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|The contents of this web site are © of Sussex Record Society and its contributors|
|The Sussex Record Society|
The Society has recently celebrated its centenary. It was founded in 1901 with the aim of publishing the original records of the county’s history from documents found in the great national libraries (such as the British Library and the Public Record Office) and in the archives of its great country houses and county families.
Through the following century it has published over 90 volumes about Sussex covering countless aspects of life in the county. The life of St. Richard, bishop of Chichester, letters of 18th century dukes, tribulations of 18th century paupers, county government during the Civil War, correspondence of iron founder/gunmakers, mediaeval charters of the diocese, struggles of Victorian commoners for their rights in Ashdown Forest, church court records of the earliest cricket match, Elizabethan politics in Lewes, the last years of shipping in Rye, cellarers’ records of Battle Abbey, a diary of Sussex life in the Great War - these are a few examples from almost a thousand years of Sussex history published in the Society’s 100 years.
The Society is proud of its achievements over its first century in preserving and making accessible the County’s rich heritage of historical documents. And its work continues with a programme of projected publications which includes: records of 18th century cricket, the Sussex Home Front in World War 1, plans of railways and public utilities, mediaeval records of Arundel College, and 18th & 19th century Coroners records.
By joining the Society you will be playing your part in keeping up this vital work. And in practical terms you will receive each new volume - free – when it is published and will also have the opportunity to buy volumes from our existing stock at considerably reduced prices (usually a discount of around 33%). Our main social occasion is our AGM - which we try to arrange at different venues of historical interest around the county with a lecture rounding off the formal business of the day.
Barbican House, High Street, Lewes, BN7 1YE | <urn:uuid:7bcb7da4-12fa-498b-a90a-d5d04f55aac3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sussexrecordsociety.org/srshistory.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947133 | 441 | 1.71875 | 2 |
South African Concul-General Jeanette T. Ndhlovu Sat 12th March 2005 1:00 PM California African American Museum in Los Angeles National Endowment for the Humanities and the California Council for the Humanities
South African Consul-General Jeanette T. Ndhlovu, as part of South Africa’s National Human Rights Month and Deconstructing Apartheid: The Photography of Peter Magubane, conveys courageous women’s efforts to combat apartheid, followed by a Q&A, short film and light repast hosted by the South African Consulate, Los Angeles.
Deconstructing Apartheid: The Photography of Peter Magubane
Peter Magubane, internationally recognized photojournalist, is a social realist, who through his camera documented the plight of minorities in South Africa and the egregious practices of apartheid. His images, bought at great personal cost, spotlighted the government’s callous implementation of its punitive racial policies and eventually were instrumental in turning international indifference to concern and opposition. 84 photographs and artifacts document Magubane’s examination of the development and implementation of government sanctioned injustice in South Africa. The exhibition’s focus is on Magubane’s life, dramatic instances of daily life under apartheid and the South African Black Power Movement. The exhibition culminates in its documentation of the indigenous cultures of rural South Africa, preserving and recording their arts and crafts, ceremonies, rites of passage and religious practices as social, economic and political changes transform the nation.
The museum is located at 600 State Drive in Exposition Park. Admission is free. Parking is $6. For more information, please call (213) 744-7432.
Date: Thursday, May 12, 2005
Time: 1:00 PM - 12:15 PM
Los Angeles, CA 90095 | <urn:uuid:78519b4f-27bd-488a-a12e-3dd2e92a9fd0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.international.ucla.edu/africa/events/printevent.asp?eventid=7481 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906792 | 381 | 2.15625 | 2 |
John Embree was born in New Haven on August 26, 1908. He was
the descendent of Southern abolitionists, and was "the heir
of a distinguished moral tradition which he, in his own way followed
He received his A.B. at the University of Hawaii and his M.A.
from the University of Toronto in 1934. While at the University
of Chicago, from which he receive his PhD in 1937, Embree pursued
an anthopological study of a Japanese community. From this work,
he eventually published Suye Mura, which became an "immediate
After receiving his PhD, Embree returned to the University of
Hawaii as an assistant professor, moving to the University of
Toronto in 1941. During the war, he worked in a variety of public
service capacities; such as preparing pocket guides for the Office
of Strategic Services, improving the administration of the Japanese
relocation centers as principal community analyst for the War
Relocation Authority, and heading studies of the Civil Affiars
Training School for the Far East for the War Department. With
the end of the war, he joined the State Department as Cultural
Attaché in Bangkok and Saigon, helping to develop their
program of cultural relations.
When that program was reduced in scope, he returned to the U.S.
and in 1948 joined the Southeast Asia Studies program at Yale
University as associate professor of of Sociology. While at Yale
he began to lay the foundations for a long-term program of research
by preparing a comprehensive bibliography of the region. His published
papers on Southeast Asia are brief, but in his article, "Thailand
- A Loosely Structured Social System" (American Anthropologist,
Vol. 52, No. 2, 1950), ".....the beginnings of a comparative
analysis of social structure of great promise" could be seen.
In July 1950 he was made Director of Southeast Asia Studies following
the sudden death of Raymond Kennedy.
"He was struck down by an automobile and instantly killed
in Hamden, Connecticut on Friday afternoon, December 22, 1950.
That day the anthropological profession lost a colleague it could
ill afford to lose."
- Fred Eggan (1951), "John Fee Embree, 1908-1950," American
Anthropologist, Volume 53, Issue 3
"John Embree had less than two decades in which to work.
Yet within that time he gained both some public name and the lasting
regard of his fellow professionals. One of the most competent
contemporary observers of social life and of the Far East, he
was also one of the most versatile....at the time of his death
he was a specialist in two areas of Asia; and as an anthropologist
he was both scholar and actor in public affairs. The historians
of his fields will no doubt remember him primarily for these acomplishments.
His contemporaries, however, will recall him as readily for his
personal attainments. Of sensitive moral fibre, he was by character
and conviction animated by an extraordinary and classic sense
of pity. This quality of course won him the respect and admiration
of his colleagues. It also opened to him the hearts of those less
fortunate than himself, and of the people among whom he worked."
"John Embree's best work has been deeply productive for
his contemporaries. His restless curiosity and his belief that
his work should be both faithful to fact and of service to ethical
ends are the main tradition of his fields. It is with a deep sense
of loss that we have to record his early death.
- John Pelzel (1952), The Far Eastern Quarterly, volume 11, Issue
2 (February 1952) pp. 219-225. View
Sterling Memorial Library
Miscellaneous papers of John Fee Embree, sociologist and director
of Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University, 1950. Two journals
of trips to the Far East, 1926 and 1947-1948, the latter accompanied
by numerous photographs, postcards, wood cuts, and other illustrations
are included. Also in the papers are correspondence and mimeographed
memoranda of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social
Science Research Council and the Far Eastern Association, 1948-1951,
on the advancement of Asian studies in the United States. There
are also documents, reports and lecture outlines from the School
of Naval Administration, Hoover Institute, 1945-1946, on the Far
East and countries in the South Pacific, and manuscripts by Embree
on East Asia and the Japanese in America. http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ms.0976 | <urn:uuid:365f685c-9366-4097-9b99-9fd3bd057ce6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yale.edu/seas/Embree.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962854 | 978 | 2.484375 | 2 |
When my mom was still packing my lunches I always wanted her to include a Fruit Roll-Up or a Fruit by the Foot. The sugary, brightly colored treat was the perfect snack from the prospective of a kid in elementary. But a quick glance at the ingredients and it makes you think twice — maltodextrin, the ever controversial corn syrup, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, acetylated mono and diglycerides sodium citrate, malic acid, xanthan gum, locust bean gum, potassium citrate, yellow 5, red 40, and blue 1. Oh yeah, and fruit.
But those delicious treats don’t have to be filled with all that crap, and you can make them at home too. Pretty easily in fact. Here’s what you need:
- 2 lbs of peaches (canned or fresh)
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/4 cup sugar
- Juice of half a lemon
Combine the water and sugar, dissolve over heat. Add the peaches and bring to near boil.
Add the lemon juice, then put the mixture into a blender and puree, or use a stick blender to do it in the pot.
Turn on oven to 180 degrees F.
Bring that all back to a boil and reduce by at least a third, or until about the consistency of apple sauce or baby food.
Spread the mixture on cooking sheets covered with parchment paper. Spread out the mixture until it’s about 1/8 inch think. Pop in oven for 2-4 hours, until the fruit is tacky to the touch, but won’t spread to the touch either.
Cut with a pizza cutter, store in an air-tight container for up to a month.
Don’t be afraid to use other fruit, or combine fruit. Strawberry kiwi? Peach Strawberry? It all sounds pretty delicious. | <urn:uuid:a5a3875f-3484-49f3-a34f-6bb93d086534> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://andrewthomason.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/homemade-fruit-leathers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919754 | 395 | 1.742188 | 2 |
From the New York Times:
On that supercharged day in 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Ala., she rode her way into history books, credited with helping to ignite the civil rights movement.
But there was another woman, named Claudette Colvin, who refused to be treated like a substandard citizen on one of those Montgomery buses — and she did it nine months before Mrs. Parks. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his political debut fighting her arrest. Moreover, she was the star witness in the legal case that eventually forced bus desegregation.
Yet instead of being celebrated, Ms. Colvin has lived unheralded in the Bronx for decades, initially cast off by black leaders who feared she was not the right face for their battle, according to a new book that has plucked her from obscurity.
Last week Phillip Hoose won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for “Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice,” published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The honor sent the little-selling title shooting up 500 spots on Amazon.com’s sales list and immediately thrust Ms. Colvin, 70, back into the cultural conversation. | <urn:uuid:2ba06ff7-4d79-44b3-8701-2a55d08a1782> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newsone.com/364807/overshadowed-by-rosa-parks-civil-rights-catalyst-finally-recognized/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959648 | 267 | 2.359375 | 2 |
One word comes immediately to mind when I look at the Proenza Schouler shoe styles featured at this week’s runway show: Architectural.
The actual upper materials, ranging in type from patent to metallic fabrics to fur, are not insignificant to the overall appearance; but the truth is that these shoes are all about the Heel.
These shoes are stunning and appealing. Other words that might adequately describe them are Modern, Engineered, and Structured. The feat accomplished here is maintaining a balance between the structured presentation of the heel’s metallic architecture while maintaining an open an light appearance. The successful merging of these aesthetics to produce a shoe that is edgy without appearing heavy is quite an achievement.
One word I didn’t use in describing these is ‘Futuristic’. The first thing that comes to mind when I hear this term are images from Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner along with this poster image of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis:
And while I agree that these shoes would look completely at home on many a science fiction heroine, films such as Blade Runner & Metropolis can also be said to have a ‘gritty’ feel. And gritty is definitely not a word that should be used in describing these marvelous Proenza Schouler creations. | <urn:uuid:b611eff8-dec5-4885-9b2a-e39849f9f97d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shoeblog.com/blog/runway-report-proenza-schouler/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943498 | 267 | 1.5 | 2 |
Home and Garden
Say something inspirational! Spell out your artistic side with today's offer from Imagine Letters.
Select any name or word (up to 7 letters of your choice) to spell out something wonderful. Photographer Neeva Kedem has been photographing letters from New York, Paris, Rome, Toronto, and other parts of the world for 20 years. Create your child's name, write out an inspiring quote, or just proclaim 'LOVE' on any room in your house. She also has a new religious line of symbols and letters as well as a great selection of Hollywood stars.
The first photo of letter in the "Imagine Letters" collection was created in the early '90 by professional photographer Neeva Kedem, during one of her photo tours. She loved to take pictures of buildings and architecture, where most of the letters were hidden, waiting to be discovered. The letters simply popped up from the buildings, designs, streets, trees; anywhere she looked, she could see letter's shapes. During the next 20 years Neeva has photographed more and more photos of letters; some in her home country Canada and some in other countries. Today, the idea of using photos of objects to spell out a word of inspiration became a successful business. | <urn:uuid:58c6a580-3983-488c-ab65-4325f0a30118> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.plumdistrict.com/moms/discount/everywhere/home-and-garden-deals/imagine-letters-25-for-up-to-7-pieces-of-letter-art-a-70-value-ACYyYX | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967211 | 257 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Ms. Taylor-Austin is available for presentations on “Counseling Gang Members” for agencies, clinicians and professionals. She is also available for consultation with therapists and therapeutic agencies.
I have been counseling gang members, and those at-risk of joining a gang, since 1988. I do not believe there is any one “right way” to counsel gang members.
But I am often asked, “What works with gang members?” I wanted to address that question on this web page. Each counselor’s or therapist’s personality, approach and techniques vary; however, here is what has worked for me over the years.
First, it is important to distinguish between a client who demonstrates pathology and one who does not. With clients who have some type of mental illness, it is important to use a team approach, with a psychiatrist, psychologist and any other appropriate personnel. Because clinical needs vary so widely and greatly, treatment of clients who demonstrate pathologies will not be discussed here. Instead I would like to focus on the “average” youth who has fears, insecurities, possibly poor social skills and/or poor academic skills.
It is important when counseling gang members to ascertain if you are working with a multi-generational gang or one that the client wants to join for protection, money, status or a feeling of “family,” etc. When working with multi-generational gangs, it is important to note that the biological family has been entrenched in that gang for years and years. To break with this tradition is to break completely with the biological family.
So, let’s begin the discussion on the “average” youth who is not in a multi-generational gang.
Youth often join gangs for a number of reasons: protection, the lure of fast money, status, the need to belong, etc. Often youth may join gangs believing that doing so will be one way to achieve those goals, then they soon find gang-banging is a stressful life. Our goal, as therapists, is not to tell these youth what to do, but to lead them in examining different aspects of their lives so that they may come to a decision about whether their current way of life is “working for them.” When counseling youth, remember: if their life is in imminent danger or if they have overtly threatened the life of another, you must report that fact to the appropriate authorities. It is crucial to explain confidentiality issues at the beginning of the counseling relationship, for that reason.
I have found Reality Therapy to be the most useful theory when working with gang- or criminally involved youth. The therapist’s role and function is to establish rapport and respect (respect and honesty are highly valued by gang members, and by most people for that matter), establish a structure and limits for the sessions, focus on the client’s strengths and potential, actively discuss the client’s current behavior and actively discourage excuses for irresponsible behavior, introduce and foster the process of evaluating realistically attainable wants, teach clients to formulate and carry out plans to change their behaviors, and help clients find ways to meet their needs while encouraging them not to give up when they become discouraged (Corey, G, Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy,1991).
Using the ‘WDEP System’ is useful. This approach explores the clients Wants and Needs; Direction and Doing; Evaluation; and Planning and Commitment. Reality Theory has demonstrated itself to be a concrete approach and one that youth can understand and relate to easily.
I have also found Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Therapy to be useful in counseling gang members or those at-risk. This theory takes the A-B-C theory of personality and challenges the client’s beliefs. The therapist challenges the irrational thoughts of the client and demonstrates to clients their illogical thinking. I, personally, tend to use a combination of RET and Reality Therapy.
Professional relationship with the client has proven to be the most essential element in counseling gang members. When clients feel comfortable, they can cry, laugh, and share openly with the counselor. It is very important when counseling gang members or at-risk gang members not to place your values on the client. If you feel you cannot remain neutral with a client, it is best to refer that client to another counselor. Clients do not need to be told that gang-banging is “bad.” Rather they need to have their beliefs challenged, and they may need to learn new ways in which their needs can be met in less violent ways. To counsel a gang member effectively, you must have a full understanding of gang culture, norms, and values. Read as much as you can on the subject. Ask your client to explain these things to you. Over the years I have seen more and more at-risk youth “posing” as gang members, when indeed they are not. It is important to be able to tell the difference!
Before closing, there is one more thing I would like to address. I have heard colleagues talk about “de-programming” gang members. Not only do I believe that approach is dangerous, I also believe it is disrespectful to the client. I believe it is more beneficial to work with a client’s self-identity and goals in life (or lack thereof), to explore ways to meet needs in a non-violent manner, and to encourage hope. If you personally feel that you are not the person to work with a gang member in this manner, please find someone else who can. One of the worst things we, as therapists, can do to our clients is impose our values and beliefs upon them.
I highly recommend reading Gangster: Fifty Years of Madness written by my colleague Dr. Lew Yablonsky. Dr. Yablonsky describes counseling programs that have worked successfully with gang members. His book can be ordered at a discount via my bookstore page. You can use the same URL to find other gang-related books.
Another program I’ve found successful is Aggression Replacement Training (ART). ART has proven itself effective with gang members in St. Louis and in Colorado (it is being used elsewhere across the United States and abroad). The thought behind ART is that youthful offenders, including gang members, are dyssemic. Dyssemic people have space boundaries (either physical or verbal) and are deficient in empathy, anger management and basic social skills. ART is based on Dr. Arnold Goldstein’s theory, which was tested in Harlem, NY. You can read about it in his book The Prepare Curriculum. ART stresses personal responsibility and uses structure over time to change the behavior of violent youth. Aggression is a learned behavior and ART uses role-playing activities, mind/gym exercises, and body movement to inculcate appropriate behaviors and social expectations. A school that utilizes ART would have a schedule of three hours of social skill building, academics, a parent component, and more. For information on ART, click here
For information on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, click here
The following essay was written by an 8th-grade student I counseled. His name has been withheld to protect his privacy.
“To me gang related is dumb because they have all these colors and streets. If you go in a street wearing blue and you go through wearing red, you can get jumped or shot. People like picking trouble and wanting to fight. To me I’d be friends with them but I won’t be in the gang. It is stupid to me. My friends could get my back if someone don’t like me. I have been asked to be in a lot of gangs but I said no because some of my family been in a gang. Now they’re in jail. Almost all my family were in the Latin Kings. I don’t want to be like them.” | <urn:uuid:9e4e02f0-ac57-4cca-a854-16aff5809887> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gangcolors.com/?page_id=8 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961967 | 1,638 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Parade marking the arrival of the Three Kings in the city.
Traditional popular festival which takes place in Chiclana's streets. Fancy dress competitions and comedy and songs satirising local, national and international events. There is a big parade on the 2nd saturday of carnival.
Popular and religious celebration, with processions through Chiclana's most picturesque streets as well as the famous "saeta" (short sacred song in Flamenco style).
Originally a cattle fair, this is now the most representative celebration in the town. Eating, drinking and dancing "sevillanas" are the main activities in the marquees on the fair ground which become a second home to people from Chiclana during this period.
Popularly known as the feast of "Juan and Juana", in the preceeding days huge figures are built to satirise topical events in the city. On this night, the figures are burnt and snails are served as a traditional "tapa" dish at local bars.
Procession (called "La Banda") that starts and finishes at San Sebastián Church.
Procession from the "Capilla del Carmen"(chapel) in "La Barrosa" Beach to Sancti-Petri, where the procession takes to the sea going from Sancti Petri beach to La Barrosa beach.
Great street party with fabulous fireworks from the Ermita viewpoint.
Chiclana celebrates this day by offering flowers to the patron saint and with a long procession from San Telmo Church. There is traditional grape treading in honour of the patron saint.
This festival has recently been revived. The main attraction is a display of decorated market stalls in the town's market place. Scenes of political or popular significance are recreated using- fresh products including meat, fish, poultry and vegetables. "Saint's bones", a traditional sweet, are commonly sold and eaten at this time of the year. | <urn:uuid:e3e48f27-df52-4355-9558-5a55618ea210> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.turismochiclana.es/Festivals.765.0.html?L=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954285 | 403 | 2.09375 | 2 |
So what is this magical interval training? It's normal, steady exercise interspersed with bouts of high-intensity exercise. For example, running at a steady pace for five minutes, then running as fast as you can for two minutes, then returning to your normal pace and repeating the pattern throughout your workout.
The Beauty of Speedplay
Why is it so great? Because a 45- or 60-minute session of interval training burns more fat and calories than steady exercise performed for the same amount of time. According to a study by University of Guelph researcher Jason Talanian (and reported in ScienceDaily), "After interval training, the amount of fat burned in an hour of continuous moderate cycling increased by 36 percent."
You can use interval training (also called "speedplay" because you're speeding up, recovering, and speeding up again) in your weekly cardio training. And you can incorporate intervals into your strength workouts by alternating between muscle-building exercises and short bursts of cardio.
If you've ever wondered what all these popular "boot camp" classes are about, we'll pull back the curtain for you … they're just an hour of strength and cardio interval training. Participants will do push-ups for one minute, then spend two minutes running. They'll do a few sets of biceps curls with a dumbbell, then spend a minute doing jumping jacks.
Interval training is great because the frequent change in exercise and intensity keeps your brain and body busy so you never get bored. The strength training creates lean muscle, while the cardiovascular moves increase endurance. And research shows that this combination melts fat like a hot frying pan! | <urn:uuid:ab91c004-fedf-4804-9e9b-d42e2f15646d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.babyzone.com/beyond-baby/life-beyond-baby/week10-exercise-interval-training_69863 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937052 | 333 | 1.90625 | 2 |
What’s this I keep hearing about feminism promoting “victimhood”?
Anti-feminists often suggest that feminism encourages women to “see themselves as victims,” that feminism is actually insulting to women because it suggests they need “special rights” in order to be able to compete with men. The concept of programs that encourage women to pursue STEM professions or that teach men not to rape, therefore, implies that women are poor defenseless victims.
But does it really?
I never really understood this critique of feminism because I remember how powerless I felt before I became a feminist, and I know how powerful I feel now. Maybe there are feminists who feel like hopeless victims of the patriarchy. I don’t know; I haven’t met any.
You know what really sounds like victimhood to me? Anti-feminism.
Anti-feminism says that women must act “feminine” and men must act “masculine,” no matter how they personally feel like acting.
Anti-feminism says that sex and romance must follow certain scripts, and if you don’t like those scripts, too bad. If your desires fall outside of those scripts, again, too bad.
Anti-feminism says that all-male (or mostly-male) legislative bodies can make laws telling women whether or not and on what conditions they may obtain an abortion and how they may acquire birth control. If women don’t like that, well, they can just run for elected office themselves because this is a democracy after all. How they’ll do that while popping out all those babies they didn’t want? You tell me.
Anti-feminism says that men can’t control their sexual urges and refrain from raping women that they find attractive. It says that women do have the power to prevent their own rapes, but only by not having consensual sex, not drinking, not going out alone, not flirting–pretty must just staying home where it’s safe.
Anti-feminism says that if a dude keeps making inappropriate comments to you at work, you should suck it up and learn how to take a joke. Guys will be guys.
Anti-feminism says that if you’re a woman who wants to have children, you’ll have to accept the fact that caring for your children will reduce your career opportunities while the man you had those children with continues advancing through the ranks. If you wanted a more successful career, you shouldn’t have had children.
Anti-feminism says you should spend hours of your day putting on makeup, removing your body hair, fitting yourself into uncomfortable clothes, and tottering around on high heels–in fact, many of these things are often required of women in the workplace. It says that appearance is a reasonable factor to judge people by, because if you’re ugly, you can just choose to take better care of yourself.
Anti-feminism says that if you’re fat, you should spend your time, money, and energy on getting thin. Otherwise it’s acceptable to discriminate against you.
Anti-feminism says that you’ll be happier, a better woman if you marry a man and have kids. Even if you think you won’t. Do it anyway.
Anti-feminism says that if that man abuses you, you should make an effort to be a better wife.
I can’t think of anything less disempowering, more victimizing, than to live by an ideology like this one.
I know why people think feminism is all about victimhood. The reason is that feminism, like all progressive ideologies, rejects the idea of meritocracy. Feminism acknowledges the fact that while hard work and perseverance matter, some people still start out the race already ahead, while others must run the race dragging weights behind them. Acknowledging this reality, documented by decades of academic research and personal narratives, isn’t promoting victimhood. It’s lifting a rug that we’ve swept so much crap underneath.
The meritocratic worldview can be beneficial both to individuals and to society. On an individual level, it maintains the “just world hypothesis,” the idea that the world is fundamentally fair, that those who deserve success will get it and those who get screwed over must’ve deserved it somehow. It can be much more comforting than believing that sometimes people get screwed over for no good reason. And not just because of bad luck, either, but because our society may be set up in a way that screws over certain groups more than others.
On a societal level, the meritocratic worldview keeps people working hard. After all, if you truly believe that hard work is all you need to succeed, well, you’re probably going to work pretty damn hard, unless you’re just lazy and don’t deserve success anyway.
But understanding that hard work isn’t all there is to it doesn’t mean that people won’t work hard. It means that people will try to fix the world’s broken parts rather than pretending they’re not there. Feminism is empowering to me and to so many other people precisely because it shows us that we don’t have to accept the world as it is–even if some of the realizations it provokes are uncomfortable and jarring.
Most people will feel like victims at some point in their lives. Life has a way of putting almost everyone through shit that’s completely reasonable to feel sorry for yourself over. For what it’s worth, I’ve never felt like a victim as a woman. I’ve felt like a victim as a child who was bullied by her own teachers, as an adolescent who lived with untreated depression for nearly a decade, and as a young adult who sometimes feels like there’s just no way to get anywhere in this world without tons of money. Sometimes.
But there are people out there who have had their lives irrevocably altered by sexism in ways so horrible I try not to think about them. If those people feel like victims from time to time, I think they’re completely justified.
And that’s not something that can be blamed on feminism. That’s something that feminism, unlike the dogmatic pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps crap we keep getting fed, is actually trying to address. | <urn:uuid:c4e6d707-f437-4a5a-8a98-cb9187c0c3b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://freethoughtblogs.com/brutereason/2013/02/01/feminism-and-victimhood/?wpmp_switcher=mobile | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96455 | 1,354 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Written by Luigi Zingales
Republicans need to be pro-market, not pro-business.
(Grand Ol' Gang by Andy Thomas)
For 30 years, the Republican Party dominated American political life, winning five of the seven presidential elections before 2008. But the GOP has taken its lumps of late, culminating in its loss of Congress in 2006 and the White House last November. As the party suffers not just from a leadership vacuum but from considerable internal division, its future direction is unclear. This much, however, is certain: as America struggles to emerge from a financial crisis, any renewal of the Right will require the Republicans to rethink their approach to the economy. An agenda focused chiefly on tax cuts, as the Republicans' has been since Ronald Reagan's presidency, is no longer enough.
In 1980, Reagan won the election by attracting a substantial portion of Democrats with three simple ideas.
First was the fight against the Soviet Union.
Second, the battle against the excesses of the state: "Government is the problem, not the solution," Reagan famously said.
Third, and most relevant to this discussion, was an overarching faith in economic growth. Growth improves everyone's well-being, lifting the underprivileged from poverty and eliminating the need for costly fiscal redistribution. With growth as the objective, a deep cut in tax rates for higher-income people was not only justifiable but necessary, because it would increase the incentive to work and thus foster productive activity.
Lower taxes became a winning political weapon for the Republican Party-all the more so, perhaps, because the cuts weren't accompanied by painful reductions in public spending. Fiscal deficits, traditionally unacceptable to conservatives, had even become welcome to the Right, which regarded them as a way to "starve the beast." By burdening the state with debts, the thinking went, we could reduce its ability to expand and thus the danger that it could suffocate the economy.
In 1980, when the highest marginal income-tax rate stood at 70 percent, this economic platform was extremely attractive, as were Reagan's other key ideas. The country had just seen a decade of low growth and high inflation, defeat in Vietnam, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the humiliation of the American hostages in Tehran. It was ready for change. An entire generation adhered to the Republican Party, forming a majority so solid that it permitted George W. Bush to be elected president 20 years later.
The success of the Republican platform went well beyond the voting booth, of course. The war against the evil empire brought the collapse of Communism and the democratization of the Soviet Bloc countries. During the Reagan years, the battle against the state led to a negative real growth rate in nondefense public spending. Deregulation freed the economy from excessive constraints and, together with tax cuts, sparked enormous entrepreneurial and creative forces. A golden era of economic growth began in the early eighties and continued, aside from a few minor recessionary interludes, until 2007-a quarter-century of unparalleled prosperity. After the Reagan economic reforms kicked in, the United States grew by an average of 3 percent each year, against Germany's 1.9 percent, France's 2.1, and Italy's 1.8.
Not only did this revolution allow the U.S. to outpace Europe in income and productivity; it also transformed the country from a manufacturing economy into an innovative, high-powered service economy. Today, America does not produce iPhones, but it generates the technology and the design that permit a piece of plastic to sell for $300. It does not manufacture microchips, but it creates the technology that lets some wafers of silicon sell for thousands of dollars apiece. It does not build computers, but it develops the operating systems that run them. This transformation has enabled the United States to face the competition of emerging countries from a position of strength.
Yet today the Republican brand, so successful for over two decades, has lost some of its luster. In part, it's simply the curse of success. The war against the evil empire has been won. Taxes were substantially reduced. The battle for deregulation has achieved many of its main objectives. Deregulation was a cry of freedom that most Americans supported back when Chicago banks couldn't open branches in southern Illinois-let alone in other states; when a truck had to obtain a permit to transport merchandise across state borders; and when a government agency decided the prices of commercial flights. But now that these restrictions are only a distant memory, the public may see further deregulation as unnecessary, or even as a cover for the financial lobby, rather than as a symbol of freedom.
In part, too, Reagan's platform lost its appeal because the Republican Party frequently betrayed it. How can Republicans effectively campaign against big government when the size of government increased by 33 percent during President George W. Bush's first term, the largest increase in federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson? How can Republicans portray themselves as free-market paladins when Bush's last secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, orchestrated the most massive state intervention in a Western economy since François Mitterrand's nationalization of the French banking system? The party has much to do before it regains credibility on this score.
The Republican approach has also lost traction because the situation of Americans changed. By juxtaposing his faith in the American dream to Jimmy Carter's portrayal of American malaise, Reagan captured the hearts of traditionally Democratic blue-collar workers who believed that with hard work, every generation would enjoy greater prosperity than the previous one. But this dream has materialized only in part. Though American GDP has doubled in real terms over the last 25 years, median real income has grown by only 17 percent. While the richest 1 percent of the population has almost tripled its real income and the richest 0.01 percent has more than quintupled it, the bottom 10 percent has increased its income by only 12 percent. While in 1980, an average high school graduate earned 26 percent less than a college graduate, in 2005 this gap had grown to 38 percent. The blue-collar "Reagan Democrats" are among those struggling the most.
America's transition to a service-based economy is one reason for its growing income inequality. A country specializing in manufacturing needs many high-quality (and well-paid) workers. By contrast, a service economy can succeed with a relatively small number of geniuses who design devices like the iPhone and earn millions, while less educated workers have fewer opportunities to make a good living.
Ironically, the relatively slow increase in American workers' wages also results, in part, from the success of the American economic model throughout the world. In the first three quarters of the twentieth century, companies operating in the United States enjoyed unique advantages: a well-educated workforce that shared pro-market values and a government sensitive to the will of the people. Much of the rest of the world was run by dictators, torn by ideological conflicts, and populated by illiterate or semiliterate people. American companies dominated easily, and American workers shared in the prosperity that came from their privileged position.
Over the last 30 years, however, these values have spread around the world. Communist countries and autocracies have become democracies. Generalized education has become the rule. And much of the world has embraced basic market principles. America has succeeded in nation-building after all-not by force, but through example. The only unfortunate consequence of this otherwise happy story, which has brought greater prosperity across the globe, is that the comparative advantage of U.S.-based production has declined, and this has put downward pressure on American workers' wage growth.
Many Americans could not help but feel disgruntled at such developments. Until recently, though, they could console themselves with the robust capital gains on their home-equity and retirement accounts. Unfortunately, the financial crisis has destroyed this comfort, too, creating significant discontent. In a survey taken in December 2008, 60 percent of Americans declared themselves "angry" or "very angry" about the economic situation.
This anger is affecting political decision making. In September 2008, when Congress voted against the first version of the Paulson plan, it did so in response to the anger pervading the country. This past March, the House of Representatives approved a 90 percent tax on AIG bonuses for the same reason. And when President Obama contradicted his advisors and condemned the bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch executives, he, too, was responding to widespread anger. The question is not whether this populist pressure will have a strong influence on policy decisions, but how: Will it work to destroy, or to improve, the market system that has brought so much well-being?
If Republicans ignore popular anger, as the party establishment did last autumn, they leave a powerful and potentially disruptive force in the hands of Democrats. The majority of the Democratic establishment does not believe in the American dream, in the importance of providing incentives for economic growth, or in the market as the best mechanism to allocate available resources. The Democrats could channel popular anger into protectionism, 90 percent tax rates, and onerous new market constraints.
In Republican hands, though, populism could become a strong force for positive change. At the beginning of the twentieth century, facing similar conditions of rising income inequality and popular anger, President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, approved a series of fundamental reforms that turned the United States into a modern country. From creating the Food and Drug Administration to trust-busting, Roosevelt used public anger to counterbalance the power of large companies (and monopolies) and create a more efficient and popular form of market capitalism.
The Republican Party today must follow a similar strategy, updated for present circumstances. It has to move from a pro-business strategy that defends the interests of existing companies to a pro-market strategy that fosters open competition and freedom of entry. While the two agendas sometimes coincide-as in the case of protecting property rights-they are often at odds. Established firms are threatened by competition and frequently use their political muscle to restrict new entries into their industry, strengthening their positions but putting their customers at a disadvantage.
A pro-market strategy aims to encourage the best conditions for doing business, for everyone. Large banks, for instance, benefit from trading derivatives (such as credit default swaps) over the counter, rather than in an organized exchange: they can charge wider spreads that way, and they can afford to post less collateral by using their credit ratings. For this reason, they oppose moving such trades to organized exchanges, where transactions would be conducted with greater transparency, liquidity, and collateralization-and so with greater financial stability. This is where a pro-market party needs the courage to take on the financial industry on behalf of everyone else.
A pro-market strategy rejects subsidies not only because they're a waste of taxpayers' money but also because they prop up inefficient firms, delaying the entry of new and more efficient competitors. For every "zombie" firm that survives because of government assistance, several innovative start-ups don't get the chance to be born. Subsidies, then, hurt taxpayers twice. A genuinely pro-market party would have resisted more vigorously the Wall Street bailouts, in line with popular sentiment.
And a pro-market approach holds companies financially accountable for their mistakes-an essential policy if free markets are to produce sound decisions. A pro-market party will fight tirelessly against letting firms become so big that they cannot be allowed to fail, since such firms may take risks that ordinary companies would never dream of (see " 'Too Big to Fail' Must Die," Summer 2009).
Being pro-market does not mean being heartless. For markets to work properly, inefficient firms must be allowed to fail, but their workers don't have to suffer unduly. In fact, it's a market imperative that they don't: the harsher their pain, the more politically feasible it becomes to subvert the market system to alleviate that pain. In Italy, for example, where unemployment insurance does not exist, governments frequently bail out large firms, fearing televised images of massive protests and the political cost of thousands of families without financial support. (The mechanism is so automatic, in fact, that some firms hire more people once they get into trouble.)
Thus a wise pro-market party understands that any strategy is only as good as it is politically sustainable. Markets enjoy political support primarily because of the well-founded belief that they do a better job of providing goods and services than any other arrangement. This conviction often weakens during major crises like the current one. So a pro-market party should favor a robust safety net-for people, that is, not companies. Of course, this safety net should be run on market principles as much as possible. For example, unemployment insurance should retain incentives to look for work, and the health-insurance industry should be opened up to competition. But defenders of markets cannot ignore the importance of providing such security for citizens.
They also cannot ignore the nation's growing income inequality, and the loss of confidence, among a substantial part of the population, that the future will be better than the past. Revolting against the devastating effects of technological change, early-nineteenth-century British workers destroyed mechanized looms. Modern Luddites don't need to resort to violence: they can resist progress by supporting protectionism and regulation. And they will do so, unless they're given a stake in the brighter future of technological progress-retraining for new jobs, sending their children to better schools, and so on.
The knee-jerk Democratic reaction is to give these poorer citizens entitlements disguised as rights: the right to a job, the right to health care, the right to appropriate a fraction of someone else's income. The Republican response should focus on providing opportunities. Parents should have access to good schools for their kids, regardless of their financial means or where they live. The best way to deliver on that promise is through a voucher system. Students should have better access to loans to finance their education because everyone gains from a better-educated workforce. The unemployed should have access to retraining, which can also be designed through a voucher system. Health care should be available in the marketplace; the current system, in which only employers get a tax deduction for health insurance, reduces labor mobility and increases the cost of becoming unemployed.
In the end, it's not only the Republican Party that would benefit from these policies: it's America and the world. The United States has been the inspiration for all who believe in freedom, both political and economic. Its identity, however, is predicated upon maintaining a political consensus that supports market values. Growing income inequality, the financial crisis, and the perceived unfairness of the market system are undermining this consensus.
Today, the Republican Party is the best candidate to carry the pro-market flag. Being in the opposition, it is less subject to the lobbying efforts of big business, which always sides with whoever is in power. The party's current leadership vacuum and intellectual disorientation create the perfect conditions for renewal and the emergence of a new agenda. And the nation's social tension creates a sense of urgency. Above all, the Republican Party has a moral obligation to support markets. The United States and the world are threatened by protectionism, state intervention, and dirigisme. If Republicans don't stand up for markets, who will? | <urn:uuid:7ca7bfa6-e469-49b2-9e12-935a3c4e7b2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rightsidenews.com/2009110727036/us/economics/an-economic-agenda-for-the-gop.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964293 | 3,144 | 1.875 | 2 |
Quantum Computation at Room-Temperature for a Reasonable Time
Scientists have successfully overcome one of the obstacles in quantum computation by storing data on quantum bits (qubits) for about two seconds at room temperature.
Many of the current systems utilize extremely complex and costly equipments to trap an individual electron or atom in a vacuum at absolute zero temperature. However, a team of researchers from Harvard University have solved the problem of working at normal temperature by using diamonds, which are atomically pure materials on Earth.
“This research is an important step forward in research toward one day building a practical quantum computer,” said Kucsko, who works in Lukin’s lab and is one of two first authors of the paper. “For the first time, we have a system that has a reasonable timescale for memory and simplicity, so this is now something we can pursue.”
Scientists have used the impurities in ultra-pure, laboratory-grown diamonds, to store quantum bits of information for about two seconds i.e. an increase of six orders of magnitude over the earlier systems. They are hopeful that in the near future the technical issues will be resolved to increase the life span of storage up to hours.
Advances in such systems could also be utilized in “‘quantum cash’ (a payment system for bank transactions and credit cards that relies on the coding of quantum bits to thwart counterfeiters) and quantum networks (a highly secure communications method that uses quantum bits to transmit data).”
You can read the abstract of the paper below;
Stable quantum bits, capable both of storing quantum information for macroscopic time scales and of integration inside small portable devices, are an essential building block for an array of potential applications. We demonstrate high-fidelity control of a solid-state qubit, which preserves its polarization for several minutes and features coherence lifetimes exceeding 1 second at room temperature. The qubit consists of a single 13C nuclear spin in the vicinity of a nitrogen-vacancy color center within an isotopically purified diamond crystal. The long qubit memory time was achieved via a technique involving dissipative decoupling of the single nuclear spin from its local environment. The versatility, robustness, and potential scalability of this system may allow for new applications in quantum information science.The research appeared in the June 8 issue of the journal Science.
(Credit: Stephanie Mitchell / Harvard Staff Photographer) | <urn:uuid:143e3e0c-f8f6-4635-8dfe-50cc12a4eb43> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://technorati.com/technology/article/quantum-computation-at-room-temperature-for/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921723 | 504 | 3.4375 | 3 |
Lifeline is a home emergency reponse system, which enables elderly, handicapped or medically fragile persons to live independently while assuring them that if they need help quickly, it will be available to them.
Lifeline gives you the confidence and freedom to live on your own, because there is always someone standing by to help, 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week, at the press of a button.
Lifeline works through your telephone. Whenever you need help, one press of your lightweight, waterproof help button activates a small in-home unit called a communicator. It puts you in touch with a caring Lifeline Monitor who talks to you to find out what kind of help you need. He or she will then call one of your friends, neighbors or relatives ("responders" who come to your home to check on you). If you need more professional help, such as an ambulance, your Monitor will call for it immediately. And if you press your button and cannot speak, your Lifeline Monitor knows exactly what to do.
Lifeline services have a $30 monthly rental fee. There is a one-time installation fee of $25.
In order to receive Lifeline, you will need:
- A private telephone line. Lifeline does not work with cell phones.
- A modular telephone jack, which accepts the snap in type of telephone cord. Most modern telephones have a modular jack.
- The names, addresses and telephone numbers of three responders who would be willing to assist you if you needed help.
- A willingness to provide keys for the three responders (or willingness to let them know where a key is located on your property).
For more information regarding the Lifeline Service at Columbus Community Hospital, please call the Community Relations Department at (920) 623-1280. | <urn:uuid:7e1d8942-a1bd-4d66-ba86-db3033c6fae6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cch-inc.com/Services/Lifeline/Pages/default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929433 | 379 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Energy policies of Member States will have to be harmonised, even after the implementation of the EU’s Energy Strategy 2020; therefore the objectives should be identified until 2030, and then to 2050, stressed National Development Minister, Tamás Fellegi, during the informal meeting of EU Energy Ministers, held in Gödöllő, on 3 May 2011.
The meeting was focused on Energy Roadmap 2050, which aimed at the establishment of a low carbon energy system, and the EU’s external energy relations. Tamás Fellegi pointed out during the meeting that, “During the term of the Hungarian Presidency, discussions started on the documents, which could possibly determine the possible directions and the system needed in the energy policy for decades to come.” In addition to Commissioner Günther Oettinger attendance, the meeting was also joined by CEO of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Nobuo Tanaka, and representatives of several non-EU Member States of Europe.
Energy efficiency and competitiveness
Acting as chair of the meeting, Mr Fellegi said that the 85-90 per sent carbon emission reduction included in the Energy Roadmap (compared to 1990), is an extremely ambitious aim, “By which we can accomplish energy security, sustainability and competitiveness.” Mr Fellegi highlighted that the efficiency of energy consumption, also plays a key role in meeting the emission targets. The exploitation of renewable energy sources requires new technological solutions in the EU, he said. The minister added: it is important that the principle of solidarity should also be applied, so the EU should consider the different economic and geographical characteristics and capabilities, when defining the Roadmap 2050 for Member States.
Commissioner for Energy, Günther Oettinger, said during the meeting that, first, the medium-term strategies should be defined thoroughly, “I find the question of what will be the situation in 2030 more exciting, we should identify exactly what the intentions are for this period.” The Commissioner added, “In the definition of the strategies, we must consider aspects such as energy efficiency, the application of renewable energy sources, and energy storage.” According to the Commission, technologies related to carbon dioxide capture and storage should be treated as a priority, “The question is, whether we can accomplish a breakthrough in that.” According to Mr Oettinger, we need to make important decisions concerning the future’s utilisation of nuclear energy as well.
The significance of renewable energy sources
Ministers of Member States also emphasised the importance of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar energy and tide. The ministers also mentioned that the carbon emission reduction to be accomplished in the field of electricity generation must not jeopardise energy supply; and that affordable energy should be guaranteed for all households in the future too.
Several Member States highlighted that the switch to using more modern energy sources does not come free, therefore, higher energy prices are unavoidable; but even considering that, consumers should be encouraged to switch. Certain contributors believed that part of the community of consumers should receive price discounts for the switch. It was also said that there is no single solution, which would be equally appropriate for each Member State. Several countries indicated that they would like to cover part of their energy needs from nuclear energy, or natural gas in the long run too.
Focusing on efficiency
Member States’ representatives agreed that very important energy investments and new technologies are required, so research and development will also be assigned a key role in the Energy Roadmap. Member States also emphasised upon the importance of developing a single energy market, which could guarantee the security of supply in the long term. It was unanimously accepted that energy efficiency should be realised in all fields, not only in energy production. Several speakers urged the use of “clean energy” in transport.
Günther Oettinger and several Member States’ representatives emphasised that the Roadmap 2050 should be “flexible”, so that it matches technical development, which is not yet visible at this point.
Social and budgetary dimensions
In the second half of the meeting, the Energy Commissioner pointed out the social and budgetary dimensions of the Roadmap 2050. He believed that if Member States take energy efficiency seriously, they will have to modify their national budgets as well. Primarily, Mr Oettinger underlined the efficiency of public and private buildings. “The question here, is whether our generation is ready to spend more money on energy efficiency.”
Creating a carbon-free Europe
“The goal is to reduce carbon-based energy consumption and today we discussed the conditions of this,” said Gunther Oettinger, in his summary of the meeting at the subsequent press conference. “The issue of Europe’s energy goes beyond the borders of the 27 Member States: energy is our common matter,” the Commissioner added. He said the results of the meeting in Gödöllő will be utilised at the next formal Energy Council, in June, which will aim to make concrete and constructive proposals.
As was said by Tamás Fellegi, at the press conference, Member States consider consumers being informed about the extent and impact of energy consumption, especially important. We have to shape consumer attitudes, the Development Minister added. The meeting also covered the energy mix, “Although there is a clear ambition to make common policies where possible, the energy mix will still remain a national competence,” Mr Fellegi said.
Nuclear safety as a common interest
Although the meeting did not touch on nuclear safety, in response to a journalist’s question, Günther Oettinger expressed hope that the common criteria for stress tests will be developed by next week. He also hoped that, “Companies, Member States and also the EU will accept these regulators; and stress tests will be carried out in the EU’s 143 nuclear plants.”
Tamás Fellegi added, commenting on the pan-European responsibility, “The undisturbed sleep of each European citizen matters to us, which is why publicity and the creation of common conditions are essential.” | <urn:uuid:393fbc92-a4ea-4a83-a2b2-bf108e24122d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ceoc.com/newsarticle.aspx?CatId=8&NewsId=344 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955388 | 1,268 | 1.867188 | 2 |
9.1°in Port Macquarie
Mid north coast locals are being warned to question telephone offers of carbon tax refunds.
The Office of Fair Trading said the mid north coast in particular is being targeted as part of a carbon tax rebate scam.
Some residents have already been contacted by international callers familiar with their personal details.
Lani Carmody said she got a call from an overseas number and that a woman claiming to be from the Australian government offered her a refund.
"I didn't understand what she said as far as which department it was, but she said I was entitled to a $5000 to $100 odd refund cheque from the government," she said.
"My concern is that there is that there is so much information about various rebates to compensate for the carbon tax coming in that some poor pensioner is going to think, oh, they're going to contact me and I just have to give them my bank account details and off we go."
Ms Carmody said her concern is that people could hand over their bank details because they think the calls are genuine.
"They addressed me by name, so they've obviously got the phone books," she said.
"But they're just so on the ball for what's going on at the moment and the confusion surrounding the carbon tax with a lot of people about what's going to happen to them.
"So saying that you're from the Australian government right now and offering that sort of rebate is exactly how you'll get people sucked in." | <urn:uuid:79c8a71c-0a0c-4445-a550-7f8db6426c74> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-10/mid-north-coast-target-of-carbon-tax-rebate-scam/4120542/?site=midnorthcoast&source=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989481 | 311 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Services exist on a broad continuum including: limited special education instruction within regular classrooms; special education interwoven with regular instruction in classes that are "team-taught" by a regular and a special education teacher; pull-out services for intense skill development; self-contained special education classes. Eligibility for special education is determined by a Planning and Placement Team (PPT) consisting of professional staff members and the child's parent(s). Parents and teachers who believe a child has a learning problem caused by a disability should notify the principal, who will convene a PPT meeting. In order to qualify for services, a child must have a disability recognized by state and federal law or be eligible under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. For an eligible student, a plan will be developed outlining the services the team believes are necessary for him or her to benefit from education.
Services are geared toward maintaining students in their home school district. However, Westport accepts a number of children from schools in the area into our life-skills program at Staples H.S.
Speech and Language
The professional staff of speech and language pathologists, including a teacher of the hearing impaired, offer screening consultation and direct services. All kindergartners are screened to identify significant problems. Parents or teachers with concerns about a child's speech, hearing or language development, should notify the principal who will refer the youngster to the school's Early Intervention Team.
Special Education Law and IEP Process
- An overview of IDEA (Individuals With Disabilities Education Act)
- Procedural Safeguards
- Rehabilitation Act Section 504 | <urn:uuid:7b3ba217-df01-4bb5-875d-6716032e5ed2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.westport.k12.ct.us/district/pupil-services/special-education/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947243 | 333 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Here's a little secret about talking with an older parent about a possible end to driving: Try some small talk.
Start with, perhaps, the hazards of driving in inclement weather. Then work up to what happens when eyes age and reflexes slow.
That approach worked for Diane Valuck, 65, of Tucson, when she and her mother, Jean Valuck, had long conversations in 2001 about hanging up the keys. They included the perilous winter driving in Michigan, where Jean lived.
Jean eventually acknowledged she could no longer handle the winter road conditions, and she didn't fancy the cost of keeping a car in good repair.
At 85, Jean made her decision. She sold her Pontiac and for the last decade of her life used the transportation offered by her assisted living center for shopping and medical appointments.
The elements in the Valucks' example come right off the pages of an AARP seminar, "We Need to Talk."
When is it time to talk?
The free seminar, also available online as a 90-minute webinar, helps family members recognize when to initiate "the talk" and illustrates how to work toward the decision after warning signs appear.
Those signs can include getting lost in familiar territory, running over curbs, paint smears on the fender or dents in the mailbox post by the driveway.
"We're not telling anybody to stop driving," said Hal Parrott, 79, of Scottsdale, a seminar leader. "If there's a problem, we just want you to know how to proceed."
Some of the tips seem aimed directly at families like that of Harriet Warren, 85, of Tucson.
Warren says she still drives quite well. But her children, who live in various parts of the country, worry.
The seminar urges people like Warren's children to gather plenty of solid information before jumping to a conclusion that a parent should no longer drive.
Next page: What about alternatives to driving? » | <urn:uuid:258d9ece-7f71-479e-9db3-c5230d3a593c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aarp.org/home-family/getting-around/info-12-2012/senior-driving-safety-classes-az.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958819 | 403 | 1.835938 | 2 |
About 50 percent of the athletes I coach at any one time are mountain bike racers. Over the years, rider event goals range from the prestigious Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike race or the Pro XCT series to local cross-country events.
When any mountain bike rider wants to improve performance, there are several key areas I look at when designing a plan. In this column are five of those key considerations.
More: How to Finish a 100-Mile Mountain Bike Race
Training Days are Based on Estimated Race Time
It seems like common sense to design training based on race distance. However, it is all too common for riders to train too long or too short for goal events. Riders aiming for events that take five hours or more need several single-day long rides or a series of moderately long ride days placed back-to-back.
If your race is less than two hours long, your longest ride should be in the two- to three-hour range to build overall race endurance. Shorter rides are where you need to keep intensity levels high. If your legs are always wrecked from big training volume and little recovery, you will never develop the power levels necessary to do well at traditional cross-country type events.
More: How Much Does a Pro Mountain Biker Train?
Use the Road Bike to Train Steady Endurance
Riders that do nearly all training on a mountain bike and on technical courses often have limited ability to ride steady at tempo or threshold pace. This is most obvious when mountain bike riders show up to a group road ride (on a road bike) and they have a hard time keeping up with the group.
The difficulty comes from the fact that these riders are accustomed to big effort, recover, big effort, recover, repeat. In many cases these riders stop at the top of each technical section when riding the mountain bike. They may be fantastic technical riders; but if all their rides include putting in big efforts less than two minutes long and recovering after every effort, they will not have strong endurance or the ability to hold high, steady intensity for low, aerobic metabolic cost.
Any mountain bike race demands the ability to hold a steady, relatively high pace for the entire event. Of course that pace is different for each individual and each race distance.
More: 8 Tips for Transitioning From Road to Dirt | <urn:uuid:2f458c9e-f1cc-4102-aabb-4646764a3dea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.active.com/mountainbiking/Articles/5-Training-Secrets-for-Mountain-Bike-Racers.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948761 | 475 | 1.554688 | 2 |
I put this conundrum to all sanet subscribers in the hope that perhaps
this issue has not been discussed before, nor has an explanation been
given for it.
Food Quality-A Mater of Taste!
The Organic Retailers & Growers Association of Australia have a wide
membership from growers, processors, distributors, consumers and over
40 retail outlets marketing organic foods. One of the many comments
received from consumers is that, the food has more flavour, it tastes
like food used to taste, or it tastes like food we once grew ourselves.
As the technical adviser to this association there comes a time when
perhaps anecdotal evidence starts to weigh up in favour of there really
being a scientific reason for these observations.
We know that food flavour can be a matter of sweet, sour, bitter, but we
also know that flavours that are synthesised for the food industry
consist of complex chemical compounds such as benzyl acetate (fruity
raspberry), isoamyl acetate (banana), tomato isobutylthiazole cis
Many factors are involved in imparting flavour to fruit and vegetables
such as variety, hours of sunshine received during the growth period,
absence or maintenance of moisture, grown to maturity(ie. ripened), but
also of course fertilisation and general soil fertility.
The following hypothesis is proposed for organic foods reporting
stronger more intense flavours.
A soil well endowed with organic matter cycling correctly will break
down to humus and hundreds of other complex chemical compounds. We know
that around the rhizosphere of a plant, the most active microbial area,
many times the amount of organic compounds are present than in the
In the knowledge that plants can take up quite complex organic compounds
is there the possibility that in an organic rich soil and one high in
microbial activity this increase in organic compounds around the plant
rhizosphere enables a plant to take up many of these compounds which act
through photosynthesis and enzymatic activity to produce or be
converted into the compounds that we recognise as food flavour.
Working as a soil consultant over many years has enabled me to see a
direct correlation between an increase in soil fertility and an increase
in the quality of plant products(vigour, health, increase in yield).
The reason however for the perceived increase in flavour has been a
long-time niggly question for me.
Is there any merit in this hypothesis that an organic rich soil high in
microbial life and fertility, ie. a soil farmed organically, may result
in produce that has enhanced flavour characteristics or are the comments
of many hundreds of consumers nothing more than perceptions based on a
food choice criteria.
Organic Advisory Service
Organic Retailers & Growers Association of Australia
61 03 95607066 | <urn:uuid:b0dbdc06-82e1-4b00-9807-fbd4a4f55b2a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ibiblio.org/london/agriculture/forums/sustainable-agriculture1/msg00621.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931254 | 589 | 2.328125 | 2 |
- Online Store
- Musical Works
- YouTube Videos
- The Snowman
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research. The Commander of the International Space Station recently 'had a vision that Howard Blake's “Walking in the Air” song from “The Snowman” animated film would be great to have in the background of one of the spectacular time lapse aurora videos he’s working to capture' and Howard agreed with USA government authorities to proceed with this project. The amazing results of this collaboration can now be seen on You Tube. Dan Cook the mastermind of the project writes: 'We have completed the ISS imagery time-lapse project with “Walking in the Air” and wanted to share the feature with you. The imagery is absolutely stunning and coupled with the music, it becomes even more of a captivating experience.'
Walking on Air (on NASA’s “ReelNASA” YouTube Channel)
And, I’m sure you all may have seen “The Snowman” animated short film but for ease of reference, here’s the clip where the magical snowman takes the young boy on a night-time flying adventure where they experience many bird’s-eye views, including the ever-so-phenomenal dancing aurora.
The video is also currently featured on the NASA home page @ http://www.nasa.gov within the “NASA Multimedia” videos section located near the center of the page. | <urn:uuid:9dd5017c-e752-4397-8917-46b3ded7282f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.howardblake.com/news1.php?news=480 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918332 | 344 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Restaurants Chew On Trans Fats Issue
Only Wendy's, which now uses zero trans fats frying oil, is introducing product packaging to promote that fact. It will roll out systemwide by next month, said Bob Bertini, a spokesperson for the Columbus, Ohio-based chain of 6,300 restaurants.
Wendy's uses a blend of soy and corn oil for frying and has also removed the ingredient from its burger buns and salad dressings. The chain began its search for a trans-fat free oil several years ago.
Still, Bertini said that Wendy's opposes a local ban: "Nutrition and ingredient regulation should be done at the federal level," he said.
Subway, which operates more than 300 stores in the New York area, also has a menu low in trans fats. Sandwiches have a "negligible" amount; the one menu item still containing trans fats is a seasoned bread topping. The chain aims to have that topping trans-fat-free by the end of the year, said Les Winograd, spokesperson for Milford, Conn.-based Subway.
Subway doesn't promote its trans-fat-free menu, although "it's something that might actually benefit us," Winograd said. However, he said he doubted the chain would ever take a "never had it, never will" approach to advertising its lack of trans fats.
Au Bon Pain, a Boston-based bakery chain with several dozen locations in New York, introduced zero trans fats cookies, muffins and sandwiches back in 2004. The company did not return phone calls seeking comment.
At McDonald's, executives say they are still searching for a trans-fat-free cooking oil that will not alter the taste of its French fries. "Concerning trans fats, McDonald's knows this is an important issue which is why we continue to test in earnest to find ways to further reduce TFA levels," said Walt Riker, vice president of corporate communications for Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald's.
As for the ban, "we will closely examine the Board's proposal," Riker said.
New York City's Board of Health, which announced plans of the ban on Tuesday, will vote on the ban in December. If passed, the ban will become fully functional--encompassing cooking oils plus chips, salad dressings and baked goods--by July of 2008.
Health professionals deem trans fats more damaging to arteries than even saturated fats. Trans fats occur when hydrogen is added to oils to make them longer-lasting; frying foods can also create trans fats, and some meat and dairy items contain natural trans fats.
New York would be the first city in the country to ban trans fats from restaurant menus, although other municipalities, among them Chicago, have discussed such a ban.
The restaurant industry has reacted predictably: "The restaurant industry has made great strides in providing a wide variety of choices and options that can accommodate the dietary needs and preferences of restaurant guests," said a prepared statement from the National Restaurant Association, the Washington-D.C. based restaurant lobbying group.
"However, mandating that restaurants provide menu labeling and eliminate trans fat from their prepared foods is an unreasonable, one-size fits all approach," the statement said. | <urn:uuid:b2701c47-edcf-454e-913a-432ed314efaa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/48905/restaurants-chew-on-trans-fats-issue.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95901 | 667 | 1.75 | 2 |
19801983 Dodge Mirada CMX
By the early 1980s, demand for big coupes was waning. But Dodge had one more up its sleevethe Mirada. Although it was nominally the successor to the Charger, the Mirada shared nearly nothing with that legendary ride.
The Mirada was underpinned with the same chassis as the Diplomat sedanthe cars cops used at the time. But there wasn't much cop-spec goodness under the Mirada. The CMX top model promised performance, especially when you saw those larger 205/75R15 radial tires. But in reality the 360-cid V-8 under the CMX's long hood made just 185 hp. The Mirada died in 1983 as sales of all Chrysler vehicles were in freefall, making room for Lee Iacocca's more fuel-efficient and quicker turbocharged front-drive K-cars. | <urn:uuid:b1650d02-9103-40f1-bc0d-360265b2e08c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/pictures/performance-pretenders-10-malaise-era-muscle-cars-6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962324 | 184 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Intellectual Ideas Motivating Blair and Bush's Invasion of Iraq
1. Blair's Calvanist education and study of 19th century Liberal philosophers, plus his own 'discovery' of Christian socialism at Oxford led him to support a 'neo-imperial' mission to re-order the world.
2.Both Blair and Bush agreed that the post-1989 period represented 'wasted time', years of drift that could have been used to press home Anglo-American dominance. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, so the argument ran, Washington had missed the chance to move decisively and impose a Pax Americana.
3. 9-11 provided the golden opportunity to exploit the resultant state of flux and move to create a different world with a more interventionist agenda.
4. In addition both leaders were moved by:
i) The 'Democratic Peace Theory' which argues that democracies don't fight each other and that therefore its spread could make war obsolete.
ii) The 'Democratic Transition Theory' which asserts that democracy can successfully be transplanted into a former autocracy, even if no traditions exist therein of democratic traditions or any sympathetic civil society.
I suppose the final piece of the jig-saw was provided by the religious beliefs both shared which convinced them they had somehow been chosen to do His work to engineer good works and remake the world according to His wishes. Such fallacies, one suspects underlie many similar disasters into which well meaning leaders have dragged their reluctant armies.
Intellectual Ideas Motivating Blair and Bush is an interesting idea.
I find it impossible to accept that there was any intellectual process in the decision to go to war. Surely Bush is an intellectual vacuum.
If you look at Bush’s track record when governor of Texas it is clear that he is devoid of compassion, has little regard for human life (unless it is still in the womb!!) and has little sense of justice.
He probably had the objective of
1). Finishing off the job his father failed to finish
2). Do the bidding of the neo-cons who surrounded him.
9/11 certainly allowed an excuse amongst the Americans despite the fact that it was nothing to do with the Iraqis.
The tipping point was more to do with oil, not the Iraqi oil reserves but their proposed move from dollar pricing of oil to a euro based pricing. The fall of the petrodollar would have had serious economic issues.
In the case of Blair – it is nonsense to talk of Anglo-American influence – it is American influence through and through. Blair wanted to recapture the Thatcher-Reagan partnership, the difference is, much as I dislike the Wicked Witch, at least it was a mutual relationship – Blair was happy to be a lap dog.
As for them being Christians:-
1) They are outright liars who took their countries to war on deliberate falsehoods
2) They place no value on human life
3) They ignore any advice from religious leaders – including the Pope
These are neither Christian nor intellectual.
Finally this notion of democracy that the West has is also pretty shallow – the West likes democracies when the electorate get the answer the West is in favour of. There are democracies that have fought each other, Israel – Lebanon for example.
To look for any intellectual reason for going to war is like looking for cheese on the Moon.
Links to this post: | <urn:uuid:277a2a80-fad9-4763-95f8-8ac7cbb79ea8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://skipper59.blogspot.com/2008/01/intellectual-ideas-motivating-blair-and.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961735 | 698 | 2.203125 | 2 |
The percentage of American 50- to 59-year-olds who reported having abused illicit or prescription drugs during the past year more than doubled, from 2.7 percent to 6.2 percent, between 2002 and 2009. Not coincidentally, by the end of that period baby boomers—the generation born between 1946 and 1964—had filled out that age cohort. Baby boomers' histories of illicit drug use, and their relatively tolerant attitudes toward it, along with the fact that they now comprise nearly 30 percent of the Nation’s population, have raised the stakes on understanding and responding effectively to drug abuse among older adults.
The social and physical changes that accompany aging may well increase vulnerability to drug-related problems. The loss of loved ones, juggling of multiple roles, and retirement or other alterations in employment and income may cause some older people to use illicit drugs as self-medication for anxiety or depression, especially if they have a history of taking drugs to cope. Slowing metabolism can increase sensitivity to the effects of drugs. Furthermore, the effects of drugs of abuse in older adults may be influenced by age-related health conditions and medications—contingencies that are more problematic when patients hide their drug abuse.
Scientists have much to learn about the intersection of drug abuse, aging, and the neurobiological systems that underlie addiction. Basic animal research will be required to describe the impact of drugs on the changing neurochemical balance in the aging brain and trace the combined impact of addictive substances and aging.
We do know that older adults respond at least as well as younger ones to substance abuse therapies. That is why recognizing drug problems in older patients is critical. Clinicians need to be aware of patterns of drug abuse among older people and alert to the possibility that some physical problems of older adults, for example falls and other accidents, may stem from illicit drug use. Primary care physicians have a key role in screening older people for drug abuse and related issues: Although it is not specifically targeted to the aging population, the NIDAMED toolkit can guide doctors in assessing a patient’s risk of developing an addiction problem, advising patients on the health effects of substance abuse, and, if needed, arranging a referral to specialty care. With this age group, as with every other, the goal is to help people live longer, healthier, and more productive lives. | <urn:uuid:27c8f75d-f511-430c-805f-92873a0d1630> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drugabuse.gov/news-events/nida-notes/2011/12/substance-abuse-among-older-adults | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953111 | 478 | 2.875 | 3 |
Doing a home improvement project on your own isn’t always a simple matter. Sometimes it seems simple enough when you get started, but before you know it, you realize that if you had just taken proper measurements and planned out your renovation in a little more detail ahead of time, it would have saved a whole lot of headache.
Since I happen to have a DIY project that I’m planning out this year, I needed a program that would help me plan out the entire project. The project in question is a basement renovation. I am planning to convert our basement into a finished basement, with both a bedroom and a laundry room.
Before getting started with laying out my plan, I took all of the room measurements required to put together a good sketchup of the room so that I could plan out walls, furniture and the rest of the project. To do this, I needed software that would let me draw up the room using all of those measurements.
There are a lot of CAD applications we’ve covered here at MUO, including Angela’s review of LibreCAD, which I used for a little bit of interior design as well. Then, in Directory we’ve covered apps like BabyCAD and DesignYourRoom. However, I think the absolute best application to “sketch up” a room design like this is obviously SketchUp!
Planning Your DIY Project With Sketchup
A while back, I covered SketchUp 7.1 to create 3D buildings for Google Earth. It was very clear to me back then that SketchUp was some pretty impressive CAD software, created with the regular user in mind. It’s simple to use, very easy to learn, and the things that you can do with the tool rivals a lot of paid drawing applications out there. For DIY room renovations in particular, SketchUp offers a bunch of tools that make it ideal for the job.
Today, it is now SketchUp 8. When you first launch the software, the welcome screen is the same as it was back in version 7.1 – where you can choose the starting template to use for your project. In my particular case, I went for architectural design for drawing out the room plan.
When you first start out with your drawing, you’ll find a woman standing at the X, Y, Z coordinate intersection. This is your starting point for the drawing.
Ready to get started? Like I said, the learning curve is not steep at all. Just click the rectangle tool in the menu, and click and release one corner of the rectangle. Then, click and release the next corner along the same axis where you want to place your wall. Finally, draw the third point to place the rectangle along your chosen second axis. This can be a little tricky, so play around with cursor movement to get the rectangle to align with the axis that you want.
Keep in mind as you lay out the walls, that you can see the actual length of the wall at the lower right corner of the design screen. Using these measurements, I was able to quickly lay out the outer basement walls using the dimensions that I had taken earlier.
Another nice feature is the Tape Measure Tool. You can use this tool to click from any position and measure a distance in any direction. As you bring the tape measure up, you’ll see a dotted guideline associate with it. This is really cool for setting wall or object heights before you draw them out.
Within less than 15 to 20 minutes, I was able to finish drawing out the outer walls of our future finished basement. Want to know how to draw the stairs? It’s easy, just draw a rectangle and then use the push/pull tool in the menu to stretch it into a long, square rectangle. Just copy and paste each step and place them edge to edge.
To set up measurement guides to use then you’re building your project later, you can use the nifty “Dimensions” tool in the Tool menu. Just run your cursor along the edge that you want to show the measurement for, and the dimension will pop-out just like you’d see on any professional drawings.
A useful way to carefully draw in any stationary objects in the middle of a room is to take measurements to the object from two walls. Then, on your SketchUp drawing, all you need to do is use the Tape Measure tool to take those measurements from the walls you’ve built. Where the lines intersect is where you need to draw that object. In my case, the object is a pole from the floor to the ceiling.
Once you’ve got your new room drawn, you may want to play around with wall colors just to see how different color designs work. You can do this by clicking on Tools and “Paint Bucket“, choosing the color you want to try, and then clicking on the surface that you want to paint.
Under Tools, you can also use Text or 3D Text to add notes anywhere in your drawing.
Also, I think one of my absolute favorite features is the “Walk” tool under the Camera menu option. This is a really cool tool that lets you place a cursor anywhere in the design you’ve created, so you can take a look at how your new room looks from ground level, as though you’re walking through the room yourself.
It’s interesting to see a design from this angle, rather from just an overhead design-view like most CAD systems. Using this view, you can take a look at different hallways or room layouts to make sure that the room will really look like you expect it to when you’re done.
The nice thing is that if you’ve taken accurate measurements of everything, this “walk around” view will offer a pretty accurate representation of what you can expect.
During your DIY renovation design process, don’t forget to use the Paint Bucket tool to also add the right materials for things like floors and doorways. Making the door wooden in your drawing will make the whole layout look closer to reality, and it’ll help you picture the look that you’re actually going for.
As you can see, SketchUp goes beyond just designing a DIY project. It lets you test out different colors and materials, it lets you you maintain the accuracy and dimensions you expect from a professional design, and it also lets you take a look at your project from the ground – which is about as close to a realistic simulation of your project as you can expect to get with a computer.
Can you think of any cool projects that you’d like to use SketchUp for? Have you ever used SketchUp for any of your own projects? Share your experiences and feedback in the comments section below.
More articles about: | <urn:uuid:2487c9be-245c-4d6d-b7a5-6437990eee48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3d-design-daily-life-plan-home-diy-project-sketchup/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945627 | 1,412 | 1.945313 | 2 |
I just got home to find a question about my RAC on VirtualBox article. The poster was having problems creating the virtual disks using the commands in the article. A quick scan through the docs reveals a number of changes to the way VirtualBox 4.0.0 handles disks and also changes to the VBoxManage syntax. I’ve amended the article to include a version of the commands for version 4.0.0 which seem to create and attach the shared disks in the same state, but it will be a few days before I get to test this properly.
So what’s happened that affects shared disk setup?
First, you can’t create a shareable disk. You have to create the disk (createhd), then modify it to shareable (modifyhd). That sounds fine, but there is an issue. The manual says,
“Before VirtualBox 4.0, it was necessary to call VBoxManage openmedium before a medium could be attached to a virtual machine; that call “registered” the medium with the global VirtualBox media registry. With VirtualBox 4.0 this is no longer necessary; media are added to media registries automatically. The “closemedium” call has been retained, however, to allow for explicitly removing a medium from a registry”
Well that is not entirely true. When you create a new disk it is not visible in the media manager until it is attached to a VM. That means you have to create the disk, attach it to a VM and then convert it to shareable. If you try to modify it before attaching it to a VM you get told the disk doesn’t exist. This just feels wrong.
As a minor annoyance, the VM detail pane doesn’t notice the “–type” change so the disks still display as normal unless you restart VirtualBox, or click the “Storage” link for the VM and come straight out, which seems to get the screen to update.
This is not a big deal, it’s just a little annoying as the old syntax was more straight forward. I’m sure it was done for a good reason… | <urn:uuid:514f3cac-31ea-43dd-b012-24209e07de3d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oaktable.net/category/tags/vboxmanage | 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 | 0.932682 | 455 | 1.617188 | 2 |
You may well be thinking something like this, “I’m interested in learning more about Jesus, but I don’t want anyone pressuring me. I just want to see what the Bible says at my own pace so I can come to my own conclusions.”
If that’s how you feel, don’t worry: many people feel that way. That’s why the book, The Essential Jesus, was designed to make a “solo journey” through the Bible easy and meaningful. The 100 short passages trace the story line of Jesus that’s woven throughout the Bible. The readings are undated so you can complete them at your own pace—in one hundred days, six months, a year or more. The readings are grouped into sets of five that begin with an introduction that alerts you to important themes.
You’ll want to have a copy of The Essential Jesus to guide you through The Essential Jesus Challenge. And you will find that the Essential Jesus Planner and The Essential Jesus Challenge Guide are the prefect companions to help keep you on schedule, available here.
Whatever schedule you pick (and picking a schedule is important), don’t feel guilty if you miss a day now and then. Just do the next reading whenever you have time, and before you know it, you’ll make it through all one hundred.
Also, even though you’ll be reading the passages on your own, you might want to talk about what you’re learning with a friend, perhaps someone who is a committed follower of Jesus. If you do, just make sure it’s someone who will listen to you, not preach at you. But if you find the right person, you’ll find that talking about what you’re learning can make your journey through the Bible more meaningful.
However you choose to take The Challenge, remember that your goal is not just to read through 100 Bible passages or gain more Bible knowledge. Those things are important, but your higher goal is get to know more about Jesus. With that goal in mind, your reading will be more than just a “challenge,” it will become an exciting adventure of getting to know the most influential person in history: Jesus Christ. | <urn:uuid:217141a9-a55d-4c4c-84eb-3015da555846> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://essentialjesuschallenge.com/e100-for-individuals | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952461 | 470 | 1.773438 | 2 |
I have conducted a number of workshops for students in various contexts about how to write a successful fellowship application. For the workshops I have put together a short-power point presentation that provides some key tips and strategies for developing an effective proposal, and also some key fellowship resources.
I am uploading the slides to this site, as perhaps some faculty may want to use the slides to help conduct workshops for their own students and/or students may find it useful to read through the resources. The presentation is available here ScholarshipsPresentation.pdf
Some additional key resources for proposal writing include
A short summary is below:
This presentation is designed to provide key resources on how to obtain students can obtain fellowships and scholarships for study and research. Faculty members and staff are encouraged to use the slides to conduct workshops for their students. Some of the content for these slides (citations are provided) are taken from a wonderful guide to the Art of Writing Proposals from the Social Science Research Council http://fellowships.ssrc.org/art_of_writing_proposals
Please note, it can be very challenging to get a scholarship, but if you produce a strong application and apply for multiple opportunities this will significantly increase your chances. The rate of applicants per fellowship varies widely by opportunity and country, but in my experience reviewing fellowship applications in the US (and also advising students), the rates here are generally between 10-30 applicants per fellowship offered (some fellowships are much more competitive than this). For some fellowships in the US and opportunities in other countries the rate can be much, much higher, sometimes with maybe several hundred or more applicants per fellowship offered. Thus, to have a chance at the fellowship a strong application with a convincing purpose, strong letters, etc., is a must.
Feel free to add your own suggestions/resources. | <urn:uuid:c588bec2-8151-4dbf-a8c2-185f9c80ecc9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.internationalpeaceandconflict.org/profiles/blogs/workshop-materials-for-how-to | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930526 | 374 | 1.523438 | 2 |
But the president insists that Krueger will bring him “unvarnished economic guidance…[which is] more important than ever right now. We need folks in Washington to make decisions based on what’s best for the country, not what’s best for any political party or special interest.”
Goolsbee was brought in with unemployment above 9% and the mandate to improve employment in the housing and manufacturing sectors. Unemployment is still above 9% and employment in the housing and manufacturing sectors is little changed. So rather than change policies, the White House is changing suits.
The challenges facing President Obama have ratcheted up considerably in the past year, and he is now trying to come up with additional strategies and programs to accomplish what Goolsbee couldn’t. He has dropped hints about some of those strategies, including:
- An extension of the payroll tax beyond the end of the year
- Continue and possibly expand jobless benefits
- Pay subsidies directly to businesses who hire
- Infuse government money directly into construction projects
- Pay for all of this through future unnamed spending cuts
Krueger might be just the man for the job. After teaching at Princeton for the last 20 years, he was called to Washington by the president in March of 2009 to be his Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Timothy Geithner. He left after a year and half to return to Princeton to qualify for tenure, but not before offering a program designed to jump-start the economy: Cash for Clunkers. All that program did was move forward some purchases to take advantage of the credit which wound up stealing sales from the future. When all was said and done, automobile manufacturers enjoyed a brief bump-up in sales, and then a sharp decline after the program ended. There was no lasting economic benefit, just more proof that government interventions, even by smart people like Goolsbee, don’t work. According to a study of the program by researchers at the University of Delaware, each vehicle traded in under the program cost the government $2,000, with total costs of the program exceeding benefits by $1.4 billion.
Krueger isn’t expected to get in the way of Obama’s recommendations, especially the extension of unemployment benefits, even though his own study of the matter indicates that all unemployment benefits do is keep people unemployed longer. But Krueger, as the new suit in town, isn’t likely to cross the president, or even his press secretary, Jay Carney, who explained the Keynesian rationale behind Obama’s planned extension of unemployment benefits:
Extending unemployment benefits] is one of the most direct ways to infuse money into the economy because people who are unemployed and obviously aren’t earning a paycheck are going to spend the money that they get. They’re not going to save it; they’re going to spend it. And unemployment insurance, that money goes directly back into the economy dollar for dollar virtually.
So it is — and when it goes back in the economy, it means that everywhere that those people — everyplace that that money is spent has added business. And that creates growth and income for businesses that then lead them to making decisions about jobs — more hiring.
This half-baked explanation reflects the kind of thinking directing economic policy in the present administration. It looks only at what is seen, and doesn’t consider what isn’t seen. Forget for the moment that the government has no money of its own – only what it forcefully takes from its rightful owners – there is no stimulus here. Money that is removed from the hands who earned that is transferred to those who didn’t reduces the incentive of those who earned it and increases the incentive of those receiving it to clamor for more. Living on the dole takes a lot less effort than working. And thus the whole process slows the economy down.
A Heritage Foundation study proved the point. Unemployment insurance “actually leads to longer periods of unemployment and does not provide the promised stimulative effect.” In fact, the study shows that when unemployment benefits were extended beyond 13 weeks, the average worker remained unemployed two weeks longer than those not receiving the benefits.
The Washington Post made it clear that Obama’s changing suits just before his big speech isn’t going to change anything: “Krueger is a center-left economist in the mold of many top economic policymakers in the Obama administration, including Goolsbee and Harvard economist Lawrence Summers…who resigned as director of [Obama’s] National Economic Council at the start of the year.” Another Harvard economist who headed up George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, Gregory Kankiw, agreed. Krueger’s appointment is “not a signal that they’re going to change things. It’s a signal of continuity, if anything.”
Related article: Obama Picks Krueger as Economic Council Chairman | <urn:uuid:432a07cd-79e9-4682-be4c-c616e3bfc0e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thenewamerican.com/economy/commentary/item/4063-krueger-is-obama%E2%80%99s-economic-council-chairman-pick | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964106 | 1,029 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Bay Area Water Trail could put Hudeman Slough on the map
Published: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 at 4:51 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 at 4:51 p.m.
Hudeman Slough in southern Sonoma County is a kayaker's dream, a snaking, secluded tidal path that meanders through the Carneros region and a tapestry of vineyards and ranches.
Given its remote location about 10 miles southeast of the city of Sonoma, the spot exists in relative anonymity, visited mainly by local fishermen and hunters.
That's subject to change with implementation of the San Francisco Bay Area Water Trail, which could feature Hudeman Slough prominently on a map of access points for kayakers and other enthusiasts of non-motorized boating activities.
More than a decade in the making, the water trail is not so much a linear path but a recommended network of places for people to plot a daily or days-long adventure. In concept, it's like the Bay Area Ridge Trail, but with paddles instead of hiking boots.
"The water trail can let people know how to get out into one of the greatest water resources we have in the Bay Area," said Ann Buell, project manager for the California Coastal Conservancy.
The project was authorized in 2006 with the passage of Proposition 84 (the Safe Drinking Water, Water Quality and Supply, Flood Control, River and Coastal Protection Bond Act), and funded with a $1 million grant.
The Coastal Conservancy, working with a consortium of agencies, has identified 112 sites in the nine-county Bay Area region for possible inclusion in the water trail. Many of the sites have existing services, but others will require upgrades to meet safety and environmental standards, or to provide access for the disabled.
Hudeman Slough is one of four sites in Sonoma County identified by the group. The others are on the Petaluma River, including at the Petaluma Marina, Turning Basin and at Gilardi's Lakeville Marina.
Buell met with representatives from Sonoma County Regional Parks at the slough this week to discuss the site's eligibility.
They were joined by Galli Basson with the Association of Bay Area Governments, which is administering a $500,000 grant program for improvements to the trail's access points.
Sonoma County planners are hoping to tap into that money to help fund the redevelopment of Hudeman Slough.
The site is owned by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and operated by county regional parks, which recently abandoned a policy requiring visitors to obtain a key to the gate because people simply cut the locks.
The boat dock, originally built in 1962, is in forlorn shape, its gangway listing like a drunken sailor. Parts of the aluminum structure have been ripped off by vandals, and the launch itself is often buried under a pile of broken reeds and mud. Portable toilets are no longer an option because they keep getting stolen.
County planners are hoping the redeveloped site will deter future vandalism. The plans include a completely rebuilt dock, a built-in bathroom and possibly camp sites -- with an on-site camp host -- for overnight adventures.
"This creates a gateway to many different experiences in Sonoma County and the Bay Area. Heck, you could go all the way to San Francisco (by boat)," said Elizabeth Tyree with regional parks.
She said the county has already committed to redeveloping the site and has garnered $112,000 so far for initial design and permits. That includes $40,000 in county tobacco funds set aside for Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.
She said the county is investigating whether the work is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act. Some environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, have raised concerns about some proposed locations on the water trail posing a threat to wildlife and sensitive vegetation.
Tyree said construction at the slough could begin by early next year, with completion set for summer 2014.
Bill Manzoni, whose home and gravel excavating business borders the slough, said he welcomes improvements to the boat launch, which he said is impossible to use during low tide.
But he said Skaggs Island Road, which leads to the slough and is riddled with potholes, will deter people from visiting the site. And he worries for the safety of kayakers in the waterway.
"It gets narrow in there," he said.
Buell said one goal of the water trail is to improve safety for boaters by making it easier to access the water and providing information about tides and weather conditions.
She said the trail also could protect from unwanted development.
"This is a proactive, preventive measure to protect what exists, and to enhance what exists," she said.
You can reach Staff Writer Derek Moore at 521-5336 or email@example.com. On Twitter @deadlinederek.
All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged. | <urn:uuid:2f0b68d7-a5cd-43e2-8a48-20ae218d6bbf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20130129/ARTICLES/130129498/0/opinion | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954061 | 1,053 | 1.804688 | 2 |
The Triadex Muse is a sequencer-based synthesizer from the early 1970's. It was designed by Marvin Minsky and Edward Fredkin, both MIT professors with an interest in artificial intelligence. Intended as a compositional aid, the Muse is unlike most synthesizers out there, which may have contributed to its poor sales. Even so, it managed to make its mark upon the world of music, especially among the avant garde.
In lieu of a keyboard, the Muse uses eight 40-position slider switches which control a series of digital logic circuits using complicated algorithms (the Muse is considered one of the first digital sequencers). The binary output from the logic circuits is fed into a digital-to-analog converter (DAC), and the output from the DAC is fed into a simple VCO. The result is a sequence of notes which, depending on the slider settings, can take years to loop back around to the beginning!
Operation of the Muse is not particularly intuitive, yet it is not too difficult to get started. Four of the sliders control the interval of notes, and the other four control the overall theme. A bar-graph lamp display near the sliders shows the status of the logic gates. Another set of sliders control the volume from the internal speaker, the tempo of the sequence, and the pitch. Additional switches allow you to start the sequence from the beginning, step through it note-by-note, or substitute a rest point in place of the lowest note. The owner's manual provided slider settings for example tunes, as well as templates where the user could log settings which had resulted in interesting sequences.
The Muse retailed for only a brief period of time in the early 1970's, and is considered extremely rare. The exact number of units sold is unknown, but is thought to be under 300. Even more rare are the accessories Triadex produced to go along with the Muse, including an Amplifier module (with an external speaker), a Multi-Muse Cable (used to daisy-chain multiple Muses together), and a Light Show module, a color organ whose 4 colored lamps blink in time to the signals coming from the Muse. All these accessories shared the Muse's unique design styling, too.
While it's very difficult to master, and nearly impossible to get it to play a specific song, the Muse offers nearly endless potential for random music generation. Set the sliders, switch it to automatic mode, and it will produce all sorts of bleeps and bloops. Add the Light Show module to the mix, and it becomes a visual spectacle as well. It's too bad the Muse used a proprietary I/O for communicating with other Triadex products, as it means the Muse can not be used to control any other synthesizers.
- Polyphony - Monophonic
- Multitimbral - None
- Oscillators - 1 VCO
- Waveforms - Square
- LFO - 1 LFO with tempo control
- Filter - None
- Envelope - None
- Effects - Tempo, Pitch, Fine Pitch, Rest
- Sequencer - More than 14 trillion possible sequences
- Tracks - One
- Patterns - None
- Songs - None
- Arpeggiator - None
- Keyboard - None
- Memory - None
- Control - Proprietary In/Out for daisy-chaining multiple Muses
- Date Produced - 1972
Errors or Corrections? Send them here. | <urn:uuid:e1848a28-c7e7-4e12-ba50-24113c8664d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vintagesynth.com/misc/triadex_muse.php?comments_page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922096 | 717 | 2.125 | 2 |
Urban Decay: Another weekend of violence in the president's hometown, now run by his former chief of staff. If you want to see the fruits of a presidential second term, look at the decline of his city.
President Obama and Rahm Emanuel, current mayor and former White House chief of staff, brought the "Chicago Way" to Washington in more ways than one. Not only did they bring a style of bare-knuckled backroom politics of intimidation and cronyism, they brought a statist philosophy of government knows best that has left America's Second City a second-rate city with nowhere to go but down.
Last weekend was all too typical in Chicago these days, with four dead and 29 wounded throughout a city that's been home to one of the nation's toughest gun laws. Chicago has become the murder capital of America with a 50% increase in violence for the past year.
Obama recently paid his hometown, where he maintains a residence, a visit. As Wayne Allyn Root, writing on FoxNews.com, noted, 35 were injured and seven killed in gun battles with the president home that weekend. Included in that violent mess was a 16-year-old girl. Three of the murder victims were killed in one hour on Sunday morning. It was the third weekend in a row with gunshot murders and injuries in the double digits.
The Windy City briefly shone during the recent NATO summit, held in a cordoned-off high-security enclave on the city's postcard Lakefront . The local Fraternal Order of Police took the occasion to erect billboards around town reminding people that for a decade the city has been 1,000 police officers short of complying with the legal minimum for police protection.
Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas recently disclosed a staggering $108 billion debt tab across various governing bodies in the county that translates to $63,525 per Chicago household. Unfunded pension liabilities make up nearly a quarter of that. Not all the debt is Chicago's, a city with the nation's highest sales tax, but enough of it is.
Chicago lost 200,000 people from 2000 to 2009. The only one of the nation's 15 largest cities to lose people. Of all cities, it fell between Detroit, reigning champion of progressive urban decay, and hurricane ravaged New Orleans, in the number of people fleeing to greener pastures.
As Aaron M. Renn writes in City Journal, during the first decade of this century Chicago lost 7.1% of its jobs. Chicago's famous Loop, the second-largest business district in the nation, lost 18.6% of its private-sector jobs.
While Obama's critics delve into his Kenyan ancestry, and his defenders delve into likely opponent Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital and as governor of Massachusetts, pundits and voters would be wise to look at Obama's Chicago for clues to his past and our future.
Chicago was the political incubator for a community organizer who would become president. It is where President Obama sat in the pews on Sunday listening to the liberation theology of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright for two decades. Its liberal academia provided an educational haven for the likes of the former bomb-wielding terrorist Weatherman William Ayers, who was host to Obama's first fund-raiser.
Now the wheels are wobbly, and Chicago has become one of those overtaxed and overregulated places where growth has stalled. Chicago doesn't work so well anymore, having succumbed to the consequences of decades of urban liberalism, and neither does the country to whom it gave Rahm Emanuel, White House adviser David Axelrod and President Obama.
Forget Kenya and look at Obama's Chicago to find out what its favorite son is likely to produce unrestrained by any further electoral battles. | <urn:uuid:f4035f8d-959d-4a19-ae7c-b51941d5d6a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/062512-616013-obama-hometown-of-chicago-in-decline.htm?p=full | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972791 | 766 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Apple Proposes Standard for Smaller SIM Cards to Make Even Thinner iPhones
Reuters reports that Apple has submitted a proposal for a standardized SIM card design smaller than the micro-SIM currently used in the iPhone 4 and iPad, with the new design having apparently won the backing of French carrier Orange. The design would reportedly allow Apple and other companies adopting the card to design smaller and thinner devices.
"We were quite happy to see last week that Apple has submitted a new requirement to (European telecoms standards body) ETSI for a smaller SIM form factor -- smaller than the one that goes in iPhone 4 and iPad," said Anne Bouverot, Orange's head of mobile services.With finalization of the standard and technical issues still to be worked out, devices using the smaller SIM card could hit the market next year.
"They have done that through the standardisation route, through ETSI, with the sponsorship of some major mobile operators, Orange being one of them," she told the Paris leg of the Reuters Global Technology Summit.
Apple made waves last year with reports that the company was seeking to deploy embedded SIM cards, a step that would remove some of the power of carriers over phone distribution. While the GSM Association and some carriers expressed interest in the idea, threats from other carriers to withhold iPhone subsidies reportedly resulted in Apple backing away from the technology for the time being.
It is unclear whether the newly-proposed standard is related to the embedded SIM technology discussed last year, but it appears to more likely simply be a smaller evolution of the removable SIM cards in use today. | <urn:uuid:a53bde90-dba9-4e83-b302-b9c9e59b29a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/17/apple-proposes-standard-for-smaller-sim-cards/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955248 | 322 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Q: I love Origins of the Specious and intend to shill it whenever I can, which brings me to the reason I’m writing: Is the word “shill” derived from the British shilling?
A: I’m glad you like the book, but I may have to disappoint you about the origin of “shill” in the sense of to pose as a satisfied customer to encourage buyers.
The word first showed up in the United States in the early 20th century, as a verb in 1914 and as a noun in 1916, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
The OED defines the verb as to “act as a shill” and the noun as a “decoy or accomplice, esp. one posing as an enthusiastic or successful customer to encourage other buyers, gamblers, etc.”
The dictionary describes “shill” as “slang (chiefly N. Amer.)” and says it may be an abbreviation of “shillaber” (1913), which the dictionary simply defines as a shill. As for the etymology of “shillaber,” the OED says, “Origin unknown.”
The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology also makes a possible “shillaber” connection and adds that the usage was probably of “circus or carnival” origin.
The “shilling,” a former British monetary unit, is derived from an Old Frisian or Old Saxon coin called the skilling, according to the Chambers reference.
The dictionary’s etymologists speculate that the word may ultimately be derived from one of three ancient roots: skell (to resound), skel (to divide, as of gold or silver), and skeld (shield).
None of my language references connect “shill” and “shilling,” but I suppose it’s possible a coin that rings true and a shill that sings false may ultimately descend from an ancient root that resounds. I wouldn’t put money on it, though. | <urn:uuid:ff6b7976-941c-4a64-9cd1-f3579d84b6fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2009/06/the-shill-of-it-all.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960628 | 451 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Fifty million Christmas cards are expected to change hands in Northern Ireland this Yuletide.
But take a look around your office - chances are there aren't quite so many cards festooning the filing cabinets this year.
Instead of going to the expense - financial and ecological - of sending off hundreds of cards to clients, companies are increasingly opting for alternatives, such as sending emailed greetings.
Friends of the Earth says that while Christmas cards are an integral part of the Yuletide festivities, sending a lot of cards made from virgin paper can be problematic.
Campaigner Declan Allison advises: "If you're creative you could make your own cards, perhaps using old Christmas cards.
"Or if you don't fancy sending cards, think about making a donation to a charity instead. Whatever you decide to do, have a merry Christmas."
Many companies have signed up to charitable greetings schemes, such as the one organised by the Simon Community.
Companies give donations and are included as sponsors of a full page Christmas greeting advert. They are also allowed to include a banner on company emails linking them to the Simon Community's online greetings site.
Ciara O'Neill, director of finance and fundraising with the Simon Community, said: "One of our main aims is to develop a corporate strategy to develop our work. Companies here are taking on board the benefits they get by being seen to be supporting charities in their local communities.
"This would be the fifth year we've done this and it is the biggest year so far. We have 18 companies which doesn't sound a lot but it really is a massive support for us. We have a target of £100,000 for Christmas in Northern Ireland.
" This is as much about awareness raising as fundraising - there are so many people from so many different backgrounds that are homeless and it can happen to anybody. Everybody needs to be concerned about it.
" The message is still there and the Christmas wish is still there - it's just not on cardboard and sent through the mail. This will make a very big difference in individual lives. Being homeless is probably the most traumatic thing you can face, especially at this time when its much about family and looking at what you have."
Calor Gas was among the first companies to support the campaign and it lets clients know through its day-to-day correspondence that it is doing so.
"We would have always produced a Christmas card and printed them up and sent them to our clients, but we decided that instead of doing that, we would contribute towards this," spokesperson Berni Neill said.
"It seems to be the accepted and the done thing these days. We have noticed we would have a good few less cards now than what we would have had in the past.
"We feel it's the right thing to do at Christmas - it's nice to support that. We are very happy to take that opportunity to support a worthwhile charity at Christmas. We support a number of charities during the year and it's another extension of that."
A spokesman for solicitors Carson McDowell, which also supports the scheme, says: "What we would send out at Christmas is a greeting by email with a note saying we are supporting the Simon Community. Carson McDowell is a city centre business and homelessness is an urban problem which we help to alleviate by becoming involved in the activities of the Simon Community. What we also do is donate a Christmas box of personal toiletry items to them to hand out to homeless people.
"I've noticed a lot of companies taking the opportunity to go down the avenue of email supporting some sort of charity." | <urn:uuid:4ab916a2-3cb3-436b-8002-c8e15e84b72d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/a-very-merry-christmas-is-on-the-cards-28071228.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981695 | 741 | 1.625 | 2 |
If you are protestant most of us worship on Sunday but as long as you take at least one day to rest and worship Him im pretty sure God isnt going to strike you dead or ban you from heaven if you choose a different day. The term 'sunday' didnt even exist when God made the commandments. Nor did ant of the other days of the week. The whole 'it absolutely HAS to be Sunday and nothing else' is a legalistic point of view encouraged by the very traditional. If you worship your 'sabath' on saturday or any other day thats fine as long as you have A day. Sunday just works out best because it when most churches meet. However you could look for non-traditional churches in your area. Some of them hold services other days than just Sunday. In short - dont worry about it. Have A day of worship, which day doesnt matter.
Sabbath is the seventh day on Saturday, Monday is on Monday, Friday is on Friday and Christians worship on the FIRST day of the week to commemorate the believed resurrection which is on Sunday. Christian tradition doesn't keep the sabbath or move the sabbath to Sunday. +++ Now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight. -Acts 20:7 (NKJV)
9 months ago
Last edited at 11:08AM on 8/23/2012
You are not under law like those who lived during Jesus' lifetime. Everything Jesus talked about was for the lost sheep of Israel. Now that He died, you came in under grace. ( it's not what you do, it's what you believe). And the moment God saw faith in your heart, He forgave you of all your past, present, and future sins. Don't go off willy nilly, but walk in peace about that. So, go worship Him Sundays or any other day you choose! Bye!.
The Sabbath is on Saturday, starting sunset on Friday eve and ending sunset on Saturday eve. When Jesus said Sabbath that's what he meant. In many languages the name for Saturday is derived from Sabbath: Italian (Sabbato), Spanish (Sabado), Russian (Soboti), Hebrew (Shabat), and many other languages as well. In English the name is the pagan day of Saturn worshippers. When God commands in the Decalogue to keep and remember the Sabbath and make it holy, God specifically means Saturday, and the neighboring verses make that clear. The early Christians also held Saturday as their Sabbath. But as you are a Christian, you can do whatever you want, and God doesn't care as long as you do not violate the Noahide Laws. Even if you work 24/7 365 days a year.
Saturday. The sun god was traditionally worshiped on Sunday. Sun god- God's son. Interesting how similar they are. What is even more interesting is how many people got this question wrong. It takes time to learn what the scripture is saying. | <urn:uuid:cfdeaab8-0444-4192-80ee-69361c58b985> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ask.com/answers/196843001/i-am-a-new-believer-of-jesus-but-i-am-not-sure-which-day-is-sabbath-day-could-you-please-tell-me-thank-you?qsrc=3111 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971049 | 634 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Since 1909 The University of Texas at Austin has offered students of all ages and backgrounds opportunities to learn about a variety of subjects or extend their professional learning outside a regular college classroom. Many of the university’s continuing education programs are offered through Continuing and Innovative Education. Many others are supported by the univerisity's colleges, schools and divisions.
Continuing and Innovative Education Programs
University Extension offers college credit courses through regular classroom experiences in the evening or online coursework to learners in and outside the university community.
Petroleum Extension Service (PETEX) develops, produces and delivers technical and nontechnical training courses, publications and digital training materials for the oil and gas industry.
Center for Lifelong Engineering Education provides busy engineers with immediately applicable, real-world knowledge through professional courses, master’s degrees and on-site custom courses.
The UT Professional Development Center helps individuals meet professional and personal goals and helps organizations develop employees and improve performance through workshops, seminars, onsite training and certificate programs.
The Thompson Conference Center offers conference facilities and personal enrichment programs.
The K-16 Education Center provides coursework for high school students, opportunities for Spanish-speaking English language learners to transition to public school, opportunities for migrant high school students to earn credit at any time and place, and ASKME courses in science and mathematics to be used by teachers in a classroom setting or completed by independent learners.
The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) offers a variety of continuing education seminars, lectures, field trips and social activities for adult learners. OLLI members may enroll in a range of non-credit, non-graded short courses offered purely for the love of learning and the promise of connecting to a social and academic environment.
Informal Classes gives members of the greater Austin community exciting opportunities for personal enrichment in a wide range of program offerings. Students of all ages and backgrounds can take courses to have a more active life, enhance their business skills, explore their creativity, discover different cultures and get into the best physical shape of their lives.
Road Scholar is an international education and travel organization, providing adult learners with opportunities to travel while learning about history, nature, music, art and much more. For 20 years, Continuing and Innovative Education has hosted Road Scholar on our campus and in the Austin community. Participants embark on educational trips to major U.S. cities throughout the south and Midwest.
Lifelong Learning Programs
AP Summer Institutes provide Advanced Placement (AP) course training to middle and high school educators who teach or are interested in teaching Pre-AP and AP courses. Institutes are offered in subject areas including math, science, social studies, English, foreign languages and fine arts.
The Free Minds Project provides Central Texas adults living on low to moderate incomes with a chance to fulfill their intellectual potential and jumpstart their college education.
"Not Even Past" is an online learning community developed by the university's Department of History to showcase Texas, American and world history. It offers book recommendations, video clips, podcasts and virtual history courses with leading professors in the subject.
More Continuing Education Programs
- Office of Professional Development at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs
- Continuing Education at the School of Law
- Texas Executive Education at the McCombs School of Business
- Continuing Education at the College of Pharmacy
- M.S. in Technology Commercialization at McCombs School of Business
- Continuing Education at the School of Social Work
Software Quality Institute at the Cockrell School of Engineering | <urn:uuid:16d98aa9-0f76-48a1-a12f-72fc3110b8c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cc.utexas.edu/community-engagement/continuing-education | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940258 | 722 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Syphilis and HIV: A Dangerous Duo Affecting Gay and Bisexual Men
December 14, 2012
A blog by Gail Bolan, M.D., Director of the Division of STD Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), discusses surveillance data released in CDC's 2011 STD Surveillance Report. Bolan draws attention to the increase in primary and secondary syphilis rates among gay and bisexual men -- who account for more than 70 percent of all infections -- and what can be done to reverse the high rates of infection among this sector of society. She notes that a large number of these infections are among young men who have sex with men (MSM), with the highest rates among 20-29 year olds.
Annual surveillance data in the report emphasize the disproportionate burden of disease among gay and bisexual men. Bolan explains that the genital sores caused by syphilis make sexual transmission and acquisition of HIV even easier. Hence, there is an estimated two-to-fivefold increased risk of HIV if persons with syphilis are exposed to the virus. Also, studies show that syphilis increases the viral load of persons with HIV infection. These facts increase Bolan's concern, since data show that four of every 10 MSM with syphilis is co-infected with HIV. Bolan argues that the stakes are too high to ignore these health disparities and emphasizes the importance of promptly diagnosing and treating syphilis infections among MSM to decrease their chances for HIV infection.
Bolan stated that to fight the root causes of health disparities among gay and bisexual men involves confronting the underlying conditions that place the group at greater risk of STDs. She contends that risk behavior alone does not explain the disproportionate STD burden of MSM, but that complex issues such as homophobia and stigma are responsible to some extent for these infections. She discusses how CDC is working with program partners to take action to confront the underlying causes of STD disparities and provides the example of the more comprehensive holistic sexual healthcare through CDC's program collaboration and service integration. Also, action plans guided by the best available science and input from partners are being implemented to help individuals and communities overcome environmental forces that increase the risk of acquiring an STD.
Bolan is aware that government cannot do it alone and that more broad-based action is needed by all involved. She envisages that working together, government and individuals can face sexual health issues. The blog concludes with Bolan' suggestions for what health care providers, individuals, and community leaders should do to create greater awareness and openness about sexual health issues, to help end the disparity, and to ensure good health for gay and bisexual men who are disproportionately impacted by STDs and HIV.
To read the blog visit: http://blog.aids.gov.
12.13.2012; Gail Bolan
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At an international colloquium this September, researchers will tell the story of science poetry’s evolution
The popularization of science is done most often now through nonfiction. But in the century following the scientific revolution, it was poetry that carried the day. Book-length treatises in verse elaborated discoveries in botany, astronomy and medicine. This may seem counterintuitive to us now; and indeed, some of these works can seem far removed from scientific fact. In 1791, in his verses about plants, Erasmus Darwin imputed emotions and desires to them. It’s perhaps an understatement to say that, however charming, something like this would not fly today.
But in the early 1800s, such fancy was not so far-fetched. According to Hugues Marchal, a professor of literature at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, scientific poetry was seen as a way of promoting the science it described. Its writers wanted most of all “to lead people to be interested in what was going on in contemporary sciences.” He points to the remarks of poet-naturalist René-Richard Castel (1758–1832): “A poet must not aim to teach and advance a science as much as to show its advantages and make it loved.” This was not a bad deal for those scientists whose work was enshrined in verse. They often repaid the favor by endorsing writers’ work or providing prose commentaries on it. Poets, in turn, who had been relying on classical literature for their subject matter and sources, received an infusion of new ideas and material—and they went with it.
This mutually beneficial relationship could not last. By 1900, such works had all but disappeared from the literature. Poets still played a part in furthering public understanding of scientific concepts. But the long poem designed to inspire interest in science—to seduce readers, as Marchal says—was gone.
Such poems and the reasons for their disappearance will be the subject of a colloquium this September 15–17 in Montréal, Canada, entitled “The Glory and Fall of Scientific Poetry.” Its organizers, Marchal and Michel Pierssens of l’Université de Montréal, are part of an ongoing project, Euterpe (named for the Greek goddess of lyric poetry and music), designed to map the evolution of scientific poetry in France. They hope that the 40 papers presented will create a collective assessment of the genre across Europe and North America.
The first paper, presented by Muriel Louâpre of l’Universite Paris Descartes, will include Euterpe’s statistical analysis of French scientific poetry between 1792 and 1939. This will for the first time allow for systematic study of how the genre played out over time.
Other papers will cover astronomer Roger Boscovich’s 1779 poem on solar eclipses and its links to Maxwell, Newton and Kelvin, and the impact of Erasmus Darwin’s scientific poetry on the Romantic poets. Present-day examples will be considered as well: Two talks will discuss the work of Raymond Queneau, whose vast sonnet sequence of 1961,
Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes
(Hundred Thousand Billion Poems), ably employed combinatorics in its form. And astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet will make a case for present-day science poetry. “According to him,” Marchal says, “we could speak of a kind of rebirth of scientific poetry at the end of the twentieth century. He is going to try and convince us.”
Marchal suggests several reasons for the fall of the longer scientific poem: the split that began in the early 1800s between literature and the sciences; the replacement of broad knowledge with specialization; the increasing speed of scientific discovery (which contrasts with the time required to make good poetry); and the rejection in the literary world of didactic poetry that transparently described science.
Barri J. Gold, a professor of English at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania and the author of
ThermoPoetics: Energy in Victorian Literature and Science,
believes our assumptions about teaching science played a part as well. “I think that we have certain socially engrained beliefs, held by scientists and nonscientists alike, that science can’t be explained in ordinary language to an intelligent nonexpert,” she says. “I don’t agree with that.” But the pervasiveness of this idea might explain why describing science in the language of poetry can seem doubly difficult.
Marchal offers the example of eminent botanist Francis Hallé’s 1999 work
Eloge de la Plante
(In Praise of Plants). “He always quotes poets like Paul Valery, saying that they provide him with good images of what he wants to convey about our new sense of what a plant is. The poetry is not only adornment for his book; he thinks with it, in a way.”
Gold also concurs with Marchal that the Enlightenment-era divide between the sciences and the humanities played a role—and still does: “Thinking about those two things as separate categories of problems that require separate methods to think about can get us in a lot of trouble.”
Thinking of the two as closely linked, on the other hand, can be fruitful, perhaps essential. “The humanities is good at framing questions,” Gold says. “It lets us think in the space prior to hypotheses. And that may be a really important space for poetry and other genres to engage, from different perspectives, with the stuff of science.”
Although many of the older texts under discussion at the conference will require a trip to the library—and pulling them out of the stacks would be a pleasant way to spend an afternoon—some are available on the Web. Here are a few science poetry works online.
The entire text of Erasmus Darwin's The Botanic Garden is available for online reading and for free download at
. The introduction is followed by
"The Economy of Vegetation,"
and then by the more-famous second part,
"The Loves of the Plants."
Several sites are devoted to Raymond Queneau's Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes, including this translation, which has a grid to show the combinatorics in action, and this one by Bev Rowe.
For a general overview, try
Contemporary Poetry and Contemporary Science
, edited by Robert Crawford (Oxford University Press, 2006). The book was reviewed by Katy Price at the
British Society for Literature and Science
and by Peter Forbes
» Post Comment | <urn:uuid:c12882d8-8592-4ea7-98b1-7c7a63bf55cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2010/5/epic-science | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956363 | 1,402 | 3.09375 | 3 |
As more and more localities declare their independence from budget-destroying unions, the United Auto Workers is reaching into its bag of liberal magic tricks to help breakup non-union plants in the Deep South. It’s the last gasp of the UAW that knows it must perish if it is not successful in breaking into non-union shops operating in the U.S., such as foreign automakers Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen.
Not surprisingly, given the desperate times for unions, the UAW is relying on an appeal to racism in the south- one of the only tricks left in the liberal bag- in order to exploit African-American workers at the Nissan plant in Canton, MS.
“After months of speculation about where the United Auto Workers was going to focus its do-or-die Southern campaign to organize workers,” writes Facing South, “the giant 3,000-worker Nissan plant in Canton, Miss., has emerged as Battleground No. 1.”
Facing South, a liberal newsletter, produced by the progressive stink tank, The Institute for Southern Studies, says that the UAW is focusing on Nissan’s Canton plant because they estimate that the plant’s racial makeup is 80 percent African-American, thus more easily exploitable.
“It was here that some of the bloodiest battles of the civil rights movement were fought,” reports Facing South. “It is here where the idea of a social movement based on social justice at the workplace can find fertile ground, UAW leaders believe.”
Gee and I thought the civil rights movement was about securing the same rights for black citizen that everyone enjoyed regardless of skin color.
It’s nice to see that the UAW readily admits that, at least for them, the civil right movement is about exploiting the color of someone’s skin in order to bolster union coffers. I’m supposing the UAW thinks that blacks can’t add or subtract the same way that whites do.
Because, as the UAW cynically admits, previous attempts at unionizing Nissan auto plants that were 80 percent white failed.
They failed because Nissan told the workers that their jobs depended on remaining competitive with other automakers, and unionization would make it much harder for the company to compete in a world where manufacturing capacity is a commodity business: In the end, the low cost producer wins; hence the bankruptcies and bailouts at Chrysler and General Motors how can’t compete against non-union shops.
"Bringing a union into Smyrna could result in making Smyna not competitive,” Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn told workers at the Smyrna plant according to Facing South, “which is not in your best interest or Nissan's."
Exhibit number one is from the Detroit News, which in an editorial printed yesterday, blamed the UAW for the estimated $20 billion in taxpayer losses in the auto bailout. The actual losses will likely be much greater.
“None of these losses were necessary to keep General Motors and Chrysler in business,” writes the Detroit News. “The entire net cost of the bailout came from subsidizing the United Auto Workers' pay and benefits.” For example, in the $95 billion GM bankruptcy, $50 billion of it was benefit liabilities to UAW workers.
Exhibit number two comes from declining union membership for the UAW.
The head of the union, Bob King, has admitted that declining union membership rolls means that if the UAW doesn't "organize these transnationals [foreign auto manufacturers], I don't think there's a long-term future for the UAW — I really don't."
That’s correct. Because unless the UAW can figure out how to increase labor costs across the entire industry, foreign manufacturers will continue to beat American manufacturers in the number one cost for cars: labor. Labor costs, including benefits, put current per-hour employee cost for U.S. automakers [at] around 50 percent higher than the costs for their foreign counterparts,” according to NPR.
As I reported in March of 2011, the UAW’s honcho, King, gave foreign automakers including BMW, Volkswagen AG, Toyota and Nissan an offer they can't refuse: Unionize their workers or else he'll single out one automaker and put the screws to them with a boycott. Never mind that the boycott will hurt workers, consumers and the US economy.
Last year, sources close to one foreign car manufacturer told me that they thought the target would be Toyota. But that was before a tsunami set back Japanese auto manufacturing. In January, the UAW announced they would target Volkswagen. German automakers, they felt, were likely a better bet because they thought that German unions were willing to back the UAW.
“This will be the biggest campaign ever undertaken. It will involve hundreds of dealerships,” said Dennis Williams, UAW Secretary Treasurer, adding the union will ask for help from its retirees, community groups and other unions to help with the campaign, said the Royal Oak Tribune (MI).
“We will do whatever it takes,” said Williams.
However, the support of union workers in other countries, once considered a key to success, has failed to materialize, probably because world economic conditions have foreign workers more worried about their jobs than even Americans.
"Of course, we will support the UAW; we've said that all along," said Bernd Osterloh, a German union chief told the Chicago Tribune. "But there's one thing we cannot do. We can't take workers at VW Chattanooga by the hand when it comes to voting (on UAW representation). One has to be in favor if one wants union representation."
And with that sterling stab in the back, the boycott strategy has collapsed with a chorus of loudly ringing “no comments” from the UAW’s King…And by that I mean Bob King, UAW president, not Obama.
But thank God the UAW still has racism.
Because as a union, they are all out of magic tricks.
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Do you use a headset to talk on the phone? Until recently, only telemarketers, reporters, and bond traders enjoyed this liberating experience. But more and more businesspeople are putting down their handsets in favor of headsets -- to take notes, check email, and generally be more productive while they're on the phone.
FreeHand, a new headset from market-leader Plantronics, targets business professionals. The tiny, in-the-ear unit looks like it should attach to a Walkman rather than to a telephone. Its noise-canceling microphone makes for clear sound even in open environments. Its six-feet-long cord lets users roam their offices as they work their Rolodexes.
Michael Hedrick, director of global distribution for the Bank of Montreal, has been using headsets for years but always found them awkward. Not any more. "You just pick FreeHand up, stick it in your ear, and answer the phone," he says. "It's just so convenient."
FreeHand retails for about $200. Call Plantronics (800-544-4660) or visit the Web http://www.plantronics.com .
Walk into any office and you'll see people huddled around speakerphones holding conference calls with far-away colleagues. The trouble with long-distance teleconferences is that they sound so, well, distant -- unless you spend $800 or more for high-performance, full-duplex audio equipment.
That's changing. SoundPoint, a new desktop conferencing system, delivers high-performance sound at an affordable price. Peter Rusch, a consultant based outside San Francisco, uses SoundPoint to interact with his East Coast clients. "In most conference calls, you just can't get the full impact of the meeting," he complains. "But with SoundPoint, I can hear all the conversations. I can even hear the side conversations, when people think they're whispering."
SoundPoint comes in two versions: the standard model, which connects to any business telephone, and SoundPoint PC, which works with a sound card, making it great for Internet phones and desktop videoconferencing systems. Both versions sell for $299. Call Polycom, Inc. (800-765-9266) or visit the Web http://www.polycom.com .
WebPhone's drag-and-drop interface makes it surprisingly easy to use. And the system offers some remarkable features -- not the least of which is the ability to reach anyone (with an email address) anywhere in the world for the price of a local Internet connection. WebPhone lets users create messages for specific callers ("Sorry I had to leave early, Chris; meet me in the office at 10 a.m.") or block calls from specific people and route them directly to voice mail. Placing a call is as easy as entering an email address or double-clicking on an entry in an electronic address book.
WebPhone 2.0 sells for $49.95. A limited-features version can be downloaded for free. Call NetSpeak Corporation (561-998-8700) or visit the Web http://www.netspeak.com . | <urn:uuid:39d076b7-b0d5-4c00-93e9-20ef668d20a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fastcompany.com/print/28459 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930664 | 654 | 1.6875 | 2 |
At $5.2-billion Iridium was one of the largest, boldest and audacious startup bets ever made. Conceived in 1987 by Motorola and spun out in 1990 as a separate company, Iridium planned to build a mobile telephone system that would work anywhere on earth. It would cover every city, town and square inch of the earth from ships in the middle of the Arctic Ocean to the jungles of Africa to the remote mountain peaks of the Himalayas. And Iridium would do this without building a single cell tower.
How? With an out-of-this-world business plan. First, the company bought a fleet of 15 rockets from Russia, the U.S. and China. Next, it built 72 satellites on an assembly line and used the rockets to launch them into orbit 500 miles above the earth. There the satellites acted like 500-mile high cell phone towers capable of providing phone coverage to any spot on the planet. Seven years after it was founded their satellites and ground stations were in place. It was a technical tour de force.
But nine months after the first call was made in 1998, Iridium was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It crashed back down to earth as one of the largest startup failures on record. What went wrong?
We Think We Identified a Large Problem
When Iridium was first conceived inside Motorola in 1987, worldwide cell phone coverage was sparse, calls were unreliable and per minute costs were expensive. Cell phone handsets were the size of a lunch box and cost thousands of dollars.
When it was spun out as a a separate company, Iridium’s 1990 business plan had assumptions about potential customers, their problems and the product needed to solve that problem. All were predicated on the state of the mobile phone industry in 1990. They made other assumptions about the type of sales channel, partnerships and revenue model they would need. And they rolled all of this up into a set of financial forecasts with a “size of market” forecast from brand name management consulting firms that said they’d have 42 million customers by 2002. Iridium looked like it would be printing money when it got its satellites into space.
A Business Plan Frozen in Time
But in the 11 years it took Iridium to go from concept to launch, innovation in mobile phones and cell phone networks moved at blinding speed. By the time Iridium launched, there were far fewer places on the planet where cell phone service was unavailable. Traditional cell phone companies now had coverage in the most valuable parts of the world. Prices for local and international cell service declined dramatically. The size of a cell phone handset had shrunk so it could fit in your pocket.
In contrast, when Iridium’s service became available its satellite phone was bigger than a brick and weighed about the same.
Worse, Iridium’s cell phone couldn’t make calls from cars, offices or other buildings since phones had to be used outdoors with a line-of-sight connection to the satellites. But the nail in the coffin was price. Instead of the 50 cents per minute for a regular cell phone, Iridium’s calls cost $7 per minute– plus users needed to pay $3,000 for the handset.
In the eleven years since they had been at work, Iridium’s potential market had shrunk nearly every day. But Iridium’s business model assumptions were fixed like it was still 1990. They were dead on arrival as a mass market cell phone service the day they went live.
No Business Plan Survives First Contact With A Customer
The result was a classic startup failure writ large. Iridium followed its original business plan assumptions off a cliff. Their mistakes? First, in 1990 the company thought it knew the customer problem to solve, and therefore it knew what solution to build.
Second, since it knew the solution, it went into a 8-year Waterfall engineering development process. Waterfall development is a sequential way to develop a product (requirements, design, implementation, verification – ship.) Waterfall makes lots of sense in a market with the customer problem is known and all customer needs and product features can be specified up front. It is death in a rapidly changing business. Waterfall development shut off Iridium’s ability to listen, learn, test and adapt to changing customer needs and a rapidly changing market place.
Third, its business plan had no notion of learning and discovery. The idea of iteration or pivots was unthinkable. This business plan was a static document. It was great for fundraising, looked great in business schools and large companies, but completely broke down when confronted by the realities of the changing mobile phone business. When the company launched, it ran into diminishing customers and markets that didn’t correspond to its business plan and financial projections, but it had no ability to pivot and change their business model. A Customer Discovery and Validation process that was ongoing with product development could have provided early warning that its market was not developing in Iridium’s favor. Instead management was more comfortable executing to the plan.
It All Came Crashing Down
All this, plus the corporate hubris of having raised billions of dollars, with no adult on either Iridum’s or Motorola’s board who was asking “does this still make sense?” resulted in a disaster. Instead of the 42 million customers called for in its business plan, Iridium had 30,000 subscribers at its peak. The company burned its way through more than $5.2-billion because it fell in love with technology, succumbed to Waterfall product development and never bothered to get out of the building, get their heads out of their spreadsheets and ask, “What do customers want today?”
In 2000, new investors bought Iridium’s satellites and network for $25-million, or one half of one percent of the invested capital. Today, the successor company serves some 300,000 customers in a series of niche markets including American soldiers calling home from war zones, oil rig managers, and big game hunters.
Customer Development, Business Model Design and Agile Development could have changed the outcome.
- Business plans are the leading cause of startup death
- No Business Plan survives first contact with a customer
- Rapidly changing markets require continuous business model iteration/customer development
- Your ability to raise money has no correlation with customer adoption | <urn:uuid:aa7a3d1d-0a79-4b6e-ab48-c74e24a97f9c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://steveblank.com/2010/11/01/no-business-plan-survives-first-contact-with-a-customer-%E2%80%93-the-5-2-billion-dollar-mistake/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=9514d1f115 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973139 | 1,313 | 2.328125 | 2 |
Which one is correct?
A partir de ahora, voy a hablar en español.
Desde ahora, voy a hablar en español.
In meaning I think both are close to "from." Are there any specific instances where one cannot replace the other.
A partir de is used when an action is going to take place starting from that point on. You can indicate the end by using hasta.
Desde means the same thing as a partir but the difference is that desde is used for actions that have already taken place and are still valid in the present or a specified point in time (you use hasta to indicate the end).
So which one is correct? It's difficult because of the ahora but for me as a native speaker it sounds more natural "Desde ahora...".
To simplify that.
Desde is more like "since" (in the temporal sense only).
You would not say, for instance:
You would/could say:
Desde works nearly everywhere, but a partir de only really works with sustantives.
"A partir de" is used frequently for resolutions, either personal resolutions like your example or "lawful" stuff ("a partir del lunes, las horas extras estarán prohibidas" [from Monday on, working overtime will be illegal]). It's also more natural if the point of time is just now or in the future, desde seems more natural for the past (i.e. hablo español desde el mes pasado; hablaré español a partir del mes que viene).
Please keep in mind that not every nd word in Spanish has a 'finite' translation form and that it can have different meanings in regards to colloquial differences. In Mex/Spanish, the direct translation of the phrase = 'apart from' = <----these 2 words together are the equivalent of the single English word 'apart' and are usually used in reference to distinguishing a single characteristic which sets it apart from the rest. The word <----means from and in this case, the two words together would mean 'apart from'. Although the word usually means 'from', in this case, it can also be used as a point of reference and that can be in the form of juxtaposition as well as Geo-location and in abstract form as opposed as to the finite. The Mexican word can mean either from or of, depending on the content or object of the sentence and can be used both in the abstract form as well as the finite. The direct translation of the Mexican word is both 'of' as well as 'from' and can also vary depending on the content and object of the sentence. | <urn:uuid:8fa6c158-69f5-4e1b-a639-5d20a9cbd959> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://spanish.stackexchange.com/questions/1063/what-is-the-difference-between-a-partir-de-y-desde | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901048 | 581 | 2.75 | 3 |
In an effort to raise awareness of the roles that all of us play in protecting our digital lives, today, individuals, organizations, and communities throughout the United States are gearing up to promote National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM). Tens of thousands of NCSAM participants across the country, including Verisign, will be doing their part by posting safety and security tips on social networks, educating their customers and employees, posting tips, holding events, and much more.Read more
POSTS TAGGED: cybersecurity
*Originally published in CSO Magazine
There is a growing consensus within the information security community around the benefits of establishing “intelligence-driven” security operations. A growing number of organizations are moving in this direction, based on the combination of increasingly network-centric operations and the complexity of today’s cyber threats. Without question, integrating intelligence into your security operations is beneficial, provided you are following a few core principles, one of which is working with accurate, deep and relevant intelligence.Read more
There has been a lot of discussion lately about the potential for IPv6 to create security issues. While there are definitely some security risks of IPv6 deployment, a carefully considered implementation plan can help mitigate against security risks.
As we approach World IPv6 Launch tomorrow, I thought it prudent to share the below described incident that iDefense recently observed. This incident illustrates the disruptive capability of IPv6 in action and also prompted me to think about what IT professionals need to do to help make sure their network infrastructure is ready for the impending launch of IPv6.Read more
For the past few years, iDefense has highlighted cyber security disruptors in our annual Threats and Trends report. In the commercial world, the notion of a business disruptor centers on ideas or technologies that fundamentally change the way a business sector operates. One example is the combination of iTunes and the iPod. Other companies sold digital music before Apple Inc. came up with this combination at the right price point, but once they did, they fundamentally changed how people purchase music. That is a business disruptor. Similar to business disruptors, a cyber security disruptor is an idea or technology coming down the pipe that will fundamentally change how enterprise security staffs protect their environments. These are technologies that will impact us within the next five to 10 years.Read more
Here’s a new video of me discussing my thoughts on the Zeus malcode, one of the most interesting manifestations in cybersecurity...Read more | <urn:uuid:00e63367-4d83-4b51-ac3a-bf43ce9172bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.verisigninc.com/roller/blog/tags/cybersecurity?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941305 | 501 | 1.65625 | 2 |
NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft Discovers River On Titan [VIDEO]
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured the first image of a 200-mile-long river on Titan, on of the Saturn’s orbiting moons.
According to The Space Reporter, this liquid river is the first observed on another planetary body. The river stretches more than 200 miles (400 kilometers) from its headwaters to a large sea.
NASA scientists used Cassini’s radar imaging instruments to determine that the strange geological feature is likely a river.
The scientists came to the conclusion that it was a river because of the dark, smooth surface within the meanders and channel that suggested the presence of a liquid.
According to NASA, the radar image that details Titan’s north polar region was taken on September 26, 2012. The north polar region is where the river valley flows into Kraken Mare, a sea that is similar in size to the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
NASA astronomers say that the river system could help provide them with a better understanding of Saturn’s fractured surface
Jani Radebaugh, Cassini radar team associate at Brigham Young University said:
“Though there are some short, local meanders, the relative straightness of the river valley suggests it follows the trace of at least one fault, similar to other large rivers running into the southern margin of this same Titan sea. Such faults — fractures in Titan’s bedrock — may not imply plate tectonics, like on Earth, but still lead to the opening of basins and perhaps to the formation of the giant seas themselves.”
Astronomers have long thought that Titan could serve as a hotbed for microscopic lifeforms.
According to NASA, Titan is the only other world we know of that has stable liquid on its surface. And while Earth’s hydrologic cycle relies on water, Titan’s cycle involves hydrocarbons such as ethane and methane.
Steve Wall, the radar deputy team lead, said:
“Titan is the only place we’ve found besides Earth that has a liquid in continuous movement on its surface. This picture gives us a snapshot of a world in motion. Rain falls, and rivers move that rain to lakes and seas, where evaporation starts the cycle all over again. On Earth, the liquid is water; on Titan, it’s methane; but on both it affects most everything that happens.” | <urn:uuid:86d98d62-9e4d-469f-ba23-ce059cc5c436> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.inquisitr.com/435934/nasas-cassini-spacecraft-discovers-river-on-titan-video/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937415 | 513 | 3.625 | 4 |
ThomasGR wrote:I do not see any difficulty. i(/na can easily be translated with "to, in order to, so as to" and it makes sense. Repeating it just gives more stress to the action.
ThomasGR wrote: But, I am more alarmed because in my bible there is no second "ina", but instead I have "o(/pws". It is not the first time I encounter such differences, I wonder how to explain them.
Bert wrote:The way I read it would make that "my daughter is about to die in order that you may come and lay your hands on her..."
You see my difficulty?
AT Robertson wrote:hINA seems to be merely an introductory term with the volitive subjuncive (i.e. with imperitival force) in "hINA....EPIQHS" (it is an imperitival hINA, "Do please come and lay your hands)
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CHRISTIAN McBRIDE, VICTOR WOOTEN, MARCUS Miller, Victor Bailey, Jeff Berlin, Jaco Pastorius, Stanley Clarke, Ron Carter, Paul Chambers, James Jamerson, Scott LaFaro, Red Mitchell, Israel Crosby, Charles Mingus, Ray Brown, Oscar Pettiford. Th is list of giants suggests a thread woven through the hippest music of the last 70 years. A few thousand names are missing from the list, of course, but the thread leads back to one man: Jimmie Blanton. Even though Blanton died when he was only 23, he’s known as the granddaddy of modern jazz bass playing. Last month, we looked at three classic licks from “Jack the Bear,” a Blanton feature with the Duke Ellington band. This month, let’s check out four more signature Blanton solo lines.
Blanton plays the licks in Examples 1 and 2 on several different versions of “Pitter, Panther, Patter” [Solos, Duets and Trios, RCA/Bluebird], a bass and piano duet that he recorded with Ellington in 1940. Ellington probably taught Blanton the tricky duet arrangement’s basic bass melody by ear, and Blanton added his own twists and turns to his accompaniment and solo lines. Blanton plays many of the same licks—albeit with slight alterations—in the same solo spots in all three takes.
Example 1 comes 0:50 into the track, with Ellington giving Blanton a two-bar break at the end of a chorus. When I first heard these recordings years ago, this lick in particular caught my ear, and I really wanted to “take it off the record.” It remains one of my go-to licks when I’m playing a break on a G7 chord in a medium swing tempo. As proof of the lick’s ear-catching nature, I’ve also heard everyone from Ray Brown to Ron Carter play their own variations.
Example 2 shows Blanton’s next two-bar break, which arrives at 1:00. The high G is not a harmonic; Blanton is fingering the note, pulling hard and yanking the tone out of the gut string. He was obviously used to pulling a big sound out of his unamplified bass with the big band, and he didn’t pull any punches when he got his chance to record with Maestro Ellington in this intimate duo setting.
Example 3 shows Blanton’s lick at 0:22 in “Sepia Panorama”, from The Blanton-Webster Band [RCA]. The band is screaming, and then there’s the abrupt break—Blanton’s got it! He lays into a repeated high F in a triplet pattern, and then springs up into the stratosphere. It was uncommon for a bassist in 1940 to jump up to a high A, but Blanton nails it.
Listen to the original, and hear Blanton somersaulting all over the bass behind Ellington’s tinkling piano solo. Blanton is not primarily known as an interactive bass player, but I think this shows a spark of creative interaction that set him apart from the other bassists of the era. Blanton’s playing underneath Ellington’s lines is clever—like a boxer sparring, jabbing, and punching out beautiful bass melodies everywhere.
Example 4 comes at 2:58, toward the end of the “Sepia Panorama” track. Here Blanton plays alone except for light brush work from drummer Sonny Greer. Beginning on beat four of bar 1, Blanton starts a hemiola, or cross-rhythm: The eighth-note line beginning on beat four is in triplets (rhythmic groupings of three), but the melodic phrase repeats a four-note grouping (Bb, D, Eb, F). The four-note phrase played in triplets creates the feeling of “taking it out” rhythmically, or playing across the bar line.
Wherever you sit on the timeline of bass players, know that your musical bloodline contains elements of the Jimmie Blanton legacy. Bassists have made great technical strides since Blanton, playing incredible grooves and solos, and often taking the bass to the front of the bandstand. However, Blanton was the man who made the current state of the bass possible for all of us.
Plan B: “A Train”
YOU PROBABLY KNOW THE SWING standard “Take the A Train,” which is played by school bands, swing dance bands, and lounge-lizard jump bands everywhere. You might even know that “Take the A Train” was the Ellington band’s theme song for many years. Written by composer Billy Strayhorn, who was Ellington’s right-hand man, the tune was adopted in 1940 as the theme song for legal reasons.
Before “A Train,” the band’s theme song was the Ellington composition “Sepia Panorama.” In 1940, the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) tried to raise the rate that composers received when their music was played on the radio. The whole industry—radio stations, record companies, musicians, and performing rights societies—became embroiled in a legal tussle over broadcast licensing fees. Since Ellington was an ASCAP composer, he wasn’t allowed to play his compositions on the radio for the duration of the legal proceedings.
In order to keep his band performing live on the radio, Duke had to compile an entirely new non-ASCAP band book, and find a new theme song to replace “Sepia Panorama,” which featured Jimmie Blanton. Strayhorn, who belonged to the rival performing rights organization Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), composed many great songs for Ellington during this period, including the new theme song, “Take the A Train.” Imagine if the bass feature “Sepia Panorama” had remained the Ellington theme and had become as ubiquitous as “Take the A Train”—we might still be playing it at dances and hearing marching bands perform it at high school football games!
Check out John playing “Sepia Panorama” and more timeless Ellington/Blanton music with the American Jazz Orchestra on Ellington Classics [Atlantic, 1988], and visit John’s website for bass news and information, plus John’s recording of “Pitter, Panther, Patter.” johngoldsby.com | <urn:uuid:5afcce84-bf1c-4f5d-a5b6-5ca9e5e5cc62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bassplayer.com/article/john-goldsbys-jazz-concepts-state-of-the-bass---jimmie-blanton-part-2/150877 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947537 | 1,423 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Toynbee, Arnold (DNB00)
|←Toy, John||Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 57
TOYNBEE, ARNOLD (1852–1883), social philosopher and economist, second son of Joseph Toynbee [q. v.], was born in Savile Row, London, on 23 Aug. 1852. Toynbee owed much in his early years to the in- fluence of his father, who, though he died when his son was only fourteen, had yet inspired the latter with a love of literature and with the germs of those social ideals which were afterwards the main interest of his life. Toynbee was originally intended for the army, and, after some years spent at a preparatory school at Blackheath, he went to the Rev. J. M. Brackenbury's at Wimbledon to read for Woolwich. But his increasing taste for poetry, history, and philosophy gradually turned his thoughts from a military career. He accordingly left Mr. Brackenbury's, and began attending lectures as a day student at King's College, London. But he did not long continue this course, and for some years before going to the university he practically took his education into his own hands. Endowed with a keen intellect and strongly marked character, he thus acquired an amount of knowledge in certain fields of study, and developed a strength and originality of opinion, very unusual at so early an age.
In January 1873 Toynbee matriculated as a commoner at Pembroke College, Oxford. In November of that year he competed for the Brackenbury (history) scholarship at Balliol. Though he was not successful, his work made a great impression on the examiners, and the authorities of Balliol offered him rooms at that college. Toynbee was anxious to accept this offer, but the master of Pembroke raised objections. Toynbee accordingly left Pembroke and ceased to be a member of the university, though still residing at Oxford. In January 1875 he matriculated afresh, this time as a commoner at Balliol. Here he continued to devote himself to history and philosophy, and while still an undergraduate exercised a considerable influence among his contemporaries at Balliol as an ardent disciple of Professor Thomas Hill Green [q. v.] But philosophy and religion were in Toynbee's mind, as in Green's, inseparable from active philanthropy. The desire to assist in raising the material and moral condition of the mass of the population grew more and more to be the absorbing passion of his life, and it was in order to direct his own and others' efforts in this direction that he threw himself with great energy into the study of economics, and especially of economic history. In spite of his delicate health, which caused frequent and serious interruption to his studies, and of the necessity of devoting a certain amount of time to the classical books prescribed for a pass degree in literæ humaniores (which he took at midsummer 1878), Toynbee obtained such a mastery of economics that immediately after taking his degree he was appointed a tutor at Balliol. In that capacity he had charge of the studies of the men who were preparing for the Indian civil service. His lectures, primarily intended for them, but soon attracting a wider circle of hearers, dealt with the principles of economics and the economic history of recent times. But his activity was not confined to the university. In the four and a half years between his appointment as tutor of Balliol and his death, his influence rapidly spread, not only in Oxford, but among persons interested in social and industrial questions throughout the country. As a student of economics his principal attention was directed to the history of the great changes which came over the industrial system of Great Britain between the middle of the eighteenth century and the present time. As a practical reformer he was active in the work of charity organisation, of co-operation, and of church reform; and he delivered from time to time popular lectures on the industrial problems of the day, which were attended by large audiences of the working class in Bradford, Newcastle, Bolton, Leicester, and London. The volume of his works entitled ‘The Industrial Revolution,’ which was published after his death by his widow, with a memoir by Professor Jowett, bears witness to his activity in both these directions. The first part of it, ‘The Industrial Revolution’ proper, consists of the notes of his lectures delivered at Balliol on the industrial history of Great Britain from 1760, a subject on which he was collecting materials for a comprehensive volume at the time of his death. Despite its fragmentary character, the ‘Industrial Revolution’ is full of valuable research and acute observation, and has exercised a considerable influence on students of economics, both in Great Britain and abroad. The popular addresses, ‘Wages and Natural Law,’ ‘Industry and Democracy,’ &c., which compose the second half of the volume, are chiefly of interest as illustrating Toynbee's character and aims as a social missionary. The eloquence, the religious fervour, the intense zeal for the better organisation of industrial society, the genuine but not uncritical sympathy with the aspirations of the working class, which were characteristic of him, are traceable even in the imperfect remains of these lectures, which were largely extempore, and could in some instances only be pieced together, after his death, from notes or from the reports of provincial newspapers. But the chief source of Toynbee's influence lay in the charm of his personality. His striking appearance, win- ning manners, and great power of expression, above all his transparent sincerity and high-mindedness, won the respect and affection of all with whom he came into contact, whether as pupil, teacher, or fellow worker in social causes. His intellectual and moral gifts made themselves equally felt in the academic world of Oxford and among the manufacturers and workmen of the great industrial centres where he delivered his popular addresses.
As an undergraduate Toynbee attracted the notice of Professor Jowett, master of Balliol, and became one of his intimate friends. He was also closely associated at Oxford with Professor T. H. Green and Richard Lewis Nettleship [q. v.], and, in his work among the poor of East London, with Canon Barnett, vicar of St. Jude's, Whitechapel (afterwards Canon of Westminster), and founder of the first university settlement, Toynbee Hall, which was established soon after Toynbee's death. Toynbee has often been called a socialist; but he was not a socialist of the revolutionary type, nor did he ever adopt the doctrines of collectivism. But he was opposed to the extreme individualism of some of the earlier English economists, and believed earnestly in the power of free corporate effort, such as that of co-operative and friendly societies and of trade unions, to raise the standard of life among the mass of the people, and in the duty of the state to assist such effort by free education, by the regulation of the conditions of labour, and by contributing to voluntary insurance funds intended to provide for the labourer in sickness and old age. Toynbee's economic views never took the shape of a fully developed system of economic philosophy. This was perhaps owing to his early death; but even if he had lived longer, it is likely that he would have devoted himself rather to the history of industrial development, and its bearing on the questions of the day, than to the more theoretical side of political economy. In the last year of his life he was deeply interested in the agitation which arose out of Henry George's book on ‘Progress and Poverty’ (New York, 1880; London, 1881). Convinced of the onesidedness of that remarkable work, and alarmed by what he considered the bad and misleading influence which it was exercising upon the leaders of working-class opinion, he did his best to combat the doctrine of land nationalisation by speech and writing. Two lectures which he delivered on the subject, first in Oxford and then at St. Andrew's Hall, Newman Street, London, were his last efforts as a teacher on social questions. For some time he had been greatly overworked, and the physical and mental strain attending the delivery of these lectures hastened the complete breakdown of his health. He died at Wimbledon on 9 March 1883. At the time of his death Toynbee, who had been made bursar of Balliol in 1881, was just about to be appointed a fellow of that college. Shortly after his death his friends established in his memory, under the guidance of Canon Barnett, Toynbee Hall (in Commercial Street, Whitechapel), an institution designed to encourage closer relations between the working classes and those educated at the universities. This ‘university settlement’ was the first of its kind, and has formed the model of similar institutions in other districts.
Toynbee married, in June 1879, Miss Charlotte Atwood, who survived him. He had no children.
The ‘Industrial Revolution’ was first published in 1884. The second edition appeared in 1887, the third and fourth in 1890 and 1894 respectively. To the fourth edition are added the two lectures on Henry George, delivered in St. Andrew's Hall in February 1883.[An excellent life by Professor F. C. Montague, published in the Johns Hopkins Historical Series, 1889; and ‘Arnold Toynbee: a Reminiscence,’ by the present writer, 1895.] | <urn:uuid:68482e55-1062-4922-a4bc-b23a3e2dc987> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Toynbee,_Arnold_(DNB00) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98504 | 1,988 | 2.65625 | 3 |
In 1812, Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt was on the ultimate dream trip, crossing Arabia disguised as a trader in search of the fabled "lost city of stone." The ancient city built by the Nabataean tribe of Arab nomads had been the source of many tales, but no Westerner had ever seen it. Burckhardt convinced a guide to take him there, saying he wanted to make an offering, and was astonished by the beauty of the ruins, now known as Petra ("rock" in Greek). Ever since, the buildings--carved into the towering pink sandstone cliffs more than 2,000 years ago--have been a must-see destination.
Petra is in the mountains of southwestern Jordan, where it can be blazingly hot in the summer and frigid in the winter--even snow is possible. The best months to go are April and May, when the weather is mild and dry.
Visitors typically fly to Amman, the capital, and then drive about three hours south to Wadi Musa, the town next to Petra. Rental cars cost about $45 a day, and the roads are excellent. The ruins are another 15 minutes by car from Wadi Musa. Try to arrive when Petra opens at 6 a.m. to avoid the mid-morning crush of tour groups--for several hours, you'll have the site largely to yourself.
Wadi Musa has seen a boom in hotel construction in recent years. One of the most interesting options is the Taybet Zaman (011-962/3-215-0111, jordan-travel.jo/taybet_zaman, from $96 per night), built in the stone houses of a century-old Ottoman village and decorated with traditional Bedouin rugs, blankets, and art.
Tickets for Petra are available at the main gate for $28 for one day, $37 for two days, or $44 for three days. While you can see most of the major sites in a day, two or three days will give you ample time to explore the side trails and less-visited tombs. Maps are available at the visitors center; to get a better sense of the history, hire one of the English-speaking guides ($28 for a half day, $70 for a full day including one of the major hikes, such as the High Place of Sacrifice or the Monastery).
The sun can be relentless, so bring a hat, sunscreen, and plenty of water. The ruins stay open until sunset, and there also are night tours three days a week.
To reach Petra, you first pass through the Siq, the sliver of a canyon that protected the city from invaders for hundreds of years. The half-mile-long path, its cobblestones rutted by carts and chariots, is so narrow that it's almost completely cut off from the sun, making the air feel chilly. The gorge is lined with ancient water channels and has beautiful bas-reliefs on the steep rock walls.
The 140-foot-high Treasury has greeted visitors to Petra since it was built in the 1st century A.D. As with many of the ruins, its name is misleading: The structure was actually built as a tomb. But according to local folklore, Bedouins believed an Egyptian pharaoh had hidden his treasure inside the urn on top of the building, and they shot at it a number of times to try to break it open. The façade endured the assaults well, and it's been naturally protected from erosion by the canyon walls, preserving it in far greater detail than many other sites at Petra.
Street of Façades
To the right of the Treasury, the ancient city opens up into the Street of Façades, where more than 40 tombs have been carved into the mountainside. One intricate tomb on the end of a cliff has a regal row of crowns on the top. Near the amphitheater are dozens of unadorned gravesites, most likely for commoners.
Built on the eastern cliffs of Petra, the Royal Tombs give off a dazzling array of reds, purples, pinks, and browns in the sunlight. The Urn Tomb, the largest one, was chiseled out of the rock high on the mountainside, with dozens of steps leading up from the valley. Historians believe the tomb was built around 70 A.D. and is the gravesite of either King Malchus II or King Aretas IV. Farther along the mountainside, the Tomb of Sextus Florentius was constructed to honor the Roman governor of Arabia after the Romans conquered Petra in the 2nd century A.D. It's one of few ruins to have been inscribed with a date; historians don't know for certain when the rest of the city was built.
The giant tomb known as the Monastery (Al-Deir in Arabic) lies at the end of a 2.5-mile mountain path. The Monastery rivals the Treasury in terms of grandness--the façade is 170 feet wide, and the main doorway is two stories high. The structure was built as a tomb in the 1st century A.D. During the Byzantine era, however, it was used as a Christian church, and crosses were painted inside--which may be why it's called the Monastery.
High Place of Sacrifice
The path from the valley to the High Place of Sacrifice passes a pair of obelisks dedicated to the Nabataean gods Dushara and Al'Uzza, then rises steeply to Al-Madbah, the flat, stone area where animal sacrifices were performed. The circular stone is surrounded by carved pools, which some historians claim were meant to catch the animals' blood. Don't miss the excellent valley views just past the altar.
Petra at night
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, the Siq and the Treasury are lit with 1,800 candles and open to tourists for an hour and a half after dark. If you let most of the other visitors go through the passageway first, you can enjoy a contemplative walk and still have time to catch the Bedouin music concert inside the Treasury courtyard. The tour begins at 8:30 p.m. You can buy tickets ($17) at Petra's main gate or ahead of time at a tour agency. | <urn:uuid:557823ed-bd8a-4de8-88c3-774e3dcb815c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.budgettravel.com/print/6526/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964551 | 1,321 | 1.679688 | 2 |
For being the key to weight loss, your metabolism is incredibly simple. It's just all of the chemical processes in your body added up. So the higher your metabolism, the more calories you burn. And while your metabolic rate is influenced by genetics, your workout can really rev it up big time.
More: 5 Tips to Speed Up Your Metabolism
Exercise can increase your metabolism in three ways:
- It burns calories during the workout session.
- It burns additional calories directly following the workout session, which is known as the after-burn affect. This post-exercise metabolic boost can last 24 to 48 hours.
- It increases calorie-burning lean muscle mass. One pound of muscle burns an extra six to 50 calories a day.
More: 6 Ways to Increase Metabolism and Lose Weight
But when it comes to boosting your metabolism, not all exercise is created equal. Here, how you should prioritize your workouts to get your metabolism humming:
#1 Choice: Strength Training
Lifting weights will boost your metabolism in all three ways and should be your first priority if you really want to burn more fat more easily. Have you ever noticed that men can lose weight by cutting out their nightly ice cream while women have to count calories like crazy before the scale will even budge? That's because men tend to have more metabolically active muscle than women. Complete a total-body strength-training program two to three days a week to build significant lean muscle mass and boost your metabolism, even if you're cutting calories.
More: Tips for Smart Strength Training
#2 Choice: Interval Training
This type of cardio workout, in which you push your exercise intensity for a short period of time and then recover, will burn calories during exercise as well as give you an after-burn effect. In one study comparing the effects of 15 weeks of interval training with 20 weeks of steady-state endurance training, researchers found that the participants who completed interval workouts lost nine times more fat than those who completed endurance workouts.
More: Drop Weight With Interval Training
#3 Choice: Steady State Endurance Cardio and Aerobics
When you hit the pavement, you burn calories during the run, but you don't get the benefit of an after-burn effect or of building muscle. And be careful: If you overdo it, you could actually end up losing muscle, which can slow your metabolism. In one study published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine, participants completed six long runs in seven days, after which the average weight loss was 6.1 percent. However, 5 percent of their weight loss came from lean mass and only 1.1 percent came from body fat. Stick to a little running, about 30 minutes on the days following your strength-training sessions, to help recover from your workouts without burning through muscle.
More: 3 Fast Cardio Workouts
Sign up for a fitness class. | <urn:uuid:87752ff5-f9de-4de3-b2ed-89fa967e41f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.active.com/fitness/Articles/3-Workouts-to-Crank-Up-Your-Metabolism.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94298 | 596 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Confronted by the evidence, the country rounds on those trying to force it to stop the trade.
The head of Vietnam's wildlife trade authority has angrily dismissed accusations that his country is the driving force behind the illicit trade in rhino horn, describing them as "bullshit". He went on to blame China for the slaughter.
In a rare interview during the triennial conference of parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), Do Quang Tung, who is the acting head of Vietnam's Cites Management Authority, lashed out at critics who have identified the country as a "rapacious" consumer of rhino horn.
"I don't care [what they say]," he said. "That is a bullshit report. Vietnam is not the main destination."
He claimed that Vietnamese intelligence agencies had identified China as the destination for "99% of the horn that goes through Vietnam" and that "we do not have much evidence that Vietnam is the main consumer country".
"Most of the complete rhino horns are illegally exported to China," he said. "Only the chopped up horn is used in Vietnam … Up to this stage, we cannot control the border. Every day they have a massive shipment, not only of wildlife, but everything going through [to China].
"Last year, more than 600 rhinos were killed in South Africa. That is almost three tonnes of horn. At $50 000 a kilogram, it is equivalent to millions of US dollars. I don't know how Vietnamese people can afford it at those prices."
He claimed some of the horn was also being funnelled to Asian communities in the United States and Europe.
He also rubbished suggestions that rhino horn was commonly used by cancer patients in Vietnam. "They do not have money to afford rhino horn. Most cancer patients don't just believe in rhino horn any more because they still die."
But the wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic, the species survival commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that targets environmental crime syndicates and carries out undercover operations, all say there is "overwhelming" evidence that Vietnam is at the heart of a shadowy rhino horn "trade nexus".
In their most recent report to Cites, the IUCN, Traffic and the Asian Rhino Specialist Groups said that "the principal end-use market has been Vietnam". But they express concern about the growing role of China, citing horn seizures in Asia and the large number of European export permits issued in the recent past to move auctioned rhino horns and antique libation cups to China. They also cited the numbers of
live white rhino imported from South Africa to China by a pharmaceutical company, whose stated objectives include producing rhino horn products and "rhino horn detox pills".
More than 4000 rhino horns, about 12 tonnes' worth, are believed to have been smuggled out of Africa between 2009 and 2012. Only a fraction of the shipments – about 2.3% – were detected and seized by law enforcement agencies in Asia.
Do said Vietnam had "very good controls at airports and ports" and was "the biggest country in seizures". "We have had 10 cases in Vietnam since 2010," he said.
The figures appear to show otherwise. Between 2009 and September 2012, Vietnam reported only six rhino horn seizures, totalling just 70kg. In the past six months, as parties geared up for the Cites conference in Bangkok, Vietnam said it seized a further 42kg of horn. China has reported 30 seizures of contraband horn weighing more than 150kg since 2009.
Vietnam has also largely failed to meet commitments to investigate and "verify" the locations of rhino horn trophies taken in so-called "pseudo hunts" in South Africa.
More than 400 rhinos are believed to have been "hunted" by Vietnamese citizens in nine years, beginning in 2003 and ending in 2012, when South Africa stopped issuing hunting permits to the country's nationals and tightened legal loopholes. In that time, Vietnam quickly came to dominate the trophy hunting market.
"None of the Vietnamese can hunt," Dawie Groenewald, a notorious safari operator who faces hundreds of criminal charges relating to allegations of illegal rhino horn deals and hunts, once said. "They are not here to hunt. They are here to get the horn."
Despite the evidence, Do maintained that there was "no linkage between incidents of poaching and trophy hunting".
Of the 607 trophy horns recorded to have been exported from South Africa between 2006 and 2010, only between 150 and 170 were officially declared to have been imported into Vietnam. The bulk simply vanished.
In a report to the Cites secretariat, Vietnam said it had conducted random checks on only 40 hunters, just 10% of those believed to have participated in sham hunts. Of that number:
- Seven "hunters" still had the trophies;
- Nine had cut the horns into small pieces, keeping some and giving others to family and friends;
- Six had used the horns to make lamp bases, candlestick holders, carved bowls and cups;
- Seven claimed they had lost or given away their trophies; and
- Eleven "were not at home and the imported horns could not be inspected".
Vietnam has no tradition of sport or big game hunting and does not have any recognised hunting associations.
In terms of the Cites Convention, to which both South Africa and Vietnam are signatories, rhino horn trophies are "personal effects" and cannot be legally traded for commercial gain or given as gifts. But Cites relies on member states to enact legislation to give force to those principles. Although Vietnam has recently implemented a ban on rhino horn trade, it has no laws criminalising the "gifting" of trophies.
One recent case spotlighted Vietnam's unwillingness or inability to act. In September last year, Tram Be, the vice-chairperson of Vietnam's second largest bank and a man dubbed the "secret entrepreneur" by the Vietnamese press, reported the theft of two rhino horns from his house. Police set off after the thieves but made no attempt to arrest them.
Tram Be claimed he had been given an 885kg stuffed rhino as a "house-warming present" by the hunter who shot it and that he was therefore the legal owner. The Vietnamese police accepted his claim and local newspapers were later warned off the story by government officials.
Do defended the banker, saying the hunter had felt the trophy was "not safe in his house and temporarily put it in the house of a friend", a claim at odds with the banker's own version of events.
He said that Vietnam had banned "all" rhino horn imports in January this year.
But the prohibition, signed by Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, contains an exclusion clause that environmental activists say is "big enough to drive a bus through".
Imports of rhino horn for "diplomacy, scientific research, biodiversity conservation, display at zoos, exhibitions, non-profit circus performances, law enforcement and exchange of specimens amongst Cites management authorities of member countries are still allowed".
In 2006 and 2008 the Vietnamese embassy in Pretoria was involved in a number of scandals in which senior diplomats, including a political counsellor, an economic attaché and the embassy's first secretary, were implicated in smuggling rhino horn. To date, Vietnam has failed to take any action against the diplomats.
In a public confrontation at a Cites side event last week, Nguyen Thi Minh Thuong, the "international co-operation" official at Vietnam's Cites Management Authority, claimed that Vietnam's law enforcement agencies had made "endless efforts" to crack down on the trade and that "strict punishment" was meted out to the diplomats involved.
South African Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa said the Vietnamese government had confirmed that no steps had been taken against the diplomats but "there was an undertaking that they would do something about them".
Cites this week stopped short of imposing sanctions on Vietnam, but gave it eight months to implement key recommendations. These include strengthening law enforcement, border controls and legislation and reporting on seizures, prosecutions and penalties imposed.
Meanwhile, the EIA has petitioned the US government to impose trade sanctions on Vietnam until it demonstrates full compliance with Cites regulations.
"Vietnam and Vietnamese diplomats have been shown to be at the centre of a massive illegal rhino horn trade that is fuelling the biggest rhino poaching crisis in over 30 years," the EIA president, Allan Thornton, said. "Vietnam must enact and enforce a total domestic ban on all rhino horn trade and enact strict measures to combat Vietnam's criminal syndicates driving the poaching in South Africa."
Julian Rademeyer is the author of Killing for Profit: Exposing the Illegal Rhino Horn Trade, published by Zebra Press | <urn:uuid:83f7b7e0-44df-4c85-af1e-c42bdfffcab9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mg.co.za/article/2013-03-15-00-vietnam-denies-rhino-horn-charges/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965852 | 1,847 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Posted by Yehuda as RPGs
The Gen Con Live Auction last August was originally supposed to be sponsored by the Children’s Christian Fund, the favorite charity of Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons. It’s safe to assume that Gary probably donated a fair amount to the charity, himself.
So it’s rather unfortunate to read that CCF withdrew from sponsoring the auction, and therefore the receiving of the proceeds, when they discovered that some of the items to be sold were D&D material. I prefer to think of it as vast ignorance rather than vast stupidity, but I’m waiting to hear a response from CCF.
The proceeds instead went to the Fisher House Foundation.
Update: CCF finally responds. Somewhat lamely.
“I prefer to think of it as vast ignorance rather than vast stupidity…”
I would say it is a lot of both. Hypocrisy at its finest… how sad.
Depressing. Seriously depressing. Particularly if he did donate…
…..there are no good words for this. Particularly not printable ones.
That’s a tough one. I can understand them not wanting to “sponsor” the auction if anything objectionable was going to be auctioned including D&D, swords, maces, demon costumes, etc. I’m not sure if that means the would have rejected the proceeds if offered. There is a verse in th Bible about things offered to idols and it holds that just because something is offered to a false god that does not exist does not mean it cannot be consumed/used by a Christian who is consuming or using it as what it is and not what significance it may have had when it was offered. Yet the same book in the Bible says that it accepting, consuming or using it offends our Christian conscience then we should not accept it. So to be fair them they may have simply withdrawn out of conscience.
D&D is evil! Eeeeeeeeviiiiiiilllllll!
Ironically, one of the creators is Christian.
Very sad. Even as a religious charity, I think they should put these things aside and accept the money for those that will need it. But it is good that the money ended up in the hands of someone else who needed it.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, it may be that the CCF itself didn’t have a problem with D&D, but perhaps they were thinking that other prominent supporters of theirs would be bothered by the association.
Further evidence of the backwardness of Christianity.
It’s frustrating that now, where we are fortunate enough to self-educate on nearly any topic you can imagine with little more than the time involved, people’s useless fears or misgivings about something as beneficial as D&D can guide them to making obtuse decisions.
Wake up, people.
“Further evidence of the backwardness of Christianity.”
It’s thinking like this that begins the kind of misinformation we’re talking about in the first place. Just as not all D&D is related to evil, not all christians think like this. Seriously now…
[...] Christian Children’s Fund Refuses Charity Tainted by D&D CCF withdrew from sponsoring the auction, and therefore the receiving of the proceeds, when they discovered that some of the items to be sold were D&D material. I prefer to think of it as vast ignorance rather than vast stupidity, but I’m waiting to hear a response from CCF. [...]
*rolls eyes* I’m a Christian and I gotta say, they’re idiots. Gygax was a christian for crying out loud.
[...] realize the money FDG donated earlier this year in Gary’s memory was tainted by D&D too… :) Christian Children’s Fund Refuses Charity Tainted by D&D:)by:)Purple Pawn __________________ Tom Tullis Fat Dragon Games [...]
[...] they realize the money FDG donated earlier this year in Gary’s memory was tainted by D&D too? Christian Children’s Fund Refuses Charity Tainted by D&DbyPurple Pawn __________________ Tom Tullis Fat Dragon Games http://www.fatdragongames.com Last edited by [...]
With any luck, the money will still get to the children that need it. Hopefully without all the ideological baggage the CCF would have brought along, baggage that would only have served to reinforce the cycle of poverty that victimized the recipients in the first place (Contraception and birth control BAD!).
Who knows? Maybe they are trying to be consistent by not taking the money. Then again, if it’s like most religious folks, they’re still voting for politicians who were in favor of state lotteries, even though they’re probably opposed to gambling. But, that money goes to education, so it’s okay I guess. Or, they’re probably voting for so-called “pro-life” presidents(whose opinions usually allow for some exceptions-which still equals choice). It’s just that D&D money is thought to be Satanic, and therefore one worse a sin than other sins. Oh well. I thought the D&D creators were supposedly the Great Satans? Turns out that one of the two men was a Christian, and wanted to give to a Christian organization. Thanks for being so kind with your donations, Gary. At least the Fisher House will benefit from your generosity.
Please forgive the afore-mentioned ramblings of a conservative-friendly libertarian!
Ridiculous. It shows total ignorance. D&D is a game. Its not “satanic” and does not promote “devil worship” in any way. I am Christian & have played the game for years.
I bet many of the critics of D&D have never sat and observed a game, or opened a rule book. Its fantasy. Its bad to have an imagination?
Hypocrits. Gambling is bad, its a sin. But Church bingo games are OK?? Bingo isnt gambling??
“It’s thinking like this that begins the kind of misinformation we’re talking about in the first place. Just as not all D&D is related to evil, not all christians think like this. Seriously now…”
There’s a disanalogy, however. D&D *itself* is not evil, it has nothing to do with devil-worship. Crap like the CCF’s position does indeed follow from religious conviction, even if not all religious people think this way. So the problem *is* with religion.
Please avoid any general shots at religion, religious convictions, or similar. Thank you.
Still no response from CCF.
As an active duty member of the military, I’m glad to see the money go to the Fisher House. As a Christian, I’m ashamed of the ignorance that’s sometimes perpetuated as “God’s will”. Maybe it was God’s will that the money go to the Fisher House. I know it will certainly be used to help a lot of very appreciative and deserving families.
[...] in Uncategorized at 17:41 0 by gillsmoke Christian Children’s Fund Refuses Charity Tainted by D&D What is this the eighties? My favorite part about the article was the inventer of D&D gave [...]
now everybody can see how being lawful good is not a good idea… sarcasms aside, i hope they will reconsider this poor choice
I’m Attacking The Darkness…
Here’s a thought experiment for you: Let’s say you run a charity to care for impoverished kids around the globe and someone hands you a check for $17k. The money was raised from a charity auction of books and art – nothing racy, just…
All you bashing CCF really do not have a clue about what is going on. This most likely has nothing to do with CCF’s personal beliefs about D&D. CCF most likely has 100′s of donors who are Christians. Some of those Christians who support them definitely have a wrong view of D&D and probably never read game instructions, etc. Yet, it is to CCF’s long term interest for financial support that it not allow itself to be tainted in Christian circles by items that offend some Christians (like D&D). In addition, the bible gives clear direction that Christians may have freedoms (like playing games such as D&D) but they are required to NOT use their freedoms if it causes weaker Christians to stumble. I don’t expect non-Christians to understand this or even agree with what the Bible teaches, but I would encourage them to not judge Christian principles without “playing” — the same way you don’t want Christians to judge D&D without playing. (And please, a fund-raising event is not the time to try and correct the wrong thinking of Christians!) Save that for internet debates :-) | <urn:uuid:775afc7f-f23b-4af4-883c-2240443b3739> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.purplepawn.com/2008/10/christian-childrens-fund-refuses-charity-tainted-by-dd/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964675 | 1,939 | 1.53125 | 2 |
|by Jim Amidon • August 27, 2012|
“Don’t come to class with a dead iPad,” was one of the final instructions Wabash College history professor Michelle Rhoades gave the 23 students in her 19th Century European History course.
“No matter how tired you are at night, make sure you plug them in,” she said.
And that pretty much wrapped up the first meeting of the class. Minutes before each student was given a new iPad to use as part of the College’s iPad Pilot Project. Four courses are being taught using iPads this semester, and for Rhoades’ students, the combination of history and technology is a perfect match.
“It’s kinda cool that we’re learning history on an iPad,” one student said as he received his device.
Rhoades started using her own iPad as a research tool about two years ago. She read a review about an iPad application called “iAnnotate,” which is a PDF reader that allows users to make notes as they read electronic documents.
Though she said the whole process of using the iPad for research involves a learning curve, she was able to improve her annotations and shorten her course prep time.
All along, she imagined how she might incorporate electronic devices in her classroom. (Rhoades is a stickler for preparation — students know they need to have read required texts well ahead of class because a big chunk of their grade is based on discussion.)
About that same time, the College started to charge students fees for printing documents at public computing labs.
“As a result, laptops appeared like mushrooms in my classes,” Rhoades said, suggesting the students were no longer printing assigned readings. “The laptops took up space, annotation and reading was clumsy, and they crowed the students' workspaces making learning more difficult.”
When Wabash’s IT Services made a call for proposals for a limited iPad Pilot Program, Rhoades had an “aha” moment. “I thought, ‘I’ll try this!’” she said. “In my spare time I looked for apps that I could connect to a course I already loved to teach — 19th Century Europe. Many books I used were already available as Kindle books. It was, as they say, a perfect storm.”
In addition to Rhoades, professors Wally Novak (chemistry), Sara Drury (Political Persuasion), and Stefani Rossi (2-D Art) are also using iPads in their classes.
Shortly after Rhoades called her first class to order last Friday, Kitty Rutledge, who is coordinating the program for IT Services, walked in with her arms filled with shiny new iPads for every student.
Rutledge encouraged students to use them as their own — for email, calendaring, and Internet research.
As the students propped open the devices, Rhoades projected her iPad on a large screen at the end of the classroom. She quickly walked the tech-savvy students through the various applications they will use, all of which were purchased by the College. The Kindle Reader and iAnnotate are what Rhoades described as “the engines” that will drive the students’ work.
There are eight full texts that the students will purchase online as eBooks, but the cost savings are dramatic — most are between $7 and $12. Another seven books will be used in part, and shared electronically using the course management system Moodle.
Rhoades even showed off the course syllabus. True to old school teaching, she handed out printed copies at the start of class. But she soon had it projected on her iPad and showed the students how many of the readings were just a click away.
But the key for Rhoades is the ability for students to annotate as they read. It is, after all, a history course, and the students will be required to read thousands of pages. And Rhoades wants them to highlight text, make notes, and write in the virtual margins with inexpensive stylus devices.
They will even download a video game of sorts. Rhoades found a free app called “Château de Malmaison,” which allows the students to experience Napoleon’s castle in a visually stunning replication. “You will be able to walk around to see what it might have been like to do so in the 19th century,” she said.
(I tried the app with my own iPad — tilt the iPad up and see the chandeliers, turn the iPad to the side and see a 360-degree view of the actual castle as it exists today.)
As the first class neared the end, she asked the students to be patient. “You’re going to have to be flexible. It’s an experiment and we’ll work through this brave new world of classroom technology together.
And later, as she said to me, “Now, my experiment begins. I wanted to place the technology in students’ hands to facilitate their learning. Now they will use electronic books, articles, and Apps in class; we will see how they respond.” | <urn:uuid:a34353ab-d1ba-4b74-902d-5dc7f33c3f57> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wabash.edu/news/displaystory.cfm?news_ID=9581 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970796 | 1,104 | 2.296875 | 2 |
The normally staid scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sounded positively star-struck this week as they awaited release of a new movie in which it’s up to them to save the world from a killer outbreak.
Tickets to a special Thursday screening of “Contagion,” the just-released Steven Soderbergh film about a deadly pandemic virus, had to be doled out via lottery to eager CDC staffers, who already had acted as extras and hobnobbed with actors during filming.
Even Dr. Ali Khan, a rear admiral and assistant surgeon general who leads the CDC’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, admitted to a bit of Hollywood awe.
“I had fun chatting with Kate Winslet. I drew an epi curve for her,” he said, referring to the graphic representation of infection cases used to track an epidemic.
Winslet plays a CDC researcher in the movie. The film's team caused a buzz at the agency's Atlanta offices starting about two years ago, when the crew sought technical advice and filming locations to add authenticity to the movie, said Dave Daigle, an associate director for communications with the CDC's preparedness office.
During the course of the filming, staffers decided that Winslet’s real-life counterpart would likely be Dr. Anne Schuchat, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases who served frequently as the agency’s spokeswoman during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
Fictional-but-plausible deadly virus
But on the eve of the film’s nationwide release, CDC curiosity had reached a fever pitch, particularly about the source of the fictional-but-plausible deadly virus that quickly circles the globe.
“We were wondering and discussing what the disease might be and rumors are flying about,” Daigle said. “If anyone knows, they have been sworn to secrecy. Most of us think it will not be a pandemic flu, or if it is, it will be mutated.”
Reviews of the movie depict the scourge as a previously unknown virus that leaps from bats to pigs to people. In interviews, Dr. Ian W. Lipkin, the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health infectious disease expert who served as the movie’s technical adviser, said he suggested that the bug be modeled after Nipah virus, a fatal South Asian infection that has been known to migrate from animals to people.
That makes scientific sense to Khan, who says he views television shows and movies about outbreaks with a critical eye.
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“Usually, for these movies, I play a guessing game: What’s the animal reservoir?” Khan said, referring to the species that might first host a fatal virus. “I didn’t think it was going to be birds. If something bad is going to come for us, it’s going to come from a bat.”
Khan says he looks to see whether movie-makers get the science right, but he also checks for what he calls “the silly factor.”
“Does the CDC have a good-looking van with an electron microscope mounted inside? Do we have a CDC helicopter? Do we have the black suburbans?” he said. “Is CDC going to call in an air strike?”
The answer, most often, is no — although some CDC movie fantasies have come true. In the 1995 film “Outbreak,” which starred Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo, the CDC’s fictional disaster center was way more posh than anything that existed at the time. Sixteen years later, the agency now boasts an impressive command center of its own.
Khan said he expects “Contagion” to do a thoughtful job of portraying CDC staffers and the work they do. He appreciates the attention, particularly in an era of declining federal budgets and growing threats from problems most Americans never consider.
“I enjoy the fact that CDC is increasingly shown as the good guys,” Khan said. “It reminds people that not only are we at risk of a novel pandemic, but also that CDC protects them from routine threats every day."
© 2013 msnbc.com Reprints | <urn:uuid:2658f860-818c-47b3-affc-389279b099b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44447046/ns/health-infectious_diseases/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959901 | 1,064 | 1.859375 | 2 |
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- Important figure in the Egyptian Communist Party
- Political journalist
- Founded the bimonthly journal Afrique Asie
- Passionately anti-Israel, anti-West
- Close friend of Yasser Arafat
A key figure in the Egyptian Communist Party, Simon Malley was born in May 1923 to a Syrian family in Cairo. After high school, he became a political journalist and was later dispatched by an Egyptian newspaper to cover the United Nations in New York, where he met his wife, a native New Yorker named Barbara Silverstein. (At the time, Miss Silverstein worked for the UN delegation of the National Liberation Front, the leftist, anti-American political party that led the independence movement in Algeria in the 1950s and early 60s, and thereafter ruled the country.)
Simon Malley supported the 1952 revolution of Gamal Abdul Nasser, who would serve as Egyptian President from 1956 to 1970. Nasser appointed Malley to be the New York representative of the Egyptian daily newspaper Al Goumhouria.
According to American Thinker news editor Ed Lasky, Simon Malley “participated in the wave of anti-imperialist and nationalist ideology that was sweeping the Third World [and] … wrote thousands of words in support of struggle against Western nations.”
After immigrating to Paris in 1969, Malley co-founded (with his wife) the bimonthly journal Afrique Asie. This publication, whose readership of nearly 120,000 was based mostly in Africa and Latin America, supported various leftist revolutionary “liberation movements,” particularly the Palestinian cause, as well as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. According to an October 4, 1980 New York Times report, Afrique-Asie commonly “criticized moderate African and Middle Eastern leadership and denounced Israel.” An Associated Press report from that same period stated that the magazine also supported “the Cuban intervention in Angola and Ethiopia, the seizure of American hostages in Iran, the Algerian-backed guerrilla war in southern Morocco, and the Arab opposition to Israel and the Camp David agreements.” By contrast, Malley, whose publishing enterprise was funded by the Soviet Union (as well as by Romania, Libya, and Algeria), passionately denounced “western imperialism.”
In 1980 Simon Malley and his family were expelled from France for what French officials described as “political activities which do not correspond with, and even run contrary to, French interests in certain countries.” An October 3, 1980 United Press International report stated: “[French] Interior Minister Christian Bonnet told the Assembly that some articles written by Malley were ‘genuine appeals to murder foreign chiefs of state...’”
Among those to publicly protest the French government’s expulsion order was Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat. According to Alex Safian, Associate Director of CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), Malley and his wife “were rabidly anti-Israel and counted Yasir Arafat as a personal friend.” “Indeed,” writes Safian, “Arafat was among those ‘leaders’ (for want of a better word) who intervened with the French government to readmit the Malley family to France after they had been expelled for their radical activities.” Adds Ed Lasky: “Simon Malley loathed Israel and … spent countless hours with Yasser Arafat and became a close friend of Arafat.” According to Daniel Pipes, Malley was a sympathizer of the PLO during the height of its terrorism activities against the West.
With Francois Mitterrand’s election as French President in 1981, the expulsion order against Simon Malley was lifted, and he returned with his family to France. He later resurrected his magazine, under the title Le Nouvel Afrique Asie, in which he published (in December 1989) a lengthy interview with Yasir Arafat. That same edition also featured a copy of Arafat’s personal letter congratulating Malley on being permitted to return to his home.
Simon Malley died on September 7, 2006. His son, Robert Malley, formerly served as President Bill Clinton’s Special Assistant for Arab-Israeli Affairs (1998-2001), and is currently the Middle East and North Africa Program Director for the International Crisis Group. | <urn:uuid:6f866c83-66f8-4164-84fa-2021d974641f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2309 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975955 | 909 | 2.25 | 2 |
PQ: What can I do if someone stares at my breasts?
What can I do if someone stares at my breasts?
Go to an art museum — or look at any magazine cover — and you'll see that breasts are a subject of interest. Breasts feed babies and they give women's bodies that hourglass shape, so it's understandable that people are interested. But it is not polite to stare at someone's breasts — it's rude and it can make girls feel very uncomfortable.
If someone stares at yours, you can fold your arms and then look them straight in the eye. That should send the message without you having to say anything. There are other time-tested methods, too, like holding your books in front of your chest. But if someone's staring is making you uncomfortable, be sure to tell a parent or an adult.
Reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MD
Date reviewed: July 2010 | <urn:uuid:512aa57f-2a0f-4f20-a085-2699170ad51d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kidshealth.org/kid/talk/pq_girls/oglers.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969603 | 189 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The Story of... Henry VIII, Queen Catherine of Aragon and their legacy
As we look forward to the wedding of a future Queen Catherine, the divorce of another passes
It's just about a month now until the Royal Wedding: the uniting of a future King with a future Queen Catherine. But today in history saw the conclusion of a marriage for another Queen Catherine, as Henry VIII finally divorced his first wife, the Lady of Aragon.
Fortunately, the circumstances are unlikely to be repeated for the Lady of Middleton. Wills is a very different character from his predecessor and the politics of England are a little different. Nevertheless, there's no doubt that Henry had an impact.
Henry VIII was one of England's most famous, or infamous, kings. Remembered universally for his six wives, the most important event which King Henry presided over was his break with Papal authority in Rome which established the Anglican Church following that divorce.
There's no doubt that the fascination with Henry's memorabilia continues.
An exhibition of the King's armour at the Tower of London which demonstrated just how much Henry grew over the years from a tall, strapping athlete to a bloated, stomping tyrant provoked huge interest from Britons and tourists alike.
Armour gives a chance to get close to get close to the shapes and sizes of historical figures in a way that paintings do not: armour fits from head to toe and can be neither loose nor chafing. Henry's expansion from 34.7" round the waist to 51" is a matter of historical record - few failed dieters have to suffer that.
Little of Henry's armour has made it onto the private markets, but several documents related to the King have, and of course these too bring us closer to the arrogant monarch. Our experience is that these certainly remain highly desirable.
Indeed Bobby Livingston of RR Auction underlined in our interview with him that King Henry's signatures are exactly the sorts of pieces which an investor could have confidence of retaining or improving their value regardless of the economic climate.
We certainly haven't struggled to sell valuable Henry VIII manuscripts on to eager collectors, including a summons to give King Henry advice and a text in arcane language requesting the supply of 'blak bogy' for his musicians.
However, perhaps the most exciting document we have remains available, and it is Henry's personal plea for a divorce from Pope Clement VII. A document which perhaps changed the course of history, paving the way for Protestantism in a way which would greatly influence both Europe and America in decades and centuries to come.
- Click here to view our Royal autographs and memorabilia for sale
- Learn how you can get pleasure & profit from Royal collectibles
- Read all the latest Manuscripts, Autographs and Militaria news
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The dress worn by the future Queen of England at a university fashion show attracted a global audience
The set was part of the estate of Queen Juliana, with stunned everyone by raising $7m for charity
A manufacturer has made a rather basic error in their attempt to cash-in on the Royal wedding | <urn:uuid:94cf1f86-00cf-4fe1-8c88-94dd3f7c2b3b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/section.asp?catid=77&docid=6434 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955421 | 721 | 2.375 | 2 |
On the developmental continuity/discontinuity of early adolescent patterns of racial identity salience: Relations with later identities and psychosocial adjustment
Given the significant amount of attention placed upon race within our society, racial identity long has been nominated as a meaningful influence upon human development (Cross, 1971; Sellers et al., 1998). Scholars investigating aspects of racial identity have largely pursued one of two lines of research: (a) describing factors and processes that contribute to the development of racial identities, or (b) empirically documenting associations between particular racial identities and key adjustment outcomes. However, few studies have integrated these two approaches to simultaneously evaluate developmental and related adjustment aspects of racial identity among minority youth. Consequently, relations between early racial identity developmental processes and correlated adjustment outcomes remain ambiguous. Even less is known regarding the direction and function of these relationships during adolescence. To address this gap, the present study examined key multivariate associations between (a) distinct profiles of racial identity salience and (b) adjustment outcomes within a community sample of African-American youth. Specifically, a person-centered analytic approach (i.e., cluster analysis) was employed to conduct a secondary analysis of two archived databases containing longitudinal data measuring levels of racial identity salience and indices of psychosocial adjustment among youth at four different measurement occasions.^ Four separate groups of analyses were conducted to investigate (a) the existence of within-group differences in levels of racial identity salience, (b) shifts among distinct racial identity types between contiguous times of measurement, (c) adjustment correlates of racial identity types at each time of measurement, and (d) predictive relations between racial identity clusters and adjustment outcomes, respectively. Results indicated significant heterogeneity in patterns of racial identity salience among these African-American youth as well as significant discontinuity in the patterns of shifts among identity profiles between contiguous measurement occasions. In addition, within developmental stages, levels of racial identity salience were associated with several adjustment outcomes, suggesting the protective value of high levels of endorsement or internalization of racial identity among the sampled youth. Collectively, these results illustrated the significance of racial identity salience as a meaningful developmental construct in the lives of African-American adolescents, the implications of which are discussed for racial identity and practice-related research literatures. ^
Black Studies|Psychology, Developmental|Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
Anthony L Burrow,
"On the developmental continuity/discontinuity of early adolescent patterns of racial identity salience: Relations with later identities and psychosocial adjustment"
(January 1, 2005).
ProQuest ETD Collection for FIU. | <urn:uuid:8bfa6614-11f1-427b-9a45-cac5b41ca5b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/dissertations/AAI3169452/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927828 | 530 | 2.4375 | 2 |
I don't normally go into antique shops, because they normally sell a lot of old tat... But I did today and was very happy to find those, which I promptly bought, quite cheap too...
That "chopper" for want of a better name, has a 10" blade, 16" overall. it's really nice to hold, 1/4" thick tapering to about 1mm at the tip, round Oak handle with a through tang. Very nice. I am going to sharpen it and make a nice leather sheath for it!
Does anyone know that name? Was it a good maker? It certainly looks and feel very nice.
And this nice sheep shears, made by Rob Sorby. Sorby is still going, they make carving tools (unless it's another sorby) 6"blades and the thing is still quite sharp and easily cut paper, and that's before I sharpen the blades! This is going to become a couple of knives...I think... I rather like it as it is at the moment!
I don't think they are particularly old, but I am very pleased with them!
And, they had a couple of nice little hatchets in that shop... I'll be going back there veryyyy soon...
Does that chopper say Smithfield on it?Butchers knife prehaps(smithfield market in London..)I have a butchers saw by the same maker.Loads of google hits for that name.Those shears are nice.Out of the hundreds ive ever seen those are the only ones with a spring like that.most unusual.The blades would have been made from shear steel.
Shears are almost certainly sheep shears. My Dad has a pair and I've seen them being used on TV a few times. The spring is a bit different to the usual simple circular bend as they appear to have an inner element. They make good cutters for grass if a little tiring for small hands. Remember being made to edge my parents lawn once with a pair. That included cutting bits the mower never reached and also cutting those tough grass seed stalks that the mower often failed to cut if they grow to high between mowings. Anyway they were sharp, cut well but some can take some pressure to use them which as a kid left me with a knackered hand / wrist. I reckon I earnt that punishment or perhaps I earnt the rewared. Can't remember why I had to do it just what it was like.
Anyhow, they make good shears and would be a shame to bastardise a good pair and especially a pair with an interesting variation on the more common design. Not that I'm trying to influence you.
I would have thought the Smithfield explanation is the one as it looks like a proper old fashioned butchers knife. I remember seeing some really old school butchers using such knives. Big, bone cutting knives. I'm sure the balance you described is important to butchering. there is / was a proper butchers near high/low Newton IIRC in a building a little up from the old road before the byepass. They bought rare breed animals from farmers in the area and took them to a nearby farmer's field to fatten up (for example with cattle) then they travel a very few miles to the back door of the building and butchered there and then. You went into the shop and could get any cut you wanted. They would do it out back on a fresh carcass if they haven't got it already prepared. Not for the squeamish as the door from the back of the shop lead to a corridor and on to another door to a room with drainage channels cut in the concrete floor. I only went there a few times but I saw through both sets of doors both times as people came through them and seen on both occasions a butcher in whites washing down the floor with a hose. Bloody mess is was. I'm sure I saw one carrying a knife that sort of size and shape. Don't know why I remembered that. Good looking knife, utilitarian
Hi Nigel. How are you, mate? It does indeed. Part of the name is missing, but there is enough so you can make it out. So it's a knife rather than the woodworking tool is was sold as! I liked the look of the thing and thought it looked a bit unusual. Do you think the handle would be an original shape? I am pretty sure it's not an original handle, it looks too new for that, but it also looks more like a woodworking tool handle to me.
As to the shears, Paul, now I found out a bit more about it, I don't think I am going to do anything to it! It's still sharp although a bit ragged, so I am going to sharpen it a bit and keep it as it is, but not keep them as drawer queens, I like to use my tools.
I can see it would be tiring to use for long periods, probably caused you some sort of repetitive strain injuries. Thanks for the memories.
Jojo - I was about 8 or 9 at the time. I'd like to think I could use it for longer now but it certainly isn't a strimmer or hedge trimmer it will take effort. Of course don't keep tools a drawer queens. It is an offence to the manufacturer and the worker who made it IMHO. Use it but please don't get caught by the farmer, they might not appreciate you chasing their sheep to give them a shear. Although in some parts of Cumbria the farmers have stopped shearing because it costs more to get them sheared than the wool will make so if you are any good with them perhaps you could help them out. Of course it might be easier to use them on a bit of hedge topiary. I wonder if anyone has ever cut their hedge into the shape of a good knife or Gransfor axe or some other favourite tool. I've seen squirrels, chickens even elephants but nothing bushy related. There's a challenge Jojo. | <urn:uuid:5200765e-9445-445f-8b71-34cd50b642fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56964&mode=hybrid | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985253 | 1,261 | 1.671875 | 2 |
|By JCN Newswire||
|October 1, 2012 02:14 PM EDT||
In recent years, not only PCs and mobile phones but a wide range of equipment such as consumer electronics and motor vehicles, are being connected to the Internet via compact devices such as RFID(5) and sensors with wireless communication functions to exchange various information. At the same time, the risk of information leakage on the Internet, as seen with computer viruses, is increasingly on the rise. Thus, increased security will be necessary even for compact devices with limited information processing resources in their CPU or memory, and low power consuming technology enabling encryption of data and authentication of devices as well as low-cost implementation of these functions is vitally needed. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electro technical Commission (IEC) have been working on ISO/IEC 29192 as an international standard for light-weight cryptography for implementation in constrained environments and have now issued ISO/IEC 29192-3, the section on stream ciphers, adopting Enocoro as an international standard.
Since developing MULTI-2 in 1989, Hitachi has continued research in cryptography and standardization of the technology. In recent years, the stream ciphers MULTI-S01(6) and MUGI(7) in 2005, and the public key cipher HIME(R)(8) in 2006, have been adopted as international standards. With the adoption of Enocoro this time, four cryptographic algorithms developed by Hitachi have become standards. Through its cipher technology including Enocoro, Hitachi will continue research on technologies for a reliable networked society to improve security as important infrastructure and industrial systems become increasingly connected.
Details of Enocoro
The Enocoro stream cipher family consists of two algorithms, Enocoro-80 which has a key length of 80 bits and Enocoro-128v2 which has a key length of 128 bits. Enocoro, based on the high-speed stream cipher MUGI, an ISO/IEC standard, achieves its reduced hardware circuit size by drastically reducing the number of registers required to maintain the internal state. Further, by employing the mixing function of the 2 iterations of SPN(9) structure, it is able to mix data on the register more efficiently, thus improving security at the same time as reducing power consumption.
Specifically, when Enocoro-128v2 with a key length or 128 bits is compared with the light-weight implemented AES-128 which offers the same level of security, 2 to 10 times faster processing speeds were achieved, i.e. data encryption was achieved with even less processing. Further, when a field programmable gate array (FPGA) was used to measure the power consumption for encryption per bit: with AES it was 1.16 nano-watts per second (nWs), and with Enocoro-128 v2 it was 0.103 nWs, confirming that Enocoro-128v2 consumed approximately one-tenth the amount of power to encrypt the same amount of data.(10)
(1) Stream cipher: A cryptographic method which encrypts data bit by bit using a random bit stream (key stream) generated by means of a private key.
(2) ISO/IEC 29192 (Light-weight cryptography): An encryption standard for implementation in constrained environments. The standard consists of 4 parts: 1) General, 2) Block ciphers, 3) Stream ciphers, and 4) Mechanism for using public key cryptography. Part 1 and Part 2 were issued on 29th May 2012 and 10th January 2012, respectively.
(3) AES (Advanced Encryption Standard): An encryption standard adopted by the US government in 2001, and the de facto world standard for data encryption. AES was ratified after 3 years of open public assessment sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
(4) In the "Phase 2 action plan for information security measures concerning critical infrastructure" (3rd February 2009, Information Security Policy Council of the Information Security Center, Cabinet Office of Japan), "critical infrastructure" is defined as platforms formed by business entities providing highly irreplaceable services essential in the daily lives of citizens and for socio-economic activity; which if suspended, reduced or become unavailable, has the potential to greatly disrupt the lives of citizens and the socio-economic activity of society. The plan identifies 10 areas which should be protected: information communication, finance, rail, air, electricity, gas, water, distribution, medical care and municipal services.
(5) RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification): ID tag with wireless communication capability
(6) MULTI-S01 (MULTImedia encryption algorithm and Stream cipher No.01): A stream cipher operation mode developed by Hitachi in 2000. Conventional stream ciphers only provided a function for data confidentiality but with MULTI-S01, data tampering detection was also achieved. MULTI-S01 was adopted as an ISO/IEC standard in July 2005.
(7) MUGI (MUlti GIga cipher): A stream cipher developed by Hitachi in 2001. MUGI was listed as a recommended encryption code for electronic government, and adopted as an ISO/IEC standard in July 2005.
(8) HIME(R) (High Performance Modular-squaring-based public-key Encryption): A public key encryption scheme, i.e. data is encrypted and decrypted using different keys, developed by Hitachi in 2001. HIME(R) was adopted as an ISO/IEC standard in May 2006.
(9) Substitution-permutation Network (SPN): A mixing method, also used in AES, where text replacement based on a substitution box and linear transformations are alternately repeated. MUGI employs a mixing method based on the Feistel scheme, and is comprised of a layer of the Feistel scheme. The Feistel scheme is also a mixing method, used widely in symmetric-key cryptography such as DES, which was standardized by the US in 1977.
(10) In practice, measurement results may differ depending on evaluation conditions.
Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 320,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2011 (ended March 31, 2012) consolidated revenues totaled 9,665 billion yen ($117.8 billion). Hitachi will focus more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes information and telecommunication systems, power systems, environmental, industrial and transportation systems, and social and urban systems, as well as the sophisticated materials and key devices that support them. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com/.
Hitachi Ltd Corporate Communications Tel: +81-3-3258-1111
Copyright 2012 JCN Newswire. All rights reserved. www.japancorp.net | <urn:uuid:5a840af2-4215-44df-8367-c29a36f7ca6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sys-con.com/node/2383868 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938737 | 1,449 | 2.484375 | 2 |
10 Ways to Prevent Breast Cancer Today
Assess Your Breast Cancer Risk
One in eight women will develop breast cancer over the course of their lifetimes, and almost all of us spend a lot of time worrying that we might. A recent survey by the Society for Women's Health Research found that 22 percent of women named breast cancer as the disease they fear most, more than twice as many who said heart disease.
Is the fear founded? In your 30s, your chances of developing breast cancer are generally 1 in 229; by your 40s, the risk is 1 in 68; in your 50s, 1 in 37; and in your 60s, 1 in 26. Those numbers should actually reassure you and help you better understand that even when a study reports a 20 percent increase in risk, that means the likelihood that you'll get cancer if you're 45 has gone from 1 to 1.2 in 68 women. If your risk is doubled, that still translates to just 2 in 68 -- not as scary as it sounds.
Breast cancer risk is higher among those who have a mother, aunt, sister, or grandmother who was affected before age 50. If only your mother or sister had breast cancer, your risk doubles. Having two affected first-degree relatives pushes your risk up to five times the average. Sometimes the problem is a hereditary mutation in one of two genes, called BRCA1 and BRCA2, which normally protect against breast cancer by producing proteins that hold abnormal cell growth in check. For women with the mutation, the lifetime risk of developing breast cancer can soar up to 80 percent (compared with the general population's risk of 13 percent). Still, this condition accounts for only 5 to 10 percent of all breast cancer cases. All told, between 20 and 30 percent of all women with breast cancer have a family history of the disease.
For the other 70 percent of us, the risks are harder to pin down. Several factors -- diet, weight gain, alcohol consumption -- can raise our bodies' levels of estrogen, the hormone that feeds many breast cancers. Fortunately, there's a lot we can do every day to keep excess estrogen in check and protect our breasts. Although prevention isn't a word scientists like to use ("'risk reduction' is the preferred terminology," says Debbie Saslow, PhD, director of breast and gynecologic cancer at the American Cancer Society), here are 10 of the smartest moves that the latest research indicates will reduce your breast cancer risk.
SAVE EVEN MORE! Say “Yes” to Ladies' Home Journal® Magazine today and get a second year for HALF PRICE - 2 full years (22 issues) for just $15. You also get our new Ladies' Home Journal® Family Favorites Cookbook ABSOLUTELY FREE! | <urn:uuid:cffa5170-bba8-439f-baf3-1477c9ebe9f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lhj.com/health/conditions/cancer/10-ways-to-prevent-breast-cancer-today/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960336 | 569 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Water Summary Update
DES MOINES—Rainfall for 2012 to date has been just over 8 inches while the statewide average for this period is just less than 8 inches. Drought conditions that parts of Iowa are still experiencing are the result of the heat and dryness of late summer through the end of 2011.
For a more thorough review of Iowa’s water resource trends April 19 through May 2, go to http://www.iowadnr.gov/watersummaryupdate.
The report is prepared by the technical staff from the Iowa DNR, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, and the USGS, in collaboration with the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management Division. | <urn:uuid:a8e5ca44-d8ed-48ef-ac96-fd0498418d35> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iowadnr.gov/insidednr/socialmediapressroom/newsreleases/vw/1/itemid/774 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927049 | 146 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Western Australian Indicator Framework System
What is WAIFS?
The Western Australian Indicator Framework System (WAIFS) is an exciting joint venture between the WA State Government and the ABS.
Initially conceived by Katrina Hopkins, Principal Planning Officer from the Department of Indigenous Affairs (DIA), the WAIFS was developed in a bid to reduce duplication of effort and cost incurred by agencies trying to access similar statistics for their indicator frameworks.
For example, the DIA indicator framework, entitled Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage (OID), contains around 100 indicators such as life expectancy, labour force participation and health. It also measures anticipated levels of disadvantage through indicators such as birth weight, hearing impediments and early school engagement for indigenous children.
Many of these indicators are duplicated in other state government frameworks, such as the Well-being Indicators for Children and Youth (WICY), developed by the Office for Children and Youth (OCY) and the Indigenous Women’s Report Card (IWRC), developed by the Office for Women’s Policy (OWP).
“The duplication of effort really hit me when I kept bumping into ABS outposted officers who were trying to access similar administrative information for indicator frameworks they were developing”, says Katrina. “At the same time, the Statistical Policy Committee was trying to compile an inventory of administrative data-holdings, and it appeared that there were obvious compatible objectives”.
Stephen Jones, a DIA Information Analyst, found that approximately 80% of indicators used similar variables and that there was potential for substantial data collection savings.
What Are The Benefits?
The WAIFS concept can deliver significant benefits, particularly by reducing unplanned demand on data custodian agencies. Currently, these agencies receive multiple random requests for similar data throughout the year.
The WAIFS will consolidate the requests into one annual request for data, which can be built into future work programs.
The WAIFS aims to identify gaps and duplication within indicator frameworks, improve the quality and consistency of indicator statistics and improve access for WA State Government agencies to a “warehouse” of summary statistical information.
A prototype WAIFS search engine was developed in early 2006, and three indicator frameworks (WICY, IWRC and OID) were loaded to the system to demonstrate the value of the WAIFS.
Once the search engine is fully functional it will display indicators relating to key outcomes of State Government. All State Government staff will have online access to the most up-to-date and definitive data from one central location. This will assist in the development of policies, planning service delivery programs, responding to Ministerials or reporting against frameworks.
Over the next six months, development of the WAIFS will focus on expanding the number of frameworks and improving the system’s search functionality. The ABS will also increase the range of indicators, develop procedures to update indicators and enhance the user interface.
To access the test version of the WAIFS, go to http://www.dia.wa.gov.au (note, only staff from WA State Government agencies can download the data).
If your agency has a framework that could be incorporated into the WAIFS, or you would like more general information, please contact Lesley Martin on 9360 5320.
This page last updated 25 March 2008 | <urn:uuid:28594863-6bd5-43c4-be5f-e875d92cf43d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/1304.5Main%20Features4Dec%202007?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=1304.5&issue=Dec%202007&num=&view= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941589 | 690 | 2.5 | 2 |
Preferences are the corners we smooth to break-in our applications. Rounding and polishing the rough edges, optimizing our apps to meet our needs. Some preferences offer personal comfort by adjusting font size, tracking speed, or repeat rate. Others allow expression with a choice of color, desktop pattern, or ringtone. A computer’s most fundamental preferences control screen brightness, speaker volume, and energy efficiency. While the interconnected nature of our modern devices makes communication preferences like wireless network, email server, and screen name indispensable.
Applications that perform a single task well are like a straight line with very few rough edges. The path from point A to point B is clear, and the requirements needed to complete the job are straightforward. Very few preferences are needed. But as customers have demanded more features from their applications the line from point A to point B has splintered into a maze full of right angles and sharp corners. The view from entrance to exit is obstructed, and more preferences are required to smooth the corners and make navigation easier.
My two favorite text editors have two different approaches to application preferences. WriteRoom is a straight line text editor designed to minimize distractions. It does not have a formal preference pane to collect application settings. All of the user configurable preferences in WriteRoom are selected from the Menubar. No setting is hidden out of sight. When I write in WriteRoom I tune it like I would an old style radio. Choosing a theme is like selecting the station, adjusting the font size is like changing the volume. Once I have selected what feels right I begin writing. WriteRoom is a great text editor, but it lacks the complex features and advanced preferences to be my dedicated coding environment.
Coding in BBEdit is like configuring a television set. Not an old fashioned television set with two discrete nobs, one for selecting the channel and the other for changing the volume, but a modern television set full of hidden settings for picture quality, input source, and surround sound. BBEdit has a preference pane so expansive that it requires a search field to locate all of its hard to find hidden settings. When I code in BBEdit I know it is capable of handling every task I can throw at it. If I can’t find a preference using the integrated search I can submit a bug report and Rich Siegel will show me the hidden feature I am missing. BBEdit is a powerful application that offers a labyrinth of corridors for completing almost any task.
WriteRoom and BBEdit are two different applications, aimed at two different tasks, with two different approaches to user preferences. WriteRoom is a simple application aimed at distraction free writing with a minimal set of preferences. BBEdit is a complex coding environment targeted at software development with a extended set of settings. They are as different as an old style radio and a modern flat panel TV can be, and yet neither approach is perfect. Applications cannot become so simple that they only perform one task well. Preference panes cannot become so complex that they require a search field to navigate. The perfect amount of preferences falls somewhere in between.
By separating the preferences people use most from the ones they don’t, developers can streamline advanced application configuration and reduce confusion. We are already starting to see this approach with mobile applications that connect to a dedicated web service. Upon first launch users are asked to enter their service credentials. Once those credentials are verified a user never has to set that particular preference again. Instead of wasting screen space with settings we only set once developers can offer us immediate access to the preferences we use most to fine tune our day to day application experience.
The perfect set of preferences is like an office chair. The difficulty of assembly is only experienced once and is analogous to configuring the server settings on a modern mobile app. Once the chair is constructed preferences like height, recline, and rotation are only a convenient handle pull away. When developers design their next application I suggest they separate the preferences users need everyday from the ones they don’t. No one wants to put together their chair twice when all they were really reaching for was a little lumbar support. | <urn:uuid:3a4cef76-edb7-44e9-8563-ce1e5a61ad98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eggfreckles.net/notes/perfect-preferences/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936819 | 849 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Thank modern propagation techniques for making tropical hibiscus plentiful, cheap and available at any garden center or discount chain store. Grown as a rounded shrub or trained to resemble a small tree, these plants are garden show-offs with silken blossoms in the shimmering hues of a tropical sunset.
Hibiscus reach their peak in late summer and early fall, so this month's display should be nothing short of spectacular. But about the time you gather your last tomatoes, you'll have a decision to make: Will you discard your hibiscus plants and start over next year, or will you try wintering them indoors so they might live to spend another summer under your care?
It may partly depend on whether you have a suitable spot, ideally a sunny, cool (60- to 65-degree) room where plants can be positioned away from direct heat. If you want to save your tropical beauties, here's how to do it: Bring plants indoors when night temperatures drop below 50 degrees. Stop fertilizing and water less frequently, but try to boost humidity by misting often, running a humidifier or standing pots on trays of dampened gravel.
To foil common pests in dry, heated interiors -- chiefly spider mites and white flies -- give your plants an occasional shower. Cover the soil surface with plastic wrap or aluminum foil, stand pots in the tub and sprinkle them with tepid water for five or ten minutes.
In late winter, replace the top 2 inches of soil with a fresh potting mix that includes some slow-release fertilizer. Don't repot unless roots are protruding from drainage holes in the bottom of the container.
In late February or early March, new buds will start to swell. Prune now, before rapid growth begins, to remove weak branches and maintain a compact shape. Once night temperatures are above 55 degrees, acclimate your hibiscus to outdoor conditions. Put the plant in a shady, protected spot and gradually increase sun exposure over a week or 10 days.
When new growth appears, feed periodically with an all purpose fertilizer. Water faithfully, but allow the soil surface to dry between dousings. Don't use saucers under pots since hibiscus require good drainage.
Hibiscus kept indoors won't bloom through the winter; the goal is to keep the plant alive and healthy. Even during the summer, hibiscus flowers last only a day -- on the plant or cut, in water or not.
One way around the indoor-outdoor shuffle is to opt for hardy relatives of the tropical hibiscus. These are hybrids of the native rose mallow, Hibiscus moscheutos, and are still relatively unfamiliar despite their virtues. Hardy in climates as harsh as Minnesota's, the moscheutos hybrids bear huge, disk-shaped flowers 8 to 12 inches across, in colors ranging from white through pink to dark red.
The Fleming Brothers of Lincoln, Neb. famously spent 50 years producing varieties like 'Kopper King' with copper-red foliage and white flowers, the purple 'Plum Crazy,' and 'Old Yella,' the first yellow cultivar. More popular still are newer, compact types including the Disco Belle, Luna and Splash series, which grow just 2- to 3-feet tall.
These smaller forms are suitable for containers, although they must go into the ground by Labor Day to adequately prepare for winter. Once frost kills the upper growth, plants can be cut back.
Leave stems 8 to 10 inches tall so you will know where plants are and can avoid disturbing them before new shoots appear in late May or early June.
Hardy hibiscus are drought-resistant once established but are adaptable and can even grow in damp or soggy soils. Like the tropical kinds, they want full sun (at least six hours) and regular watering. Two or three doses of all-purpose fertilizer each season will keep them happy.
Flowering begins in mid-to-late summer and continues until frost -- a boon in the late-season garden. They combine well with other hardy perennials like daylilies, ornamental grasses and Russian sage and are nearly as carefree. Because they emerge so late, these plants are good companions for small, early spring bulbs that bloom before the new hibiscus foliage appears.
One possible downside: Hardy hibiscus flowers might serve as a whimsical hat, but are far too large to tuck Gauguin-style behind one ear. If you try this romantic look with your tropical blossoms, do as the Pacific islanders do: It's the right ear if you're available and looking, the left if you're already spoken for.
Mail-order suppliers of tropical hibiscus include Hidden Valley Hibiscus (exotic-hibiscus.com) and Logee's Greenhouses (logees.com). Hardy types are available from Nature Hills Nursery (naturehills.com) and the Sooner Plant Farm (soonerplantfarm.com), which specializes in Fleming hybrids. | <urn:uuid:ca5cc1d0-59c4-4a82-a6c7-31d4134300f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nj.com/insidejersey/index.ssf/2009/08/how_to_host_a_hibiscus.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9147 | 1,053 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Don’t remember much from high school biology? What you do remember seem light-years behind where biology is today? Wondering what is going on in all those tubes of clear liquid people use in experiments?
Join us as we go through Albert’s Molecular Biology of the Cell textbook.
Once a week for 25 weeks will read a chapter and meet to discuss it for an hour. By the end, you should have a firm grasp on the vocabulary and concepts of modern molecular biology. With this foundation, you’ll be able to follow lab-based classes easier and start coming up with ideas of your own! Class is open to all those who are in or have had high school biology.
Required Text: You will need to get a copy of Albert's Molecular Biology of the Cell (Used 4th Editions are reasonably priced on Amazon).
Cost is $5 per class for members ($10 for non-members). Limit 10.
Study Group is led by Kyle Taylor, PhD | <urn:uuid:e6eaec0c-a71e-424b-a7b2-154c5979dd48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.meetup.com/BioCurious/events/84466702/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959328 | 204 | 2.59375 | 3 |
31.Jan.2011 The C-List: Charlie Bell, 1916-2011
Item! Charlie Bell, one-time cartoonist for the Regina Leader-Post, died January 28 at the age of 94. Bell started as a political cartoonist with the paper in 1947, moved sideways into reporting, and eventually became managing and then associate editor before retiring in 1982. Official obit.
Item! Writing for The Walrus, Jeet Heer examines the history of Canada Reads in the context of Canada’s middlebrow bookchat culture, providing a tonic to all the hype: “Rarely discussed in the populist hubbub of Canada Reads is the idea that difficult writing can be deeply pleasurable. A knotty piece of prose is like one of the gymnastically challenging sexual positions in the Kama Sutra: difficult to master but, if you can pull it off, intensely gratifying.”
Item! Writing for Montreal’s Westmount Examiner, Wayne Larsen reviews at collection of editorial cartoons from the 1940s by a cartoonist I had never heard of. Very interesting. Cartoon Review of the War: Louis Baratgin’s World War II Album, by Robert Bruce Henry, is published by Véhicule Press.
Item! We can all breath a collective sigh of relief now that “The Senator” hockey hero mascot has finally been revealed. | <urn:uuid:1d851475-89fd-47d1-ae9b-6ec1b5705cdd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sequential.spiltink.org/the-c-list-charlie-bell-1916-2011/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934188 | 288 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Shell, the global oil and gas company, sued more than a dozen environmental groups that oppose offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean on Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times reported. The environmental groups hope to block Shell’s plans to drill exploratory wells this summer in the Chukchi Sea, between Alaska and Russia.
The idea behind the suits, filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, is to beat environmental activists to court. Shell has already spent $4 billion on the project but has not yet started drilling.
“This is a very unique legal approach. I’m not sure anything like this has ever been done before,” Shell spokeswoman Kelly op de Weegh told the LA Times.
Shell, which is headquartered in the Netherlands, targeted, among others, the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, which last week sent six activists, including the actress Lucy Lawless, to protest aboard an oil rig in New Zealand. According to AlaskaDispatch.com, Shell is also seeking damages from Greenpeace for its protest occupation.
Whit Sheard, a senior adviser for Oceana, told the LA Times he doesn’t believe Shell has adequately met the requirements of the law.
“This cleanup plan, just like their previous cleanup plans, is woefully inadequate, based on technology that has never been proven, and continues to be too risky for the Arctic environment,” Sheard said.
He added: “What are they trying to do, get the courts to declare something legal that hasn’t been challenged as illegal? It seems premature, and potentially unnecessary.”
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News | <urn:uuid:fd98e42b-6ef5-4ff4-8211-f094c4cb5bc6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/02/29/10544605-shell-sues-environmental-groups-to-score-drilling-rights?lite | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958799 | 348 | 2.109375 | 2 |
a. Find the beaver pelt and look in the drawers below. Name three objects that trade introduced to Native American cultures.
How do you think the trade materials influenced Native American culture?
Choose three words to describe
. . . how Europeans might have felt about trade.
. . . how Plains Indians might have felt about trade.
b. Find the object that tells the story of an international conflict that took place in the geographic region that we know as Nebraska. What is the object?
What is the story?
How is this object different from the ones you have seen in this exhibit so far?
c. Go to the Tribal Histories room. Choose a tribe. What did you learn about the tribe from the objects on display?
d. Go to the Clothing section. Think about your clothes and accessories. What do your clothes tell about the culture in which you live? (Think about materials, styles, and decorations.)
Name two articles of clothing or accessories that demonstrate contact between the Plains Indians and Europeans.
What features of these clothes or accessories indicate the Plains Indians were changing some of their culture?
What features indicate they were keeping some of their culture?
e. Go to the earthlodge and listen to the audio stories. Think about your house. Which rooms of your house would serve the same functions as the earthlodge?
What advantages do you think the Pawnees found in having a one-story, circular, one-room dwelling rather than a two-story, rectangular dwelling with many rooms?
f. Find the photo near the earthlodge of an earthlodge village at Genoa,1871. How was an earthlodge village arranged? Draw or describe.
Find the map of Todd County, South Dakota with the Rosebud Sioux Reservation. How did this system of living compare to an earthlodge village?
Choose one word to describe how you would feel about reservations in the late 1800s and early 1900s if
. . . you were a Winnebago Indian forced to move to one.
. . . you were a European or European-American settler living near one.
g. Go to the Winnebago living room. Each of the objects tells a story about the cultural transition taking place on reservations. Which object do you think represents the largest adjustment? Why?
Which of these objects represents the best opportunity for the Winnebago to keep some of their culture? Why? | <urn:uuid:d5d300ef-638d-446c-984a-00ccff6bf450> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nebraskahistory.org/sites/mnh/grades/firs9-12.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966935 | 510 | 3.921875 | 4 |
Belarus - Country history and economic development
1919. A Soviet regime is established in Belarus.
1922. Belarus becomes a member of the USSR.
1923. The forced mass collectivization of agricultural lands begins.
1944. After 4 years of occupation by Nazi Germany, Minsk is recaptured by the Soviet Army.
1986. The Chernobyl nuclear power station accident in Ukraine leaks radiation into Belarus.
1990. Belarus declares state sovereignty from the USSR.
1991. Belarus declares independence. Belarus, along with Russia and Ukraine, forms the CIS.
1994. Russia and Belarus announce a monetary union, which is abandoned by Russia a year later. Alexander Lukashenka is elected as the first president of independent Belarus.
1995. Belarus joins NATO's Partnership for Peace Program.
1995. Russia and Belarus allow the free movement of certain goods across their border.
1996. The last nuclear weapon left over from the Soviet-era is removed from Belarusian territory.
1997. Russia and Belarus sign the Act of Union, which envisions the union of the 2 countries. | <urn:uuid:1aee36df-d7f2-4808-9432-d8050e3789ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Europe/Belarus-COUNTRY-HISTORY-AND-ECONOMIC-DEVELOPMENT.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913721 | 224 | 3.65625 | 4 |
Warriner’s Grammar and Composition—a name, a title, almost for many a book of faith. For me it was just a beginning, both positive and negative.
My first semester teaching high school, I taught four sections of Grammar A, which if my memory holds, were followed by four sections the next semester of Grammar B. (This was during the mid 70s when grade-level courses were turned into semester options we called mini-courses.) I don’t quite trust my memory because I know for sure that one day during my own learned lecture on participles, delivered to a class of more or less un-focused eyes, I fell asleep—at least, I woke or became aware that I hadn’t the least idea what I was talking about or what my last significant comment had been.
Suddenly, I realized my college degree was worthless, and my teacher prep courses were on the line. “Adapt, improvise, overcome”—Heartbreak Ridge had not been filmed, but I knew the lines instinctively. I accused a tired-looking kid in the back row of not paying attention, and asked the bright, straight-A girl in the second row if she might explain my point to the confused scholar in the back. She loved showing off and explained my point perfectly, clueing me in on where I had dozed off. I envied the kid in the back who had the temerity to snore.
I have often wondered if my class knew I was in a semi-unconscious state. We all were, except the clever girl in front. For years I kept trying to teach what I was told to teach—trying to master Grammar A, Grammar B.
I’m not sure when I first found myself really teaching, but now I teach things differently—even grammar. I still find myself teaching participles, but I approach the subject more thoughtfully: not as an end but as a means to the richness of language. For example, a woman called the other day to ask which sentence is correct: “We are heading in the wrong direction” OR “We are headed in the wrong direction.” Apparently she and her husband had gotten lost driving to the lake, and grammar had at least provided the couple common grounds to argue. The phone call became a teachable moment. I asked a class how they would explain the different forms since both sentences pass the fundamental student test: they both “sound” correct. Finally class discussion moved from which is right and wrong (as the woman posed the question) to meanings—the difference in meaning instead of “correctness.” That is what I aim for now, and maybe it is why I still love teaching.
Johnson County Community College
Overland Park, Kansas
35 years of teaching
Composition and/or Literature: The End(s) of Education
Editor(s): Linda S. Bergmann, Edith M. Baker
This collection focuses on the rift between literature and composition in English studies, examining the extent to which this division affects teaching practices in colleges and universities.
Grammar and the Teaching of Writing: Limits and Possibilities
Author(s): Rei R. Noguchi
For many students, Noguchi believes, formal study of grammar seems far removed from the daily use of language. He believes that grammar can help students—but only with style, not with content or organization—and he suggests presenting students with a "writer's grammar" that specifically addresses the problems that crop up most often or those that society deems most serious. | <urn:uuid:846bc723-8ac4-41dc-a311-322061d528cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ncte.org/centennial/teacherstories/andyanderson/contenthistory/2009528/12703/16/29/967 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976801 | 748 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Eva Zeisel was continually intrigued by what she called her "playful search for beauty" – an idea she continued to explore until December 30, 2011, when she passed away at age 105. Zeisel was world renowned for her ceramics, and when she was in her early 80s, she started designing tables. The medium may have changed, but her Coffee Table (1993) is still very Zeisel with its whimsical lines and ornamental motifs. A person of delightfully defiant spirit, Zeisel was just beginning her career when she declared war on the fashionable avant-garde. "I didn't accept the purism of modern design," she said. "In my definition, if it gave beauty to the eye, it was beauty." Even when MoMA was an advocate of straight-lined Bauhaus design, Zeisel gave them curved feminine forms. The result of such an approach is a design that's truly timeless. "I always live life in the present," said Zeisel. "Eternity is only in the present." In 2005, Eva Zeisel was awarded the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement. Made in Canada.
Choose from two finishes: black or white lacquer.
Solid ash with black or white lacquer; .5" tempered glass with flat-polished edge.
Eva Zeisel was continually intrigued by what she called her "playful search for beauty." A person of delightfully defiant spirit, the designer was just beginning her career when she declared war on the fashionable avant-garde. "I didn't accept the purism of modern design," she said. "In my definition, if it gave beauty to the eye, it was beauty."
Zeisel was born Eva Striker in Budapest in 1906. Her father ran a textile factory and her mother was an outspoken feminist and one of the first women to earn a doctorate at the University of Budapest. It was through her mother's urging that Zeisel switched from studying painting at the Budapest Royal Academy of Fine Arts to pursue the more practical career of ceramist. She apprenticed herself to a potter at a porcelain factory, an unusual path for an educated woman at that time. Zeisel persisted, graduated to journeyman status and became the first woman admitted to the local pottery guild. It was during this time that her work took on the sensuous, flowing and biomorphic forms that would continue throughout her career. Read more > | <urn:uuid:1ffa7ab7-0ecb-4684-b7ad-80a1122606f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dwr.com/product/eva-zeisel-coffee-table.do?keyword=coffee | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986072 | 506 | 2.15625 | 2 |
When the travelling man, the cultural pirate, Humphrey Gilbert hove up on the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador, his fellow celebrity, Edmund Spenser, was recording the politics and passions of his age in song. The government of the day didn’t have to reward Gilbert for seizing “this blessed isle,” he drowned on the way home, but Queen Elizabeth I did want to provide a life-time pension of £100 to her musical chronicler. Her chief minister, though, was horrified at the misappropriation of government funds and exclaimed: What! All this for a song.
Mr. Chancellor, As you well know, this mean-spirited, unimaginative parsimony is not confined to the 16th century. However, while this court of intellectuals and government of scholars may be occasionally short of funds, it is not short-sighted. In Newfoundland and Labrador, we place a high value on music and song, ever since Robert Hayman, in the 16th century, wrote a song about the rich elements of our province. That is why today we are proud to honour the pre-eminent singer/songwriter, Bruce Cockburn, whose songs have recorded the politics and passion of our lives and times. He has courted and provoked us all to engage in the urgent political, economic and environmental issues of our time. His lyrics summon us to take responsibility for our actions, and, most difficult of all, to love our neighbours as ourselves.
Through his extensive travels in Central America, Asia, Africa and Iraq, Bruce Cockburn’s substantial discography bears witness to the horror and the holiness of the human condition. And while, like Spenser, he sings of the evanescence of life, of our
Footprints by the sea’s edge
the intensity of his imagery, offers us glimpses of the divine.
Mr. Chancellor, While Bruce Cockburn modestly refers to himself as a “cultural pirate,” widely read in the Christian writings of Thomas Merton, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and in the work of the poets Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Ernesto Cardenal, he is an original artist. His luminous and forceful images have awakened our consciousness to the fearful symmetry in the dual nature of human kind our amazing acts of grace and our atrocious acts of evil. The rich, sensuous palette of his music, a versatile distillation of folk, rock, reggae, jazz, blues, and liturgical, Renaissance rhythms, played on Western, Asian, African and Caribbean instruments, has been a call to generations of Canadians to attend to humanistic values.
Mr. Chancellor, in fact this is Bruce Cockburn’s second gig this month. He has just received an honorary doctorate in divinity from Queen’s University, but he is the first to admit that he is no saint. His parents thought he would become a bum if he played the guitar; he was once arrested for busking without a license in Paris and, having had some experience in these matters, he is writing the music for the film Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance by Irvine Welsh. While his songs at times are bitter and impassioned cris de coeur, they are never preachy. They are extracted from the truth of his own experience. If the songs take on a life of their own that is the risk this artist takes in speaking truly.
His songs attest that, in his odyssey, Bruce Cockburn has almost been overcome by the “sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt,” the futility and waste of human life. His spirituality has sustained him, while he has been a grim traveller in a dawn sky, as has the sacrament of erotic love, recorded in many of his sensuous songs, which he has shared with all of us who are Lovers in a Dangerous Time. Witness, Mr. Chancellor, the number of fans in the faculty clamouring for tickets to this convocation.
So what better way to record this convocation than to close with Bruce Cockburn’s own words
This outstanding Canadian, this citizen of the world, Bruce Cockburn, has given us true soundings on the voyage of our lives. We trust he will have a safer voyage from these shores than Humphrey Gilbert, that his communion with us will ensure a lifetime remuneration of grace and inspire many more songs illuminating the reality of our world.
Dr. Annette Staveley | <urn:uuid:6ef89bd4-ce98-41cd-b91e-1a1997c052e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mun.ca/gazette/past/issues/vol39no15/c8.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964952 | 933 | 2.09375 | 2 |
The unmistakable voice of an American original
His is the most famous phiz in American literature. With the overabundant mustache and unruly head of hair, the hawk eyes and hooked nose not to mention the genteel suits and potent stogies Mark Twain mixed an unmistakable personal image with literary genius in a way that made him one of our nation's first true celebrities. Now the subject of a new book, Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography, the companion volume to the television series that airs this month on PBS, the inimitable author receives reverent treatment from Ken Burns and collaborators Geoffrey Ward and Dayton Duncan, who have worked with the filmmaker before on projects like The Civil War and The West.
Celebrating Twain as novelist, journalist, humorist, creator of literary archetypes and founder of American letters, their latest endeavor honors a man who was unafraid to critique the politics and manners of the country he adored. Indeed, as the authors show, it seems that no writer ever loved America more. Who else but the man from Missouri would liken Venice to an overflowed Arkansas town? Or compare the Great Pyramid of Cheops to Hannibal's Holliday's Hill?
From his birth as Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Missouri, to his rowdy days as a bachelor-reporter, to his rise as a writer and the adaptation of his literary alter-ego, Mark Twain traces the arc of the author's personal and artistic lives, while telling the stories behind books such as Roughing It, The Innocents Abroad and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer all produced during years of success and tragedy, marriage and, of course, travel. Twain, whose itinerant tendencies surfaced early (he stowed away on a steamboat as a boy), viewed himself as a vagabond and a rover, an unregenerate rascal whom his beloved wife Livy would reform. His humility and self-effacement, as well as the enormity of his contribution to American literature, are wonderfully reflected in this tribute a book that glitters with photographic gems, including pictures of the author at work, of his splendid Hartford, Connecticut, home, and close-up shots of his handwritten manuscripts. Documents like Clemens' riverboat pilot's certificate, issued in 1859, and newspaper clippings a snippet dated February 3, 1863, from Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise contains the first appearance in print of the name Mark Twain are among the book's visual riches. The text draws on Twain's diaries and private correspondence, and offers contributions from writers Ron Powers and Russell Banks.
A novel collection
A master of satire as well as more sober-minded fiction, Twain—ever the intrepid explorer—was not afraid to test his powers in disparate literary genres. His versatility as a writer is demonstrated in the sixth volume of the Library of America's authoritative collection of his work. Mark Twain: The Gilded Age and Later Novels, edited by Twain scholar Hamlin H. Hill, includes the amusing title novel a satirical take on Washington, D.C., bigwigs and its sequel, The American Claimant; Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective; and the complete version of Twain's final book, No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, a gothic adventure set (believe it or not) in a medieval Austrian village.
New spin on Huck Finn
Readers with a hankering for the more traditional Twain can try The Annotated Huckleberry Finn, the ultimate edition of a timeless classic. With notes by best-selling author Michael Patrick Hearn, this new version of the controversial narrative, originally published in 1885, contains archival photos and drawings, including maps of Hannibal, Missouri, and the Mississippi River, circa 1845. Hearn's thorough annotations, drawn from Twain's original manuscript, his revisions and correspondence, supplement the narrative. Reproduced for this edition, the novel's original illustrations by E. W. Kemble show an impish Huck, a raggedy Pap, a dour Miss Watson distinctly American images that are almost as unforgettable as Twain's own. | <urn:uuid:b162d4ed-9cc6-4076-b423-fd9f7b1a3710> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bookpage.com/feature/the-unmistakable-voice-of-an-american-original | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953631 | 849 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Today is Banned Website Awareness Day, and all across the country, educators are doing their part to raise awareness of how overly restrictive blocking of educational websites affects student learning.
The dialogue around filtering must also include bring-your-own-device policies, appropriate use of social media in schools, and overall responsible use of technology in school. Each of these issues plays an important part in the equation that influences school policy around filtering websites. For example, do students and teachers use social media sites like Edmodo or even Facebook for class purposes? Are educational videos on YouTube part of teachers’ curriculum? In large school districts, does it make sense to have individual school policies? Are students allowed to use their cell phones?
The Presence Project came to my attention when I helped judge the Learning, Design, and Technology Program student projects at Stanford. Two graduate students “who feel passionate about developing tools for modern families,” sustainability-focused designer Kyle Williams and Emily Goligoski, a researcher in Stanford’s Calming Technology Lab, created a digital and tangible toolkit to help families talk about, explore, and do something about their attentional choices around digital media.
"A Platform for Good (PFG) is a project of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) designed to help parents, teachers and teens to connect, share, and do good online! At FOSI we work with leaders in the field of online safety and, regularly, we hear about incredible stories and exciting opportunities in our digital world. We hear stories of parents, teens, and teachers using technology to raise social awareness, encourage activism, enhance our education system, and of course, have fun!
What we have noticed, however, is that the stories reported in the news and infusing public conversation are focused heavily on the negative notions that don't support the research that says the majority of people's online experiences are positive. Given this climate, it is our hope that PfG will create a place to have a more balanced discussion about the role digital technology can play in our lives.
Our vision for A Platform for Good is to start a dialogue about what it means to participate responsibly in a digital world. While recognizing the potential risks, we will celebrate technology as a vehicle for opportunity and social change."
"How do people who’ve grown up using the internet engage in civic life?....In democratic states, citizens need information about what challenges a government faces and what it’s proposing to do about it to be effective citizens. And citizens need to be able to connect with one another to discuss, debate and propose solutions. What a communications medium makes possible has a shaping influence on civic life."
"The Internet's reach is so pervasive, it feels as though it has always been around. The reality is that the web is still in its infancy, and we don't really understand the risks it poses to our mental health....."
With the Chronicle of Higher Education’s recent story, “MOOC Mania,” even more people are talking about MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses – and a lot of this dialogue is happening right here on www.hastac.org. Check out the links below for insightful posts on MOOCs and how to use them to revolutionize teaching and learning.
The Flipped Classroom is a learning model where students are exposed to new ideas at home–often through videos–and then work applications of that learning at school–an approach that reverses, or “flips” the old approach.
"For whatever reason, discussions of online education are in the air. Cathy Davidson frequently writes about the challenges facing our education system on this blog, and when a consortium of top universities combined to create an online course initiative, it seemed that online education had grown past its infancy as was ready for mainstream acceptance.
"That initiative, Coursera, has clearly excited the public, as it now boasts over one million students taking free online courses. Yet it has not been without its critics." See site for more.
The key differentiator between those who feel overwhelmened by the volume of information available today and those who feel empowered and enthusiastic appears to be....know-how. --Howard Rheingold
"But now, there’s proof that all this worry about information overload, message meltdown and attention crash is overinflated hyperventilating. A study out of Northwestern University finds that “very few Americans feel bogged down or overwhelmed by the volume of news and information at their fingertips and on their screens.”
Published in the journal The Information Society, the findings were based on seven focus groups with 77 participants from around the country. According to study author Eszter Hargittai, associate professor of communication studies, “We found that the high volume of information available these days seems to make most people feel empowered and enthusiastic. People are able to get their news and information from a diverse set of sources and they seem to like having those options.”"
WNYC's Studio 360 asked us to create a new visual vocabulary that reflects the multidimensional role of the teacher. Listen to our interview with Kurt Andersen on Studio 360 and check out our full presentation.
"With YouTube, Wikipedia, search engines, free chatrooms, blogs, wikis, and video communication, today’s self-learners have power never dreamed-of before. What does any group of self-learners need to know in order to self-organize learning about any topic? The Peeragogy Handbook is a volunteer-created and maintained resource for bootstrapping peer learning." | <urn:uuid:b0d44a7b-4f2c-4939-878a-d4c0469d29b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scoop.it/t/learndigital/p/454948813/e-l-s-u-a-a-km-blog-thinking-outside-the-inbox-by-luis-suarez-google-plus-and-twitter-how-they-work-for-me-hand-in-hand | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948307 | 1,159 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Collaboration between China and Japan is helping to save one of the region’s rarest and most threatened birds—the Crested Ibis. Through captive breeding and release, in combination with other measures, the population has increased form a handful of individuals to over 500 birds in the wild. The two nations’ commitment to the species was recently highlighted by the historic meeting of the countries’ Prime Ministers to discuss the ongoing conservation effort.
In 2007, the Prime Ministers of China and Japan came together to discuss the fate of one of Asia’s flagship birds: the Asian Crested Ibis Nipponia nippon (Chikatsuji 2007). The historic meeting, which took place at the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) conference in the Philippines, may prove to be a critical step towards safeguarding the future of one of the region’s most threatened species.
By 1982, the Asian Crested Ibis, which had once bred in Russia, Japan and China, appeared close to extinction, having declined owing to changing agricultural practices, pollution, and hunting. Just five wild individuals were thought to persist in Japan and the decision was taken to place these in captivity. However, in May of the same year, seven birds were rediscovered in Shaanxi province, central China. Since this time, a concerted effort by the Chinese Government and local people has resulted in a steady population increase. By June 2002, the population numbered 140 birds and today there are believed to be over 500 in the wild (Unshan 2007, BirdLife International 2008).
As a result of these efforts, the species is no longer listed as Critically Endangered, yet numerous threats remain for the tiny population. Captive breeding and the reintroduction of the species within its former range are crucial to its long-term survival. Both China and Japan maintain successful breeding programmes, and the two nations are now working towards the re-establishment of wild populations. China has donated a number of ibises to its neighbour, and there are currently plans to reintroduce the birds to Sado Island in Japan (Chikatsuji 2007). Given that the future of the species depends on effective collaboration between China and Japan, the meeting of the two Prime Ministers is highly significant and underlines the two nations’ commitment to the conservation of the Asian Crested Ibis.
BirdLife International (2008) Captive breeding and release of Asian Crested Ibis: linking Japan and China. Presented as part of the BirdLife State of the world's birds website. Available from: http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/sowb/casestudy/266. Checked: 24/05/2013
|Key message: Re-introducing birds where necessary| | <urn:uuid:0fe445b9-7c89-4021-893f-a3cbdb71382a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/sowb/casestudy/266 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934141 | 569 | 3.8125 | 4 |
Another supplier of packaged systems, W.J.Wadsworth & Associates, Arlington Heights, Ill., agrees that there is a trend toward smaller, more precise flows, and cites another driver. "In water treatment, which is a market for which we supply many systems, the trend is towards more-concentrated additives," says Len Niemi, president. "Chemical suppliers are seeing better economics in providing undiluted additives, saving on shipping costs." It's hard to say whether better dosing precision has led to the use of more-concentrated additives, or whether the additive suppliers' needs have spurred the equipment developments, but the end result is the same, notes Niemi: metering systems are handling smaller flows of additives or components with better accuracy.
One company poised to take advantage of this trend is Ivek Corp., North Springfield, Vt., which provides pumps and metering systems for liter/min to nanoliter/min ranges, in applications such as pharmaceutical production, food processing and lubrication systems. The company's core product, explains Frank Dimaggio, sales VP, is a reciprocating piston pump, powered by a stepper motor. The piston and its associated chamber are constructed of alumina or zirconia ceramics. The sealless piston pump's components are machined to within 10 millionths of an inch, and get sufficient lubrication from the fluid being pumped so that no other lubrication is needed, says Dimaggio. Using ceramics minimizes fouling while enabling easier cleaning, he adds. The all-digital controls allow for repeatability of 0.1 percent and comparable accuracy. System pressure is limited to around 250 psig to prevent damage to the ceramics.
The Pulsar HypoPump for handling sodium hypochlorite features a patented design that allows pressurized process fluid to flush liquid cyclically through the pump's discharge check system.
When it comes to accuracy of metering, most system designers agree: you get what you pay for. A good designer will weigh the need for higher accuracy (and the higher attendant cost) against the process and economic impact of lower, but adequate, accuracy. If a process can tolerate some over- or under-feeding and the additive is not expensive, opting for higher accuracy may not make sense.
The simplest metering applications tend to involve ingredient addition to vessels in batch procesess. Continuous processes, where flow of the primary fluid might vary, add a level of complexity that usually requires closed-loop control, with flow metering of the primary fluid providing a feedback signal to the metering pump to adjust flow. And continuous processes where a key characteristic of the primary fluid does vary (such as the pH of wastewater entering a treatment plant) represent a greater challenge.
Basic flow control of metering systems starts with calibration of the output of the metering pump. (This calibration is also recommended as a routine maintenance check.) Most systems have some type of pulse counter connected to the pump; as long as the volume or mass represented by each pulse is accurately known, the output can measured simply by counting.
Depending upon the severity and variability of the application, simple pulse counting might not suffice. Backpressure also can significantly affect the output of some positive-displacement pumps. In these cases, system vendors provide a variety of flow sensors that measure actual output. Neptune, for example, offers a gear-meter-based "flow checker" in its PZiA line of metering pumps, which allows the user to calibrate the system under actual process conditions, to account for variations in viscosity and pressure.
Split-case pump for metering fluids at rates of up to 2L/min. features a pump module containing precisely machined ceramic parts.
Source: IVEK Corp.
Pulsafeeder's Valente points to its digital logic controller (motor) or DLCM, which uses patented technology to control the stroke length of its hydraulically actuated diaphragm pumps, in addition to the flow output. The combination provides better accuracy and repeatability than systems that control one or the other performance characteristic, but not both, he says.
Wadsworth's Niemi suggests adding another flow element when designing a metering system: a pulsation dampener. It is a type of valve that reduces the spike in pressure with rotary or piston-driven pumps. "If the downstream gauges see that spike, it will eventually cause them to wear out," he says. "You get more trouble-free operation when a dampener is specified."
Metering systems can be arranged with multiple pumps or with multiple feedlines coming from one or more pumps and serving a group of vessels. Craig DeWallace recommends the use of a large-capacity pump for moving the bulk of the fluid to a vessel, and then another, more precise pump for reaching the desired output-such as for addition of a caustic solution to neutralize a wastewater stream at a treatment plant. His company has built systems with an air-operated double-diaphragm pump to move a large quantity of neutralizing solution quickly, plus a metering pump to provide the finishing amount.
Mini-Pak manifold provides metering accuracy to 0.1% even at flowrates of over 600 gal./min.
Source: Lubrizol Performance Systems
Multiple feeds from a pump usually are routed through some type of manifold, and that manifold provides another point where flow control is possible. This is the design philosophy behind a product line from the Performance Systems Div. of Lubrizol Corp., Atlanta. The business grew out of Lubrizol's need to develop systems to inject additives into gasoline at fuel terminals -- where it retains a leading market share -- and now encompasses food processing, downstream oil production, defoaming and other applications.
Its Mini-Pak injector is a machined block of metal with ports for feedstreams, and connections to a solenoid valve, a gear-based flowmeter, and communications modules. The typical application, says Bill Silzle, division president, is for controlling the addition of a small quantity of an expensive component -- such as the dyes used in retail gasoline -- to a large flowstream, such as the fuel being dispensed into a delivery truck at a fuel terminal. The injector's flowmeter divides the flow into thousands of pulses, which are counted electronically and totalized for the desired flow input. Silzle says that the unit achieves metering accuracy to within 0.1%, even with flowrates in excess of 600 gal/min. | <urn:uuid:d8c07e22-ee30-479d-847c-34eaab097b07> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chemicalprocessing.com/articles/2003/230/?start=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925687 | 1,355 | 1.984375 | 2 |
Residents of Sandyville never liked the idea of a bully spoiling their fun.
A burly ironworker from Zoar learned that lesson when he tried to break up a meeting to celebrate the victory of William Henry Harrison in the presidential election of 1840.
“The older residents remember some of the diversions of the early days, and still rehearse them to the rising generation on summer evenings at the village store,” W.W. Scott, editor of the Iron Valley Reporter in Dover, wrote for a story published on June 11, 1896. “Prominent among these was the jollification by Sandyville over the election of ‘Old Tippecanoe Harrison’ in 1840. People came from all the country ‘round to see the fun.”
An enormous corn pone, or cornbread, was baked on the Pritchard farm for the occasion. It measured 6 feet long, 18 inches wide and 2 inches thick. It was carried to the party on hand spikes and served with roasted raccoon, “which was thought to be a great delicacy then.”
The event was held on a rise of land not far from the village square.
All was going well into a man employed at the iron furnace in Zoar arrived.
“The big fellow had his own whiskey, and after he had mixed that with large doses of corn pone and roast coon, he got on his muscle, and began to hunt trouble,” Scott wrote. “No one wanted to tackle the burly iron worker, and he proceeded to break up the meeting.”
No one wanted to tackle him except for Col. John Laffer, the 34-year-old son of Sandyville founder Gen. Henry Laffer. “When he thought the Zoarite had stamped about enough, he warned him to stop or get out.”
The iron worker took a swing at Laffer, and in the next moment they were in a clinch on the ground. They rolled down a bank and landed in a fence corner. Laffer was on top.
“The way he licked the iron worker gladdened the hearts of all who had crowded around, and it is talked about even to this day,” Scott wrote. | <urn:uuid:9e984104-f7e4-402c-b83c-808cc7407a11> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timesreporter.com/blogs/hooked-on-history/x1805320174/Bully-met-his-match-in-Sandyville-in-1840?rssfeed=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984972 | 472 | 2.15625 | 2 |
It didn't produce many memorable matches, but it doesn't really matter. The World Cup, first and foremost, is about human drama more than it is about goals, and in that regard this edition produced plenty of winners and losers:
Germany: The World Cup was supremely organized. But you expected that. The big surprise was the warmth of Germans, shedding decades-old stereotypes of being a rude, introverted people.
German national pride: Six weeks ago, you'd be hard-pressed to find a German flag anywhere in public other than hanging from a government building. Now they're everywhere. People drove around honking horns and waving flags all night ... after winning the third-place match.
German weather: It was cold and rainy, even snowy, in the two weeks leading up to the opener. Then the skies magically cleared and temperatures climbed to comfortable levels, and stayed that way through the final. Think of San Diego weather for a month.
Juergen Klinsmann: Besides giving his countrymen a renewed sense of national pride, his greatest legacy may be that he opened traditionally conservative minds to innovative methodology, much of it influenced by living in Southern California since 1998. Sociologists are predicting it will impact more than coaching soccer in Germany. Klinsmann, however, is moving on. He won't extend his contact as Germany's coach, according to the German soccer federation.
Felipe Scolari: If Italy's Marcello Lippi wasn't the best coach in the tournament, then “Big Phil” was – as much for what his current team (Portugal) did as for what his former team (Brazil) did not. The semifinal loss to France ended a personal 12-match unbeaten streak in the World Cup.
Mexican fans: No contingent of foreign spectators made more of an impression on this World Cup, painting complete cities green without so much as a single ugly incident. Suffice to say, a few Germans might be booking trips to Mexico in the near future.
Ghana: It saved face for Africa, which was on the verge of not having a team in the second round for the first time since 1982. Two words for the future: watch out.
Adidas: The big winner in the boot wars. Puma sponsored more teams, and Nike had better ads, but adidas is expected to sell 15 million of the World Cup balls – 50 percent higher than initial projections.
Italian defenders: They surrendered two goals in seven matches, an own goal against the U.S. and a dodgy penalty against France. And here's the most impressive part: The guy who was supposed to be their best defender, Alessandro Nesta, was hurt and barely played.
Zinedine Zidane: The retiring superstar practically willed France to the final with one stirring performance after another, a resurgence that became the story ofthe tournament.
Soccer: The World Cup was great. The soccer was not. The only World Cup with fewer goals per game was 1990, and in terms of snooze factor 2006 probably tops the list. There were an awful lot of clunkers.
United States: Three-and-out performances in 1998 and now 2006 confirm what a lot of people thought but were afraid to say: The 2002 trip to the quarterfinals might have been a fluke. The good news is, the tournament probably won't return to Europe (where the Americans still haven't won a World Cup match) until 2018 at the earliest.
Ronaldinho: He wasn't horrible, but he wasn't anything close to the player we've seen at Barcelona the past few seasons. He is a poster child for a new era of player who is sensational for the team that signs his paycheck and so-so for a national team that does not.
Jose Pekerman: His legacy will forever be as the guy who left 19-year-old phenom Lionel Messi on the bench in the quarterfinals while Argentina blew a 1-0 lead to Germany and lost in a penalty shootout.
Referees: FIFA went to great lengths to improve the officiating in the wake of the 2002 disaster – a more comprehensive selection process, tougher fitness standards, more education, linesmen that spoke the same language as the referee. And what happens? It might have been even worse.
Wayne Rooney: He makes a miraculous recovery from a broken foot, then fails to score and gets a red card for stepping on a Portuguese player's, uh, midsection.
Cristiano Ronaldo: Rooney's Manchester United teammate played well and made the cliching PK in the shootout against England. But his cocky attitude and incessant diving were so grating that the technical committee choosing the tournament's best young player admitted they passed over him for those very reasons. They also sealed his departure from Man U.
Togo: It could have been such a nice, quaint story about the lads from the speck of an African nation. Instead, the players either look greedy for nearly boycotting a match over unpaid World Cup bonuses, or the federation looks corrupt for refusing to pay them.
Soccer minnows: After having three teams reach the 2002 quarterfinals, no one from the sport's lesser confederations (Asia, Africa, Oceania and CONCACAF) did this time. So much for all that brash talk about how Europe and South America no longer rule the soccer world.
Zinedine Zidane: The retiring superstar practically willed France to the final with one stirring performance after another, a resurgence that became the story of the tournament ... until he head-butted Italy's Marco Materazzi in the final.
BEST OF THE BEST
Best coach: Marcello Lippi, Italy. He merely held together a team wracked by scandal and tragedy, successfully switched formations at mid-tournament, gracefully deflected intense media criticism and never made a bad sub.
Best player: Andrea Pirlo, Italy. With the Azzurri trailing 1-0 in the final, teammate Mauro Camoranesi won a corner kick and prepared to take it, until Pirlo came sprinting over and waved him off. Pirlo took the corner instead, put the ball perfectly on Marco Materazzi's head, and it was 1-1. Pirlo did stuff like that all tournament.
Best match: There's not a lot to choose from here, but Mexico-Argentina in the quarterfinals was a cracking game won with a singular piece of brilliance from Maxi Rodriguez.
Best goal: It's tough to top Rodriguez chesting a pass and then curling a left-footed volley just inside the far post from 25 yards. (Don't try this at home, but if you must, don't do it around any windows.)
Best team to watch: Ivory Coast. These guys zipped the ball around the field and weren't afraid to go forward or to try outrageous shots. Too bad they were in such a brutal first-round group. It would have been fun to see what they could do in the knockout phase.
Best stadium: Munich's Allianz Arena is the most spectacular and has the best sightlines. But there's nothing quite like riding a train into the middle of nowhere and watching a match in Fritz-Walter-Stadion in Kaiserslautern, a small town that loves its soccer like no other.
Goalkeeper: Jens Lehmann (Germany).
Defenders: Fabio Cannavaro (Italy), Fabio Grosso (Italy), Lilian Thuram (France) and Philipp Lahm (Germany).
Midfielders: Andrea Pirlo (Italy), Zinedine Zidane (France), Maniche (Portugal, pictured left), Michael Essien (Ghana) and Patrick Vieira (France).
Forward: Miroslav Klose (Germany). | <urn:uuid:65869b43-e7f0-423c-af08-f18fe38ac4f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060712/news_lz1s12winners.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968761 | 1,629 | 1.640625 | 2 |
12 modifiers that writers should trash
These words and phrases serve only to slow your readers as they stumble toward your message. Get out the broom and dustpan, and let's get to work.
In a webinar I created a couple of years ago, I compared cluttered writing to a junk-filled attic. The following bits of verbal rubbish could present a stumbling hazard to your readers. Here, in no particular order, are 12 modifiers that belong in the trash can—or maybe the recycling bin. (Some are superfluous only in certain contexts.) New. "The construction crew erected a building." Was it new? Of course. Do you need to say new . Of course not. It's imp read more...
To continue reading this article, you must be a member of Ragan Select. | <urn:uuid:47d62e34-933d-48bf-96ed-91e88f5b4658> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/46224.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93374 | 163 | 1.695313 | 2 |
On Friday morning the essential AAAARG site sent me my daily missive which informed me that someone had uploaded several prose works by Prynne. One of the was “Mental Ears and Poetic Work” which was published last year by the Chicago Review and is a transcript (with notes) of a lecture given by Prynne last year.
Having downloaded and read this piece once, I have to announce that Prynne has now joined David Harvey in my pantheon of using the dialectic sensibly. To be fair, Prynne’s usage is not the core of the lecture but it does inform his reasoning in a remarkably clear way.
The core argument, which Prynne admits is tentative, concerns phonology which is the study of the ‘systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken language’ (Wikipedia) although Prynne defines it as ” the system of sound forms in a speech practice that is structural to the coherence of a language and its evolution through time”. Prynne argues cogently that poetic practice must take more note of phonology because it isn’t variable, unlike metre, syntax, phrasing etc. all of which are subject to change and are dependent on the way things are read and received. This is a crude précis of the argument which doesn’t do justice to the way Prynne arrives at his point but is the best I can do without quoting him word for word.
Prynne provides the examples where phonetics are crucial- Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’ and ‘Prelude’ and Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’. I’m not familiar with the first two- my only reading of Wordsworth has been ‘Solitary Reaper’ and what Prynne has to say about it. I am however very familiar with ‘Paradise Lost’ and the passage that Prynne uses- Eve’s description of being born into Eden. From the first poem, Prynne draws our attention to the line “Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart” and then launches into a deep and complex analysis of the words ‘felt’, ‘blood’, ‘along’ and ‘heart’, noting that along has a nasal ending whilst the other three have plosive endings. So far, so good. We then come to a brief history of the word ‘blood’ which Prynne derives from ‘bleed’ because ” ‘living blood’ precedes bleeding but our observationally confirmed knowledge of blood has until recent times been consequent on bleeding events”. For me, this confirms that Prynne does not think like the rest of us, there’s nothing at all wrong with this argument but it is the way that it is formulated and expressed that belies someone with a deeply idiosyncratic way of thinking about language and the things it does. This is equally evident in Prynne’s recent work on ‘The Solitary Reaper’ which I now realise that I’ll have to read again with my mental ears firmly in place. This almost wilful determination to stand aside from any notion of mainstream lit crit is laudable especially when it produces such valuable insights and challenges, I just wish it was given a wider audience so Prynne’s criticism could more fully collide with the ‘witty circus’.
We now come to my problem with the Romantics and Wordsworth in particular. I’m more than happy to concede that Wordsworth is one of our finest poets and that some of his stuff contains really great lines but the ideology of Romanticism still offends the materialist in me, it’s not so much that I deny the power of nature to exalt the soul- I just don’t see that it matters very much. The cusp of the 18th and 19th centuries was a time of enormous upheaval and grinding poverty, what was needed was a poetry that engaged with these times in the manner of Godwin and Cobbett. What was not needed was a group of privileged young men going on about nature and their emotional response to it. I almost exclude Shelley from this but Wordsworth is firmly in the frame.
Prynne quotes another passage from ‘Tintern Abbey’ and examine the words ‘trust’, ‘gift’ and ‘blessed’. He points out that blessed can be traced back to blood which is linked by an early meaning of bless which is to “make sacred or holy by ritual shedding of blood”. There then follows an analysis of the word ‘sublime’ for which I am truly grateful. Prynne points out that ‘sub’ means “up to, as far as” and that ‘lime’ derives from ‘limen’ which is “the lintel or entrance portal to the spirit world of beatitude and love”. As an attentive reader of all things Prynne, I have frequently speculated and fretted over Prynne’s recurrent use of ‘lintel’ in his poetry. Now that the mists have cleared, I am able to return to the work with greater confidence although it isn’t yet clear that this definition will help. I also have to point out that it would have taken me years to get to this understanding without explicit help from the man himself.
In a paragraph which starts “See how this works”, Prynne lays out with great clarity the central ‘thrust’ of ‘Tintern Abbey’. Whilst I’m not sure that the end-stop in the word ‘heart’ signifies our mortality and feel that Prynne’s argument for phonology is still a little tenuous, the argument that the poem points to the potential of living souls to be transposed by nature even in the face of death is both cogent and forceful- it does not make me want to read any more of Wordsworth however.
What does send me back to my worn out copy of Paradise Lost is Prynne’s analysis of Eve’s account of her birth- “That day I oft remember, when from sleep / I first awaked and found myself reposed / under a shade of flowers…”. As readers we are told at the very beginning of the poem that Eve is doomed and we read the description of the time in Eden with a sense of foreboding. Prynne points to the use of hard end-stops (oft, sleep, awaked, found, reposed, shade) and speculates that these may point to the trap that Eve is already in. As an attentive reader of Milton, I find this wholly credible and realise that I’m going to have to pay attention to phonology the next time I read the work.
Prynne’s use of the dialectic is to be admired, he doesn’t over-elaborate nor does he drown his argument in cliché-ridden analysis. He does point out the contradiction involved in the root of ‘blessed’ being derived from blood sacrifice and he points out that ‘poetic form within the textual domain’ can disrupt apparent harmony and bring “discrepant aspects face to face”.
For those of us who are confirmed fans, the essay contains many delights. We get again the notion that language is compromised but also “clean hands do no useful work”. As an advocate of the (fairly) quietist approach to poetry, I’m probably going to give this more than a little thought. We also get “Language is itself an intrinsic fault system, and it is worse than a mistake not to understand this as best ever we can”. This is the final line and I wish to draw your attention to the contrast between ‘worse than a mistake’ and ‘as best ever we can”. The first phrase smacks of a rather aggressive piece of polemic whilst the second throws in a bit of humility, a case of Prynne wanting more than his cake?
I’ll finish with my favourite quote which is a kind of riposte to those critics (and there are many) who feel that Prynne has written himself into dark obscurity. He’s absolutely right both about his own stuff and that of others who are also considered to be difficult (Hill, Celan etc.). | <urn:uuid:1785b001-37d8-4788-86c5-8ece9f45246e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bebrowed.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/jeremy-prynnes-mental-ears/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963127 | 1,807 | 2 | 2 |
CEC Professional Awards
Each year the Council for Exceptional Children offers awards that recognize the educators who have advanced the field and the quality of special education service.
Heartspring Award for Innovation and Creativity in Special Education
Heartspring awards teachers who use new and innovative methods to get results for children with special needs. Desirable applications are creative, take risks and tell in a unique way how you execute your program to get results. Winners receive $1000 dollars, an expenses paid trip, and more.
National Association of Special Education Teachers
Each year, NASET presents awards in a variety of categories for outstanding professional accomplishments. This site offers many awards for special education teachers.
P. Buckley Moss Foundation and Moss Society Arts Teacher Award
These awards recognize outstanding teachers who consistently integrate the arts into the teaching of children with learning disabilities and other special needs. The awards also encourage and reward instructional collaboration among teachers whenever arts are included in the classroom learning experience as an essential ingredient in the education of all children. | <urn:uuid:ca2c7581-d53f-4404-9407-9cb9bfc1dcb7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fundforteachers.org/funding-opportunities/awards-recognition-special-education.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938042 | 204 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Dave Winer wants us to ignore the rapid adoption of apps — primarily driven by the genius generation of smart phones now on the market — because he says they ‘are not the future’. This reminds me of the Chico Marx line, ‘Who are you going to believe? Me, or your own eyes?’
Leaving aside the astonishing proliferation of apps, what is it that Winer is trying to get at? What would lead to the fall of the applications ecology out there?
Dave Winer, Why Apps Are Not The Future
Visualize each of the apps they want you to use on your iPad or iPhone as a silo. A tall vertical building. It might feel very large on the inside, but nothing goes in or out that isn’t well-controlled by the people who created the app. That sucks!
The great thing about the web is linking. I don’t care how ugly it looks and how pretty your app is, if I can’t link in and out of your world, it’s not even close to a replacement for the web. It would be as silly as saying that you don’t need oceans because you have a bathtub. How nice your bathtub is. Try building a continent around it if you want to get my point.
We pay some people to be Big Thinkers for us, but mostly they just say things that please people with money. It pleases the money folk to think that the wild and crazy and unregulated world of the web is no longer threatening them. That users are happy to live in a highly regulated, Disneyfied app space, without all that messy freedom.
I’ll stay with the web.
So when Dave means ‘the web’, he means the generation of the web where we were primarily interested in web pages and how they referenced each other by hyperlinks. This is what I call the Web of Pages, and it was a very productive basis for a decade, during which time we rapidly developed and migrated onto the Web of Flow, which is where we are mostly living now.
Instead of pages and links, the most important objects in the Web of Flow are people and relationships. Instead of wandering around the web, jumping from page to page using browsers, people now use social apps, and those apps bring information to us through social relationships.
Yes, we still use URLs as convenient IDs for snippets of information, and those are the handles being passed around by apps, but they are increasingly becoming proxies for information that is embedded on the pages, used increasingly as a mechanism to fetch the information and bring it into a social context.
But Dave thinks we want to live in a 2008 era forever. I wrote about some of these arguments a while back in a piece called Why Closed Works: Moving Past Steampunk Thinking About The Future Of Computing, which dealt with the open/closed issue surrounding the rise of apps, and the fall of the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) style of human-computer interaction.
Personally, I want a future where we move farther away from the physical layers of the web and higher into the social layers. Here’s what I think is right around the corner:
- Social Operating Systems — Apple and Google (and perhaps Microsoft and Facebook, as well) will roll out operating systems in which social communication and connection will be fundamental primitives, just like the file system was part of previous OS’s. Apps will be able to rely on the OS supported notions of identity and connection, instead of every application implementing the basics over independently.
- The Fall Of The Browser — The browser is an afterthought, still an odd man out in the 2008 era model of computing. In a sense, this is because the web is an afterthought in older OS’s. We are now seeing OS’s where the web is the primary context, and the local hard drive is increasingly treated as a cache. When the web is primary, and all apps navigate and negotiate it, the browser starts to seem more like Apple’s Terminal program, that you will use once in a while when things get broken, and some people will never use it at all.
- Social is not Disney — Moving into a world of social apps is not necessarily a simplification of the big bad complex web. It is a different web, with different complexities.
Lastly, Dave seems to have an issue with ‘Big Thinkers’ who supposedly say what they do to make others — those with ‘big money’ — happy. But I don’t see that people advocating a new model of communication and connection through a different sort of web are necessarily doing the work of monied interests. I’m advocating it, personally, because I think it will lead to a richer user experience, and ultimately, stronger social connection in the world. | <urn:uuid:dc3f2520-b700-4c99-9352-ff44af0cb4cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stoweboyd.com/tagged/steampunk-computing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949459 | 1,010 | 1.65625 | 2 |
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There are more than 150 canvas embroidery stitches, most of which are a variation or combination of the long stitch, covering more than one mesh, or intersection of threads, and the tent stitch, which covers only one. Since the 16th century the most commonly used stitches have been the tent (or continental) stitch, the vertically worked Florentine stitch (also called the flame, bargello, or...
petit point embroidery
...because of its small scale. The squareness and regularity of the outlines of the forms represented is less apparent at ordinary viewing distance. The stitch used—also called petit point or tent stitch—is worked either in diagonal or horizontal rows across the intersection of the canvas threads. The thread is carried back from stitch to stitch in a uniform manner to ensure that...
What made you want to look up "tent stitch"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:98a2ba5a-ae3e-4b94-8b22-5e63bac50484> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/587586/tent-stitch | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924308 | 222 | 2.375 | 2 |
My friend Steve Jones (real name John Stephen Jones), geneticist and popular writer, appeared this morning on the BBC Radio 4′s regular program, “The Life Scientific.” You can either download or listen to the half-hour show here (click “play recent episodes”).
Steve is quite eloquent, as always, covering topics ranging from his own upbringing, his experiments on flies and snails, his role as a popularizer of science, and where the media fails in covering science.
I was interviewed about Steve for this BBC show some months ago, and they’ve used two snippets of my own recollections, especially describing the experiments Steve and I did with others in Death Valley studying how far fruit flies can fly in the desert, and a really beautiful (and largely neglected) experiment we did with Linda Partridge using mutant flies with temperature-sensitive eye colors as a way to determine what climates flies actually experience in the wild (references and links at bottom).
Steve was elected to the Royal Society in April, so at last he can (but won’t) append the vaunted “FRS” to his name.
h/t: Several British readers
Coyne, J. A., I. A. Boussy, T. Prout, S. H. Bryant, J. S. Jones, and J. A. Moore. 1982. Long-distance migration of Drosophila. Am. Nat. 119:589-595.
Jones, J. S., J. A. Coyne, and L. Partridge. 1987. Estimation of the thermal niche of Drosophila melanogaster using a temperature-sensitive mutation. Am. Nat. 130:83-90. | <urn:uuid:887aaf45-afc0-4628-a768-def07f19339f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/science-is-the-refuge-of-the-mediocre-steve-jones-on-the-life-scientific/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922192 | 364 | 2.046875 | 2 |
*Perilous Times and Global Warming
Intense tropical cyclone Jaya*
01 Apr 2007 22:03:00 GMT
Source: Tropical Storm Risk
Intense tropical cyclone Jaya is forecast to strike Madagascar as a
tropical cyclone at about 06:00 GMT on 3 April. Data supplied by the US
Navy and Air Force Joint Typhoon Warning Center suggest that the point
of landfall will be near 15.8 S, 50.7 E. Jaya is expected to bring
1-minute maximum sustained winds to the region of around 157 km/h (97
mph). Wind gusts in the area may be considerably higher.
According to the Saffir-Simpson damage scale the potential property
damage and flooding from a storm of Jaya's strength (category 2) at
* Storm surge generally 1.8-2.4 metres (6-8 feet) above normal.
* Some roofing material, door, and window damage of buildings.
* Considerable damage to shrubbery and trees with some trees blown down.
* Considerable damage to mobile homes, poorly constructed signs, and
* Coastal and low-lying escape routes flood 2-4 hours before arrival
of the storm center.
* Small craft in unprotected anchorages break moorings.
There is also the potential for flooding further inland due to heavy rain.
The information above is provided for guidance only and should not be
used to make life or death decisions or decisions relating to property.
Anyone in the region who is concerned for their personal safety or
property should contact their official national weather agency or
warning centre for advice.
This alert is provided by Tropical Storm Risk (TSR) which is sponsored
by Benfield, Royal & SunAlliance, Crawford & Company and University
College London (UCL). TSR acknowledges the support of the UK Met Office. | <urn:uuid:5f11b890-001c-41a6-9151-78d172196b15> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://groups.google.com/group/Bible-Prophecy-News/browse_thread/thread/2e687e04b840fcfd/ | 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 | 0.90163 | 393 | 2.453125 | 2 |
This 20th Anniversary issue of Business Today is – both , in keeping with making the Anniversary Issue a Collectors’ item as well as presenting either a fresh view to the contemporarily relevant topic or presenting a new topic] a very pensive yet full- of –hopes forward-looking statement.
In presenting the design and the content, the Editorial Team has indeed lived up to their promise of not looking back.
The issue is essentially split in several sections, each section having an article or a story from the different fields of India.
For all practical purposes, the issue opens with ‘Companies That Changed India’ in the last 20 years. There may be some debate about a few of the models quoted here or left out from its roster,, but even while looking at the rear window, the eyesight has not wavered from the front-view.
‘Score Ahead’ charts the current scenario and future agenda for ‘a new India’ in terms of the aspirations and challenges in the fields of Democracy, Politics, Corruption, Media, Scientific Research, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Education, Banking, Global Standing, Personal Finance, Philanthropy, Women, NGOs, Healthcare, Public Transport, Infrastructure, Agriculture, Environment, entertainment, Advertising, Technology [Social Media].and Sports – the Index has inadvertently maintained the title of “Column’ here- with the help of quite passionate articles from the persons at the grass-roots in the respective field. The topics do cover most of the soft issue for the tomorrow of India, and to some extent that of Bharat as well.
The editorial preface to these articles notes deluge of opportunities. Partly the [so called] liberalization in the past 20 years, coupled with need of the European countries and USA to locate their manufacturing bases to a low-cost destination has provided such a booster dose to our economy, that some of the chinks left out in the process of development have not hurt the economy and the people.
The liberalization eased, to a greater extent, but only in certain selected areas only, the governmental controls on operation and maintenance of the business in India. As result, entry of private enterprise in the two basic sectors, heath care and education, did get great opportunities. At the end of 20 years, when the momentum of growth has mellowed down, the three typical systemic maladies – insufficiency, [only] profit orientation and degeneration of ‘people aspect’ – as captured by Dr. Abhay Bang [“Change the Medication” , page 96], seem to affect almost all the areas taken up for discussion in this section.
The Editorial Team needs to be especially complemented for presenting the stories of ‘common men’s spirit of entrepreneurship – the potential bulwark of engagement of the bulging young India in decades to come – in the section ‘The Enterprising India’. One may chuckle with a resignation of cynicism on this aspect, particularly if he /she has read a story, being circulated in some other publications, of Dr. Piramal sitting over a pile of disinvestment cash. Oh well, even though we have gained fairly good ‘project’ management expertise [“Blueprint for Excellence” – Shri K Venkatesh, page 110], as much of the work has been done in last 20 years is still required to be done in next 5 years.
‘Catalytic Converters’ has picked up a wide spectrum of potential game changers by way of Clean Drinking Water, Solar Energy, Low-cost tablets, Wireless Broadband, UID, Cloud Computing, Mobile-based Transactions, Commodity Trading,
The photo gallery and snippets of thoughts of “ambitious men and women who are deciding the future of India in the areas of Entrepreneurship, professional Executive, Fashion, Jurisprudence, Education to air their views on what would change in their areas of work in the next decade.’
The stories in the issue have presented the imbalances and the opportunities by maintaining the delicate balance with an undercurrent of positive optimism.
May be because of such strong under-current of déjà vu that Shri Chaitanya Kalbag’s editorial post script – which I have translated in Gujarati] throws up the gauntlet of getting back to the work of unfinished agenda of providing decent education, health care, nutrition and shelter to the poorest child in the remotest village of India [Bharat] with the’ collective semi-conscious’ energy to stand up, dust off and carry on. He has unambiguously emphasized the intent of the Editor-In-Chief to set the tone for the future on the 20th Anniversary of Business Today.
On the whole, the issue has been well-designed and its content carefully chosen and presented to render the Anniversary issue a must-read and ponder upon.
I feel satisfied to remain an avid reader of this business journal from its inception and justified in maintaining the relationship of a subscriber for almost 15 years.
Ashok Vaishnav, Ahmedabad, | <urn:uuid:19fe8d5f-1d72-45c2-89d0-4b8246db7d09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://amvaishnav.wordpress.com/tag/india/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936929 | 1,057 | 1.703125 | 2 |
New Hampshire Court Records
From Ancestry.com Wiki
This entry was originally written by George F. Sanborn Jr., FASG, and Alice Eichholz, Ph.D, CG for Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources.
Each county, in addition to having a registry of probate and of deeds, has court records. At different times inferior courts of common pleas, superior courts, and courts of general sessions of the peace existed to deal with civil and criminal cases, equity, and naturalizations. The superior court records include naturalization records.
Divorces, although indexed beginning in the 1870s at the Bureau of Vital Records, are all filed at the county superior court. Some earlier ones are in legislative petitions.
The province court records to 1771 are card indexed at the New Hampshire Records and Archives. After that time, the county seat traditionally housed court records. In a few cases, card indexes to plaintiff and defendant are available to guide the search. Original county court records now at the New Hampshire Records and Archives instead of the county seat include Grafton (1773–1899), Hillsborough (to 1880), Merrimack (to 1870), Rockingham (1772–1860), Strafford (1773–1850), and Sullivan (to 1880). Microfilm of Grafton, Merrimack, and Strafford court record copy and docket books are at the New Hampshire State Library. New Hampshire State Papers, vol. 40, contains court records from the Dover-Portsmouth Quarterly Court (1640–92) and there are some general court records and indexes both at the New Hampshire Records and Archives and on microfilm at the FHL for the colonial period. After statehood, the court system became established along county lines. The only court records that have been abstracted or published for the post-colonial period are Laura Penny Hulslander’s abstracts of Strafford County Inferior Court Records, 1773–83 (Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1990). | <urn:uuid:4a58ef31-6663-4d4f-a5c4-e42f1e533835> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ancestry.com/wiki/index.php?title=New_Hampshire_Court_Records&oldid=2567 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91249 | 424 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Are You Infected with the Misconception?
Two students are discussing their physics homework prior to class. They are discussing an object that is being acted upon by two individual forces (both in a vertical direction); the free-body diagram for the particular object is shown at the top
During the discussion, Anna Litical suggests to Noah Formula that the object under discussion could be moving.
In fact, Anna suggests that if friction and air resistance could be ignored (because of their negligible size), the object could be moving in a horizontal direction. According to Anna, an object experiencing forces as described at the top could be experiencing a horizontal motion.
Noah Formula objects, arguing that the object could not have any horizontal motion if there are only vertical forces acting upon it. Noah claims that the object must be at rest, perhaps on a table or floor. After all, says Noah, an object experiencing a balance of forces will be at rest.
Who do you agree with?
Anna is correct
Noah Formula may know his formulas but he does not know (or does not believe) Newton’s laws. If the forces acting on an object are balanced and the object is in motion, then it will continue in motion with the same velocity. Remember: forces do not cause motion. Forces cause accelerations.
Let’s do an example
Remember last winter when you went sledding down the hill and across the level surface at the local park?
Imagine a the moment that there was no friction along the level surface from point B to point C and that there was no air resistance to impede your motion. How far would your sled travel? And what would its motion be like?
Without friction or air resistance to slow it down, the sled would continue in motion with the same speed and in the same direction. The forces acting upon the sled from point B to point C would be the normal force (the snow pushes up on the sled) and the gravity force
. These forces are balanced and since the sled is already in motion at point B it will continue in motion with the same speed and direction. So, as in the case of the sled and as in the case of the object that Noah and Anna are discussing, an object can be moving to the right even if the only forces acting upon the object are vertical forces. Forces do not cause motion; forces cause accelerations.
Newton’s first law of motion declares that a force is not needed to keep an object in motion. Slide a book across a table and watch it slide to a rest position. The book in motion on the table top does not come to a rest position because of the absence of a force; rather it is the presence of a force - that force being the force of friction - that brings the book to a rest position. In the absence of a force of friction, the book would continue in motion with the same speed and direction - forever (or at least to the end of the table top)! A force is not required to keep a moving book in motion; and a force is not required to keep a moving sled in motion; and a force is not required to keep any object horizontally moving object in motion. | <urn:uuid:a2ae75f6-d233-49ac-9614-5c8e5a6a3b39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://astrotastic.tumblr.com/post/40286637386/subatomiconsciousness-are-you-infected-with-the | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950228 | 652 | 4.28125 | 4 |
Twentieth-Century Painting and Sculpture in the Philadelphia Museum of Art
The composition and visual effects of Night Sea reflect the remarkable balance of rationality and intuition that informs Edna Andrade's approach to painting. Created from simple straight lines of iridescent green and pink on a rich blue-black ground, the rhythmic, wavelike image is at once solidly geometric and precise as well as constantly in flux. Seemingly without beginning or end, the painting changes, depending on where the eye and mind focus. Straight lines curve, colors emit different intensities of light, and inescapably flat elements bend, project, and bulge into space. Every line of Night Sea seems to connect to every other line and then to change color and direction at sharp angles, either splayed out to produce a generous curve or concentrated into dense knots of color, light, and energy.
An influential artist and teacher who has lived and worked in Philadelphia since 1946, Andrade first explored optical phenomena in her painting in the 1960s, when she was presenting courses on color and design at the Philadelphia College of Art. The clarity of her conception and the sureness of her drawing also reflect her work in the 1940s as an
architectural draftsman for government projects. Night Sea belongs to a group of works from the 1970s painted with a limited palette of bright colors finely drawn on dark grounds in which she devised mathematical systems to generate elegant, curving surface patterns and surprising visual effects using straight lines. The rules she used are only intermittently revealed by close observation; more prominent are the organic unity of the whole, the delicacy of the line, and the interdependent relationship of drawing, volume, color, and light that Night Sea projects. Its colors and fluctuating waves recall the effects of phosphorescence in the ocean glowing on a dark night, joining principles of science and wave theory with her inspired imagination to determine the ordered principles that structure her painting. Twentieth Century Painting and Sculpture in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2000), p. 124. | <urn:uuid:d0995cf8-e7aa-4c64-b291-9c68ae0f1691> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/72126.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934977 | 420 | 2.96875 | 3 |
The Conscientious Congressman's Guide to the Electoral Count Act of 1887
Stephen A. Siegel
DePaul University - College of Law
Florida Law Review, Vol. 56, No. 3, p. 541, 2004
Electoral vote counting is the oldest activity of the national government and among the oldest questions of constitutional law. Yet, it is one of the least understood aspects of our constitutional order.
The Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs Congress's electoral vote counting process, lies at the heart of this confusion. During the 2000 presidential election dispute, for example, politicians, lawyers, commentators, and Supreme Court justices seemed prone to misstate or misinterpret the provisions of the law, even those that were clear to the generation that wrote it.
The purpose of this Article is to explain the provisions of the Electoral Count Act of 1887 as it was understood by the Congresses that debated and enacted it. This article explicates the Electoral Count Act through a comprehensive exploration of its legislative history, the history and theory of electoral vote counting, and the legal and political assumptions of the Congresses that framed it. This Article also develops its understanding of the ECA by analyzing the interplay between the Act's various substantive sections and between the its substantive and procedural provisions.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 84
Keywords: constitutional law, elections, electoral votes, presidential elections, Bush v. Gore, Electoral Count ActAccepted Paper Series
Date posted: September 11, 2008
© 2013 Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This page was processed by apollo2 in 0.469 seconds | <urn:uuid:b1b9ec99-4bdc-4839-8759-5743196240a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1265227 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946502 | 331 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Posted: Feb 1, 2010 7:50 AM by Associated Press
Enough peach buds in Mesa County may have survived a spell of extreme cold in December to give growers a complete crop this spring.
The cold snap that brought temperatures as low as minus 22 in some areas killed an estimated 25 percent of Mesa County's grapevines.
Plant pathologist Harold Larsen, interim manager of the Colorado State University Western Colorado Research Center, says spring weather will ultimately determine crop sizes. But he examined several samples of peach buds and found 65 percent of the Alberta peach variety and about 33 percent of the Jersey Queen variety survived.
Since peach growers may thin 70 to 80 percent of buds as trees bloom, Larsen says growers tentatively can expect a full crop. | <urn:uuid:a1642c0f-7a51-4641-97db-66db5acc957c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.koaa.com/news/december-chill-not-enough-to-hurt-mesa-county-peaches/ | 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 | 0.934829 | 153 | 2.296875 | 2 |
- Mar 04, 2008 5:13 PM EST
- [num] Comments
Microsoft's love-hate relationship with open standards continued this week, when it announced plans to make Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) compliant with Web standards interoperability.
Microsoft, of course, has its own way of doing things, and when that applies to browser standards, it can result in skewed rendering when applied to competing browsers.
To rectify this, Microsoft will embrace three rendering modes: the standards-compliant mode; a mode that was in place at the time of IE7's release in 2006; and a third that displays information from older Web sites, according to Microsoft.
"Our initial plan had been to use IE7-compatible behavior as the default setting for IE8, to minimize potential impact on the world's existing Web sites," Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, said in a statement. "We have now decided to make our most current standards-based mode the default in IE8."
Naturally, the move has something to do with Microsoft's favorite governing body, the European Commission. The EU last week fined Microsoft a record $1.35 billion for failure to comply with a 2004 ruling that required Microsoft to disclose interoperability data to developers.
"While we do not believe there are currently any legal requirements that would dictate which rendering mode must be chosen as the default or a given browser, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue," Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said in a statement.
Last month, Microsoft announced that it would provide greater access to some of its key software products, but the EU was skeptical that the announcement would actually yield any results. Will the commission be more forgiving on the Web browser front? Stay tuned. | <urn:uuid:2055f03c-a059-4c2c-b9b9-1453cd3211ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://appscout.pcmag.com/none/275779-microsoft-ie8-will-support-web-standards | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936677 | 364 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Cruise the beach in comfortable Jamaican style with this motorized hammock. [Stephen Shaffer] and his friends built it for the Red Bull Creation contest which has as its number one requirement, the need to include an Arduino. We’re basically looking at a hammock frame made out of square pipe that has been put on wheels. Watch the video after the break to see the prototyping, construction, and final product. Looks like originally the electric wheelchair base that’s used for propulsion was centered below the hammock. One sharp turn and the rider/operator gets dumped out on the concrete.
The final version includes a couple of wheels that serve as outriggers, keeping the vehicle upright. A PlayStation 2 controller is used for steering and directional control. It’s polled by the Arduino, which then uses servo motors to control the original wheelchair joystick. At least that’s what we were able to figure out by watching the video. | <urn:uuid:78ab48f4-cbab-4d3c-8f24-40dce3e34766> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hackaday.com/2011/04/27/be-lazy-and-get-somewhere-at-the-same-time/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963686 | 197 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Critics of the new health-care law, having lost one battle in the Supreme Court, are mounting a challenge to President Obama’s interpretation of another important provision, under which the federal government will subsidize health insurance for millions of low- and middle-income people.
Starting in 2014, the law requires most Americans to have health insurance. It also offers subsidies to help people pay for insurance bought through markets known as insurance exchanges.
At issue is whether the subsidies will be available in exchanges set up and run by the federal government in states that fail or refuse to establish their own exchanges.
Critics say the law allows subsidies only for people who obtain coverage through state-run exchanges. The White House says the law can be read to allow subsidies for people who get coverage in federal exchanges as well.
The law says that “each state shall” establish an exchange. But Washington could be running the exchanges in one-third to half of states, where local officials have been moving slowly or openly resisting the idea.
The dispute has huge practical implications. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that 23 million uninsured people will gain coverage through exchanges and that all but five million of them will qualify for subsidies, averaging more than $6,000 a year per person. Subsidies, in the form of tax credits, will be available to people with incomes from the poverty level up to four times that amount ($23,050 to $92,200 for a family of four).
Some supporters of the law say Congress may have made a mistake in drafting this section. But, they add, the intent of Congress is clear: subsidies should be available in federal as well as state exchanges.
The law says that subsidies will be provided to residents of a state to help defray the cost of health plans offered “through an exchange established by the state.”
A rule issued by the Obama administration allows tax credits for insurance bought in either a state or a federal exchange.
Political brawling over health care will continue this week on Capitol Hill. The House plans to vote on a Republican measure to repeal the 2010 health care law, Mr. Obama’s most significant legislative achievement. Democrats, who control the Senate, say repeal efforts have no chance of success there.
Representative Phil Roe, Republican of Tennessee, said the rule on premium subsidies “contradicts the explicit statutory language” of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Mr. Roe and another Tennessee Republican, Scott DesJarlais, have introduced a bill to nullify the rule, issued by the Internal Revenue Service.
Douglas H. Shulman, the I.R.S. commissioner, defended the rule as consistent with the intent of Congress. “The statute,” he said, “includes language that indicates that individuals are eligible for tax credits whether they are enrolled through a state-based exchange or a federally facilitated exchange.”
However, Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said the Obama administration was usurping the role of Congress and rewriting the law to provide tax credits through federal exchanges.
White House officials have repeatedly underestimated opposition to the health care law. They predicted that public support for the law would grow as people learned more about it. They minimized lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the requirement for most Americans to carry health insurance. They predicted that states would embrace the opportunity to insure more of their residents by expanding Medicaid and creating insurance exchanges, but a number of states have balked.
James F. Blumstein, a professor of constitutional and health law at Vanderbilt University, said the dispute over subsidies involved a serious legal issue.
“The language of the statute is explicit,” Mr. Blumstein said. “Subsidies accrue to people who obtain coverage through state-run exchanges. The I.R.S. tries to get around that by providing subsidies for all insurance exchanges. That interpretation will almost certainly be challenged by someone.”
The most likely challenger, Mr. Blumstein said, is an employer penalized because one or more of its employees receive subsidies through a federal exchange. Employers may be subject to financial penalties if they offer no coverage or inadequate coverage and at least one of their full-time employees receives subsidies.
Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the link between subsidies and penalties was a crucial part of the law.
“Those tax credits trigger the penalties against employers,” Mr. Cannon said. If workers cannot receive subsidies in states with a federal exchange, their employers cannot be penalized, he said. That, in turn, would hobble federal efforts to get employers to offer coverage in those states, Mr. Cannon said.
Prof. Timothy S. Jost, an expert on health law at Washington and Lee University, said Congress had made “a drafting error” that should be obvious to anyone who understands the new health care law.
“There is no coherent policy reason why Congress would have refused premium tax credits to the citizens of states that end up with a federal exchange,” said Mr. Jost, who supports the law. | <urn:uuid:dcb04dbf-21d9-434f-b70a-ba6c6c5345df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mobile.cnbc.com/us_news/48105142 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964071 | 1,067 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Every Sunday for the last four years, Derick Allen unlocks the door to a
nondescript building in Sunset Park at 2:45 a.m. This Sunday is no exception. He begins his work alone in a simple kitchen, unloading and organizing a variety of different foods, some of which require meticulous prep work. Over the course of the next six hours, he will have again successfully completed what he now believes to be his lifes passion and purpose: volunteering in the name of Jesus.
Derick Allen was born in Georgetown, Guyana, in South America, and became a product of the streets following his grandmothers death when he was 13.
He snorted cocaine and shot heroin, stole from innocent families, distributed narcotics, prostituted himself, and was in and out of prisons and rehabs for the better part of the next 20 years.
Along the way, he married at 19 and moved out of the streets and into a low-rent apartment. In his mid-20s, a drug friend introduced him to South Americas black market, where he made $1.5 million as a middleman moving exotic animals from Venezuelas border and selling them to South American buyers.
I had money and I was never happy. I lived the life of a rich man, I was never happy. You can be poor and be happy.
Allen had it all: a beautiful wife, a daughter, a house, two cars, two
motorcycles, a boat, and a lot of money. But within a few years he slipped back into familiar habits and traded everything for cocaine.
It wasnt long before he was back where it all started, on the side streets of Georgetown, digging for food in trashcans and looking for the next needle.
Life is about choices. Every choice we make has consequences, Allen says.
From an early age, hardly anyone cared for or even acknowledged Allens existence, and he came to learn, among other things, one harsh truth that those in need of the most help are often neglected and left to their own devices.
Its difficult to imagine Allen in these circumstances as he prepares food alone for the homeless, sometimes upward of 200 men, women and children at a time. He often wears a freshly pressed, white buttoned-down shirt tucked into gray slacks. The only evidence pointing to another life are the baggy pants and loose white short-sleeved shirt hes chosen to wear today; that and the tattoos on each of his forearms, which become more apparent as he washes his hands and checks the time on his wristwatch.
Its shortly after 3 a.m. at Early Bread, a Christ-centered ministry located in a one-floor building as humble as the tenants of its own religion. Nametags of other volunteers (some recovering drug addicts who have come and gone) from various denominations pepper wall-to-wall, red-checkered window curtains. The names hang like silent witnesses to the ministry here.
Right now, Allen is preparing 60 pounds of donated chicken, which hes carefully cleaned and marinated in ketchup, olive oil, chopped onions, and salt and pepper. The amount of work left before breakfast is served at 7 a.m. seems insurmountable: 300 slices of cheese and buttered toast, 520 eggs either scrambled or hard boiled, an industrial-sized pot of steaming grits, pans of savory roasted potatoes and onions, and meats the chicken, and often ham or turkey or bacon.
There is a steady rhythm, though, to Allens work. He moves methodically, with specific intent and without worry, never slowing down or speeding up. Constant. He flips on a floor fan and sips his coffee before continuing to cook.
The people always come to help, friend, he says through a thick, South American accent.
By 5:30 a.m., volunteers start trickling in, some plucking their nametags from the window curtain and introducing themselves to new volunteers. For his part, Allen shifts to delegation, assigning one person to crack eggs, two people to the stovetop, one to slice fruit, others to arrange donated pastries on trays and bag overflow bread, one to wash dishes, two to make the cheese and buttered toast, and two to carry coffee pots and other necessary items to the dining room for set up. He does this after saying, Thank you for helping, friend, and offers coffee to each of them as they go to work.
The guests begin to arrive with the sunrise, around 6:30 a.m., by foot, bicycle or church vans. They take seats in the dining hall, just as volunteers complete last-minute preparations. In the kitchen, a circle is formed by joined hands. Deacon David Hueholt, whose church, St. Peter the Fisherman, oversees the work of Early Bread, leads the prayer. Deacon David asks if anyone is here for the first time and whether there are any prayers that need to be lifted up this morning. Some request prayer for an end to violence in the world; others ask to donate to Compassion, a foundation geared toward helping struggling children survive in countries like Kenya. One man, his voice shaky with sadness and hope, requests prayer for his son who shares the same disease of addiction, that he may find it in himself to seek help. Then Allen speaks:
I was an addict for 25 years on the street. Today, Derick is 13 years, 10 months and 18 days clean. Me am better than nobody. An addict is an addict. I try everything to stop using and nothing work. Then I try Jesus and Jesus work, friend. On the street no one is safe; in prison, you go to get food and a good nights sleep. Today, Jesus is in my heart, friend.
He says this without embarrassment and without eloquence, but with the kind of genuine honesty that can only be reached through profound humility. For a moment youd think, based on peoples expressions, that they have found relief through Allens message.
He ends by saying, My thoughts will be on my recovery, living and enjoying life without the use of drugs. Just for today, I will try to fight it, with the help of Jesus, to the best of my ability.
Prayer typically ends with the Serenity Prayer and the Lords Prayer, and with a newfound energy, the group gets back to work.
This place here, doing Gods work, many people do it from their brain and it doesnt work. Me, I do it from the heart, he says.
In the dining room, the homeless have formed a single line that wraps around the three walls surrounding the food line. Following a welcome and prayer by Deacon David, Allen reminds those assembled that the women and children will be served first.
From a row of simple tables now loaded down with hot, wholesome foods, guests are greeted (many by name) with compassionate smiles and served as much as they want. There is music, plenty of food, and the kind of camaraderie that can only be found through the virtues of service, love and kindness. For one hour, they are free.
The more you help people, the faster they heal, Allen says.
Allen began volunteering the first day after his third attempt to stay clean. He was being held in a South American jail cell awaiting trial for larceny with the possibility of a ten-year sentence. A priest named Andy Carto approached his cell on the seventh day and offered to pay for his drug debt and recovery. It totaled $375,000. He told Allen, Live for your family; live for Jesus, and if you can help somebody, help them.
That message has stayed with Allen for nearly 14 years, and in all
likelihood, it will continue to stay with him.
Each year he travels back to the same streets he grew up in (in Georgetown), passing out plates of hot rice and slip-slaps to addicts and the homeless and carrying the message of Jesus along with his message of hope: I came from these streets; with Jesus, friend, you can make it too.
People in the street need the message more than people in the church, he says.
He plans to move back to Georgetown, Guyana, in four to five years to run his own volunteer feeding program.
But for now Allen scans the dining room in a nondescript building of Sunset Park, watching the group finish its meals.
As they start to leave, seemingly satisfied and grateful to have been helped, Allen says, I would like to do this for the rest of me life. | <urn:uuid:34ee4a32-6ec1-4aa5-8b88-db4e3b0f557a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com/article.asp?aid=860&iid=108 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972996 | 1,783 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Antique recurved Kaman bow from Rajastan North India
A rare war bow from North India Rajastan knwn as a Kaman. of Recurved form, when strung the bow would have been under high tension and able to fire arrows for a considerable distance. This form of recurved/reflex bow was used throughout the eastern world from Mongolia to Turkey. The bow is red lacquered with painted flowers as decoration at intervals. It is all solid and stable and in good condition for its age and fragility, there has been some restoration and retouching to the paintwork. This is an antique bow dating to the 18th or early 19th century and is extremely fragile. | <urn:uuid:7f069a9c-09f0-4228-a55e-79f2b44e3d1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ashokaarts.com/shop/antique-recurved-kaman-bow-from-rajastan-north-india | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97233 | 146 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Safford Unified School District v. Redding
Whether school officials acted unconstitutionally by strip searching a 13-year-old girl based on the uncorroborated accusation of a fellow student and, if so, whether the strip search was so clearly unconstitutional that plaintiff is entitled to damages. DECIDED
The ACLU represents Savana Redding, who was strip-searched by school officials when she was 13 years old based on the uncorroborated accusation of a fellow student who had been found with prescription strength ibuprofen (equivalent to two Advils) that she had received the pills from Savana at some unspecified time and place. After being told to remove her pants and shirt by school officials, Savana was then told to lift her panties and bra, exposing her breasts and pelvic area. The search confirmed what Savana had already told school officials: she did not have any pills in her possession. The case raises two questions, both of which were resolved in Savana's favor by the lower court. First, was the strip search unconstitutional? Second, was it so clearly unconstitutional that Savana is entitled to recover damages for the invasion of her personal privacy? Among other things, the ACLU brief argues that school officials should be required to have more evidence of wrongdoing to strip-search a student than to search her backpack. | <urn:uuid:12b7d4d9-93c0-402d-a26f-444d117a55d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/safford-unified-school-district-v-redding | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98667 | 277 | 1.632813 | 2 |