for experiments that didn't use them than to redraw the schematic each time a condition changed.
Figure 1a: The Isotron - a series
tuned circuit (L1,C1)
connected to a 50 ohm cable and 1 volt source (at 3)
Figure 1b: The Isotron is tuned to 7
V(3) = cable input V(4) =radiating voltage V(5)=0
Figure 1b shows the essential characteristics of the Isotron series-tuned circuit. The lower part of the Figure shows the various voltages in the circuit vs frequency. The cable voltage (V3) shows a low-impedance load at resonance at 7 MHz. The capacitor voltage (V4) shows a peak at this frequency. The other Isotron capacitor is grounded and its voltage, (V5) or V(L2:2) is zero. The upper part of figure 1b shows the phase of the radiating capacitor voltage V4. At resonance, the phase is -90 degrees.
Figure 1c: Shows where input impedance
= 50 ohms (v(3)=0.5
Figure 1c changes the scale of the voltage plots to 1 volt full scale from the value of 24.93 volts in figure 1b. This clearly shows the loaded cable voltage, (V3) and the null at resonance. The cable is closest to being matched when the voltage V3 == 0.5 volts. There, the load resistance is equal to the source resistance of 50 ohms. The cursor table in the figure shows that the voltage A1 is 0.502 volts at 6.832 MHz. The vertical finely dotted line is the A1 cursor. The sparsely dotted line is the A2 cursor. It is showing V(l2:2) or V5, the capacitor voltage on the other grounded Isotron that equals zero. This cursor is set at 6.9 MHz. The Isotron has two possible matched points, above and below resonance, where V3 (the blue line) crosses 0.5 volts. The dotted cursor lines surround their associated colored identifier symbols across the bottom of the figure.
ADD A SECOND ISOTRON
Figure 2a shows the schematic for the two isotrons in parallel. L1 -C1 is the lower frequency Isotron. L2-C2 is the higher frequency Isotron. The coupling between the two is still grounded and out of play.
Figure 2a: Two Isotrons wired to make
an EH antenna
One tuned high, one tuned low
Figure 2b: The two Isotrons combine to
load the cable with
two tuned circuits symmetrically about the center frequency
Figure 2b shows the voltage plots. The cable voltage V3 is green and it shows the expected two nulls at the resonant frequency of the two isotrons. The capacitor voltages are red and blue and show a peak between the center frequency of the system of two Isotrons and the respective individual resonant frequencies. Note that the phase between the voltage at the antenna ends is quite different from that in Figure 1. It abruptly changes from -180 degrees above and below the two resonant frequencies of the system to -360 degrees == zero degrees between the two nulls in V3. No more gradual change in phase with frequency! This change happens at the real resonant frequencies of each Isotron. Note also the perfect symmetry about the center frequency of the system. The yellow curve shows the voltage difference between the ends of the antenna. At the center frequency of the system, the voltage at the two ends is in phase and is equal-the difference is zero (strictly speaking, the difference == the drive voltage V3).
Figure 2c: At center frequency the
combination is a high impedance
-- a parallel-tuned circuit (green = cable load)
Figure 2c is the voltage plot showing the bottom 3.74-volt range. Note the two nulls in the cable load voltage V3. The cursor is at the center frequency of the system. Now, note the voltage at the cable: 0.996 volts from a 1-volt source! This is a high impedance pointthe current is 80 uA and the load is 12.5k ohms to drop the voltage only .004 volts coming from a 50-ohm source! Each Isotron tuning null is a zero drive point for the other Isotron as well as a maximum voltage point for its own capacitor, since the two Isotrons are in connected parallel across the cable.
ADD ONLY 10 pF END TO END COUPLING
The Figure 3 group show what just 10 pF coupling between the two cylinders does. Figure 3a shows the circuit. The coupling is C3 and there is a megohm of resistance to simulate a small amount of radiation in place. V4 and V5 are the two capacitor or cylinder voltages for the two Isotrons.
Figure 3a: Stray coupling between ends
(the C1, C2)
and low radiation destroys the symmetry of tuning
Figure 3b: The phase between the ends
zero degrees near the center frequency
Figure 3b shows that the low frequency resonance has moved off the screen to the left. The high frequency Isotron resonance is much narrower in bandwidth and has moved a small amount to the left. Note that the phase changes in V4-V5 (the cylinder to cylinder voltage) are only slightly moved in position. They still are near the real resonance of each Isotron!!
Figure 3c: The combination is no
longer matched -- Coupling hurts!
Figure 3c is a magnified version of the frequency region around the higher frequency Isotron. Note the whole screen is only 400 kHz wide. The cursor shows that loaded cable voltage is 0.9981 volts-down 38 uV from the source voltage. The load is 26k ohms. A little coupling changes things drastically.
LOWER THE RESISTOR REPRESENTING RADIATION LOAD TO 2k
The Figure 4 group show what might happen if the system were to have a radiation resistance of 2000 ohms. This is where the load would be if the voltage from cylinder to cylinder were out of phase. But, the voltages on the cylinders are in phase; so all fields are outward from the two cylinders to the cable ground. The load on the cable is still a high impedance load.
Figure 4a: A low radiation resistance
loads the circuit,
destroys the symmetry, but does not help the matching
Figure 4b: The loading drops the
voltage on both ends at once
Figure 4a shows the circuit. Figure 4b shows the tuning curves. The effect of the 2k resistor is to load down the lower frequency Isotron and to smooth out the phase change at the real resonant frequency of this component. Note that the phase change related to the upper frequency Isotron is still near the real resonant frequency. Also, note that the maximum capacitor voltage is less than half of what it was without the 2k load that was represented in the Figure 3 group.
The two inductors are wound on the pipe below the cylinders, along the axis of the pipe. They must have some inductive coupling. All of the curves discussed so far are for the condition where the coils are independent and not coupled. The next series of curves show what happens when there is inductive coupling between the inductors.
REPRESENT THE COILS WITH A TRANSFORMER
WITH THE SAME INDUCTANCE AS L1 AND L2
Figure 5a shows the circuit with only inductive coupling. The coupling transfers some of the energy from one Isotron to the other.
Figure 5a: Inductive coupling between
the coils (=K) is inherent in the structure
The Figure 5b group is a series of frequency scans at different coupling coefficients, k, from 0.001 to 0.2. The lowest coupling gives curves that look like Figure 2-symmetrical about the center frequency of the system. As k increases, two things happen. First, the lower frequency Isotron moves lower in frequency and the width of the pattern increases. The Q of this Isotron is lowered. The higher frequency Isotron moves upward in frequency and its pattern narrows. Its Q increases. Second, the abrupt phase shifts between the cylinders accompany the pattern of the higher frequency Isotron in its movement. At higher k values, the cylinder voltages are out of phase (180 degrees) over the whole pattern of the lower frequency Isotron.
Figure 5b: Increasing coupling spreads
the resonances apart,
lowers the Q of one and raises the Q of the other
Click for Figure 5b Group
Figure 5c shows the lowest 1-volt range of the figure 5b curves. The loaded cable voltage crosses the 0.5-volt value twice for each Isotron, except at the highest coupling, where the upper frequency Isotron just gets down to 50 ohms at the bottom of its null. For k > 0.2, it would never be a matched load. The inductive coupling between Isotrons gives 3 or 4 chances to be matched, with different voltages between the cylinders or from the cylinders to ground.
Figure 5c: The system is matched at 3
Click for Figure 5c Group
I should observe here that I first found this strange double resonance with a DLA that had a k of 0.82 and no radiating capacitors-just radiating coils. The spacing between high and low resonant frequencies was enough that I tried to make a dual band 40- and 20-meter version! I didn't recognize the coupling association until this study.
ADD THE CAPACITIVE COUPLING BETWEEN THE CYLINDERS
Figure 6a shows the capacitive coupling between Isotrons. Figure 7a is the same except the coupling is increased to 20pF. The inductive coupling was set at 0.02 for these curves.
Figure 6a & 7a: Coupling between
the ends does the same kind of thing
The Figure 6b group shows the patterns for three values of coupling capacitor: 1pF, 4pF and 10 pF. The highest value has about the same amount of effect as the inductive k of 0.2, and all the effects are the same for either kind of coupling.
Figure 6b: The tuning spreads but the
between ends is still zero or 180 degrees
Figure 6c: A wider scan shows where
the lower resonance went
Figure 6c shows the bottom 1-volt range for the two lowest couplings. Note that just 4pF coupling is enough to raise the impedance at the highest resonant frequency to a value greater than 50 ohms, while the resonant pattern has the usual two matched frequencies. For the 10pF coupling, the frequency scan was widened to completely show the lower frequency pattern. Figure 6d shows the bottom 1 volt of the patterns. The yellow line in figure 6d shows the 0.5-volt level where the cable voltage V3 is matched.
Figure 6d: There are still only two
It looks like only one isotron!
INCREASE THE CAPACITIVE COUPLING TO 20 pF
Figure 7b shows the effect of 20pF and k=0.02. The lower frequency resonant point is moved from around 7 MHz to about 4.6 MHz while the higher resonant point is under 8 MHz. Figure 7c shows the bottom 1-volt range to help locate the matched points.
Figure 7b: Increasing the capacitive
between ends moves the resonances further apart
Figure 7c: Still only matched at 2
Figures 8a and 8b show that increasing the k ten times, to 0.2, only moves the lower frequency resonant point from 4.6 to about 4.3 MHz. Both types of coupling work together in the same directions.
Figure 8a: 10x inductor coupling
things too much with high end coupling
Figure 8b: Still matched only at lower
frequency -- it looks like only 1 isotron!
The EH antenna appears to be simply two Isotrons combined to give the effect of a single, much lower frequency Isotron. As such, I would expect it to radiate numbers that seem to average about an S unit (-20 db) down from a dipole.
The EH antenna is a member of the class of antennas where coupling between two radiating tuned circuits, a factor poorly controlled in most designs, can produce great tuning changes. This factor works against any possible meaningful merits worth comparing the other various EH constructions.
The abrupt phase transitions and broad regions of unchanging phase over many different tuning and coupling conditions suggest that trying to tweak the phase to produce CFA-like conditions is doomed to failure. I think any variations in performance observed are due more to the movement of the resonance patterns in frequency than to any field interactions. -30-
Brief Biography of Author:
Worked for 16 years designing electronic
countermeasures against monopulse and pulse compression radars, including remote means of
bending the radar's antenna pattern, and have designed and built an instrumentation radar.
~ antenneX ~ December 2001 Online Issue #56 ~
Send mail to email@example.com
with questions or comments.
Copyright © 1988-2011 All rights reserved - antenneX©
Last modified: December 31, 2010 | <urn:uuid:9a0f135a-1ef4-4f4e-8ec7-f67b592a2400> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.antennex.com/hws/ws1201/theeh.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916412 | 4,088 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Paul J. Tobin, president of VetsFirst and United Spinal Association participated in a press conference on May 2 hosted by New York City Comptroller John C. Liu calling on Mayor Michael Bloomberg to modify the proposed “Taxi of Tomorrow” agreement before sending the contract to the Comptroller’s Office for approval as required by the City Charter. Liu vowed to reject the agreement, until New York’s entire taxi fleet follows in the footsteps of cities like London and makes all cabs wheelchair accessible.
In December 2011, a federal court ruled that the City, through its Taxi and Limousine Commission, was in violation of the ADA.
The City’s proposal for a separate dispatch system for passengers using wheelchairs fails to address the underlying problem — there are not enough wheelchair accessible taxis in New York City. Only 231 of the City’s 13,000 yellow cabs, less than 2 percent, are wheelchair accessible.
VetsFirst believes this is a slap in the face, not only to New Yorkers who use wheelchairs, but all of our nation’s disabled vets.
“Today, more than 22 years after the ADA and after 10 years of war, the City of New York is consciously attempting to discriminate against disabled veterans who use wheelchairs. It is unconscionable and we applaud Comptroller Liu for not only doing what is legal, but what is right,” Tobin said
In April 2012, Mayor Michael Bloomberg rolled out New York City’s new “Taxi of Tomorrow”–Nissan’s NV200. Despite all the bells and whistles touted by the City, accessibility is not one of the key features of this cab.
“The new contract for taxis presents us with a historic opportunity to right a wrong that New Yorkers with disabilities have been fighting to achieve for nearly two decades,” Comptroller Liu said.
“Requiring cabs to have independent passenger climate controls is nice, but when you fail to make them accessible to a growing number of New Yorkers, it’s not just a slap in the face, it’s illegal. We will send back any plan that does not uphold the civil rights demanded by the Americans with Disabilities Act,” he explained.
Read Terry Moakley’s recent VetsFirst blog: The Origin of Accessible Public Transportation in New York City. | <urn:uuid:3bcd6d01-414e-4667-82ae-b1b5df9b9db8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vetsfirst.org/new-york-citys-taxi-of-tomorrow-locks-out-wheelchair-users-and-disabled-vets/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924835 | 498 | 1.695313 | 2 |
A NOAA-led team of scientists has found that the apparent increase in the number of tropical storms and hurricanes since the late 19th and early 20th centuries is likely attributable to improvements in observational tools and analysis techniques that better detect short-lived storms. . .There have been (as of this writing) exactly zero news stories on the paper. Whatever the reasons, there is clearly a huge bias against reporting on scientific studies that do not support a particular perspective on climate change as being catastrophic or worse than we thought.
According to Dr. Brian Soden, a professor at the University of Miami’s Rosentiel School for Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, “The study provides strong evidence that there has been no systematic change in the number of north Atlantic tropical cyclones during the 20th century.”
A few years ago Andy Revkin at the New York Times explained this dynamic as follows:
There are a variety of reasons that the media tend to pay outsize attention to research developments that support a “hot” conclusion (like the theory that hurricanes have already been intensified by human-caused global warming) and glaze over on research of equivalent quality that does not.The main one, to my mind, is an institutional eagerness to sift for and amplify what editors here at The Times sometimes call “the front-page thought.” This is only natural, but in coverage of science it can skew what you read toward the more calamitous side of things. It’s usually not agenda-driven, as some conservative commentators charge. It’s just a deeply ingrained habit. | <urn:uuid:100a8847-ff63-4965-89ad-b1460041630c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.ca/2009/08/no-change-in-atlantic-tropical-cyclone.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954906 | 329 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Wet liberals like me are always looking for ways of communicating the faith, the uniqueness of Christ, we don't want to ram it down people's throats. We realise Catholic schools don't work*, well, not to produce practicing Catholics. Ascension Day is pretty good for "public signs". When I was younger I tried Ascension Day kites and those fiery paper bag balloons, you really need a hundred or so for a real effect.
I have tried so many things that are relevant, never puppets but I have to admit it I have tried liturgical dance, not doing it myself and never at Mass but I once had a group of charismatic missioners in my last parish. I have even tried projecting images on the ceiling during a Vigil.
The trouble is these things, like contemporary Catholic education don't work, and now I have run out of bright ideas, like so many priests. So many younger priests have positively rejected them. There is one option open to us, which is to look at the riches of the past. Here is what Traditionally happened, before Ascension there was a period of prayer, Rogation Days, following Christ, imploring his sanctification of the world and blessing of new growth.
*a radio programme produced by Mark Dowd in peparation for the Papal visit, this extract has pupils at a Catholic school speaking about what it means for them to be Catholic, the last speaker is "Youth Chaplain". | <urn:uuid:e38c72a9-fcf6-4bc4-89cc-e4487f901671> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://marymagdalen.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/i-have-tried-liturgical-dance.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975725 | 294 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Joined: Mar 15, 2003
I don't know if this is related to what you have in mind, but I make use of a Java applet which calls a servlet to gather data. The applet opens an HttpURLConnection, then reads back the servlet's response by calling getInputStream(). If you do this, there are some tricky issues in Microsoft IE's implementation of URLConnection to watch out for. Also, if you want this servlet to handle cookies, you have to do some extra work.
You might want to consider forwarding the request/response after the initial processing completes rather than sending another response. This would be a much more standard way of handling the situation where you need multiple things done after a single form is submitted. i.e. Form->Servlet 1->processing ->request dispatcher->forward ->Servlet 2->processing ->request dispatcher->forward ->Servlet 3 etc etc This way you only need one request/response pair, you know the order, and you're not tied to any silliness or broken features of a particular browser.
"Write beautiful code; then profile that beautiful code and make little bits of it uglier but faster." --The JavaPerformanceTuning.com team, Newsletter 039. | <urn:uuid:f5a1d263-9ff9-4f01-b116-a2afe99246c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coderanch.com/t/356218/Servlets/java/HTML-Servlet-mutiple-request | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933636 | 257 | 1.585938 | 2 |
A new obesity reported released Tuesday found that 25.1 percent of adults in New York are obese and said a big factor was the high obesity rate among the state’s minority population.
As high as the obesity rate is, New York is one of the slimmer states in the union. The report, “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future,’’ ranked New York 36th for obesity among U.S. states.
The seventh annual report was released from the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).
In last year’s report New York was ranked as the 37th most obese state in the nation for adults.
In order to determine obesity doctors use a formula based off of height and weight_called the body mass index (BMI)_. If an adult has a BMI of 30 or higher, they are considered obese.
The report examined several factors that are believed to lead to obesity. They compiled data based on race, gender, access to physical activities, and income levels.
According to Jeff Levi, the executive director of the trust, economics play a big role in obesity because “healthy foods cost more.”
The report showed that 35.5 percent of adults earning less than $15,000 per year were obese, whereas 24.5 percent of adults earning $50,000 or more each year are obese.
Adult obesity rates for blacks and Latinos are higher than those for whites in nearly every state. Adult obesity rates for blacks are at or above 30 percent in 43 states and the District of Columbia. In nine states, the rates exceed 40 percent for blacks.
For Latinos, adult obesity rates are at or above 30 percent in 19 states. Only one state _ West Virginia _ has an adult obesity rate for whites at or above 30 percent.
The report said 35.9 percent of black youth and 38.2 percent of Latino youth ages 2-19 are overweight or obese, compared with 29.3 percent of white children.
The report said one reason for disparities among children is the availability of safe public areas for physical activity.
The reports found that among Latino parents, 40.1 percent cite safety concerns as a reason why their children can’t exercise, compared with 8.5 percent of white parents.
Mississippi ranked highest on the obesity report for the sixth year in a row, with obesity rates at 33.8 percent. Colorado remained the lowest at 19.1 percent. | <urn:uuid:0ffb957f-9f0a-4980-b780-acb09ae8ce0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.timesunion.com/nypotomac/one-fourth-of-new-yorkers-obese-rate-rising/3305/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953118 | 524 | 2.59375 | 3 |
My dear Wynn
All the blunders concerning Coke will soon be over I hope, my letter to Wynnstay, & what I have this day
written to Sancho will explain them — & the book will soon be here I
For my little poem in the Magazine. Philips had been
some year & half importuning me for my name, & I did not like
the appearance of pride in refusing it. the piece pleased me. look at the word
very as there used again — it occurs twice — & you will find that in the
last place it is used as an adjective, & no other word could so well
supply it. in the first — it scarcely — even to my own ear seems expletive “It
was a very plain & simple tale. By the by I called it a plain tale — to
which Philips or Aikin absurdly tacked
on a syllable & made it ridiculous — plaintive! it was written at Burton — the mere recital of what happened
near our lodgings.
You will be surprized perhaps at hearing that Cowpers poem does not at all please me. you must have heard it in
some moment when your mind was predisposed to be pleased, & the first
impression has remained. indeed I think it — not above mediocrity — I cannot
trace the Author of the Task in one line. I know that our tastes differ much in
poetry. & yet I think you must like these lines by Charles Lamb. I believe you know his
history — & the dreadful death of his mother.
Thou shouldst have longer lived, & to the grave
Have peacefully gone down in full old age.
Thy children would have tended thy gray hairs;
We might have sat, as we have often done,
By our fire side, & talkd whole nights away,
Old times, old friends & old events recalling,
With many a circumstance of trivial note,
To memory dear & of importance grown.
How shall we tell them in a strangers ear!
A wayward son oft times was I to thee,
And yet in all our little bickerings
Domestic jars, there was I know not what
Of tender feeling, that were ill exchanged
For this worlds chilling friendships, & their smiles
Familiar, whom the heart calls strangers still.
A heavy lot hath he, most wretched man,
Who lives the last of all his family.
He looks around him, & his eye discerns
The face of the stranger, & his heart is sick.
Man of the World, what canst thou do for him?
Wealth is a burthen which he could not bear,
Mirth a strange crime the which he dares not act,
And generous wines x no
cordial to his soul.
For wounds like his Christ is the only cure.
Go — preach thou to him of a world to come,
Where friends shall meet & know each others face
Say less than this, — & say it to the winds.
I am aware of the danger of studying simplicity of language. but
you will find in my blank verse a fullness of phrase when the subject requires
it. these lines may instance
it was a goodly sight
To see the embattled pomp, as with the step
Of stateliness the barbed steeds came on,
To see the pennons rolling their long waves
Before the gale, & banners broad & bright
Tossing their blazonry, & high-plumed Chiefs
Vidames & Seneschalls & Chastellains,
Gay with their bucklers gorgeous heraldry
And silken surcoats on the buoyant wind
God bless you. I come to London Monday the 20th.
* Address: To/ C W Williams
Wynn/ 5. Stone Buildings/ Lincolns Inn/ London
Postmarks: FR/ NO/ 13/ 97; NO/ 13/ 97
Endorsement: Nov, 13/
MS: National Library of Wales, MS 4811D
Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of
Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), I, pp. 324–326 [in
part; misdated 20 November 1797].
Dating note: 12 November was a Sunday in
1797, and therefore probably the day on which Southey wrote this letter.
Edward Coke (1552–1643; DNB), Commentarie upon Littleton (1628), the first part of
his four part Institutes of the Laws of England
‘Hannah, a Plaintive Tale’ was published in the Monthly
Magazine, 4 (October 1797), 287. From 1799, it was incorporated
into Southey’s sequence of ‘English Eclogues’ and retitled ‘The
Sir Richard
Phillips (1767–1840; DNB), author, publisher and
proprietor of the Monthly Magazine. BACK
William Cowper (1731–1800; DNB), whose works included The Task
Published as ‘Written Soon after the
Preceding Poem’, in Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd, Blank Verse (London, 1798), pp. 84–86. BACK
These lines
appeared in Joan of Arc, 2nd edn, 2 vols
(Bristol, 1798), II, pp. 238–240. BACK | <urn:uuid:f7b84972-eabe-4a30-bb5c-1f413fb9646f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/southey_letters/Part_One/HTML/letterEEd.26.272.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936341 | 1,170 | 1.625 | 2 |
Fun And Interesting Bug Facts
- There are over 30,000 known species of scarab beetles worldwide.
- Scarab beetles can be found on every continent in the world except for Antarctica.
- Some scarab beetles collect animal dung by rolling it into a ball with their hind legs. These beetles, called Dung Beetles use the dung for food as well as a nest for their larvae.
- One species of scarab beetle was worshipped by the ancient Egyptians. Images of the beetle appear in hieroglyphs and sculpture.
- In spite of their size, tarantulas have relatively weak venom
- Tarantulas sense their prey by vibrations in the ground.
- Most tarantulas live in underground burrows, but some live in logs, rocks, trees or even bananas!
- Male tarantulas can live up to 10-12 years. Females can live twice as long!
- Many people keep tarantulas as pets.
- About 900 different species of tarantulas have been identified.
- Tarantulas live in tropical, grassland or desert climates throughout the world.
- Wolf spiders carry their egg sacs with them. When the egg sacs hatch, the young wolf spiders ride around on their mother’s abdomen.
- Wolf spiders get their name from the way that they stalk their prey (like a wolf).
- Some wolf spiders can walk on water thanks to small hairs in their legs that keep them above the water’s surface.
- Wolf spiders can be found just about everywhere in the world except for arctic and Antarctic climates.
- Some wolf spiders live in underground burrows with trap-doors to keep rainwater out.
Black Widow Spider:
Black Widow Spider
- Male black widows are not venomous, only female black widows carry venom.
- Black widows are cannibalistic, which means they will eat each other if no other food source is around.
- The black widow spins the strongest web silk in the spider kingdom.
- A black widow female can lay up to 3600 eggs per year.
- Black widows are indigenous to North America, but other species of the widow family can be found worldwide
Earwig / Pinscher Bug:
Earwig / Pinscher Bug
- There are 1800 recorded species of earwigs. They can be found on every continent in the world except for Antarctica.
- Earwigs got their name because of a myth that they will crawl into your ear and lay eggs in your brain if you are sleeping on the ground.
- Earwigs are not poisonous, though they can deliver a painful pinch.
- Paleontologists have discovered earwig fossils dating back over 200 million years old!
- Earwigs are maternal. They watch over their eggs and young.
Horned Beetle / Rhino Beetle:
Horned Beetle / Rhino Beetle
- The term “Rhino Beetle” refers to 300 different species of beetles!
- The rhino beetle is the strongest animal in the world. It can lift up to 850 times its own weight!
- Rhino beetles look ferocious with their large horn, but they are actually harmless. They do not have any teeth, stingers or venom.
- Some species of rhino beetles are sold as pets in Japan.
- Most rhino beetles live in South and Central America with a few species living as far north as the southern United States.
- There are 250 known species of bumblebees. They can be found throughout the northern hemisphere.
- Most bumblebees are assumed to be yellow and black, but some bumblebees are red, orange, white, pink or entirely black.
- Bumblebees can regulate their body temperature, which allows them to live in cold climates.
- Bumblebees live in underground burrows, only laying 8-12 eggs at a time.
- Male bumblebees have no stingers, but the females do!
- An angry bumblebee will chase her victim over long distances and sting multiple times!
- A cockroach can hold its breath up to 40 minutes.
- There are over 4,000 different species of cockroach, of these only 20 are considered to be pests.
- Cockroaches sometimes carry their eggs around with them.
- Cockroaches can find food by following the scent trail of other cockroaches.
- Cockroaches can live up to four years in captivity.
- A cockroach’s favourite food is the glue on envelopes and book bindings.
- The world’s largest species of cockroach is in South America. It can grow up to 6 inches long with a 1 foot wingspan!
- Ladybugs are used by farmers and gardeners to keep pests off their crops.
- Some people actually raise ladybugs to sell for pest control.
- There are over 300 different species of ladybugs worldwide.
- Ladybugs are actually beetles.
- A typical ladybug can lay up to 1000 eggs in her lifetime.
- Wasps use paralyzed insects and spiders as food for their young, but wasps themselves feed on nectar.
- Tarantula wasps actually paralyze tarantulas and lay eggs on their immobile bodies.
- Wasps do not make honey like bees.
- Some wasps make their nests from saliva and chewed plant matter, paper or mud. | <urn:uuid:f45abd33-4a44-479e-9a39-5762ce52299b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kidzworld.com/article/24929-fun-and-interesting-bug-facts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915407 | 1,119 | 3.546875 | 4 |
I basically agree with JoelBrown, but let me elaborate a little.
In the IT world, as JoelBrown says, a "data type" is a technical term referring to a specific format of data, like "32-bit integer" or "date stored as the number of days since Jan 1, 1970". Or arguably in a slightly more general sense to refer to a category of data that can be used in specified ways in a given programming language or other software product, like "string" or "boolean". (The difference I am getting at here is that we may not care exactly how, say, a boolean is stored, whether it is a single bit, an integer where zero means false and non-zero means true, the character T or F, etc. We just care how it works in the program.)
"Type of data" would be read by most IT people as a general phrase whose exact meaning must be determined by context, rather than as a technical term with a well-established meaning.
Thus, if you wanted to say that your programming language supports both 32 and 64 bit integers, you should refer to these as "data types". But if you want to distinguish how your software product uses data imported from other systems versus how it uses data entered directly by the user, you should call these "two types of data".
(It suddenly occurs to me that your question may have nothing to do with IT. If you are talking about different kinds of data in a statistical analysis with no reference to whether that data was collected and processed on a computer or manually, then nothing I've said applies. :-) | <urn:uuid:141ffd98-ced0-48b6-bce2-60918f83c775> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/93455/types-of-data-vs-data-types?answertab=oldest | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954053 | 329 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Tokyo lifestyle in Ueno: culture, fashion, and natural vibes
Sarah Deschamps, Michel Lebon and Lee Jay Walker
Modern Tokyo Times
The Ueno district in Tokyo is extremely diverse because aspects of “Old Tokyo” still survive alongside modernity within this vibrant part of Tokyo. Ueno provides many cultural places to visit. Therefore, Tokyoites and tourists flock to this area because of the many attractions provided. However, within Ueno you get a real mish-mash which flows from cultural attractions to social deprivation; from fashion to the sex trade which is powerful; and other contradictory factors in this famous entertainment district.
Tokyo lifestyle in Ueno and the surrounding area provides a plethora of different angles but unlike most major parts of Tokyo, it is a district which is either loved strongly or disliked. It normally isn’t a district where people sit in the middle because of the very nature of the area. This applies to Tokyoites who are going to pick a new place to reside or to enjoy the natural vibes of this district.
However, from a tourist point of view then Ueno is a must place to visit because you have so many cultural attractions and places to enjoy. Also, the natural raw energy of Ueno can be felt because this part of Tokyo is very distinctive when compared with other major districts. Therefore, tourists can enjoy the usual cultural spots to visit and at night the entertainment aspect of Ueno is extremely vibrant.
Ueno is also a gateway for people who reside in Chiba prefecture and Ibaraki prefecture. In saying this, Ueno is still firmly entrenched within Tokyo because within a short distance by train you have thriving districts like Ikebukuro and Akihabara. In between you have sleepy but beautiful areas like Komagome which is blessed with stunning gardens. Also, Nippori is extremely fascinating because if you visit the old area, then you have many stunning temples to visit – and providing your knowledge of the area is really good, then individuals can walk from old Nippori to Ueno.
The most notable cultural attractions apply to the Tokyo National Museum, National Museum of Western Art, National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, National Museum of Eastern Art, Tokugawa Mausoleum, Shitamachi Museum, Sogakudo Concert Hall, University Art Museum (Tokyo University of the Arts), Tosho-gu-Shrine, Iwasaki Family House, Yushima Tenjin, the statue of Saigo Takamori, Ueno Park, Shinobazu Pond, and other attractions like Ueno Zoo. Therefore, from this extensive list, which could easily be added, it is clear that Tokyoites and tourists alike have much to enjoy in Ueno because the cultural factor is very important.
The diversity of Ueno can also be felt within the fashion angle because it is a real mixture of natural street fashion, top notch department stores, independent fashion, and other styles. Ueno isn’t like Aoyama, Ginza, Harajuku, Ikebukuro, Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Omotesando when it comes to fashion; but this doesn’t take away from the buzzing fashion angle of Ueno. This means that the multi-dimensional factor behind Ueno is catering for different fashion vibes alongside the choice of major stores.
In Marui department store you will find many amazing boutiques and stores to visit. Marui is one of the most highly respected department stores for fashion lovers which can be found throughout Tokyo, and in other parts of Japan like Osaka. Marui focuses on lovely boutiques for ladies and caters for male fashion. At all times this company understands the trends of Japan and for this reason it’s pulling power remains strong year after year.
Stores that can be found in Marui in Ueno applies to Sly, Moussy, Vence, Peyton Place, Rew de Rew, Mercury Duo, Jill Stuart, Swingle, Samantha Thavasa, Xmiss, Gap, Muji, Tsumori Chisato, Anna Sui, Earth Music & Ecology, Laisse Passe, Will Selection, Mary Quant, and too many others to mention. The choice on offer by Marui sums up this company very well because you have so many elegant boutiques to visit and other companies in this adorable store. Therefore, Marui in Ueno is a magnet for fashion and the same applies to all Marui stores which enhance the lifestyle of so many Tokyoites.
Matsuzakaya is the most famous major shopping landmark in Ueno because this company was established in this part of Tokyo a very long time ago. Indeed, the company itself can trace itself back to the early seventeenth century. Matsuzakaya sells a vast array of products and given its rich history then individuals should pay a visit. Also, you can buy scrumptious food and enjoy the dining provided within this department store.
Ueno vibes can be felt in places like the Ameyoko bazaar (Ameya-yokocho bazaar) and Takeya where both places provide their own unique angle. Indeed, the Ameyoko bazaar stands out in Tokyo because you have a rare buzzing market to visit which caters for different goods. Likewise, Takeya caters for an array of products and the independent vibe is most welcoming. Therefore, both places are well worth a visit for bargains and to feel a different atmosphere which is rare for Tokyo.
Overall, Ueno is certainly very individualistic and the options available are enormous. This fact means that Tokyoites and tourists continue to flock to this part of Tokyo. Not surprisingly, the cultural angle is a huge pulling power. However, within Ueno you also have an interesting fashion scene and clearly it is a bustling place to reside. In saying that, the beauty of Ueno is that you also have many Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, and cultural places to visit. This means that Ueno caters for a broad array of individuals.
http://www.tokyoessentials.com/ueno.html (about Ueno)
http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/location/regional/tokyo/ueno.html (info about Ueno) | <urn:uuid:516c45b1-c6ce-4287-8868-0aee68374f3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://leejaywalker.wordpress.com/tag/tsumori-chisato/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935108 | 1,307 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Prefabs were the result of the 1944 Temporary Housing Programme, and were designed to provide a quick and easy solution to the massive housing problem caused by the Second World War. They were built around a central core of Kitchen, toilet and bathroom, designed by the Ministry of Works. Prefabs were a familiar site in at least three areas of Hyde by 1950. The smallest site was at the bottom end of Water Street, where the Manchester Evening News once had a small distribution centre, with only four Prefabs. The largest two sites were at Carter Street (Tin Town) and the old Brickyard area of Godley
The two pictures enclosed where kindly loaned to me by Joe Lloyd of Hyde, they are both of Carter Street around 1946 or 1947.
Carter Street construction 1
Carter Street construction 2
Many Thanks to David Stafford and Joe Lloyd for the information and photographs! | <urn:uuid:9eb7228a-bed2-485e-a322-a94a1ff55c0f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hydonian.blogspot.com/2012/07/prefabs-in-hyde.html?showComment=1341335065383 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977911 | 176 | 2.15625 | 2 |
SCTC offers Construction Site Safety Technician (CSST) Training
The CSST Training is a 100-hour training program that thoroughly examines over 50 safety-related topics. Participants receive training that allow them to return to their companies with applicable new skills and a proactive approach to safety.
The CSST Training is designed to prepare an individual or a team of professionals in your company for assuming the responsibility of coordinating a construction site/project safety program. This course introduces the trainee to the required knowledge and activities of a construction site safety technician and is intended for all employees who desire to work in the construction industry as safety personnel.
Upon successful completion of the CSST course, certified construction site safety technicians will receive a certificate of completion and wallet card, and will be entered into the NCCER ANR Registry.
This course will be offered periodically throughout the year. The minimum course enrollment size is 10 participants.
For further information on the Construction Site Safety Technician (CSST) Training, please contact:
409-948-9009 ext. 399 | <urn:uuid:2101caba-907e-4798-b0c6-5c72c1af9d6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sctexascity.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=112&Itemid=175 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918014 | 214 | 1.820313 | 2 |
ST. PETERSBURG — Douglas Parks hit the sack early Saturday night. It was so early that in the budding hours of Sunday morning, he was awake reading.
Parks, who lives in Bay Plaza Apartments at 419 Third Ave. N in St. Petersburg, got out of bed to go use the bathroom when he smelled something strange.
"I opened my door and the hallway was smoky," Parks, 41, said. "I looked out back and black smoke was just rolling over the fence. I said, 'this baby is on fire' and dialed 911."
That was at 3:05 a.m. — the same time that St. Petersburg Fire Rescue got a call that the Biltmore Apartments was on fire. The three-story wood-frame structure at 435 Third Ave. N is a few feet from Bay Plaza.
Four minutes after the call, firefighters were on the scene battling the blaze. It took more than 100 firefighters to quench the blaze.
"You could hear the crackling," Parks said. "Like it was wood in a fireplace."
It was 4:46 a.m. before the fire was under control. The Biltmore Apartments building was destroyed, said Assistant Chief James Wimberly.
Firefighters had to cut the electricity to Bay Plaza because so much water had gotten into the adjacent building's attic.
Sixty-five people were evacuated from Bay Plaza. And 96 were evacuated from the Marriott Courtyard hotel, but were allowed to return to their rooms later.
The fire's origin and cause have not been determined, Wimberly said.
Because of the safety hazard that the wood structure presented, a demolition company was called in Sunday afternoon to bring the building down.
The Biltmore Apartments building has been vacant and boarded up for many years, but the area's homeless often frequented it.
"We will take it apart, piece by piece," Wimberly said. "We are hopeful that no one was in there but we don't know for sure yet. Hopefully, we will not find anyone."
Sandy Privitera owns the Legal Building with her husband. It sits to the west of Biltmore Apartments. She said all the window blinds on that side melted and there's a heavy smoke smell in the building. Privitera said the good thing is that most of the offices on that side of the building are empty.
The American Red Cross was on the scene early Sunday and provided breakfast at the Sunshine Center on Fifth Street N to those displaced. They later moved across the street to Trinity Lutheran Church, also on Fifth Street N, where they were provided lunch, dinner and cots to sleep on.
Some residents of Bay Plaza were allowed back into their apartments Sunday afternoon but there was still too much water and smoke damage for others to return.
"Everything I own is in there and soaking wet," Parks said. "Even the few things that I managed to grab are wet."
Donald Werner, 56, has lived at Bay Plaza for about four years. He praised firefighters for managing to contain the fire to the one building despite its proximity to two others.
"If it wasn't for those firemen, I think we would have lost our building," said Werner, who has asthma. "That fire scared the you-know-what out of me. I can't believe I got my clothes on as fast as I did."
Demorris A. Lee can be reached at (727) 445-4174 or email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:5067d400-633c-4195-b3a2-3eb919a91955> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/fire/fire-destroys-vacant-building-in-st-petersburg/897203 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989752 | 738 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Used cars and the GST
There are many ways in which tax can affect a small business. In addition to income tax, the effect of the Goods and Services Tax must be taken into consideration when both buying and selling anything that relates to a business.
Q. If I buy a used vehicle costing $25,000 for my small business, which is registered for GST, can I claim the GST credit if I purchase it from a dealer? What if I buy a used car privately, does GST apply?
A. Only businesses registered for GST can claim a credit for GST in the purchase cost of an item. In addition only businesses registered for GST can charge the tax. In your case, if you buy the vehicle from a GST-registered dealer, you would be able to claim up to 100 per cent of the GST included in the purchase price. If the vehicle was purchased from a private person who is not registered the GST, none would have been included in the purchase price.
This means a vehicle purchased from a GST-registered car dealer costing $25,000 would have $2273 included in the purchase price. But the $25,000 vehicle purchased privately would have no GST included and will effectively cost more than the vehicle purchased from the dealer.
The amount of GST that a business can claim is limited to the business use of the asset. If the vehicle you are buying is used 100 per cent for business purposes, the vehicle would cost $22,727 after the GST input tax credit claim.
Q. I opened a business last year and am looking at buying a car before the end of this tax term. The car I have now is a four-wheel-drive and is not practical with all the driving I'm doing for the business. I am looking at buying an economical car for $15,000. I am in the process of keeping a 12-week log book.
I want to know how much I would get back in tax claiming this new car and if it would be feasible to buy the more economical car? Right now I spend around the $100 mark on fuel each week but expect this would drop to $60 a week. Repairs and servicing would be around $1000 a year.
A. The amount you will get back as a tax refund, or a reduction in income tax payable, will depend on the total running costs of the vehicle including depreciation, the business-use percentage that your log book supports, and your marginal tax rate.
For example with petrol of $60 a week, repairs of $1000 a year, registration and insurance of $1200 a year, and depreciation of $1875 a year, the total running costs would be $7195. On a marginal tax rate of 30 per cent, plus the Medicare Levy of 1.5 per cent, with 100 per cent business use, your reduction in income tax would equal $2266.
The question of whether it will be feasible for you to swap the 4WD for a more economical car is a bit harder to answer. Your saving in petrol costs per year of $2080 is not the only thing that should be considered when it comes to deciding if it makes sense to buy the more economical car.
Other factors that should be considered are the difference in resale values between your current vehicle and the new one, and whether over time the cost of repairs for the 4WD will become more costly. You should contact your accountant to see if he can help you with this analysis.
Questions on small business tax or other issues can be emailed to email@example.com
Tax for small busi-ness, a survival guide, by Max Newnham is available in book-stores. | <urn:uuid:d5002d0e-59b0-4cc6-b3da-e2a8d455ff44> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smh.com.au/money/planning/used-cars-and-the-gst-20110314-1btuk.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971352 | 755 | 1.515625 | 2 |
In winter I sometimes warm up by reading books with real cold. For a few years years I shuttled between Rick Bass’s Winter, about his first winter in Montana in the 1980s, and R.M. Patterson’s magnificent, shivering Dangerous River, of his days trapping the Yukon in the 1920s. Last week, partly to commemorate the centenary of Robert Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole, I re-read The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s beautifully written account of that mission and of a strange mission within it. For six weeks in the darkness of polar winter, with temperatures running between -40F and -70F (-40C to -56C) — a hundred degrees of frost — Cherry-Garrard and two other men drag a heavy sledge of supplies across the Ross Ice Shelf. They hope to reach a bay on Cape Crozier so they can collect the eggs of the Emperor penguin, for science.
Nothing beats this trip for cold. No trip could deliver more misery, for even a gram more would have killed them and ended it. They expected such daily.
On 29 June the temperature was -50° all day.… Owing to the weight of our two sledges and the bad surface our pace was not more than a slow and very heavy plod.… That night was very cold, the temperature falling to -66°, and it was °-55 at breakfast on 30 June. | <urn:uuid:f9315be5-d1f6-4706-a366-077498c833d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/tag/henry-bowers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965246 | 317 | 1.9375 | 2 |
I'm new to the forum. I'm trying to learn a bit of statistics on my own (as a pastime) but I'm stuck with this problem:
I have two independent random variables X and Y with probability generating functions
and I have to find P(3X-2Y=12)
The problem I have is that I can't find an easy way to work out the coefficients I need in Gs(t), where S = 3X - 2Y.
I know that X has a geometric distribution and that the only values that 2Y can have are 4, 5 and 6.
If I'm not mistaken, the probability generating function for Gs(t) should be:
(3t/4)^3 * (1 + t/4 + (t/4)^2 + (t/4)^3 + ...)^3 * (4/t^4 + 2/t^5 + 4/t^6)
Hence, I have to find the coefficients for t^13, t^14 and t^15 in the cube of the geometric progression. But I can't think of any easy way of doing this. So I suppose there's either an alternative way of solving this problem or there's a formula I'm not aware of which gives me the coefficients.
I'd greatly appreciate any pointers! Thanks.
Advertise on Talk Stats | <urn:uuid:0cf29eaf-1d0b-40c3-a561-34af4ec80daa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.talkstats.com/showthread.php/3592-probability-generating-function | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940985 | 291 | 1.742188 | 2 |
The past couple of weeks I’ve received a few emails from women concerning my post on Boundary Lessons. This has created some lively discussion on women’s issues, anger, betrayal, forgiveness, expression. So I’ve been asked to write about this topic some more.
There was a rough patch in my life awhile ago that caused me to have some serious anger issues. I didn’t like experiencing that emotion and sought out counseling and read many, many books about the subject. I would like to share some of the tools I’ve learned.
Know your triggers
For most women, our triggers are around issues of power, justice, and responsibility. We become angry when we cannot meet our own expectations, when we cannot change frustrating circumstances from work or home, and being treated unfairly or disrespectfully.
The self-esteem factor
Venting anger is even more harmful than keeping it in. Labels like bitch, shrew, ball-buster mean to undermine self-esteem. To enhance self-esteem people need to feel loveable, and competent, and venting anger does neither of these. Having low-self esteem makes people more likely to be easily provoked and to express their anger in volatile ways. When we are angered we tend to regard innocent acts and words as personal affronts, further undermining self-esteem.
Another counterproductive response to anger (this one was so me) is a tendency to ruminate and brood about the precipitating event, construing it as unfair and deliberately provoking said rumination only worsened angry feelings.
When we have high self-esteem we have fewer anger symptoms and are much less likely to brood about the events that provoke anger. We also have a less propensity to become angry or to keep anger in, or to vent it.
Rather than suppressing anger or negatively expressing it, women with high self-esteem tend to discuss their anger in a problem solving way, either with a confidante, or with the person who provoked it, or both.
Women with high self-esteem also do not have to busy themselves with protecting a fragile sense of self, but can identify the salient aspects of the anger producing situation and approach it from a problem solving stance.
Women who suppress their anger also suffer from low self-esteem, because they’d allowed themselves to be treated as doormats or punching bags. Occasionally after prolonged suppression, their anger would erupt in a way that was out of proportion to the triggering event, making them feel guilty and worthless, further lowering self-esteem( this was me too).
The difference between venting and expressing
*Analyse what makes you angry with out walking around it. Without blaming or reaching for complaints. Recognize it. Validate it by writing it down.
*Admit your anger, feel it out. Exercise, yell into a pillow. Go running. Tear apart old phone books. Depending on the intensity of the emotion this may not always be necessary, some may prefer to draw, paint, or write in a journal. Expressing anger in this way is so positive and healthy, and it is not venting out, hurting people. Regardless of whether or not they make sense our feelings are an essential part of who we are – no longer allow repression. With expression there is no room for it!
* Understand the deeper meaning. Once you’ve allowed yourself to really feel it and you are aware of where or who it has been directed to. There is almost always another feeling behind anger.
* Set boundaries! Plan ahead. Say what you want. Hold yourself responsible for your own happiness.
* Know your limits. Recognize those triggers. Find the roots of them.
* Value yourself and forgive. Forgive others for not always getting it right. Forgive yourself.
On a side note, any emails sent to me will absolutely, positively be private. I do not share emails or names, and do not discuss private conversation with anyone, ever. Privacy is a huge issue for me! If there is anything you would like to discuss or comment on in private please email me at firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:111816b4-9266-49ac-9b4a-553e66b74b74> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thereflectiveself.wordpress.com/tag/value/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958276 | 851 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Al Jazeera English has produced a remarkable interactive network map that identifies much of the Syrian regime and its network of supporters — from senior military officials (generals and colonels) and members of parliament to diplomatic officials and ruling family members. It tracks those who defect or die, marked by various node colors, but also keeps a running tally in chart form below this tool.
Clicking on the individual nodes, which can be zoomed to, provides information about the person it signifies. The profiles of the defectors and the recently departed include details and sometimes embedded news clips about their highlighted fate.
Unlike a network analysis map, however, the relations between the individuals themselves are not depicted and distance within the clusters are not informative. Rather they are clustered into identifiable groups, such as Cabinet, Parliament, Security and Senior Military, Diplomats and Family, with Bashar al-Assad at the center.
Not all key pillars of the regime are accounted for in this tool. Bassam Haddad has also pointed to a co-opted business elite that bolsters the regime. Their defections, sometimes as entire families or splintered ones, can prove just as damaging as those within the internal clusters choose exit over complicity. Perhaps the business elite overlap with Parliament, anyways.
I have to say that despite this regime’s excessive cruelty, watching the color coding of deaths makes it feel like a spectator sport. And if this was used as some sort of tool for the planning of attacks, it would raise journalistic ethical questions. In the midst of an internal bloody war, though, I count on the rebels having their own network maps with more precision and actionable details. And I am sure plenty of the interested and meddling foreign powers are providing much more intelligence than we see on this page.
Nevertheless, this is a useful tool for Syria observers as a graphic representation of a corrupt and decrepit political infrastructure struggling to live to see another oppressive day. As the webpage cautions users, verifying defections and even deaths can prove difficult. The regime boots out critical journalists and keeps a tight lid on information contrary to its interests. This service gives us non-partisans a barometer of a conflict that has already gone on for too long and with too much human cost. The regime’s stubborn insistence to go on with business as usual has been a decision made with the willingness to sacrifice their country.
The information in the map may not change things on the ground much, but any application that sheds more light on what’s happening there is welcome.
Finally, it should be noted that AJE has the assistance of an organization Movements.org founded by Jared Cohen, the former State Department official and Director of Google Ideas, Jason Liebman, CEO and co-founder of Howcast, and Roman Tsunder, co-founder of Access 360 Media. It’s About webpage describes itself as “a non-profit organization dedicated to identifying, connecting, and supporting grassroots digital activists from around the world.” | <urn:uuid:1d49542e-1f71-472e-b8f1-e967e68517ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://takefiveblog.org/2012/09/21/mapping-the-syrian-regimes-network-of-support/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962946 | 611 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Well we all know that one of the main reason people come to Bali is non other then to surf, because Bali do have surf spots with some of the finest wave and view.
We can see our self how surf boards are so many to see around Bali. On the beach, stores, and even in souvenir stores in any size.
So know we just want to share with you wonderful people a bit about “Surf Boards”.
The history of the surfboard dates back to the Hawaiian ancestors of the 1970′s and takes us to the epoxy surfboards of today.
The very first surfboards ever used were heavy wooden boards over 15 feet long, but these are no longer typical this days.
Now days there are more modern types of surfboards designed for beginners, intermediate and advanced surfers that can be purchased from a variety of surfboard manufacturers and surf shops.
Many surfers think that there are only two main types of surfboards that they can choose from, a shortboard or longboard.
When the truth is that there are several categories of surfboards including fish surfboards, fun surfboards, quad surfboards, epoxy surfboards, semi guns and gun surfboards.
Before you even decide to choose a surfboard it is very important to know the various aspects of surfboard design, from the different types of surfboard fins, surfboard tails and surfboard bottom contours to how the length and width of your surfboard can affect the way in which you surf. Also there are quite a few points to consider before you choose a surfboard. These include your age, weight, height and surfing ability. | <urn:uuid:675b5a80-44ef-41a3-9e15-3839fe580a2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://baliwonderful.com/2012/what-is-surf-boards.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957393 | 341 | 1.890625 | 2 |
That first post, entitled "With the help of O'Connell's Angels", was an invocation of sorts to my favourite Dublin ladies, the angels which surround the base of O'Connell's statue in Dublin. It was also an invocation to my ancestors to continue to aid me in my ongoing search for their history, and the accurate dissemination of the facts of their lives.
As I have shared in the description of this blog, my search for my family has taken me across Ireland into a history which has included both the glorious and the ignoble, the beautiful and the profane.
Although I have not always been entirely comfortable with all aspects of the information found, I am very grateful for all that I have uncovered. The course of many years of conducting family history research has taught me a number of lessons, five of which I will share here.
1. Blood is definitely thicker than water.
It seems no matter how far back in time my research takes me, I feel a sort of protectiveness about my ancestors and relatives, and their respective stories. I have suffered heartbreak over the loss of members of my family, including young children who died needlessly, and young men who fell on the fields of battle in Europe during the First World War. So too, those connections make me want to be in the places in which my ancestors and relatives once lived and died, to tread where they once did. My connection to Tom Kettle, and the two Williams, Dunne and Pell, will take me this summer to the battlefields of France on which they once fought, and where Tom is memorialized, and to the graves of the two Williams in Belgium to pay my respects.
My connection by blood leads me to continue the search for the story of my maternal fifth great-grandmother, for whom I have only a name and an approximate year of birth: Ally Howard, circa 1740. I am intrigued by Ally in part because of her forename. In a period in which the names of other family members were recorded in a more formal fashion, on the baptismal records of her children, she is simply 'Ally'. Although her granddaughter Ally Cavenagh was christened Ally, she always wore the name Allice. It seems Ally Howard is the only Ally in the family tree. For some inexplicable reason I feel a real affinity with Ally, and hope to learn more of her story.
|'INSTRUCTION' on the left, and 'PEACE' on the right.|
Two of the four female figures which sit atop the complex in Dublin called Government Buildings.
Occasionally my mother used to talk to me about her grand-aunt Alice, my great-grand-aunt. When I was a child the story of Alice frightened me because she seemed to me to be a woman of unbounded cruelty who would beat my mother and her siblings with a wooden cane. What I found to be most cruel was that the thrashing was never delivered immediately following an infraction, but instead sometime later, and usually when the child was in a happy mood. I describe one such incident in the post entitled 'Tittering Lily', and childhood tales of Ringsend.
Despite this sort of treatment from Alice, my mother always spoke of her with great love, and over the course of doing family history research I have come to understand why. Alice is remembered with love because she held together their family unit. Also, for the youngest children who had no memory of their mother, Alice, for all intents and purposes, took on that role. Without Alice, the children may have been taken away from their father following the death of their mother.
|St. Patrick's Church, Ringsend, Dublin. The church in which my parents were married.|
In the time following the death of my mother, I learned more about the connections within my mother's family, and about who shows up in such situations and who does not, who is compassionate and who is not. On a very positive note, as I shared in the post entitled 'Life lessons from my brother', I learned from my older brother as he bravely faced the loss of his closest friend. I have also learned a lot about my own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to dealing with profound loss.
|Above: Bray Head in County Wicklow|
Below: A thatched cottage in the Boyne Valley, County Louth.
Family History is also about the places and spaces our ancestors and family members once occupied, and how those places impacted their lives. Even if the houses in which they lived no longer exist, we can still get a sense of what life was like for them.
Did they live in the shadow of a mountain, or at the edge of the sea? Were their lives bounded by the narrow spaces of a tenement life, or did they thrive in a cottage in a seaside village? Did they live and work the tenant farm nearest to the Lord's castle, or did they live in the castle itself, and bear the titles of Lord and Lady?
Elements in the natural world also connect us to our ancestors, on an unbroken chain through time. Our tenth great-grandparents rose to the same sun which awakens us each morning. They gazed at the light of the same moon which hangs in our skies at night. As the tide begins its rhythmic movement, drawing sea water out and then back into Clew Bay in Mayo or Dublin Bay in Howth, I know my ancestors might have watched the rush of the water in much the same way I am seeing it now.
5. There is always room for a little levity.
One of the things I most love about family history is those stories which round out the history of our family. Some of my fondest childhood memories relate to stories my parents told me, both the amusing and the poignant, such as the story in one of my favourite posts: 'Cycling Apparitions' in the Castle ruins: An Irish Story.
There are many other lessons I've learned over the years while doing family history research, but for now I'll leave it at these five. Researching the past also means looking to the future, and as I celebrate this blogiversary I look forward with joyful anticipation to all that is yet to come in terms of research and writing.
Finally, I want to sincerely thank each and every one of you who continue to share this journey with me. I am truly very grateful!
|Detail from a stained glass window in St. Patrick's Church, Ringsend, Dublin.| | <urn:uuid:7621813c-6fed-4141-9881-037e34a2a6af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thesearchforanneandmichael.blogspot.com/2013/03/third-blogiversary-lessons-in-looking.html?showComment=1362635646682 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976843 | 1,340 | 1.703125 | 2 |
"When it comes to health care," George W. Bush said in his 2007 State of the Union address, "government has an obligation to care for the elderly, the disabled, and poor children. And we will meet those responsibilities. For all other Americans, private health insurance is the best way to meet their needs. But many Americans cannot afford a health insurance policy."
Right! Our president didn't explain why the responsibilities of government are limited to just a few groups of people, nor did he take the time to explain why private health insurance is the best way to meet the needs of others. Faced with a crisis in both public health and the federal budget, our president pulled out his remedy that has more uses than Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root -- tax cuts. This, he explained, will make private health insurance more affordable -- to those who can already afford private health insurance.
Meanwhile, one of the largest private insurers, United Healthcare, and its subsidiary, Oxford Health, have been accused of violating the US Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). Two New York hospitals, Jamaica Hospital Medical Center and Flushing Hospital Medical Center, have accused United Healthcare and its subsidiary, Oxford Health, of operating a rogue business plan. In simplest terms, UHC has been accursed of refusing to pay its bills. In some cases, patients would be admitted to hospitals with the assurance that their costs would be covered, and then the claim would be retroactively denied. When bills were accepted, payment was delayed. The lawsuit also claims that patients were steered away from Jamaica and Flushing Hospitals by being told that these hospitals were out-of-network.
Meanwhile, William McGuire, CEO of United Healthcare, has been questioned about backdating of stock options. The options he holds have been valued at around $1 billion. And, on March 5, Adweek magazine featured one of United Healthcare's television spots in its Best Sports column. Finally, the American Medical Association has accused United Healthcare of improperly calculating "usual and customary" fees for certain procedures in order to reduce the actual payments to physicians and hospitals.
Obviously, United Healthcare isn't the only insurance company to face similar allegations, and that's what's wrong with the system. Private insurance companies are in the business for their health, not yours. The costs of health care are high everywhere, and even European nations, all of which have far more efficient health care financing than the US, are scrambling for ways to keep costs down. Every modern nation faces the same challenges -- aging population (which is a result of better health care to begin with), and the availability of modern (meaning expensive) technology.
What makes the US different is the existence of the extra layer of fat, the massive health insurance industry. The health insurance industry imposes an extra layer of bureaucracy, as more people spend more time confirming eligibility for care and arguing over coverage. The money spent on television spots and magazine ads shows up in the healthcare part of the budget. Countries with national health systems don't have to pay multi-million dollar salaries to CEOs. They don't have to cover all these needless expenses, and then show a profit, and because they aren't traded on the stock market (and there are no stock options for the managers), they don't have to show a bigger profit every year. The logical first step in cutting health care costs isn't to make private insurance more affordable with tax cuts, it's to get rid of private insurance entirely.
The insurance companies won't go easily. In 2006 the insurance industry gave over $30 million in political contributions on a national level (65% to Republicans). When Hillary Clinton tried to develop a universal health care plan, while there was still time to head off the current crises, she made a sincere attempt to placate the insurers. They weren't satisfied, and the Health Insurance Association of America developed the very effective Harry and Louise advertisements to tell us that everything was fine, and we should just leave the system alone. These are companies that have a vested interest in the status quo, and they're big enough to be a real problem if they don't get their own way. Once a society is built around certain systems, whether it's the internal combustion engine and imported oil, or private health insurance, major change becomes difficult.
But it has to be done. In contrast to what our president said in his State of the Union address, government has a responsibility to care for all the people, because government is the way all the people care for themselves. Once we understand this, we may be able to improve a system that is dangerously broken.
Sam Uretsky is a writer and pharmacist living on Long Island, N.Y.
Subscribe to The Progressive Populist | <urn:uuid:39fa4b2c-e3b4-4071-a78b-e7dc533ab8fe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://populist.com/07.6.uretsky.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976518 | 966 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Laconian Kylix (Vase/Cup) - 560 BC
Hand-made ceramic copy of a Greek Corinthian Kylix from the Black Figure period of ancient Greek ceramic art, depicting a mythological scene. The original was made around 560 B.C. and features an unusual contemporary scene— King Arkesilas of Cyrene overseeing a group of workmen. The weighing motif suggests an Egyptian model, but the lively details and crisp decorative friezes make it a fine example of Laconian pottery.Approx. 20 cm in diameter (7.9").
*This is a hand-painted reproduction, individually signed by the artist.
Due to special handling requirements, product may require 2-4 weeks for delivery depending on availability. Express delivery available upon request.
GREEK BLACK FIGURE POTTERY
The black-figure pottery ( 'μελανόμορφα, melanomorpha ) technique is a style of ancient Greek pottery painting in which the decoration appears as black silhouettes on a red background. The pale, iron-rich clay turned a reddish-orange color when fired, and then the design was sketched in outline and filled in using refined clay as paint. Details would be added with an engraving tool, scratching through the paint layer to the clay below. Originating in Corinth during the early 7th century BC, it was introduced into Attica about a generation later. Other notable black-figure potteries existed at Sparta, Athens, and in eastern Greece. The technique flourished until being practically replaced by the more advanced red-figure pottery technique in 530 BC, although later examples do exist. | <urn:uuid:0583e24a-8673-4c84-aa38-e31f36452eaa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greekcostumes.us/Ancient_Greek_Replicas/Amphora_and_Kylix_Collection/Laconian_Kylix_30_cm_118_in.html?pdi=P9_128_kylix_30cm&ug=47 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935964 | 350 | 2.9375 | 3 |
The American dream of a college education for everyone who wants it and who qualifies has been the topic of hot debate around the issue of “affordability.” This has been translated into the concept that college should be accessible to all, regardless of ability to pay. A noble ideal. Indeed, my paternal grandfather refused to accept the lack of access to university for the 9th child of a rural English farm family and emigrated to Ohio where he worked his way through a small private college, Ohio Wesleyan. The American dream, fulfilled.
President Obama’s suggestion in his State of the Union message that colleges and universities have to do their part to achieve this dream by “working to keep costs down,” is inarguable. But his challenge: “Higher education can’t be a luxury – it is an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford” will be met only if we recognize and address the A,B,Cs of post-secondary education in the 21st Century:
Affordability. This currently en-vogue phrase cannot become synonymous with universal accessibility without renegotiating a partnership that has frayed over time and threatens to unravel in the face of increasing economic pressures and societal demands.
Affordability has recently been translated into the concept that college should be accessible to all, regardless of ability to pay. Again, a noble ideal. But someone has to pay. The key to making higher education affordable varies with the type of institution, but one common step lies in forging partnerships among colleges and universities, government, private philanthropy and consumers. Yes, consumers.
Students and families would do well to rethink their priorities. Which matters more: a state-of-the-art dorm with suites, or smaller classes and top-notch professors? Is a football team more important than financial aid? When a steady escalation in energy costs, coupled with an equally steady depreciation of aging facilities, are combined with ever growing expectations for cutting-edge classrooms, gyms, student centers, libraries and dorms, costs mount quickly.
Public institutions were originally founded with the premise — and the promise articulated by President Obama — of affordable education for all. They were supported by taxpayer dollars, and tuition was low, with no or very little financial aid. The notion of a state-supported university has become virtually an oxymoron, as public institutions now receive less than 20 percent of their funding from state subsidies. This dramatic drop in state support — and resultant rise in tuition — has led many such institutions to attempt to maintain affordability by seeking outside funding, often from research grants. The resulting focus on graduate programs, sometimes at the expense of undergraduate teaching, has been widely noted.
Because of the lack of financial aid, the large research universities in particular are less accessible to low-income students than are small private colleges, and these universities are educating proportionately more middle- and upper-class students.
In fact, in New York State, the private non-profit colleges and universities educate a higher percentage of low-income students than do the public universities. This is largely because they provide more financial aid and are more likely to graduate students in four years, resulting in a lower overall cost of a college education.
Basic business. Selling something for less than it costs to produce it is the first step to economic extinction. This business truism suggests any talk of affordability must be accompanied by honest talk of revenue and costs.
We leaders of colleges and universities need to do everything in our power to keep costs down, even as we manage inflation and growing expectations for financial aid and amenities. But government and the public need to accept the responsibility to support higher education and student aid in order to increase access. Shifting the cost of education from federal or state grants to student loans is not the answer, for it only places more of a demand on colleges — particularly in the private sector — to increase the aid they give students. An increase in such aid is a decrease in revenue. The bottom line is that neither the public universities nor the privates can afford to provide education for less than it costs to produce, and remain open. Those colleges and universities which stay in business will have to charge what is costs to provide education, and higher education will increasingly become a privile
ge for the wealthy, as it was in the England of my grandfather’s day.
We must find not only new revenue to meet rising costs, but ways to decrease the cost of a college education. Like many other institutions and the public in general, my own institution, The Sage Colleges, has undergone a sometimes painful process of cost containment. We have consolidated academic programs, merged administrative offices, removed reductions in teaching loads and reduced faculty stipends, and in some cases eliminated low-enrolled academic programs entirely. At the same time, we have sought to decrease the out-of-pocket expenses of our students by freezing tuition for the past three years, increasing financial aid provided by the college by 12 percent, and providing a pathway for students to achieve a bachelor’s degree in just three years.
While they have been successful at Sage, these initiatives will not work for all colleges and universities. The needs of institutions and the students they serve are too diverse to ignore the complex amalgam that is higher education.
Complexity. The President’s rhetoric glosses over the differences that exist among this country’s more than 20,000 degree-granting institutions. As one who has spent 32 years as a faculty member and administrator at two large public universities and is now the president of a private college, I can attest: Speaking in one breath of UAlbany, a state-assisted, research-intensive university, Hudson Valley, a publicly funded community college, and Sage, a private institution that depends mostly upon tuition and modest endowments, does a disservice to both the academy and the American public that it serves.
All of us in public and private education are in this business to provide the best education possible, in a variety of settings and modalities that has something for everyone. Just as our constituencies differ, so do the recipes for a sustainable prosperity.
For the large public and private research-intensive universities, Congress needs to remember the multiplication of the value of research dollars awarded through federal agencies. Not only does research keep us on the cutting edge of innovation, it supports faculty, students and facilities at our research universities, increasing jobs and innovation. At the same time, the commitment to provide basic education at an affordable price must be maintained at our community colleges.
For the private colleges, the need for partnerships forged with the business and philanthropic sectors of society has never been greater. As student needs for assistance grow right along with rising utility rates, tuition increases can only be held in check with the generous assistance of these sectors.
No matter what an institution’s configuration, federal and state leadership need to remember the return on their investment of financial aid and other support for public higher education institutions is returned many-fold in the form of innovation, new and renewed businesses, jobs, an educated workforce and responsible citizens.
Affordability is everyone’s job: Congress, the states, college administrations and faculties, students, and those who financially and emotionally support them. President Obama has articulated what many know: the old model isn’t working. But higher education is a collective responsibility. It is time we took that to heart. | <urn:uuid:f8ee3624-ae0c-4d96-824a-9beb3418cc29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.timesunion.com/scrimshaw/category/education/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968635 | 1,519 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Moped operators in Virginia would have to wear helmets and eye protection, carry a government-issued photo ID, and title, register and put a license plate on their scooters under a bill waiting to be signed into law by Gov. Bob McDonnell.
Update #3 — March 20, 2013; 9:30 AM
By Shelby Mertens | Capital News Service
New moped regulations:
- Beginning July 1st: moped operators must carry a photo ID and wear both helmet and eye protection.
- Beginning July 1, 2014: moped owners must title and register new vehicles ($10 charge), and obtain a license plate.
— ∮∮∮ —
Moped operators in Virginia would have to wear helmets and eye protection, carry a government-issued photo ID, and title, as well as register and put a license plate on their scooters under a bill waiting to be signed into law by Gov. Bob McDonnell.
Senate Bill 1038, passed by the General Assembly during its recent session, is based on recommendations from a yearlong study conducted by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.
In September 2011, the DMV was asked by the assembly’s transportation committees to study the increasing consumer demand for vehicles that do not fit the current motor vehicle definitions in the Code of Virginia.
The Non-Conventional Vehicles Study group was made up of representatives from the DMV, law enforcement, the insurance industry, highway safety, motorcycle dealers and manufacturers, moped dealers, and other state and local government agencies.
The study focused on low-speed vehicles like mopeds, all-terrain vehicles and three-wheeled motorcycles. The work group wanted to address concerns dealing with the safety and proper use of mopeds.
“The number of mopeds on Virginia roads has increased significantly as a result of the rising cost of gas, along with the affordability and availability of mopeds,” said Sunni Brown, a DMV spokeswoman.
“With the increased number of mopeds sharing our roads, there has been an increase in the number of concerns expressed from the public, law enforcement, General Assembly members and traffic safety advocates.”
The study also looked at moped-related crash and fatality statistics in Virginia, as well as laws governing non-conventional vehicle in other states.
“After reviewing those other state moped requirements, it became clear that Virginia is one of the few states imposing no requirement on moped operations in terms of licensing of the operator, titling, registration of the moped, and liability insurance,” Brown said.
Chelsea Lahmers, owner and founder of Scoot Richmond, which sells and services scooters, was part of the work group for the study. Lahmers said that right now, mopeds are in a gray area between bicycles, which do not require titles or registration, and cars, which of course do.
Virginia and North Carolina are the only states in the country that do not require moped operators to carry official identification. Current Virginia law requires that the moped operator must be at least 16 years old, but no valid driver’s license is necessary.
As a result, Lahmers said, there have been many cases in which moped drivers have been in an accident and did not have a photo ID on them.
Under SB1038, moped operators would have to carry a photo ID and wear a helmet and eye protection beginning July 1.
The requirements regarding titling, registering and getting a license plate for a moped would take effect the following year – starting July 1, 2014.
According to Lahmers, titling and registering a moped gives the owner protection against theft.
“We see mopeds get recovered by the police that never get back into the owner’s hands,” Lahmers said. “Without that title, it is almost impossible to get your vehicle back if it gets stolen.”
A $10 fee would be charged for titling. Lahmers said the titling requirement would apply only to newly purchased mopeds. The DMV is unsure of what to do with mopeds already on the road, she said.
Lahmers supports the legislation, but questions one provision: Under the bill, low-speed vehicle owners would be subject to a 5 percent motor vehicle sales and use tax, and exempt from the retail sales and use tax. In addition, localities may exempt mopeds from personal property taxation.
Lahmers notes that some organizations, such as the Virginia Motorcycle Dealers Association, want the motor vehicle sales and use tax lowered to 3 percent.
SB1038 was sponsored by Republican Sens. Stephen Newman (23rd District) and Charles Carrico (40th District). It was approved unanimously by the Senate and on a vote of 60-39 in the House. According to Newman’s office, McDonnell is expected to sign the bill soon.
Last year, Maryland passed a bill that made similar requirements for moped operators. The Maryland law requires owners to place a permanent decal on the rear of the moped and levies a 6 percent tax.
— ∮∮∮ —
Update #2 — February 14, 2013; 9:55 AM
Although the bill–which addressed other “non-conventional vehicles” in addition to mopeds–passed the Senate, it was modified by a House committee to refine the definitions of all-terrain vehicles and establish low-speed license plates for special four-wheeled electrically-powered vehicles, among other things (PDF).
As the bill was modified, it will return to the Senate for reconsideration. If the modified bill passes the Senate, it will go before the Governor. However, if the modified bill is rejected, it will then enter a committee of conference for the two bills to be reconciled.
A representative in the office of the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Stephen Newman (R- 23rd District), said the senator approved of the House changes, and expects the modified bill to pass the Senate and move to the Governor’s desk.
— ∮∮∮ —
Update #1 – January 16th; 6:30 AM
Del. Joe May (R-Leesberg) has introduced a bill (HB1984) that would require all mopeds in Virginia to be titled and registered, with riders required to carry government-issued photo identification and wear safety glasses if the moped is not equipped with a windshield.
The bill would also update the state’s legal definition of “moped” to mean:
…every vehicle that travels on not more than three wheels in contact with the ground that has (i) has a seat that is no less than 24 inches in height, measured from the middle of the seat perpendicular to the ground and; (ii) has a gasoline, electric, or hybrid motor that (a) displaces less than 50 cubic centimeters or less or (b) has an input of 1500 watts or less; (iii) is power-driven, with or without pedals that allow propulsion by human power; and (iv) is not operated at speeds in excess of 35 miles per hour.
Thus, motor scooters displacing 49cc or less would be considered mopeds under the bill, which would become law effective July 1, 2014. A representative of Del. May’s office said a House subcommittee reviewing the bill recently lowered the proposed titling tax rate on mopeds from 5% to 3%. The bill is scheduled to go before a full House Transportation Committee vote on Thursday.
The Senate is also considering a similar bill (SB1038), now awaiting vote in the Senate Transportation Committee.
Relatedly, Sen. Jeff McWaters (R-Virginia Beach) has introduced an additional moped bill (SB1007) that would require moped owners to have a valid driver’s license, complete special vehicle operations testing, and wear a helmet during operation. The bill also forbids excess of one passenger riding on a moped while in use, and increases violation fines from $50 to $250.
The bill is awaiting vote in the Senate Transportation Committee.
— ∮∮∮ —
Original — December, 27 2012; 10:45 AM
Draft legislation requiring scooter and moped1 owners across Virginia to register and title their vehicle, as well as wear helmets and eye protection, will likely come before the General Assembly sometime after it convenes in early 2013. Several motor scooter riders and enthusiasts, including the owner of local Scoot Richmond, think the proposed law is imperative.
“There were not nearly as many 49cc bikes” when state laws were first made, said Chelsea Lahmers.2 “Now there’s so many more. Something had to be fixed.” She said Virginia has one of the nation’s most lax moped laws.
She said that since 2009, Scoot Richmond has seen steady growth in annual sales, largely because of the fuel economy mopeds offer (typically 70-100 mpg). She said 2012 has been the retailer’s “best year on record,” seeing upwards of 75 moped sales in a single month. However, neither Lahmers or state officials know the number of mopeds in either Richmond or the state. “No one has any idea,” Lahmers said. That’s one of several benefits Lahmers sees in the proposed law.
The Scoot Richmond owner was one of several individuals that comprised a recent “Non-conventional Vehicle Study Group” organized by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The study group, consisting of various state departmental officials, representatives of safety organizations, and business owners, held a trio of meetings this past summer to discuss updating state laws regarding several non-automobile vehicles, including mopeds.
Lahmers said one of the chief concerns among moped discussions was to create a consistent law that encompassed all of the state rather than relying on individual cities and counties to make and enforce laws that sometimes contradicted one another.
For instance, Richmond law requires moped riders to wear helmets while operating their vehicle. However, “In many other counties, that [is] not the law,” Lahmers said. Similarly, some state jurisdictions require riders to wear eye protection while on a moped. Others do not. The proposed law will make it so that all Virginians who operate a moped must wear both a helmet and eye protection across the state.
Another benefit of the law that Lahmers praises is the requirement that all mopeds must be both tagged and titled. Currently, moped riders can operate their vehicle without a license plate, which Lahmers said help makes them “very easy” to steal. Just this summer, Richmond Police noted that moped thefts in the city were up nearly 150 percent compared to 2011. Should the proposed law pass, moped riders will be required to obtain a license plate3 for their vehicles at a one-time, $10 charge (the tag should follow the bike if its subsequently sold).
Many mopeds in Richmond are also not titled. The new law would require moped owners to pay $20 to register their vehicles with the DMV. Lahmers said that not only would tagging and titling mopeds deter theft (and make it more likely to recover a vehicle should it be stolen) but it would add another method of identifying a moped rider should she be involved in a severe accident with no identification on them. “If that person has no plate on the bike…there’s no way to find out who that person is,” Lahmers said. Titling will also help give officials and the public a better idea of just how many mopeds are in use statewide.
Many riders will be pleased with what the proposed law does not require. Moped owners will not need a driver’s license to operate their vehicle, will not need to pay property taxes, will not be required to obtain an annual state inspection of the vehicle, and will not needing to renew tags.
“I feel there aren’t a lot of downsides,” Lahmers said about the proposed statewide changes. She believes that when Delegate Joe May (R – Leesburg) brings the bill to the General Assembly sometime next year, as is expected, it will become law. “I’m very optimistic that this will pass.”
— ∮∮∮ —
- Public perception of mopeds and scooters sometimes differ from their legal distinctions. According to Virginia law, any motor bike that operates at 49cc or below is considered a moped. So, while some would see a 49cc Vespa and refer to it as a scooter, it is legally classified as a moped. Anything 50cc and above is a motorcycle. So, a 100cc Vespa may be called a scooter in conversation, but is legally referred to as a motorcycle. ↩
- Virginia considers motor scooters that operate 50cc and above motors motorcycles, which carry with them their own unique tagging and titling requirements. ↩
- Lahmers provided this photo comparing the license plates of an automobile (bottom), motorcycle (middle), and one that would likely be similar to that of a moped under the new law (top). ↩
photo by swanksalot | <urn:uuid:9f0881eb-5606-4760-bb9f-078dcaf06a0c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rvanews.com/news/stricter-scooter-laws-in-virginia-general-assembly-will-consider-them-in-2013/79215 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964499 | 2,788 | 1.953125 | 2 |
TV’s Amanda Lamb says it's not too late to light up a child’s Christmas in aid of the NSPCC
|Author: Julie Pengelly||Published: 8th December 2009 14:42|
For immediate release: Monday, 07 November 2009
Amanda Lamb (pictured), A Place in the Sun TV presenter is today reminding people in Sussex that it's not too late to give a child an NSPCC Letter from Santa before the big day.
Amanda is asking people in Sussex to support the NSPCC fundraising initiative which gives parents, grandparents, friends and carers the chance to nominate someone special to receive a magical letter from Santa for a suggested donation of £5.
The letter is personalised with the child's name and age and is sure to confirm that Santa will be making his usual stop in Sussex to wish everyone a merry Christmas. The letter is written in a hand script font and is beautifully illustrated on quality colourful paper and the envelope shows that it's been safely delivered through ‘express Rudolph Mail'.
Amanda who recently became a mum herself said: "Christmas is going to be very special this year, as it will be my baby's first Christmas. As a mother, it's very sad to think that this time of year can be a time of loneliness and family tensions for many children. I'm really pleased to be supporting the NSPCC Letter from Santa fundraising appeal and would like to encourage others to give a gift, which not only brightens up Christmas but will make a difference to a child in need."
Russell Squire, community fundraising manager for Sussex said:" Letter from Santa is a great way to make a child feel extra special this Christmas. The appeal also helps us to raise money to support children who are perhaps not as fortunate. It's not too late to buy your letter so order one now before Santa starts up his sleigh."
"It is important to remember that Christmas is not a time of celebration for every child. Over the festive period last year, ChildLine - a service provided by the NSPCC - counselled over 3,500 children between 24 December 2008 and 05 January 2009 who were in danger or distress and had nowhere else to turn. By supporting this appeal you will be helping to provide support, advice and protection for these children who are in desperate need of help."
Also on offer is a Baby's First Christmas letter from Santa, which is the perfect keepsake for newborns celebrating their first festive season.
To order a letter from Santa for a child you know, visit http://www.aboutmyarea.co.uk/templates/www.nspcc.org.uk/santa or call 0845 839 9304. Alternatively look out for a Letter from Santa order postcard in your local Debenhams, SPAR, Thorntons or Bhs store.
For more details about the NSPCC or if you would like to be one of Santa's little helpers and volunteer your time to help distribute some of our Christmas leaflets in Sussex, please contact the NSPCC South & East Appeals team on 01293 651840.
For interviews with an NSPCC spokesperson or further information please contact Julie Wills, NSPCC communications officer, on 020 7825 2606 or email firstname.lastname@example.org. Out of hours mobile: 07966 527987
Notes to editors: Caption for photograph: TV's Amanda Lamb says it's not too late to light up a child's Christmas in aid of the NSPCC.
In addition to the NSPCC Letter from Santa fundraising appeal, you can also support the NSPCC by sending flowers this Christmas.
Send flowers this Christmas: The national online florist, The Cracked Pot Flower Boutique has created a special NSPCC bouquet this Christmas called "winter wonderland", a £4 donation will be made for every bouquet sold. This amount can pay for a ChildLine counsellor to answer a call from a vulnerable child. The beautiful bouquet crammed full of silver and white flowers can be purchased at www.thecrackedpot.co.uk for £45.00.
About ChildLine: ChildLine is the UK's free, confidential 24-hour helpline for children and young people, with trained volunteer counsellors available to comfort, advise and protect. In February 2006, ChildLine formally joined with the NSPCC in a move that will ensure even stronger services and a more influential voice for children of all ages. The ChildLine service, now one of the NSPCC's listening services, still has the same well known telephone number - 0800 1111 - and children and young people can still call 24 hours a day and receive the same crucial service. | <urn:uuid:0b075de4-b531-45d2-add6-8043e26ddb39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aboutmyarea.co.uk/West-Sussex/Littlehampton/BN17/Charity/NSPCC/149365-TV%E2%80%99s-Amanda-Lamb-says-its-not-too-late-to-light-up-a-child%E2%80%99s-Christmas-in-aid-of-the-NSPCC | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945512 | 989 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Jailed Conspirators Call Coup Attempt A `Patriotic' Act
SOVIET COUP: ONE YEAR AFTER
WITH the exception of Vasily Starodubtsev, the key figures in the August coup attempt remain confined. But being behind bars has not prevented some of them from freely expressing their views on last year's failed putsch.Skip to next paragraph
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Interviews with several alleged coup conspirators - including former parliament speaker Anatoly Lukyanov, former Vice President Gennady Yanayev, and former KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov - have appeared both on television and in newspapers in the weeks leading up to the putsch anniversary Aug. 19.
Mr. Yanayev and Mr. Kryuchkov were both members of the eight-man State of Emergency Committee, which ousted former President Mikhail Gorbachev and nominally took charge of the Soviet Union for three days, Aug. 19-21. Mr. Lukyanov, though not an Emergency Committee member, is suspected of masterminding the coup attempt.
In the interviews, the accused showed little remorse, calling their actions a patriotic attempt to save the Soviet Union from collapse. The coup began the day before a new union treaty was to be signed, which would have granted the 15 union republics increased powers at the expense of central authorities in Moscow .
"I feel guilt before the Russian people only in that I could have changed their lives, could have avoided the situation the country now finds itself in ... but I failed," said Yanayev in a television interview last month.
Kryuchkov said people should not blame the coup conspirators for the ethnic conflict and economic collapse that has befallen the former Soviet republics in the last year.
"History will hold responsible for the fate of the Soviet Union not those who made an attempt to save it, but those who ruined our powerful and united motherland," Kryuchkov said in an open letter published last month in Pravda, the former Communist Party daily.
Rather than defend his actions, former Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov attacked the "shock-therapy" economic policies of the Russian government.
"We have had enough of economic experiments on our country," Mr. Pavlov said in a Pravda interview Aug. 8.
Of all the Emergency Committee members, only former Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov has expressed any regret, calling himself "an old fool" for taking part in the plot.
The coup conspirators are being held at Moscow's Sailor's Rest prison, where life is harsh in comparison to what they enjoyed when at the top of the Soviet power structure. Mr. Yazov, for example, reportedly has lost more than 40 pounds while living on a Spartan prison diet of gruel, potatoes, meat, and fish.
Some of the accused say they look forward to their trial on charges of conspiracy to seize power, saying they will be completely vindicated. Yanayev, for example, maintained it was impossible to prove the accused were guilty of conspiracy, saying they talked with Mr. Gorbachev as early as in April about plans for introducing a state of emergency. "How can you speak of a conspiracy to seize power if the highest state officials participated?" asked Yanayev.
In a news conference Aug. 17, Gorbachev called those allegations "a lie from beginning to end." | <urn:uuid:e9f30caf-ca70-462c-989b-90b3cde25a7b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csmonitor.com/1992/0819/19092.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973341 | 698 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Science Wednesday: Tweet! Tweet! Chirping from the Field.
Each week we write about the science behind environmental protection. Previous Science Wednesdays.
About the Author: Melissa-Anley Mills is the news director for EPA’s Office of Research and Development. She joined the Agency in 1998 as a National Urban Fellow.
Usually I sit in a Dilbert-style cube-farm, a warm, calm, enveloping sea of beige, beige, and more beige. So it was a rare and truly delicious treat to be invited to tag along on a field visit. The mission was simple: help Dr. Montira Pongsiri communicate her biodiversity research examining the link between biodiversity, the abundance and composition of animals, and Lyme Disease risk. To do this, my colleague, Aaron Ferster, (who previously blogged about our trip) and I had to see the researchers in action. We wanted to bring this experience to others via the web, so we loaded up on the technologies that would help us do that, a blackberry for “microblogging” (or “tweeting” on Twitter), and still and video cameras.
This turned into an experiment for the communication crew – the first time someone had microblogged live to the EPA’s Twitter account from the field. The first challenge we encountered was, of course, technical: spotty cell phone service. Recording the time and saving tweets in draft mode until reaching cell coverage solved that. But the real challenge was keeping the tweets short and sweet. Twitter has a limit of 140 characters (including spaces!) for posts. But there was so much to say about what we were seeing: white-footed mice, voles, baby opossums, catbirds, warblers, thrushes and ticks, oh my!
So there we were in the forest, watching and learning, tapping away on the blackberry, capturing video and photos, and lending a hand to the researchers. You can see the fruit of this labor on EPA’s biodiversity web page. Here you can read the tweets, and see the slideshows. Soon we’ll post video clips, so stay tuned.
Let us know what you think, suggestions are welcomed. What you would like to see in future “Field Notes” or visits with researchers?
Hopefully, through the images you’ll get a taste of this exciting research. Maybe it will encourage you to consider an environmental career as a field researcher, maybe a science teacher could use this as a teaching module, but I hope one thing is clear to see, the passion and devotion that these researchers have to gather the scientific data necessary to protect the environment and public health
Editor's Note: The opinions expressed in Greenversations are those of the author. They do not reflect EPA policy, endorsement, or action, and EPA does not verify the accuracy or science of the contents of the blog. | <urn:uuid:8eb75c9e-8a01-48c4-af9b-1aeb4da450b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.epa.gov/blog/2008/09/sciencewednesday-tweet-tweet-chirping-from-the-field/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939186 | 605 | 2.328125 | 2 |
- Historic Sites
Born In ’64
Four million Americans came into the world that year. Here are some who have already made their mark on 2006.
October 2006 | Volume 57, Issue 5
Jeff Bezos, January 12: Founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com; he was Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999.
Mariska Hargitay, January 23: The actress won an Emmy in 2006 for her role as Detective Olivia Benson in the hit show “
Bret Easton Ellis, March 7: Author of the novels
Bonnie Blair, March 18: Speed skater and one of the most decorated female athletes in Olympic history, with five gold medals and one bronze medal.
James Langevin, April 22: Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Rhode Island.
Stephen Colbert, May 13: The comedian and actor was the longest-running correspondent on “The Daily Show” before he got his own satirical news program, “The Colbert Report.”
Wynonna Judd, May 30: Singer who, with her mother, made up country music’s legendary duo the Judds; her first solo album, “
Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels, May 31, and Joseph Simmons, November 14: Pioneers of hip-hop culture and founding members of Run-D.M.C.
Dan Brown, June 22: Author best known for his immensely successful 2003 novel
Barry Bonds, July 24: Baseball player for the San Francisco Giants who holds the Major League Baseball record for the most home runs in a season (73) and has the second-highest number of all-time home runs.
Sandra Bullock, July 26: Actress in romantic-comedy films such as
Melinda Gates, August 15: Philanthropist and wife of Bill Gates; named co-Person of the Year with her husband and Bono by Time magazine in 2006.
John E. Sununu, September 10: New Hampshire Republican who in 2002 defeated an incumbent senator and governor to become the youngest member of the U.S. Senate.
Tavis Smiley, September 13: Author and host of talk shows on PBS and PRI radio.
Bobby Flay, October 9: Celebrity chef and restaurateur, with four restaurants and several Food Network television programs.
Teri Hatcher, December 8: Star of the darkly comedic “ | <urn:uuid:52b0e03c-b8c9-432d-80a2-3addefe81080> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanheritage.com/content/born-%e2%80%9964 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971649 | 511 | 1.796875 | 2 |
BLACKSBURG, Va., July 16, 2004 – Virginia Tech announced its adoption of the iTunes on Campus program, joining a group of universities taking the first step to stem the illegal downloading of music by students who want to listen to music at the time and place of their choice.
"Virginia Tech's use of iTunes will allow students to download songs legally but will also assist faculty members who may use music in their curricula," said John Krallman, Virginia Tech's director of Information Technology Acquisitions. "At no cost to the university, electronic distribution of the Apple software will be available to current faculty, staff, and students for the fall semester."
Such partnerships have emerged, in part, to respond to the national issue of copyright infringement when music, photographs and other electronic information is downloaded from the Internet. In recent months, for example, Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed several lawsuits targeted at those who download music illegally.
iTunes offers an extensive music library of more than 700,000 songs for Mac and PC customers to legally discover, purchase, and download music online. The iTunes Music Store gives users the ability to play songs on up to five personal computers, burn a song onto CDs an unlimited number of times, burn the same play list up to seven times, and listen to their music on an unlimited number of iPods.
"There is competing software on the market, but to date, no one else has approached us with this type of agreement," Krallman said. "The university is open to offering additional solutions for our students."
Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech has grown to become among the largest universities in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today, Virginia Tech's eight colleges are dedicated to putting knowledge to work through teaching, research, and outreach activities and to fulfilling its vision to be among the top 30 research universities in the nation. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 180 academic degree programs. | <urn:uuid:9622d071-1440-40a8-8029-537e8852f9f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2004/07/2004-311.html | 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 | 0.956532 | 460 | 2.078125 | 2 |
More Than $20 Billion Worth Of Gold Found In Haiti
Precious metals worth potentially over $20 billion have been found deep below the tropical ridges in Haiti’s northeastern mountains.
The most obvious question now is will government officials (both locally and on the U.S. front) be good stewards of the find or will they just tragically line their pockets? According to MSNBC, a mining company is drilling around the clock right now to determine how to get the metals—gold, silver and copper—out.
“If the mining companies are honest and if Haiti has a good government, then here is a way for this country to move forward,” says Bureau of Mines Director Dieuseul Anglade.
“When I first heard whispers of this I said, ‘Gold mines? There could be gold mines in Haiti?’” says Michel Lamarre, a Haitian engineer whose firm, SOMINE, is leading the exploration. “I truly believe this is our answer to taking care of ourselves instead of constantly living on donations.”
Geologists have found at least one million ounces of gold at two sites so far and earlier this year, prospectors found between 20 million and 30 million ounces of silver. Copper reportedly may become the most lucrative find of all; geologists suspect more than one million tons lay in just one of many areas under exploration.
As MSNBC reports, a windfall of locally produced wealth could pay for roads, schools, clean water and sewage systems for Haiti’s 10 million people, most of whom live on as little as $1.25 a day. Countless residents are still living in tents from the devastating January 2010 earthquake and efforts to rebrand the nation from a charity to investment destination have been eclipsed by self-made internal crises, controversy and corruption scandals. Here’s praying this recent find of precious metals will be the long-awaited windfall the country needs to finally get on its feet. | <urn:uuid:bf3aa643-c759-4fae-a58c-f2a4a915c370> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://live.drjays.com/index.php/2012/05/14/more-than-20-billion-worth-of-gold-found-in-haiti/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963377 | 404 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) is capable of producing thousands of seeds and last season’s parents would be proud to see the mass appearance of their offspring which have already been spotted in areas of Edinburgh and Glasgow. For people living in close proximity to these outbreaks the feeling is not shared! In 6 weeks giant hogweed infestations will be well established and pose a significant threat to anyone who comes into direct contact with this noxious weed. Giant hogweed sap is capable of causing severe chemical burns to exposed skin. Each year, the media reports cases of people burnt by this non-native invasive weed and no doubt this year will be the same. It can, however, be prevented if people know what to look out for and then avoid exposing themselves to this harmful plant. So if you spot the the jagged leaves of giant hogweed then please DO NOT TOUCH them. By learning what giant hogweed looks like you can not only prevent this menacing plant from burning you but you can help the environment by reporting it to the landowner and encouraging them to have it eradicated. To learn how to identify giant hogweed, please visit our giant hogweed page. More pics can be found on our Facebook page here.
If you think you may have giant hogweed or any other invasive weeds (Japanese knotweed, Himalayan balsam etc.) on your property please call Scotland’s premier invasive weed eradication specialist, Invasive Weeds Agency on 0845 676 9252 or contact us here.
IWA. Getting to the root of the problem. | <urn:uuid:92c197f9-ce11-43d3-8513-d7e3d89b338f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://japaneseknotweed.com/giant-hogweed-removal/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919334 | 327 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Can the Netherlands show the world how to get electric cars to catch on like it has for cycling?
The Dutch are certainly working on it. The government is offering major tax incentives for electric car buyers, building a grid of charging stations not just in cities but along highways, and offering free parking and charging in Amsterdam. Combine that with the fact that gas costs about $8.50 a gallon and the country has a relatively limited geography (than, say, the United States) and you would expect the conditions to be ripe for an electric car boom.
The results: electric car ownership is growing, up eightfold to 7,500 last year. But if you’re not impressed by that number you’re not the only one. The New York Times reports:
[E]xperiments with the cars in the Netherlands and Denmark also underscore the challenges facing this new technology. Sales have been lower than politicians and automakers hoped, representing under 1 percent of new vehicles, even here. “It seems that the industry has not convinced consumers that they can do this,” Mr. Jensen said. “If they fail over the next few years, I think investors will pull out, and that will be a problem.”
Even with the Dutch buildup of electric car infrastructure it can’t compete with the infrastructure for gas-powered cars which has been built up over the years. Range anxiety is present in even the most EV-friendly countries. Whether countries that want to see more electric cars on the road can build up the infrastructure to ease range anxiety before investors give up on electric cars will be the biggest challenge going forward.
Plugging In, Dutch Put Electric Cars to the Test [New York Times]
Related on SmartPlanet: | <urn:uuid:3a9df42c-35f0-4f6e-ab36-c8d3d58e0104> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/can-the-dutch-lead-the-way-on-electric-cars/12562 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968894 | 358 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Man, that is born of a woman, Is of few days, and full of trouble.
He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: He fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.
And dost thou open thine eyes upon such a one, And bringest me into judgment with thee?
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.
Seeing his days are determined, The number of his months is with thee, And thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass;
Look away from him, that he may rest, Till he shall accomplish, as a hireling, his day.
For there is hope of a tree, If it be cut down, that it will sprout again, And that the tender branch thereof will not cease.
Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, And the stock thereof die in the ground;
Yet through the scent of water it will bud, And put forth boughs like a plant.
But man dieth, and is laid low: Yea, man giveth up the spirit, and where is he?
As the waters fail from the sea, And the river wasteth and drieth up;
So man lieth down and riseth not: Till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, Nor be roused out of their sleep.
Oh that thou wouldest hide me in Sheol, That thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, That thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me!
If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my warfare would I wait, Till my release should come.
Thou wouldest call, and I would answer thee: Thou wouldest have a desire to the work of thy hands.
But now thou numberest my steps: Dost thou not watch over my sin?
My transgression is sealed up in a bag, And thou fastenest up mine iniquity.
But the mountain falling cometh to nought; And the rock is removed out of its place;
The waters wear the stones; The overflowings thereof wash away the dust of the earth: So thou destroyest the hope of man.
Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth; Thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away.
His sons come to honor, and he knoweth it not; And they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them.
But his flesh upon him hath pain, And his soul within him mourneth. | <urn:uuid:d820269b-c0ab-4967-99a9-5abe7cb72eb3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://amightywind.com/hebrewbible/job14.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953843 | 542 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Tuesday 31 January 2012
Ndugu Mdogo Rescue Reintegration 2012
Twelve young Street Boys aged between 5-14 years that were on May 10 2011 rescued from the street of Nairobi and underwent rehabilitation at Ndugu Mdogo Rescue Centre, have now joined school and reunited with their families.
The social workers initially carried out assessment of the children’s families to determine the stability of the home environment. In January 21 2012 the children were reintegrated back into the families and as well taken to school.
Catch a glimpse on the video below | <urn:uuid:813b15f8-c21a-4573-bbff-3a6c4b0396fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.koinoniakenya.org/koinonia/articles/art_13161.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979217 | 119 | 1.578125 | 2 |
[From Sex Scandal: The Private Parts of Victorian Fiction. Duke University Press, 1996. ($16.95 paperback). ©Duke University Press. To order, contact Duke University Press by following the link above or at 919-688-5143.]
From Chapter One, "Sex, Scandal, and the Novel"
Victorian Britain is mainly remembered for two things: sexual prudishness and long novels. This book considers the relationship between these two achievements -- the one, which inhibited the Victorians from speaking, and the other, which occasioned their extraordinary volubility. The period from 1860 to 1900 witnessed both the consolidation of modern sexual categories and the height of the long novel's cultural authority. In these years, prudishness drove fiction in contradictory directions, compelling it to generate and to prohibit discussion of sexuality. Sex scandals, both as they appear in novels and as they form a cultural context for literary production, supply the clearest means of making legible these conflicting tendencies. Newspaper scandal stories show the nineteenth-century imagination of sexuality at its most dramatic and public. In so doing, they elucidate the operations of the novel, which offers a formally structured and covert aspect of this imagination. Through the combined effects of newspapers and novels, sexuality in the nineteenth century became the subject routinely and paradoxically signalled by its ineffability -- a subject that consequently produces volatile effects at the moments when it approaches explicit articulation. Like the novel, the scandal story, which publicly broadcasts information ordinarily kept secret, supplies a rich vein of cultural material through which to investigate language about sexuality.
Sex scandal is a Victorian phenomenon, but anyone within range of the mass media today needs hardly be told that it is not only Victorian. Nineteenth-century scandals establish the terms for, and supply the history of, the manifest absorption of contemporary Anglo-American culture in sensational stories of sexual exposure. Our own press tends to ignore the fact that scandal even has a history, treating each new case as if it sprang up sui generis. The moment of scandal is a long one, and if its origins reach back in Europe and America at least to the eighteenth century, scandal stories continue today to propel mass aesthetic forms and popular press reporting. While the discursive status of sexuality has indisputably changed in this period, sexual transgressions still provoke the most sensational media spectacles. Even if, as we often imagine, we have become inured to hearing news about sex, we are still shocked -- or, at least, we are told that others are shocked -- by sexual disclosures. Media reports insist that the public is outraged by the revelation of sexual secrets not necessarily because people are outraged, but because a consensus that sex ought not to be talked about in public continues powerfully to hold sway.
The readings I undertake in this book show that sexual unspeakability does not function simply as a collection of prohibitions for Victorian writers. Rather, it affords them abundant opportunities to develop an elaborate discourse -- richly ambiguous, subtly coded, prolix and polyvalent -- that we now recognize and designate by the very term literary. Like other restrictions upon expression, the conventions of sexual unspeakability serve writers as a productive constraint, contributing to a certain historical formation of the literary. Literature in turn supplies a culturally privileged repository for the production, and recognition, of sexuality as unspeakable.
If the requirements for discretion about sexuality supply a resource for literary writers, the same might also be said of scandal-mongering journalists, who must convey the sexual content of their stories without offending their readership. Given all the fanfare of revelation and indignation associated with scandal, it may seem odd to argue that it makes anything less, rather than more, speakable. One might propose that the Victorians were in some full sense capable of talking about sex -- and nowhere would this garrulousness be more evident than in a sex scandal. But in bringing forth sexual activities for public consideration, scandal announces them in such a way as to establish their status as private, rather than -- as scandal discourse itself encourages us to believe -- radically to violate that status. However pious and disciplinary the public narrative scandal produces about private sexual transgression, though, its effects cannot be predicted according to formulas for ideological containment. While it inculcates an understanding of normative behavior in its audience, scandal also provides the opportunity to formulate questions, discuss previously unimagined possibilities, and forge new alliances. A social drama that enhances the power of one group may at the same time disempower others; while it gratifies some, it terrorizes others. And while scandal teaches punitive lessons, often deliberately intended to induce conformity in its audience, its thrilling terrors always pose the danger of inciting disobedience to the norms they advertise.
In the Victorian period, scandals of all sorts proliferated in the popular press. In part as a result of the repeal of the stamp tax in 1855 and the paper duty in 1860, the number of newspapers in Great Britain multiplied, and they became cheaper, more widely available, and more national in scope. This burgeoning medium generated stories for popular consumption on a scale that had not been possible before, and the character of both newspapers and news itself changed significantly. The papers' greater availability, coupled with increasing literacy, made scandals publicly accessible in new ways. As much as scandalous news may have exploded in the second half of the nineteenth century, however, this is not to argue that there were no scandals before 1855, nor that, characteristic as it is of this era, scandal is uniquely Victorian. Events from earlier periods, such as the South Sea Bubble, the Queen Caroline affair, and numerous notorious divorce cases, certainly fall under the rubric of scandal. Such antecedents notwithstanding, I suggest that scandal assumes its modern form only once several conditions are met: that news media are national and accessible; that they distance the subjects of their stories from their audience enough to effect a divide between the exposed private life and the anonymous public reading about it; and that the audience itself is conceived in terms sufficiently capacious to encompass a wide range of class, gender, and geographical positions.Address comments to William A. Cohen
Last modified 4 December 2003 | <urn:uuid:3e5f8da3-65d9-4cea-a72f-6422a2c89913> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/gender/wac.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948844 | 1,255 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Dr. C. Mohan’s first post about NoSQL databases:
Having worked in the database field for more than 3 decades with a fair amount of impact on the research and commercial sides of this field (see bit.ly/cmohan), it pains me to see the casual way in which some designs have been done and some supposedly new ideas get proposed/implemented. Not enough efforts are being made to relate these proposals to what has been done in the past and benefit from the lessons learnt in the context of RDBMSs. Not everything needs to be done differently just because it is supposedly a very different world now!
There are evolutionary and revolutionary products. And sometimes changing the perspective and starting from scratch is needed to validate or invalidate new or old time hypothesis. In the world of polyglot persistence there’s space for every solution that solves real problems. As perfect as one product could be it will not be able to address all the needs. The data storage space is not a zero-sum game. Winners don’t take it all.
Original title and link: The NoSQL Hoopla … What Is NonsenSQL About It? ( ©myNoSQL) | <urn:uuid:9b6fbc3f-3e72-4a9c-8799-5eea40f2330c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nosql.mypopescu.com/post/20165611252/the-nosql-hoopla-what-is-nonsensql-about-it | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934877 | 248 | 1.875 | 2 |
LEBLANC, Sir PIERRE-ÉVARISTE (baptized Pierre-Laurent-Damase-Évariste), teacher, lawyer, politician, and lieutenant governor; b. 10 Aug. 1853 in Saint-Martin (Laval), Lower Canada, son of Joseph Leblanc, a blacksmith, and Adèle Bélanger; m. 12 Jan. 1886 Josephine-Hermine Beaudry (d. February 1931) in the parish of Saint-Jacques, Montreal, and they had three children; d. 18 Oct. 1918 at Spencer Wood, in Sillery, Que., and was buried 21 October in Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery, Montreal.
It was long maintained that Pierre-Évariste Leblanc’s ancestors were of Acadian origin and had come to Île Jesus, near Montreal, in 1757, following the deportation carried out by Charles Lawrence*. However, genealogical research seems to invalidate this claim. As far back as 1666 the marriages and burials of his forebears were registered in Ville-Marie (Montreal), Charlesbourg, Saint-Laurent, and Saul-tau-Récollet (Montreal North).
Leblanc studied at the local academy and then attended the École Normale Jacques-Cartier in Montreal, winning the Prince of Wales Medal upon graduation in 1873. He taught for eight years at his alma mater, where he is believed to have given private lessons for a fee. He apparently soon became disenchanted with the profession. According to one contemporary, “His quick temper overrode the patience that must be shown in order to impart to young people the rules and exceptions of French grammar, arithmetic, and geography.” While still engaged in teaching, Leblanc began studying law at McGill College in 1875–76, and then articled in the offices of Siméon Pagnuelo and Joseph-Aldric Ouimet. Called to the bar on 11 July 1879, he practised with the legal firm of Leblanc et Brossard in Montreal. He would be given a federal QC on 7 March 1893 and a provincial one on 9 June 1899.
Before long Leblanc was involved in political life. In the winter of 1874–75, with Alfred Duclos* De Celles, Fabien Vanasse, Guillaume-Alphonse Nantel*, and Joseph-Gédéon-Horace Bergeron, he founded the Club Cartier. Its purpose was to reinvigorate the federal Conservative party, which had been defeated in the election of January 1874 by the Liberals under Alexander Mackenzie*, and to recruit young people. In this club Leblanc “made his initial attempts at the art of public speaking.” He found himself on the hustings in the spring of 1878, during the provincial campaign that followed the dismissal of Premier Charles Boucher de Boucherville by Lieutenant Governor Luc Letellier* de Saint-Just. In 1898, under circumstances even more difficult for the Conservative party, Leblanc and his sympathizers would found yet another political club, the Conservative Association of Montreal.
Leblanc won a seat for the first time in the provincial by-election of 30 Oct. 1882, when he was returned as the Conservative member for Laval. On 19 Jan. 1883 he was chosen to move the adoption of the address in reply to the speech from the throne, a privilege underlining the esteem in which the party held him. He also made his first speech in the Legislative Assembly, covering, in succession, judicial reform (codification of the laws, juries), the economy (forests, mines), colonization, government expenditures, the civil servants’ pension plan, alcoholic beverages, protection against insurance companies, and freshwater fishing. Newspaper columnists noted that the new mla seemed “very much at ease,” and that he was “witheringly scornful towards his opponents.” During the session Leblanc served on two committees, moved four petitions, three bills, and a resolution, and asked three questions. He was even called on five times to substitute for the speaker, Louis-Olivier Taillon*. But his first venture into the legislature proved brief. On 25 May 1883 his election was annulled on grounds of corrupt practices and he was defeated in the by-election held on 13 June. However, since the victory of his opponent, Amédée Gaboury, was overturned on 31 May 1884, new writs were issued for 14 July, Leblanc and Gaboury again being candidates. Leblanc won and he was also successful in 1886, but on 7 April 1888 the balloting was once more declared invalid, on grounds of fraudulent activities. He managed to win the by-election of 8 May 1888, was re-elected in 1890, and was returned by acclamation in 1892.
During these years as a back-bencher, Leblanc was involved in every battle. He defended the stance of Sir John A. Macdonald*’s Conservative federal government in the Riel affair [see Louis Riel*]. He opposed a motion to congratulate British prime minister William Ewart Gladstone, who was proposing to grant home rule to Ireland. He denounced a bill to broaden the franchise and give workers time off for political activities. Leblanc’s speeches touched off several incidents during the session. The member for Laval used every available weapon and attacked on all fronts.
After the dismissal of Premier Honoré Mercier* by Lieutenant Governor Auguste-Réal Angers in 1891 and the election of 8 March 1892, Leblanc was unanimously voted in as speaker of the Legislative Assembly on 26 April. At first glance, the Boucherville government’s choice may seem incongruous, given Leblanc’s history of partisan politics and political independence of mind, but it must be remembered that Leblanc had already five times replaced the speaker and had been completely overlooked afterwards. During the period 1892–96 he twice had the casting vote in the legislature. In one case he supported the government mlas, who opposed the abolition of the Legislative Council. In the other, he sided against them to ensure second reading of a bill amending the Municipal Code. The opposition challenged a number of his rulings but the majority in the assembly upheld all of them. Leblanc never succeeded in smoothing the sharp edges of his personality; he retained his “brawling” style, his intransigence, and, perhaps, his partisan spirit. Journalist Omer Héroux* of Le Devoir would remark, however, a few days after Leblanc’s death, that he “presided over the house with great impartiality.” While he was speaker, the house committee on rules was almost ignored. Its members were called together only four times in 61 months. (His predecessor, Félix-Gabriel Marchand*, had convened the committee 18 times in 51 months.)
The Conservatives lost the election of 11 May 1897, but Leblanc was returned in his Laval “fief” and would retain the seat until 1908. During this period, the number of Conservative mlas dropped from seventeen in 1897 to seven in 1900 and five in 1904. Leblanc was one of the chief lieutenants of opposition leader Edmund James Flynn* after the defeat of 1897, and he succeeded him in 1904. His rise to this position confirmed his talents as a debater. He defended the church’s exemption from taxation against the decision taken by the municipality of Saint-Germain-de-Rimouski (Rimouski) to tax religious property. He denounced the increase in public expenditures. He took the floor frequently and on every subject, making himself the spokesman for many citizens.
On 14 Nov. 1907 the constituents of Laval organized a celebration to honour Leblanc’s 25 years in the legislature, but he lost his seat in the general election of June 1908. After that result was declared invalid on 19 November, he was again defeated on 28 December. It was said that he had overestimated his strength during the June contest and had neglected his riding. Leblanc subsequently returned to the practice of law. He kept in touch with the mlas, since he often came to Quebec when the legislature was in session to appear before the private bills committee on behalf of clients. It seems that the old Conservative mlas were soon hoping for his return to the assembly, being tired of the duumvirate of Joseph-Mathias Tellier* and Henri Bourassa*, and that they considered offering him a Montreal riding.
When Lieutenant Governor Sir François Langelier died on 8 Feb. 1915 with the legislature in mid session, the federal Conservative government, encouraged by a majority of the province’s Conservative mlas, appointed Leblanc his successor. Leblanc served in this capacity from 12 Feb. 1915 until his death on 18 Oct. 1918.
Made a cmg in 1910, Leblanc became a kcmg on 3 June 1916. He was also a knight of the order of St John of Jerusalem in England and a member of the Mount Royal Club, the St James Club, the Montreal Hunt Club, the Garrison Club at Quebec, and the Union Club in Montreal.
Sir Pierre-Évariste Leblanc’s motto, “Always forthright,” accurately sums up his political behaviour. A lifelong staunch Conservative, he was an aggressive mla. However, his spontaneity, unselfishness, candour, and warmth apparently did much to break down partisan barriers and resentments, as contemporaries such as De Celles, Thomas Chapais*, and Abbé Elie-Joseph-Arthur Auclair bear witness. Omer Héroux expressed their thoughts when he wrote: “For 15 years the late lieutenant governor was one of his party’s most ardent fighters. Endowed with unusual physical strength and a considerable gift for public speaking, quick to retort . . . passionately fond of political battles, he was always in the front line when his party needed him. . . . Personally, we think he had no enemies.”
AC, Montréal, État civil, Catholiques, Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges (Montréal), 21 oct. 1918. ANQ-M, CE1-48, 10 août 1853, 12 janv. 1886. NA, MG 30, D1, 18: 62. Le Citoyen (Asbestos, Qué.), 20 juin 1978. Le Courrier de Saint-Jean (Iberville, Qué.), 1er nov. 1907. Le Devoir, 19, 21 oct. 1918. Le Monde illustré (Montréal), 14 mai 1892. Le Moniteur acadien, 25 oct. 1918. Montreal Daily Herald, 8 May 1909. La Patrie, 31 mars 1890. F.-J. Audet et al., “Les lieutenants-gouverneurs de la province de Québec,” Cahiers des Dix, 27 (1962): 242–43. Canadian men and women of the time (Morgan; 1898). CPG, 1918. Cyclopædia of Canadian biog. (Rose and Charlesworth), vol.2. J. [-E.]-A. Froment, Histoire de Saint-Martin (comté Laval-Île-Jésus) et compte rendu des noces d’or de son curé M. l’abbé Maxime Leblanc (Joliette, Qué., 1915), 109–14. GPQ. André Labarrère-Paulé, Les instituteurs laïques au Canada français, 1836–1900 (Québec, 1965), 298. Le Jeune, Dictionnaire. Qué., Assemblée Législative, Débats, 1883, 1890, 1892, 1907; Journaux, 1883–84, 1886–97. Résultats électoraux depuis 1867. RPQ. Rumilly, Hist. de la prov. de Québec, vols.4–5, 7, 12–13, 19.
Education, Education -- Educators, Legal Professions, Legal Professions -- Lawyers, Office Holders, Office Holders -- Provincial and territorial governments, Politicians, Politicians -- Provincial and territorial governments | <urn:uuid:b14b6a20-d137-4475-97c0-c84bed71d9d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=7519 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961028 | 2,649 | 2.328125 | 2 |
Ever since the Salman Rushdie incident, the word Fatwa has had a negative connotation. Perhaps no word has been as misunderstood, with the exceptions of jihad and madrassa.
It turns out that a fatwa is a kind of judicial opinion from an islamic religious authority. In nations that have adopted the Shariah as part of the legal system, a fatwa could have the force of law. But mostly, it is guidance for the faithful. Because Islam does not have a hierarchy like the Catholic Church, each religious authority has to rely on its own reputation as the force behind its fatewa.
Outside of the Middle East, the most respected school of Islamic studies is Darul Uloom, located at Deoband near Delhi in India. It was founded in 1866 after the defeat of Indian forces by the British. The school played an important role in the Freedom Struggle of India. It opposed the creation of Pakistan, and asks its followers to participate peacefully in Indian democracy. Its influence extends well outside of India. The mainstream of Islam in Pakistan is historically of the Deoband school. After Partition, certain logistical difficulties clearly exist and Saudi Arabia is playing an increasing role in providing support to the madrassas. (more…)
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|Clarkia is a plant genus in the evening primrose family (onagraceae). This genus has become a well studied group of species in evolutionary biology and genetics. This genus of 41 species is almost entirely endemic to California with the exception of eight species, six that occur in various areas in the western United States including California (C. amoena, C. rhomboidea, C. gracilis, C. purpurea, C. epiloboides, and C. lassensis), one that occurs in the Pacific Northwest and excluding California (C. pulchella), and one that occurs in South America (Clarkia tenella). The first studies in Clarkia were cytogenetic examinations in the 1920's. In the 1950's, Harlan Lewis' laboratory began examining this genus conducting taxanomic and systematic studies. He arranged the genus into 10 sections of 33 species. Today, the genus Clarkia has been expanded to 41 species divided into 11 sections. The Lewis lab also began to show that the genus as a whole exhibited chromosomal variation both within and between populations. After many years of study, Harlan Lewis proposed that the rapid speciation he observed in Clarkia was due to "catastrophic selection", or extinction of marginal populations followed by colonization. One example of this sort of speciation can be witnessed in C. lingulata which differs from its progenitor, C. biloba australis, in lacking petal lobes and having an extra chromosome that is a rearrangement from C. biloba. C. lingulata is known to only occur in two small locations in the Merced River Valley of California and is at the end of the range of C. biloba. | <urn:uuid:1a46a08f-7465-4e8b-abcf-b1c6b3f27b0d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://labs.mcdb.lsa.umich.edu/labs/pichersky/clarkia/clarkia.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956634 | 356 | 3.8125 | 4 |
Intel Xeon Phi - The Future of Intel MIC Architecture
At the International Supercomputing Conference 2012, Intel announced that Xeon Phi is the new brand name for all future Intel Many Integrated Core Architecture (Intel MIC Architecture) products.
The first offering from the Intel Xeon Phi family of processors have been christened Knights Corner. The Xeon Phi coprocessor uses the same 22nm 3D Tri-Gate transistor technology found on Ivy Bridge processors and comes in the form of a PCIe expansion card. Each coprocessor contains fifty cores and features a minimum of 8GB of GDDR5 memory. The card operates independently of the host operating system, courtesy of its own Linux operating system that manages each x86 core. The coprocessor is compatible with x86 programming models and will be used in high performance computing (HPC) environments.
Intel is positioning the Xeon Phi series as an alternative to NVIDIA's Tesla GPU as developers familiar with x86 programming models will not have to pick up new skillsets for NVIDIA's CUDA framework. The Xeon Phi series is part of Intel's High Performance Computing (HPC) program and it can be considered the successor to Intel's defunct Larrabee project that attempted to compete with GPUs in the realm of highly-parallelized streaming processing.
With the launch of Knights Corner, Intel hopes to challenge NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem of GP-GPU computing with its Tesla GPUs. Since the strengths of the Xeon Phi series of coprocessors are touted to be in double-precision floating point performance, Intel should focused on championing the Knight Corner as a worthy challenger to NVIDIA's Tesla K10.
Intel has not announced any pricing details with regards to Knights Corner, but it is speculated that Xeon Phi solutions will be commercially available by the end of this year. | <urn:uuid:9d29f4dd-c98e-4fc2-9cd4-72f544d1f1c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/tech-news-intel-xeon-phi-future-intel-mic-architecture | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911747 | 365 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Lawmakers seek to honor Mark Twain
Mark Twain didn’t seem to think much of Congress. (""It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress," he wrote.)
But that isn’t stopping lawmakers from seeking to honor Twain by creating a commemorative coin to raise money for organizations dedicated to preserving the author’s legacy.
The Mark Twain Commemorative Coin Act would require that a surcharge from commemorative coin sales be divided between the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Conn.; the Mark Twain Project at the Bancroft Library of UC Berkeley; the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, in New York and the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Mo.
Twain has special significance to the Senate. He once worked as a senatorial secretary.
A "down-on-his-luck" Twain needed a salary and a place to finish writing his first book and went to work for Nevada Sen. William Stewart, according to the Senate historian's office.
"Twain’s Senate-staff tenure was brief. He upset the senator’s landlady by smoking his malodorous cigars in bed; he forged the senator’s frank on personal letters; and he responded to constituent mail with characteristic irreverence.''
Senate historian Donald Ritchie noted in an interview that Twain wrote in an essay, "My Late Senatorial Secretaryship" that he left the Senate job because his boss was displeased with his responses to constituents.
"One town wanted a post office and he wrote back, why do you need a post office? None of you can read anyhow. What you need is a good jail,'' Ritchie said. "Sen. Stewart, when he found out about this, said, 'You’re ruining me.'"
“People of all ages from every corner of the globe seek to learn from Twain’s literary works, wisdom, and wit each day," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a statement. "This bill commemorates his cultural and historic legacy and empowers those organizations most committed to preserving it.”
A similar bill has been introduced in the House, with bipartisan support.
Under the legislation, the U.S. Mint would produce, for a limited time, $1 silver and $5 gold coins. The design should be "emblematic of the life and legacy of Mark Twain," the legislation says. The bills have been sent to House and Senate committees.
-- Richard Simon in Washington
Photo: Mark Twain. Credit: Associated Press | <urn:uuid:7e7db65f-6d4b-4881-8222-4a78e08f6352> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/12/lawmakers-seek-to-honor-mark-twain-.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960293 | 553 | 1.953125 | 2 |
The year began in 1998 with numerous media reflections on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark Roe vs. Wade decision and the thirty to thirty-five million abortions that the ruling legalized. (In fact, three years earlier in 1995, Norma McCorvey [known as Jane Roe], the woman whose fight for the right to an abortion led to the 1973 Supreme Court decision, said that she disavowed her position and had been baptized by the national head of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue.) In January of that year, a New York Times/CBS News telephone survey of 1,101 Americans found one- half viewing "abortion [as] the same thing as murdering a child" and a general preference toward restricting the procedure. For instance, when asked whether a pregnant woman should be able to get a legal abortion if her pregnancy would force her to interrupt her career, only 25% said yes--down from 37% in 1989. With the conclusion of this anniversary year, studies of The Alan Guttmacher Institute found a decrease in the number of abortion providers in the United States and reported the lowest abortion rate since 1975. (Click here for the Abortion Law Homepage.)
American women have among the highest rates of unplanned pregnancies and abortions of all industrialized countries. Chances are more than 2 in 5 that an American woman will have an abortion sometime in her lifetime. Although the total number of abortions --1.6 million a year-- performed in the United States and the rate of abortions among American women has remained relatively constant, more married women are getting abortions, according to recent surveys.
The American abortion history not only involves central moral, religious and social values, but has also been shaped by racism, feminism, and class dynamics. A powerful political coalition, perhaps with as many as ten million followers, has emerged to promote antiabortion legislation. By the late 1990s there were reports of extreme antiabortionists allying themselves with rightist militia groups. Philadelphia Surgeon Dr. Everett Koop, the antiabortion activist who was to serve as Reagan's Surgeon General, observed: "Nothing like it has separated our society since the days of slavery."
Worldwide, roughly one-in-five abortions occurs in developed nations. In India and China there's a different facet to the abortion-feminist connection: the selective-sex abortions of female fetuses. According to Prabhat Kumar et al. ("Low male-to-female sex ratio of children born in India," The Lancet [online Jan. 9, 2006]), selective-sex abortions claims one-half million Indian girls each year. Interestingly, they found the female feticides most common among the most educated women--those who could afford the ultrasound determination of sex tests.
Click here to see
And to see the work that has drawn the ire of pro-life and pro-choice folks alike, check out John J. Donahue and Steven Levitt's "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime" in the May 2001 issue of The Quarterly Journal of Economics.
The United States executed 53 individuals in 2006, 46 percent fewer than in 1999, when the greatest number (98) were put to death since the early 1950s. Nearly four in ten of these executions occurred in the state of Texas (whose Dept. of Criminal Justice's "Death Row" statistics page for some reason even details final meal requests). Since its reinstatement in 1976, this ritual of retribution has been administered to nearly 1100Americans. For up-to-date statistics, history and famous trials check CBSNews.com's Capital Punishment Interactive website.
According to Amnesty International's 2002 report, only two countries executed more people than did the United States during the preceding year: China (1,060) and Iran (113). Together, these countries conducted 80% of all known executions worldwide. Congress's 1993 crime bill extended the death penalty to an additional 47 Federal crimes, authorizing the death penalty for 15 Federal crimes previously punishable by life in prison. As the Derechos Human Rights organization notes, the ritual has been abolished de jure or de facto by 111 nations and is still imposed in 83 others. For one country's history of the practice, see Capital Punishment U.K.
Support for the death penalty is slipping in the United States, from a 1994 peak of 84 percent to, according to a May 2001 Pew Center report, 66 percent--about its level in the 1950s. This decline corresponds with declines in homicide rates and public support.
In what was probably the most detailed investigation of capital convictions in the United States, a study released in June 2000 out of the Columbia University Justice Project found that nearly 7 out of 10 of death penalty verdicts made between 1973 and 1995 which were appealed were thrown out. A full copy of A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995 is now available for download.
Click here to see
OPPOSITION TO THE RITUAL
In early 1998, Karla Tucker became the 145th individual executed by Texas (click here for the state's death row information) since the moratorium on capital punishment was lifted in 1977. She was the first woman executed in that state since the Civil War, despite widespread support for her cause. A telegenic individual and a born again Christian, Ms. Tucker became known as the nicest person on death row and her supporters included televangelist Pat Robertson and the homicide detective who tracked her down. After her death, some speculated that perhaps the Christian Right might soften its staunch pro-capital punishment position. It didn't. In March 2003 Texas conducted its 300th execution in 20 years.
Since fundamentalist Christians comprise roughly one-third of American adults, how might such a shift in stance toward this ultimate punishment affect their positions toward other death-related moral issues? To be more precise, to what extent does their moral ideology integrate attitudes toward capital punishment, abortion, and physician-assisted death (euthanasia)?
Looking at the combined 1996-2000 NORC General Social Surveys, let us consider responses to the following three questions:
HOW ATTITUDES TOWARD CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
CORRELATE WITH ATTITUDES TOWARD ABORTION & EUTHANASIA
IN THE MINDS OF FUNDAMENTALIST PROTESTANTS IN 2000
In Protestants' minds there was at century's end no correlation between attitudes toward capital punishment and abortion. Beliefs about capital punishment do, however, correlate with attitudes toward physician-assisted death--more so for fundamentalist Protestants than for their more liberal Protestant counterparts. For instance, those fundamentalist Protestants who favor executions are nearly half again more likely to favor physician-assisted death than those opposing executions. Thus it might be predicted that any shift toward opposing capital punishment will lead to increasing opposition in this group toward abortion and euthanasia.
We may have, observed Daniel Maguire in 1974, "overestimated our right to kill in a military setting and underestimated it in some medical and private settings."
Return to Kearl's Death Index | <urn:uuid:c98f2398-44af-49ab-8fbe-46a5a213a20d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.trinity.edu/mKearl/death-5.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953581 | 1,437 | 2.484375 | 2 |
(This post was delayed due to a profound lack of togetherness on my part)
On Wednesday evening, in a crowded and uncomfortably warm meeting room, a sampling of European planetary scientists with an interest in Mars, including a number of Mars Express people, gathered to discuss plans for the surface. So far, European attempts to reach the Martian surface have not been happy ones. The joint Russian/ESA Mars 96 mission, which carried some surface landers and penetrators, never made it to orbit. Netlander, which would have set up a system of seismometers and other instruments, never made it to the launch pad. And then there was Beagle 2.
This string of failures means that the surface of Mars is effectively an American preserve, and European scientists don't particularly like that. So for a couple of hours they kicked around ideas about what might be done. There were no decisions, and no consensus. But the debate did throw up a number of key factors and some fundamental choices.
Key factor the first: it is going to be very hard for Europe to do anything that comes even remotely close to the ambition, scope and achievement of the current American program, let alone the vigorously expanded American program that might be in place by the time any of the European missions actually flies. Europe is talking about Pathfinder scale missions like that which America mounted in the mid-1990s for flight opportunities when America will be flying the Mars Science Laboratory, an all-singing, all-dancing, long-duration "MER on steroids". (There's an interesting piece in the New York Times today arguing that America's scientific and technological lead is slipping. This may be true on earth, in some respects, but it surely isn't true on the surface of Mars)
This is the context for a first crucial choice: "keep it simple, stupid" versus scientific ambition. There's a strong argument for a KISS mission with a lot of safety margin built into its engineering specifications, one that would be counted a success if it simply got something on to the surface. It might not have much of a scientific payload, but it would get the job done. Later missions could then build on the first success. It's hard not to feel sympathy for this view: getting to Mars is hard, it's best to walk before you run, and so on. The argument is given extra weight by previous failure. Like the MER rovers this year, the next European attempt to reach the surface really has to work.
There's a technical problem here, but not an insurmountable one. Proponents of such a mission argue that once you have a landing system you can modify it for future missions. In practice this has not proved to be possible. Landing systems don't scale very well. Turning the airbag system designed for Pathfinder into teh airbag system that served for the much larger MERs was incredibly hard work -- various people on the mission ended up wishing they had designed something new from scratch. The rocket system designed for the Polar Lander will be used, in modified form, on the Phoenix lander; but teh system for the Mars Science Laboratory landers will be different again. If you design a nice little lander for a KISS mission, its entry descent and landing (EDL) system might not be much good for follow on missions if they were more ambitious.
However, that's really jsut a warning against overselling such a mission, rather than trying it. EDL systems don't scale -- but EDL expertise does, as Albert Haldemann of JPL pointed out. JPL's advantage is not that it has existing off-the-shelf EDL systems, but that it has a cadre of engineers capable of designing new ones because of the experience they've amassed. Even a primitive KISS mission would provide the beginnings of a similar body of expertise within ESA.
Perhaps a bigger problem is that a safety-first bare-bones lots-of-margin mission, sensible though it might well be, might end up satisfying no one. The scientists will want science. The politicians will want something that makes Europe look at least vaguely competitive -- spending hundreds of millions on an extraordinary technical achievement that is completely overshadowed by someone else is not terribly attractive. A KISS mission would fall into the ancient trap of making sense as part of an ongoing programme, but not on its own.
Hence the argument for ambition; let's plan a mission that does something really ballsy on the science front, thus trying for an end run of some sort. The problem here is that this was the Beagle strategy. And right now it doesn't look very good.
The thing the people in the room seem most clearly agreed on is that a straightforward reflight of Beagle is not an option. No one knows what happened to Beagle -- according to people who seemed to be in the know, no single fatal engineering flaw has been discovered by the ESA inquiry into the loss. Instead a range of things that might have gone wrong has been identified. The inquiry apparently briefed Pillinger and UK science minister David Sainsbury on its findings last week -- including, I imagine, its criticisms of management and oversight -- but it is not going to release them in a final form until mid-May or so. (An interesting detail here is that the Mars Express results that had seemed to support the idea that the atmosphere's density profile was very different form what had been expected -- effectively pinning some or all of the blame on Mars itself, or at least on those who model its atmosphere -- seem to have gone away, at least as far as the Mars Expressionists in Nice were concerned.)
With no certainty as to the nature of the Beagle loss, it's a fair bet that the next European mission to the Martian surface will have an EDL system designed afresh, almost certainly by ESA's own technical staff. Among other things, that means there would be no chance of flying anything before the 2009 launch opportunity.
This scheduling points up the more general problem with an end-run high-ambition approach: American scientists are just as bright as European scientists, they and their engineers are much more experienced in this area, and they are far better funded. While Beagle had the putative advantage of doing science that the MER rovers couldn't in terms of analysing carbon compounds, by 2009 that will be gone. MSL may well end up with instruments capable of doing a lot of the things that Beagle was meant to do -- and doing them to a series of samples carefully chosen from any part of a large well-mapped field location, rather than to whatever came to hand (or paw) within a metre or so of the landing site.
A more plausible way of distinguishing the European program would be to go for science that America is not currently pursuing. This is the allure of "network science" -- stations scattered across the planet that would do seismology and also monitor the weather and climate. A surface science program built along those lines would produce science that nothing currently planned in America is looking for. The problem is that this is exactly the science that the cancelled Netlander project was going to do. And, not to belabour the point, it was cancelled.
Some Netlander advocates at the meeting seemed to think that they might get a successor project up and running by co-opting the Beagle community. Develop a spacecraft that could carry a modified Beagle package or a Netlander package. Fly a few of each. Everyone's happy. Except the people who pay for what looks a lot like two missions, not one -- with a series of further netlanders now in the pipeline. And the engineers who get asked to design a single spacecraft bus that can do two very different things -- something that never works out as well as people contrive to convince themselves it might.
And then there's the problem of ExoMars. ExoMars is meant to be the first stage of the European "Aurora" programme, a lander and orbiter combination dedicated to Mars's biological potential that ESA talks of launching in 2009. The fact that there was a hot-and-sweaty-meeting-room-full of people discussing completely different approaches to the martian surface when they could have been off having convivial dinners can be taken as an indicator of how likely the European planetary science community thinks that 2009 mission is. If people really believed there was going to be a sophisticated European rover mission launched just five years from now they wouldn't have needed to discuss anything else.
But the people committed to ExoMars -- who are probably pretty reconciled to the idea that their mission will slip to 2011 or 2013 -- know that if some other mission sneaks in in front of them then they'll be delayed even further, especially if it's an ambitious mission.
So my reading of the micropolitics ended up like this. Netlander people are unlikely to get to Mars unless they can expand their remit and their interest-group-constituency with some set of astrobiological objectives. ExoMars people are likely to resist a major pre-ExoMars astrobiology mission. Beagle people will be in the middle of that conflict.
And if I was in charge? Of the possibilities on offer, I'd tend to back a simple Netlander-plus, with the crucial proviso that all its landers be nuclear powered and long lived. If you can develop a robust EDL system for dropping a series of seismic stations to the surface, and if those stations are long lived (which means nuclear batteries) then you can build up your network of seismometers (and surface weather stations) over time. It's a very different sort of virtual presence from that offered by rovers, but you could argue its a crucial and complementary one. It's not something America is likely to do soon, because it's probably too ambitious an undertaking for a single Scout mission (network-science scouts didn't make it to the final shortlist last time) and most of the other missions are pretty well defined. And if the Mars Express Mars-is-still-active theme pans out, seismology could look newly attractive. (As one scientist put it, "we need to be sure there are seisms before we try seismology")
And the Beagle instruments? I'd put them forward for inclusion on MSL. | <urn:uuid:cd260d42-1cde-4270-89a2-fe3bc4600e85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mainlymartian.blogs.com/semijournal/2004/05/notes_from_nice.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970135 | 2,124 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Charge any Apple i-devices with this low-profile device. (August 13th, 2010)
Product Manufacturer: Kensington Computer Products Group, div. of ACCO Brands
Price: $24.99 US
- Charges all USB devices. -Works well -Can rapid charge iPad. -Small.
- Nothing, but may be difficult to remove. -No place to park your device.
It seems that everyone and their sister make peripherals that you can charge with an USB port. The iPhone, iPod, iPad, cell phones, GPS devices, and hands-free kits all can charge via USB, and the list doesn’t stop there. You can use many of these devices in the car, but your car probably only has a cigarette lighter, sometimes called the Power Adapter in these politically correct days, so you need an adapter.
The 2.1 Amp Kensington PowerBolt Micro Car Charger is just such an adapter. It plugs into the lighter in your car, and provides a power-only USB port for you to use. This is much better than a car adapter that has an integrated cable for two reasons. First, it means that you can charge several devices with a single adapter as long as you have the right cable for the device. Second, when you're not using it, you can leave it plugged in without worrying about the cable getting in your way.
The PowerBolt is very small; it is about 1 1/2 inches long, and when plugged into your car, sticks out less than 1/2 inch. Kensington refers to its low-profile design on the site. It has a little LED on the front, which shines red when it is getting power. The connector on the front of the PowerBolt is a standard USB female USB A-type connector, just like on your Macintosh. The PowerBolt also comes with a separate USB to iPhone/iPad/iPod connector as well.
To install the PowerBolt Micro Car Charger, you simply plug it into the lighter, and you're ready to go. The smallness works against the PowerBolt though, if you have to remove it. Since it is so small, and sits almost flush with the top of the lighter, it is hard to get a grip on it to remove. The PowerBolt charged my iPhone on the way home from work one day, and my wife’s Garmin GPS the next time out. I am sure that in my car, the plug does not get power unless the key is turned on - the LED on the front of the PowerBolt make this easy to check. That means you do not have to unplug it to preserve car battery life when you leave the car.
Kensington claims that the PowerBolt Micro provides enough power to enable fast charging on an iPad. I charged my iPad while it was plugged in, but I didn't have any way of verifying that it was charging fast, as they claim. The iPad did go from 61% charged to 74% during a 25-minute ride.
The PowerBolt has a reasonable list price of $24.99, and is available from the Apple Store, as well as various online retailers such as Amazon. Now, if I could only charge my MacBook Pro over USB!
Edited by Ilene Hoffman, Reviews Editor
PowerBolt Micro Package Photo by Marshall Clow | <urn:uuid:1f866e2c-49d3-4f3c-94ec-fcb8d2783faa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.electronista.com/reviews/kensington-powerbolt-micro-car-charger.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960144 | 697 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Wal-Mart's next conquest: Organics
It pounded supermarket chains by selling groceries cheaper than anyone else, now the discount leader wants the "naturals" niche.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is pushing into organics with a vengeance.
Who stands to benefit? Organically-inclined consumers because of Wal-Mart's price-busting mentality.
Who's should be very afraid? Competitors like Whole Foods (Research), Wild Oats (Research) and other supermarket chains who've either built their business on selling "natural foods" or are aggressively expanding into that area.
Wal-Mart (Research)'s already the No. 1 seller of groceries, a category it entered when it opened its first supercenter store in 1988. Today, the company sells fruits and vegetables, milk, bread and other packaged foods in nearly 2,000 supercenter stores and about 100 smaller neighborhood market locations.
However, the retailer introduced organic food products such as milk and vegetables into the mix only about five years ago.
Industry observers believe Wal-Mart hesitated to dive wholeheartedly into the lucrative $15 billion organics market because it didn't think higher-priced natural foods were a good fit with its core low-income consumers.
Not anymore. Today, it's all about organics and "going green " at Wal-Mart, not just in food but in clothing and even in electronics and other household products, especially as the company strives to expand its profit margins, find new growth opportunities and appeal to less price-sensitive customers.
Wal-Mart spokeswoman Karen Burke said the retailer's already doubled its organic choices in fresh produce, dairy and dry food items this year, although she declined to say exactly how many organic food units are currently stocked on the discounter's shelves.
"Many of our customers told us that they're interested in one type of organic product or another. So we wanted to make it convenient for them to buy it at a Wal-Mart," Burke said, adding that Wal-Mart hopes to become the low-price leader in organics.
Among other initiatives, the retailer will launch a line of organic cotton baby clothes in May under its private label "George" and introduce organic infant formula. It'll also sell organic cotton T-shirts as part of this year's back-to-school offerings.
Beyond food, Wal-Mart also wants to take the "healthy" concept into the environment, home and electronics.
To that end, Wal-Mart has promised to buy more fish from sustainable fisheries, it's selling more energy-saving light bulbs and is asking all its laptop vendors to develop more eco-friendly machines that limit the use of hazardous components in them.
From niche to mass market
Holly Givens, spokeswoman for the Organic Trade Association (OTS), sees Wal-Mart's heightened interest in the organics market as a positive development for the industry and for consumers.
"Anytime a retailer looks to expand into organics, it's good news for shoppers because they get more access to these products," she said.
On the vendor side, she thinks Wal-Mart's stamp of approval could also provide an enormous incentive to non-organic farmers to think about expanding into organic food production as a way of boosting their sales to Wal-Mart.
"Organics still represent only about 2 percent of the total food and beverage sales in the United States but the market is growing 20 percent a year. That's much faster than the 2 to 4 percent growth for non-organic food sales," Given said.
Wal-Mart's foray into organics should help to bring down prices for consumers, said Craig Johnson, president of retail consulting group Customer Growth Partners.
"Wal-Mart gets a bad rap for many things. People say Wal-Mart squeezes its suppliers too much and hurts their business because it wants to pass along those savings to consumers through lower prices," said Johnson. "But as this middleman, Wal-Mart has also helped its suppliers to become more efficient and achieve cost savings in their businesses."
Givens declined to comment on whether or not Wal-Mart's pricing policy will hurt organic food farmers other than to say that she believed it was important that organic farmers "are able to earn a living doing what they're doing."
Can Whole Foods stand up to Wal-Mart?
Natural food sellers Whole Foods, Wild Oats, Trader Joe's and even conventional supermarkets that have a small mix of organic products have to be very wary of Wal-Mart because of its size and the volume of business it generates, said Andrew Wolf, analyst with BB&T Capital Markets.
"If Wal-Mart decides on pursuing anything, even if its tangentially related to the what Whole Foods or Wild Oats is involved in, it has to be mentioned with caution," Wolf said.
Indeed, Whole Foods' investors have taken note, with the stock down about 21 percent year-to-date. However, rival Wild Oats shares have fared better, gaining about 43 percent so far this year.
If the Wal-Mart threat was spooking investors, then both companies' stock would have headed south, Wolf said. According to Wolf, who has a "hold" rating on the stock, Whole Foods' is still logging double-digit annual sales but the retailer has ratcheted up its new store growth and that's impacting the bottomline and pressuring the stock.
"No doubt Wal-Mart is a concern. This is a franchise that has a reputation of providing great value to mid and low-income customers," said Wolf. "Right now I don't see too much of a customer overlap between Whole Foods and Wal-Mart. Whole Foods doesn't operate in the same markets as Wal-Mart and it caters to a higher-income shopper. "
Johnson agreed with Wolf.
"I don't see Wal-Mart as a great threat to Whole Foods right now. There's a lot of market share up for grabs in organics," Johnson said. "The disparity of their customer base is too great. So instead of stealing customers away from Whole Foods right away, I think Wal-Mart could successfully expand the natural food market to low and moderate income shoppers. It certainly fits in with Wal-Mart's strategy to move upscale but in a limited way."
Sonja Tuitele, spokeswoman for Wild Oats, said the company was definitely aware of Wal-Mart's organics initiatives, but not too worried.
"We can approach this from two different angles. There's very little overlap between our shoppers and Wal-Mart's. We're a specialty retailer and our customers don't focus on price first," said Tuitele.
"The other way to look at it is that it's a good thing because Wal-Mart could help expose more people to better quality food that's also better for the environment," she said. "Maybe these people don't come to Wild Oats today because of the high prices but at least they'll start to think about what they're putting into their bodies. Once they decide to lead an organic lifestyle, they'll come to us for greater variety of products and the education we provide to consumers about a healthier lifestyle."
Whole Foods could not immediately be reached for comment.
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Wal-Mart seeks to 'organize' labor its own way. Click here for more.
Wal-Mart CEO trumpets change. Click here for more.
Sorry Paris, people don't buy the burger ad. Click here for more. | <urn:uuid:1df4f985-417f-40b2-9162-c4ef16d2b8b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/01/news/companies/walmart_organics/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971464 | 1,577 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Going Up: Real Estate Is on the Rise Again in JapanPublished: November 29, 2006 in Knowledge@Wharton
Nothing symbolizes Japan's bubble economy, or its subsequent long slump, more than real estate. Now, after dropping by as much as 70%, real estate prices are ticking up, signaling a renewed Japanese economy.
A major restructuring of the nation's financial system, along with an injection of foreign capital and the introduction of publicly traded real estate investment trusts, are driving the real estate revival, according to Wharton faculty and real estate analysts working in Tokyo. "The no-growth swamp is over. Not only is real estate coming back, but it's coming back strong," says Wharton real estate professor Susan Wachter.
For the first time in 16 years, land prices rose in Japan's top three markets -- Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya -- during the 12 months that ended in July. Commercial land prices were up 2.6% while residential property was up O.4%. In addition, new development is visible in Tokyo, rents are on the rise and investors are returning to the market.
Speaking at the fall members' meeting of the Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center at Wharton, Michael Pralle, CEO of General Electric's $48 billion real estate unit, said Japan is his top pick among current global real estate hot spots, including China, India and Germany.
GE has been in Japan since 1998 and owns $3 billion in real estate assets, including 120 office buildings and 9,000 residential units. Last year, it formed a partnership with Shinsei Bank to increase its holdings. "We like Japan a great deal," said Pralle, noting that GE is drawn to Japan by strong yields, attractive land prices that are still near 25-year lows, tax advantages and improving economic conditions overall.
According to Wachter, because real estate is viewed as a long-term asset, renewed confidence in the industry reflects optimism about the long-term prospects for Japan's economy. "The structure of Japan, Inc. has been substantially reformed and there is no going back at this point."
In addition to banking and other financial reforms, Wachter says a key element of today's interest in real estate is the government's willingness to abandon politically popular, but economically unjustified, public works projects in rural and agricultural areas. As a result, a drain on government spending has been eliminated, and more deserving projects in urban areas will receive more support. "There's no more business as usual," says Wachter. "This is a long-term structural reallocation that will not only affect Tokyo, but also the second-tier and even third-tier cities."
The Rise of REITs
Another driver of the real estate recovery is the same cure that was used for the United States' real estate crash following the savings and loan collapse of the 1980s: real estate investment trusts. Japan enacted new laws creating real estate investment trusts, known as J-REITs, in 2001. Now there are more than 30 J-REITs in operation with assets of $30 billion.
Nomura Real Estate Holdings raised the most money in an initial public offering of any Japanese company this year, trading up as much as 13% during its first day of trading in October. Nomura's debut topped the record set a month earlier by the Nippon Commercial Investment Corp., a real estate investment trust of Pacific Commercial Management.
Andrey Pavlov, a visiting professor of real estate at Wharton, explains that because REITs can be exchanged at any moment, managers are responsive to the market. Better response to market conditions helps prevent disconnects between supply and demand that lead to boom and bust cycles in real estate. "REITs are a great source of capital because they provide fairly-priced financing and there is a lot of discipline due to that immediate and direct connection to shareholders," says Pavlov.
Concerns are overblown that investors in REITs will be able to pull out abruptly if they unexpectedly need access to their capital, forcing REIT managers to unload long-term assets at what might be a low point in the market, he adds. "That's typically not a problem. REITs get the money from investors to buy the assets but the REIT itself is unaffected. There is no cash flow change."
REITs in Japan, and elsewhere, are a better way to finance real estate than bank lending, Wachter notes. Banks often structure deals with incentives or fees that encourage lending, leading to transactions that are often not aligned with market demand.
REITs also are structured with tax incentives that tend to draw international capital to Japan and other markets, she notes. REITs pool money from the sale of stock and use that to make investments in real estate. The shareholders then receive dividends paid out of profits earned by the REIT on rents or property sales. The dividends are not taxed.
For example, Nippon Building reported a 37% rise in net income to 9.85 billion yen ($84 billion) for the six months ending in June. The REIT paid out a record dividend of 19,391 yen, up from 17,046 yen for the same period a year earlier.
Wachter also points out that REITs are not closely correlated to the stock market and can provide balance for institutional portfolios, another draw for foreign capital. Finally, REITs bring transparency and better analysis to the market in which true value is often hard to gauge because shopping malls and office buildings, even homes, don't come up for sale everyday. "Once the funds are large enough, then you can have analysis with an entirely new level of sophistication, which again brings discipline," says Wachter.
The Japanese mortgage market is also moving toward greater securitization which will give investors another reason to invest, Wachter adds.
Following World War II, Japan created the Government Housing Loan Corp. (GHLC), to provide easy residential financing for homeowners. During the bubble years, as housing prices skyrocketed, Japanese homeowners were offered numerous types of exotic mortgages, including a 100-year mortgage to be paid off by the borrower's grandchildren.
As part of the nation's economic reforms, GHLC in 2001 was converted from an issuer of loans to a packager of mortgage-backed securities. By 2003, GHLC had securitized $8 billion in Japanese mortgages. Next year a new agency, the Japan Housing Finance Services Agency modeled on Fannie Mae in the United States, will begin securitizing loans written by private financial institutions.
Poised for the Future
Richard Georgi, a guest lecturer in real estate at Wharton and managing partner of Grove International Partners, a global private equity firm, estimates that Japan's economy bottomed out in 2002 and 2003. While hopes of earlier recoveries based on fiscal and monetary stimuli were subsequently dashed, Georgi says the current optimism is deserved because the government and the Japanese people have made significant changes to their economic system. "We are now starting to see some emerging growth patterns that we think are sustainable because they are on the back of real reform," says Georgi, who is based in Tokyo.
Rents are starting to tighten in Tokyo, which Georgi notes is double the size of Manhattan and four times the value. "This is a supertanker economy, so small changes can result in huge movements of capital."
As the nation's deflationary spiral comes to an end, interest rates will likely continue to rise. As that happens, investors sitting on yen-denominated Japanese government bonds will seek new asset investments. The capital-starved real estate industry will make an attractive investment, Georgi predicts, adding that the rest of the developed world has been in recovery for some time and is now priced high. Other countries, he says, will need to work off a real estate bubble created after the sharp interest rate declines that followed the September 11 terror attacks. "Japan is poised for future growth, although it is still at a low base compared to historic norms."
Foreign investment has played a part in Japan's recovery, but will not be a dominant force going forward, Georgi suggests. Changes in the nation's postal saving system, he notes, could free up vast pools of household savings that will flow into real estate. "Foreigners are here, and they have been playing a role in injecting liquidity into the market. But the most important transformation looking ahead will be the return of domestic capital to the real estate market," says Georgi.
Yasuhiko Watanabe, senior advisor at Mitsubishi Estate Co., says the Japanese real estate revival started in spring 2005. Vacancy rates for Class A office space in central Tokyo are now less than 1%, compared to 4% to 6% a year ago. Rents in the desirable Marunouchi district, located between Tokyo Station and the Imperial Palace, are up 20% from a year ago. "Probably we are now in a position to worry a bit about too much too soon," he says.
Japan's strong corporate comeback and infusions of domestic and international capital are feeding the real estate resurgence, says Watanabe, who also cautions that excess liquidity in the global economy could set off a financial crisis if the system experiences a shock. "The market could lose its steam if, for any reason, today's high level of liquidity becomes vulnerable. Geopolitical risks as well as financial and economic risks might play a significant role in the outlook for the market."
In addition to the new REIT investment vehicles, Eric Perraudin, managing partner of Japan Management Consulting in Tokyo, says ultra-low interest rates are contributing to the recovery. Investors can borrow 80% of the value of a building with a non-recourse loan at a rate of 2%. At the same time, building regulations governing the density of buildings have been eased, allowing developers to build more space on less land.
Pavlov warns that despite confidence in the real estate turnaround, the Japanese economy is still in a delicate state and policymakers will need to steer a careful course between stimulating growth and guarding against inflation. "As the economy picks up there will be more demand for real estate," he says. "It is very important that, in the face of the up-tick in demand, there is sufficient availability of funding, whether its bank loans, equity investment or private investment. You don't want to be in a credit crunch. Even if people want to buy and develop real estate, if they can't get the financing, nothing happens."
According to Pavlov, there is often a fine line between too little credit and too much. "Let me emphasize that you should never stimulate or encourage policy with the availability of cheap or under-priced financing. It has to be fairly priced," he says. "But you want to make sure lenders and other sources of capital don't overreact to the previous crash and stop lending altogether. There needs to be a golden balance between sufficient financing and not under pricing.... It's not an easy thing to do."
Perraudin notes that prices for commercial buildings have recovered about 30% to 50% from the bottom reached in 2002-2003. However, the gains are concentrated in Central Tokyo, Central Osaka and Nagoya. In other major cities, the market is flat, and small cities and rural areas are still experiencing declines. "Demand for real estate in central areas is limited," he says. "Demographics are bad, with the Japanese population and workforce shrinking."
He points out that land prices in some regions are still artificially high, propped up by subsidies for agricultural use and ownership of property by debt-ridden public institutions and governments.
John Percival, a Wharton adjunct finance professor, says that despite all the reforms that have been made in Japan, real estate is likely to remain cyclical. While companies and financial institutions have undergone major reforms, there remains more cross-shareholding between banks and other businesses than in the United States and much of the rest of the world. "Real estate is coming back," says Percival, "but that's the good news and the bad news. If there's another bubble, then we'll go through this whole process all over again." | <urn:uuid:9bc8786f-68bb-4beb-af56-a2f92bdde3ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1612 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964527 | 2,515 | 1.632813 | 2 |