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In the wake of last week's Supreme Court decision upholding the individual mandate in President Barack Obama's health care law, the debate on the campaign trail turned not to extending health care to nearly 50 million uninsured Americans, but to the language of the ruling.
Mitt Romney's campaign, in a politically vulnerable spot given the similar mandate he enacted as governor of Massachusetts, labeled the fine a "penalty" on Monday.
The next day, the chairman of the Republican National Committee made an attempt at party unity, saying on CNN: "Our position is the same as Mitt Romney's position. It's a tax."
Romney himself weighed in on Wednesday, saying that while he agreed with the court's dissent that the mandate was unconstitutional, he accepted the majority ruling that the fine assessed to people who choose not to obtain health insurance amounted to a "tax." He reiterated his vow, made at every campaign stop, to repeal the law.
Democrats, intent on not appearing to raise taxes, have stuck with their description of the law as a "penalty," despite the Court's ruling that it's only constitutional as a tax.
Asked Thursday whether Obama "disagrees with the Supreme Court decision that says it's now a tax," campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt said "that's right."
"He's said it was a penalty," LaBolt continued. "You saw our arguments before the court."
And Jay Carney, White House press secretary, said again Thursday "this is clearly a penalty."
Obama's solicitor general, however, did argue in March that the individual mandate could be viewed as constitutional under Congress' taxation power. Donald Verrilli said the fee would be collected by the Internal Revenue Service on April 15, the day Americans pay their federal income taxes.
Asked by associate justice Samuel Alito "can the mandate be viewed as a tax," Verrilli responded "I think it could." | <urn:uuid:c1dc766c-787f-474f-9cf8-657f6ede8281> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wcvb.com/news/politics/The-politics-of-parsing-Penalty-tax-or-just-penaltax/-/9848766/15413812/-/3xw583z/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979194 | 389 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Tillman K A, Araki M, Pelli D G, 2008, "Crowding shows that faces have parts and bodies do not" Perception 37 ECVP Abstract Supplement, page 33
Crowding shows that faces have parts and bodies do not
K A Tillman, M Araki, D G Pelli
Crowding provides an operational test for whether an object is recognized by parts or as a whole. If an object has parts for recognition, those parts must be isolated, separated by at least the observer's critical spacing, in order for the object to be identified. Martelli et al [2005, Journal of Vision 5(1.6) 58 - 70] showed that faces are like words: both are recognized by parts. Here we use an emotion-recognition task to ask whether bodies are like faces. We use a staircase procedure to measure the threshold size for identifying the emotion (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, or disgust) conveyed by a body posture silhouette or face photograph. We compute 'complexity' as the ratio of this threshold object size and the size of the smallest 'isolation field' (based on critical spacing) in that region of the visual field. Complexity≤1 indicates holistic recognition, while complexity>1 indicates recognition by parts. We replicate Martelli et al's finding that faces are recognized by parts (complexity = 3.6±1.0). Surprisingly, we find that bodies, unlike faces and words, are recognized as wholes (complexity = 1.0±0.3).
[Supported by National Eye Institute grant R01-EY04432 to DGP.]
These web-based abstracts are provided for ease of seaching and access, but certain aspects (such as as mathematics) may not appear in their optimum form. For the final published version of this abstract, please see
ECVP 2008 Abstract Supplement (complete) size: 2329 Kb
[Publisher's note: The abstracts in this year's ECVP supplement have been published with virtually no copy editing by Pion, thus the standards of grammar and style may not match those of regular Perception articles.] | <urn:uuid:cd02d967-ef7d-418c-b0c2-958ba9689516> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.perceptionweb.com/abstract.cgi?id=v080115 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911738 | 441 | 2.171875 | 2 |
AIDS Talk Ignores Gays
Imagine two senior HIV/AIDS administrators delivering prepared speeches on the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program that assists countries hardest hit by the epidemic and not uttering the word "gay," or even the more clinical term "men who have sex with men."
It would be disappointing but not surprising during the George W. Bush administration. It is disheartening when it is the Obama administration in 2012.
But that’s what happened when Ambassador Eric Goosby, U.S. global AIDS coordinator, and Nils Daulaire, director of the Office of Global Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, delivered remarks this week.
The occasion was the July 10 unveiling in Washington, D.C. of the 278-page issue of the journal Health Affairs . It focuses on evaluations of PEPFAR, perhaps the only shining legacy of the Bush presidency.
Neither the speeches the two men gave nor the papers they contributed to the journal mentioned the group hardest hit by HIV on all continents.
It can’t be out of ignorance. Goosby did his medical training at UCSF and has spent his career alternating between Washington and San Francisco dealing with HIV. He knows better.
Instead of a balanced discussion that included all of the major groups affected by the HIV epidemic, Goosby focused on advances made in prevention and treating women and children.
In the bad old days, say 25 years ago, they were the "innocent victims" of the disease while, to many, gay men were not so innocent, they had brought the infection on themselves. What progress has been made; from being demonized to being ignored, despite the fact that gay men were and remain disproportionately affected by HIV in nearly every country in the world.
Even while that six-hour briefing continued to roll on, a mile away at the National Press Club a handful of AIDS advocates tried to draw a little attention to the still-festering domestic AIDS situation ahead of the International AIDS Conference.
The Obama administration wants to believe that health reform in the shape of the surviving Affordable Care Act will take care of everything.
AIDS advocates hope it will help address many of their concerns, but major provisions won’t take effect until 2014 and evaluating their effectiveness will take even longer. One still has to get from here to there, and even with expanded Medicaid coverage there will still be a need for HIV-specific support programs.
HIV in the U.S. remains "an epidemic of the marginalized ... of discrimination and neglect," said Cornelius Baker with the National Black Men’s Advocacy Coalition. "It is still largely a disease of white, black, and Latino gay men who comprise more than a majority of the cases despite being only 2 percent of the American population."
The perception is that science has solved the problems, he said. "There is a low perception of risk," he noted, despite the fact that 50,000 new infections a year occur in the U.S. And while the problem continues to grow, funding for AIDS education continues to shrink.
"We have a population that is becoming increasingly ignorant about the epidemic," he added.
Julie Scofield, executive director of the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, said the goals of the national AIDS strategy, unveiled two years ago, "cannot be achieved without significant increases in funding for critical HIV/AIDS discretionary programs."
At least $190 million is needed for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program. Only 4 percent of total HIV domestic spending goes toward prevention, a number that would have to double "to make a big difference in the epidemic in the U.S.," Johns Hopkins University HIV researcher David Holtgrave told a congressional hearing in 2009.
Scofield called on Congress "to meet and exceed the president’s budget" for HIV programs. But she fears the sequestration process of an automatic slashing of appropriations to non-defense spending that will take effect in January if Congress does not agree to specific substantial cuts toward balancing the budget.
Ronald Johnson, with AIDS United, called on all political and private actors "to end the acrimonious battles over healthcare reform and move toward full implementation" of the ACA.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation continues to act independently of most other advocacy groups. It held a Washington news conference on July 9 chastising President Barack Obama for being "MIA - missing in action" for not having yet committed to speak at the International AIDS Conference set to open in the capital on July 22.
The group has criticized the administration for lagging on AIDS education, needle exchange, and other programs, as well as not devoting adequate resources to the epidemic. AHF spokesman Tom Myers said, "It may be better if the president not attend the conference if he is coming without any concrete proposals to fix these problems."
Earlier in the month White House staff met with a number of AIDS advocates about what Obama might say in a speech to the conference. A participant who did not want to be identified said the staff seemed to be more concerned with spin than with offering anything new. | <urn:uuid:23318f1b-36cb-48c9-85c1-5f9a14eda4c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edgenewyork.com/health_fitness/hiv_aids/135077/aids_talk_ignores_gays | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960458 | 1,051 | 1.742188 | 2 |
How to Obtain Services
The Office for Students with Disabilities facilitates accommodations with faculty and staff, and serves as an information
resource to promote awareness and knowledge of disabilities. The student is responsible for self-identifying with the Office
for Students with Disabilities. This voluntary declaration is independent from the admissions process itself. Once contact
has been made with the Office for Students with Disabilities, the student is required to provide current (preferably, within
the last three years) documentation from professionals who make such diagnoses.
Students are required to secure appropriate disability testing and documentation on their own. All disability records
are treated as confidential and secured in the Office for Students with Disabilities. Once disability testing information is
received, appropriate services can begin. Students requiring special assistance and/or support services must contact the
Office for Students with Disabilities 30days before the term begins or as soon as possible thereafter.
For additional information, contact the Office for Students with Disabilities located on the Key West Campus. Students can
make appointments with the Coordinator for Students with Disabilities by calling 305-809-3292.
RAVE Program - Renewing and Advancing through Vocational Education
The RAVE Program offers special support services to individuals enrolled in A.S. Degree, A.A.S. Degree, and Certificate
Programs. Financial assistance for eligible students is available. Non-financial assistance includes career counseling,
information and referral service, and employment assistance.
Eligible Students Include:
• single parents
• displaced homemakers
• economically disadvantaged
• academically disadvantaged
• students with a disability
• limited English speaking students
• non-traditional students
Stop by the Financial Aid Office for more information on the RAVE Program or call (305) 809-3523.
In the event that a student notices anyone acting in an inappropriate manner (in word or action) or in the event that a
student feels threatened, he/she should maintain a calm demeanor contact the nearest FKCC employee and 911. If it is
after college business hours, students should
Please see the Vice President of Business and Administrative Services for additional information, policies, and procedures
concerning security at FKCC.
William A. Seeker/KeyWest Campus
The college does not operate any medical care facilities. Emergency medical services are available at the Lower Keys
Medical Center, located across the street on 5900 College Road. | <urn:uuid:078bd35b-37f6-4b7c-ace7-b862dff34d24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fkcc.edu/skins/userfiles/file/Printed%20Schedule/files/assets/basic-html/page51.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926415 | 503 | 1.625 | 2 |
New research from the economists at Delta Dental suggests that last year was the second-best year of all-time to lose all your teeth, provided you have access to a Tooth Fairy. Each year since 1998, the company has conducted a Tooth Fairy Poll, asking parents how much they give kids for a lost tooth. It is a transparent ploy to get media coverage, so congratulations to them on that score.
Operating under the perfectly rational assumption that Delta Dental's research is peer-reviewed and statistically significant, we figured we would see just how well it stacked up with other equally useful economic indicators. So we dug up a few data points: the price of the Dow Jones Industrial average on the last day of each year, annual gross domestic product for the U.S., and the average price of consumer goods as calculated under the Consumer Price Index. And lo:
The price of a tooth (blue line) has increased a little faster than the Consumer Price Index average since 1998, but more slowly than the GDP. And like the Dow, it's highly volatile. That's seen more clearly here, tracking average change of each index.
What's worth noting, however, is that there isn't a clear correlation between tooth prices and the Dow -- in other words, that these two indicators track different aspects of the economy. Equally well, I might add.
A contrary indicator: sugar. One would think that as sugar prices rose, it's use would taper. That, in turn would suggest that cavities would decline, making teeth worth more. And sure enough, there is a clear causal relationship between sugar prices and the price for a tooth.
One note of caution: the data from Delta Dental isn't adjusted for inflation. When you do so, a different picture emerges.
Last year was a good one -- but only slightly more so than the boomtime of 2005, a year remembered by kids around the world as one of the most flush in recent memory. In 2006, the bubble popped.
And finally, to answer the question on everyone's mind. Given a full set of 20 baby teeth, what would have been the best year to lose them all? Adjusted for inflation, your winner is 2010, when losing a full mouth of little kid's teeth would have cost his parents $53.20. Despite the parents' entreaties, an estimated $0 of that money went into the bank for college. | <urn:uuid:abf1bd57-4fd0-4e42-b01d-8e8147e4226f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/02/its-great-time-kids-lose-their-teeth/62599/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971793 | 494 | 2.421875 | 2 |
By Micki Manheimer and Joel Pickford
From the Authors: By the end of our first semester at Goucher, Micki and I were sick of writing. With research papers looming in all of our other classes, we were desperate to find an alternative to producing yet another paper for our Frontiers class. So we decided to join forces and create a documentary instead. I must admit, I find it slightly ironic that we’ve been selected for publication in a journal featuring other well-written papers when our original aim was to avoid the word "paper" as much as possible.
The focus of our Frontiers class was food. After reading a fair amount of literature on sustainable farming and the local food movement, and noticing the efforts Goucher College was making to provide such food for us in the dining halls, we decided to find out more about the food culture in and around our school. Of course, like any good college students, we failed to imagine the amount of work such a decision would lead to. Though Micki had some experience in video editing, neither of us had ever attempted to craft something so cohesive. Making appointments and trips to shoot were initially daunting, and intensive post-production work was strenuous given the extremely short timeframe we had to complete the project (16 days). In the end, however, our hard work paid off and we’re both quite happy with the final result. It may be rough at parts and it may have been a lot of work, but at least it’s not another paper.
From the Faculty Nominator: "Local" was created as a final project in Frontiers 100.20: Food Pleasures and Politics. This writing intensive course investigated the ways that our food choices are shaped by culture and family, corporations and advertisements, rituals and relationships. Students savored treasured memories and uncovered culinary traditions while grappling with the global economic and environmental implications of the ways that food is produced, distributed, presented and consumed. Topics included the role of tradition in our eating habits, the ethics of eating meat, the emphasis on local foods, and the experience of hunger in the United States and abroad; students experimented with a range of genres, from memoirs, recipes and restaurant reviews to analytic arguments, cross cultural interviews and a collaborative investigations. Students were invited to determine both the format and the focus of their final projects.
Watch: LOCAL (Documentary Short)
Copyrights of all Verge articles and editorial material belong to the authors. | <urn:uuid:66429d74-025b-473d-a4d9-9830dfc4da54> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.goucher.edu/academics/verge/past-issues/verge-6/manheimer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965784 | 506 | 1.914063 | 2 |
NULL values in a database: A programmer's nightmareMany argue that it should be allowed to have NULL values in a database. The reality is; all database systems I know of, allow NULL values for columns. But is it right; or even better; are NULL values at all allowed at all according to the relational model?
Before we proceed, I should make you aware of the fact that the term "NULL values" is actually incorrect: NULL means "unknown", and as such, it can not be considered a "value" at all. However, I will let it stand in this article, since the use is so widespread, if it makes it more convenient for you.
Actually, the original paper(s)(1969/1970) by E.F. Codd on the relational model, stated that relations have attributes which contain values within a domain. (I'll be back on that one in another article).
Thus, the relational model states that every attribute has a value for a given occurence (row/tuple). (Remember, NULL is not a value, it is something unknown).
But we need not go all the way to the relational model:
This is actually common sense, when you think about it.
Let us look at an example: I have a table ACCOUNTS: By the way, since it allows a column to have a NULL value, it is definetely not a relational table; ref the above definition. More on that later:
Notice the column AVAILABLE: for account_no 30 it holds a NULL value
(although the term "value" is not correct when talking about NULLs, as mentioned earlier). How could that be?
Study the three different statements carefully. You will notice that the first two do a correct count of the occurrenses (rows), while the last one returns TWO. But there are THREE! It is only that, that the last occurence is unknown, so the database cannot return a correct value. The value is unknown, so Oracle cannot give us an answer!
Stay with me, as it is just getting better (or worse, if you prefer).
The first SELECT turns nicely up with all accounts where available=Y.
The second SELECT turns up all accounts where available IS NOT Y. But actually, as you can see, it doesn't.
What we wanted to ask the database was "give me all acounts with available Y combined with all acounts where available IS NOT Y". But it fails.The row with available=N satisfies the WHERE-clause, but with regards to the row with an unknown value, Oracle simply says: "I don't know, therefore I cannot tell".
In my opinion, instead of returning an answer, Oracle should have told me: "I do not know the right answer to your question".
Chris Date has published an article called "Not is not Not", and I hereby credit him for giving me inspiration for this article, including pointing out some of the flaws in SQL, through his eminent seminar "Relational Remodeled".
Now, most database vendors, including Oracle, who has implemented the NVL function (the SQL Server equivalent is the ISNULL function), know that this is not a situation we can live with. So take a look at how we can 'fix' our little problem:
Now, everything is right(?). We have an NVL function which says, 'if AVAILABLE contains a NULL value, replace it with X'. X being different from Y, the UNION works.
But who decided upon that X value?
I did, actually. So, what did I do? I ASSUMED that if the value was unknown, we could use an X. I just guessed.
The whole point of NULL, is that it is unknown. No-one knows, including me. I just made an assumption.
Actually, any value chosen would have been just as good, or bad, as X, with an exception for Y: Y UNION Y yields Y.
Let us take it further: What if all rows in the table had a NULL value for AVAILABLE?
There are still three rows in the table, but a COUNT over NULL values makes it look as if there are no rows. Now, here comes a shock for you: The above is from an Oracle database. How about SQL Server?
(Programmer's manual stuff, saying): "In SQL Server, when using the COUNT function against a column containing null values, the null values will be eliminated from the calculation. However, if the COUNT function uses an asterisk, it will calculate all rows regardless of null values being present."
The same thing will happen. Back to Oracle:
Actually, if we delete the three rows, we will get exactly the same answer:
This last example is even worse: The SELECT * returns 'No rows selected', but the SELECT COUNT(*) returns ONE row with the value 0!
In other words; if you had a WHERE clause like this:
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT COUNT(AVAILABLE)...
it should return TRUE. Totally wrong...
Well, actually, this is an error in the COUNT function: Any column would give the same COUNT result...
Actually, until proven otherwise, with the COUNT function, you could 'prove' that TRUE=FALSE, since it returns ONE row with the value zero (0).
I am very reluctant to trust ANYTHING coming out of a database like this. Would you?
If you are not convinced, let us do another little exercise: I have added the column BALANCE to the ACCOUNTS table, and I have two rows in it, where one of the rows contain a NULL value for BALANCE:
Now, let us calculate the sum of balances:
Fair enough? As far as we know, the sum is 1000. That is: As far as we know.
But: Are we sure? A balance is really either 0 or some amount of cash, positive or negative... The best thing the database could have answered, is 'Gee, I'm not really sure here. Can't really give you an answer'.
Why?: 1000 + something unknown = something unknown: That's elementary logic...
POINT: NULLs are giving us severe problems in determining the true values. It serves no informational purpose at all, and can only lead to incorrect answers and distrust in the database itself. Of how much worth is an untrusted database?
CLUE: In both of the examples above, we can trace them back to bad database design: In the example of AVAILABLE, the column should be mandatory. In the example of BALANCE, it is an example of denormalization, often performed in order to 'help' the database to perform better without taking the consequences into account. Check out my eBook on Database normalization, where this case is solved.
Now, another thought: If you define a column as numeric, how could you allow it to contain anything but numbers? Numbers are well-known: they consist of figures from 0-9. NULL is not a number... I think ;-).
Actually, I do not know what the NULL "value" is: That is the concept of NULL...
CLUE:Whenever I see that someone has put a NULL column into the database design, I think to myself: 'Is there a missing entity here?'
Most often, the answer is yes.
A few last words on NULL: NULL = Unknown.
What kind of unknown?
POINT: How many types of unknown are there? For each type, you have to add logic. That is what we call n-Valued logic.
In computers, we should only deal with TRUE or FALSE (2-Valued logic). Everything else is guesswork. Computers are extremely bad at at guesswork: They want facts, and can make desicions based on facts. Without facts, they are of little or no use...
This leads us into a short conclusion:
CONCLUSION: Allowing NULL values into your columns introduces a whole new degree of uncertainty into your database. (Qualified?) guesses must be made by the SQL programmer to counter for erroneous results of NULL values in a database.
Even better, if two (or more) programmers work on the same table(s) with NULL values in a database allowed, you could end up with as many different results as you have programmers. Or more.
To quote Chris Date: "I hate NULLs!". I couldn't agree more.
If you want more documentation on null values in a database, do a Google search: Search for null values. There are (depending on your country) more than 51 million sites discussing this problem.
Yes, the concept of NULL is a problem; just do the search and read on. (Don't be surprised if this page shows up as no. 1 of those millions :-)
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The name Oracle is a trademark of Oracle Corporation. | <urn:uuid:6e5113b8-d546-40e7-bf3e-5b2f3f85ce13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.databasedesign-resource.com/null-values-in-a-database.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919938 | 2,053 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Rogue States Embrace the Bush-Sharon Press Conference
Rogue States Embrace the Bush-Sharon Press Conference
OCCUPIED ARAB JERUSALEM –
Bush’s embrace of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral plan to annex six major West Bank settlement blocs and reject the internationally-recognized Palestinian right of return as a quid pro quo for Sharon’s pull-out from most Gaza settlements represents a major defeat for Palestinian human rights and international law, and a huge consolidation of the U.S.-Israeli alliance. While U.S. policy has, since 1967, tacitly accepted Israel’s illegal settlements and done nothing to even encourage the end of the occupation, Bush’s position represents a sharp break with longstanding precedent of supporting a negotiated settlement and even more sharply with Bush’s own (however disingenuous) claim to support a two-state solution.
In his rejection of the right of return and his acceptance of the permanence of Israeli occupation, Bush banished the possibility of achieving a serious and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The “new status quo†of U.S.-recognized permanent Israeli occupation, no right of return and no viable Palestinian state will set the terms for the next indefinite period, with the possibility of any change dependent on a future Israeli determination that it has found a newly “acceptable†Palestinian negotiating partner.
The U.S. position returns Middle East diplomacy to its pre-1991 position, when Palestinians were excluded from all negotiations. Israeli-U.S. negotiations become the substitute for Israeli-Palestinian talks, with the U.S. free to concede Palestinian land and rights. As one PLO legal advisor told the New York Times, “imagine if Palestinians said, `O.K., we give California to Canada.’ Americans should stop wondering why they have so little credibility in the Middle East."
The official U.S. acceptance of the Israeli occupation of huge swathes of Palestinian territory, and the Bush administration’s willingness to cede internationally-recognized Palestinian rights represents a new version of the 1917 Balfour Declaration in which Britain, the colonial power, guaranteed settlers of the early Zionist movement a “national Jewish homeland†in Palestine disregarding the rights of the indigenous population.
While calling for Israel to make the Apartheid Wall a “security border†and not a “political border,†Bush made clear he has no intention to hold Israel accountable for the Wall’s violations of international law. The finding of the Wall’s illegality by the UN General Assembly, and the likely decision of the International Court of Justice regarding the consequences of that illegality, were ignored.
The U.S. endorsement reaffirms the U.S. willingness to violate international law, ignore the United Nations Charter and undermine UN resolutions (including the often-cited resolution 242 which unequivocally prohibits “the acquisition of territory by forceâ€) to provide diplomatic and political protection for Israel. It even violates the terms of the U.S.-imposed but internationally endorsed “roadmap,†which stipulates that Israel must freeze all settlement activity in its first phase. Sharon stated explicitly that the six major settlement blocs should continue to grow and be strengthened.
In the short and medium term, Bush’s move will likely lead to a spike in his political support in the election campaign. However, recognition of the long-term dangers inherent in such an explicit embrace of the most one-sided acceptance of settlements and denial of Palestinian rights ever endorsed by a U.S. president, may bring about a later drop in electoral support.
The U.S. action demonstrates the increasing isolation of the Bush administration. Government officials and commentators from around the world have been unified in condemning Bush’s statements. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan criticized the U.S. endorsement of Israel’s unilateral plan, stating that “final status issues should be determined in negotiations between the parties based on relevant Security Council resolutions.†It is unlikely that even chief Bush-backer Tony Blair of Britain will endorse his partner’s action in meetings scheduled for today.
Sharon’s “Gaza withdrawal†plan is predicated on an end to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Sharon made clear that he views its results as part of a “long-term interim solution,†in which Israeli occupation will be retooled to remain in place virtually forever, without ever reaching “final status†negotiations. That reflects the vast power disparity between occupied and occupier; for Israel, an end to Palestinian resistance (enforced, or willing, or fenced off) is all that is required to make the current situation perfectly acceptable for the long-term. For Palestinians, an end to violence would leave them still stateless, living in isolated and truncated bantustans, cut off from each other and surrounded by Israeli walls, troops and territory.
The plan’s terms were negotiated by Sharon’s minions for many months – not with Palestinian interlocutors, however, but with the Bush administration. So it was clear even before the joint Bush-Sharon press conference that U.S. backing was certain. All that was left to be announced was how much U.S. support would be explicit, and how much couched in coded language.
Bush’s actual language was far more explicit than most analysts anticipated. Calling Sharon’s plan “courageous and historic,†Bush went on to embrace a new status quo, making permanent the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. In Bush’s words, the “new realities†on the West Bank made it “unrealistic to expect the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the unrealistic 1949 armistice line.†The reference to 1949 was a deliberate effort to deflect attention away from the Israeli occupation of 1967, and instead remind listeners (especially pro-Israeli voters in the U.S.) of the alleged “vulnerability†of Israel in the pre-1967 period, often used to justify the 1967 occupations
On the right of return, in a sharp departure from earlier officially vague U.S. positions (however disingenuous), Bush officially welcomed Israel’s longstanding rejectionism. He stated that the Palestinian refugee problem should be solved by “the establishment of a Palestinian state and settling of Palestinian refugees there, not in the state of Israel.†He also referred several times to the “Jewish character of Israel,†code for acceptance of the Israeli concerns regarding the racist-termed “demographic bomb.†He thus dismissed longstanding international law (the Geneva Conventions, which guarantee all war-time refugees the right to return to their home regardless of the particular reasons they fled or were forced to flee), and specific United Nations resolutions (including 194, which since 1949 specifically guarantees Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes and to compensation for their losses).
Response among Palestinians was swift. Palestinian officials across the political spectrum had preemptively condemned Sharon’s plan even before its embrace by George Bush. The continuing refusal of U.S. officials to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians, the isolation and sidelining of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, the willingness of the U.S. to give away Palestinian land and Palestinian rights as if they were their own, culminated in the absence of even a token Palestinian presence at the Bush-Sharon press conference. The result is an extraordinary escalation in the sense of Palestinian political humiliation, with their recognized leaders, however compromised, utterly excluded from the decision-making determining their future. That political humiliation, and international isolation, now match the on-going humiliation on the ground facing Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. The result is almost certain to lead to an upsurge in violent resistance.
Regional and international response, particularly among Arab and Muslim countries, was immediate. Condemnation from Arab and Muslim governments, and deep unease was widespread among U.S. allies. It remains unclear whether the European Union will officially condemn the U.S. position; along with the United Nations and Russia, the EU’s ostensible role in the so-called “Quartet†supporting the “road map†has been completely sidelined by the new Bush position. It also remains uncertain whether the UN General Assembly, anticipating a certain U.S. veto in the Security Council, will take on the challenge of crafting a serious condemnation of the U.S. endorsement of Sharon’s illegality.
Sharon had been floating his “withdrawal from Gaza†proposal for some months, facing significant opposition from his right-wing Likud bloc, and particularly from the settler movement which has historically been his primary political base. Being able to claim U.S. backing for the illegal annexation of major West Bank settlement blocs (which together hold over 100,000 Israeli settlers) as well as U.S. acceptance of the longstanding Israeli rejection of the Palestinian right of return gives Sharon crucial political cover.
The Gaza settler population, while economically valuable for Israel (not surprising given that the settlers control 40% of the land and a commensurate proportion of the water of the Gaza Strip) is tiny, only 7,000 Israeli settlers. Living among 1 ½ million Palestinians, the majority of them impoverished refugees in squalid camps, the settlements remain costly in military terms, requiring deployment of significant numbers of Israeli troops to back the armed settlers. The effect of the Sharon plan’s U.S. endorsement will likely be wider backing from Sharon’s right (with the exception of the most ideologically-driven of the settler movement) as well as acceptance from the mainstream Labor Party, who will likely focus on Sharon’s “historic withdrawal†from Gaza and paint it as a first step towards a two-state solution, ignoring the far more significant U.S. embrace of annexation and rejection of the right of return. Right-wing and settler opposition to Sharon’s plan will likely be narrowly-based and short-lived. | <urn:uuid:75c2413f-e7f1-4ce2-810a-83a91cf9f1cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zcommunications.org/rogue-states-embrace-the-bush-sharon-press-conference-by-phyllis-bennis | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934258 | 2,210 | 1.78125 | 2 |
December 17, 2006 While the established players in the scooter game have shown concept machinery in the fuel cell, electric and hybrid genres, there’s one European company that has been quietly going about the business of designing and building a viable electric maxi-scooter with performance roughly equivalent to a 400cc conventional internal combustion engined mount – Vectrix. The Vectrix maxi-scooter is 100% emission free, has a top speed of 62 mph and runs for up to 68 miles on a single 2-hour charge from a standard electricity socket. Combined with low running costs, minimal maintenance, ease of operation, and generous storage, the Vectrix maxi-scooter is the world’s first practical zero-emission two-wheel vehicle. The scooter will be available within months and the great news is that Vectrix recently purchased the EV rights to the innovative Vespa three wheeled carving scooter and a prototype was displayed at last month’s Milan motorcycle show. The variable front suspension provides stability at low speeds and excellent handling at higher speeds. The 3-wheel scooter is extremely versatile and will be popular with local businesses and with consumers with limited riding experience as well as being ideal as a delivery vehicle and council/police mount. | <urn:uuid:8057db9e-4a98-4b97-bec7-0520113ead7f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gizmag.com/go/6627/picture/29927/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938265 | 260 | 1.765625 | 2 |
The cities of Watertown and Ogdensburg will get help from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency brownfield program to clean up blighted properties.
On Monday, the EPA announced Ogdensburg will receive $1 million to set up a revolving loan fund and $200,000 to continue cleaning the former Standard Shade Roller property. Watertown will receive $200,000 to remove contaminated soil at the former Ogilvie Foods site.
"This is all very good news," Ogdensburg City Manager Arthur J. Sciorra said in a statement. "We are eager to get the asbestos abated and the buildings demolished at the Shade Roller site, and the cleanup grant is another step toward achieving that goal."
The Ogdensburg cleanup grant will go toward removing petroleum, metals and other pollutants from the 7.8-acre property, which housed boat, match and shade-roller manufacturing plants.
The money will be used with a $700,000 state grant to tear down several buildings on the property, and a recently awarded $100,000 federal grant to continue assessing the area.
With its $1 million grant, Ogdensburg will set up a $1,116,000 fund to give grants and loans to private property owners to clean polluted sites. The city has identified about 13 acres of underused sites that are potentially polluted.
"We'll use the program to inventory those sites and then put together redevelopment plans and then make money available to implement those plans through the revolving loan fund," Ogdensburg City Planning and Development Director J. Justin Woods said. The "fund will give us another tool in our redevelopment toolbox."
According to Kenneth A. Mix, Watertown planning and development coordinator, the city will use its money to completely clean the four-acre site off North Pleasant Street that housed the Ogilvie Foods plant.
Testing in 2006 found about 950 cubic yards of petroleum-laced soil and estimated cleanup at about $90,000.
"It's been on our minds for quite some time," Mr. Mix said.
Both cities will have to provide a $40,000 match for the cleanup grants.
According to EPA spokeswoman Beth Totman, the agency announced a total of $17 million for 17 revolving loan funds and $19.36 million for 99 cleanup projects across the country. | <urn:uuid:41ceb6a9-d6e2-4ccf-b389-1f2299b9caf2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20100420/NEWS05/304209970 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943845 | 483 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Averill Cook to Speak as Part of Environmental Issues Lecture Series
NORTH ADAMS, Mass - Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) will host the annual Elizabeth and Lawrence Vadnais Environmental Issues Lecture on Thursday, Nov. 18, at 7 p.m. in Murdock Hall, room 218. Williamstown native Averill Cook will present "Biomass Stewardship, A Practioner's Journey," about his focus on green farming.
This event is free and open to the public.
Cook has made significant strides in the fuel pellet industry for the past 20 years, and after 12 years he started the Biomass Commodities Corporation, a residential and commercial fuel pellet heating equipment provider servicing the Northeast. In recent years, Cook's work has been installed in Dartmouth College, New Hampshire Ball Bearing, West River Assisted Living Center in Townshend, Vt., and Maine Wood Pellets in Athens, Maine, where Cook served as a project manager.
"Alumni and current students are buzzing about the event," said Assistant Professor of Environmental Science Elena Traister. "Averill's lecture will address what is certainly an important current issue and hot topic in environmental studies."
Through the fuel pellet corporation he has developed, Cook has several projects underway in Serbia, Brazil, Uruguay, Upper Michigan, Mississippi and Arkansas. Cook also operates Wendling Biomass Consulting, which supports biomass projects throughout the world.
The Elizabeth and Lawrence Vadnais Environmental Lecture Series is named for Professor Lawrence H. Vadnais and his wife. For more information, call (413) 662-5185, or go to www.mcla.edu/speakers. | <urn:uuid:60ce786f-31da-4056-a683-36096307401e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mcla.edu/news/averillcooktospeakaspartofenvironmentalissueslectureseries_372/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93854 | 356 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The rate at which atmospheric dissipation progresses is unpredictable. After the breakdown of the stratosphere, plasmonic reactions break down the mesosphere, after which ionic reactions break down the troposphere, leaving the planet with no atmosphere at all and unable to support life.
An event like this generates a plasmonic energy burst which could interfere with the operational status of an orbiting starship. Power surges and systems failures could happen randomly and keeping a transporter lock on someone might be difficult. The dissipation also bombards the planet itself with radiation from which only a deflector shield could protect someone.
An atmospheric dissipation cannot be stopped, but an atmospheric shield could be used to contain the atmosphere within a limited area. | <urn:uuid:9f539878-64b6-4ed1-9a0f-da02ed6c9e73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Atmospheric_dissipation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917078 | 146 | 2.578125 | 3 |
If the federal money never shows up, the project's budget could have a multi-billion dollar hole to fill each year starting in 2015 (see Exhibit 7-10 in Chapter 7, Page 15 of the California High-Speed Rail Authority's newly-revised business plan). But by then, says Tiffany Roberts with the non-partisan Legislative Analyst's Office, auctioning off greenhouse gas emissions could raise between $3 billion and $14 billion a year (see page 13 of this LAO report).
Roberts: "It certainly does look like the money could potentially be there. It's probably a question of, is this a legally defensible use of the revenues, and if we're going to get the best return on investment."
A recent state analysis (see pages 56-57 of the 2008 California Air Resources Board AB 32 scoping plan) suggests high-speed rail would not be the most efficient way to use "cap and trade" revenues, which are intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, expanding California's green building practices would be 26 times more efficient. But the governor's Department of Finance says that's a policy choice - and if the governor and legislature want to use that money for high-speed rail, they can. | <urn:uuid:1bf6dabc-dc41-4705-b39e-05751ed58fcd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.capradio.org/171351 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934879 | 251 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Air Jordan V “Anchor” Customs By El Cappy
The symbol of the ‘anchor’ has various meanings within this Air Jordan V custom, brought to us by El Cappy. While he intends the anchor print as a signifier of “the people holding their city down”, the colorway itself is an anchor of the Air Jordan legacy as a whole; red and black has served as the rock-solid core of Air Jordan 1 through 2012, giving the term ‘anchor’ multiple meanings and openness to interpretation. Using a tonal red upper and a unique blacked-out netting, El Cappy employs the ‘all-over’ anchor graphic on the center panel for that dizzying elephant print motif. More angles of this custom below, so take a look and let us know what you think. | <urn:uuid:e17ffa23-925b-46f5-ac90-4cd5600b6b84> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sneakernews.com/2012/08/08/air-jordan-v-anchor-customs-by-el-cappy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938006 | 177 | 1.617188 | 2 |
|Schock encourages students to become lifelong learners
The path to a lifelong learner begins at a young age. U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock is encouraging students to become lifelong learners with his Summer Reading Program.
Aaron discusses the 18th district reading program with WMBD-TV
"Studies show there’s a difference between a student coming to school in the fall who has continued learning over the summer months and those who have not," Schock said. “Teachers say they can distinguish students who participated in the program. They’re much more focused and they’re better readers because of the program.”
Students who participated in the program celebrated Sunday, Oct. 14, at Eastside Centre in East Peoria. Schock read a book, “Abe Lincoln: the Boy Who Loved Books” by Kay Winters and Nancy Carpenter, followed by an afternoon of pictures, games, cotton candy and hot dogs, bounce houses and even live animals including lizards, a hawk, an armadillo and more on display.
Participating students in kindergarten through eighth grades read more than 4,500 books combined. There were 80 participating schools and nine libraries throughout the 18th Congressional District.
“This event is the carrot at the end of the road to encourage students over the summer months to stay focused and keep learning over the summer months," Schock said.
This is the eighth year Schock hosted the program, which he began when he was a state representative. The program has reached more than 100,000 students.
"Reading is knowledge. It is through that knowledge that you will also find opportunities all throughout your life and I am certain that's what's helped Congressman Shock find opportunities throughout his life," said state Rep. Mike Unes, who also attended Sunday's event.
"I encourage all of you to continue reading, to continue to reach for the stars Reading is knowledge and anything is possible when you have the desire to learn and desire to read." | <urn:uuid:5c9abd33-7518-429b-af86-f412b47079a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://schock.house.gov/district-report/reading-program.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972553 | 413 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Brits terrified of online fraud, but want magic cars, says BT
UK a nation of web worrywarts
Britons' fear of online crime has rocketed in the last ten years, according to BT.
The UK telco makes the claim in its new "21st Century Life Index", a pile of research examining how consumer attitudes to technology have changed since the heady days of 1998 and the information superhighway.
Back then only 3 per cent said that if they could improve the internet in one way it would be to make it safer from scammers and other reprobates. Today the proportion wishing for a less dangerous online life is 28 per cent. Yet just 2 per cent of non-internet users cite fraud as the reason they stay offline.
Less dodginess is now the second most popular request for improving the net* after faster speeds, which also held the top spot 10 years ago. There's bad news for BT's plans to justify billions of pounds in fast fibre investment by carrying high definition TV - only 13 per cent said they would be interested.
Happily for the net's libertarian progenitors, the increased fear of nasties hasn't prompted an accompanying clamour for authorities to get more involved. The proportion of the public that wants more regulation has risen only slightly from 4 per cent in 1998 to 6 per cent today.
Elsewhere in the report there are unsurprising stats showing that we're all spending longer online, visiting more websites, and spending more cash online. However, the rise of the internet seems to have left many craving more direct contact. Face-to-face communication remains our favourite, and has increased its dominance as the preferred medium for 51 per cent of the population in 1998 to 68 per cent today.
In a section that follows in BT's proud tradition of pointless futurology, it reports that by 2012, 28 per cent of Britons want a water-powered vehicle, 18 per cent a powered exoskeleton and 17 per cent a robotic housekeeper. In similar spirit we'd like to register our demands for the moon on a stick, the reanimation of Rod Hull, and a flying car made of gold. ®
* Regular readers might note that BT and Phorm have recently been touting another piece of research (which we're not allowed to see for ourselves) that they say shows that what actually annoys people most about the internet is "irrelevant advertising". Strangely, more effective marketing doesn't appear in the 21st Century Life Index's list of how people would improve the internet... | <urn:uuid:e26d5a4e-883b-4a16-935e-e091885e9b26> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/28/bt_internet_attitudes_survey/print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943417 | 521 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Summer in Paris; 1001 Books to Read Before You Die
Part of what makes this novel of wartime France so compelling is knowing that Nemirovsky wrote of what she knew, and sadly, that she never survived the German invasion of France. Nemirovsky was sent to a concentration camp and died before the war ended. Her daughters, hidden in homes during the war, carried her manuscripts with them and eventually had them published. Suite Francaise, which is composed of two section of a proposed five part novel was put together from Nemirovsky's notes. We can never know how she might have edited or changed what this book ended up becoming. Amazingly, it is still a great read and a wonderful, if incomplete story.
Storm in June covers the exodus from Paris after France fell. Alternating chapters show the many perspectives and experiences different classes of people had. Dolce is a smaller story, focusing on one small village under occupation by the Germans. Both give a view of what life would be like during a war and an uncomfortable occupation. Nemirovsky keeps the focus on the individual person, and the fact that she wrote this while the war was going on, with no idea of the eventual outcome, and kept such an impartial view impressed me.
The writing was fluid and poetic, in some parts more than others. I wondered if some of her asides in brackets were meant to be there or just notes to herself about character that she wanted to make sure to include later. All in all, her insight into human behaviour and feelings combined with the wonderful writing was what made this an engrossing book. And a very sad story - both hers and the novel.
also reviewed: lizzysidal at Lizzy's Literary Life, joanna from lost in a good story, caribousmom, jill at fizzythoughts,
Book Bath and Tamara from Thyme for Tea.
Posted by raidergirl3 at 9:58 PM | <urn:uuid:ca21ddab-0006-4985-a2f4-2a96cf69cfc7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://raidergirl3-anadventureinreading.blogspot.com/2010/07/book-suite-francaise-by-irene.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985186 | 411 | 1.734375 | 2 |
On Tuesday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter telling state governors that the Obama administration is willing to work with them on the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, even though the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on the expansion made state participation optional, The Hill's "Healthwatch" reports.
Sebelius wrote, "Now that the Supreme Court has issued a decision, we want to work with you to achieve our ultimate shared goal of ensuring that every American has access to affordable, quality health care." She also included details about a series of meetings that HHS will host in several states so that federal and state officials can discuss the Medicaid expansion and the creation of health insurance exchanges under the health reform law.
In an acknowledgement that some Republican governors have publicly declined to participate in the Medicaid expansion or create the exchanges, Sebelius noted that the "[Supreme] Court's decision did not affect other provisions of the law" (Baker, "Healthwatch," The Hill, 7/11).
Sebelius Touts Health Reform Benefits, Criticizes House Repeal Vote
The Supreme Court's decision to uphold the health reform law was "a chance to stop refighting old political battles and move forward" with implementing the law, Sebelius wrote in a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post. However, "congressional Republicans will spend Wednesday staging yet another repeal vote," she noted.
While the vote "is only symbolic," Sebelius said that it is "worth setting the record straight about false claims" about the law, such as it drives up health care costs, puts a burden on small businesses and eliminates Medicare benefits.
"People are entitled to their opinions, but not to their own facts," Sebelius wrote, noting that "national health spending is rising at a slower rate, health insurance premiums are rising at a slower rate, small-business coverage is holding steady and Medicare is on a stronger financial footing."
She concluded, "Now that the Supreme Court has issued a decision, the American people would be better served if Congress joined the president in working to build on that progress, not undo it" (Sebelius, Washington Post, 7/9). | <urn:uuid:2674c12c-da86-4cea-bb22-3975b5e2e948> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.californiahealthline.org/articles/2012/7/11/white-house-aims-to-work-with-states-on-medicaid-expansion.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967759 | 450 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Contents - Previous - Next
This is the old United Nations University website. Visit the new site at http://unu.edu
Session 5: From new technologies to new modalities of cooperation
Systems management for information technology
A role for the UNU/IIST: Developing countries' access to new information technologies
The potential of information technologies for international cooperation
Panel discussion 2: Towards new modalities of international cooperation
Chairperson: Charles Cooper
Systems management for information technology development
2. A gateway strategy for information technology developments
3. Knowledge facets for systems integration and information technology development
4. A newness matrix approach to information technology development
5. Phased life cycles for system acquisition
6. Evaluation of technologies
7. Information technology perspectives
Andrew P. Sage
I present a systems management approach to information technology development. While lack of an appropriate systems engineering process for the management of information technologies will not necessarily turn out to be an impenetrable barrier that prevents a technology from ultimately being developed, it can make such developments occur at a much slower rate than might otherwise be possible. Also, the final development costs may be much higher than if an efficient and effective process were followed. This may have significant harmful effects on a given organization or nation, in terms of impaired ability to compete with others as well as on society, and the cumulative effect of this can adversely effect productivity in an increasingly competitive world. There are many new scientific and technological modalities that support enhanced productivity for all. International cooperation is much needed to enhance delivery of these. Contemporary developments in information technology can potentially do much, if properly managed, to support needed actions and efforts. I describe systems management approaches for information technology development here.
There is much contemporary interest in the use of science and technology to aid humankind. Often, this is related to such issues as technology transfer or infusion, innovation, entrepreneurship, and other efforts associated with the effective and appropriate development of technologies for increased competitiveness and satisfaction of market-place demand for societal betterment. Much of the effort to date centres on the transformation of already developed innovative technologies into viable commercial products .
Often, basic research and development will have been accomplished in other organizations, and even other countries, and there may be a lack of an adequate technological base to immediately assimilate a new technology by units desirous of developing a product based on such R&D. This may occur because of a lack of financial resources and expertise to develop these systems, or to extend the initial developments such as to enable integration with existing systems. An objective in the use of a systems engineering approach to information technology development is to enable a focusing of research and development and associated infrastructure concerns, such as to enhance the potential for productivity, including commercialization of the resulting technological products or services.
This paper reports on one effort in this direction. It is an introductory paper and describes an overview, framework, and architecture for systems management of information technology development that could lead to implementation of a support system for technology developments and enhanced use of contemporary science and technology for international betterment. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant EET-8820124. The Government of the United States has certain rights in this material.
Identification of an operational set of critical success factors and use of them in a successful phased study of systems management of information technology development for enhanced access to science and technology is aided by a systems engineering, or systems management, process that will provide:
- the ability to quickly identify ideas and potential technologies that are worth pursuing, and that are not worth pursuing;
- the ability to identify a reasonably short, reasonably low-cost sequence of activities that will result in a cost-effective and societally desirable implementation of a product, process, or service;
- the ability to identify specific projects that will potentially allow such implementation and provide for detailed implementation efforts; and
- the ability to identify impediments or barriers to successful information technology project implementations that will not likely allow success, and either remove the barrier or provide for a mechanism for disengagement from the potentially unsatisfactory technology implementation.
Accomplishing this will require a quick-response, action-oriented group attitude, an awareness of practices and future perspectives that affect the technology under consideration, the systems management of this technology, and the market-place potential for the technology and the products and services that result from its use. To be sure, there are other challenges and critical success factors associated with the overall process of information technology implementations in developing nations.
The US National Research Council sponsored a 1987 study that identified eight critical success factors :
(1) integration of technology into the overall strategic objectives of the firm;
(2) ability to get into and out of technologies faster and more efficiently;
(3) accessing and evaluating technologies more effectively;
(4) accomplishing technology transfer in an optimum manner; (5) reducing new-product development time;
(6) managing large, complex, interdisciplinary and inter-organizational projects and systems;
(7) managing the organization's internal use of technology; and
(8) optimal leveraging of the effectiveness of technical professionals.
These critical success factors are associated with the entire life cycle of system development. While they were developed specifically for the United States, these prescriptions appear sufficiently generic that they are universally applicable. They can, therefore, be used as some of the attributes to evaluate information technologies proposed for development. There are, of course, many other attributes that affect technologies, including information technologies, in developing nations. These include technology transfer issues , national and international standardization issues , and issues that affect information technology development forecasting, planning, and management [1, 13,17, 27, 64, 36].
A phased life cycle methodology for systems management is especially important due to the rapid shrinking of the time between initial technology conceptualization and subsequent product emergence. The major causes of this shrinkage would appear to be the increased intensity and significance of international competitiveness and the technological changes made possible by information technology itself - such as computer-aided design, manufacturing, and production methods. One result of these two primary factors, and a host of secondary ones as well, is a shortening of the life cycle of the typical product development process. Another result is the ever increasing importance of information and knowledge as driving forces in competitive strategy selection.
The usual listing of the three primary factors of production includes capital, labour, and materials. However, information is an increasingly important driving factor in our economy, and, in particular, information technologies, including computer-aided design and production methods, are a major force in shrinking the time between technology conceptualization and product emergence. I have, therefore, included information as a fourth primary factor of production and have indicated this in figure 1. Many would argue, as does Thurow , that human resources and information dominate raw materials in importance in present economies. It seems clear that information now needs to be a separately identified factor that is explicitly included in the usual listing of the three primary factors of production, capital, labour, and raw materials.
Only now is this need beginning to be recognized [34, 40]. Among relevent research that explores this new phenomenon of the increased role of information in the production process are Cohen and Zysman , who suggest that American industry has not adapted to flexible manufacturing systems as quickly as it might have; Kaplan , who faults US management accounting systems for failing to adapt to new production patterns; Dertrouzos, Lester, and Solow , who discuss needed efforts for the United States to regain the productive edge; Hayes, Wheelwright, and Clark , who are very concerned with improving the manufacturing process through infrastructure improvements that involve the vital resources of humans, information, and leadership vision; Zuboff , who is very concerned with using information technology to empower people with process knowledge such that they are capable of crucial and collaborative judgement as contrasted with simply automation of production tasks; a series of reprints that discusses many aspects of information technology management; and a series of papers edited by Bainbridge and Ruiz-Quintanilla that explore the impact of information technologies on human work and the need for appropriate training and aiding supports to assist humans in using information technology-based systems.
Figure 1 Four primary factors of production for economic rationality
The use of computers by management and in organizations as decision support systems or executive support systems is the subject of three recent efforts [45, 46, 27]. In the decision and control trilogy of strategic planning, management control, and task control, computer-based information systems are especially useful in the management control function . It is especially necessary to be able to valuate potential investments in information technology, and four recent works provide detailed commentary [61, 34, 62, 7] on this subject. There are many legal implications to information technology implementations, especially when systems integration and systems management considerations are involved , as is invariably the case. The implications of information technology innovations on human performance are a subject of much current interest [39, 4]. Information technology has the potential for support in a variety of organizations and for a variety of purposes [2, 20]. To achieve effective support, it will be essential to manage information technology developments, to integrate information technology and institutions and organizations and, thereby, to enable appropriate design through information technology.
There are many ways in which the critical ingredients of a systems management approach to innovation and emerging engineering technologies could be described. As just mentioned, they could be described as production, capital, raw materials, and knowledge. The steps to be accomplished in each phase of an emerging engineering technology effort involve the interaction of:
- problem-solving steps;
- knowledge of technologies, and the characteristics of humans, organizations, and the environment;
- learning over time about these; and
- environmental interaction and systems management, including crisis management strategies, as shown in figure 2. We are surely describing a dynamic process that involves the interaction of many variables. An important issue for information technology transfers to, and associated development in, developing nations is the use of systems management and integration procedures that effectively and efficiently cope with this process in ways that support continued productivity and competitiveness through advantageous use of science and technology. A major challenge in this is that the knowledge base will be different across various units. An appropriate set of development strategies and tactics must incorporate this reality, as well as the difference in various environmental variables.
Critical ingredients in systems management of technologies for development or transfer
2. A gateway strategy for information technology developments
There are a number of key strategy elements affecting information technology developments, including possible technology transfer. These include:
- technological and societal need for a technology;
- available technology base;
- research and development process management strategies;
- market and other external factors; and
- standards, including technological regulations and legislation.
There are a variety of ways in which we might conceptualize a model to describe the resulting flow of technological innovations. In figure 3, we envision several primary gateways that control the development and flow of technology, from either a push or pull standpoint. The "Gateway Concept" suggests that a technology, to reach a mature stage in which it yields useful products or services, must pass through three fundamental gateways: the technology gateway, the management gateway, and the societal gateway. These can be easily expanded into a larger number of gateways, as shown in the figure. Passing through the technology gateway requires research ability, innovation, technical merit, and a technical champion [52, 26]. Feasible scientific innovations, the available technology base to support development, and technology research and development efforts are employed, often and primarily in a technology push fashion.
The management gateway includes both systems management and enterprise management. Systems management is fundamentally concerned with strategic and tactical efforts associated with the multi-phased life cycle process needed to bring about a trustworthy and high-quality product. It is a systems engineering function concerned with technology management, systems integration, process and product standards, configuration management, and strategic and operational level quality assurance and management. Enterprise management is concerned with finance and accounting, organizational development, marketing, sales, and other efforts needed to bring about a successful interface between the organization and its environment.
The society or consumer gateway, sometimes referred to as a "demand pull" gateway, includes societal and market-place needs, consumer/user receptiveness, and general economic conditions. The gateway concept provides a uniquely appropriate overview of the process of technology development, and I will rely heavily on it as I develop a specific systems engineering approach to information technology development.
As noted in figure 3, the "push of technology" is basically scientific in nature in that it includes development of all feasible scientific discoveries. These are limited, however, by technological capabilities and systems management capabilities. When the resulting technological systems design and management systems design needs are satisfied, there is really only a push from feasible technological innovations. The pull of society, or the marketplace, is basically the pull of the Maslow hierarchy of needs , as indicated in the figure.
Essentially all studies show that few, if any, successful products emerge only because of technology push. This leads to potentially major pitfalls in pursuing research and development from primarily a university-based technology push perspective, and without reference to application-oriented technology pull needs of an enlightened industry perspective. This is under scored by the conclusions of a recent study by industrial R&D leaders. The study, Industrial Perspectives on Innovation and Interactions with Universities, which summarized opinions of 17 top industrial research officials, as stated in the Washington Post of 26 April 1991, concludes that "Many university officials erroneously believe that the discovery of new ideas represents the most significant step in the process of innovation, and that universities are the key source. [In fact,] industry is the primary source for innovation. Universities play only a limited role in this realm." This suggests a major role for joint industry-university and joint industry-government-university interactions in pursuit of technology development and educational goals. This is especially important relative to information technology developments.
Figure 3 Expanded set of systems and enterprise management gateways for product development
It has been postulated [16, 42] that the growing universality of science and research now makes successful innovation more frequently driven by market pull than by technological push. There are, of course, approaches that encourage and stimulate technology push . Usually these approaches involve enhanced communications and attention to scanning and targeting of potential market areas for the new technology. The several gateways - a science gateway, a technological gateway, a systems management for development gateway, an enterprise management gateway, and a societal gateway determine what can ultimately flow through to society in the form of a realized innovation or an emerged technology. The major factors affecting, or filtering or monitoring, the flow through these gateways are also shown in figure 3. For a developing nation, the nature of each of these gateways is doubtlessly different in character from those found in a developed nation. Nevertheless, each of the ingredients is surely present.
Any conceptual diagram such as this is necessarily incomplete. What is shown in figure 3 does not adequately represent the dynamics of the process, or the distributed nature of the process, or the many feedback loops involved. It is very clear that technological development alters societal values, certainly the more pragmatic ones, and this in turn acts to change the nature of the societal pull for technological products and services. The process of technological innovation is distributed in time and space. Innovation is clearly a function of a given organization's technological and market expertise relative to a particular technology innovation or development area.
In order for there to be motivation for development or transfer of a technology, there must be a perceived need for the technology; or at least a felt need to accomplish development or transfer of it. As a consequence of this, we need to envision and consider technological needs, systems management needs, and societal needs associated with information technology development and transfer issues. These are the principle gateways we show in figure 3. If there is a technological need for a product, simply because one does not now exist, there will be no technological barrier to development of the product if there is adequate venture capital, and sufficient technological capability as provided through systems management expertise, to enable the development. If there is also societal need, then it becomes possible for a technology to actually emerge into the market-place. Again, there are dynamics involved. It is possible, for example, for a technology to be developed because of a real technological demand and a perceived market or societal demand. Such a technology will not generally be successful, at least initially. It may turn out that there is a later demand for the technology, perhaps in a somewhat modified form.
For a new technology to be developed or transferred, there must be an available technology base that supports development or transfer of the particular technology in question. Existing large investments in production facilities will enhance the propensity of developing innovations that enhance the effectiveness of this investment, for example. There can, and often will, be potentially inhibiting effects as well. The existence of a large investment in one form of technology may well impede the propensity to allocate resources to an entirely new approach that could make the old approach obsolete. At least initially, this might be viewed as a very significant impediment to technology development or transfer in a developing nation. There may well be, for example, manual methods of production that would initially become obsolete due to introduction of a new technology. Of course, a longer-term view of the development situation might show that the initially displaced workers could, upon retraining, enter the workforce more productively at a higher skill level. The criticality of human resources is a major facet of contemporary system, including organizational system, design and development approaches.
More often, however, the fact that there exists one satisfactory way to do something provides an intellectual bias that impedes thinking about new methods of approach. Therefore, a successful technology developer must be motivated and prepared to demonstrate that a new and potentially innovative approach is better in some societally acceptable ways.
There should be an appropriate systems management, or technology management, and integration process that support the identification of potentially efficient and effective technologies. Should is a key word here. The lack of an appropriate process will not necessarily turn out to be an impenetrable barrier that prevents a technology from ultimately being developed or transferred; but, it can make such developments occur at a much slower rate than might otherwise be possible. Also, the final development or transfer costs may be much higher than if an efficient and effective process were followed. This may have significant harmful effects on a given organization, in terms of impaired ability to compete or reduced quality of life.
Also, there will generally exist a set of standards and regulations, of technological, legal, and political natures, that will act to focus and constrain potential new technological innovations, including development and transfer of information technologies. These may be enhancing or inhibiting factors that depend upon the type of standards that have been identified and the way in which these standards have been implemented and interpreted.
There must also exist a set of market and other external conditions that are suitable for the emergence of an appropriate technology. Otherwise the technology will not get through the societal gateway. These external conditions could be rapidly occurring and of crisis proportions; such as might be due to severe drought, disease, or huge trade deficits. Alternately, they could be of a much slower time-scale. The societal gateway for developing nations is an area that will very strongly influence appropriate technologies for development in or transfer to a given country. It is an error to assume that this societal gateway is invariant across international boundaries. In my subsequent efforts in this paper, I will also make use of this gateway concept in suggesting a systems management strategy for information technology development.
Contents - Previous - Next | <urn:uuid:28d1cb0e-ff3d-4e81-a0e6-e924c66b5db4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu07ee/uu07ee0s.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936375 | 4,023 | 2.328125 | 2 |
2435 Scarce Burnished Brass Diachrysia chryson
(Esper, 1789)Wingspan 44-54 mm.
Formerly resident in a number of southern and eastern counties, this species has reduced in range, and now occurs in only a few southern counties of England and south Wales.
An inhabitant of marshy places, fens, and river banks, the adults fly at night in July and August.
The larvae feed on hemp-agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum). | <urn:uuid:cf176eb7-1751-4765-82a1-c6f41a503d8c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ukmoths.org.uk/show.php?id=6574 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926977 | 108 | 2.03125 | 2 |
I am attempting to deploy a database to a machine by executing a script generated by the "Generate Scripts" tool in SQL Server Management Studio. Here is the command I've issued: sqlcmd -S ...
From msdn I learn, that the Variable Precedence of :Setvar X Y is higher, than that of sqlcmd -v X=Y. I want to write a script, that uses the variables supplied to sqlcmd with the -v option, but ...
I've noticed something which i'm not sure about. can it be that running queries directly with SSMS is much faster than running queries with SQLCMD? I've noticed that the results of queries that ran ...
I don't consider "just to ensure that sqlcmd-mode is not required by a script" a valid reason. Any things to think of before giving the order to enable this setting to my coworkers?
SQLServer 2005 introduced something called SQLCMD Mode msdn link. At first glance this mode adds variable subsitution from command line batch files, and some escaping to OS commands. Is this ... | <urn:uuid:b57bae7d-e870-4476-bda5-afefba0040d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ssms+sqlcmd | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930659 | 227 | 1.765625 | 2 |
- (Photo: AP Photo / Vincent Yu)
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea has sparked concerns around the globe after its government claimed that its planned nuclear tests will target the U.S., which it called "the sworn enemy of the Korean people."
"Settling accounts with the U.S. needs to be done with force, not with words as it regards jungle law as the rule of its survival," read a statement from North Korea's National Defense Commission, the nation's highest government agency, as reported by ABC News and several other sources.
The U.S. has expressed fears that the Pacific nation is working toward a nuclear device that can be mounted on a long-range missile and be launched toward America.
The isolated pacific nation has already held two previous nuclear tests, in 2006 and 2009, and has defied all international warnings not to continue with its weapons program. It had previously said that its nuclear tests were strictly carried out for research and peaceful purposes, but the latest claim from the North Korea Defense Commission appears to reveal Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un's real intentions.
"We are not disguising the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States," the statement added, although it did not explain when exactly this "high level test" will be conducted.
Sources said the move was likely to be a direct challenge to U.S. President Barack Obama, who began his second term in office on Monday, and South Korea's newly elected leader, President Park Geun-hye, who takes charge next month.
The U.S. has expressed its disappointment that North Korea has decided to proceed with another nuclear test. Hopes had lingered that Kim Jong-Un would be more open to negotiations and seeking peaceful solutions than his father, Kin Jon-Il, known for his stern dictatorship..
"We hope they don't do it, we call on them not to do it. It will be a mistake and a missed opportunity if they were to do it," remarked Glyn Davies, the U.S. special envoy on North Korea policy who is currently visiting Seoul. "This is not a moment to increase tensions on the Korean Peninsula."
BBC News reported that some experts believe the previous tests North Korea carried out involved using plutonium as fissile material, but now the Koreans might be working on a program to produce highly-enriched uranium.
"It's a major test for Kim Jong-Un," said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea specialist at Dongguk University in Seoul, as reported by The New York Times. "Unlike the rocket launching in December, which the North has said was conducted because it was his father's dying wish, a nuclear test will be Kim Jong-Un's decision, one for which he will be held responsible." | <urn:uuid:2d9cc153-09b5-42f2-8a15-f3c70e9f5919> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.christianpost.com/news/north-korea-claims-high-level-nuclear-tests-will-target-united-states-88817/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98016 | 592 | 1.710938 | 2 |
How can Visual Artists help Art and Dole?
1. Think of Art and Dole as your own resource file - professional practice outside of art schools. Help collect information, fill in the gaps, or keep things up to date. It makes the dole thing more fun, anyway. If you know anyone on the ‘inside’ of Centrelink, this is particularly useful.
2. Publicise Art and Dole. Make your own dinky designs for Art and Dole and email them to email@example.com see Posters, Badges and Images for more info.
Make your own posters, badges, stickers or fliers from the images supplied, and distribute them around your arts sites. We ask you to keep these in areas arts-specifics, to avoid misuse and any possible backlash.
Link us to any of your other sites or blogs – particularly art sites.
If you are a teacher, lecturer or tutor at any of our art schools, pulicise this information/ site. We are building an education pack free to give out at art schools - please see the link to the left.
For galleries and artist run spaces, let us know if we can put Art and Dole fliers on your email lists, arts mailing list, or in your information boards or front desk.
3. Lobby your parliamentarian. Art and Dole has undertaken several lobbying workshops, and information as to the most efficient forms of lobbying and lobbying information is found here.
Any more ideas? Leave them here
3:20 am by Intern in Uncategorized
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Share a story or resource with fellow artists. | <urn:uuid:f1a6d755-dd71-4109-9116-ab86783c3e6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://artanddole.org/help-art-and-dole | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913844 | 353 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Making the case for anaerobic digestion in the U.S.
April 1, 2010
Though we at Harvest Power are in the business of anaerobic digestion, we realize the term might be new to those outside the clean tech industry. The concept is not so new to our European neighbors. In fact, recent information shows Europe to be two to three decades ahead of the United States in this arena. An implementation plan published last week, titled Accelerating the Uptake of Anaerobic Digestion in England, shows even more widespread dedication to this process across all UK economies.
A blog post by Econosystemics.com yesterday featured a comprehensive and accessible definition of anaerobic digestion, comparing it to the process our bodies use to break down food.
The article explains: “A wide range of bacterial microbes in the oxygen deprived (anaerobic) interior of our digestive tracts break down the complex organics of the food we eat, and feed our bodies as well as theirs with the nutrients. They do not do a perfect job, however, and our feces still contains abundant, energy rich organic material.
“A municipal anaerobic digestion facility utilizes a different set of bacterial microbes that live at much higher temperatures than those in our bodies. Those microbes thrive on our sewage, food waste, compostable paper and yard trimmings, generating biogas rich in methane (natural gas), as well as an end product of high-value compost.
“The latest generation of “dry” anaerobic digestion facilities are able to process the full range of municipal organics and are most favored for new facilities, delivering two strong benefits to the econosystem: biogas that has value as a “green” substitute for fossil natural gas, and high quality compost that restores soil health and productivity. The relatively high temperature microbial digestion process destroys all pathogens and most complex organics.”
Anaerobic digestion has the power to recycle food and organic waste, returning it to our ecosystem with the added value and ability to create fuel. It is consider a cost-effective and environmentally sustainable alternative to incinerating or dumping our sewage sludge into a landfill. Once we fully understand the benefits of this process and begin to implement it, we’ll be on track to preserving our environment and positively contributing to our ecosystem.
That’s a move that will benefit us all.
- uberVU - social comments - Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by HarvestPower: Making the case for anaerobic digestion: ... | <urn:uuid:3a37c7ba-b464-4710-87a4-6e39d191dca3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.harvestpower.com/making-the-case-for-anaerobic-digestion-in-the-u-s/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912877 | 533 | 2.421875 | 2 |
William was a carpenter, aged 44. He had been married twice before and had nine children, eight of whom were still living, aged four to sixteen. His second wife had only been dead six months when he married the nineteen year old Elizabeth. No doubt he needed to provide a stepmother for his brood but Elizabeth clearly had her own attractions. William went on to have a further eight children with her, the youngest born when he was aged 65. William died in 1857, aged 80, and Elizabeth only survived him by a decade. She died at Dean on 14 August 1868, aged 66. Raising sixteen children clearly wore her out a lot faster than fathering seventeen of them did him!
Sadly, the surname Panther has nothing to do with big cats. It is a variant of Panter, which is an occupational surname. The panter was an officer in a medieval household, who supplied the bread and had charge of the pantry. The panter in a monastery also distributed loaves to the poor. The word is derived from the Old French panieter, via Anglo-French paneter.
The earliest occurrence of the surname cited by Reaney & Wilson in their Dictionary of English Surnames is Reginald le Paneter in Kent in 1200. In later centuries, when the original derivation had long been forgotten, the name probably began to be spelled as Panther because of the association with the animal.
The surname Panter is rare today and its variant Panther even rarer. The distribution is extremely localised to Northamptonshire and its surrounding counties. In 2002 I did a study comparing the occurrence of the surname Panther in the 1881 census to the entries in the modern British phonebooks. In 1881 there were 302 people with the surname Panther, of whom 52% were living in Northamptonshire, with a further 9% in the surrounding counties. 61% of all the Panthers in the 1881 census were born in Northamptonshire. In 2002, the surname Panther appeared in significant numbers only in the Northampton phonebook. | <urn:uuid:aa10a962-2637-4235-bef8-ed01e922c14f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cmgurney.blogspot.com/2011/02/surname-saturday-panther.html?showComment=1296981257993 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988441 | 424 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Rising Domestic Energy Demand Points To Record-High Crude Oil Burn In 2011July 2011 | Industry News
One of the lesser-examined energy developments of the past few years is the substantial rise in oil consumption for power generation within the major oil-producing countries of OPEC. The International Energy Agency's (IEA) July 2011 oil market report highlighted this problem in OPEC's most important producer: Saudi Arabia. The IEA estimates that the Kingdom will burn an average of 741,500 barrels per day (b/d) of crude oil in its power stations during the 2011 summer season (defined for statistical purposes as April-September).
To read the full article, please choose one of the following options: | <urn:uuid:eaf9066f-5ff4-4756-9f35-89780e61e830> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oilandgasinsight.com/file/103942/rising-domestic-energy-demand-points-to-record-high-crude-oil-burn-in-2011.html | 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 | 0.908361 | 145 | 2.265625 | 2 |
BAHAMAS REEF FISH (4) – YELLOW STINGRAY Uboritas jamaicensis
The YELLOW STINGRAY (Uboratis jamaicensis) is one of several ray species found in the tropical western Atlantic ocean. They live in shallow water on sandy or seagrass bottoms, and are commonly found near coral reefs. Their light and dark splotchy colouring can rapidly change according to the surroundings and the need for camouflage. Look at the photos below with half-closed eyes and (apart from knowing perfectly well that there’s a ray there), the blending in is remarkable.
The yellow stingray feeds on small invertebrates and fishes. It can use its ‘wings’ to uncover buried / hiding prey by disturbing the sand. It also has a subtle ‘passive’ method of hunting by using its mantle to form a lethal ‘cave’ that attracts shelter- or shade-seeking prey.
Yellow stingrays breed in seagrass. They are quite prolific, breeding year round and usually having two litters a year of up to 7 young. This species is ‘aplacental viviparous’: the developing embryos are sustained initially by yolk and later by uterine milk. To find out more about viviparity, you’ll find a section at the bottom of this post where the inquiring may opt in… Not everyone’s sac of yolk, I quite understand.
The yellow stingray is innocuous towards humans, but can inflict a painful injury with its venomous tail spine. The threats to the species are (1) taking as bycatch by commercial fisheries; (2) collection for the aquarium trade; (3) negative impact from habitat degradation, both of reef areas and seagrass breeding grounds. For now, it remains common and widespread and retains its IUCN LISTING of ‘Least Concern’.
REPRODUCTIVE STRATEGIES (Marine Biodiversity, Canada)
As with all elasmobranchs, skate and rays are internal fertilizers. Internal fertilization is beneficial because it increases the likelihood and efficiency of fertilization by reducing sperm wastage. In addition, it ensures that the energy-rich eggs produced by the female are not consumed by predators, and that all the energy allocated to reproduction is passed to the embryos and not lost to the environment. This is especially the case for species that retain their embryos until the embryos have completely developed, a reproductive mode termed viviparity. Elasmobranches that practice viviparity are called viviparous (or live-bearing). There are many types of viviparity, which can be divided into two broad categories: aplacental and placental viviparity. Placental viviparity is the most advanced mode of reproduction, during which the embryos are initially dependent on stored yolk but are later nourished directly by the mother through a placental connection. This type of reproduction is not exhibited by any type of batoid. Ovoviviparity (or aplacental viviparity), on the other hand, is the only mode of reproduction employed by rays. In rays, the embryos rely on the substantial yolk within the ovulated egg only during the initial stages of development. After the nutrients stored in the egg have been consumed, the embryo ingests or absorbs an organically rich histotroph (or “uterine milk”) produced by the mother and secreted into uterus. The most highly developed of these strategies occurs in some rays in which the lining of the uterus forms tiny, finger-like projections (termed trophonemata) that increase the surface area for histotroph secretion. This form of nutrient supply (or maternal investment) results in very large offspring, which is characteristic of most species of ray.
For those now fluent in viviparity, the treat of one of Melinda Riger’s fabulous aquatic close-up photos – keeping a close eye on you…Credits: Melinda Riger of Grand Bahama Scuba, with thanks; Wiki for other images / source material; selected online pickings | <urn:uuid:d0eb7ee8-c555-41b5-9990-703087bf99fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rollingharbour.com/category/abaco-wildlife/page/2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934111 | 880 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Sri Lanka's main ethnic Tamil party has dropped its demand for an independent state and said it is ready to accept regional self-rule, following the defeat of separatist Tamil Tigers in a 25-year civil war.
The Tamil National Alliance, said in its platform for April 8 parliamentary elections that it would accept a "federal structure" in the north and east provinces with power over land, finance, law and order.
The party vowed to launch a Gandhi-style civil disobedience campaign to press a long-standing demand for regional autonomy for their ethnic minority.
"If the Sri Lankan state continues its present style of governance without due regard to the rights of the Tamil-speaking peoples, [we] will launch a peaceful, non-violent campaign of civil disobedience on the Gandhian model," the party said on Saturday.
On Saturday the alliance said it would lobby neighbouring India and the international community to ensure the island's Tamil community - 12.5 per cent of the population -gets a greater say in the administration.
"Power sharing arrangements must be established ... based on a federal structure in a manner also acceptable to the Tamil-speaking Muslim people," the party said in its latest manifesto.
The Tamil Tigers agreed to a federal state in December 2002 but Norwegian-brokered talks collapsed in 2006, leading to more fighting that eventually resulted in their military defeat by government forces last year.
Between 80,000 and 100,000 people were killed in the fighting.
Tamils have long complained of discrimination at the hands of the island's majority Sinhalese, but Sri Lankan authorities have rejected any self-rule for them, saying it would be a prelude to secession.
Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Sri Lankan president, called the April parliamentary vote after being re-elected in January in a presidential election called two years ahead of schedule.
Sarath Fonseka, the opposition leader and former army chief, has been detained on sedition allegations.
The Tamil alliance, which supported Fonseka in the presidential election but plans to contest the parliamentary vote on an independent platform, also demanded resettlement, housing and livelihood programmes for the nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians displaced in the last stages of the civil war, about 100,000 of whom are still in refugee camps.
The Tamil National Alliance, a coalition of moderate Tamil parties, has 22 seats in
the outgoing parliament, but the various elements have split following the crushing of the Tigers, weakening their bargaining position. | <urn:uuid:9dd29767-5a06-4ef2-9fbc-541d50fddd07> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2010/03/2010313215127841206.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96005 | 508 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Truth About Computer Security Hysteria
Home page hijackingsCATEGORY: Misconceptions about genuine threats
A misunderstood concept in which an agressive website forces a computer to visit them by default every time the user launches his/her browser.
GoHip.com earned noteriety in 1999 for using this tactic, and they continue to use it to this day. Indeed, their agressiveness goes a step further — they also modify your email program to include a GoHip endorsement in every message you write. See below for a specific link about GoHip.
Such agressiveness also goes by the name of "viral marketing" and "viral advertising." In effect, your PC turns into a relentless commercial for anyone who hijacks your browser's default settings.
Media reports about home page hijackings surfaced again in February 2001 after "United Parcel Service apologized to some 200,000 customers over software provided by the delivery giant that took the liberty of switching home page settings to the UPS Web site."
Some people claim they "had to reinstall Windows" to undo GoHip's home page hijacking. These claims appear unfounded — yet such agressive tactics can stymie even a seasoned computer user. This led one security firm to issue a "malicious code alert" about GoHip. Again, see below for a related link.
...Renowned virus expert David Chess (IBM) believes "viral marketing/advertising" doesn't accurately describe GoHip-like home page hijackings. "The phrase already has an established definition," he notes. "I'd suggest perhaps 'Trojan marketing' for what you're describing (except that it might be confused with deciding what romantic pictures to put on certain boxes of birth-control devices...)"
Last updated: 2001/2/26 | <urn:uuid:1b5d2cf9-b524-4b53-9714-a7bf041e06d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://vmyths.com/hmul/5/9/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938688 | 378 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Due to Hurricane Sandy, the university is closed and all events have been postponed. We will announce another date for this event as soon as possible.
Championed as a medium for
reaching wide audiences, prints in the 20th century have drawn inspiration from
social commentary, popular culture, graphic design, and art history. Today as
print-making progresses with unrelenting force into the digital age, prints
remain a favorite opportunity for the enriching experience of living with
visual art—a mission at the heart of Vera List’s vision as an arts patron and
Vera List (1908-2002), spirited
individualist and enlightened supporter of many of the most significant artists
of the late 20th century, was also a devoted philanthropist. It was the
generosity of Vera and her husband Albert that enabled the founding of the Vera
List Art Project at Lincoln Center in 1962, MIT’s List Arts Center in 1982, and
the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School in 1992, among
In recognition of this
exceptional legacy and these institutional anniversaries, six internationally
renowned artists have joined forces with Lincoln Center, MIT and the Vera List
Center to create the Vera List Anniversary Print Portfolio. They are Dan
Graham, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Sarah Morris,
Matt Mullican, Fred Tomaselli, and Fred Wilson.
On October 30, Kathleen Goncharov, Curator of Exhibitions and Audience
Raton Museum of Art, and former curator of The New School Art
Collection, Paul C. Ha, director of
the List Visual Arts Center, and artist Paul Ramírez Jonas examine the democratizing force
of prints through the lens of Vera List’s legacy. The talk is moderated by Artspace.com
editor-in-chief Andrew M. Goldstein.
Organized and presented by MIT,
Lincoln Center, Artspace, and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, in
conjunction with the center’s New School class Art & the Political.
VLC = 20 Years. Join us for a 20th
anniversary year, with free admissions to all VLC events. Stay tuned for more | <urn:uuid:6f86ccab-13d8-42b7-b637-7c794e6bcc28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newschool.edu/continuing-education/events.aspx?id=85689 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918721 | 463 | 1.929688 | 2 |
A Space That Makes You Want to Study
No one homework spot will work for everyone, but follow these guidelines to create a study space that will work for your child:
Set the scene
Are you a lone studier or do you need more activity to concentrate? Solitude seekers might want to set up a space in a bedroom or an out-of-the-way spot. If you thrive in a busier atmosphere or like to involve your parents in your homework, carve out a permanent corner of the kitchen or family room for studying. Try to keep distractions to a manageable level by steering clear of family thoroughfares.
Get comfortable (but not TOO comfy)
Are you too hot or too cold? Is there an irritating noise outside your window? Be sure your spot keeps you relaxed, focused, and alert. You might like to read on your bed, but if you fall asleep you're no closer to completing that book report so maybe a cushioned chair is a better bet.
Ideally, your work surface should be about waist-height. When you sit down, see if you can rest your elbows on the table without hunching up your shoulders and can put your feet flat on the floor (even if you don't always sit that way). If your chair's not the right height, try sitting on a pillow to raise your seat or tucking a shoebox under your feet to help them reach the floor. Slip a rolled-up blanket behind your back to keep it from getting sore. If you have a computer in your space, position the monitor about 18-30" away from you. An anti-glare screen is great for keeping your eyes fresh.
Light it up
Seems kind of basic, but you're going to get tired and distracted easily if you have to squint at your books or can't see what you've written. Try a combination of overhead light and a reading or desk lamp you can aim at the books or computer screen.
Make sure you can arrange your work so that you're not drowning in a stack of papers. If you have a computer on your desk, position it off to the side to make space for pen-and-pencil work too.
What do you always find yourself hunting for? Scissors? A Calculator? Paper? Try to keep supplies all in one spot so you're not always hunting for things you need. Keep a calendar, to-do list, or planner of some kind so that you know what you have to do and when.
Use boxes, drawers, organizers — whatever you like best — to keep your stuff tidy. Ask your parent to help you and see if you can hang a bulletin board and wall calendar to help keep track of due dates and handy reminders. It's also great to have a list of your classmates' numbers who could help you if you forget an assignment or get stuck (we'd recommend contacting the ones who get good grades).
Personalize your space with posters, pictures, artwork, or anything else that's meaningful to you. You're going to spend some time there, so you may as well enjoy it. You never know when gazing at that photo of your dog will generate a story or paper idea, or a picture of your team's top scorer will inspire you to new homework heights. If you have a lucky hat or favorite sweater that helps you think, keep it close by.
Turn off the IM and the TV
I know, you're thinking "but noise makes me work better!" Perhaps, but noise, something to watch, and something that might interest you more than your geography test is just going to distract you. Try some background music and save the TV till you can give your favorite show the attention it deserves.
Recommended Products for Your Child Ages 11-13 | <urn:uuid:cdfd9acf-9e3d-406e-9035-56efd939f3c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scholastic.com/parents/resources/article/study-skills-test-taking/space-makes-you-want-to-study | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940103 | 776 | 2.625 | 3 |
Seattle Children's Theatre Performance
5/11/2013 5:30 PM
Crash Coogan seems to have it all – good grades, natural athleticism, popular friends. But what he can’t seem to get is the attention of his preoccupied father and the new girl in town, Jane. Despite being the target of Crash’s bullying, Penn Webb, his unconventional neighbor, enjoys a happy life with a pet turtle, strong family support and Jane’s friendship. Penn wants to earn a coveted spot on the Penn Relays team to honor his great grandfather. Crash wants to win that spot just to prove he can. Things change when his grandfather suffers a stroke and Crash realizes finishing first isn’t the most important thing. This production shares important insights and demonstrates author Jerry Spinelli’s appeal to older elementary students. | <urn:uuid:d064a214-00c6-4223-a4eb-122fc9e109e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.seattlecenter.com/events/event_detail.aspx?eid=434715 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96202 | 171 | 1.710938 | 2 |
As another year comes to a close, we’re fondly remembering the incredible homes—and inspiring homeowners—that have graced Natural Home’s pages over the past year. We reviewed hundreds of amazing homes before we settled on the select few that we highlight in the magazine. From British Columbia, where Denise Franklin lives happily in a 280-square-foot cottage built to resemble a mandala, to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where an architect took full advantage of an urban infill site to build an inspiring green duplex, we pulled the best of the best. Here’s a look back at another spectacular year of green living.
January/February: “Mission Accomplished”
With little money, a recent college graduate proves that anyone can build a green house if they have the will. Heather Ferrier’s passive solar home in suburban Dallas is the first house in Texas (the third in the United States) to get the U.S. Green Building Council’s highest Platinum ranking.
Heather Ferrier's Dallas home is sited to catch maximum sun from the south and east. A metal Galvalume roof reflects back 75 percent of the sun's heat. Photo By Paul Bardagjy.
March/April: “In Quietude”
Denise Franklin’s 280-square-foot cottage in British Columbia, built for just $28,000, is a place for healing and nurturing. Her simple house, aptly named Quietude, accommodates her back-to-the-land lifestyle.
Denise Franklin's 280-square-foot cottage is built of local lodgepole pine. The ventilated, insulated double metal roof reflects heat away from the house during the hot Okanagan summers. Photo By Stuart Bish.
May/June: “At Home in the Future”
Chicago artists Francis Whitehead and Jim Elniski create a living art project in an abandoned warehouse—a home much greater than the sum of its parts—that features an impressive array of alternative energy technologies.
Frances Whitehead and Jim Elniski's Chicago warehouse-turned-home is filled with artwork, antiques and oddities they have collected on world travels or inherited from family. Photo By Barry Rustin.
July/August: “Green on the Greens”
Karen and Griz Adams’ Craftsman-inspired stucco and limestone home fits right into its golf-course community outside San Antonio—but forward-thinking features such as passive solar orientation, solar hot water and natural ventilation make it stand out from the rest.
Local craftsman Bruce Calder used a salvaged pecan tree to make the dining room table in Karen and Griz Adams' Craftsman-inspired Texas home. Photo By Paul Bardagjy.
September/October: “Tulsa Time”
A deep green duplex built using structural insulated panels (SIPs) makes the most of its urban lot and invites Oklahomans to embrace sustainable building.
Rachel and Shelby Navarro's Tulsa, Oklahoma, home is constructed from structural insulated panels (SIPs) made in nearby Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Photo By Michael Shopenn.
November/December: “Family-Style Prefab”
A sustainably built, passive solar prefab home in Aspen, Colorado, highlights efficient, responsible materials and the versatility of so-called “kit home.
The Grant family's sun-drenched patio provides sweeping views down the valley, and multiple windows offer passive heating on cold Aspen days. Photo By Michael Shopenn. | <urn:uuid:6ff3adde-6884-47a6-aaaf-d3bee451d6d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.motherearthliving.com/the-good-life/the-year-in-natural-homes.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900648 | 749 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Why We Punish
Posted by John Darley & Pam Mueller on January 7, 2008
Previous studies have shown that when individuals are given the opportunity to punish an offender, they sentence retributively, based on the moral wrongfulness of the offender’s actions. However, those initial studies did not assess whether people based these retributive punishments on the harm the act caused or the wrongfulness of the offender’s intent.
* * *
The easiest case in criminal law involves one person intending to shoot and kill another person — who aim, fires, and hits the target. The easiest case, however, is never the most interesting. Criminal law is full of cases in which the intended assassin has poor aim, and winds up shooting the wrong person or no one at all, as well as cases in which a hunting or target-shooting bullet goes awry, making an unintentional killer out of a marksman.
Princeton social psychologists (Alter, Kernochan, and Darley) investigated situations in which the harm done and the harm intended were not the same. How much punishment — or, more specifically, how long of a prison sentence — would subjects impose on actors in these situations? Would the harmfulness of the act or the wrongfulness of the act be the primary factor in these judgments? Such sentencing preferences would tap into moral intuitions about the importance of wrongfulness (intent) and harmfulness (consequence).
Modern criminal law requires both actus reus (a wrongful act) and mens rea (a guilty mind) to coincide for a crime to have occurred. Liability is thus contingent on both harmfulness and wrongfulness. Doctrines such as “innocent agency” allow one person’s acts and another person’s intent to be consolidated so that a crime can be found to have occurred. In such a situation, a knowing actor manipulates an innocent individual into committing an act that would be criminal if mens rea were present. The person who acted wrongfully with intent in this situation is the one who is punished, not the person who acted harmfully without intent.
Prior studies (e.g. Carlsmith, Darley, & Robinson, 2002) have found that people sentence offenders based on the “just deserts” theory of punishment, in which individuals are punished in proportion to the perceived moral wrongfulness of their acts, rather than the “deterrence” theory, in which acts are punished in proportion to the costs they impose on society. These studies did not, however, separate the distinct factors of wrongfulness and harmfulness within the acts presented to participants.
The more recent set of studies used stimuli that separated harmfulness and wrongfulness. Stimuli were grouped in triads, in which a given act was manipulated to be 1) harmful, but not wrongful; 2) wrongful, but not harmful; 3) both harmful and wrongful. The first two would separate the issues that had been confounded in past experiments, while the third condition would reveal any interaction between harmfulness and wrongfulness in determining sentence length.
The research hypothesized that participants would impose higher sentences on wrongful acts than on harmful acts and that, given those tendencies, participants would also believe that a legal system that emphasized wrongfulness was fair and just, while a system of punishment rooted in harmfulness was unfair. According to those hypotheses, subjects would see a system as particularly unfair if it assigned heavy punishment to a person who caused harm with no intention to do so.
The three situations that were manipulated to create the experimental stimuli were a theft, a shooting homicide, and a simple assault. Participants separately rated the harmfulness and the wrongfulness of each of the three acts on 9-point scales. They then imposed appropriate sentences for the offenders in each of the situations, using a 13-point rating scale (ranging from no sentence to a death sentence) that has been tested in many prior experiments. Finally, after reading fabricated comments in support of a harmfulness- or a wrongfulness-based sentencing system, they rated their agreement with the statements “The legal system is unfair and unjust” and “If I were a citizen, I would feel anger toward the legal system.”
Participants assigned harsher sentences for “wrong only” cases than “harm only” cases, and assigned the harshest sentences in situations where the offenses were both wrongful and harmful. For instance, in the shooting homicide example, participants’ mean sentence was 1.07 on the 13-point scale (essentially, no liability) when there was harm without intent; with intent but no harm, the mean sentence was 7.70 (a 1-3 year prison sentence); and when there was both intent to harm and harm caused, the mean sentence was 10.64 (between 15 and 30 years in prison). Analysis showed that wrongfulness was the primary determinant of sentencing, and judgments of wrongfulness were significantly better predictors of sentence length than judgments of harmfulness.
The last dependent measure assessed participants’ attitudes toward the justice system. As expected, participants expressed greater contempt for a harm-based system than for a wrong-based system.
In the hopes of ensuring that subjects were carefully considering the implications of the sentencing judgments, a second, smaller study brought the situations closer to home for Princeton students. The experiment manipulated the harmfulness and the wrongfulness of behavior surrounding a breach of the Honor Code. Additionally, the Honor Code Board is a quasi-judicial institution meting out punishments that are more immediately relevant to Princeton students; therefore, it is a better vehicle with which to test the hypothesis that isolated unjust outcomes can cause development of contempt for the justice system.
The paradigm was similar to the first experiment: participants rated the three related situations on harmfulness and wrongfulness scales, and then were asked to make a judgment about punishment on a scale of 0 (full exoneration) to 6 (expulsion). Participants were then asked to rate their contempt for the Honor Code Board if one of two amendments were adopted by the Board, codifying either 1) punishment of offenders based on harmfulness of behavior, or 2) punishment of offenders based on wrongfulness of behavior.
As in the first study, punishments were most severe in the “harm and wrong” condition, less severe in the “wrong only” condition, and least severe in the “harm only” condition. Wrongfulness was again a reliable predictor of sentences, but in this study, harmfulness did not significantly predict sentencing. All participants expressed some contempt for the Honor Code Board, whether as a result of general negativity or, potentially, as a result of a desire for balance between evaluation of wrongfulness and harmfulness in sentencing decisions. However, as expected, expressed contempt was greater in the “harmfulness only” condition.
These findings suggest that when individuals seek to apply an appropriate sentence, they rely on the heuristic of how intuitively wrongful the offense feels. Harmfulness is not completely cast aside in the decision; it also plays a direct, albeit small, role, as evidenced by the harsher sentences for the “wrong and harm” conditions. (This role may have been further diminished by the fact the manipulations for wrongfulness were statistically stronger than the manipulations for harmfulness.)
This study provides further evidence that people prefer a “just deserts” theory of punishment to a “deterrence” theory. Thus, the justice system should continue to use wrongfulness as an important part of its punishment calculus. If an entirely harmfulness-based sentencing scheme were implemented, people would view the legal system very negatively; thus, further amendments to the sentencing guidelines should reflect a concern with wrongfulness in order to gain the most public respect.
The results also provide some insight into jurors’ thoughts and behavior in capital cases – the only juries that play a role in sentencing decisions. These jurors are likely to be affected by the same intuitive primacy of wrongfulness over harmfulness. Judges are also likely to be susceptible to these same heuristics, though their behavior will be tempered by sentencing guidelines and other legal duties; certainly, more research is necessary to reliably extend these findings to judges.
* * *
For more information about the study, click here. To link to a related law-review article co-authored by Paul Robinson & John Darley, titled “Intuitions of Justice: Implications for Criminal Law and Justice Policy,” click here (pdf).
This entry was posted on January 7, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Law, Legal Theory, Public Policy, Social Psychology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. | <urn:uuid:551abdef-404d-424c-a3f2-47777c10eebc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/why-we-punish/?like=1&_wpnonce=cb13afa090 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967288 | 1,805 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Borley Rectory, Essex
Described as the most haunted house in Britain, Borley Rectory was built in
1863 on the site of a 12th century church and monastery. A popular legend
claims that a monk from Borley fell in love with a nun from a nearby
convent. They planned to elope, but the monastery's elders discovered their
plans. He was hanged, while she was buried alive in the vaults beneath the
rectory – and their ghosts have haunted the site ever since. | <urn:uuid:7580aa74-ff6c-49d6-9aba-c60ef4ebb006> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/activityandadventure/9643052/The-worlds-scariest-places.html?page=2&frame=2383216 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97385 | 111 | 1.960938 | 2 |
Press Release – New Zealand Government
The community celebrations recognising the first section opening of the Pureora Timber Trail, part of Nga Haerenga, The New Zealand Cycle Trail, which were held over the weekend are the first step to see visitors travelling through ancient rain forests …
Hon Dr Pita Sharples
Minister of Maori Affairs
3 December 2012
Pureora Cycle Trail about realising economic potential
The community celebrations recognising the first section opening of the Pureora Timber Trail, part of Nga Haerenga, The New Zealand Cycle Trail, which were held over the weekend are the first step to see visitors travelling through ancient rain forests and across the ancestral homelands of several Central North Island hapū.
“It’s a brilliant example of innovative Māori asset holders and government working together to realise the economic potential of their lands,” said Māori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples.
The government is contributing around $5.5 million to construct the Pureroa Timber Trail: $2.1 million through the New Zealand Cycle Trail and the remainder through the Department of Conservation (DOC).
A consortium of seven Māori land trusts and one Māori incorporation make up Kohia Ltd, who have been supported in their mahi by Te Puni Kōkiri, the Ministry of Māori Development.
DOC who manage the Trail have asked Kohia Ltd to manage aspects of the trail, located west of Lake Taupō, which analysts predict could attract up to 15,000 tourists every year.
Starting at Pureora in the north and ending at Ongarue in the south, travellers will cross New Zealand’s longest cycle trail suspension bridge over the Maungatukutuku Stream, pass by spectacular rock formations and travel deep into extensive native bush.
“This tourism enterprise could hold the potential of hundreds of new jobs and shows the benefits of iwi working together and alongside other local and national stakeholders to create sustainable, economic value in their communities,” said Dr Sharples.
The Pureora Timber Trail is expected to open on March 2013. | <urn:uuid:c094d530-ca4f-44f5-9436-72e9e033f99f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://community.scoop.co.nz/2012/12/pureora-cycle-trail-about-realising-economic-potential/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939792 | 439 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Testbed and Testing Methodology
We test assembled system cases at a constant ambient temperature of 23°C maintained by an air conditioner. As we assume that most users prefer low-noise computers, we set the speed of the CPU and system fans (those connected to the mainboard’s 3-pin connectors) into Silent mode (the quietest mode in the mainboard’s BIOS). If a system case has its own speed controller, we switch it to minimum speed, too. We do not change the default configuration of air flows determined by system case design.
The following components are installed into each system case:
- Intel Core i3-2120 processor at 3.30 GHz
- Intel’s Socket 115x cooler with a copper core
- Zotac H67-ITX WiFi mainboard (Intel H67, Socket 1155)
- Three Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD hard disks (3.5”, 10,000 RPM, SATA)
- Western Digital Raptor WD740GD hard disk (3.5”, 10,000 RPM, SATA)
- Seagate ST9500420AS hard disk (2.5”, 7200 RPM, SATA)
- 1 GB DDR3 SDRAM Corsair CM3X1024-1333C9DHX
- 1 GB DDR3 SDRAM CellShock CS3222580
- Thermaltake Litepower W0293 450W power supply
- Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
We test system cases with their bundled PSUs if they have one. If not stated otherwise, the HDDs are listed in the order of their placement from the top main HDD bay downwards without any gaps.
The temperature of the CPU is measured with Core Temp 0.99.8. HDD, GPU and mainboard temperatures are measured with CPUID Hardware Monitor. The speed of the fans is measured with an optical tachometer Velleman DTO2234. There are the following test modes:
- IOMeter (IOMeter’s Access Time test running on all the HDDs to load them fully)
- Linpack (Linpack-based Intel Burn Test 2.5 runs in the stress test mode, loading both CPU cores; we show you the peak temperature of the hottest CPU core in the diagrams)
- MSI Kombustor (full-screen mode, DirectX 9 rendering, 1280x1024 with 8x MSAA, Xtreme burn-in)
Every temperature is read after the system has worked for half an hour in the current test mode. The following table shows the temperatures of the components if the system is assembled without an enclosure (“open testbed”).
The noisiness of the systems is evaluated subjectively.
Configurations available for the tested system cases differ very much, so we will only show you the results of three common tests in the comparative diagrams. Besides that, we will run each product throughout all the tests it can support. For more readability, the nonstandard Seagate ST9500420AS disk, which differs dramatically from the WD Raptor series in terms of operating temperature, is marked with an asterisk (*) in the tables below.
Lian Li PC-Q07
Lian Li PC-Q11
The different system cases turn out to be rather similar when it comes to cooling our test configuration. That’s why we don’t want to comment on the performance of each of them. The only exceptional results we can note is that the CPU and mainboard’s chipset are not cooled as effectively in the Lian Li PC-Q11 as in the other system cases and that the Chenbro ES34169 is the best one at cooling our 3.5-inch hard disk drives.
While the latter’s superiority as a file server could have been predicted, the poor performance of the Lian Li with its active cooling system is quite a surprise. It has the largest interior and a high-speed fan but turns out to be less effective at cooling than its opponents. Its developers must have done something wrong with the air flow configuration although it seems logical enough.
By the way, the lowest chipset temperature at peak CPU load is also the result of the poor ventilation of this system case. The CPU cooler would just accelerate to a higher speed than in the other system cases, ensuring better cooling of the chipset along the way.
Anyway, the difference of a few degrees of temperature cannot be viewed as a critical downside of the Lian Li PC-Q11. This system case can hardly be preferred by hardcore overclockers, but when it comes to non-overclocked mode, it can keep the CPU and mainboard cool enough.
The next diagrams compare the system cases with each other and with the open testbed. | <urn:uuid:c69ee7e4-7606-4054-85a3-db9680ce8544> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cases/display/lianli-chenbro-cases_10.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901981 | 1,003 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Using the cooked meat carcinogen PhIP to turn normal breast cells cancerous, researchers explore the use of green tea to interrupt this malignant transformation.
Cancer, Interrupted: Green Tea ,
More than 85% of breast cancers are sporadic and attributable to long-term exposure to environmental carcinogens, such as those in the diet, through a multistep disease process progressing from non-cancerous to premalignant and malignant stages. Now we know that the chemical carcinogen (PhIP) is one of the most abundant heterocyclic amines found in high-temperature cooked meats and is recognized as a breast carcinogen. However, the PhIP’s mechanism of action in breast cell carcinogenesis is not clear. How does it do it? Well in this landmark new study they "demonstrated, for the first time, that cumulative exposures to PhIP at effectively induced progressive carcinogenesis, cancer transformation of human breast cells from a non-cancerous stage to premalignant and malignant stages in a dose- and exposure-dependent manner.” They started out with normal human breast cells. And were able to transmute them completely into cancer cells just using that cooked meat carcinogen found predominantly in fried bacon, fish, and chicken. That's all it took, and Jekyll becomes Hyde. Now PhIP was already established as a carcinogen, the reason they did this was to develop a model of ''human breast cancer carcinogenesis", from beginning to end to test various interventions to see if we can somehow stop this process of cancer formation. For example, three recent meta-analyses reviewing all the epidemiological, or population-based evidence concerning green tea consumption and breast cancer risk concluded that green tea consumption may be protective. Well let's put it to the test. Here's the response of normal breast cells to repeated exposure to the cooked meat carcinogen PhIP using six different measures of cancerous qualities. They all go up—but, if you add a little green tea phytonutrients, the transformation to breast cancer is blunted, it was indeed "effective in suppressing PhIP-induced cellular carcinogenesis and tumorigenicity.”
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Jonathan Hodgson.
To help out on the site please email email@example.com
What is this PhIP stuff? See the last four videos for some background:
Might white tea work even better? See Antimutagenic Activity of Green Versus White Tea.
Any other plants that might be able to smack on the cancer kibosh? (I mean besides broccoli, so for example: DNA Protection from Broccoli and Broccoli Versus Breast Cancer Stem Cells). Stay tuned for my next video Cancer, Interrupted: Garlic & Flavonoids.
If you haven't yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here.
PS: Those of you with mobile devices will have noticed immediately the major upgrade to NutritionFacts.org yesterday. The entire site has been redesigned to incorporate "responsive web design." This means NutritionFacts.org will now automatically resize to fit whatever device you're on. There are now close to 50 million people in the U.S. alone that watch videos on their mobile devices. Sure we could make a special iphone app, an ipad app, an android app, but there are now thousands of smartphones and tablets out there. Enter: responsive web design. NutritionFacts.org now automatically resizes to fit your screen--any screen! Try resizing your browser right now. See? Isn't that cool?! Thanks go to our resident web designer genius Christi Richards and the generous support of The Jesse and Julie Rasch Foundation, without which NutritionFacts.org wouldn't even exist. | <urn:uuid:a03624f5-e895-4d8f-ace3-8a4647c8ccca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nutritionfacts.org/video/cancer-interrupted-green-tea/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927486 | 806 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Soy can be genetically modified, processed, and fermented. Fermented soy, which consists of tempeh, natto, miso and soy sauce, can be good for you. The other two are not so good. An example of processed soy was concocted early on by Chinese scientists, who discovered that a puree of cooked soybeans could be precipitated with calcium sulfate (plaster of Paris) or magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts) to make a smooth pale curd known as tofu.
Apparently, until the latter part of the 20th century, the soybean was considered unfit to eat. Ancient pictographs in China show the soybean not as a food, but as a rotation crop used to fix nitrogen in the soil. It wasn’t until the discovery of the fermentation process during the Chou Dynasty that soy became edible.
The Chinese did not eat unfermented soy products because they knew that soybeans contain natural toxins or anti-nutrients such as phytates and enzyme inhibitors that block the action of trypsin and other protein-digesting enzymes.
These toxic compounds are not deactivated during cooking and can cause gastric distress, reduced protein digestion, and chronic deficiencies in amino acids and minerals, including calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc. Animal studies show that diets high in trypsin inhibitors cause enlargement and disease of the pancreas, including cancer.
Vegetarians who consume tofu as a substitute for meat and dairy products risk severe protein and mineral deficiencies. Zinc deficiencies are particularly common and can cause impaired functioning of the brain and nervous system as well as blood sugar imbalance and reproductive and immune disorders. Zinc deficiency can cause that “spacey” feeling associated with the “high” some vegetarians may mistake for spiritual enlightenment.
As with many health-related issues, whoever funds the study gets to tell the tale. In November 1999, the Third International Soy Symposium was held in Washington, D.C., and was sponsored by the United Soybean Board, American Soybean Association, Monsanto, Protein Technologies International, Central Soya, Cargil Foods, Personal Products Company, SoyLife, Whitehall-Robins Healthcare and the soybean councils of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio and South Dakota. Presentations by scientists funded by these organizations marked the culmination of a decade of research intended to win FDA approval and consumer acceptance of soy products such as tofu, soy milk, soy cheese, soy sausage, and estrogen-like compounds including isoflavones, genistein and diadzen. Shortly thereafter a processed soy marketing blitz was foisted on the consuming public and now most of us eat and drink this stuff.
We are now well down the road to using processed soy in infant formula as well as for stemming the rising tide of osteoporosis. About 15 percent of infants in the United States, or approximately 750,000 children, consume soy-based formula each year. Genistein, an estrogen-like substance found in infant formulas and menopause remedies, may depress your immune system functions. Research has found that where genistein was injected into mice, levels of immune cells dropped and the thymus gland, where immune cells mature, shrank.
Ingredients such as soy flour, soy oil, lecithin, soy protein isolates and concentrates are found in much of the processed foods that most of us eat everyday. Soy products that may contain genetically engineered soy derivatives are vitamin E, tofu dogs, cereals, veggie burgers and sausages, tamari, soy sauce, chips, ice cream, frozen yogurt, infant formula, sauces, protein powder, margarine, soy cheeses, crackers, breads, cookies, chocolates, candies, fried foods, enriched flours and pastas.
If we continue to consume food that is heavily processed with chemical and food additives, we will need to consider two things: one, that our health care professionals possess extensive knowledge of nutrition science and can advise us wisely on food choices; and two, that as protectors and builders of our own immune systems, we should learn the science of nutrition and take the time to read and interpret ingredient labels. That is, we must begin taking personal responsibility for our health.
A wise nutrition professor once said that eating as close to “just pikt” as possible is the healthiest thing we can do to build and maintain a strong immune system. That goes for raw milk as well. Stay tuned. | <urn:uuid:017b8c44-b42c-4483-8648-6bae9b233b21> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smokymountainnews.com/calendar/item/9729-soy--the-rest-of-the-story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936969 | 931 | 2.796875 | 3 |
To maximize the usable area and to incorporate greenery, the designer utilized the travertine copiously into an architectural finish inspired by the Italian urban-scape. This house is planned as a two parallel blocks joined together with a glass enclosed bridge. It permits the daylight to freely stream down to the basement spaces. The designer put some thick travertine walls and large overhangs on the western side to reduce the high temperature from the sun during afternoon. The entrance as well as the living rooms and bedrooms are arranged longitudinally to gain more natural cross ventilation and lights from the sun.
Consecutively, the four storied house has one level sunk into the ground and the three set away from the access road to intensify the usage of the land without imposing structure. The gardens and water bodies are spread all through the house to have a room for green and blue breathing spaces. Meanwhile, the living room and dining room are located on the ground floor in front of a swimming pool and a fish pond. The entertainment and guest rooms in the basement are open to the sky. It has natural light and ventilation that comes from a sunken moss garden in the courtyard.
On the other hand, the third storey flat roof is intended for both a recreational deck and a roof garden. This house simply presents a modern residence that is close to nature. There are three dimensional compositions of voids, layers and solid build spaces for both quiet, reflection and family interactions. It provides a great ambiance to share each other’s mood and moments. Well this modern house is named as the Travertine Dream House. For you to be inspired more, why don’t we take a look at the different areas of the house images below.
The arrival experience is organized by a number of layers of travertine wall that propose a fragile threshold between the exterior and the interior. The details of this house are intentionally minimal and precise to improve the simplicity of the massing and the combination of the solidity and transparency. Whereas the narrow blocks that accommodates the living room, the thick stone cladding, as well as the numerous levels of gardens and bodies of water guarantee that this house stay cool in the tropical environment.
Thus this house is well ventilated and coated in soft daylight. It also includes a bridge to keep the blocks united. This Travertine Dream house is successfully completed by the Wallflower Architecture and Design. The structure of this house is clearly built with fascinated shapes and connections that allows the design to become a dream concept for any homeowner. Well, we hope that once again you become inspired of this great idea and design of Travertine Dream House. | <urn:uuid:ec5a22d6-562c-461a-b93b-f6ac7aae9daa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://homedesignlover.com/architecture/contemporary-house-in-singapore/ | 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 | 0.951159 | 538 | 1.695313 | 2 |
In an important sense, Canada, one of the oldest continuous constitutional democracies on the planet, is no longer a free society. Oh, I don’t mean there are jackboots goosestepping through Cornwall, and razor wire along the 49th parallel. If there were, even the most lobotomized multiculturalist drone might notice. But I do mean that, in its determination to enforce a dubious government-mandated “niceness”, key elements of the Canadian state have taken a jackhammer to the cornerstone of a free society: freedom of expression, freedom of ideas, freedom of belief, freedom to engage in the whole messy rough’n’tumble of vigorous debate that distinguishes open societies from lesser, stunted, insecure ones...
As many readers will know, Mark spent much of 2008 embroiled in spurious hate-crime cases brought by the Canadian Islamic Congress with the aid of their stooges at the Canadian, Ontario and British Columbia "Human Rights" Commissions. In a compact but characteristically robust read, Kathy Shaidle and Pete Vere's new paperback tells the story of the Maclean's suits, the Alberta government's investigation of Ezra Levant, and other ludicrous cases brought by Canada's diseased "human rights" apparatus. From the "human right" of fast-food employees not to wash their hands after using the toilet to the "human right" of drunken lesbians to heckle stand-up comedians, Shaidle and Vere present a riveting portrait of Canada's kangaroo courts, their assault on liberty, and the lessons they offer for America and other countries. It's an easy-to-read 80-page field manual for the battles ahead, and includes a special introduction by Hatemonger Steyn himself. And don't forget, when you order from SteynOnline, the Hatemonger will be happy to autograph it to you or your loved one. Or hated one.
- Steyn's introduction to The Tyranny Of Nice | <urn:uuid:e61a2431-72fa-4cc7-9fe2-81612023dd68> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.steynstore.com/product51.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911792 | 411 | 1.835938 | 2 |
New Gulleway Well is located in southwest Western Australia a distance of about 390km north-northeast from Perth (show me). New Gulleway Well is at an altitude of about 358m above sea level.
The nearest populated place is the village of Mount Magnet which is 87km away with a population of around 890 (show me a map with New Gulleway Well and Mount Magnet).
The nearest road to New Gulleway Well is an unsealed road that is un-named in our database and comes within 185m of the bore.
The nearest sealed road to New Gulleway Well is the Great Northern Highway (18.4km away).
Do you know what condition New Gulleway Well is in? Contribute your knowledge by clicking here.
Do you know what facilities are available at New Gulleway Well? Contribute your knowledge by clicking here. | <urn:uuid:9a9febe5-2907-4c31-88ab-fcde1fff1033> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bonzle.com/c/a?a=p&cmd=sp&zix=r&p=217106&st=&s=butterfly%20gorge&m=19&wnb=49812798&c=1&x=137.76458&y=-28.95483&w=40000&mpsec=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957413 | 183 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Several years ago, when looking at HAYES family records I found the 1851 census entry for John Hayes, at 11 North Street, Bedminster, Bristol. He was my great great grandfather’s brother, and he and his wife Margaret had been born at Winscombe, as had their son William. There was a daughter, Mary, and his mother Rachel, aged 64. Then an Elena PURNELL, listed as a cousin, a dressmaker aged 17, who was born in Bedminster.
For a long time I puzzled about this Elena Purnell, until a transcription of the Winscombe parish registers became available, and revealed that an Ann PURNELL, daughter of James and Ann had been baptised in Winscombe in 1827.
Rachel HAYES’s maiden name was ALLEN, and she had a younger sister Ann, who thus could have been the wife of James PURNELL, though there was no record of their marriage, and no sign of Elena.
This was confirmed by the 1841 census of Bedminster, where Ann PURNELL was listed as the head of the house, with a daughter Ann aged 13 (thus the right age to be born in 1827) and with them were Simon and Rachel Hayes. But no Elena. Nevertheless, it did show that John HAYES (son of Simon and Rachel) did have PURNELL cousins.
I then saw a transcription of the 1851 census entry, where the transcriber had listed Elena PURNELL as Clara TURNEL. I checked the original again, and yes, what I took to be Elena could be Clara. So I checked the IGI, and found a Clara Purnell baptised at St Philip and St Jacob in Bristol on 21 July 1833, with parents James and Ann. It was a patron-submitted record, with no source provided, but seems plausible enough.
That solved my original mystery — where did John HAYES and his brothers get a cousin “Elena” from. The answer was from their mother’s sister, and she wasn’t “Elena” but Clara.
But it still leaves, or rather raises, some more questions — like
- When and where did James PURNELL and Ann ALLEN marry?
- Where was Clara at the 1841 census (when she would have been 7)?
- Where did the mysterious James PURNELL hang out, or did he just pop into existence to beget kids, and then disappear again?
- Where were the elder and younger Ann Purnell in the 1851 and later censuses?
If anyone spots them in the wild, please let me know.
More here, with a family group sheet. | <urn:uuid:83870aa2-9b67-40fb-9374-382c985d9db7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hayesgreene.wordpress.com/category/allen-family/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986852 | 566 | 1.5625 | 2 |
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Your child will be working on and mastering the pronunciation of different sounds and sound combinations until 8 years of age. Beginning with the vowel sounds and the easy consonants - b,d t,m - in her first year (it's no coincidence that 'mamma' and 'dadda' are often the first words you'll hear!) over the following years, s/he'll slowly acquire all the sounds s/he needs to make herself understood. S/he'll be at school before s/he masters some of the most difficult sound combinations - sh, th, y (as in yellow), soft g (as in George).
Learning new words
Your child's acquisition of new words will far outstrip the ability to pronounce them correctly and so, in the early days, you'll constantly be required to 'translate' when s/he speaks to those unaccustomed to talking with your child - and help with the difficulty in making him/herself understood, as it can be a source of great frustration.
By modelling correct patterns of speech - using verbs, tenses and pronouns correctly - you will teach him or her, seemingly overnight, how to construct grammatically correct sentences. Your toddler will constantly amaze you with the ability to permanently self-correct an error of speech and after the age of 18 months, s/he will begin to experiment with phrases and sentences although most will be missing the linking words.
More solutions to common toddler problems:
- First time they swear
- Look who's not talking
- Language and speech delay
- Hand down pants
- What to do with late starters
- Easing your toddler into day care
- Solving head lice
- Dealing with a toddler who bites
- Thumb sucking
- First time they won't go to bed
- Why some toddlers lie
- Best books for toddlers to help with learning
- Pronunciation development
More toddler firsts:
- Recipes for toddlers
- Toddler nutrition
- Moving to a big bed for the first time
- Solving tantrums
- Toilet training tips and tricks
- Resolving problems
- Activities for toddlers
- Toddler grooming tips
- Toddler development
- Toddler first steps
- Toddler teeth and dental care
More childhood firsts:
This article was written by Ella Walsh for Kidspot. Sources include Raising Children Network and The Children's Hospital at Westmead. This article was created for Kidspot - Australia's parenting resource for toddlers. | <urn:uuid:bfeb8545-1d55-4c61-8957-6f74c5be7e36> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kidspot.com.au/Childhood-firsts/Toddler-firsts-Solving-problems-Pronunciation-development+84+731+sponsor-article.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939318 | 537 | 3.484375 | 3 |
What does a Senator do?
The Student Senate is a body that meets weekly to plan, implement and evaluate college activities and policies that directly impact students. Senators are voting members of the Senate. The opportunities available to a Senator are wide-ranging. Senators serve on campus committees as student representatives, coordinate events and serve the student body directly by scheduling office hours.
Senatorship is a multifaceted learning experience for all students and of specific relevance to those studying political science, business & communication. If you would like to obtain or are seeking to enhance your leadership, communication and/or organizational skills, Senatorship is for you!
Who can be a Senator?
To become an ASB Senator you need to:
- Collect 50 signatures of registered Gavilan students.
- Maintain a cumulative GPA of 2.0 and a minimum of 5 units per semester.
- Submit your name for nomination at a Senate meeting to be confirmed
as a voting member.
Meet your Fall 2012 Senators
I have more questions...
- Excellent! Call, write or visit the ASB office with further inquiries.
- Contact ASB at 408 848-4777 | <urn:uuid:4efa2967-8447-43f6-a882-ccbd6e8c6f91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gavilan.edu/asb/senate/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911065 | 238 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Willows Edge Counseling and Art Center in Orion Township is bringing free anti-bullying workshops to the community and addressing the recent suicides of young adults in the Lake Orion and Oxford School Districts.
Words can physically affect the lives of others. Both victims and perpetrators of bullying are at a higher risk for suicide than their peers. According to studies, children who are both victims and perpetrators of bullying are at the highest risk. And so the idea for the workshop Taglines was born — using positive words to help reduce this risk of suicide.
Taglines began as a community response to the suicides of Orion Township resident Ryan Edwards, 22, Oxford middle school student Shane Hrischuk, 14, Lake Orion High School junior Dan Taylor, 17, and Lake Orion High School graduate Jeremiah Hargett, 20. These young men all lost their lives to suicide within the last year. Students within these school districts reported feeling powerless in response to the news of the deaths.
To encourage students to use positive words that promote kindness and resiliency, master level clinicials have been hosting tagline workshops. Students create clay “Taglines” — beads with a positive message as a visual reminder of the power of words. The taglines were made into pendants, bracelets or keychains.
Studies show that when people are working on creative projects, the left frontal cortex is stimulated and depression is alleviated.
Individuals can participate in two free creative workshops at Willows Edge Counseling and Art Center, 81 Indianwood Road Suite 2 in Orion Township. For teens only, the workshop is from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 12. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 13 is the all ages workshop.
For groups who want to schedule a workshop date, call 248-834-0614. It is recommended for youth groups, girl scouts, boy scouts, home schooled students and other school groups. Groups can schedule for the workshop to be brought to them.
This activity is run by Master Level trained Counselors and Art Therapists.
Visit taglinesforchange.com for more information.
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Location, ST | website.com
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Caren Gittleman likes talking cats. She'll discuss everything about them, from acquiring a cat, differences in breeds, behaviors, health concerns, inside versus outside lifestyles, toys, food, accessories, and sharing cat stories. Share your stories and ask her questions about your favorite feline.
Roger Beukema shares news from Lansing that impacts sportsmen (this means ladies as well) and talks about things he finds when he goes overseas to visit my children, and adding your comments into the mix.
Join Jonathan Schechter as he shares thoughts on our natural world in Oakland County and beyond. | <urn:uuid:5bd171d2-567e-4d81-9e6b-f83d4007c7c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theoaklandpress.com/articles/2012/09/25/life/suburban_life/doc50621643cfc8d982856309.txt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917493 | 855 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Near field communication (NFC) is a set of standards to communicate NFC devices on radio frequency by bringing them into close proximity (usually less than 5 centimeters). Since communication would be based on radio frequency, therefore scope, use cases and security consideration are different from other radio based interface such as Bluetooth.
Fig: NFC compare to other communicationIt make people’s lives easier by accessing new media and contents services more intuitive, make it easier to pay, easier to share information, and easier to use transport and other public services.
NFC’s bidirectional communication ability is ideal for establishing connections with other technologies by the simplicity of touch. For example if the user wants to connect their mobile device to their stereo to play media, they can simply touch the device to the stereo’s NFC touch point and the devices will negotiate the best wireless technology to use.
What does this mean for the end user? Easy connections, quick transactions, and simple data sharing.
The key initial applications for NFC technology fall into three categories:
• Machine-To-Machine: NFC is used to enable communication between two devices
• Payment & Ticketing: NFC will build on the emerging smart ticketing and electronic payment infrastructures
• Service Initiation: NFC is used to perform service discovery or to ‘unlock’ another service (such as opening another communication link for data transfer).
NFC could be used to setup local communication between two devices for small amount of information (up to few KB).
e.g. printing photo straight from mobile to printer, sharing photo from mobile to smart TV etc.
Fig: Taking picture and sharing to TV
Fig: Sharing data from mobile to mobile
Payment & Ticketing
Payment & Ticketing was one of the drivers for the creation of NFC standard. NFC-enabled payments are much easier and less costly for the credit card merchant than cash and other traditional payment method. Initially, NFC-enabled devices are likely to be used for low-fraud, limited-value payment situations, such as quick-serve restaurants, kiosks, vending machines and parking meters.
Touch&Travel is an NFC-based ticketing pilot project jointly conducted by Deutsche Bahn, the German rail authority, and its partners Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom and O2 Germany, with support from industry as well as local transport companies
The illustration below gives an overview of the Touch&Travel system’s operation.
1. 1. Currently close to 50 million NFC enabled handsets are sold across to world which is less than 5% of the handset market. However, the NFC enabled devices are expected to increase at least ten folds over the current level (Refer the forecast below)
2. 2. The forecasts from different analyst firms vary a lot on the NFC device projections but all agree that it would be significant by 2015. | <urn:uuid:63d7e2df-c05b-4c87-960e-6eb430ca8616> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tech-my-talk.blogspot.in/2013/03/nfc-in-action.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930913 | 590 | 3.015625 | 3 |
HOUSE PASSES AUTISM BILL
Autism Speaks hailed the U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday for approving the Combating Autism Reauthorization Act, and urged the Senate to quickly complete congressional action on the bill, and send it to President Obama.
The legislation will expire September 30 unless the Senate follows the House’s lead and renews the 2006 Combating Autism Act. Passage by the Senate will ensure the federal government’s commitment to fund autism research and treatment for another three years, and sustain federal funding at current levels, authorizing $693 million for research and treatment for autism and related disorders.
“Autism Speaks thanks Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) for their leadership in assuring a strong federal response to autism, which now affects 1 in every 110 children—including 1 in 70 boys,” said Autism Speaks co-founder Bob Wright. “Autism has been declared a public health emergency—doing nothing is not an option.”
Action on the bill now moves to the Senate where the measure cleared the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on September 7 by unanimous vote. President Obama has pledged to sign a bill reauthorizing the CAA this year. The CDC has determined that the incidence of autism in America has jumped to 1 in 110 children, and 1 in every 70 boys.
One third of the Senators have publicly signed on to support this legislation as cosponsors. Our Senator Barbara Boxer is among the co-sponsors, Our other Senator, Dianne Feinstein, has yet to declare herself.
Contact Name: Autism Votes: Telephone Number: 202-955-3114
Mailing Address: Autism Speaks, 1060 State Road, 2nd Floor, Princeton, NJ 08540 US | <urn:uuid:2a4a33d6-ac52-427e-af88-565a611a6a31> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.santamonicadispatch.com/2011/09/house-passes-autism-bill/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942104 | 373 | 1.695313 | 2 |
|Photo Source - Thanks Anna|
I have been trying to freeze more foods lately. It saves money, I am not wasting food because the leftovers are not getting eaten, and it actually will preserve the food's freshness. I realized I had a lot to learn when it came to freezing foods. There are so many things that can be frozen that I never knew, shredded cheese, soups, certain fruits. I think I am going to start doing this a lot more often. Especially now that I am finding some good deals at the grocery store. Usually you have to buy in bulk to get the savings, so I never took the deal because it is just the two of us, but I am going to take advantage of my freezer and get on this now!
Here are the basics for freezing foods:
Timeline for freezing foods:
- Bacon: 1 to 2 months
- Breads: 2 to 3 months
- Casseroles: 2 to 3 months
- Cooked beef and pork: 2 to 3 months
- Cooked poultry: 4 months
- Cookie dough: 3 months
- Fruit: 8 to 12 months
- Frozen dinners: 3 to 4 months
- Hot dogs: 1 to 2 months
- Lunch meats: 1 to 2 months
- Sausage: 1 to 2 months
- Soups and stews: 2 to 3 months
- Uncooked chicken (parts): 9 months
- Uncooked chicken (whole): 1 year
- Uncooked steaks, chops, or roasts: 4 to 12 months
- Uncooked ground meat: 3 to 4 months
- Vegetables: 8 to 12 months
Tips for freezing foods:
- Put foods in the freezer as soon as possible after you purchase them or get them from your garden. It preserves the quality and will be better when you defrost.
- Make sure you label the foods you plan to freeze so you know how long they have been in the freezer.
- Don't thaw foods on the kitchen counter. It is a breeding ground for bacteria. Place in the refrigerator, in a cold water bath, or in the microwave.
- If you freeze in glass containers, make sure it is tempered so it doesn't break.
- You can freeze most foods but, should stay away from freezing eggs. The shell can crack and let in bacteria. - You can freeze mayonnaise, cream sauces, and lettuce, but their quality will not be the same after you thaw them.
- Cool cooked foods down before freezing so they freeze faster, which helps preserve quality.
- You can freeze meat in its original packaging, but if you want to store it for long periods of time, add an additional layer of packaging, such as plastic wrap or bags.
Foods that you shouldn't freeze, and do not thaw well:
- Cabbage, celery, cress, cucumbers, endive, lettuce, parsley, radishes
- Irish potatoes, baked or boiled
- Cooked macaroni, spaghetti or rice
- Egg whites,
- Icings made from egg whites
- Cream or custard fillings
- Milk sauces
- Sour cream
- Mayonnaise or salad dressing
- Gelatin In
- Fruit jelly
- Fried foods
A tip to freezing fresh fruit is to spread out the cleaned, dried, and prepared (cut up) pieces of fruit on cookie sheets and place in freezer. Once the individual pieces of fruit are frozen, you can combine and put in freezer bags. Some people prefer to pack fruits in sugar or sugar syrup to help preserve texture and flavor.
Vegetables usually need to be blanched (boiled or steamed for a short time) before freezing if you want to maintain flavor, color, and texture. Blanching times vary depending on the vegetable. The National Center for Home Food Preservation has a chart with blanching times for everything from corn to collard greens and simple instructions for how to freeze a large variety of vegetables.
If you need to find out how to freeze something, check out the list from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.
Now that you know how to freeze foods, what about storing your fruits and vegetables to they stay fresh and last their longest? How To Store Fruits and Vegetables to Keep them From Rotting | <urn:uuid:354c1600-db71-4811-9f53-59786f6fc2e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mythirtyspot.com/2011/07/how-to-freeze-food-timeline-tips-and.html?showComment=1343788533031 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935555 | 896 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Q&A with Jeff Hayward, Climate Initiative Manager, Rainforest Alliance
The Rainforest Alliance began exploring how forests contributed to carbon sequestration more than ten years ago when we began monitoring pilot projects in Malaysia. We wanted to demonstrate that low-impact harvesting techniques -- such as those required for Forest Stewardship Council / Rainforest Alliance certification -- enabled trees to store more carbon than clear-cutting. This is key because the release of carbon into the atmosphere through deforestation is a leading cause of climate change. Though it was several years before the Rainforest Alliance formally launched a climate initiative -- we have been unofficially working to curb climate change for more than two decades by conserving forests around the globe. Here, climate initiative manager Jeff Hayward talks about his role and the program's evolution.
What drew you to managing the program?
I was motivated by an incredible sense of urgency. We have no time to waste in tackling the problem at a global scale. All countries share some level of responsibility, and collectively our actions will determine the quality of life on this planet over the next century.
How do you choose the specific projects and areas for the validation of carbon sequestration efforts?
We respond to all interested projects, but the most desirable assignments are based in the tropics where most emissions from deforestation originate and where we can plant the trees that grow most rapidly and sequester the most carbon. Projects that conserve forests that are large and critical within a landscape, projects that address poverty by catalyzing community development and those that restore fragmented ecosystems are also all very attractive.
In which areas do you see the initiative continuing to grow, both geographically and programmatically?
We'll expand more within the policy arena -- first, by participating in the international climate negotiations that will be discussed throughout this year and up to the pivotal United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that will be held in Copenhagen in December. And second, by developing mechanisms for implementing these policies in places with the greatest forest threats such as the Amazon, the Congo Basin and Indonesia.
What have you done to lower your personal carbon footprint?
At home, my wife and I figured out the sources of our emissions and where we could conserve energy. Then we made a list of carbon busting strategies and determined their relative costs and benefits. We took the easiest steps first, such as replacing all light fixtures with energy-efficient bulbs, and putting all of our electronics on power strips that shut down completely when they are not in use. Then we upgraded some appliances to Energy Star rated alternatives, and we installed a highly efficient gas boiler and tankless water heater, which saves energy by heating water only on demand. Our biggest investment was in installing a solar energy system. | <urn:uuid:718347dd-38c8-4832-9723-a69b69d2582c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/publications/newsletter/qa-jeff-hayward | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954069 | 546 | 2.09375 | 2 |
April 10, 2003
Nonoxynol-9 (N-9), a detergent ingredient previously thought to have microbicidal properties, is found in sexual lubricants, condoms, gels and other spermicidal products. Scientists have recently stated safety and efficacy concerns about N-9 for human sexual use, supported by studies that found N-9 was not protective against urogenital gonorrhea or chlamydia infection and causes rectal mucosa disruption in humans, which may increase risk for HIV infection during anal intercourse.
CDC, WHO and other agencies have issued several public health statements since 2000 indicating that N-9 is not protective against HIV and STD infection and may enhance transmission when used under certain conditions. The authors of the current study assessed recent rectal use of N-9 by men who have sex with men, awareness that N-9 may not be protective against HIV, intent to use N-9 in the future, and factors associated with intentions to use N-9.
Participants were recruited during Fall 2001 at multiple street locations and through community-based agencies in various sections of San Francisco and Oakland, Calif. Recruited men (n=1,528) were 18 years or older, lived or worked in the San Francisco Bay Area, and reported having sex with a man in the previous 12 months or self-identified as gay or bisexual. Men who were eligible and willing to participate (n=1,037) were scheduled for an interview at the Health Department or various community locations. Fifty-five percent (n=573) of eligible and initially willing participants completed the survey.
Sixty-one percent (n=349) of participants had heard of N-9. Latinos and men of unknown HIV serostatus were less likely to have heard of N-9; men who were HIV-positive or had higher educational attainment were more likely to have heard of N-9. Fifty-five percent of the 349 men aware of N-9 had heard in the previous year that it may not be protective against HIV.
The most commonly reported sources of information that N-9 may not be protective were newspapers (54 percent) and health agencies (50 percent), followed by magazines (37 percent) and friends (35 percent). Relatively few men reported that they received warnings about N-9 from the Internet (19 percent), product labels (17 percent), sexual partners (16 percent) or TV (15 percent).
Of men aware of N-9, 83 percent used it at some point, of which 67 percent knowingly used N-9 during anal intercourse in the previous year. Among men who knowingly used N-9 during anal intercourse in the past year, 41 percent did so without a condom because they believed or hoped it was protective.
"All MSM need to know about the dangers of using N-9 rectally," the authors wrote. "HIV care providers and prevention specialists should actively support public health warnings and disseminate information to reduce rectal use of N-9. Health officials should develop targeted educational campaigns to reduce consumer demand for N-9 products and increase demand for N-9-free lubricants and condoms among MSM. Culturally-sensitive campaigns in Spanish and English are needed. Agencies and communities should work together to remove N-9 from products, venues and websites that predominately serve MSM." In addition, the authors recommended, "Manufacturers should consider providing warning labels specific to rectal use on N-9 products as some have already done. Research is needed to better understand and intervene on unknowing use of N-9. Lastly, enhanced research is needed of other candidate HIV and STD mircobicides, including studies to ensure the safety and efficacy of products used for rectal application."
04.11.03; Vol. 17; No. 6: P. 905-909; Gordon Mansergh; Gary Marks; Melissa Rader; Grant N. Colfax; Susan Buchbinder | <urn:uuid:c371dd6f-4650-46b9-9530-0253f763caa9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thebodypro.com/content/art29856.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96556 | 808 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Is It OK to Carry a Backpack on Just One Shoulder If You Switch Shoulders Every Day?
Is it OK to carry a backpack on just one shoulder if you use a different shoulder every day? - Luke*
It's not OK if the backpack is heavy (10% of your body weight or more). That's just too much weight for each shoulder to bear on a regular basis. You can still hurt yourself.
If a backpack is heavy, you can strain your muscles from carrying it on one shoulder just for one day. That's why the best way to carry a heavy pack is by using two straps. It balances the weight across both shoulders and over your back.
Doctors and physical therapists recommend that people carry no more than 10% to 15% of their body weight. So if you weigh 120 pounds, your backpack should be no more than 12 to 18 pounds. If you weigh 150, it should be no more than 15 to 20 pounds, etc. And these amounts are for using both straps. To carry a pack on one shoulder safely, you'll have to go for much, much less than that.
The average textbook can weigh in at 3 to 5 pounds. So if your pack has a couple of textbooks, a notebook, and water bottle in it, you're already pushing the limits for a two-shoulder pack. That's without adding a laptop or other things you might want to carry around.
Why are the experts so strict about backpacks? Mostly because a backpack is a weight you carry around each and every day. For most of us, our high school and college years are the only time we'll carry around this much on a regular basis — and for several years. Yet it's also a time when our bodies are still growing. That leaves us more vulnerable to injury at the point in our lives when we're carrying the most weight.
The good thing is, our teens are also a time in our lives when we become more aware of and informed about our bodies. We're better able to take care of ourselves than we were as kids. Asking questions like this one (and thinking through the pros and cons as you are doing) helps us make good decisions. | <urn:uuid:3fa0d4ff-95e7-4412-9115-7c078b67e4aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kidshealth.org/PageManager.jsp?dn=NationwideChildrens_Hospital&lic=238&cat_id=20977&article_set=85511&tracking=T_RelatedArticle | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97098 | 449 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Authorities Review Legacy 600 Flight Recorders
ANN REALTIME REPORTING
10.02.06 1030 EDT: Authorities have examined the
flight recorders of the Embraer Legacy 600 suspected to be involved
in Friday's crash of a Gol Airlines 737. According to CNN, an
initial review of the data and voice records supports the pilot's
claims of a mid-air collision.
The 737 data recorders have not yet been recovered.
The pilot of the Embraer successfully landed the aircraft with a
portion of a wing missing. Authorities questioned the seven
passengers and crew aboard -- their stories all agreed. They felt a
bump, the aircraft shook, then the pilot turned off the autopilot
and made an emergency landing.
Gol Airlines flight 1907 plunged into a thickly-jungled region
about 18 miles from Peixoto de Azevedo, Brazil. Search and rescue
personnel spotted the wreckage from the air, but crews were unable
to reach the remote area from the ground.
Crews helicoptered in to a nearby clearing and were finally able
to reach the site after forcing their way through the dense
Despite the hazardous terrain and thick foliage, crews spent all
day Sunday searching the site for survivors -- so far, without
Questions still linger over how two aircraft could have collided
without the Embraer's pilots seeing the other, much larger, 737.
And, of course, how an impact that caused such slight damage to the
Embraer might bring down a 737.
Brazilian Air Force officials say they've begun the grisly job
of recovering bodies. The first two were carried to a local air
force base by helicopter late Sunday evening before
nightfall suspended operations.
Authorities have not declared an official cause for the crash --
they say the investigation could take up to three months.
ANN REALTIME REPORTING 10.01.06 1600 EDT:There
is tragic news from Brazil. Rescue crews helicoptered to the crash
site last night have sifted through the wreckage all day. The Times
of India reports President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said there
is no sign of survivors.
The president has called for three days of mourning in memory of
the 155 dead.
GOL company officials have released details from the passenger
and crew manifest. There were 149 passengers and 6 crew aboard.
The Captain, Decio Chaves Junior, 44, started flying in 1980 and
joined Transbrasil in February 1986. As Captain, he flew Boeing 727
and 737 aircraft. He's been with GOL for five years and has
ammassed 14,900 flight hours.
The Co-pilot, Thiago Jordao Cruso, 29, has been flying since
1999. He's been with GOL for more than four years. He has 3,850
Rescue crews continue to scour the crash site, but at this late
hour hold little hope for finding any survivors.
ANN will post more details on this tragedy as they become
ANN REALTIME REPORTING 09.30.06 1000 EDT:
Search and rescue aircraft located the wreckage of a Brazilian
Gol Airlines 737-800 that disappeared from radar last night
following a reported mid-air collision with an Embraer Legacy
Reuters reports the location of the crash site as Mato Grosso
state -- described as an area of "difficult access."
Brazilian defense minister Waldir Piers said the Embraer pilot,
who made an emergency landing with a damaged wing, told the
authorities "he practically did not see the plane. When he saw
something it was but a shadow. And he felt a shock, which made him
lose part of a wing."
In a somewhat confusing statement that may have come from
Waldir, Reuters reports that "radars" showed the two aircraft
separated by 1000' of altitude. Which radar is not specified...
The 737-800 is practically brand new; Gol took delivery from
Boeing on September 12. Gol says the aircraft had only logged 200
hours to date.
So far, no word on possible survivors.
ANN will post updates to this developing story as details become
ANN REALTIME REPORTING 09.29.06 2115 EDT:
Authorities in Brazil are scrambling to locate a Gol Airlines 737
that disappeared from radar Friday over the Amazon region,
following an apparent midair collision with a smaller plane.
A spokesman for the Manaus airport told Reuters flight 1907,
bound for Brasilia, did not arrive as scheduled.
The head of Brazil's airport authority, Infraero, said the
airliner collided with a business jet, believed to be an Embraer
Legacy 600, which later landed safely with a damaged wing.
Gol says there were 155 passengers onboard the 737. It is not
known if that number includes crewmembers.
For the moment, there is little hard evidence to indicate where
the jet may have gone down. A local farmer reported seeing a large
jet flying low near the Serra do Cachimbo, a Para state city about
600 miles southeast of Manaus.
Press Statement From Embraer
Embraer was informed today of a mid-air collision involving a
Legacy 600 aircraft which it manufactured, serial number 965, owned
and operated by one of its clients.
According to unconfirmed reports, the collision occurred in the
Serra do Cachimbo region, in the State of Pará, Northern
Brasil. Immediately after that, the Legacy 600 (File photo, below)
landed at the Cachimbo Air Force Base, with no injuries on
Embraer has offered to cooperate with aeronautical authorities
in any way possible in the investigations of the cause of this
regrettable accident. To that end, a team of Company technicians is
preparing to leave for the region.
ANN will update this story as more information becomes | <urn:uuid:44ff68cc-2ad2-422b-a023-a52b2d2553bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=40d8c3e5-01ea-43c4-9f28-af5834389ff9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934927 | 1,262 | 1.546875 | 2 |
ETON, Richard, of Pirbright and Merrow, Surr.
Available from Boydell and Brewer
Family and Education
Mayor, Guildford Mich. 1424-5.2
Coroner, Surr. by 8 Oct. 1428-c. 23 Jan. 1431.
In 1411 Richard Eton and John Wintershall* obtained a quitclaim of three messuages and extensive farmland in Pirbright from Ralph Eton, a citizen and skinner of London, and his wife Tiffany, who owned other property in Surrey and were probably Richard’s parents. Some years later in 1424 a second quitclaim of land in Pirbright, this time by Margaret Ladde, was made to Eton and his associates; and it may well be that he was adding to his holdings in this area. Eton was present at the Guildford county court for the election of the shire knights to the Parliaments of 1414 (Nov.), 1420, 1422, 1423, 1425 and 1429. He had clearly served as coroner for some time before the autumn of 1428, for it was then that the sheriff was ordered to remove him because he lacked the necessary qualifications. Nothing seems to have been done, however: he was still in office over two years later, and further instructions were sent out for his removal. Eton was still alive in May 1434, when, described as ‘of Merrow’, he was required to take the general oath not to maintain breakers of the peace in the county of Surrey.3
Ref Volumes: 1386-1421
Variants: Eaton, Eyton. | <urn:uuid:43258936-5878-4559-a440-595631fea72c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1386-1421/member/eton-richard | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980023 | 343 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Douglas Hogg, a design student from Coventry University, has designed this Bugatti Aerolithe, a futuristic car inspired by the 1935 Bugatti Electron Aerolithe prototype, which was displayed at the 1935 Paris Motor Show. Douglas designed the concept car for his final university project.
Douglas Hogg redesigned and modernized his concept car for the year 2025 by taking some styling elements from the original Aerolithe, which include pronounced shoulders, the split windshield and rear window, the aeronautical-inspired doors and the trademark grille.
69,734 clicks in 146 w
More Stats +/- | <urn:uuid:4229403e-e802-42a8-bd88-22dab6005e8d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/bugatti-aerolithe | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936994 | 125 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Replacement Alternatives in Education: Animal-Free Teaching
Corresponding author: Dalal, Rooshin (University of Virginia School of Medicine, USA)
Authors: Rooshin Dalal (1), Megha Even (2), Chad Sandusky (2), Neal Barnard (2)
Institutions: (1) University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, USA; (2) Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Research, Washington D.C., USA
In 1985, all 126 medical schools in the US offered a live animal laboratory as a requirement for teaching physiology, pharmacology, and/or surgery. Currently, 80% of medical schools have eliminated these labs from their curricula. The remaining 20%, although not requiring participation, still offer live animal labs to civilian medical students.
Until recently, the University of Virginia School of Medicine (UVa) in Charlottesville continued to teach emergency techniques to medical students using a canine laboratory. Surgical procedures were performed on approximately 100 beagles (euthanized at the end of the lab). Medical students, physicians, veterinary technicians, and members of the community initiated a group effort, working with faculty and administration, to eliminate the use of live animals and implement superior training methods. In November 2004, a new life-saving techniques course was implemented using a human patient simulator and other stand-alone stations, allowing students to practice techniques such as chest tube insertion, cricothyroidotomy, and venous cut-down for intravenous fluids.
Elimination of the canine lab marked a turning point for medical education at UVa, and follows a general trend since 1994 of a declining use of animals in medical education as determined in the 2001 survey by Drs. Hansen and Boss. Advantages of using human-based training methods include anatomical accuracy, repeating procedures for proficiency, and long-term cost benefits. Simulated human tissues and body fluids provide a realistic experience. Successful strategies for continuing this trend of replacing animal laboratories for training medical students, based on this case study, will be discussed in detail.
This abstract was presented by the authors at the Fifth World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences, which took place in August 2005 in Berlin. | <urn:uuid:08094a67-4fa3-47c1-839d-bd29c0701811> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcrm.org/research/animaltestalt/animaltesting/replacement-alternatives-in-education-animal-free | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930994 | 456 | 2.859375 | 3 |
© Copyright 1986-2008 by The University of Washington. Written by Joseph Felsenstein. Permission is granted to copy this document provided that no fee is charged for it and that this copyright notice is not removed.
Consense reads a file of computer-readable trees and prints out (and may also write out onto a file) a consensus tree. At the moment it carries out a family of consensus tree methods called the Ml methods (Margush and McMorris, 1981). These include strict consensus and majority rule consensus. Basically the consensus tree consists of monophyletic groups that occur as often as possible in the data. If a group occurs in more than a fraction l of all the input trees it will definitely appear in the consensus tree.
The tree printed out has at each fork a number indicating how many times the group which consists of the species to the right of (descended from) the fork occurred. Thus if we read in 15 trees and find that a fork has the number 15, that group occurred in all of the trees. The strict consensus tree consists of all groups that occurred 100% of the time, the rest of the resolution being ignored. The tree printed out here includes groups down to 50%, and below it until the tree is fully resolved.
The majority rule consensus tree consists of all groups that occur more than 50% of the time. Any other percentage level between 50% and 100% can also be used, and that is why the program in effect carries out a family of methods. You have to decide on the percentage level, figure out for yourself what number of occurrences that would be (e.g. 15 in the above case for 100%), and resolutely ignore any group below that number. Do not use numbers at or below 50%, because some groups occurring (say) 35% of the time will not be shown on the tree. The collection of all groups that occur 35% or more of the time may include two groups that are mutually self contradictory and cannot appear in the same tree. In this program, as the default method I have included groups that occur less than 50% of the time, working downwards in their frequency of occurrence, as long as they continue to resolve the tree and do not contradict more frequent groups. In this respect the method is similar to the Nelson consensus method (Nelson, 1979) as explicated by Page (1989) although it is not identical to it.
The program can also carry out Strict consensus, Majority Rule consensus without the extension which adds groups until the tree is fully resolved, and other members of the Ml family, where the user supplied the fraction of times the group must appear in the input trees to be included in the consensus tree. For the moment the program cannot carry out any other consensus tree method, such as Adams consensus (Adams, 1972, 1986) or methods based on quadruples of species (Estabrook, McMorris, and Meacham, 1985).
Input is a tree file (called intree) which contains a series of trees in the Newick standard form -- the form used when many of the programs in this package write out tree files. Each tree starts on a new line. Each tree can have a weight, which is a real number and is located in comment brackets "[" and "]" just before the final ";" which ends the description of the tree. When the input trees have weights (like [0.01000]) then the total number of trees will be the total of those weights, which is often a number like 1.00. When the a tree doesn't have a weight it will be assigned a weight of 1. This means that when we have tied trees (as from a parsimony program) three alternative tied trees will be counted as if each was 1/3 of a tree.
Note that this program can correctly read trees whether or not they are bifurcating: in fact they can be multifurcating at any level in the tree.
The options are selected from a menu, which looks like this:
Consensus tree program, version 3.69 Settings for this run: C Consensus type (MRe, strict, MR, Ml): Majority rule (extended) O Outgroup root: No, use as outgroup species 1 R Trees to be treated as Rooted: No T Terminal type (IBM PC, ANSI, none): ANSI 1 Print out the sets of species: Yes 2 Print indications of progress of run: Yes 3 Print out tree: Yes 4 Write out trees onto tree file: Yes Are these settings correct? (type Y or the letter for one to change)
Option C (Consensus method) selects which of four methods the program uses. The program defaults to using the extended Majority Rule method. Each time the C option is chosen the program moves on to another method, the others being in order Strict, Majority Rule, and Ml. Here are descriptions of the methods. In each case the fraction of times a set appears among the input trees is counted by weighting by the weights of the trees (the numbers like [0.6000] that appear at the ends of trees in some cases).
Option R (Rooted) toggles between the default assumption that the input trees are unrooted trees and the selection that specifies that the tree is to be treated as a rooted tree and not re-rooted. Otherwise the tree will be treated as outgroup-rooted and will be re-rooted automatically at the first species encountered on the first tree (or at a species designated by the Outgroup option).
Option O is the usual Outgroup rooting option. It is in effect only if the Rooted option selection is not in effect. The trees will be re-rooted with a species of your choosing. You will be asked for the number of the species that is to be the outgroup. If we want to outgroup-root the tree on the line leading to a species which appears as the third species (counting left-to-right) in the first computer-readable tree in the input file, we would invoke select menu option O and specify species 3.
Output is a list of the species (in the order in which they appear in the first tree, which is the numerical order used in the program), a list of the subsets that appear in the consensus tree, a list of those that appeared in one or another of the individual trees but did not occur frequently enough to get into the consensus tree, followed by a diagram showing the consensus tree. The lists of subsets consists of a row of symbols, each either "." or "*". The species that are in the set are marked by "*". Every ten species there is a blank, to help you keep track of the alignment of columns. The order of symbols corresponds to the order of species in the species list. Thus a set that consisted of the second, seventh, and eighth out of 13 species would be represented by:
Note that if the trees are unrooted the final tree will have one group, consisting of every species except the Outgroup (which by default is the first species encountered on the first tree), which always appears. It will not be listed in either of the lists of sets, but it will be shown in the final tree as occurring all of the time. This is hardly surprising: in telling the program that this species is the outgroup we have specified that the set consisting of all of the others is always a monophyletic set. So this is not to be taken as interesting information, despite its dramatic appearance.
Option 2 in the menu gives you the option of turning off the writing of these sets into the output file. This may be useful if you are primarily interested in getting the tree file.
Option 3 is the usual tree file option. If this is on (it is by default) then the final tree will be written onto an output tree file (whose default name is "outtree").
Note that the lengths on the tree on the output tree file are not branch lengths but the number of times that each group appeared in the input trees. This number is the sum of the weights of the trees in which it appeared, so that if there are 11 trees, ten of them having weight 0.1 and one weight 1.0, a group that appeared in the last tree and in 6 others would be shown as appearing 1.6 times and its branch length will be 1.6. This means that if you take the consensus tree from the output tree file and try to draw it, the branch lengths will be strange. I am often asked how to put the correct branch lengths on these (this is one of our Frequently Asked Questions).
There is no simple answer to this. It depends on what "correct" means. For example, if you have a group of species that shows up in 80% of the trees, and the branch leading to that group has average length 0.1 among that 80%, is the "correct" length 0.1? Or is it (0.80 x 0.1)? There is no simple answer.
However, if you want to take the consensus tree as an estimate of the true tree (rather than as an indicator of the conflicts among trees) you may be able to use the User Tree (option U) mode of the phylogeny program that you used, and use it to put branch lengths on that tree. Thus, if you used Dnaml, you can take the consensus tree, make sure it is an unrooted tree, and feed that to Dnaml using the original data set (before bootstrapping) and Dnaml's option U. As Dnaml wants an unrooted tree, you may have to use Retree to make the tree unrooted (using the W option of Retree and choosing the unrooted option within it). Of course you will also want to change the tree file name from "outree" to "intree".
If you used a phylogeny program that does not infer branch lengths, you might want to use a different one (such as Fitch or Dnaml) to infer the branch lengths, again making sure the tree is unrooted, if the program needs that.
The program uses the consensus tree algorithm originally designed for the bootstrap programs. It is quite fast, and execution time is unlikely to be limiting for you (assembling the input file will be much more of a limiting step). In the future, if possible, more consensus tree methods will be incorporated (although the current methods are the ones needed for the component analysis of bootstrap estimates of phylogenies, and in other respects I also think that the present ones are among the best).
TEST SET OF INPUT TREES
(A,(B,(H,(D,(J,(((G,E),(F,I)),C)))))); (A,(B,(D,((J,H),(((G,E),(F,I)),C))))); (A,(B,(D,(H,(J,(((G,E),(F,I)),C)))))); (A,(B,(E,(G,((F,I),((J,(H,D)),C)))))); (A,(B,(E,(G,((F,I),(((J,H),D),C)))))); (A,(B,(E,((F,I),(G,((J,(H,D)),C)))))); (A,(B,(E,((F,I),(G,(((J,H),D),C)))))); (A,(B,(E,((G,(F,I)),((J,(H,D)),C))))); (A,(B,(E,((G,(F,I)),(((J,H),D),C)))));
Consensus tree program, version 3.69 Species in order: 1. A 2. B 3. H 4. D 5. J 6. G 7. E 8. F 9. I 10. C Sets included in the consensus tree Set (species in order) How many times out of 9.00 .......**. 9.00 ..******** 9.00 ..****.*** 6.00 ..***..... 6.00 ..***....* 6.00 ..*.*..... 4.00 ..***..*** 2.00 Sets NOT included in consensus tree: Set (species in order) How many times out of 9.00 .....**... 3.00 .....***** 3.00 ..**...... 3.00 .....****. 3.00 ..****...* 2.00 .....*.**. 2.00 ..*.****** 2.00 ....****** 2.00 ...******* 1.00 Extended majority rule consensus tree CONSENSUS TREE: the numbers on the branches indicate the number of times the partition of the species into the two sets which are separated by that branch occurred among the trees, out of 9.00 trees +-----------------------C | +--6.00-| +-------H | | +--4.00-| | +--6.00-| +-------J +--2.00-| | | | +---------------D | | +--6.00-| | +-------F | | +------------------9.00-| | | +-------I +--9.00-| | | | +---------------------------------------G +-------| | | | +-----------------------------------------------E | | | +-------------------------------------------------------B | +---------------------------------------------------------------A remember: this is an unrooted tree! | <urn:uuid:10609b2c-2b1d-494b-895c-b4be97f0ed2a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://evolution.genetics.washington.edu/phylip/doc/consense.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940442 | 2,822 | 3.140625 | 3 |
An essential element of PAYD insurance is that customers must at all times have access to current, clear and understandable communication of the insured vehicle’s use and premium prospects.
Tracking device providers should provide customers with data such as:
- The current position of the vehicle.
- Historic movement of the vehicle.
- Speed transgressions.
- Trips into “no go areas”.
Insurer should provide customers with data such as:
- The impact that the vehicle’s use has on premiums.
- How the vehicle’s use may be modified to reduce premiums.
- Impact of vehicle use on safety of the driver, passengers and other road users.
Data is communicated to customers’ PCs and / or mobile phones.
Ctrack Intelligent Insurance uses simples and easily understood images to communicate with customers:
- Traffic lights alert customers of the behavioural factors which may affect premiums.
- Premium usage is shown using the imagery of a water bowser. Each time the insured vehicle moves water is drained out of the bowser, depending on how the vehicle is driven. Driving at excessive speeds drains water faster than prudent driving. A combination of a bad driving attitude and driving during peak times has an exponential effect on the amount of drainage. When all the water is drained the premium is spent indicating need for adjustments to premiums and / or vehicle usage. | <urn:uuid:adf149d2-a3a0-4c05-810d-c5f42b937fea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ctrackintelligentinsurance.com/TheSolution/Clients/RatingAdvicetoCustomers.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912268 | 284 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Dr. Amy Sussman
There will be no FY 2014 Request for Applications for the Research Training Program in Special Education: Postdoctoral Research Training.
The Institute has established the Research Training Program in Special Education: Postdoctoral Research Training (Postdoctoral) to increase the supply of scientists and researchers in education who are prepared to conduct rigorous and relevant special education research addressing issues that are important to special education leaders and practitioners and contributing to the advancement of knowledge and theory in special education. The specific intent of this program is to prepare researchers who are able to conduct the type of research that the Institute funds, prepare competitive proposals that address relevant education topics, and meet the methodological requirements specified for the Institute's research grant competitions.
The work of the Institute is grounded in the principle that effective education research must address the interests and needs of education practitioners and policymakers, as well as students, parents and community members (see http://ies.ed.gov/director/board/priorities.asp for the Institute's priorities). The Institute's research grant competitions targets research questions and key student outcomes of interest to education decision-makers and practitioners. These research grant programs target key student outcomes and the types of research questions posed by education decision-makers and practitioners..1 In early childhood, the primary outcomes of interest are school readiness and developmental outcomes for infants and toddlers with disabilities. From kindergarten through Grade 12, the core academic outcomes of reading, writing, mathematics, and science are the central outcomes of interest, as well as social and behavioral skills that support academic learning in school, and successful transitions to employment, independent living, and postsecondary education. | <urn:uuid:dd2e7d80-2ddc-491e-b198-a41bfd19f809> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ies.ed.gov/ncser/projects/program.asp?ProgID=57 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941229 | 327 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Disagreement Can and Should Be Respectful
Sensenbrenner considers Town Hall Meetings an important part of his service
This is the latest in a series of regular columns from U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner.
Last year, a media outlet dubbed me the “Town Hall King” because I hold more Town Hall Meetings than any other Congressman or Senator. While the title is amusing, I take my Town Hall Meetings very seriously and consider them one of the most important duties I perform.
Town Hall Meetings allow residents the opportunity to ask questions, share the issues on their mind and get help with a federal agency, which is why I think it’s important to hold these meetings on a regular basis. As standing practice, I invite local elected representatives to join me at these meetings as a resource for folks who have questions or concerns about state issues.
I truly believe that a civic-minded public is a cornerstone of a working democracy. I say this with the caveat that for democracy to truly work, as people voice their opinion, share their thoughts, and vote, civility must prevail.
For the first time ever, earlier this month in Wauwatosa I adjourned a Town Hall Meeting early because civility left the room. Despite repeated requests to show respect to speakers, other attendees, and library patrons, the room became chaotic. After 30 minutes of interruptions, and the noticeably growing unease of some people in the room, I was concerned someone might either be hurt or property would be damaged. It was unfortunate that those who came to the meeting and patiently waited to voice their opinion were unable to do so.
Government and politics can often make emotions and passions run high, however in my many years of holding these meetings I have always found the vast majority of people attending these meetings to be able to disagree without being disagreeable — to express their opinion while still respecting the counter opinion of someone else. In fact, even during last year’s intense health care debate we still had a respectful discourse at all my meetings.
There are a host of critical issues challenging our state and nation right now, and we’re not all going to agree on the best way to solve these challenges. But we can no longer kick the can farther down the road if we want our state and nation to become prosperous again — we need to talk these problems out, make a decision and move forward on that decision.
My new schedule of upcoming Town Hall Meetings will be posted in the near future, and I welcome all residents to these meetings. And those individuals who take the time to attend a meeting have my commitment that I will continue to do my best to ensure they are safe and hear a civil discourse in what I always hope are productive and informative meetings. We can disagree, but I hope that we can do so in a respectful manner. | <urn:uuid:b3877411-b819-464b-ae13-845bf5cebff6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sussex.patch.com/articles/disagreement-can-and-should-be-respectful | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967016 | 589 | 2.078125 | 2 |
– A slow speed handpiece without internal reduction gears or attachments, usually rotating at speeds near 20,000 rpm.
– a nose cone or angle that quick disconnects on and off the front of a low speed motor to provide various bur holding options.
– A mechanism enabling the operator to change a bur without the use of a wrench, by pressing a button or raising a lever.
– A steam sterilizer which destroys all living organisms through the medium of heat and pressure. Temperatures are raised to 270-275°F while the pressure is raised to 30 psi.
– A rotary dental instrument, which when placed in a handpiece is used to cut or carve tooth structure. Burs come in a variety of shapes and sizes and can be made of high speed steel, carbide, or diamond coated material. Can also be called a bit.
– A closed cylinder which houses a rotating turbine assembly inside the head of the handpiece. Designed for easy replacement.
– A sterilizer which uses a chemical to generate chamber pressure instead of steam. The absence of water in the process reduces rust and oxidation of instruments.
– Air supplied through the handpiece from the dental unit tubing to the cutting surface to cool the tooth or disperse the water spray, while flushing away residual material resulting from the removal of tooth structure.
– The part in the handpiece turbine used to hold the bur.
– Another word for the chuck mechanism.
– Attaches the handpiece to the dental delivery unit that supplies air and water to the handpiece. There are four types of standard U.S. connectors. They include the 2, or 3-Line (also called a Borden) and 4-Line. The 4-Line (also known as a Midwest) is the most popular connector. In a 4-Line connector, the holes are (1) drive air, (2) chip air, (3) water, and (4) exhaust. Sometimes a fifth line or hole is added for a fiber optic bundle. A newer type of connector, 6 Pin, is now available which provides an electrical connection for a fiber optic light bulb. Hole size and location are indicated by a standardized ISO specification.
– The front section of a handpiece which changes the desired angleto provide better bur access and visibility to the operator during use.
– Refers to the water spray directed at the bur to cool the tooth when cutting.
– Any angle that operates on the front of a nose cone that has a protruding shaft designed to fit into the nose cone chuck.
– The compressed air used to rotate the turbine in a dental handpiece.
– A motor with a standardized male fitting (connection) that accepts attachments with the matching female connection.
– The cap, or cover which is removed to install the turbine.
– The air discharged from a dental handpiece after spinning the turbine.
– A handpiece through which a transparent fiber or cellular optic bundle transmits light to illuminate the oral cavity.
– A chuck which holds the bur strictly by friction generated from an internal spring assembly. The bur is simply pushed in and out of the chuck with a special tool using force to overcome friction.
– A handheld device which engages rotary instruments for cutting, cleaning or polishing the teeth. A handpiece can be belt-driven, pneumatic (air or gas driven) or electric.
– A handpiece which operates at a speed greater than 100,000 RPM.
– A mechanism which utilizes a wrench to tighten the chuck. This design incorporates slots which create jaws that are compressed onto the bur shank when tightened with the corresponding wrench.
– An attachment that holds a specialized bur which is mechanically retained by the use of a swinging hook that engages a recess in the bur shank.
– A handpiece which operates at speeds ranging from 5,000 to 20,000 rpm.
– A liquid applied to moving parts of a handpiece or attachment in order to reduce friction, heat, or wear, or applied to surfaces in close contact to prevent them adhering to one another. May also include a solvent for cleaning.
– A straight attachment used with a slow speed motor which holds a lab type bur (3/32" shank) or any standard doriot attachment.
– An angle that holds a brush or cup containing prophy paste used by a hygienist for cleaning teeth.
– A handpiece attachment or fitting designed to allow easy separation of the handpiece from the supply tubing.
– Another name for a high speed turbine, usually self contained to allow easy replacement.
– A type of low speed motor utilizing small vanes instead of a turbine to trap drive air in a rotor assembly to generate rotation.
– Revolutions Per Minute. A unit of measurement indicating speed.
– Same as a low or slow speed handpiece. Often refers to a handpiece with a nosecone permanently "fixed" to the motor.
– Instead of threads at the rear of a handpiece, the swivel is usually a separate part that threads into the supply tubing and incorporates a quick disconnect. Designed to allow the handpiece to rotate where it attaches to the air supply tubing in order to reduce fatigue on the operators wrist.
– Located in the head of a high speed handpiece, the turbine holds the bur or cutting instrument while rotating from high pressure compressed air. A turbine consists of five main components: spindle; chuck; impeller; bearings; and two "O" rings.
We welcome business from all countries of the world.
Telephone: 888.674.6657 or 360.871.6208
Address: Port Orchard, WA 98366, USA | <urn:uuid:00d36778-1edf-41ce-a563-e32dc692249b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.orionrepair.com/glossary/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907424 | 1,171 | 2.8125 | 3 |
On August 31st, 2006, Falun Gong practitioners in Pingtung, Taiwan collected signatures at a busy train station. The signatures were to be faxed to the office of Lee Kuan Yew to call for the unfair charges against Falun Gong practitioners in Singapore to be dropped and to call for the cancellation of deporting a Falun Gong practitioner to Mainland China.
They successfully collected many signatures. The assistant director of the train station also learned two sets of Falun Gong exercises from them.
|Falun Gong practitioners in Pingtung collect signatures calling for the Singapore government to drop charges against Falun Gong practitioners|
Ms. Chen said that they went to the director's office to request permission to collect signatures in the train station. The director wasn't in, but the assistant director not only granted permission but also learned two sets of Falun Gong exercises. He also planned to find out more about the organ harvesting on the Internet.
Ms. Chen said some people didn't seem overly concerned at first, but after hearing about the persecution, they changed their minds and signed in support.
A college student from Taoyuan said he had heard about the persecution on the Internet. He said the organ-harvesting crime was too cruel! A student from Kaohsiung was very sad to hear about the persecution. She wished there was something more she could do to help. After signing a petition of support, she was happy she could participate in a noble cause.
Ms. Chen said Falun Gong registered as a legal organisation in Singapore in 1996. It grew without any obstruction from the government before the persecution in China began on July 20th, 1999. However, the legal rights of Falun Gong practitioners in Singapore have been violated since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started persecuting Falun Gong in China. Chinese Falun Gong practitioners in Singapore have been discriminated against by the Immigration Department. There have been increasing numbers of such incidents recently. In June, the work permit of a Falun Gong practitioner was cancelled. Some practitioners have been subjected to deportation and unfair lawsuits. Ms. Chen and Falun Gong practitioners request that the Singapore government not assist in the CCP's persecution.
Falun Gong practitioners in Pingtung condemn the Singapore government's assistance with the CCP's persecution of Falun Gong. They called for the Singapore government to drop charges against and cancel plans to deport Falun Gong practitioners.
You are welcome to print and circulate all articles published on Clearharmony and their content, but please quote the source. | <urn:uuid:ff4bef05-a37b-4371-bb53-4272850c3170> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clearharmony.net/articles/Taiwan_Falun_Gong_Practitioners_in_Pingtung_Condemn_Singapore_Government_and_Call_for_Charges_to_be_Dropped-a35197.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972286 | 516 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Please correct me if I am wrong anywhere.
I get the impression from what I have read that, for a simple moving wave train on water,
X = horizontal rest coordinate of a bit of the water surface,
x = horizontal displacement of a bit of the water surface,
y= vertical displacement of a bit of the water surface,
t = time
a = amplitude/2
b = constant
c = 2*pi/wavelength
f = constant
speed of waves varies as sqrt(wavelength)
x = a*sin(b+c*X-v*t), y = a*cos(b+c*X-v*t), v=f*sqrt(c) :: eqns (1)
This leads to a hypocycloid with the sharper curves on top.
If a is too big compared to 1/c, the curve becomes an epicycloid with loops on top, but water cannot go through itself, so the waves develop foam crests (sometimes called "white horses").
I have been unsuccessfully trying to make equations (1) into a differential equation. Please is there known a differential equation, or set of differential equations, for waves moving on the (2-dimensional) surface of 3-dimensional water, including explaining the usual mixed disorderly wave patterns seen on water in nature? | <urn:uuid:7c446853-d98c-4c93-80e7-d6192f76b60e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mathhelpforum.com/calculus/116837-waves-water.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930548 | 281 | 2.5625 | 3 |
- Special Sections
BLACKFOOT — Elementary school age migrant students are enjoying an educational blend of Mexican and American culture at the Idaho Migrant - English Language Learners (ELL) summer school program currently underway at Ridge Crest Elementary School.
According to Chistina Alvarez of Blackfoot, Idaho's Migrant Education Coordinator, this is a state program funded solely by grant money that helps migrant children learn to read and speak English while keeping them in tune with their native Mexican culture through music, dance and art. The students attend class Monday through Thursday throughout the month of June.
"This is such a wonderful program for the kids and it helps their parents as well," Alvarez said. "It helps boost their self esteem and they are learning so much about their Mexican heritage."
Alvarez said that the Migrant ELL program is based on an agreement with Mexico through a bi-national education forum to exchange teachers from the two countries. Blackfoot is fortunate to be one of three cities in the state (along with Boise and Nampa) to have a teacher from the cultural exchange this summer to teach the children in the summer school program, Alvarez said.
Maria Del Rocio, a young teacher from the Mexican state of Quertero, is in Blackfoot for the summer teaching first graders in the program. She described her time here as "a wonderful experience." "This is something I can take back and share with my parents and family as well," she said.
Alvarez said the summer school students will be performing their end of year musical program next Wednesday at 6 p.m. at Ridge Crest Elementary School. | <urn:uuid:5379ebc0-5468-42b7-803f-cecba3e906ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.am-news.com/content/migrant-summer-school-underway?quicktabs_2=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972553 | 336 | 2.3125 | 2 |
In 1879, two well-known evolutionists of the time went even further in their activities intended to constitute evidence for the fictitious evolution of the horse scenario and set up the equine series that Darwinists would maintain on the agenda for many years to come. The American fossil researcher Othniel Charles Marsh and Thomas Huxley (known as Darwin’s bulldog) established a series by setting out various hoofed fossils on the number of nails on the front and rear feet and the structure of their teeth. One small mammal fossil previously named Hyracotherium by Sir Richard Owen in 1841 was renamed in such a way as to echo evolution, being given the name Eohippus, meaning “Dawn Horse.” The pair published their claims and diagrams in the American Journal of Science, thus laying the foundations of the horse series laid out from Eohippus to the present day in museums and text books as supposed evidence of evolution. The main stages in this fictitious series were Eohippus, Orohippus, Miohippus, Hipparion and the present-day Equus.
This fictitious series was portrayed as the greatest supposed evidence for the evolution of the horse for the following century. The decrease in the number of toes and the regular increase in size, from smaller to larger, was enough to convince evolutionists.
Shortly afterward, inconsistencies within the horse series began manifesting themselves. New fossils dug up and attempted to be inserted into the false horse series became a problem. Because characteristics such as the fossils’ location, age and toe number formed inconsistencies and impaired the series, which turned into an inconsistent and meaningless mass of fossils in the face of these new specimens.
Many Darwinists were gradually forced to admit that the Darwinist horse series scenario was not based on any genuine evidence. In November 1980 a 4-day conference was held in the Chicago Museum of Natural History, which was attended by 150 evolutionists and considered the problems facing the theory of evolution. Boyce Rensberger, who spoke at the conference, described how the horse series had no basis in the fossil record and that no such gradual process as the evolution of the horse ever happened:
The popularly told example of horse evolution, suggesting a gradual sequence of changes from four-toed fox-sized creatures living nearly 50 million years ago to today's much larger one-toed horse, has long been known to be wrong. Instead of gradual change, fossils of each intermediate species appear fully distinct, persist unchanged, and then become extinct. Transitional forms are unknown. [i]
Hyracotherium, placed at the beginning of the so-called horse series, was originally identified by Richard Owen, an anti-Darwinist. But later paleontologists sought to conform this creature to evolution.
An additional challenge to the proposal of horse evolution is that the timing is inconsistent. The theory of evolution is based on the concept that one species is prone to evolve into another because it is better adapted for survival. This leads to extinction of the first species. In the case of horses, the three-toed must not have been as hearty as the one-toed. Evolution demands millions of years for transition to occur between species— plenty of time for the first species to die out.
However, today we know that the three-toed and one-toed horses lived together in North America. The fact that varieties of horses co-existed is completely inconsistent with evolution’s explanation. Add to this the fact that missing links between Hyracotherium, Miohippus, and Equus have never been identified. Rather than lending support for evolution, the history of the horse is more consistent with special creation—fully formed beings that were created simultaneously. ii
Although the invalidity of the evolution of the horse series has been brought out into the open day and Darwinists have admitted this state of affairs, this mythical series is still used, like other Darwinist frauds, in Darwinist publications and text books. The series is depicted as concrete fact and placed on display in museums of natural history curated by world-famous paleontologists and scientists. Dr. Niles Eldredge, an evolutionist and paleontologist who served as director of the world-renowned American Museum of Natural History, admitted some 20 years ago that evolutionist claims regarding the horse series on display in his own museum were based solely upon their powers of imagination. Eldredge also criticized the way that this speculative series was portrayed as scientific fact in such a way as to find its way into school books:
I admit that an awful lot of that [imaginary stories] has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example on horse evolution prepared perhaps fifty years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that is lamentable, particularly because the people who propose these kinds of stories themselves may be aware of the speculative nature of some of the stuff. But by the time it filters down to the textbooks, we’ve got science as truth and we’ve got a problem. iii
Huxley, known as "Darwin's bulldog," was the first theoretician of the imaginary horse series.
The fact is that they espouse a superstition, a terrible error. Almighty Allah, the Lord and Creator of All, says in His verses:
If anyone desires anything other than Islam as a religion, it will not be accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he will be among the losers. (Surah Al ‘Imran, 85)
Everyone in the heavens and everyone on the earth belong to Allah. Those who call on something other than Allah are not really following their partner-gods. They are only following conjecture. They are only guessing. (Surah Yunus, 66) | <urn:uuid:a1c20079-99e4-4889-8c27-f9e65c3b4d7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://harunyahya.com/en/works/19833/The-evolution-of-the-horse-series-is-a-fraud | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974893 | 1,207 | 3.609375 | 4 |
The Provincial Health Office has yet to confirm reports that at least 17 people in a coastal barangay in Bagamanoc have been stricken by the mosquito-borne Chikungunya virus.
Provincial Health Officer II Dr. Lubelia Sanchez told the Tribune last Friday (Feb. 1) that while the Rural Health Unit has reported that number of residents from Bagatabao who sought medical assistance for symptoms similar to fever caused by the virus, it is not yet certain whether the ailments were indeed caused by Chikungunya.
She disclosed that her office has sent blood samples from six patients to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) in Metro Manila for testing. The PHO team went to the barangay last Jan. 24 after receiving the info from municipal health officer Dr. Anabel Pelagio-Peralta.
According to the health advisory issued by the PHO to all RHUs, Chikungunya virus is spread by bites from infected Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes. It causes a sudden onset of high-grade fever, severe joint pain mainly in the arms and legs, muscle pain, headache and back pain, with 50% of the patients developing rashes.
The word chikungunya is thought to derive from a description in the local Makonde dialect, meaning "that which bends up", of the contorted posture of patients afflicted with the severe joint pain and arthritic symptoms associated with the disease. The disease was first described by Marion Robinson and W.H.R. Lumsden in 1955, following an outbreak in 1952 on the Makonde Plateau, along the border between Mozambique and then Tanganyika (the modern part of modern day Tanzania) in the African continent.
While the CHIK virus does not often result to death, the symptoms can be disabling and some persons may get severe complications. “There is no vaccine to prevent Chinkungunya and there is no specific medication available to treat the fever,” the PHO said. However, it added, using medicines other than aspirin to lower fever and joint pain may help.
The symptoms appear about three to seven days after a victim is bitten by an infected mosquito. If an infected person is subsequently bitten by a mosquito, that mosquito could spread the virus by biting another person, the PHO warned.
It said that compared to dengue, the CHIK virus is “self-limiting,” with the victims’ high fever usually lasting for a period of five days. However, there are cases reported in other countries where the joint pain lasts for months and for as long as two years.
An in-depth probe of the Bagamanoc cases is being undertaken by local health officials, particularly an allegation that the virus may have been brought to Bagatabao by fishermen who have been in contact with fishermen from Rapu-Rapu island in Albay where the disease was first reported to have infected 83 villagers in Batan town in the Bicol region in September 2012.
The PHO advisory called on residents to avoid mosquito bites by wearing long-sleeved shirts and long pants; use mosquito repellent on exposed skin; ensure that windows and door screens are intact; and use airconditioning, when available, to make households less hospitable to mosquitoes.
It likewise urged the people to keep their surroundings clean and to practice the 4S against disease-carrying mosquitoes: searching and destroying mosquito breeding places; self-protection; seeking early treatment; and, saying “no” to indiscriminate fogging. | <urn:uuid:deb5e8d5-a366-454e-b4c9-d93a4d7266d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.catanduanestribune.com/article/2YL4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960197 | 746 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Are Egalitarian Jewish Weddings Possible?
A marriage tradition steeped in property law really has to stretch to be legally egalitarian.
Reprinted with permission from Lilith magazine.
For centuries, Jewish brides and grooms have been married under a huppah [marriage canopy], a symbol of the Jewish home. Traditionally, the groom placed a ring on the bride's finger and declared her "consecrated" to him. The bride said nothing. Nothing.
If the huppah was representative of the home, then what did the bride's silence say of what was expected of her in marriage?
"For me, the thought that only the groom initiates and only the bride receives is not reflective of a relationship," said Shira Milgrom, rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami, a Reform synagogue in White Plains, New York. "For a wedding to be complete, both bride and groom need to initiate and receive, and both bride and groom need to speak."
Like many of her colleagues, Milgrom is committed to performing weddings that maintain Jewish tradition but make the bride an equal partner in the process. It's not an easy task considering that the basic premise of the traditional ceremony was that the groom acquired his bride…. The terms of his acquisition were laid out in the ketubah, the formal wedding contract, signed of course by male witnesses. So while many couples start out thinking they can create an egalitarian wedding simply by changing a few words or sharing the breaking of the glass, many rabbis will counsel them to dig much deeper….
Change Develops Slowly, Even in the Liberal Movements
The Reform movement began addressing these issues as early as the 1850s, but changes in every stream of Judaism have come very slowly, and at times paradoxically. For instance, according to Conservative movement policy, a woman can be ordained as a rabbi and therefore can officiate at weddings, but she still has to find two men to sign as witnesses on the ketubah. Even in more liberal denominations, change may have been slowed by the knowledge that such weddings--and the offspring they produce--will not be considered legitimate by Orthodox authorities who wield power in Israel and around the world.
The Legality of a Two-Ring Ceremony
Many feminist-driven innovations have found their way into the Jewish wedding, but nothing seems to have sparked as much thought and debate as the ring ceremony. Traditionally, this ceremony was meant to symbolize the kinyan, or acquisition, of the bride. The groom would place the ring on the bride's finger and say "Haray at mekudeshet li b'taba'at zu k'dat Moshe v'Yisrael"--"By this ring you are consecrated to me in accordance with the traditions of Moses and Israel." Most non-Orthodox rabbis now routinely have the bride and groom exchange rings--a ritual that appears, to family and friends in the audience, to be wholly egalitarian. But there is little agreement among rabbis on whether the bride may say "Haray atah... ," consecrating the groom to her in return. | <urn:uuid:8c9882fa-3c43-4c16-b243-0d97672d5bb6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://myjewishlearning.com/life/Life_Events/Weddings/Contemporary_Issues/Egalitarianism.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967368 | 640 | 2.5 | 2 |
Student Loan Consolidation
Consolidation Loans combine several student or parent loans into one bigger loan from a single lender, which is then used to pay off the balances on the other loans. It is very similar to refinancing a mortgage. Consolidation loans are available for most federal loans, including FFELP (Stafford, PLUS and SLS), FISL, Perkins, Health Professional Student Loans, NSL, HEAL, Guaranteed Student Loans and Direct loans. Some lenders offer private consolidation loans for private education loans as well.
The only consolidation loan discount still available is a 0.25% interest rate reduction when the borrower agrees to have the monthly loan payments automatically deducted from a checking or savings account. (For historical reference, a separate page provides a comparison chart of previous consolidation loan discounts.)
Since July 1, 2010, all new federal education loans, including
consolidation loans, have been made through the Direct Loan program.
Borrowers can still consolidate both federally-guaranteed (FFELP) and
direct loans with the US Department of Education's
Federal Direct Loan Consolidation program at
The interest rate on a consolidation loan is the weighted average of the interest rates on the loans being consolidated, rounded up to the nearest 1/8 of a percent and capped at 8.25%.
For example, suppose a student has just unsubsidized Stafford Loans originated on or after July 1, 2006. These loans have a fixed interest rate of 6.8%. When they are consolidated by themselves, the consolidation loan will have an interest rate of 6 and 7/8ths of a percent, or 6.875%. So the interest rate increases only slightly.
If the borrower has a mix of loans with different interest rates, the weighted average will be somewhere in between. For example, if the borrower has $5,000 of Perkins Loans (at 5.0%) and $10,000 of unsubsidized Stafford Loans (at 6.8%), the weighted average is
$5,000 * 5.0% + $10,000 * 6.8% ------------------------------ = 6.2% $5,000 + $10,000This weighted average, 6.2%, is then rounded up to the nearest 1/8th of a percent, yielding a consolidation loan interest rate of 6.25%.
Note that the weighted average does not fundamentally alter the underlying cost of the loan. It preserves the cost structure by including each interest rate to the extent that it applies to part of the overall loan balance. For example, the consolidation loan in the previous paragraph says that of the $15,000 consolidation loan balance, $5,000 will be at 5.0% and $10,000 at 6.8%, yielding an equivalent interest rate of 6.2%.
If you are consolidating loans with different interest rates, the weighted average interest rate will always be in between. Don't be fooled if someone tries to suggest that this will save you money by getting you a lower interest rate. The interest rate may be lower than the highest of your interest rates, but it is also higher than the lowest of your interest rates. More importantly, the amount of interest you pay over the lifetime of the loan will be about the same.
(For the mathematically inclined, there is a slight difference due to the different shapes of amortization curves at each interest rate. In the example given above on a 10 year term, $10,000 at 6.8% has a monthly payment of $115.08 and total interest paid of $3,809.66, $5,000 at 5.0% has a monthly payment of $53.03 and total interest paid of $1,364.03. If you add these, you obtain a total monthly payment of $168.11 and a total interest paid of $5,173.69. Using the weighted average, $15,000 at 6.2% has a monthly payment of $168.04 and a total interest paid of $5,165.01. So using a weighted average yields a very small reduction in the monthly payment (in this case, 7 cents) and in the total interest paid ($8.68) due to a kind of triangle law. Of course, when you consolidate the interest rate is rounded up to the nearest 1/8th of a point, so $15,000 at 6.25% has monthly payments of $168.42 and total interest of $5,210.42, yielding a slight increase. So you pay a tiny bit of a premium for consolidation, due to the rounding up of the interest rate.)
Previously some PLUS loans had a fixed rate of 8.5%. Borrowers who have PLUS loans with an 8.5% interest rate can use the PLUS loan interest rate loophole to reduce the interest rate on these loans from 8.5% to 8.25% through consolidation. Since July 1, 2010, however, all new PLUS loans have had a 7.9% fixed interest rate.
If there is any accrued but unpaid interest on a loan, such as interest that was deferred during the in-school and grace periods or during an economic hardship deferment, this interest will be capitalized (added to the loan balance) when the borrower consolidates the loans. The direct loan program capitalizes interest at loan status changes, such as when a loan enters repayment or is consolidated.
No Cost to Consolidate
Aside from a slight increase in the interest rate on the consolidation loan, there is no cost to consolidate your loans. There are no fees to consolidate.
Under no circumstances pay a fee in advance to get a federal education loan or consolidate your federal education loans. There are no fees to consolidate your loans. While other federal education loans, such as the Stafford and PLUS loans, may charge some fees, the fees are always deducted from the disbursement check. There is never an up front fee. If someone wants you to pay an up front fee, chances are that it is an example of an advance fee loan scam.
Who Can Consolidate
Both student and parent borrowers can consolidate their education loans. (Students and parents cannot combine their loans through consolidation, since only loans from the same borrower can be consolidated. But they can consolidate their loans separately.)
Married students are no longer able to consolidate their loans together. This provision was repealed effective July 1, 2006. When married students consolidated their loans together, each spouse became responsible for the full amount of the loan, and the loans could not be separated if the couple got divorced. To avoid such problems in the future, Congress decided to repeal this provision as part of the Higher Education Reconciliation Act of 2005.
Students can consolidate their education loans only during the grace period or after the loans enter repayment. (Loans that are in default but with satisfactory repayment arrangements may also be consolidated.) Students can no longer consolidate while they are still in school. (The early repayment status loophole and the ability of Direct Loan borrowers to consolidate during the in-school period was repealed as part of the Higher Education Reconciliation Act of 2005, effective July 1, 2006.)
Parents, however, can consolidate PLUS loans at any time.
Any Borrower Can Consolidate Into the Direct Loan Program
Since July 1, 2010, all new federal education loans, including consolidation loans, are made through the direct loan program. This includes federal loans made by a bank or other financial institution.
When borrowers who have old federal loans made through the federally-guaranteed student loan program (FFELP) ask their lenders about consolidation, some lenders respond that they no longer make consolidation loans. These lenders do not necessarily tell the borrowers that they can still consolidate through the direct loan program, because the lender loses the loan when the borrower consolidates into the direct loan program.
To consolidate any federal education loan into the Federal Direct Loan Consolidation program, visit loanconsolidation.ed.gov..
(For historical reference, prior to June 15, 2006, borrowers could consolidate their loans only with the lender who originated the loans unless they had federal student loans from two or more lenders. This single holder rule was repealed on June 15, 2006 as part of the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2006. Then borrowers could consolidate their loans with any lender and no longer needed to exploit the single holder rule loopholes in order to consolidate with any lender.)
The Federal Direct Consolidation Loan program has no minimum balance for consolidation loans.
Which Loans Can be Consolidated?
Any federal education loan can be consolidated. You can even consolidate a single loan. There are, however, a few restrictions on consolidating a consolidation loan.
You can consolidate a consolidation loan only once. In order to reconsolidate an existing consolidation loan, you must add loans that were not previously consolidated to the consolidation loan. You can also consolidate two consolidation loans together. But you cannot consolidate a single consolidation loan by itself. These restrictions have been in effect since early 2006.
Note that when you reconsolidate a consolidation loan, it does not relock the rates on the consolidation loan. The consolidation loan is treated as a fixed rate loan within the weighted average interest rate formula used to calculate the interest rate on the new consolidation loan. Consolidation does not pierce the veil on previous consolidations.
Since only the Direct Loan program can make new federal consolidation loans, the ability to use consolidation to switch lenders is limited. Borrowers can use a consolidation loan to move their loans from a FFELP lender into the direct loan program. Once the loans are in the direct loan program, borrowers cannot switch back to a FFELP lender.
When to Avoid Consolidation
Borrowers who have several loans with different interest rates may want to avoid consolidating their loans. Keeping the loans separate allows the borrower to target the highest interest rate loan for accelerated repayment by making extra payments on this loan. Doing so reduces the average interest rate on the set of loans, saving the borrower some money. If the borrower were to consolidate the loans, this would leave the borrower with just one loan with a single interest rate.
Consolidation loans provide access to several alternate repayment plans besides standard ten-year repayment. These include extended repayment, graduated repayment, income contingent repayment (Direct Loans only) and income sensitive repayment (FFEL only). If you do not specify the repayment terms, you will receive standard ten-year repayment.
Consolidation loans often reduce the size of the monthly payment by extending the term of the loan beyond the 10-year repayment plan that is standard with federal loans. Depending on the loan amount, the term of the loan can be extended from 12 to 30 years. The reduced monthly payment may make the loan easier to repay for some borrowers. However, by extending the term of a loan the total amount of interest paid over the lifetime of the loan is increased.
In certain circumstances (for example, when one or more of the loans was being repaid in less than 10 years because of minimum payment requirements), a consolidation loan may decrease the monthly payment without extending the overall loan term beyond 10 years. In effect, the shorter-term loan is being extended to 10 years. The total amount of interest paid will increase unless you continue to make the same monthly payment as before, in which case the total amount of interest paid will decrease.
You do not need to pick an alternate repayment plan. We recommend sticking with standard ten-year repayment, because it will save you money. The alternate repayment plans may have lower monthly payments, but this increases the term of the loan and the total interest paid over the lifetime of the loan. See our caveat about extended repayment below.
Repayment on a consolidation loan will begin within 60 days of disbursement of the loan, unless the borrower qualifies for an deferment or forbearance.
Federal education loans, including consolidation loans, do not have a prepayment penalty. So you can pay off all or part of your federal education loans without incurring a penalty. If you want to take advantage of this, be sure to include a letter with the extra payment indicating that it should be applied to reducing your principal. Otherwise, the lender may treat it as an advance payment of the next month's monthly payment.
Tools for Evaluating Consolidation Options
FinAid's Loan Consolidation Calculator can help you understand the tradeoffs of consolidating your loans. It compares the reduction in the monthly loan payment with the increase in the total interest paid over the lifetime of the loan. It also shows you the interest rate on your consolidation loan.
Despite the switch to fixed interest rates on Stafford and PLUS loans eliminating a key financial incentive to consolidate, there are still several reasons to consolidate your education loans. These include having a single monthly payment, access to alternate repayment plans, the PLUS loan interest rate loophole, and the ability to reset the 3-year clock on deferments and forbearances. But consolidation can cut short the grace period, although the grace period loophole can work around this problem. It is best to avoid consolidating Perkins loans, because you lose several valuable benefits. Beware of extending the term of your loan, as this can increase the total interest paid over the lifetime of the loan; you can stick with standard ten-year repayment.
Before consolidating, always evaluate the benefits provided by the current holder of your loans. The loan discounts offered by originating lenders tend to be superior to those offered by consolidating lenders, since consolidation loans have tighter margins. Also, if you received a fee waiver or rebate from the originating lender, you may have to repay that discount if you consolidate with another lender. It may be possible to get some of the benefits of alternate repayment plans without consolidating, such as extended/graduated repayment with a loan term of up to 25 years and a single monthly payment, if you have more than $30,000 in federal education loan debt accumulated since October 7, 1998 with the lender. (This is due to a little known provision of the Higher Education Act, in section 428(b)(9)(A)(iv), and the regulations at 34 CFR 682.209(a)(6)(ix).)
You can change the repayment schedule on your loan once per year. So consider starting off with standard ten-year repayment on your consolidation loan. You are not required to start off with extended repayment. If you find it difficult to afford the payments, you can always switch to extended repayment later.
For More Information
FinAid has a page of common questions about consolidation.
The numerous student loan loopholes are discussed in depth in other sections of the FinAid site.
FinAid also maintains a list of education lenders who offer federal and private student loans, including consolidation loans.
Borrowers interested in federal consolidation loans should visit the US Department of Education's Federal Direct Consolidation Loan web site.
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Mark Kantrowitz, Founder | <urn:uuid:f22334cb-5aa4-4a92-b6ed-adfd4630a084> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.finaid.org/loans/consolidation.phtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959609 | 3,102 | 1.679688 | 2 |
How many times have you started a new weight-loss program and decided it was too hard or not working the way you expected it to? What does it take to keep you on task in a weight-loss program?
We have all been on our own journeys, trying to find the answer to feeling better physically, mentally and emotionally. We find many times that something along the way has discouraged us, whether it be people, time, energy or just a lack of understanding of how we might achieve our goals.
Finding like-minded people is essential for long-term success. Dr. Alan Hirsch knew that people like you and me have been struggling for a lifetime with our weight. With that said, he created SENAS, a product that is safe, effective and effortless. But like any weight-loss program, it takes time for our body to get in-step and make the proper adjustments to a new weight-loss product.
The uniqueness of SENSA is a phenomenon we call Sensory Specific Satiety. SENSA was designed to work with our sense of smell and the food we eat to help trigger Sensory Specific Satiety. The scientific principle behind the product is simple in that as we eat, our smell and taste receptors send a message to our brain, which release hormones that tell our body that it’s time to stop eating.
There is no diet required or exercise for this product to work. It is our participation with SENSA that makes this work. Michael Korda says, “Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility… In the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have is the ability to take on responsibility.”
So let’s look at the simplicity of using SENSA and what our responsibility is in getting results.
- Read the information in our SENSA Kit and listen to the DVD.
- Weigh and measure yourself before starting.
- Do Not compare your SENSA journey with any other weight-loss program you have been on.
- Set short-term weight-loss goals and constantly strive for greater goals. With each met goal celebrate your achievements.
- Weight yourself once a week.
- Get connected with like-minded people. Start with the SENSA Community at www.mysensa.com or contact firstname.lastname@example.org
- Keep hanging in there and do not let quitting be an option.
- Admit to yourself what you are doing that is not working for this program and be willing to make the necessary changes.
- Be willing to ask for help early on from those that have gone before you.
- Be accountable from the start of the program until you reach your goal.
My SENSA friends, I am a winner in this weight-loss program like many others. I have lost 45# in 7 months and have gone from a size 14 to a 4. I never exercised due to my time constraints but stayed consistent with sprinkling SENSA. The program is so simple but it does require you to stay focused and take one day at a time. I am here for you and “know” you too can be a winner. Keep Sprinkling! | <urn:uuid:a7c39240-e338-4b9b-972b-1fb2eac77187> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.trysensa.com/index.php/winners-never-quit/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959361 | 660 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Cartoons May Ease Anxiety for Kids Facing Surgery
FRIDAY, Nov. 16 (HealthDay News) -- Watching a favorite cartoon can reduce children's anxiety just before they receive anesthesia and undergo surgery, researchers have found.
The new study included 130 children in South Korea, aged 3 to 7, undergoing routine surgical procedures, such as tonsillectomy. In a pre-surgery waiting area, one group of children was allowed to watch a cartoon of their choice while another group was allowed to play with a favorite toy. A third group received no special treatment.
Anxiety scores in the waiting area were lowest among the children who played with a favorite toy. But after being moved to the operating room, anxiety scores were lowest for the children who watched their favorite cartoon. (A "Power Rangers" cartoon was the most popular choice.)
In the operating room, 43 percent of children who watched a cartoon had little or no anxiety, compared with 23 percent of those who brought a toy and 7 percent of those who received no special treatment, the investigators found.
The study was published in the November issue of the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia.
"Cartoon distraction" is an "inexpensive, easy to administer and comprehensive" way to reduce anxiety in young children before surgery, study leader Dr. Joengwoo Lee, of Chonbuk National University Hospital in South Korea, and colleagues explained in a journal news release.
Watching cartoons may reduce anxiety by distracting children, the researchers said. They noted that anxiety before surgery can be a major problem, causing emotional trauma for both children and their parents. In some cases, the study authors said, anxiety before surgery can lead to lasting behavioral problems, such as separation anxiety, aggressiveness and nightmares.
The study confirms what many parents already know about the power of cartoons to distract children, according to an accompanying editorial by Dr. Franklyn Cladis and Dr. Peter Davis of the University of Pittsburgh.
They said further research is needed to determine if reducing children's anxiety before an operation reduces the risk of behavioral problems after surgery.
The Nemours Foundation explains how to prepare your child for surgery.
SOURCE: Anesthesia & Analgesia, news release, November 2012 | <urn:uuid:24338a6a-90eb-4313-8f88-b79c8db20c25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wellstar.org/education/pages/article.aspx?aid=6,670452 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964901 | 461 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Renesas Electronics, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, has announced 13 new products in its 7th-generation Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) lineup with industry-leading high performance. The new IGBTs include the RJH/RJP65S series for 650 V and RJP1CS series for 1250 V. The new IGBTs are power semiconductor devices used in systems that convert DC into AC power, and are designed for applications that handle high voltages and large currents, such as power conditioners (power converters) for solar power generators and industrial motors. The 7th-generation technology, based on enhanced thin wafer process, sets a low losses trade-off between conduction, switching losses and robustness capability to withstand short circuit conditions.
Compared to the previous 6th-generation technology, products series of 600V and 1200V, the 7th-generation portfolio has higher voltage rating 650V and 1250V to address low temperature performance requirements and overvoltage blocking capability.
Renesas IGBTs are suitable in motor controls applications. In such cases the device short circuit capability is a design critical selection parameter. The 7th-generation IGBT series comes with a 10 µs rated short circuit tolerance making it suitable for motors in general.
Recently, concerns for environmental preservation and other factors have prompted the need to improve the energy efficiency of electrical equipment as well as an ongoing shift toward clean energy such as solar and wind power. Such efforts to boost energy efficiency have been vigorous in the area of equipment that handles high voltages and large currents, such as solar inverters, water-jet pumps, and large-current inverter-controlled motors. This has spurred demand for dramatically reduced loss in IGBT products used in the conversion of power from DC to AC for this type of equipment. However, there is a trade-off between saturation voltage which is key to reducing loss, and the high short circuit tolerance required in the equipment that handles large currents. It has been difficult to achieve low loss along with a high short circuit tolerance of around 10 microseconds, which is considered essential in applications such as motor drives. In response, Renesas has developed these high performance IGBTs.
Key Features of the new IGBTs:
· (1) Reduced saturation voltage of 1.6 V for 650 V versions and 1.8 V for 1250 V versions for better power efficiency
The exclusive ultrathin wafer technology reduced the saturation voltage to 1.6 V (typical value) from the 1.8 V (typical value) of comparable earlier Renesas products for the 650 V versions and to 1.8 V from 2.1 V for the 1250 V versions, a drop of about 12 percent and 15 percent in each case. This reduces power loss and contributes to increased efficiency.
· (2) High short circuit tolerance of 10 microseconds for a higher level of reliability
The high short circuit tolerance, essential in applications that handle large currents, has been improved from the 8 microseconds (µs) range of comparable earlier Renesas products to 10 µs or above by optimized cell structure technology. This ensures excellent reliability and robust performance in systems such as power conditioners for solar power inverters.
· (3) Faster switching
The reverse transfer capacitance (Cres) has been lowered by approximately 10 percent compared with earlier Renesas products by optimizing the surface structure of the device. This contributes to faster switching and makes it possible to build more efficient power converter circuits.
These improvements contribute to lower power loss and more stable operation in applications such as the three-phase inverter circuits widely used in large-current inverter blocks of solar power inverters or inverter-controlled motors for industrial use.
Renesas benefits customers by offering total solutions combining microcontrollers (MCUs) with analog and power devices. The new high-performance 7th-generation IGBT products take their place among the best power devices in the world in their category. They form the core of the Renesas lineup of power devices, and the company plans to release new products in the series moving forward.
Renesas also plans to release an enhanced line of kit solutions consisting of the new IGBT products with Renesas’ RL78 and RX families of MCUs for motor and inverter control and photocouplers for power device drive, among other combinations. Renesas is also preparing reference boards mounted with the new IGBT products to support customers’ kit evaluation and system design.
Shipping formats for the new IGBT products are wafer/chip and TO-247A package for the RJH65S series.
- Saturation voltage (VCE(sat)):
This is the most important index of the performance of an IGBT. It indicates the collector-emitter voltage drop when the device is conducting current. The lower the value, the smaller the conduction loss.
- Load Short Circuit Tolerance (tsc):
An index of an IGBT’s ability to withstand destruction. It indicates the amount of time before the IGBT is destroyed by unlimited current flow due to a short circuit. Generally speaking, a high value is desirable for applications demanding large current handling and high reliability, such as motor drives.
- Reverse transfer capacitance (Cres):
A parameter indicating the intrinsic capacitance between the gate and collector of the IGBT. Generally speaking, a smaller value mean faster switching of the device is possible, resulting in reduced switching losses.
Pricing and Availability
Samples shipments of Renesas’ 13 new IGBT products, including the RJH/RJP65S series for 650 V and the RJP1CS series for 1250 V, are scheduled to begin in July 2012, priced at US$4.3 for 650 V RJP65S06DWA per unit and US$5.0 for 1250 V RJP1CS06DWA per unit. Mass production is scheduled to begin in September 2012 and is expected to reach a scale of 500,000 units per month by April 2013. (Pricing and availability are subject to change without notice.) | <urn:uuid:6f1baee6-129e-4616-b1fc-003d375326c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tekedia.com/44947/renesas-electronics-announces-7th-generation-igbts-enabling-high-efficiency-solutions-in-industrial-applications-such-as-inverters-for-solar-power-and-industrial-motors/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931079 | 1,273 | 1.929688 | 2 |
Less than a month after a horrific elementary school shooting, the White House is fighting to keep the momentum for new gun legislation amid signs it's losing ground in Congress to other pressing issues.
Vice President Joe Biden has invited the National Rifle Association and other gun-owner groups for talks at the White House on Thursday. On Wednesday, the vice president will meet with victims' organizations and representatives from the video game and entertainment industries. The administration's goal is to forge consensus over proposals to curb gun violence.
President Barack Obama wants Biden to report back to him with policy proposals by the end of January. Obama has vowed to move swiftly on the recommendations, a package expected to include both legislative proposals and executive action.
"He is mindful of the need to act," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Tuesday.
But as the shock and sorrow over the Newtown, Conn., shooting fades, the tough fight facing the White House and gun-control backers is growing clearer. Gun-rights advocates, including the powerful NRA, are digging in against tighter legislation, conservative groups are launching pro-gun initiatives and the Senate's top Republican has warned it could be spring before Capitol Hill begins considering any gun legislation.
"The biggest problem we have at the moment is spending and debt," Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on Sunday. "That's going to dominate the Congress between now and the end of March. None of these issues will have the kind of priority as spending and debt over the next two or three months."
Tuesday marked the second anniversary of the Tucson, Ariz., attack that killed six people and critically injured former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Following that shooting, Obama called for a national dialogue on gun violence. But his words were followed by little action.
Giffords took a prominent role in the gun debate on Tuesday's anniversary. She and husband Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, wrote in an op-ed published in USA Today that their Americans for Responsible Solutions initiative would help raise money to support greater gun control efforts "to balance the influence of the gun lobby." Kelly has indicated that he and Giffords want to become a prominent voice for gun control and hope to start a national conversation about gun violence.
There was also little national progress on curbing gun bloodshed following shootings at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, a Texas Army base or a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, all of which occurred during Obama's first term.
Still, the killing of 6- and 7-year-olds at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14 did appear to stir a deeper reaction from the White House and Capitol Hill. Obama pushed gun control to the top of his domestic agenda for the first time and pledged to put the full weight of his presidency behind the issue. And some Republican and conservative lawmakers with strong gun rights records also took the extraordinary step of calling for a discussion on new measures.
But other gun-rights advocates have shown less flexibility. The NRA has rejected stricter gun legislation and suggested instead that the government put armed guards in every school in America as a way to curb violence. A coalition of conservative groups is also organizing a "gun appreciation day" later this month, to coincide with Obama's inauguration. | <urn:uuid:c0c09559-fc17-46ce-8b10-9a6bf0c61667> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/jan/08/white-house-tries-to-keep-momentum-on-gun-control/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97073 | 660 | 1.75 | 2 |
(Reuters) – Hours after U.S. President Barack Obama was re-elected, the United States backed a U.N. committee’s call on Wednesday to renew debate over a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global conventional arms trade.
U.N. delegates and gun control activists have complained that talks collapsed in July largely because Obama feared attacks from Republican rival Mitt Romney if his administration was seen as supporting the pact, a charge Washington denies.
But the U.N. General Assembly’s disarmament committee moved quickly after Obama’s win to approve a resolution calling for a new round of talks March 18-28. It passed with 157 votes in favor, none against and 18 abstentions.
For those who forget how UN arms control works:
This time, the pretext for the “disarmament” of the Karamojong is United Nations gun control. The Ugandan military is trying to round up every last firearm in Karamoja, supposedly for the Karamojong’s own good.
The procedure is euphemistically called “forcible disarmament.” It works something like this: The misnamed Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) will torture and rape Karamajong, after which some Karamojong might then disclose the location of some hidden guns. Or the army will burn down a village, after which it might find some guns in the ash left behind.
If the pastoral tribespeople’s bloody history with Amin weren’t enough, they don’t much have reason to trust the current government of Uganda, either. The current government has repeatedly broken its promises of goods, services, and personal protection for tribespeople who voluntarily disarmed.
Last summer, the Ugandan army’s atrocities led the United Nations Development Programme to cut off its disarmament aid to Uganda. But the outrage didn’t last long. This year, the aid was restored. Although the United Nations does not fund the Ugandan army, the UN does provide a public relations sanction for the disarmament. In November, Louise Arbour, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, stated: “The actions of the UPDF do not comply with international human rights law and domestic law.” But, she also stipulated, “the decision of the Government to undertake renewed efforts to eradicate illegal weapons in Karamoja is essential….” Never mind that the disarmament campaign also eradicates people.
Disarmament by governments is a means to control. Governments don’t need to control citizens they respect, they need to control serfs they dominate. We don’t need that kind of government anywhere in the world, but the UN, wretched menagerie of dictators and thugs that it is, pushes for this stuff all the time. And now the US is back on board.
That didn’t take long. | <urn:uuid:129173fe-2c32-4151-bf47-5e9715c3d9c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thepatriotperspective.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/us-backs-un-arms-treaty-talks/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933703 | 606 | 1.75 | 2 |
Discussion of Abhidhamma and related Commentaries
Moderator: Mahavihara moderator
Is Mahavihara Abhidhamma comparable to any modern western philosophies of mind?
There are a lot of different theories, I'm aware of three main contenders in academic thought, all of which are monistic:
- Functionalism: The mind is simply a computer, an information processor, defined not as an entity of itself but by the functions it performs. So, theoretically, even things like computers or any system which processes inputs and outputs is a "mind", in the same sense.
- Biological Naturalism: Brains create minds. That is, minds are a biological phenomenon and thoughts are merely higher-level features of the brain.
- Anomalous Monism: Really confusing. I've read about it here, but still don't think I fully understand it.
How is the description of mind and body similar to or different from the above views?
Would you say the Mahavihara Abhidhamma is dualist or is it monist\nondualist?
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Some thoughts from Venerable K. Sri Dhammananda
To what extent can we compare modern psychology with the analysis provided in the Abhidhamma? Modern psychology, limited as it is, comes within the scope of Abhidhamma in so far as it deals with the mind -- with thoughts, thought processes, and mental states. The difference lies in the fact that Abhidhamma does not accept the concept of a psyche or a soul.
The analysis of the nature of the mind given in the Abhidhamma is not available through any other source.. Even modern psychologists are very much in the dark with regards to subjects like mental impulses or mental beats (Javana Citta) as discussed in the Abhidhamma. Dr. Graham Howe, an eminent Harley Street psychologist, wrote in his book, the Invisible Anatomy:
'In the course of their work many psychologists have found, as the pioneer work of C.G. Jung has shown, that we are near to [the] Buddha. To read a little Buddhism is to realize that the Buddhists knew two thousand five hundred years ago far more about our modern problems of psychology than they have yet been given credit for. They studied these problems long ago, and found the answers too. We are now rediscovering the Ancient Wisdom of the East.'
If you have asked me of the origination of unease, then I shall explain it to you in accordance with my understanding:
Whatever various forms of unease there are in the world, They originate founded in encumbering accumulation. (Pārāyanavagga)'We should not congratulate someone on the success of their misdeeds, but on the contrary should endeavour to advise him or her to lead a more skilful and wholesome life. If such advice is ignored then we can only give up and let go' - Phra PanyapatipoDharma Wheel (Mahayana / Vajrayana forum)
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Registered users: acinteyyo, Bing [Bot], Dmytro, dxm_dxm, EmptyShadow, Feathers, fivebells, Google [Bot], ground, marc108, mettafuture, mikenz66, Mindstar, palchi, Peter_S, piotr, purple planet, reflection, Sekha, serg_o, Zenainder | <urn:uuid:aa698449-3c0a-4b16-a4ae-ac48868934b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=588&start=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92596 | 767 | 2.375 | 2 |
We began with the ideas of idealism, the Treaty of Westphalia formed the modern state system, thereby creating an interation between tem, a need for communication, mostly through war and then alliances.
The romantic era was a period where nationalism emerged, it defines the state in terms of national interests "nationalism". Kings weren't fighting each other anymore, now it was nation against nation. WWI showed that cerain things needed to change in the state system for humanity as a whole. You can learn things from war from their devastation. The British enlightenment period came up with the word "humanity". In addition to nationalism in the romantic era, people were thought to have a taranscending identity with humanity as a whole. The nation state is cyclical while humanity is progressive. Which leads to teleologic v teleonomic interpretations of history. Teleology (tele=goal) refers to the idea that progress is inevitable, this is the strong version of progress. Teleonomy on the other hand means that progress may not be inevitable but that it may happen. This is why people go to school so that they can hope to make progress happen, the idea that we can learn from mistakes and create better condtions. | <urn:uuid:8aedc30c-821b-44ca-96a1-0be07e79b18c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.lib.umn.edu/swigg010/superswiggie/2007/02/212.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960501 | 246 | 3.375 | 3 |
- The Enterprise
- The Recorder
Two local women’s organizations are giving middle and high school aged females an evening of tradition, history and three religions.
The Daughters of Abraham of Southern Maryland and the Calvert County Commission for Women are holding “An Evening of Girl Talk about Women in Three Great World Religions,” focusing on Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The event will run from 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 20, at Southern Maryland Islamic Center and will count as community service hours for high schoolers.
One of the event’s coordinators, Roberta Safer, explained that the event is one of the county’s initiatives to reaffirm its commitment to Title IX, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.
Title IX, signed into law June 23, 1972, by President Richard Nixon, guarantees equal opportunities to women and girls “under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance,” the law states.
Safer said she wanted teenagers to be the target audience for this event to familiarize them with religions outside of their own.
“A lot of people don’t know what the Islam religion is or who Jews are. ... We want them to know what we bring to the table,” said Safer, who said she and fellow Daughters of Abraham member Norma Imershein will present at the Judaism table.
Safer said the event will be run with all three religions having their own tables and the attendees rotating from station to station.
She said the religions will discuss faith, tradition and practice with emphasis on items like Muslim clothing, Jewish rituals and Christian services.
Because “there’s no way you can have an event without food,” Safer said pizza will be provided to the attendees.
“It’s a good thing to bring to kids. It’s a good understanding that people aren’t all that different,” she said.
Come to a Neighborhood Watch training session
The Calvert Alliance Against Substance Abuse Inc. invites the community to a free Neighborhood Watch Program training session from noon to 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 20, in the Courthouse Square conference room on Main Street in Prince Frederick. Financially supported by CAASA and taught by Sgt. Mike Bomgardner of the Calvert County Sheriff’s Office, this specialized training will provide neighborhoods with the necessary information to set up a crime watch program. Those interested in participating should contact CAASA Coordinator Candice D’Agostino at 410-535-3733.
United Way taking grant applicants
The United Way of Calvert County has announced the 2013 Basic Needs Grant opportunity for 501(c)3 organizations that provide emergency food and shelter to people in crisis in Calvert County. According to a press release from United Way, the goals of the grant are to help individuals and families meet their nutritional and housing needs. Average grant amounts will range from $1,000 to $3,000, the release said.
Eligible organizations must be nonprofit; follow the guidelines of the Patriot Act; practice non-discrimination; have an accounting system in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP); and demonstrate the capability to deliver emergency food or shelter programs.
Qualifying organizations should go to www.unitedwaycalvert.org for grant terms and forms. For additional questions or to request a mailed application, contact Jennifer Moreland, director of community impact, at 410-286-0103, or email email@example.com. Completed grant applications are due by Friday, Nov. 2.
Domestic violence awareness events coming up
The Crisis Intervention Center and the Calvert County Commission for Women announced via press release the following October events to support those who are living with domestic violence and to honor those who have left abusive relationships:
The Clothesline Project, which is displayed throughout Calvert County, honors those who live in or have escaped domestic violence. According to the release, the Clothesline Project is a program where T-shirts are made by domestic violence survivors with positive affirmations that life does get better. Previous locations for the Clothesline Projects include College of Southern Maryland, the Calvert County Health Department, District Court, Circuit Court and the Calvert libraries in Prince Frederick, Chesapeake Beach and Lusby.
Also, on Oct. 16, the Calvert County Board of County Commissioners will proclaim October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month during its public meeting.
Hills named Calvert Hospice campaign chairs
Huntingtown resident and ABC7/WJLA-TV Chief Meteorologist Doug Hill and his wife, Mary-Ann, have been named Calvert Hospice Annual Campaign Honorary Chairs, according to a press release from Calvert Hospice. The press release said that the Hills had firsthand experience with Calvert Hospice during the last few weeks of Mary-Ann’s mother’s life.
For more information about Calvert Hospice programs and services, call 410-535-0892, or go to www.calverthospice.org. | <urn:uuid:a01dca64-b314-4d02-96a5-80f16fbaebfa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.somdnews.com/article/20121010/NEWS/710109680/1116/1116/-girl-talk-event-to-focus-on-three-religions&template=southernMaryland | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938466 | 1,068 | 1.828125 | 2 |
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Supporting Libyan-led efforts to build an inclusive and accountable government by encouraging dialogue, amplifying citizens’ voices, and increasing participation in new democratic processes.
In February 2011, the regime of Muammar Qadhafi met popular protests in eastern Libya with bruIn February 2011, the regime of Muammar Qadhafi responded to protests in eastern Libya with brutal violence, which led to a popular revolution that brought his 42-year reign to an end. On July 7, 2012, just eight months after Qadhafi’s fall, Libya held its first national elections in a half century for a General National Congress (GNC) that oversaw the selection of a government and will guide the nation through the development of a new constitution. Despite these historic accomplishments, ongoing local conflicts and incidences of targeted violence, including militants storming the U.S. compound in Benghazi, have shown that the fate of Libya’s transition is far from certain.
While an impatient populace expresses frustration with stubborn militias, lingering inter- and intra-communal tensions, and sluggish political processes, the security situation is increasingly unclear and is likely to dominate the attention of the new government in Tripoli. Amid the uncertainty, however, new political freedoms have ushered in emerging civil society organizations and independent media outlets which are working to promote and sustain the spirit of change, peace, and reconciliation in Libya.
USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (USAID/OTI) launched the Libya Transition Initiative (LTI) in June 2011 to support Libyan efforts to build an inclusive and peaceful democratic future that reflects the will and needs of the Libyan people.
Specifically, USAID/OTI partners with civil society organizations, local media outlets, and interim governing authorities to:
- Promote inclusive transitional political and justice processes;
- Reinforce national reconciliation and identity; and
- Improve government legitimacy and address other community grievances.
In each of these areas, USAID/OTI has identified an urgent need to ensure the voices of everyday citizens, especially women, youth, and minorities, are amplified so all Libyans can participate in the country’s historic transition to democracy. As examples, USAID/OTI has implemented the following types of activities:
Public outreach campaigns to keep citizens informed about and engaged in the transition process;
- Projects that help emerging independent media outlets improve the quality of information and advance the capacity of the media sector to serve as a conduit for public exchange;
- Workshops that facilitate dialogue between Libyan citizens, governmental bodies, and international experts to help develop participatory processes for government formation;
- Dialogues that bring together community leaders from around the country to develop shared strategies to mitigate conflict and promote reconciliation.
As the political process continues to evolve, USAID/OTI’s rapid response ability will be well suited to meet additional unforeseen needs that may emerge.
Last updated: May 17, 2013
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- Work with USAID | <urn:uuid:bf9966d7-0ddd-485a-b48c-4a9e7fba0473> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usaid.gov/libya/political-transitions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920508 | 746 | 2.640625 | 3 |
DRYLAND CROPPING SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT FOR THE CENTRAL GREAT PLAINS
Location: Central Plains Resources Management Research
Title: Mid-Infrared and Near Infrared Spectral Properties of Mycorrhizal and Non-Mycorrhizal Root Cultures
Submitted to: Journal of Applied Spectroscopy
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: March 2, 2009
Publication Date: May 1, 2009
Citation: Calderon, F.J., Acosta Martinez, V., Douds, D.D., Reeves III, J.B., Vigil, M.F. 2009. Mid-Infrared and Near Infrared Spectral Properties of Mycorrhizal and Non-Mycorrhizal Root Cultures. Journal of Applied Spectroscopy. 63(5)494-500.
Interpretive Summary: Mycorrhizal fungi can be very beneficial to crops because they grow into plant roots and aid in the absorption of nutrients and water from soil, which often results in increased crop yields. This study describes a possible new technology to detect mycorrhizal fungi in roots using infrared light, which can possibly simplify and speed up the measurement of mycorrhizae in field collected root samples.
We investigated the Fourier-transformed mid-infrared (MidIR) and near infrared (NIR) spectroscopic properties of mycorrhizal (M) and non-mycorrhizal (NM) Ri T-DNA transformed carrot roots with the goal of finding infrared markers for colonization by arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. The roots were cultured with or without the AM fungus Glomus intraradices under laboratory conditions. A total of 50 M and NM samples were produced after pooling subsamples. The roots were dried, ground, and scanned separately for the NIR and MidIR. The root samples were analyzed for fatty acid composition in order to confirm mycorrhizal infection and determine the presence of fatty acid markers. Besides the roots, fatty acid standards, pure cultures of saprophytic fungi, and chitin were also scanned in order to identify spectral bands likely to be found in M samples. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was used to illustrate spectral differences between the M and NM root samples. The NIR achieved better resolution than the MidIR, because no pre-treatment was needed to get good resolution in the PCA analysis of the NIR data. Standard normal variate and detrending pretreatment improved the resolution between M and NM in the MidIR range. The PCA loadings and/or the spectral subtraction of selected samples shows that M roots are characterized by absorbances at or close to 400 cm-1, 1100-1170 cm-1, 1690 cm-1, 2928 cm-1, and 5032 cm-1. The NM samples had characteristic absorbances at or near 1734 cm-1, 3500 cm-1, 4000 cm-1, 4389 cm-1, and 4730 cm-1. Some of the bands that differentiate M from NM roots are prominent in the spectra of pure fungal cultures, chitin, and fatty acids. Our results show that mycorrhizal and nonmycorrhizal root tissues can be differentiated via MidIR and NIR spectra with the advantage that the same samples can then be used for other analyses. | <urn:uuid:1a877287-287f-4e32-a17e-23aba6e72e47> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?seq_no_115=232056 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902079 | 718 | 2.171875 | 2 |
The Edible Churchyard educates NYC communities about food justice, while facilitating the transformation of urban spaces into growing possibilities.
The Edible Churchyard is a program borne out of Union Theological Seminary’s (UTS) visionary recognition that ecological justice in an integral and inseparable aspect of social justice. The Edible Churchyard is growing into an experiential, place-based learning laboratory. As a program within UTS, we are in a unique position to train hundreds of future community leaders every year. We are utilizing our growing spaces and edibles to engage the community about food, eating, and justice—and their theological implications. Integral to our work is community engagement and education.
For more information visit the Edible Churchyard website at ediblechurchyard.org. | <urn:uuid:1a7252bb-239b-4657-9c34-e16ae3933087> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsnyc.edu/page.aspx?pid=3058 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933038 | 161 | 1.875 | 2 |
Amid Swirl of History, Egypt Steps Back From Brink of Chaos
By Abdallah Schleifer
Cairo — Only hours before Egypt learned that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi had won the presidential election, feverish rumors swept across Cairo’s more fashionable districts.
After days of delay, word on the street was that Ahmed Shafik, Morsi’s main rival and a member of Hosni Mubarak’s old guard, was poised to be declared the winner of the country’s first democratic vote.
The rumors were greeted with satisfaction among Egypt’s secular middle class, some of whom feared the Muslim Brotherhood more than they feared the bloodshed and chaos that could have resulted from the perception of a stolen election.
The chatter brought a smile to the face of one of Mubarak’s former foreign ministers, whom I was interviewing at the time about a topic unrelated to the election.
After taking a call on his cell phone, he hung up and grinned even wider.
A very well-placed friend, he explained, had just called in to inform him that the electoral commission would soon proclaim Shafik the winner.
Within a few hours, the rumors and “highly placed sources” had melted away. They were swept aside by a stunning reality: The country’s electoral commission announced that Morsi won the election. Within a few hours, the Supreme Military Council congratulated him. Later, Shafik conceded.
The next day, a prosecutor announced that corruption lawsuits naming Shafik in connection with crooked land sales during his time as a Mubarak minister would go forward.
Denying the charges, Shafik nevertheless left the country for Abu Dhabi on June 26, accompanied by his family. Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s former spy chief and the former ruling party kingmaker, had reportedly already fled to the Persian Gulf with his family.
Meanwhile, Morsi went on national television just hours after he was named president-elect. He gave a long and repetitious speech that appealed to the undeniably sentimental streak of the Egyptian people. It worked. Many Shafik supporters, who had been convinced that a Morsi victory might usher in an Islamist reign of terror, were reassured by Morsi’s words. He told them he would be president of all the people, that Egypt was one family, that everyone’s rights would be respected.
Egypt, in other words, had stepped back from the brink. Its military leaders, who seemed intent on engineering a soft coup and handing the election to Shafik, had second thoughts.
What happened? Not surprisingly, some claimed that “Washington” (Obama? Hillary Rodham Clinton? The Pentagon?) had called the military command and warned that reversing the election results would destabilize the country. Others said the U.S. bluntly threatened to freeze the more than $1 billion in annual military aid.
Some believe that the top military command did not need a shove. Even they came to recognize at the last minute that getting the electoral commission to fiddle with the vote would be a disaster. In any case, even with Morsi in charge, the armed forces would retain its tremendous powers, at least for now. The recently elected pro- Morsi parliament has been dissolved, and military has assumed legislative authority until a new constitution is drafted and a new parliament is elected.
In the end, it matters little. Morsi is Egypt’s president, and he has been saying all the right things. He told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that Christians and women would be named to high positons, perhaps as vice presidents. Morsi said he had resigned from the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliate the Freedom and Justice Party. He vowed that his Cabinet would include technocrats as well as political figures from across the spectrum of Egyptian political life.
Asked by Amanpour whether he would respect the Camp David peace treaty with Israel, Morsi replied he would respect any treaty that previous Egyptian governments had signed. Amanpour pressed on, asking specifically about the peace treaty with Israel. Morsi replied that his governrment would respect the treaty as long as Israel respected it.
The main reason that Morsi won the presidential election and that the Muslim Brotherhood did so well in the first really free parliamentary election last winter is simple:. Aside from the former ruling party, it is the only large, seriously organized, dedicated and politically disciplined modern political movement in Egypt. It reminds one in that sense of the Western European communist parties at their most effective stretches. Like those parties, the Muslim Brotherhood is organized along quasi-Leninist, “democratic centralist” lines. The difference is that Islamists turn religion into ideology. They believe that God is history, while the Communists believe history is God. Needless to say, the world that the Muslim Brotherhood is part of has changed completely since its younger days in the 1950s and ’60s.
Morsi is completely different from the older generation of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders. He got his doctorate and started his family in the United States. His two sons are American citizens. His past mirrors that of Tunisia’s Islamist leader Rached Ghannouchi, who was in exile for years in Britain before Arab Spring protests catapulted him to power. He has so far behaved with a refreshing respect for pluralism and tolerance.
The refreshing change comes with a shocking irony, however. Decades ago, under the historic influences of socialism and fascism, the Muslim Brotherhood had a social program that resembled that of the New Deal and European syndicalism. It promised Social Security, real health insurance, public works projects to dramatically reduce unemployment, trade unionism and worker ownership.
That kind of old-style Muslim Brotherhood plan could be precisely what is desperately needed now in an Egypt burdened by vast unemployment and stunting poverty. But instead of pushing forward with that legacy, Morsi’s economic plan sounds barely different from that of the Mubarak regime. He promises neo-liberalism that at its very best will be one small step above the corrupt crony version of capitalism that the developing world knows only too well. It certainly does not sound like a New Deal for the Arab world’s biggest new democracy.
Source: The Jewish Daily Forward Abdallah Schleifer, a former bureau chief for NBC News in Cairo, is a decades long resident of Egypt and a professor of journalism, emeritus at American University, Cairo. | <urn:uuid:fd795be4-c40d-4e09-9324-4e0b6b840feb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/amid-swirl-of-history-egypt-steps-back-from-brink-of-chaos | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979239 | 1,309 | 2.046875 | 2 |
AIR System Monitor - Electric Air Injection Pump System
AIR System Monitor
The Secondary Air Injection (AIR) System Monitor is an on-board strategy designed to monitor the proper function of the secondary air injection system. The AIR Monitor for the Electric Secondary Air Injection Pump system consists of two monitor circuits: an AIR circuit to diagnose concerns with the primary circuit side of the Solid State Relay (SSR) , and an AIR Monitor circuit to diagnose concerns with the secondary circuit side of the SSR. A functional check is also performed that tests the ability of the AIR system to inject air into the exhaust. The functional check relies upon Heated Oxygen Sensor (HO2S) sensor feedback to determine the presence of air flow. The monitor is enabled during AIR system operation and only after certain base engine conditions are first satisfied. Input is required from the Engine Coolant Temperature (ECT) , Intake Air Temperature (IAT) , and Crankshaft Position (CKP) sensors and the Heated Oxygen Sensors (HO2S) Monitor test must also have passed without a fault detection to enable the AIR Monitor. The AIR Monitor is also activated during on demand self-test.
The AIR circuit is normally held high through the AIR bypass solenoid and SSR when the output driver is off. Therefore a low AIR circuit indicates a driver is always on and a high circuit indicates an open in the Powertrain Control Module (PCM) . The Diagnostic Trouble Code (DTC) associated with this test is DTC P0412.
The AIR Monitor circuit is held low by the resistance path through the AIR pump when the pump is off. If the AIR Monitor circuit is high there is either an open circuit to the Powertrain Control Module (PCM) from the pump or there is power supplied to the AIR Pump. If the AIR Monitor is low when the pump is commanded on, there is either an open circuit from the SSR or the SSR has failed to supply power to the pump.
The DTCs associated with this test are DTCs P1413 and P1414.
The functional check may be done in two parts: at startup when the AIR pump is normally commanded on, or during a hot idle if the startup test was not able to be performed. The flow test relies upon the HO2S to detect the presence of additional air in the exhaust when introduced by the Secondary Air Injection system.
The DTC associated with this test is Diagnostic Trouble Code (DTC) P0411. | <urn:uuid:8d49129a-1554-4ad5-bc98-94b851019502> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alldatadiy.com/alldatadiy/DIY~G~C41407~R0~OD~N/0/80851247/83204708/83204719/110671822/34853741/34857029/34857699/34857700/34850276/136214683 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92059 | 519 | 2.171875 | 2 |
See how to use takes .
Press on a take to see information about the take.
Press on a take to bring up a menu.
|Add take button|
Create a new take as the child of the current take.
|Show contents checkbox|
Shows or hides the right pane showing which parameters are included in the selected take.
|Default name field|
Specify the default base name to use when creating new takes.
Switches to the current take. See also the takeset command.
Adds a new take as a child. See also the takeadd command.
Adds a new take between the current take and its children. See also the takeadd command.
Copies the current take in order to be able to paste it.
Pastes the previously copied take.
Load an externally saved take hierarchy as a child of the current take. See also the takeload command.
Save the current take to an external file. See also the takesave command.
|Save take (and children)|
Save the current take and all its children to an external file. See also the takesave command.
Deletes the current take while moving its children to its parent take. See also the takerm command.
|Delete take (and children)|
Deletes the current take along with all its children. See also the takerm command. | <urn:uuid:cf5dc73c-88ad-44f6-96e1-4e01bd2a03c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini11.1/ref/panes/takes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912519 | 286 | 2.296875 | 2 |
A Plan to Provide Fair RepresentationJim Cullen
The method by which Texas members of Congress are elected is unjust, although not for the reasons enumerated by the disgruntled Republicans who recently played out their lawsuit before a panel of federal judges in Houston.
GOP officials supported minority voting rights at the state legislature in 1991 as long as the creation of new black-majority or Hispanic-majority districts threatened established white Democrats in Congress. And, for the first time, a black majority district was created in Dallas and a Hispanic majority district was drawn in Houston. But, in one of their few partisan manifestations, the Democratic majorities in the legislature managed to protect incumbents.
Now bawling and mewling Republican partisans want to revisit Congressional reapportionment in the federal courts, possibly because the GOP still did not manage to beat those white Democratic incumbents, even after stripping off those loyal Democratic minorities; instead they only added to the Democratic majority in Congress.
It should come as no surprise that a reapportionment plan produced by the legislature would be formed by political considerations, as Rena Hicks, the state's counsel for the attorney general's office, argued. Given the documented reluctance of white voters to support black (and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic) candidates, it seems reasonable to prescribe districts with black or Hispanic majorities, when possible.
But if minority-packed districts are to be condemned as apartheid, the best alternative to increase diversity and give minorities a reason to vote may be to replace the current winner-take-all election system with proportional representation.
This sort of talk got Lani Guinier tarred with the label of "Quota Queen" by the nation's con-servatives as they browbeat President Bill Clinton into backing off from Guinier as his choice for assistant attorney general for civil rights, but the time has come to consider alternatives to reinvigorate democracy and public service.
Proportional election systems include limited voting, in which voters cast fewer votes than the number of seats up for election; cumulative voting, in which voters cast as many votes as there are seats and may divide those votes among candidates; and preference voting, in which voters rank candidates according to their preferences. All three methods are effective in promoting minority representation and all three are viewed as heresy by the political establishment that likes the current winner-take-all method that favors incumbents and money.
A Proportional Representation Plan for Texas
Consider the potential impact of cumulative voting in Texas urban centers: Harris County, with a population of nearly 3 million, now has all or part of seven Congressional districts. If districts were drawn within the county's borders, Harris would get five districts.
Whites, with 64.7% of the county's population, now claim 85% of the current delegation to Congress. If Harris County's Congressional representatives were elected by proportional vote, any bloc with 17% of the vote would be virtually guaranteed representation, while organized blocs with less than 17% would still have a good shot at placing their candidates in Congress. Blacks, who comprise 19.2% of the population, and Hispanics, who comprise 19.2% of the population, should be able to elect two of the representatives under a proportional system.
What's more, any other group that could put together 17% of the vote would win a Congressional seat. Organized labor ought to be able to muster that much. Environmentalists, who are now scattered throughout the county, could send a green candidate to Congress.
Dallas County, with a population of two million, now has all or part of seven Congressional districts. In the current delegation, six of the county's U.S. representatives are white men and one is a black woman. If districts were drawn within the county's borders, Dallas would get three districts (and one-third of a fourth district, which could be filled out with outlying suburbs).
Whites are 67%, blacks 19.9% and Hispanics 17% of the county's population. If four reps were chosen, blacks could combine with Latinos or liberal whites to elect as many as three of their own under a proportional voting plan under which a bloc of 21% could elect a member of Congress.
The current winner-take-all system has brought us to the point where barely half the electorate bothers to vote
Bexar County, with a population of 1,232,000, now has all or part of four Congressional districts within its county lines. Three of the incumbents are Hispanic and two are Republicans. If districts were drawn within the county, Bexar County would get two districts. It could be joined with Travis County, which has a district of its own, and the Hill Country to generate four members of Congress.
Such a regional vote likely would elect a white liberal, two Hispanics and a Republican, roughly the same combination as winner-take-all elections would produce in those districts, but at least Austin Republicans and Hill Country liberals could help elect representatives of their choice.
The same practice could be followed if the remaining 17 or so districts in the state were combined into four or five regional districts. Blacks do not have enough voting strength in any East Texas district to elect a candidate, but they would have a good shot at electing an East Texas member of Congress if four or five East Texas seats were combined into an at-large districts with a proportional vote. And Republicans could elect a representative in South Texas.
History Shows PR Can Work
Proportional representation has precedents in Texas and elsewhere. In the past three years, 22 local jurisdictions in Texas have adopted proportional voting plans, according to the Southwest Voter Research Institute. They include the Abernathy, Andrews, Anson, Bovina, Denver City, Dumas, Friona, Hale Center, Lockhart, Morton, Rotan, Springlake, Stamford and Yoakum school boards and Abernathy, Anton, Earth, Friona, Loving, Morton and Olton city councils, all of which adopted cumulative voting plans, and the Grapeland city council, which adopted a limited voting plan.
Before the Voting Rights Act, Texas elected members of Congress as well as state legislators in urban counties at-large. The state still elects its judges in urban counties at large. Limited voting is used in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Hartford, Connecticut. Illinois legislatures were elected by cumulative voting from 1870 to 1980, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, city council seats are filled by preference voting. Most of the world's democracies use proportional representation.
"It is rather a radical idea, I suppose, as some have seen it, but I think it is something that is being considered as an alternative to the districting that would produce the sort of contortions that are under review in the federal court," said Bob Brischetto, executive director of the Southwest Voter Research Institute. He noted that the U.S. Justice Department has supported the use of proportional representation in resolving local voting rights cases, although Congress would have to approve a change from single-member Congressional districts.
Simply put, conservative whites have always been overrepresented in Congress, the legislature and the courts because the system is stacked against minorities. In a proportional system, an organized minority bloc should be able to break through.
This likely would mix things up and lead to more turnover, since an incumbent who failed to get out his or her vote could be picked off by a sharpshooting challenger. It also would encourage candidates to organize local communities and run positive, issue-oriented campaigns; negative campaigns might undercut support for the targeted candidate but would not necessarily benefit the mudslinger.
The current winner-take-all system has brought us to the point where barely half the electorate bothers to vote. Maybe proportional representation, with the prospect of shaking up Congress, would lure the disenfranchised half back to democracy. At least it is worth a look.
Jim Cullen is an editor at the Texas Observer, an Austin-based bi-weekly where this commentary first appeared on July 22, 1994. | <urn:uuid:37142600-1aae-483f-a839-650dd2e7e099> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archive.fairvote.org/global/?page=503 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970733 | 1,633 | 2.28125 | 2 |
NEW YORK (Customer Service Experience) - Customer service is undergoing a revolution, not just in the ways that customers communicate with companies, but in the types of messages they communicate and the reasons for those contacts, speakers at the inaugural Customer Service Experience conference said.
The customer experience life cycle, as defined by research firm Ovum, starts when a consumer researches a product, and takes her through many steps, including shopping, selecting, purchasing, using, contacting service or support, recommending to others, and repurchasing. From a company standpoint, these processes can involve customer service, sales, marketing, IT, billing, and several other departments, all of which must be communicating together to effectively reach the customer and serve her needs.
"There area lot more touchpoints than ever before, said Ian Jacobs, a senior analyst at Ovum and one of the conference chairs. These touchpoints include phone and email, Web chat and Web self-service, social media, text message, voice message, fax, and in the store. And not surprisingly, the number of contacts using paper and physical stores are going down, Jacobs said.
But more than that, customer contact now spans multiple channels. According to Ovum research, only 25 percent of customers typically use only one channel. Conversely, 74 percent use multiple channels (62 percent use three or four, while 12 percent use five or more). Additiomally, Ovum expects that by 2016, more than half of all customer contacts will start from a mobile device, with 36 percent of those coming from smartphones. "The smart device is becoming a critical chokepoint between the customer and the enterprise," Jacobs said.
But at the same time, "call volumes will decrease dramatically starting in 2016," and "the [customer service rep] will become the contact of last resort," he added.
And while the smartphone grows in popularity, still the majority of toll-free customer service lines "are not designed for these devices," said Colin Schiller, a founding partner of Serve Lab.
For apps to truly embrace the mobile customer, they need to be not only location-based, but also intention-based, meaning that they incorporate elements of the user's personal profile, presence, and history, said Philip Easter, director of mobile applications at American Airlines, which has a mobile application that has been downloaded by more than 4 million people.
Also feeding the mobile frenzy is Apple's Siri digital assistant, which Robert Gary, vice president and general manager of Nuance Mobile Care, says changed customer care. "Siri has raised the awareness and expectations for the experience possible on a mobile phone," he said..
With all the changes, though, it is important that companies stay the course with their customer service strategies, according to Dan Miller, founder and senior analyst at Opus Research. These should, by now, include the move to IP communications, mobile, social, real time, cloud, and home agents, he added.
And it's just as important that companies break down the siloes between their different departments. Even today, "everyone sees their own piece, but few see the customer experience as a complete lifecycle event," said Keith Dawson, a senior analyst at Ovum.
Dawson also pointed out that many companies have had a problem integrating their mobile applications into their basic operations because there is still a lot of confusion as to who owns the app. The mobile app also adds a lot of data to an already complex environment, he added. "Data is not being leveraged where it can be of the most use," he said.
Real-time decisioning, he said, is not only possible but recommended. "It amounts to collecting enough data about the customer at the time of the interaction to enable the company to proactively fix any issues," he said. | <urn:uuid:a6641d7c-99a6-4044-a1c8-403c30e0de7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News/Daily-News/Customer-Service-Adapts-to-Multiple-Environments-84328.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964773 | 776 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Even though Spencer knew nothing about electricity, he signed on to install the system. He learned entirely by trial and error and studied textbooks by night. When the project ended, he was a skilled electrician.
The Titanic's SOS failure and sinking in 1912 added up to a turning point. It dramatically popularized wireless telegraphy operators. One of those hooked was Spencer, who joined the Navy to learn the craft.
To make up for his limited schooling, "I just got hold of a lot of textbooks and taught myself while I was standing watch at night," he said. He learned trigonometry, calculus, chemistry, physics and metallurgy.
Spencer and Raytheon baked the first microwave in 1947, an 800-pound Radar Range that cost shoppers $3,000. Spencer Family Archives View Enlarged Image
By the time he joined Raytheon in 1925, Spencer had a reputation as one of the best electric tube designers who "could make a working tube out of a sardine can," said a Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist.
In The Know
In a 1958 Reader's Digest article, an MIT scientist suggested Spencer's lack of schooling was a plus: "The educated scientist knows many things won't work. Percy doesn't know what can't be done."
Following the end of World War II in 1945, Spencer wrote about his time at Raytheon, saying, "We found ourselves with zero business in the microwave tube field. It was in this period that I got the idea of cooking with microwaves."
The magnetron device used for radar caused a stream of electrons interacting with a magnet to resonate in a specially shaped, high-powered vacuum tube. The result was microwave radiation.
Scientists knew that magnetrons generated heat when molecules reacted to microwave frequencies.
As the story goes, Spencer was at a lab where magnetrons were being tested. As he stood close by one, he recognized that a candy bar in his pocket had melted.
He had an itch to find out more.
At the time, Raytheon revenue was plunging and needed to develop products for the civilian market.
CEO Laurence Marshall pulled together his top engineers. Spencer suggested they should build a microwave oven. He had solved some of Raytheon's greatest challenges. Now Marshall told him to go for it.
Spencer built a box with a magnetron in it and put popcorn kernels inside. In short order the kernels popped. An egg was next. Spencer began using it to reheat his lunches.
The development of the microwave grew from these observations, and in 1947 the first microwave oven hit the market. | <urn:uuid:f35e205b-4ec5-415e-a515-8d2af2f48735> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.investors.com/management-leaders-in-success/010511-558851-percy-spencer-put-the-microwave-on-everyones-radar.htm?p=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980464 | 541 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Georgia Tech architecture students create public awareness for sustainability
A team of eleven Georgia Tech School of Architecture students participated in an international competition aimed at building awareness of how much we waste and at supporting the power of recycling. The Tower of Babylon, sponsored by the Alliance of Technical Universities, required that teams use only local materials, their brains, and their hands.
The team from Tech chose two materials: plastic bottles and plastic hangers. Students collected 5,500 plastic hangers – the number wasted during one year in a local department store – and 13,000 bottles – the number used on Georgia Tech's campus in a single day.
On the Georgia Tech were students Abaan Ali, Zachary Brown, Colleen Creighton, Christina DeRiso, David Duncan, Bradley King, Chris Martin, Caleb Meister, Eric Morris, Amyn Mukadam-Soldier, and Brittany Utting. Read more about the Tower of Babylon project.
The Global Alliance of Technical Universities is a network of the world's top technological universities. The mission is to explore how technology can resolve global societal issues. Member universities are located in China, India, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States. | <urn:uuid:048a8016-2a06-4e61-9a55-10cb07f0949f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.admission.gatech.edu/tech-action/build-awareness | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923443 | 239 | 2.390625 | 2 |
A department official has told the industry regulator that the global energy giant should have a more detailed plan to avoid interfering with migrating tuna, or the midshore fishery, on the Scotian Shelf.
“New information on bluefin tuna migrations indicate that they travel along the shelf edge during the same time as the proposed seismic activity,” Donald Humphrey said Wednesday in an email to the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board.
Humphrey, with the habitat management division, also said department staff have heard from several area fisherman who have asked Shell for more information about the seismic program but have not had a response.
“I would like to emphasize the importance of engaging these stakeholders,” the filing says.
Calgary-based Shell, a subsidiary of the Dutch oil and gas company, plans to start a 3-D seismic survey program of six deepwater blocks. The parcels are located about 350 kilometres south of Halifax.
Shell wants to explore almost 12,200 square kilometres of an area known as the Shelburne Basin.
The wide-azimuth surveys, part of a $1-billion exploration program planned over six years, will help the company examine the basin for potential drilling sites.
The survey program will run from April to September, with more work scheduled during the same time frame in 2014.
The 3-D surveys involve several vessels towing air-gun source arrays, with the two outer vessels also towing streamers.
While DFO has raised concerns about bluefin tuna, an Eastern Shore fisherman said Friday he’s concerned about the possible impact the survey could have on the snow crab fishery.
Peter Connors said scientific studies about the potential impact of seismic work on fish species have been inconclusive.
“The scientists aren’t prepared to say that it does cause any harm. It may or may not. We really don’t know,” the Sober Island fisherman said.
Connors, who is president of the Eastern Shore Fishermen’s Protective Association, also fishes lobster and halibut, which is another species found in the deepwater area that Shell wants to be explore.
Because the survey work would take several months, fishermen are also talking to Shell about minimizing the seismic program’s impact on various fisheries, he said.
A spokesman for aboriginal fishermen in Truro said the seismic work would also be done in an area that has swordfishing.
“They are aware of the longliners and are addressing that issue,” Roger Hunka, director of the Maritime Aboriginal Aquatic Resources Secretariat, said of the dialogue swordfisherman are having with Shell.
A Shell spokesman said the company has consulted with fisheries representatives and will continue to do so.
“We have made efforts to provide project information regularly and respond to any questions or concerns,” Stephen Doolan said in an email.
The board said earlier this week that it takes all stakeholder comments into account in deciding on the survey plan. | <urn:uuid:72614d0c-60a8-45a8-9cd4-5c880dc5d400> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/911706-ottawa-shell-survey-could-affect-bluefin-tuna | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953533 | 627 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Harry Volpe (1906 - 1995) was a pioneer of the guitar before that phrase was coined. He was an established teacher, studio and recording musician in New York already in the 1920's and 1930's. He was the first guitarist selected to the Radio City Music Hall staff where he was a featured soloist.
A prolific composer, Harry Volpe wrote several pieces for the guitar including his interpretation of Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# Minor. Among his other compositions are Volpette, June Memories, Two Guitars and Marreqita. The early guitar duets he penned and recorded with Frank Victor in 1936 remain classics of the guitar duet form.
Some of his teaching materials are still available through Mel Bay Publications.
For many years Harry Volpe ran a music store in New York where he offered lessons to the young guitarists seeking their fortunes as jazz guitarists. Among his students were Johnny Smith, Sal Salvador and Joe Pass.
Although his playing was not purely in the jazz idiom, Harry Volpe remains a significant figure in the history of jazz guitar if for no other reason than that he played with and taught some of the best guitarists of the last century.
©Copyright 2005 Classic Jazz Guitar | <urn:uuid:936382cb-07e9-43c2-acef-a1f727863f11> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://classicjazzguitar.com/artists/artists_page.jsp?artist=37 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987835 | 251 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Born Gary Levone Anderson in Jacksonville, Florida
Philadelphia Warriors were the first NBA Champs when the league was known as BAA (Basketball Association of America).
The Basketball Association of America (BAA) was a professional basketball league founded in New York City. Maurice Podoloff (below), who was already serving as president of the American Hockey League, was appointed president of the BAA, becoming the first person to simultaneously lead two professional leagues. The league merged with the National Basketball League (NBL) in 1949, forming the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 — June 6, 2012)
legendary Hungarian photojournalist Robert Capa’s footage and photographs of the Normandy Landings made him famous.
The National D-Day Memorial. Located in Bedford, Virginia | <urn:uuid:480b767c-9b6c-457f-a794-00a36efba541> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pdxretro.com/2012/06/06/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959813 | 170 | 2.75 | 3 |
Depending on your point of view, my title for this article either makes your blood boil, or else you are cheering. Good. Either way, that should keep you reading.
A few days ago I noticed a tweet that posed the question of whether or not the states had the right to nullify anti-segregation laws that came from the federal government. That same day, in making an argument for nullification of gun laws, I also used the term right. But it occurred to me later that the term right as it used here is an equivocation – one that contributes to the confusion people have about what rights are, where they come from, what the consequences of violating them are, what states can and can’t do, what constitutions are for, and what law is. The following is meant to clarify all that.
The English word law has, as does every other political word, two distinct meanings. One is practical and the other is normative. Putting that in more simple terms – one is law in the sense of a list of rules written up by a group of men – and the other is law in the sense of how things ought to be. Now, the laws that men write down are supposed to be based upon law-as-it-ought-to-be, but they aren’t always. Hence, these two types of law are very different animals.
We might also call law-as-it-ought-to-be justice. An understanding of what justice is requires deductive reasoning. Justice is political (i.e., it deals with our relationships to other people) but it is derived from ethics (our relationship with ourselves). Once you have reasoned it out, and assuming there are no mistakes in your reasoning, law-as-it-ought-to-be is certain. That means that it doesn’t change with the times, it isn’t tentative until you have more data, and technology never invalidates it. It is utterly certain. It is, in that sense, the same as 2+2=4.
Now, could you say 2+2=5? Yes, you could. After all, you can say anything. But if you really believed that 2+2 was 5, the consequences would be grave. Because you wouldn’t be able to do much else. Maybe you could sit there sucking your thumb, but you couldn’t do anything that required math. And that’s a lot of things. Hence, there are very, very few people who question 2+2. There are rather a lot of people who question nullification, though. And yet, in essence, it’s the same thing. The mistake is not so obvious because the consequences are not so immediate. So let’s look at it.
Before we can examine the concept of nullification, we have to know what rights are. I’ve talked about rights many times before on this blog, but it never hurts to discuss it again.
What are rights?
A living being, in order to continue to be a living being, has to do certain things. If it doesn’t do those things, it dies. Among those things, for example, is obtaining food and shelter. Because you will die if you don’t do these things, and because it is only you who will ultimately suffer that consequence, you have a responsibility to do them.
When these responsibilities are restated from the perspective of a third party (third in the sense that it is not you or yourself) they are called rights.
That’s it. That’s what rights are. Now, you can see that rights are not granted by government, right? They are simply a consequence of the fact that you exist and wish to continue existing. If you want to say they are granted by anyone at all, you would have to say they are granted by God. Or nature. Or whatever it is that you believe caused life to come to exist. The Founders called that thing the Creator, but you can call it whatever you want.
All rights are in essence corollaries of one right – the right to life. For example:
Right to life –> (corollary) right to defend it –> (corollary) right to bear arms
Right to life –> (corollary) right to support it –> (corollary) right to property in the fruits of one’s labor
So you see, if you accept the right to life (and you do if you value your life), all of these other statements, including the right to bear arms, are a lot like 2+2=4. Really, they’re more like 2=2.
Now, why don’t states have rights?
Now, you could say given the relationship of a federal government to state governments, the states have rights – i.e., they have responsibilities which can be restated from the point of view of another party. Well, that’s true. But there is a problem. States do not have a right to life. Individuals do. In fact, all states really have are obligations. States are created by individuals for a purpose. Beyond that purpose they have no reason for being. In fact, their existence beyond that purpose is detrimental to individuals. But that purpose is so important that individuals are willing to risk it.
What is that purpose?
To defend individual rights.
Here it is as stated by the Founders in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…
To secure these rights….
Ok, so now we can put it all together. The states have an obligation to all of us individuals who are citizens and that obligation is to defend our individual rights. What happens if the state, instead of defending our individual rights, violates them?
Here’s some more from the Declaration of Independence:
…That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…
Ah, there it is. The people have a right to alter or abolish their government.
Now, as I’ve said before, and I think you can see from the their writings that the Founders agreed, it does not matter what legislation says. It does not matter what is written in the constitution. It does not matter what is written into law. What matters is only truth. If what is written down does not conform to the truth, the people have a right to disregard, alter, or abolish it. In other words, you don’t have to take the Founders’ word for it, or anyone else’s word for it. You can reason it out yourself.
So, why write it down at all?
Because not everyone is able to reason it out. In fact, today, unfortunately, the vast majority of people are not able to reason it out. They need a list of rules (law put into practice) to tell them what they can and can’t do if they want to live in a civilized world. If everyone were able to reason correctly governments would be entirely unnecessary in the first place.
But they are not unnecessary. And those who are capable of proper reasoning must make sure that the list of rules always conforms to proper reasoning.
That means that when you sit on the jury of a man accused of something that is not truthfully a crime (i.e., he did not violate anyone’s rights) you have a responsibility to nullify that legislation. You have that responsibility because if you send a man to prison for something that is not truthfully a crime, you are in fact perpetrating a crime. You are allowing the violation of his rights when you know better. And by allowing his rights to be violated, you have put your own rights in jeopardy.
That also means that any state, when another authority attempts to violate the rights of it’s citizens, has an obligation to those citizens to nullify that legislation.
In the case of segregation laws, the federal government nullified the states. In the case of gun laws, the states are nullifying the federal government. That’s because back then the states had no business enforcing legislation that segregated people. And today the federal government has no business enforcing legislation that prevents people from defending themselves.
So, these are the take home points
- Rights are a priori and inalienable.
- Written law is only a list of rules meant to put into practice a priori law.
- Nullification is the act of disregarding, altering, or abolishing law that does not conform to proper reasoning (i.e, does not conform to the truth, violates individual rights).
- Nullification is the responsibility of all citizens of a civilized state.
- States, that is, governments have no rights. Only people do.
Now, when someone tries to tell you that rights are granted by governments, that what is written in the constitution or passed by congress is law, or that nullification is illegal, you will know how to respond.
And if someone tries to tell you that “only certain states have the right to secede from the union because only certain states have such wording in their constitutions” you will know that they are very, very mistaken. You can then respond that what is written in constitutions is only relevant if it corresponds with justice. You can tell them that states don’t have a right to secede, because they don’t have any rights. But, if the federal government tries to violate the individual rights of their citizens, the states have the obligation to secede or to nullify. And you can remind them that the state’s sole purpose for existing in the first place is to protect individual rights. | <urn:uuid:87e18c0d-326f-47e7-bb77-59338e3d32a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lheyden.com/thegeneralist/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970787 | 2,112 | 2.28125 | 2 |
July 07, 2012
Experts' Expert: Fixing typos on Facebook
New York Times "Gadgetwise" columnist J.D. Biersdorfer is as good as anyone out there at translating technical gibberish into terms even a TechnoDolt®™© can understand.
To that end, her recent "Q&A" on how to correct a mistake in a Facebook posting.
I must confess that I hadn't a clue how to do so before reading her advice and have always just deleted updates with mistakes rather than let them stand.
Same with Twitter, which as far as I know doesn't let you edit your posts.
On the other hand, with Twitter it's no big deal to rewrite ≤140 characters, versus the drag of retyping a much longer Facebook entry.
Here's the Times item.
Q. Is there a way to correct Facebook comments after you post them? I often notice hideous typos only after I've hit the Enter key.
A. While it used to be that the only way to edit a bungled comment was to delete it, redo it and post it again, Facebook recently rolled out a new editing function that makes correcting typos much easier. To modify a comment after you have posted it, move the mouse cursor over the top right corner of the post until you see a pencil icon appear.
Click on the pencil icon to see a menu that offers the choice of Edit and Delete. Select the Edit option and the comment text is now ready for correction. Press the Enter key to post the edited version of the comment. If you select the wrong comment to fix or change your mind, press the Escape key on the keyboard to get out of the editing mode.
Facebook keeps track of modified comments so users can see any adjustments that have been made. Comments that have been retroactively corrected display an Edited link underneath the text. Clicking on the Edited link shows the editing history and changes made to that particular comment.
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The video up top, "I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Tat," "is a novelty song composed and written by Alan Livingston, Billy May and Warren Foster. It was sung by Mel Blanc, who provided the voice of the bird, Tweety and of his nemesis Sylvester."
More from the song's Wikipedia entry: "The lyrics depict the basic formula of the Tweety-Sylvester cartoons released by Warner Bros. throughout the late 1940s into the early 1960s: Tweety wanting to live a contented life, only to be harassed by Sylvester (who is looking to eat the canary), and Tweety's mistress shooing the cat away. Toward the end of the song, the two perform a duet, with Tweety coaxing Sylvester into singing with him after promising that his (Tweety's) mistress won't chase him (Sylvester) away."
And: "'I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Tat' reached No. 9 on the Billboard pop chart during a seven-week chart run in February and March 1951, and sold more than 2 million records."
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Both the Senate and the House bills thus laid out somewhat complicated schemes, but in essence they both say that whether or not things go well in Iraq, the US will pull out most combat troops sometime next year. (The Democrats are evasive about the number of combat troops that should remain.) The framers of the Senate bill, hoping to pick up the votes of centrists and moderates on both sides, made the March 31, 2008 date for withdrawal of most of the troops a “goal” rather than a firm date. The Senate bill also urged the administration to make greater diplomatic efforts involving Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, as the Iraq Study Group had strongly urged.
The bills were intended to convey to those countries that it is in their interests to maintain stability in the region once Americans have been redeployed. The Democrats are also trying to discourage Iraq’s neighbors Iran and Syria from engaging in a proxy war in Iraq after the US substantially withdraws, fueling a large-scale holy war as a culmination of the centuries-old struggle between the Sunnis and the Shiites. Bush’s actions have set the stage for such a war. Saudi Arabia could also be expected to interfere by using its ample financial resources and backing clandestine activities. It is assured that none of these countries wants millions more Iraqi refugees pouring across their borders. (As it is, about two million refugees have already left, many of them the trained professionals that neocons had insisted, and the administration had assumed, would run a secular, democratic Iraq.) The United States would continue to maintain a presence on its bases in the region, in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar, in order to fight terrorists and to offset the growing power of Iran.
The infamous “pork” provisions to fund domestic programs, including more than $4 billion in agricultural assistance, such as aid to sugar-beet and spinach growers, were added to the bills in order to nail down certain votes. But much of the added funds were for more protective equipment for the troops, for better treatment of brain injuries, and for improving conditions at Walter Reed hospital, as well as to deal with the still-devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
When the Republicans controlled Congress, they, too, inserted special-interest funds in supplemental bills for the war, and they were in fact the all-time champions of adding “earmarks” to certain legislation. The war-funding bills are “supplemental” because the administration has preferred not to reveal the real costs of the war—now roughly $9 billion a month—in the regular budget but instead to rush an “emergency” supplemental bill through Congress. This policy has been changed for the next budget by new budget director Rob Portman, a former member of Congress. So Congress is just now considering the supplemental bill because the President designed it that way. Last year, the Republican Congress didn’t get the supplemental appropriations bill to Bush until June. Nonetheless, the President and numerous Republicans made such a fuss about “pork” provisions that, as a House strategist told me, they were “more trouble than they were worth.” (The Democrats have already planned to strike some of these add-ons from the final bill.)
Until the supplemental bill was passed, there were considerable doubts about Pelosi’s leadership of the House. In particular she was criticized for her heavy-handedness in dealing with members with whom she had been on bad terms, as well as for depriving the Republicans of opportunities to offer amendments to the resolution (just as previous Republican Congresses had done to the Democrats). She had pledged to be fairer to the opposition than the Republicans had been when they were in power, and she is under pressure from some fellow Democrats to do so. Yet the bill to fund the war and the support for it were so fragile that it too was considered under a “closed rule,” a procedure that bans amendments.
But Pelosi’s strenuous, successful efforts to win the vote for the spending bill, and her tireless working with Democrats with reservations about the bill on the left and right, won her a great deal of respect—both within the party and with political commentators. According to close associates, her problems with the most dug-in antiwar Democrats were considerably frustrating to her, given her own strong antiwar credentials. For over two weeks, she met with members of the Out of Iraq caucus as a group and individually. The essential argument that she and Murtha made was that the hard deadlines for withdrawal and redeployment of the troops contained in the bill amounted to an antiwar position. They also argued that the bill was the Democrats’ best chance to force a “new approach” on the President, and that if it were defeated, the President would have a free hand.
The House had already passed, on February 16, a nonbinding resolution criticizing Bush’s surge by a 246–182 vote. But that was an easier proposition, since it was largely symbolic, and won seventeen Republican votes. The Democrats had expected even more, but Murtha blundered by telling the blog of the antiwar movement MoveOn, an increasingly powerful force, of his forthcoming proposal to block the dispatch of troops to Iraq unless they were properly trained and equipped, as well as given adequate rest time between deployments. (The military manual suggests two years, yet some troops have been sent back to Iraq within a matter of months. Moreover, Pentagon officials recently announced that tours of duty in Iraq will be lengthened, from twelve to fifteen months.) Murtha hinted that this proposal could stop the surge; but he hadn’t discussed his idea with his fellow Democrats and it wasn’t the party’s position.
After the February nonbinding resolution, the next step was harder. Murtha had been the first member of Congress to call, in November 2005, for bringing home the troops; but he isn’t considered a brilliant tactician, even by Democrats who are closely allied with him. In the next round, he played a quieter but crucial role, helping Pelosi convince MoveOn to support the spending bill as an antiwar position.
Some members of the Out of Iraq caucus walked out of an early meeting with Pelosi, demanding a firm deadline for withdrawal by the end of this year. But Pelosi kept up the pressure, and also worked with Hoyer to convince centrist Democrats that Murtha’s proposal about troop training and preparedness had been softened by allowing the President to waive it. Still lacking sufficient votes, Pelosi had to postpone House consideration of the bill for a day, to Friday, March 23; she was finally successful when Barbara Lee of California, a leader of the Out of Iraq caucus, agreed to allow its members to vote for the bill if they chose to. In the end, enough members of the caucus voted for the bill to give the Democratic proposal a bare majority of 218–212, with just two Republicans voting with the Democrats. More antiwar Democrats were ready to cast their votes with Pelosi had she needed them. Fourteen Democratic liberals and centrists (some of them facing a stiff Republican challenge in 2008) voted against the bill. The vote of antiwar liberals against the bill reflected a moral position, but it was also an unrealistic one: money would still have to be spent to protect, feed, and clothe the troops—and even to bring them home.
In the end, the House vote redefined the political consensus on the war. A national survey taken by the Pew Research Center just after the House bill was passed found that 59 percent of the respondents favored a deadline of August 2008 for the withdrawal of most US troops in the war. After the vote, Bush issued one of his numerous threats to veto any bill containing a deadline, saying that “restrictions on our commanders” were unacceptable, as were Congress’s “pet spending projects.” (Bush considers railing against “pork” an effective political strategy, though he never before vetoed any appropriations bill.) Some moderate Republicans who continued to vote for the President’s position argued that since the surge was underway, Congress shouldn’t vote restrictions until the outcome was known. Some Democrats, such as Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, a principal author of the Senate Democratic bill, argued that whether or not the surge was successful, US forces would still be stuck in the position of trying to police a sectarian conflict and would still be seen with hostility as occupiers of Iraq.
Predictably, the Shiite militia controlled by Moqtada al-Sadr laid low for a time, though press reports and administration claims of a more subdued Baghdad have regularly been punctuated by violence between Sunnis and Shiites—as well as violence against Shiites by Shiites and Sunnis by Sunnis.
If American troops continue to be deployed as a combat force, the US will still be bogged down in a country torn by sectarian rivalries and with a government seemingly incapable of making real reforms, while more soldiers are killed and maimed, and American military readiness virtually destroyed. As critics of the surge predicted, the number of US troops killed in Baghdad has risen; in fact in the first seven weeks of the new strategy that number nearly doubled from the previous period. As William Pfaff pointed out in a recent column in the International Herald Tribune, the US would still be trapped in a cultural and religious war, trying to impose American democratic and secular values on a tribal, nonsecular society.
Freshman Democratic representative Joe Sestak, of Pennsylvania, who has become an eloquent voice against the war, is a former vice-admiral who commanded a carrier battle force off Afghanistan, where twenty out of thirty ships were from other countries, and then in the Persian Gulf before the Iraq war began. In the Persian Gulf, he noticed a troubling lack of allies—”I knew then that something was amiss,” he recently told me. “Most of the violence in Iraq is being done by the Iraqis. It’s tribal leaders fighting one another. The war in Iraq has never been about terror. We doubled down on a bad bet.” In February the new defense secretary, Robert Gates—whose replacement of the widely hated Donald Rumsfeld came as a great relief to most people on Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon—told the House Armed Services Committee, “There are some foreign fighters, but they are not the principal source of the problem.”3
Republicans, including Bush, have argued that Congress shouldn’t interfere with the work of General David Petraeus, an advocate of the surge policy who was overwhelmingly confirmed as leader of the US forces in Iraq by the Senate in January of this year. They speak of him in reverential tones.4 This wasn’t simply a talking point: a Republican senator told me that “our loyalty is now to him, as opposed to the President.”
The fundamental argument against the Democrats’ proposals has been over the wisdom of telling the warring factions in Iraq when the US is planning to withdraw most of its combat troops. Republicans argue that setting such a date simply encourages the enemy to lie low until a certain date, and that the only way to pressure the Maliki government is to maintain a strong military presence, and that such a date for withdrawal is a “recipe for defeat.” John McCain, who has staked his presidential hopes on his support of the war, said that the Senate bill “should be called the Date Certain for Surrender Act.” Yet the Iraqi factions know that US combat troops will be leaving at some point. The combat troops won’t suddenly take off on a given day.
Senator Jack Reed argues that the “only way to force the Iraqi government to make hard choices is to make it understand that we will remain in Iraq in a limited capacity.” Reed argued in the Senate debate that the Democratic proposal is to “change the mission” by redeploying most of the combat troops outside combat zones. The remaining troops will have three missions: training Iraqi forces; the conduct of specific counterterrorist activities, mainly against al-Qaeda; and protecting the American forces that remain in Iraq. The House bill has similar provisions for changing the mission.
But such distinctions aren’t often explained to the public by the press, which focuses on deadlines. Reed also argued that the Senate proposal to make the redeployment date a “goal” is the more “responsible” position, allowing the flexibility to take into account the actual situation in Iraq. Numerous other antiwar advocates agree that this is the more realistic and sensible approach. Having lost a Senate vote on the Democratic leadership’s initial proposal by 48–50 on March 15, the Democrats then added the benchmarks to their proposal along these lines, hoping to get the votes of Pryor and Nelson. In the end, only Nelson switched votes, but on March 29 the Democratic proposal won 50–48, with the help of the increasingly angry Chuck Hagel and of Gordon Smith, who had denounced the war in bitter terms in December.
The Democrats’ position has been moving ever closer to the report of the Iraq Study Group. The bipartisan commission’s recommendation for withdrawing most US combat troops in early 2008 was actually a more radical proposal than the ones that Congress approved in March (though its report refrained from stating a firm deadline), and it also said it would support a short-term surge of US forces to reduce the violence in Baghdad. The November 2006 election emboldened the Democratic members of the Study Group to push for a withdrawal. (As a tradeoff co-chairman James Baker won support for a surge.)
Two well-placed sources told me that Bush has assured Baker that in time the recommendations of the report would be implemented, which of course does not give any assurance that they will. The administration has taken tiny steps to begin diplomatic discussions with Iran and Syria—ostensibly at the initiative of the Iraqis—as the Study Group as well as many Democrats have urged. But there is notable sentiment for the Study Group’s proposals on the Republican side as well. Senate Republican Lamar Alexander, reflecting the views of some other Republicans, said explicitly during the Senate debate that the President should take the Baker-Hamilton report “down off the shelf” and implement it. Some Republicans hold out hope that that will happen before the end of this year, and there is some expectation that if the surge doesn’t “work,” more Republicans will break with the President. Petraeus had told a group of senators that the outcome would be known by August, though it is now expected to last longer than the President first said, and it’s also requiring more troops than the 20,000 Bush announced in January.
The Republicans recognize that they are in an awkward position, in supporting an increasingly unpopular war. Toward the end of the Senate’s March debate on the war-spending bill, Mitch McConnell announced that the Republicans would not stand in the way of sending a final bill to the President. This statement reflected a concern not just for getting funds approved soon (when funds for the war would run out is a matter of dispute), but also a political worry about appearing to be delaying the funds. No one expected the House and the Senate to be able to muster the two-thirds vote necessary for overriding a presidential veto.
Following the passage of the Senate bill in March, Bush gave a more-than-normally petulant speech against the Democratic proposals—prompting Pelosi, like a mother scolding a teenager, to urge Bush to “calm down with the threats” and to “take a deep breath.” This was the first public suggestion by a prominent elected figure that the President lacks maturity—a widely held view in Washington. Pelosi also pointed out to Bush that the new Democratic Congress has its own constitutional role to play.
Though Congress still has a long way to go to force an exit from Iraq, Bush’s support continues to erode, and he faces growing pressures to change his policy. There are in fact some indications that he may have to do so before he leaves office. Each time Congress has voted on the war, its position has hardened. Most Republicans are now ready to accept benchmarks, and perhaps some restrictions on the funding of the war. A restive Republican senator told me toward the end of the Senate debate in March, “No one has presented us a Plan B or C or D. Looking forward, I think you are going to see variations on some of the benchmark language, and contingent funding.”
The Democrats understood that following the expected presidential veto, they might be faced with having to vote for a new bill without a cutoff date, risking a revolt from the antiwar left. Shortly after the recess began, Harry Reid joined Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, a strong antiwar advocate, in backing a new bill with a mandatory cutoff of funds by next March 31, though also including the new missions for the troops that remain there. (According to Democratic sources on Capitol Hill, Reid had promised this to Feingold in order to win his support for the Senate bill.) Reid has said that he sees this as the logical next step in increasing the pressure on the President and the Republicans; the prospect of voting for such a bill could be used to get the support of liberals who may be asked by the party leadership following a veto to vote for the current appropriations bill without a withdrawal date. Democratic strategists also admit that a proposal to order a withdrawal by an earlier date than those so far approved could be much more difficult to get through the Congress.
Democratic sources told me that the likely compromise between the House and the Senate bills to be sent to the President would include benchmarks and perhaps some sort of goal for ending the war, but not the House’s firm deadlines. Winning House support for such a proposal will be a serious challenge for Speaker Pelosi, but there is confidence that she can pull this off—by promising more restrictive measures in the future. On the supplemental bill itself, these officials say that eventually Congress will probably have to give way and not require or even set a goal for a pullout of the troops by a certain date. But that could come later. As of this writing, the President and the Democrats are conducting a minuet over whether they would meet at the White House to see if a compromise was possible. But Bush’s press secretary said on April 10 that “this is not a negotiation.”
In any event, Bush is fighting a political phony war over “funding the troops”: Congress will supply the money for the troops in Iraq. When it does, he will undoubtedly claim a great victory. But the wars over Iraq between the Democratic Congress and the President, and within the Democratic Party, as well as within Iraq itself, aren’t going to end any time soon.
—April 11, 2007 | <urn:uuid:1d87d315-9cf3-43e8-b1a8-765c49b3aa05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/may/10/the-war-in-washington/?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976364 | 3,908 | 1.859375 | 2 |
ZURICH – Russia’s path to winning the World U20 Championship in Buffalo was both rocky and spectacular. Completing the success required intangible qualities that haven’t exactly been known as typical Russian attributes. But times change.
Fans in Buffalo and in front of TV screens saw it over and over again. Russia was one preliminary round loss away from the relegation round, they were virtually gone from the quarterfinal, three minutes away from a semi-final loss and they were down and seemingly out after two periods of the gold medal game.
Russia made the final round as the third-placed team of its group recovering from a start which saw them lose to Canada and Sweden. A win against the Czechs saved the playoffs.
Their comeback win in the quarterfinals against Finland was as unexpected as it was spectacular. They came back from a 3-1 deficit with two goals in the last four minutes of regulation time before the team’s only underaged player, Yevgeni Kuznetsov, scored again, at 6:44 of overtime.
After only 17 hours of rest, Russia faced Sweden and had another comeback win. Sergei Kalinin made it 4-4 with 87 seconds left in regulation time to pave the way for a shootout win.
Then, in the gold medal game against Canada, came the coronation of Russia’s series of comeback wins. Canada led 3-0 after dominating for two periods and nobody, really nobody, saw any indication that this game could turn into another direction. And still, it did, with five Russian goals in 16 minutes.
How could this be possible? How could this be achieved by Russia, whose hockey teams haven’t been known for huge comebacks, and for what North Americans often refer to as “character wins”?
One reason could be that the Russian hockey psyche has changed. Russian players survived the tough (although, successful in hockey terms) Soviet days and in the process they have survived the transition phase between the Soviet time and modern Russia that was characterized by chaos in many aspects of life in the ‘90s.
This included hockey with low salaries and with high-calibre players escaping to all kind of foreign leagues, from the NHL to Switzerland to Denmark to Italy.
All players on the gold-medal winning U20 national team were born when the Soviet Union was in the process of dissolution. They know this country only from history books.
When they were teenagers they were already playing in hockey organizations in a remodeled Russian hockey landscape, where players were true professionals and the best ones could earn more than anywhere else in Europe.
The top domestic league had become more professional in the 2000s, its clubs again won European club trophies after the Russian league’s deep crisis in the ‘90s and later, the founding of the KHL in 2008 solidified the upward trend.
When these players were 13, they saw the rise of superstar, Alexander Ovechkin, who became a top player of the Russian league and helped Russia win the U20 gold in 2003. This was followed by emergence of Yevgeni Malkin.
They saw on TV how the men’s national team found their way back to glory, winning the 2008 and 2009 World Championships, ending a 14-year draught. Since then they know how it is for their nation to win gold without needing to listen to tales from the glory days from their fathers and grandfathers, about how much more successful their generations were.
“When the men’s team won the World Championship in 2008 and 2009, the interest in hockey started to rise again in Russia,” said Valeri Bragin, who coached the U20s to the world title.
This might explain why these kids are different than those from a few years ago. Players like Yevgeni Kuznetsov, Vladimit Tarasenko and Maxim Kitsyn had their childhood years in a more stable situation. Both when it comes to general life in Russia, but also in terms of hockey development.
But there’s more behind all these changes that happened between the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 and now. The end of the Soviet rule was also the end of centralization in Russian hockey. There was and still is a Central Sport Club of the Army (better known as CSKA Moscow), but it has lost the power to recruit any top player, like in the old days.
Dynamo Moscow won some Russian championships later on, the last one in 2005, but most titles have gone to clubs from other regions since Lada Togliatti became the first non-Moscow champion in Russian/Soviet hockey history in 1994.
Russian club hockey has for the last decade been dominated by teams from the vast area of central Russia – from the steel city of Magnitogorsk at the European-Asian border, to Kazan in Tatarstan or to Omsk in Siberia.
These are clubs that were not really relevant during the Soviet times and which lost their best players to the army team in Moscow. Now, they were suddenly competing for top players and for national reign with money mainly from local industry or regional governments. And they started developing players, with Malkin from Magnitogorsk as the best example.
This U20 national team that won gold is a reflection of the new Russian hockey landscape with strong clubs from all around the country and with a hockey scene in Moscow that went from dominant to struggling.
Of the 22 players, only five were raised in or around Moscow and seven came from the western part of Russia. This means 15 players, including most of the team leaders, were raised in central or eastern Russia, anywhere from the Tatar capital of Kazan to Khabarovsk near the Pacific Ocean.
These players have a different mentality than the Muscovites such as last year’s captain Nikita Filatov. They represent a hard-working, team-oriented and humble approach, which you might need in those regions.
And they don’t necessarily dream too much about the NHL, instead focusing on developing in Russia rather than becoming a junior star in Canada.
Coach Bragin, a Moscow-raised former Soviet U20 national team player, managed to combine the different mentalities into a team concept seldom seen since the end of the Soviet Union. There was a chemistry of cooperativeness and happiness during practices and in the games that hasn’t been seen before.
Bragin praised his players, and especially captain Vladimir Tarasenko, who came back from the dressing room during the gold medal game despite a rib injury. “He’s a real character guy and a real captain. He went on the ice despite feeling pain after every shift,” Bragin said.
Indeed, talking to Tarasenko, you can hardly hear a glimpse of selfishness or arrogance. You hear a player who is rather shy, who avoids big words and who prefers talking about the team.
“It’s not just about me; it’s all about the team,” Tarasenko said before the final round. “Every guy on our team can be a leader in a different moment.”
Or, as Denis Golubev said after scoring the deciding shootout goal against Sweden: “It doesn’t matter who scores the goals. It’s not about me, it’s about the team. We wanted to win badly because Russia hasn’t won the World U20 Championship for the last seven years.”
Or, as Kuznetsov commented after winning gold: “We improved as a team each game and we wanted to make our country proud. We were simply the best team in the end. We have the Russian character, that’s why we never gave up.”
And while the coach praised the players, they praised him. Valeri Bragin did not only merge these players into a strong unit, he also motivated them in the right moment. After the first intermission of the gold medal game he was angry enough to break a coaches’ board in the dressing room.
“The team didn’t play as they should. I just woke them up and told them how they should play,” Bragin commented.
And in the end it worked. And in the process, showing character hockey observers haven’t noticed from Russian junior squads before. Somehow, those Russian kids became “more Canadian” in a game where different styles of play have been merging in the last few decades.
Something, that isn’t necessarily bad. For sure, winning gold isn’t. | <urn:uuid:9dac3610-deba-49c6-9ada-228f43040685> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iihf.com/channels1011/wm20/news/news-singleview-wm20/recap/5251.html?tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=4272&cHash=a6fabf232f | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979366 | 1,796 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Can Brazil Afford to be 'Rescued'?
The Washington Post, November 16, 1998
It is said that doctors bury their mistakes, but so can economists, when they have the power to implement them. And sometimes they bury them in mass graves. Such is the case with the brain trust of the International Monetary Fund, which is now set to operate on its latest unlucky patient: Brazil.
After racking up disasters in Asia and then Russia, the Fund and its allies in the Clinton Administration have concluded that their only mistake was that they did not intervene early enough. So they have put together a 42 billion "rescue" package for Brazil.
But there is little reason to believe that the IMF’s bitter medicine will help Brazil any more than it helped Indonesia or Russia. In fact, economists are already predicting a recession there for next year, on the assumption that Brazil takes the IMF money and the advice that goes with it.
That advice mandates big cutbacks in government spending, tax increases, and enormously high interest rates-- a deadly mix practically guaranteed to send any economy into a tailspin. It is difficult to see how the prospect of recession-- not to mention the potentially explosive political conflict that such policies will provoke-- will accomplish the stated goal of calming nervous financial markets.
Brazil has the most unequal distribution of income in the world, with the upper 10% taking about half the nation’s income, while 43% of the people survive on less than two dollars a day. The IMF-engineered economic contraction will therefore have terrible consequences even if it "succeeds" on its own terms: people who are already malnourished will get less food, and some will die. Spending on health care and education will also be cut, and millions of people will lose their jobs, homes, and livelihoods.
Are these drastic measures necessary? Let’s start with the federal budget deficit. It is currently running at 7% of the economy (or GDP). To put this in perspective, the United States government ran a budget deficit of 6.1% of GDP in 1983, with no harm done. One might argue that either of these deficits is too high over the long run, but there is no urgency about cutting them.
It is sometimes feared that budget deficits in this range will cause accelerating inflation, but this is clearly not the case in Brazil, where inflation is currently at 3%.
What about the exorbitant interest rates, now running at 42%, which cripple economic activity even more than the budget cuts? The Fund argues that these are necessary to prevent the Brazilian currency from collapsing. This is because lenders, due to the risk of currency devaluation, are unwilling to keep their money in the country at lower rates.
But there are other possible solutions. Some economists argue that the country would be better off with a flexible exchange rate, and they are probably correct. Defenders of the status quo counter that the Brazilian real is by now highly overvalued, and so if it were allowed to float immediately it would first sink like a stone. This would increase inflation (by raising the price of imported goods). But Brazil’s imports are only about 7% of its economy, which means that the inflationary effects of a devaluation would be relatively small.
There are other measures that could help Brazil avoid plunging its economy into recession. For example, the government could place controls on the buying and selling of its currency, so as to prevent a currency collapse without having sky-high interest rates. But the IMF does not allow these, or almost any other kind of "capital controls."
In the wake of the Asian economic crisis, which was clearly brought on by the liberalization of international capital flows, a number of leading economists have changed their views and are willing to consider various forms of capital controls. But the IMF and its allies in the Clinton administration remain committed to maximizing the freedom of international investors, while protecting them from the risks of bad loans and currency depreciations. Hence their insistence that Brazil maintain its fixed exchange rate, without capital controls, no matter what the cost to Brazilians-- or to US taxpayers financing the bailout.
The Brazilian financial crisis, like the Asian "contagion" that set it off, is a product of these misplaced priorities that are decided in Washington. And that raises the most important question: shouldn’t Brazilians have the right to choose their own economic policy? Washington clearly says no: it announced just before the Brazilian Presidential election last month that the funds to prevent a currency collapse would only be made available if President Cardoso were re-elected.
So much for democracy. But the battle is far from over, and the Brazilians will make their voices heard: in their Congress, state legislatures, and most likely, the streets. | <urn:uuid:14326de8-0812-4326-9b88-50944f3b86f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/can-brazil-afford-to-be-rescued/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964128 | 980 | 1.921875 | 2 |
The hydrocarbons sector is the backbone of the economy, accounting for roughly 60% of budget revenues, 30% of GDP, and over 95% of export earnings. Algeria has the seventh-largest reserves of natural gas in the world and is the second-largest gas exporter, it ranks 14th in oil reserves. Sustained high oil prices in recent years, along with macroeconomic policy reforms have helped improve Algeria's financial and macroeconomic indicators. Algeria is running substantial trade surpluses and building up record foreign exchange reserves. Real GDP has risen due to higher oil output and increased government spending.
The government's continued efforts to diversify the economy by attracting foreign and domestic investment outside the energy sector. The macroeconomic situation has improved and the last figures published related to 2005 give:
-Growth rate : 5.1% ,
-GDP : 101 billion USD,
-GDP per capita : 3100 USD
-Inflation rate : 1.6%
-International reserves : 62 billion USD
-External debt : 13.9 billion USD
A huge program of support to the economic re launch has been launched for an amount of 80 billions USD over five years (2005-2009) including many huge infrastructural, housing and water projects, education…while many reforms are conducted in the financial and banking system to improve its capacities. These reforms include privatizations and partnership operations which involved till 2005, 238 public companies sold to private sector including 31 companies sold to foreign private sector in agro based industry, chemicals, electronics, mining, and building materials.
The global amount of the investment during the year 2005 was 16 billion USD:
-9.7 Billion USD as State investment (more than 60%)
-3.5 Billion USD by the National privet sector
-more than 2.8 Billion USD by Foreign investors | <urn:uuid:6f35acb9-c62f-4035-8068-71591b2c3518> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.namnewsnetwork.org/v3/country.php?nn=Mw== | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949241 | 378 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Ford trucks were work trucks back in 1963 just as much as they were work trucks as far back as the 1940s. As a matter of fact, Ford trucks have always been work trucks. They get bigger, more powerful, and even more luxurious every year. Yesteryear’s trucks are a far cry from the lap of luxury that we enjoy today, but their purpose has remained the same generation after generation. Ford trucks always have been and always will be work trucks, from the half ton F100 to the muscular one ton F350.
I found the first featured 1963 Ford truck for sale on eBay Motors and it hails from Wisconsin. Originally from South Dakota, under the hood is sports the original 292 cubic inch Y block engine coupled to a four speed transmission. This three quarter ton F250 is ninety-nine per cent rust free and is a great truck as is, or it could be a fairly easy restoration. It starts right up, runs, and drives like a truck should. It has been kept in a heated garage out of snow and rain, and the current owner only drives it on sunny, dry days. There are a few issues, but you will have that with any truck that is almost half a century old.
This second 1963 Ford F100 is out of Florida and also is for sale on eBay Motors. This is an unrestored step side with the original six cylinder engine and three speed transmission. It runs and drives as it should, although one of the wheel cylinders does seep a little and will need some attention. The tailgate has some rust on the bottom, but it is still original and attached to the truck. The interior is all stock and the floors and frame are both solid. Whoever purchases this truck will need to get the ignition and door locks both re-keyed.
This last 1963 Ford truck, again from eBay Motors, is from the great state of Texas. The original 292 cubic inch V8 is in great condition, as is the three speed transmission. The three on the tree linkage is a little worn, so inexperienced drives may get it locked into second gear. The wheel cylinders, master cylinder, and brake shoes have all been recently replaced. This truck also has the old, original AM tube radio which does work once the tubes warm up. This truck needs a little cosmetic work done, but it would definitely make a great daily driver. | <urn:uuid:d399853c-0977-45a8-ba9d-c4478dd1d75b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jackedupliftedtrucks.com/1963-ford-trucks-classic-workhorse/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976454 | 483 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Over the last few months, scientists have been watching huge solar flares explode off the sun. Government scientists are expecting the solar flares to grow larger over the next few days, and say that the solar energy could interfere with GPS systems.
Joseph Kunches, a space weather scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center, said:
“The magnetic storm that is soon to develop probably will be in the moderate to strong level.”
The solar activity expected in the next couple of days could extend an Aurora as far south as Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Reuters notes that GPS and satelite disruption from a solar storm is rare, but it has happened in the past. In 1989, a solar flare up took down Quebec’s power grid, leaving millions without power for hours.
The largest solar storm on record was in 1859, which caused an Aurora to extend to the Caribbean.
“I don’t think this week’s solar storms will be anywhere near that. This will be a two or three out of five on the NOAA Space Weather Scale.” | <urn:uuid:5ef0d8a8-b1c1-4bf4-9d87-f9d04f601006> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.indyposted.com/172502/solar-storms-to-peak-this-weak/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953047 | 221 | 2.90625 | 3 |
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THERIZINOSAURS FROM THE EARLY JURASSIC
John V Jackson wrote:
<<Yup. Three wierd discoveries within twelve months, and only George
"Cassandra" Olshevsky's theories predicted them all. Spooky eh?>>
To which Tom Holtz replies with:
<<Very curious statement...>>
John replies to that with:
<<Come on Tom - when are you going to give him some credit for his
predictions? After all, prediction surely is an important part of that
fully-agreed-upon unchanging entity you suggest "science" is!>>
I think that Tom was just saying that even though George predicted these
things, he certainly wasn't the only person or first person to predict them.
<<1) Sinosauropteryx's fluffy stuff>>
George was not the only person to predict this. If you want to pick a nit,
you can point to Bakker, or perhaps even Huxley or Marsh.
<<2) Caudipteryx (& Protarchaeopteryx)'s feathers>>
Again, the same.
<<3) The early Jurassic "therizino...">>
This was indeed predicted by George, but it is NOT AT ALL inconsistant with
the idea that therizinosaurs are derived coelurosaurs.
Think for a sec, coelurosaurs and carnosaurs are sister taxa. What is the
first Carnosaur and when did it live? The answer is Cryolophosaurus and it is
also from the Early Jurassic (probably). What does that mean? It means that
coelurosaurs also had to be living in the Early Jurassic too.
There is also the Middle Jurassic coelurosaur skull Proceratosaurs which I
don't see anyone putting up a fuss about.
Eumaniraptorans were around at least in the Middle Jurassic because there are
dromaeosaur teeth from that time. That puts the origin of the
Maniraptoriformes at a time BEFORE that.
OVIRAPTOR HYPOTHESIS: if therizinosaurs are oviraptors, an Early Jurassic
origin is not at all hard to believe. Holtz 1994 placed them within
Arctometatarsalia as the outgroup to the Tyrannosaur + Bullatosaur group, and
Sereno 1997 placed them as basal Maniraptora. Since Maniraptoriformes HAD to
exist at least in the Middle Jurassic, probably sooner, there is no great leap
to say later Early Jurassic.
BULLATOSAURIA HYPOTHESIS: if therizinosaurs are bullatosaurs, an Early
Jurassic origin is not that hard to believe either. Arctomets had to exist in
the Middle Jurassic at least, and troodonts and ornithomimosaurs had diverged
already by the late Jurassic (Koparion), and some claim now that there were
Morrison Tyrannosaurs too (Stokesosaureus). So, a Bullatosaur therizinosaur
in the Early Jurassic is not exactly a stretch.
People at first might find it hard to believe that there were a lot of
supposedly "advanced" coelurosaurs running around in the Middle and Early
Jurassic, but realize that they HAD to be simply because a true bird was alive
before the Jurassic was finished.
Because Oviraptors, Dromaeosaurs, and Arctometatarsalians are known from
complete remains in the Late Cretaceous almost exclusively, many people get
the impression that they lived JUST in the Late Cretaceous, but this simply is
not the case. The Phylogeny INSISTS that they (or their stem-group
"ancestors") had to exist before then, most probably in the Middle and Early
<<I'm pleased he was happy. However I don't expect him or Kevin Padian, when
referred to in the role of world experts, ever to mention K-BCF>>
What is K-BCF? Also, I think it best for you to wait a year or two, there
just might be some counter ground-up papers published, perhaps even by some
<<. . . which incidentally is adhered to by a respectable section of frequent
to this list.>>
Which of course amounts to a while pile of nothing. No offense to George, but
just because people agree with him doesn't mean he is right :-) Of course, he
can counter with, just because a lot of people agree that therizinosaurs are
theropods doesn't mean they are :-)
<<and I'll own up to knowing very nearly nothing about segnosaurs and
absolutely nothing about the early J jaw.>>
I too know next to nothing about this jaw. It seems to get Nature to western
North America, they throw them in row boats and paddle them across the
Atlantic, then thrown in backpacks and hiked accross the continent then thrown
in the basement of the UW libraries for a few weeks before being put on the
Anyway, it is of course possible that this jaw isn't even from a
therizinosaur. It could belong to a prosauropod or even something like a
heterodontosaur or a stegosaur. I will need to read the paper (whenever it | <urn:uuid:37f1bd4e-84ab-4471-a4eb-38f3659fecc3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dml.cmnh.org/1998Jul/msg01075.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947439 | 1,173 | 2.484375 | 2 |
Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman and Marcia Cross all have one thing in common. Besides being successful actresses, the three ladies are all redheads.
Some call them carrot-tops, copper-colored or believe stereotypes about feisty personalities. But in at least one country, being a redhead isn't so easy.
The British Isles feature more redheads than anywhere else on earth. But some people who have the genetic trait said they feel discriminated against.
"It's horrible," one woman said. "I mean, I love redheads. But people are quite anti-them."
In England, the flame-haired are called "ginger" or "ginge."
Photographer Charlotte Rushton said people often yell at her in the street and she often feels like part of a minority.
"The nail that sticks out gets hammered down," Rushton said.
The nation that gave the world Ginger Spice, the Duchess of York and Lily Cole may be ginger-phobic. And it is not a joke.
One British family of redheads, the Chapmans, told the British media it was driven from its home by abuse including anti-redhead grafitti, vandalism and physical assaults.
Even Prince Harry has said he was bullied at school because of his hair. Apparently, his army buddies called him the ginger bullet magnet and his girlfriend calls him the big ginger.
"Somebody with ginger hair will stand out from the crowd." said Louise Burfitt-Dons of the group Act Against Bullying.
Waitress Sarah Primmer just sued her boss for sexist and "ginger" abuse and won $35,000 compensation.
"When you get older, you don't expect people to say things about the color. It's not nice," she said.
Even TV comedian Catherine Tate highlights such absurdity with a fictional refuge for abused gingers on "The Catherine Tate Show."
"We have all sorts of gingers here: Gingers in denial, confused gingers even militant gingers," she joked on her show.
Rushton said when redheads see one another, there often is a sense of camaraderie.
"Redheads walk along the street and we nod or wink or smile at each other," she said.
Rushton has photographed red heads for an as-yet unpublished book, "Ginger Nuts: A Celebration of Carrot Tops."
"It's a glorious color," she said. "It's amazing. Nature produced this color." | <urn:uuid:fb22d053-843b-4a41-aa83-518d2ff043de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3378972 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971029 | 519 | 1.914063 | 2 |
How Czar Peter the Great Married Off His Moor
How Czar Peter the Great Married Off His Moor (Russian: Сказ про то, как царь Пётр арапа женил, Skaz pro to, kak tsar Pyotr arapa zhenil) is a 1978 film directed by the Russian filmmaker Aleksandr Mitta. The film features Vladimir Vysotsky as the protagonist Ibragim Hannibal who is the North African godson of the Czar Peter. Also starring in the film are Aleksei Petrenko as Peter the Great, and Irina Mazurkevich as Natasha Rtishcheva. It is an adaptation of Aleksandr Pushkin's book Peter the Great's Negro (1827) The music for the film was done by the composer Alfred Shnitke.
The beginning of the film contains some animations depicting Ibragim's acquisition from his native land and eventually we find him in the courts of Paris. He gets himself in trouble when a French countess, whom he had romances with, bears a black child. Ibragim is challenged to a duel which is played out humorously in a sped up timeframe. He leaves Paris shortly thereafter to return to his home in St. Petersburg where his godfather, and czar of Russia Peter the Great enthusiastically awaits his return. Upon arriving Ibragim expresses he is done with love, as his lover denounces him as a savage and his son is never fated to know his father. In an attempt to help Ibragim, as well as tie him into the nobility of Russia, Peter announces Ibragim and Natasha Rtishcheva are to be wed, to the despair of the family and the her current suitor. Ibragim however, refuses the marriage on the grounds that he believes Natasha is in love with another. This angers the czar who in turn begins to alienate both Ibragim and Natasha's family from his favor. The conundrum plays out in humorous and dramatic ways and eventually resolves in a pleasant and light-hearted manner.
The film is in color and makes use of animation at times, as well as a combination of animated scenes and live actors. The colors are lively and in a few instances the timescale is sped up, making light of otherwise dire situations. Also Mitta makes use of point-of-view angles, for example when a nervous mariner crosses a long, elevated plank in order to reach Peter the camera looks down at his feet as he nervously crosses. The shot shows the drop below and the characters feet cautiously making each step, poking fun at the hesitation. | <urn:uuid:391cf1e6-588b-4221-a728-0ab22c57cf8b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skaz_pro_to,_kak_tsar_Pyotr_arapa_zhenil | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973643 | 575 | 1.820313 | 2 |