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Cause Marketing For Dummies
Cause marketing creates a partnership with benefits for both a nonprofit entity and a business. Written by an expert on cause marketing whose blog, SelfishGiving.com, is a key resource on the subject, this friendly guide shows both business owners and marketers for nonprofits how to build and sustain such a partnership using social media such as Facebook and Twitter. It covers new online tools, how to identify potential partners, tips on engaging your fans, and how to model a campaign on proven successes.
- Cause marketing is not marketing a cause, but a partnership between business and nonprofit that benefits both
- This guide offers an easy-to-understand blueprint for finding appropriate partners, planning and setting up a campaign using Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, measuring campaign success, and more
- Explains online tools such as Quick Response Codes, services like Causon and The Point, and location marketing services including Foursquare, Whrrl, and Gowalla
- Features case studies that illustrate successful campaign techniques
Cause Marketing For Dummies helps both businesses and nonprofits reap the benefits of effective cause marketing.
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with QR Codes For Dummies, Portable Edition (List Price = US $9.99) Cannot be combined with any other offers. Learn more. | <urn:uuid:dd985cbf-70fe-436a-824c-1cb2a3d6ada1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dummies.com/store/product/Cause-Marketing-For-Dummies.productCd-1118011309,navId-322436,descCd-description.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903709 | 284 | 1.6875 | 2 |
As an industrial city, Birmingham has very few
noteworthy historic sites; however, it does have a wealth of great cultural attractions
to offer. At Chamberlain Square, the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, whose holdings
include the world's largest collection of pre-Raphaelite paintings, is a must. The
museum also offers a wonderful interactive exhibit.
The Ikon Gallery, strategically located on Oozells Square, stands out as one of the most
important contemporary-art galleries in Europe. Works by British as well as
international artists are on view here. You'll also find a Spanish-style café on the
Those with an appreciation for all manner
of jewellery shouldn't miss the historic Jewellery Quarter. Here, some 100 of the most
renowned jewellers in Britain, who produce more than a third of the United Kingdom's
regalia, can be seen at work. To admire the most beautiful pieces and learn about the
district's history, head to the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter. The museum also houses
a shop that offers a great selection of locally made creations.
In Handsworth, the elegant Soho House, the former home of
industrialist Matthew Boulton, is open to the public. Inhabited by Boulton from 1766 to
1809, the place features beautiful rooms as well as a garden.
Chocoholics will undoubtedly make a stop at Cadbury World so as to
learn about the history of cocoa, observe the chocolate-making process and enjoy free
samples. For the admission fee, visitors also receive a few chocolate bars.
Although Birmingham and its
region are rather quiet during the day, the city truly comes to life after sundown.
Indeed, Birmingham is justly proud of its highly recognized, thriving nightlife. There
certainly is no shortage of theatres, live-music venues, pubs, bars and nightclubs of
all kinds. The Broad Street-Hurst Street area is proof positive of the city's amazing
Music-lovers partial to jazz or
classical music will enjoy the Birmingham Jazz Festival, held during the first two weeks
of July, and the prestigious City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which regularly
performs at the Convention Centre's Symphony Hall. And for theatre-goers, the Birmingham
Repertory Theatre, the Hippodrome and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (in
Stratford-upon-Avon, southeast of the city) regularly stage plays.
Last but not least, Birmingham is known as the capital of the balti,
a famous Kashmiri dish visitors should be sure to sample before leaving the city, which
is home to a great many restaurants ("Baltihouses") specializing in this type of
Where on earth
Located in the heart of England, in the Midlands,
Birmingham is the second-largest city in the country, after London. It is home to over
one million people, with more than twice that in the urban area. | <urn:uuid:bd97ba4c-2cdc-4fbf-8bfb-8194ae236b08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.airtransat.ca/en/Europe/England/Birmingham?ID=BHX&type=destination&tmpl=GEN | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950226 | 621 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Sapphire Technology has announced that its new 1GB HD4870 Toxic edition graphics card is available worldwide.
The high-end GFX card utilises Sapphire's Vapor-X, vapour chamber cooling technology along with three heatpipes and heatsinks and a thermally controlled fan. Cool.
Overclocked out of the box, Sapphire's HD4870 Toxic boasts a whole 1GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 100MHz and a GPU core clocked at 780MHz.
The graphics card supports AMD CrossfireX technology and can be daisy-chained via two high speed connectors.
Like others in the HD 4400 range the card features ATI Avivo technology, and features a second generation Unified Video Decoder for hardware accelerated decoding of Blu-ray and the now largely defunct HD DVD.
Don't expect the card to come cheap, however, with the 512MB version at the £200 mark and this one likely to come in at a far higher price point.
From CES 2009 | <urn:uuid:d76a84cb-b85b-4427-82b8-b704c4c2b4d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing-components/sapphire-1gb-hd4870-gfx-available-globally-498701 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902037 | 205 | 1.5 | 2 |
Border crossings to Laos
Where to get stamped in and out
Types of border crossings
Laos has two types of border crossings, international and local. As you may suspect, international crossings are generally open to all foreign nationals in possession of a valid passport and visa, while local crossings are open only to locals (on each side of the border) who are able to cross back and forth using some form of border pass. The international crossings are the only ones covered in this section.
Laos has over a dozen international overland border crossings. These allow overland travel to Thailand (via seven crossings), Cambodia (via one crossing) and Vietnam (via six crossings). You can also arrive by air at either Vientiane or Luang Prabang, both of which have international airports.
The most popular overland border crossings to/from Thailand are at Nong Khai/Vientiane and Chiang Khong/Huay Xai. To Cambodia, you only have one option, the Veun Kham/Dom Kralor crossing. To Vietnam the most popular crossing is at Nam Phao/Cau Treo. Lao visa on arrival is available at all these crossings.
Lao border crossings tend to keep varying hours, so it's best to get there early rather than late. On weekends and at later hours, don't be surprised if you're asked to pay a dollar or so in "overtime" -- don't expect a receipt!
Chong Mek / Vang Tao
For those planning on visiting far southern Laos from Thailand, the Chong Mek/Vang Tao crossing is the most convenient. From Thailand a regular bus runs from Ubon Ratchathani to the border town of Chong Mek taking 1-1.5 hours. Sometimes you may be required to change buses as Phibun Mangsahan depending on the bus caught. Once deposited at Chong Mek it is a five-minute walk through each crossing and regular songthaeaws run from Vang Tao to Pakse, taking about one hour. Visa on arrival is available.
Savannakhet / Mukdahan
With the construction of the Friendship Bridge II over the Mekong, all foreigners planning on travelling between Thailand and Laos at this crossing are required to use the bridge. Coming from Thailand, a minibus from Mukdahan takes you across the bridge itself, where tuk tuk drivers are always waiting to take you into Savannakhet. Lao visa on arrival is available.
Tha Khaek / Nakhon Phanom
This riverine crossing takes travellers from the riverfront of central Nakhon Phanom to the riverfront of central Tha Khaek. Boats run around a half dozen times a day, seven days a week. There is a small fee for the boat. Lao visas on arrival are available.
Paksan / Bueng Kan
From Laos, follow the sign that says Port off the main road, just pass the Manolom Guest House. A boat across the Mekong River costs 60B when full (seven to ten people). Arrive in the morning to catch the daytripping Lao crossing to shop in Thailand to be sure of a full boat, otherwise it's 360B per boat to cross. No Lao visa on arrival is available crossing to the Lao side from Thailand, so be sure to get one ahead of time if you plan to use this border.
Vientiane / Nong Khai
Lao visa on arrival is available at this crossing, the most popular means of entering Laos by land. The crossing is actually around 20km from Vientiane and a few km from the centre of Nong Khai, but regular and affordable transport is available in both directions.
Vientiane / Ban Mo
Just about unheard of. Travelfish reader Tilapia reports it is possible for foreigners to cross at the Thai village of Ban Mo to Vientiane. The village, just west of Si Chiang Mai, is opposite Vientiane. Less conveniently, the ferry across only goes Sundays and Tuesdays, at 6:00 pm ... so, in the dark!) No Lao visa on arrival is available.
Thai Li / Nam Hueng
This fairly remote crossing would be a handy one to open up fully due to the fairly good road condition north to Pak Lai and onwards to Luang Prabang. Currently there are conflicting reports on it being open, although it appears it is easier to leave Laos this way than to enter it. There is no Lao visa on arrival available here, nor is there much at all in the way of regular pubic transport. See the GT Rider forum for more information.
Huay Xai / Chiang Khong
A 30-day Lao visa on arrival is available for US$30 or 1,500B -- there have been many reports of officials refusing to accept US cash (as they pocket the difference on the exchange rate). Lao officials also charge an additional $1/40B fee for doing their job -- if you arrive at the weekend, it is called a 'weekend fee', if you arrive after 16:00, it is called an 'after hours fee' and if you arrive during a weekday before 16:00, it is called a 'processing fee'. The Chiang Khong/Huay Xai crossing is one of the most popular for independent travellers entering Laos from Thailand. After clearing customs on either side, it is a five-minute boat ride (30B - ticket sellers may try to charge you a 10B fee for each bag on top of the 40B) over to the other side. If you cross the border first thing in the morning, you will have plenty of time to catch the boat to Luang Prabang.
Laos / Cambodia borders
Veun Kham/ Dom Kralor
This is the only overland option between Laos and Cambodia, making it quite a popular option. Visa on arrival is now available in both directions. For a comprehensive walk-through on this crossing, see our feature story on the Lao Cambodia border crossing.
Sop Hun / Tay Trang
This border has finally opened to international travellers. To get into Vietnam, a bus leaves daily from Muang Khua on the Lao side for Dien Bien Phu on the Vietnamese side. The bus leaves at 07:00, and costs 50,000 kip (plus 2,000 kip to cross the river). We suggest getting to the bus departure point (on the Vietnamese side of the Nam Ou) by 06:30 as seats are limited and allocated on a first come first serve basis. If the bus is full you will be left behind! Tickets cannot be pre-purchased. At the border, Lao immigration staff demand a 4,000 kip 'processing fee'. You cannot get a Vietnamese visa on arrival, so arrange this beforehand. In the opposite direction buses leave daily from Dien Bien Phu to Muang Khua at 05:30. Lao visa on arrival is available at the border.
Na Maew / Nam Xoi
For those coming from Vietnam, this crossing offers convenient access into the boondocks of Laos' Hua Phan province. It is a short ride from the border to Sam Neua. Through buses run from Sam Neua to Thanh Hoa in Vietnam taking 10-12 hours. If you don't want through transport, there are songthaeaws to the border from Sam Neua for 21,000 kip but there isn't much on the Vietnamese side to pick you up.
NamCan / Nam Khan
Convenient to the Lao town of Phonsavan and the large Vietnamese city of Vinh, this border a popular one for overland travellers. Coming from Vinh there are buses to Phonsavan departing at 6:00 on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, costing 142,000 VND (100,000 kip). The trip is 403 km and should take about 12 hours. Through buses to Luang Prabang leave at 06:00 as well, on Wednesdays and Sundays only. The 690 km journey costs 325,000 VND (216,000 kip). Vietnamese passengers pay less (but then again, they pay taxes and you don't!). Lao visas on arrival are available.
Nam Phao / Cau Treo
Convenient to the Lao town of Lak Xao and the large Vietnamese city of Vinh, this border is the crossing of choice for many overland travellers. Coming from Laos, the border is 34 km east of Lak Xao. You can catch a bus to the border and then walk across to the other side, 500m away, and after entering Vietnam, find a connection to Vinh, about 100km away on the Vietnamese eastern coast, and from there to your city of choice in Vietnam. You'll need to have your Vietnamese visa in advance, of course.
Dansavanh / Lao Bao
This was the first land border between Laos and Vietnam to open for international travellers. It was for a long time the most popular, but many now opt for the more northern crossing near Lak Xao instead. This crossing is convenient for Hue in Vietnam and Savannakhet in Laos. Lao visas are available and through buses from Savannakhet to Hue run daily.
Bo Y / Ngoc Hoi
Convenient to Attapeu and Laos and Kontum in Vietnam, the border at Bo Y is wide open to foreigners, and now provides an interesting, if somewhat challenging, way to enter Vietnam. Of course, as ever, you'll need to have obtained a valid Vietnamese visa before hitting the border. In Attapeu, mini-buses for Bo Y leave in the morning. The first departure is at 07:00, running through to about 10:00. The price to Bo Y is 80,000 kip. It's 119km from Attapeu to Bo Y. Once everyone is processed the vans continue on to the town of Ngoc Hoi, 18km on the other side of the border. The entire process from Attapeu takes about three hours. Transport options are available from in Ngoc Hoi to just about anywhere you want to go. The nearest spot on the tourist trail is Kon Tum, 68km east of Ngoc Hoi.
Boten / Mengla
This is the only Lao border that is currently open to independent travellers. Lao visas on arrival are available. The border is about 42km north of Luang Nam Tha. There is regular transport between the two in the morning, but by early afternoon this drops to a trickle, so try to cross in the morning if you can. There is accommodation available in Boten should you get stranded.
See the visa and border crossings section of the Travelfish forum for reports from travellers how have used the above crossings.
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*Important note: This article does not, and is not meant, to take the place of work with a qualified therapist, which is essential to healing from severe trauma. The comments in this article are in general terms only, and are only opinions.*
Healing. That is the goal in the journey of healing from abuse, and I have a confession to make. The question I asked therapists in this article was totally self serving. I really wanted to hear what they had to say on healing, what helps, and what doesn’t. As a survivor, I was extremely interested in the answers.
Each therapist was careful to say that they were speaking in generalities, that each client is different and unique. That each person’s healing will following the path best for them. But there are some excellent insights that they shared from their observations over the years, and I felt that this deserved an article of its own.
The question I asked was: Which factors have you seen in clients that help them progress in their healing process from ritual abuse? Which factors have you seen that tend to retard progress? (I know this is a complex question, just a few key elements)
Ritual abuse often makes the survivor feel they are worthless, or have no rights. Jenny had some thoughts on this topic:
Aura of spirituality; sense of humor, lack of feelings of entitlement, strong support system Which factors have you seen that tend to retard progress? (I know this is a complex question, just a few key elements) Opposite of the above
Fran had comments based on many hours of work with her clients. Her response shows her commitment, and her client’s commitment, to the healing process:
Factors that facilitate progress:
1. Patience by the therapist.
2. Hard work, journaling, art, between sessions.
3. Having a greater purpose of helping others
4. Having helpful, loving, and protective support persons.
5. A religious base of hope and protection.
6. Valuing both their own knowledge and the suggestions of the therapist.
7. Crying, grieving.
Factors that retard progress
1. Maladaptive relationships
2. Being re-accessed or abducted.
3. Substance abuse
4. Over-dependence, looking for the perfect new mother.
5. Lack of support persons
6. Lack of a religious support network and belief system.
7. Lack of looking inward for answers, over-reliance on the therapist
8. Resistance to crying.
Those who have been ritually abused have often had negative spiritual experiences. Joann shares her perspective that includes her belief system:
Which factors have you seen in clients that help them progress in their healing process from ritual abuse? strong Christian beliefs, strong desire to heal, submission to the healing process Which factors have you seen that tend to retard progress? denial, unwilling or unable to commit time or money, fear, trust issues, emphasis on presenting alters rather than on programming/structures/systems , lone ranger counselors who burn themselves out
Survivors of ritual abuse have often had a multitude of painful betrayals in their lifetime. Alice shares her thoughts on this painful topic:
It always helps to process betrayal…all the betrayals from spiritual to parental. It also helps to label specific behaviors as abuse in the framework of healthy parenting and group dynamics.Sometimes clients have difficulty with their corrupted belief systems as regards themselves…i.e.- “I have no soul”
Survivors of ritual abuse often have difficulty trusting others, and John shares his perspective on this issue:
What helps the most is the solid listening and them coming away from session after session with a strong sense of being listened too. The second mostimportant eliment is to treat the presenting problem properly and that is usually a deep seated depression that masks itself in some other format. ODD or BiP or BPD etc. and to gain releif here and build trust over time….
One of the facinating things that I have found is that in the fourth or fifth year of treatment sometimes the depth of the dissociative aspect jumps out and you have alters in your office who have watched you for a very long time and they can finally trust you to share. I had one lady who had been treated for 8 and half years before I got to her and it was late in our third year when I meet the first alter. The Alters knew the truth of what happened to her and it was ritual abuse by her mom. It went on every day and on several occasions nearly resulted in the clients death, and all this happened per age three. Mom later confirmed this. I had used the principal of the ISH and garnered its support in the healing and the client now 39 has her child back, is holding down a full time job, is in a relationship that she is happy with and is clean and sober drugs and alcohol 6 years..She is on Rx for her depression and probabily will be all the rest of her life… but she is having one now.
I found these responses helpful and insightful. These are caring people, who have invested hours and hours into helping survivors in the often painful, but also rewarding, journey of healing. The fact that they took time from their busy practices to share some thoughts is awesome, and I appreciate and thank each and every one. In my thoughts, these people are heros, along with the people that they help. Ritual abuse is one of the most traumatic abuses to heal from, but the therapists and survivors discussed in these articles are doing just that. Healing. | <urn:uuid:9737a5c1-29e0-450b-b74d-5dd672bbe4c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://svalispeaks.wordpress.com/tag/therapists/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979424 | 1,154 | 1.570313 | 2 |
What We Are Doing About:
- Magazines and Multimedia
- About the Institute
- Weizmann Institute Homepage
|Alternative Energy||Materials Science|
|Biochemistry||Molecular Cell Biology|
|Computer Science||Plant Sciences|
The Feinberg Graduate School, the Institute’s university arm, was established in 1958 with the support of a $25-million loan (eventually turned into a grant) from the U.S. government. The School, which will soon be celebrating its 50th anniversary, is registered as an accredited higher education institution both in Israel and in the U.S. It awards M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics and computer science, physics, chemistry, life sciences and science teaching.
Outstanding students from around the globe pursue their studies at the Feinberg Graduate School. The language of instruction is English, and the average advisor-student ratio is 1:3. About 1,000 research students are enrolled: some 300 are pursuing M.Sc. degrees, and 700 Ph.D. degrees. About 45% are female. In addition, the School lists some 220 postdoctoral fellows, about a third of them from the United States, Canada, Latin America, the European Union and Africa, as well as Korea, China, India, Australia and New Zealand.
The Feinberg Graduate School trains research students for senior posts in academia, scientific and medical research, industry and governmental bodies. Its curriculum mandates the students’ direct involvement in research conducted at the Institute. This intensive program poses a real challenge to the students; all receive scholarships to cover their tuition and living expenses so that they can devote their full attention to research and study.
Summer science programs
The Academic Affairs Office organizes the Karyn Kupcinet International Science School for Overseas Students and the Emma and Oscar Getz Summer Science Program for Israeli Students. Every summer, about 30 undergraduate students who have completed at least two years of studies are admitted to each of these programs. (Neither admits graduate students.) They spend 10 to 16 weeks at the Weizmann Institute, gaining experience in various fields of science under the guidance of Institute scientists.
Feinberg Graduate School research students are involved in Israeli society and deeply committed to helping improve the quality of life of different segments of the population. They initiate and take part in the distribution of foodstuffs to the needy, tutor at-risk youth and participate in various activities aimed at bringing the public closer to science.
Performances of Feinberg’s student theater group are an important part of the cultural and community life, both for Institute scientists and employees and for the residents of towns, settlements and villages in the vicinity of the Institute. | <urn:uuid:88cda2eb-7a46-40c6-9eb0-e5a8570ec441> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/feinberg-graduate-school%20 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919634 | 558 | 1.945313 | 2 |
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Zookeepers turned up the heat for chimpanzees and strawberry growers covered their crops as Californians braced Friday for three days of freezing temperatures.
The cold snap is expected to last through the weekend.
Morning temperatures fell into the 20s and 30s in many areas, and much lower in the mountains. A low of 12 degrees was recorded in the Big Bear mountain resort east of Los Angeles.
In Sonoma County, homeless shelters started handing out extra warm clothes to protect people from below-freezing overnight temperatures.
Central Valley citrus growers watched as temperatures dipped into the 20s Friday. Napa, in wine country, and Sacramento, farther north, both recorded 27.
High temperatures in the Central Valley over the weekend were forecast for 50 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
In the south, forecasters warned that a low pressure trough sinking over San Diego County and parts of neighboring Orange County could keep nightly temperatures below the freezing point in coastal areas, the low deserts and inland valleys, threatening orange and avocado orchards and other sensitive plants. The coldest nights were expected to hit Friday and Saturday.
Farmers prepared to pull out giant fans to circulate the air and keep it from settling on their citrus trees, said Eric Larson of the San Diego County Farm Bureau.
"These guys are going to be up all night watching thermometers," Larson said.
Workers at SeaWorld in San Diego planned to crank up the heat for their macaws, toucans and parrots. San Diego zookeepers were also heating rooms for chimpanzees, apes and other tropical animals.
"They'll probably be huddling together and not be in areas where people will be able to see them," zoo spokeswoman Christina Simmons said.
Authorities on Friday reopened a 40-mile stretch of a major highway north of Los Angeles — some 17 hours after snow shut the route and forced hundreds of truckers to spend the cold night in their rigs.
The California Highway Patrol shut the Grapevine segment of Interstate 5 on Thursday afternoon. Officers began escorting traffic southbound early Friday and then opened northbound lanes about an hour later.
The shutdown severed a key link between the Central Valley and Los Angeles.
"There must have been 1,000 Mack trucks lined up," said traveler Heidi Blood, 40.
Blood and her three youngsters had been visiting Orange County and set out at 4:30 a.m. for their home in Kentfield when they found the road closed.
"I usually watch the news but I went to a spin class instead. I learned my lesson," Blood said.
Blood had to give an insulin shot in the car to her 13-year-old blind, diabetic dog, Barney.
To pass the time, the family watched movies and read on their iPads, turning on the car every 30 minutes to use the heater.
"We're watching 'Nannie McPhee' in the car right now," Blood said. "I only have enough juice for another three hours."
The highway through Tejon Pass rises to 4,100 feet in the Tehachapi Mountains and frequently is shut down in winter by blowing snow and treacherous black ice on the roadway.
Associated Press writer Jason Dearen in San Francisco and Robert Jablon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Friday, May 17 2013 2:47 PM EDT2013-05-17 18:47:04 GMT
Commencement ceremonies will begin Friday for more than 2,000 Cal State San Marcos students and about 9,000 San Diego State University students, with a Saturday ceremony
Commencement ceremonies will begin Friday for more than 2,000 Cal State San Marcos students and about 9,000 San Diego State University students, with a Saturday ceremony scheduled for the Thomas Jefferson School of Law. | <urn:uuid:a9a77df5-f30f-4752-be0b-b0ebd6d44cc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cbs8.com/story/20566075/zookeepers-growers-prepare-for-california-freeze | 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 | 0.952502 | 782 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Ethics quickly faded from the agenda of Utah’s Legislature this spring and now it’s off the governor’s to-do list as well. With political bribery scandals fresh on the minds of voters early this year, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. announced his Commission on Strengthening Utah’s Democracy, a wide-ranging effort to examine ethics reform, campaign finance, voting and the gerrymandering of political districts. Huntsman’s message was if the Legislature wouldn’t take care of ethics reform, he would. The Legislature punted on ethics reform, then legislative leaders asked the governor to do the same. Huntsman obliged, dropping both ethics and fair political districts from his commission’s agenda.
The Salt Lake City Police Department won’t be training its officers to do the dirty work of federal immigration agents. Police Chief Chris Burbank said “no thanks” to the provision of an anti-immigration law passed by the 2009 Utah Legislature. So did the Utah Highway Patrol and several other city police departments. The stand steamed some lawmakers, but Burbank complained the only thing cross-deputizing his officers would accomplish was to make immigrant communities fear police. At public meetings and through the media, the chief let Salt Lake City’s immigrants know they can still report crimes without fear of finding themselves locked up for their trouble. And that makes all city residents safer.
Sounding like a sore loser. U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, is blocking a key nominee to Obama’s Interior Department. Environmental lawyer David Hayes has been cleared by a Senate committee to take his seat as deputy Interior secretary, but he can’t get a required vote by the full Senate because of a “hold” placed on his nomination by Bennett. Backed by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Bennett says he’s protesting Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s decision to rescind 77 oil and gas leases auctioned by the Bush administration near Utah national parks. Utah’s House delegation seems just as environmentally friendly. The 3,000-member Republicans for Environmental Protection recently trashed the environmental voting records of Rep. Rob Bishop and former-Rep. Chris Cannon, both Republicans, giving each Utahn a rating of -5, citing attempts to block wilderness creation. | <urn:uuid:607b3230-3ff5-43df-8e6f-0b7cf3342636> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/article-12-7834-ethic-lapse-police-protection-green-blockade.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9532 | 485 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Thanks to a few devoted individuals, the Outer Banks' wild horses continue to survive despite increasing hardships.
It was a typical early March day on the Outer Banks as I drove north on N.C. Highway 12 towards Corolla. Storm warnings had been posted the evening before in advance of the last big blow of a particularly vicious winter season. Already, gray clouds scudded low across the sky on a stiff northeast wind, and the Atlantic Ocean was writhing with foam and spray.
To be honest, I didn't have much hope of photographing the famous wild horses of Corolla this day. Like all other sane creatures, they had probably sought shelter from the harsh wind. But I was early for my appointment with Rowena Dorman, director of the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, so I thought I would do a little exploring.
Currituck County's beaches have undergone profound changes since 1984, when Highway 12, which then terminated in Duck, was extended north, through Corolla, opening the northern Outer Banks to unprecedented development. Palatial beach homes, ritzy health clubs, specialty boutiques and plush golf courses now border the two-lane blacktop. With appealing names like Monteray Shores, Ocean Sands and Corolla Light the sprawling developments have transformed Currituck into one of the most desirable vacation spots on the East Coast.
That explosive growth, however, has placed the horses in jeopardy. The horses, which have roamed the Currituck Banks unhindered for centuries, are in direct conflict with thousands of tourists who flock to Currituck each summer --with disastrous results. Seventeen have been killed in car accidents since 1989, when a single-car collision killed six horses, including several unborn foals and their mothers. Others have been harmed by unfettered feeding in the form of human handouts and fertilizer on the lush lawns of Corolla.
Ironically, the horses have contributed in no small way to the appeal of Currituck Banks. They are at once mysterious and majestic, symbols of the unbridled wilderness and frontier era that once characterized the Outer Banks. There is something about the sight of a wild horse, running free on a wide, sandy beach, that stirs one's blood.
But on this raw winter day, the homes and businesses of Corolla were battened down until Memorial Day, and I doubted I would see any living creature running wild and free on the beach. I drove past the Currituck Beach Lighthouse, up to where Highway 12 ends. A low fence zigzagged east to west across the Banks, from ocean to sound, broken only by a cattle guard built into the final few feet of the road. From here northward, there are more than 12 miles of relatively undeveloped beach to the Virginia line: the proverbial final frontier and the Corolla horses' new home.
Last March, after a great deal of political wrangling, the Corolla Wild Horse Fund constructed the fence in a desperate attempt to separate man and horse. With the help of volunteers from throughout eastern North Carolina, they herded 14 horses north of the barrier onto 15,000 acres of public and private land where they could roam unmolested. Today, however, they were nowhere in sight.
I headed back toward the houses of Ocean Hill and turned off the main road, toward Currituck Sound. As I rounded one corner, I hit the brakes. There, on the side of the road, smack-dab in the middle of a deserted neighborhood, were five of the wild horses peacefully grazing on the winter grass.
I parked and got out, bundled up against the rising wind. I approached them silently, camera ready. One medium-sized black stallion nonchalantly raised his head in my direction, then went back to his meal.
A Currituck County ordinance prohibits people from approaching within 50 yards of the horses, so I stopped and squatted where I was, snapping off a few frames. And then, before I could get back on my feet, the black stallion started in my direction. I didn't move. If these animals were really wild, anything could happen. But he slowly came to me and lowered his head. I held out the back of my hand. He sniffed it. Then, convinced I had no goodies, he moved past me in search of greener pastures.
By the time I arrived at Rowena Dorman's office at the Currituck Beach Lighthouse grounds, I was excited and full of questions. As director of the Corolla Wild Horse Fund and resident expert on Currituck's wild horses, she was the one to ask.
Dorman is a talkative, friendly young woman from Lumberton, where she grew up riding and training horses. She moved to the Outer Banks in 1987 and, two years later, found herself involved with a coalition of local residents concerned about the future of the Corolla horses.
In 1989, Currituck County designated its beaches as a Wild Horse Sanctuary, and Dorman volunteered as a sanctuary officer. She talked to visitors about the horses' welfare and monitored the herd.
Since then, she has become their most visible champion. She has been featured in magazines, on television and, most recently, on the Fund's Internet homepage. She has helped boost membership in the Fund to nearly 2,000 people from across the country.
''The biggest factor in protecting the horses is public outcry,'' she says, ''and the publicity we've gotten lately has helped us immensely in our efforts to protect the horses.''
That is, after all, the primary goal of the fund. And , considering that the organization is without precedence among preservation groups in the United States, it has achieved a great deal of success.
''When most people think of wild horses, they think of the ponies at Chincoteague or Cumberland Island, Georgia, or even Ocracoke,'' she says. ''But what makes the horses there different from us is that they already have the protection of the (U.S.) Park Service, and they are primarily in undeveloped areas. The Corolla horses don't have that luxury. Everything that's been done to protect them so far has been done by concerned citizens.''
There was a time when the Outer Banks' wild horses didn't need any protection. It has been only in the last 40 years that the advent of tourism has forced the horses --and the Outer Banks as a whole-- to radically adapt.
Four hundred years ago, when theory has it that the horses first arrived on the Banks, there was nothing but sea, sand, and grass. The most accepted, and romantic, genealogical theory traces them to Spanish mustangs that came ashore from the wrecks of galleons along the treacherous North Carolina coast. The evidence is compelling.
For example, blood samples from the Ocracoke and Corolla ponies reveal genetic similarities to the mustangs. In addition, the ponies bear a strong physical resemblance to the fiery Iberian Peninsula breeds: wide foreheads, long and crested necks, a high tail and long mane and, most importantly, the tell-tale absence of a sixth lumbar vertebrae, an anomaly common in Spanish mustangs.
Another equally colorful but less plausible explanation credits Sir Walter Raleigh's lost colony with importing the horses' ancestors. Other experts propose that the are simply feral animals that were released on the Banks by early settlers to contain them and allow them to graze.
Regardless, the horses were once much more plentiful than they are today. In a 1926 article, the National Geographic Society estimated that there were some 6,000 horses roaming the Banks from Currituck to Shackleford Banks in Carteret County. Only a few small fishing villages dotted the desolate coastline, and locals would occasionally round up the horses, brand a few and place them in service hauling fishing boats or lifesaving equipment.
On Ocracoke Island, man's contact with the horses took a more creative approach. Up until the late 1950's Ocracoke residents held an annual ''Pony Penning'' on the Fourth of July, similar to the event that still takes place annually at Chincoteague, Virginia. The ponies were caught, penned, branded and released. The owners registered the animals, then sold them at auction.
One Ocracoke native, Captain Marvin Howard, decided the ponies could be put to better use, and in 1956 he established the first mounted Boy Scout Troop in the country. To join the troop, a scout had to catch, pen and break his own pony, or he had to raise the money to purchase one at auction.
In 1957, however, the State of North Carolina enacted stock laws that required all wild animals, including horses, on the Outer Banks to be penned or removed. The major bone of contention was that the islands were suffering from erosion and loss of vegetation caused by overgrazing. The state General Assembly made an exception for the Ocracoke Boy Scouts, but many horses were removed from Core Banks and Hatteras Island, as well as from the northern Outer Banks.
The Ocracoke mounted scout troop lasted only a few more years, and by the end of the decade the National Park Service stepped in. With the formation of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the entire island of Ocracoke (with the exception of the village) came under federal jurisdiction. In 1959, with construction of Highway 12 down the spine of Ocracoke Island, the U.S. Park Service rounded up all the remaining ponies and penned them in a 160-acre pasture where they have remained ever since.
Today, the Ocracoke herd has dwindled in size from nearly 300 at the turn of the century to approximately 20 well-cared-for horses. They are still under the care of the National Park Service, which employs a full-time ranger to feed and water them and provide veterinary care. The Park Service has also implemented a breeding program designed to keep the herd at a size that benefits both the environment and the horses, as well as weeding out genetic defects and disease.
''I really commend the Ocracoke community for having the foresight to save their horses before development threatened them,'' says Corolla's Dorman. ''Personally, however, I would like to see the Currituck horses allowed to roam freely without any constraints.''
As it stands now, the CWHF has considered every option available, including penning the horses. Yet the 15,000 acres north of the fence to the Virginia line is a strange amalgamation of Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Refuge, North Carolina Estuarine Reserve and private land. So far, none of the parties involved has offered a permanent haven for the 100 or so horses, particularly since there isn't any immediate danger from vehicular traffic.
The Nature Conservancy and the state own several east-west tracks of land across the Banks, and although developers are continually lobbying for the extension of Highway 12 north to the Virginia line, the owners won't budge --which suits Rowena just fine.
''As long as a road is hindered in that way, there won't be much growth north of the fence,'' she said. ''But then, we don't even want to talk about a road up there, do we?''
Right now, the CWHF's main concern is keeping the horses north of the fence. Shortly after the initial roundup, its weaknesses were exposed when ''M&M,'' a 6-year-old stallion, led his herd of 11 horses 1,500 feet out into the shallow Currituck Sound, around the fence's western terminus, and back to its familiar feeding grounds in Corolla.
''That fence is most effective for the other herds farther north that have never called Corolla home, '' Dorman says. ''Trying to change a horse's migratory and feeding pattern is very difficult, especially when you consider how easy food is to find in Corolla. As a result, we have a couple of herds that keep trying to get back home, and we've had to remove them for their own safety.''
Last autumn, the Corolla Wild Horse Fund shipped the fugitive herd to a private farm in Smithfield, where they have acclimated to their new surroundings quite well, according to Dorman.
From the 1950s up until the late'80s, removal of the horses was standard operating procedure for the National Park service, which owns and manages nearly 75 percent of the Outer Banks. At Cape Lookout National Seashore, for example, the Park Service policy calls for managing the islands as a ''proposed wilderness area.'' According to Michael Rickard, a resource management specialist for the Park Service, that means ''that we remove all non-native species where possible and reasonable.''
At one time, wild horses roamed the entire length of Core Banks in Carteret County. Today, the remaining horses are restricted to Shackleford Banks, a narrow island that runs east-west from Cape Lookout to Beaufort Inlet. The Park Service acquired Shackleford Banks in 1981, with plans to restore it to its natural state.
''At one time, there were more than 3,000 acres of maritime forest over there. But logging and human use denuded it in the early 1900s,'' says Rickard. ''The last humans left Shackleford in the early 1900s, but they also left their pigs, goats, cattle and horses behind, so that today there are only 90 acres of natural forest remaining. The island has become a migrating, shifting sand dune.''
The Park Service removed most of the animals in the late 1980s, but public outcry caused it to postpone removing the horses. Meanwhile, the population grew. Today there are 220 horses on Shackleford, placing great stress on the environment.
''The situation is critical, both for the horses and the environment, and we had to do something,'' says Rickard. Public hearings were held in Carteret County last year, and the residents were adamantly against removal.
''We definitely reached a compromise with the people of the area who wanted to see the horses say on the island,'' Rickard says. ''Shackleford may be a proposed wilderness area, but the policy means that we should attempt to return it to its pristine state where possible and reasonable. Removal of the horses wasn't reasonable to these people, so we are allowing them to stay in limited numbers.''
The Park Service has embarked in a new direction that involves rounding up about 120 of the Shackleford horses this summer and testing them for equine infectious anemia, a highly contagious disease transmitted by biting insects. The disease recently devastated a smaller herd on adjacent Carrot Island, and the Park Service officials are worried that the fatal disease may have spread to Shackleford.
Those that test positive will be destroyed, and the rest placed for adoption with the help of the Humane Society. The Park Service will implement a contraceptive program (with the horses remaining on the island), hoping to reduce the herds to a target number of 50 to 60 within a couple of years. The entire project bears an initial price tag of $72,000, plus another $5,000 a year for the contraceptive program.
''The goal on Shackleford is now to control the horse population enough to allow the vegetation on the island to recover and still maintain a free-roaming environment for the feral animals left on the island,'' Rickard says.
The issue is not so conclusive when it comes to the Corolla horses. Now that the animals are relatively safe, the Corolla Wild Horse Fund has initiated an environmental impact study that addresses the agendas of all the special-interest groups involved north of the fence.
''We have a much broader agenda to cover than does the National Park Service, because ownership of that 15,000 acres is so diverse,'' says Dorman. ''Fortunately, we have all come to a good place where we can reach a compromise and complete a study before population control becomes an issue.''
Currently, though, the Corolla wild horses have no home. They are living on borrowed time and borrowed land. Fortunately, they have devoted advocates in Dorman and the Fund.
''These horses are a cultural and historical treasure for North Carolina, and they should be protected as such,'' she says. ''And if you are a preservationist of any kind, you simply cannot stand by and let development progress until they don't have anywhere else to go.''
With that, Dorman invites me outside for a surprise. We bundle up and walk over to a small penning area next to the majestic red-brick Currituck Beach Lighthouse where five horses amble among the pine trees. Despite the rising gale, it is oddly calm under the canopy. This is where the Fund holds injured animals as they heal.
''When the weather gets bad like this, they head for the woods and turn their hindquarters into the wind,'' Dorman says. ''They are remarkably adaptive animals. That's why they've survived in this harsh environment for so long.''
She leads me inside the pen, and we tiptoe over to where a mare, ''Miss Tina,'' is feeding. Next to her, hunkered low and close on spindly, unsure legs, stands the latest addition to the Corolla wild horses: a new foal born just the night before.
''We haven't even named her yet,'' Dorman whispers.
It is an awesome and speechless moment, one I will always remember. And in that moment, with the winter's gale wailing harmlessly in the trees above me, I realized that these proud and threatened animals may have a future on the Outer Banks after all. | <urn:uuid:986b2088-9cea-42dd-a4e1-e5aed6754d15> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coastalguide.com/packet/thecorollawildhorses.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964908 | 3,656 | 2.078125 | 2 |
For generations, there’s been a cultural assumption that creative people are more mentally unstable than everybody else. In his 1936 essay, The Crack-Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald detailed his own personal battles with depression and alcoholism. Just four years prior, German psychiatrist Wilhelm Lang-Eichbaum examined 800 “geniuses,” and found that they showed higher tendencies toward “nervous tensions” than the general population.
In 2005, a study of 30 writers from the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop were compared with 30 people of similar IQ and comparable educational advancement. The writers--and their immediate relatives--had a higher rate of mood disorders than the controls. And, for added measure, let’s throw in the fact that of America’s 11 Nobel laureates in literature, four of them were “clearly alcoholics” (Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neill, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway), and one of them (Steinbeck) “probably was,” according to Donald W. Goodwin, MD, who wrote a book on the subject.
This fall, the first statistically significant study linking creativity and mental illness was published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research. “Mental Illness, Suicide, And Creativity: 40-Year Prospective Total Population Study,” examined 1.2 million Swedish patients from the country’s national registry and compared this sample against the entire Swedish population.
Here’s what they found:
Overall, creative professionals were about 8% more likely to suffer from bipolar disorder than the general population. The study found this to be true for artists (practitioners of everything from photography to choreography) and scientists (professors and researchers). The most startling results, however, related to authors. Writers were a whopping 121% more likely to suffer from bipolar disorder than the general population. Moreover, Simon Kyaga, the study’s lead researcher, says that authors had a “statistically significant increase” in anxiety disorders--38% to be exact. Rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide also increased among writers.
So what, exactly, is going on here? And why the particular increase in bipolar? Simon Kyaga, the study’s lead author, explains that first you have to address the tricky problem of defining creativity. He does so by examining three aspects: personality (traits like curiosity that are associated with creativity), process (what actually happens in the brain during a creative act), and product. In short, he says that creativity is the production of something new and meaningful. Sure, these terms are subjective. But research has shown that the greater the creative person’s output, the more likely she is to hit on something innovative or revolutionary.
“When you’re manic, you get more things done, but you also get more and wider ideas. And the more ideas you have, the more creative you are,” says Kyaga. It’s certainly possible for a manic person to create an excess of crappy art. But Kyaga’s team has also seen a link between bipolar disorder and ambition. If you’re truly ambitious, then you’re actively trying to create new and meaningful work. In other words, your art is more than a by-product of your inability to sit still.
But this doesn’t explain why the rates of bipolar disorder are so much higher for authors. Kyaga’s study discovered that authors are really overrun with psychological illness--from anxiety disorders to alcoholism. In fact, this was the opposite of what Kyaga found among other creative professionals. Visual artists, dancers, directors, and scientists suffered from these disorders at significantly lower rates than the general population. Kyaga theorizes that writers are particularly plagued by environmental factors. “It takes a long time before you get something published and a long time to get feedback,” he says. “That waiting isn’t present to the same extent in other occupations.”
(As an author, I will attest to the truth of Kyaga’s observation about the agony of waiting, but I’m not sure the struggling painters, dancers, or, for that matter, the scientists who work for years without a breakthrough, fare any better.)
In any case, the important question raised by the Swedish study relates to treatment. Can this new diagnosis change the way that doctors help their patients? Kyaga says absolutely. “Patients cannot be reduced to a diagnosis, and these results point to that.”
He argues against the tendency to look at patients as either sick or well, because even “sickness” has its upsides. “The underlying traits [of these illnesses] might confer advantages, e.g. creativity,” he says. And because of this, Kyaga says that doctors need to think twice before administering standard drug treatments. Drugs can stabilize but in so doing, they can alter a creative person’s personality, process, and product. On the flip side, Kyaga says that some studies have shown an increase in creative output among patients who are taking lithium, a common treatment for bipolar disorder. He points to an old one (1979) in the British Journal of Psychiatry, which examined the effects of Lithium treatment on 24 manic-depressive artists. Half of the sample reported an increase in artistic productivity.
“Treatments need to be based on sound clinical trails,” says Kyaga. “And this calls for using large databases of information.” Say, 1.2 million Swedes. | <urn:uuid:5e72cb6d-a2ef-4f5a-a1f6-ebdd326829db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fastcocreate.com/1681970/does-creativity-come-with-a-price-new-insight-on-creatives-and-mental-illness | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955 | 1,169 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Living in mixed and coniferous forests, porcupines are found in Canada, Alaska, and the northern and western USA. There are also isolated groups in West Virginia and western Virginia, and in shrub lands and deserts south into northern Mexico.
Porcupines are known for their spines (quills), which are solid at the base and barbed at the tip, but hollow in the shaft. The quills cover the body and tail (where they are longest), but not the belly. The porcupine cannot “shoot” its quills, but they are easily detached, especially when the porcupine swings its tail. Unless threatened, the quills lie flat against the body. When embedded in a victim, body heat causes the barbed tips to expand. The porcupine’s skin contains antibiotics presumably to prevent an infection if it were to be pricked by its own quills.
They are large but stubby rodents: thick body and stubby limbs and tail. Their total length can be 35” and they can weigh up to 30 lbs.
Porcupines eat twigs, leaves, roots, stems, berries when available, and tree bark. They are slow moving but bright: they can learn complex mazes quickly and remember these months later. This is an essential trait for the near-sighted porcupines when preferred trees are scattered few and far between.
They often den in a hole in a tree or a decaying log, and tend to sleep a lot during the winter. They live a solitary life, but do mate (with their quills held flat to the body), in the fall, and a single infant is born in the spring. The quills are soft at birth, but harden within several hours. The infant will begin to forage for its own food after the first week, even though it will stay with mom for another six months.
Prior to mating males may fight over a female. They also perform elaborate dances, and will spray urine on the head of the female. (Wow!)
What do porcupines, armadillos and opossums have in common?
Answer: their ancestors all came from South America. Paleontologists think that 30 million years ago, the ancestor to caviomorph (South American) rodents rafted across the Atlantic from Africa to Brazil. There, they evolved into many different kinds of rodents including guinea pigs, capybaras, chinchillas, and porcupines. Three million years ago, the Isthmus of Panama rose out of the oceans and connected North and South America. Armadillos, opossums, and porcupines began migrating north, pumas and jaguars to the south.
This article is part of a series about natural life on the Lost Coast, sponsored by the Lost Coast Interpretive Association, which may be contacted at email@example.com. For photos, educational information and news about the Lost Coast, please visit the Lost Coast Interpretive Association’s Facebook page. _https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lost-Coast-Interpretive-Association/241253955966296.
The common porcupine | <urn:uuid:c562f2fc-f68b-451c-a066-b25a03d87e3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.redwoodtimes.com/ci_21732974/natural-life-lost-coast-porcupines | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949532 | 667 | 3.859375 | 4 |
It is not a merit to be proclaimed but a defect to be deplored when mysticism would put a taboo on modern knowledge and scientific attitudes. The medievally-disposed mystic who looks down upon the practical inventions and mental achievements of science is not really being spiritual, as he believes, but merely being foolish. And those who scorn literature and vaunt anti-intellectualism are dreamers of the dreamiest kind. Sharpness of intelligence and breadth of experience are not only at a large discount in such circles but are actually regarded with disfavour. You will not find the kingdom of heaven between the covers of a book, but you may find some ideas which could point the way to the kingdom. If so, the book has served you well. Mystical denunciations of intellectual activity find their logical conclusion in the advocacy of absolute idiocy, in futile stagnation. Moreover, we need the intellectually formulated doctrines to guide our thinking and conduct because we cannot hold for long the moods of religious reverence and mystical inspiration. They give us something to hold on to when we are bereft of inward experience. The endeavour to make a scientific analysis of the contradictory situations which arise in meditational practice or mystical doctrine and thus clarify its issues, is often avoided with horror as being blasphemous! Those who are afraid to look such shortcomings in the face--or who even deny that they exist--are not suited for philosophy. We may find in their uncritical enthusiasms and vague outlooks and anti-rational attitudes some of the grounds why mysticism has not commended itself to the educated Western mind. For the latter expects and rightly expects that what is claimed to be a higher way of life should surely raise and not lower the level of intelligence of its readers.
-- Notebooks Category 16: The Sensitives > Chapter 2: Phases of Mystical Development > # 183 | <urn:uuid:e1fe7b55-7479-468c-bf8f-60dac57dcc72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wisdomsgoldenrod.org/notebooks/para/19632 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949918 | 379 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Monday, August 18th, 2008
A couple days after I passed on this alert to the amazing Charles Cushman photo collection, another reader immediately saw possibilities for this carefully filed and annotated archive of our city in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s.
He’s created a Google map, digitally mapping over 200 of the enormous collection’s slides to their places of origin.
This looks like it must have been a TON of work, but as Dan wrote, “Richard — this wasn’t so much effort as it looks. Google maps has a geocoder which takes street intersections and turns them into GPS coordinates. I wrote a script to download the Cushman archive pages, look up the street addresses in the geocoder, and add them to the map.”
Right — it’s easy if you know how! And I suspect that slightly more energy went into this project than Dan is letting on.
Though just a bit over 10% of the 1791 images in the San Francisco portion of the archive were readily identifiable, it’s more than enough to pull you back into a visceral, three-dimensional experience of our city in the era of Kodachrome.
6 Comments » - Posted in From the community,Just plain cool,San Francisco history blog by richard - sparkletack
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008
A reader alerted me to an amazing post that just popped up over at Laughing Squid.
See the two photos below? The first comes from an online collection of vintage color snapshots of San Francisco, courtesy of an online gallery at Indiana University — it’s the intersection of South Van Ness and Army, snapped by who-knows-who back in 1953.
The second one was snapped by Todd Lappin just yesterday — and at first glance, not much has changed in the last fifty years but the trees on the Bernal Hill and the price of gas! | <urn:uuid:dbe2a392-bb4c-49a7-8cd5-f1f9bab4e8ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sparkletack.com/tag/photo/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949093 | 411 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Two years ago Cedar Key was holding its breath as the BP's Deepwater Horizon well spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico and doomsayers fretted that a hurricane would blow the stuff our way.
It did not happen. The clam industry and the town's tourism industry were not touched by oil like the Panhandle beaches were. There were some effects as Florida seafood got a bad rap.
Cedar Key businesses have been gearing up for the usual July 4th perk in business. The city is not sponsoring fireworks, but business owners Cindy and Pat Bonish have stepped in to organize a holiday light show at the city park. They are seeking donations.
Fire Chief Robert Robinson and his crew were going to put up the flags and patriotic bunting again. He is asking residents and businesses to do the same. The chief also could use some donations for the decorations. He is also seeking names of those serving in the military for the honor roll of service.
Gas prices are dropping below $3.25 in the area and AAA out of Jacksonville says to expect about a 5 percent increase in Fourth of July trips away from home.
Then the insidious saltwater that provides a livelihood for the community crept in and messed up the wells that provide the water supply.
It's not the worst thing that could happen. But water is used in so many ways in our daily life.
The real inconvenience is not being able to turn on a tap and fill a glass or a pot for drinking and cooking. We now must turn to a bottle for our consumption.
Watching folks line up for their "two gallons per" the other day gave me deja vu. I remember the water and ice lines after Hurricanes Ivan, Dennis and Katrina.
The big difference is that these lines will not go away in a few weeks. The big worry is that our summer visitors will stay away.
The work on a solution begins Tuesday at 5 p.m. when the Cedar Key Water & Sewer Board meets at the community center to decide on short and long term solutions.
They have stepped up to the plate in getting water to residents, visitors and businesses. The effort - along with county and state emergency management and other agencies - has been heroic. The plan to bring in water from the new Fowlers Bluff water plant is nothing short of serendipitous. A thank you is due to the neighboring community.
Let's also commend Nestle Waters for its contribution of 9,600 gallons of water for free. I think I'll carry a list of their brands on the electronic shopping list in my phone for a long time.
As for the worry about visitors - let's remember what happened two years ago and repeat it again. Send out the message:
We are open for business.
Say it every chance you can to the people you speak to elsewhere. Say it with a smile. Put it in emails to friends, put it in comments on web sites and Facebook.
Cedar Key is open for business.
And if people ask about the water, tell them you can shower and wash your clothes in the stuff that comes out of the tap.
And when it comes to drinking water, tell them we only serve the best — "the imported stuff."
We just don't have to say it's "Fowlers Bluff Fancy Blue." | <urn:uuid:0e5290a5-9477-44f0-bd1c-0a80ea9d95cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cedarkeybeacon.com/content/cedar-key-open-say-it-often?mini=calendar-date%2F2013-03 | 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 | 0.972297 | 683 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Ques 1.What is the criteria for admissions in various programmes being offered
by Resonance for IIT-JEE?
Ans Resonance conducts an Entrance Exam called ResoNET every year for its various
courses.Admissions will be based on applicant's performance in ResoNET.
Ques 2.How many students you generally takes in each course/Do you have particular
no. of seats for each course?
Ans The intake depends on the cut off marks of the ResoNET in each course.There
is around 25% increment in the strength of the students in each course every year.
Ques 3.How can I get your application form?
Ans You can get the application form: in person,by post/courier
and through our website you can apply online.
Ques 4.How and Where to send your complete application form?
Ans The application form must be sent by registered post/speed post/courier to Kota
Head Office in such a way that it reaches us on or before the last date of the submission.The
form can be submitted at Kota or any other Study and Information Center if it is
being submitted in person at the institute.
Ques 5.How to check the application status?
Ans You can log on to our website to see the status of your application form or
DD during entire administrative process by entering the application form no. only.
Ques 6.Student already enrolled in PCCP,what will be admission procedure for
your foundation course?
Ans The student will be given the application form free of cost from PCCP Department
which you need to fill and submit at Resonance and shall appear in ResoNET for the
Ques 7.What is the mode of payment of fee in Resonance?
Ans All the students who will be declared qualified in ResoNET-2011 can deposit
their course fee for the academic session 2011-12by making Demand Draft/Pay Order
of required amount from any bank in favour of Resonance payable at that particular
Study Center where the student wishes to study.It can be deposited in SBI Bank through
Challan provided along the Admission Packet.The details are mentioned in ResoGuide
(available with Admission Packet) and on Institute's website under Fee section.
Ques 8.What should I enclose with the application form?
Ans Attested photocopies of marksheet of 9th,10th,11th,12th and competitive examinations
(whichever is applicable to the student) must be enclosed along with the form.
Ques 9.What if I do not receive my admit card of ResoNET on time?
Ans If you do not get the admit card in due time (3 days before the scheduled date),don't
get worried.You just have to reach the test center 30 mins before selection test
along with the photocopy of filled application form.You will be allowed to appear
in the selection test at the venue you had choosen earlier.You can also download
the duplicate admit card from the website.
Ques 10.What is the criteria for admissions in various programmes of AIEEE & AIPMT?
Ans Admission is based on First cum First serve basis for the various of AIEEE & AIPMT. | <urn:uuid:f0cd8b1f-3834-4ced-9e28-2da476d3a0fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.resonance.ac.in/reso/admissions/faq-admission-process.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919227 | 701 | 1.742188 | 2 |
From Ohio History Central
The Signing of the Treaty of Greene Ville, 1795, as depicted by Howard Chandler Christy (painted in 1945). Anthony Wayne dictates terms to the Indians. This painting is currently hanging in the rotunda of the Ohio Statehouse.
The Ojibwa Indians, also known as the Chippewa Indians, lived mainly in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Ontario, Canada at the time of European contact. They were part of the Algonquian Indians. The Algonquian Indians consisted of various tribes that spoke similar languages. The Ojibwas were closely related to the Ottawa Indians and Potawatomi Indians. They were sustained through hunting, fishing, and some agriculture.
The Ojibwa Indians participated in the fur trade with French merchants. Numerous Frenchmen found spouses among Ojibwa women. Ojibwa warriors fought with the French against the British in the French and Indian War. Following France�s defeat, the Ojibwa Indians assisted Pontiac in Pontiac�s Rebellion. Pontiac was a chief of the Ottawas, but his mother was Ojibwa. During the American Revolution, the Ojibwa Indians allied themselves with the British. The natives feared colonial settlers would continue to move into the Indians� land if they did not receive assistance from the British.
General Anthony Wayne defeated the Ojibwas, who fought alongside the Indians of the Ohio Country at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. They gave up their claim to lands in Ohio with the signing of several treaties, including the Treaty of Fort Harmar (1789), the Treaty of Greeneville (1795), the Treaty of Fort Industry (1805), and the Treaty of the Maumee Rapids (1817. Unlike most other Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River, the United States government did not force a majority of the Ojibwas off of their land. Rather, the Ojibwas lost some of their territory in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota, but the Indians retained much of this land as reservations. In 2005, approximately 176,000 Ojibwa Indians resided in North America.
- Algonquian Indians
- American Revolution
- Battle of Fallen Timbers
- Chippewa Indians
- Fort Harmar
- French and Indian War
- Fur Trade
- Ohio Country
- Ottawa Indians
- Potawatomi Indians
- Treaty of Fort Harmar (1789)
- Treaty of Fort Industry (1805)
- Treaty of Greeneville (1795)
- Treaty of the Maumee Rapids (1817)
- Anthony Wayne
- Hurt, R. Douglas. The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996. | <urn:uuid:f0cb4ac9-144e-4724-a8c8-ef487c241c0f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Ojibwa_Indians?rec=2090&nm=Ojibwa-Indians | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941675 | 588 | 4.34375 | 4 |
Underutilisation and less than optimum performance from today's server and storage systems are byproducts of two main issues.
Issue One : Servers and storage have been added whenever and wherever needed, by different departments, divisions and locations.
Issue Two : Many organizations deploy a single application per server.
Server and storage consolidation is one key way to improve utilization.
There are five types of server and storage consolidation.
Logical consolidation is the simplest and least expensive form of server/storage consolidation. It involves the consistent application of policies, procedures and best practices across infrastructures, including the use of consistent deployment, change management and monitoring methodologies and tools. Logical consolidation provides more control and consistency, and should be implemented and reviewed on a regular basis across IT organizations.
Physical consolidation involves the location of server and storage devices. By reducing the number of physical locations for servers and storage, organizations can greatly simplify the day-to-day management and operations of these devices. In fact, physical consolidation is often a prerequisite, or at least a good starting point, for all the consolidation types.
Workload consolidation involves moving the same application from a variety of servers and storage devices to fewer and newer more powerful servers and storage devices. Combining workloads that have been deployed remotely and/or on older generation servers can provide improved manageability, performance and utilization. Workload consolidation has proven very effective for a number of applications, including file/print and messaging/e-mail.
Storage consolidation provides a number of benefits. By combining disparate storage resources and moving to networked storage, organizations can simplify the management of storage and significantly improve utilization. The management of backup and restore processes can also be greatly improved through centralized, networked storage. These solutions will be the platform for continued, managed data growth in the future.
Application consolidation involves the aggregation of distinct applications onto a single server. New server virtualization technologies enable this by partitioning the server into virtual workspaces for each application. Extensions of this technology now enable the movement of these virtual machines across clustered physical systems, essentially removing physical limits to the number of virtual machines that can be supported. Virtualization is a technology that will be essential for the datacenter of the future and should be investigated by most organization.
Through consolidation and virtualization, organizations can dramatically improve utilization today. At the same time, clusters for key applications must be considered for additional utilization through availability. | <urn:uuid:0f506612-31f5-4a4c-baac-0cad01485e5d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/pedge/topics/en/scale_utilization?c=uk&cs=RC1059030&l=en&s=hied | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921324 | 492 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Posted by James Briggs on October 23, 2002
In Reply to: Re: "Archaic use"? posted by Tim Eckes on October 22, 2002
: How can it be an archaic use? This term is in current usage.
But it is the only phrase in which 'Sway' indicates 'power' or 'influence'. Thus, archaic.
Another example is 'fell', as in 'fell swoop'. There are others. | <urn:uuid:d01f7e26-eff7-4237-a9e1-e7adef944b3d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/16/messages/561.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969127 | 92 | 1.632813 | 2 |
If you are traveling for business or for pleasure and you own a laptop, the chances are you are going to want to bring it along. One of the biggest obstacles to most people working effectively on long flights is limited battery power. After all, whether you are working on a spreadsheet, a document, a presentation or even if you want to let your kids watch their favorite DVD, you can't do much with a limiting two hours of battery life. So how do you plan and what should you do?
First, figure out whether the plane on which you are flying has appropriate power ports. On most planes, if you are traveling in business or first class they will have power ports for you in every seat. The big question is coach/economy and whether or not the plane is newer. If you can, find out from the airline which type of aircraft on which you'll be flying. You can do this over the phone or online, for the most part. Then go to battery canada store plug in the information and you'll be able to see if you are going to have power from the aircraft. This is obviously especially useful on longer flights across the country or transatlantic.
If you have access to a power port then you should be all set for the duration of the flight. If you find out from taking the steps above that you don't, you need to plan. First, assess what you have. If your laptop is newer you probably have a three hour battery, which may be sufficient for your needs. If you have a used laptop or a refurbished laptop, or just an older machine you may only have two hours of battery for use. Once you assess your power, then you'll need to make a decision about buying a backup battery. This would obviously double your powerless access and it may offer you some additional security as having spares of just about everything, including batteries, on hand usually works out to your benefit.
If you need to buy an additional battery, or a newer battery with longer life, one of the best place to hit is thelaptopbattery canada store. They have batteries and power supplies that work with a variety of laptops for very reasonable prices. This means you can have power from coast to coast which will offer plenty of time to map out all of those ideas or to run through as many Pixar movies as you need to stay sane while traveling hp v3000 battery.
Finally, if you are traveling and you need internet access, check out your airport's website and figure out whether or not they have WiFi. Some places will charge while others offer free wireless internet access. If you're older, used laptop or refurbished laptop doesn't yet have a wireless card, they are really inexpensive for the benefits you will gain. Some airlines are also introducing wireless internet on flights. Lufthansa Airlines, Scandinavian Airlines, Japan Airlines, ANA, Singapore Airlines and China Airlines are all taking advantage of the new Connexion by Boeing program. This program will be coming on more airlines soon so be sure to ask your carrier when they will be bringing it on board!
No matter your situation, there are ways to plan for laptop use and access on board your flight. You may as well make your flight as productive as possible!
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On the heels of New York's legalization of gay marriage, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he is "not a fan of same-sex marriage" and would not sign a bill to legalize the practice in his state.
In an interview on NBC News' "Meet the Press" Sunday, Christie told host David Gregory that his state will stick with its civil union law.
"We had a very vigorous debate in late 2009, early 2010 - before I became governor - about same-sex marriage, and it failed in the state legislature under a Democratic legislature with Democratic Governor Jon Corzine. And so my view on it is, in our state we're going to continue to pursue civil unions," said the Republican governor.
"I am not a fan of same-sex marriage," asserted Christie. "It's not something that I support."
In the Garden State, Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer), the state’s only openly gay lawmaker, has proposed a bill (A4130) to legalize same-sex marriage. The New Jersey bill was introduced during the same week that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo introduced a gay marriage bill, which passed days later in the Assembly and on Friday in the Senate.
But even if the gay marriage bill does make it through the New Jersey legislature this time around , Christie, who is a Catholic like Cuomo, said he would not sign it into law.
"I believe marriage should be between one man and one woman. That's my view, and that'll be the view of our state because I wouldn't sign a bill that - like the one that was in New York," said Christie.
The New Jersey governor has been an opponent of gay marriage but a supporter of homosexual civil unions.
In a recent interview with CNN's Piers Morgan, Christie said, however, that he doesn't view homosexuality as a sin.
"Well my religion says it’s a sin. I mean I think - but for me? I don’t - I’ve always believed that people are born with the predisposition to be homosexual, and so I think if someone is born that way, it’s very difficult to say then that that’s a sin,” said Christie.
“But I understand that my Church says that, but for me personally, I don’t look upon someone who’s homosexual as a sinner.” | <urn:uuid:59dffed1-247a-4cbd-800a-198e6d38cb24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.christianpost.com/news/not-done-new-jersey-gov-christie-wouldnt-sign-gay-marriage-bill-like-new-york-51600/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976594 | 503 | 1.609375 | 2 |
The collaboration works best if a clinician genuinely has bought into the process and "prescribes" the DVDs and booklets. But patients can do the driving if they choose. O'Connor has evaluated and rated more than 200 decision-aid tools, many of them online, that address medical choices, from getting a flu vaccine to having surgery for obesity (http://decisionaid.ohri.ca/AZinvent.php). Besides risk-benefit information, you might be invited to probe your feelings about, say, starting a statin for high cholesterol: How important is it to you to give diet and exercise a go before starting a lifelong drug? How worried are you about the medication's side effects—or having a heart attack? Some of the tools offer a printable summary of which way you're leaning, which can inform a conversation with your doctor. O'Connor suggests asking your physician's group practice for a doctor who will cooperate. Your insurance plan may also offer decision-aid tools; call after a new diagnosis to find out.
Buy time. At the very least, buy time to process the diagnosis and get your questions about treatment answered. Where shared decision making is not the norm, doctors "may want to get moving because they don't want you to fall through the cracks. But most situations are not a medical emergency," argues Jeff Belkora, director of decision services at the University of California, San Francisco Breast Care Center, one of the 12 test sites. Get questions to the doctor ahead of your appointment, he suggests. And ask in advance if you can tape-record the conversation, since people notoriously retain very little in these circumstances. More general direction on how to get informed and involved in the face of a new diagnosis can be found at www.guidesmith.org, a site developed by Belkora.
The bottom line: You can hold out for care that fits your life. Sabadosa was young, healthy, free of risk factors, and "absolutely floored" at the news she had breast cancer. Opting out of reconstruction, she says, was not a common choice in her patient support group. But by taking her time, getting informed, and working with clinicians who honored her values, she came to a decision that still feels right. | <urn:uuid:879ca593-c129-467f-8cc1-e710cb5caf86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/articles/2009/11/25/medical-treatment-patients-and-shared-decision-making?s_cid=related-links:TOP&page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964632 | 466 | 1.882813 | 2 |
With Election Day less than five months away, Hispanic voters are energized and paying close attention, said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, which hosts this week's convention.
"There's a lot at stake. We're talking about a significant share of the American electorate that could well decide this election," Vargas said. "It's only now that both candidates are turning their attention to the Latino vote."
Indeed, both sides are crafting aggressive strategies to appeal to a demographic that is by no means monolithic but has supported Democrats in recent elections. Some Republicans fear - and Democrats hope - that Obama could capitalize on this moment to help solidify Hispanic voters as predominantly Democratic this fall and for years to come, much as President Lyndon B. Johnson secured the black vote for Democrats as he pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The stakes are high, not only for states with larger Hispanic populations such as Florida, Nevada, and Colorado, but for a growing number of other battlegrounds - Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia among them - where even a modest shift among Latino voters could be significant. The United States' Latino population surged from about 35 million in 2000 to 50 million in 2010, according to the Census Bureau.
As the presidential candidates head to the Florida convention, Obama is riding a wave of Latino enthusiasm over his decision to allow hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to stay in the country and work. Under the administration plan, illegal immigrants can avoid deportation if they can prove they were brought to the United States before they turned 16 and are younger than 30, have been in the country for at least five continuous years, have no criminal history, and graduated from a U.S. high school, earned a GED, or served in the military.
The move was politically timely, in the heat of the campaign and with Obama needing to energize a key part of his base of supporters - many of whom had grown disenchanted over the last three years. While the direct beneficiaries of the directive can't vote for Obama, his action has widespread support among American Latinos.
In fact, Obama has long enjoyed support among Hispanics - he won 67 percent of the Latino vote in 2008.
But he risked losing their enthusiasm, partly because Hispanics have been among the hardest hit by the economic slowdown. Obama also lost some support because he hasn't fulfilled promises of a comprehensive overhaul of the immigration system and because his administration has been aggressively deporting illegal immigrants.
Obama senior adviser David Axelrod predicts that the president could exceed his 2008 performance with Hispanics this year, noting that his opponent then was Sen. John McCain, who had initially pushed for an overhaul of the immigration system.
Axelrod contends that Romney is "hopelessly twisted up on this issue."
The Romney campaign has struggled to offer a consistent response to the president's move. Romney has assailed Obama's "broken promises" on immigration in recent days but has focused on the new policy's temporary status as his prime criticism.
"These people deserve to understand what their status will be long term, not just four and a half months," Romney said on Fox News Radio this week. "And that's why I think it's important for me and for Congress to come together to put together a plan that secures the border, that insists that we have an employment verification system, and that deals with the children of those who have come here illegally on a long-term basis, not a stopgap measure."
Still, Romney's own immigration policy is unclear as he works to distance himself from harsh conservative rhetoric that was common during the extended GOP primary season earlier in the year. | <urn:uuid:dde57cce-3952-4df3-8a32-1493f76081af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.philly.com/2012-06-22/news/32353198_1_latino-vote-hispanic-voters-illegal-immigrants | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980335 | 748 | 2 | 2 |
With another unfortunate and saddening school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut which left 27 families without a loved one, we are reminded once again to look at and be thankful for the safety of our children. As we send our heartfelt thoughts to those affected by this tragedy, we must also look into our own schools and the violence in our teens’ lives.
While we are fortunate that these fatal tragedies don’t happen daily, there is a great deal of violence in our schools that goes nearly unmentioned and unattended to. A recent study from Duke University found that until 2010, more teens were threatened than actually injured, however, these trends have now merged so that both threats and injuries occur at the same level. In a given year there are 1.7 million nonfatal crimes committed at schools, ranging from assault to theft. About one-third of students age 12 and up are the victims of school bullying. Of this bullying, middle schools appear to have the highest rates of bullying with nearly 43% of students reporting being bullied.
There are many factors that contribute to teen violence.
- The increased accessibility to violence that comes with access to a computer and television appears to have a large influence on teens. A study reported in 2008 found that teens and preteens aged 10 – 15 who were frequent visitors to websites that included depictions of violence by real people, were five times more likely to report that they themselves had engaged in violent behavior than were young people of the same age who did not visit such websites. Today teens spend a great deal of time with computers, phones, televisions and video games. While these all seem like harmless devices it is important to remember that too much exposure can lead to increased violence in teens.
- Another reason teens engage in violent behavior is to improve and maintain their social status. Studies show that young people who want to be better appreciated and respected within their group are the most likely to be violent. Violence appears to maintain social status by intimidating other students and lowering others self-confidence. This violence can in turn increase violence within the school because those who experience bullying or teasing may become enraged enough to begin acting out in revenge and engage in violence themselves.
- Lastly, teen violence can be caused by frustration due to learning disorders, emotional distress, or attention deficits. In some cases teens do not know how to appropriately channel their frustrations and act out in anger as a form of release.
As we learn more about the factors leading up to violence in our teens, it is important to take steps to prevent such horrific crimes from happening within the safety of our schools and within our community.
- Monitoring and limiting our children’s exposure to violence in movies and television, on the internet and in video games is important to decreasing rates of violence.
- Another key factor in reducing violence amongst our teens is to ensure that teens are not exposed to violence within the home. A teen growing up with their mother being abused will more likely be a violent teenager and adult, than a teen that grows up in a loving home. Creating a home environment of respect and courtesy teaches children how to respect one another and teaches them to consider the feelings of others.
- Lastly, a great way to reduce teen violence is to stay involved in the lives of our teens. Keeping open communication allows teens to express their feelings in more appropriate ways. Involvement also permits us to notice warning signs of violence including increased seclusion and poor behavior. It is important that we speak with our teens and offer our support.
Violence is preventable and with effort and involvement, we can reduce tragedies such as this weekend’s occurring.
Teen Violence Statistics http://www.teenviolencestatistics.com/content/media-and-teen-violence.html | <urn:uuid:424375ee-1205-429a-a054-27ec5bb1c926> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.helpnothassle.org/tag/bullying/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968386 | 764 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Topic: Good, portable IDE for Ruby - any suggestions?
I've started my adventure with Ruby recently.
Now I'm looking for good IDE that I can use to edit my code (Ruby scripts and Rails applications). It can be free or commercial (I don't mind spending few quids on it).
So far I've user RubyMine IDE and EditRocket - they are fine, but wonder whether there's something better?
My requirements are:
- portability (I mainly use Mac OS X, but also Windows and Linux)
- code completion
Thanks in advance. | <urn:uuid:9a592b93-eddc-422b-b33e-e4b9ddabc283> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://railsforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=44219 | 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 | 0.917299 | 120 | 1.5625 | 2 |
MDX in Analysis Services: Mastering Time: Introduction to Moving Averages - Page 2
August 23, 2004
Introduction to Moving Averages
Objective and Business Scenario
In the following sections, we will perform the steps required to create a calculated measure that generates a simple moving average within a sample cube, to illustrate cube-level support for an organizational analysis requirement. Once we have accomplished the simple structural additions to MSAS, we are free to use the new structure in any OLAP reporting solution that is capable of accessing MSAS. Within that solution, our use of the structures that we build here are limited only by our knowledge of the reporting tools we use, and the manner with which these tools interact with MSAS. Examples of these uses include the construction of a report that presents a rolling average of an important measure of performance within our organization, analysis of a rolling average of a critical measure with variable time granularity and range parameters, and the support of further key performance indicators within the perspectives of various organizational responsibility centers. We will develop the reporting side of these concepts in articles within my Reporting Services series at Database Journal.
For purposes of our practice procedure, we will assume that information consumers within the Finance department of the FoodMart organization have expressed the need for the capability to analyze a key measure, Warehouse Sales, on a rolling average basis. The consumers state that they wish to be able to examine the rolling average over a two-year time frame, on a quarterly basis. They need to be able to see the moving averages specifically for U.S. Store States, at present, but are cognizant that the ability to apply the rolling average of the measure to other perspectives, both within the store hierarchy ("drill up / down") and across other relevant dimensions ("slice and dice"), will be a "nice to have" capability.
We determine, in discussing the business requirements with the consumers, that we need to construct a calculated measure that will take the Warehouse Sales value for the current quarter (let's say we are Q4 of 1997, for purposes of illustration), then average that value with the same value from the last three quarters (Q1, Q2, and Q3 of 1997, to continue the illustration). As time passes, and as we move into the next quarter, the "four quarter" range over which the Warehouse Sales average is computed becomes Q2, Q3, and Q4 (of 1997), and Q1 of 1998.
We immediately recognize that such a rolling average might be valuable for other measures, as well as for other consumers in the organization. Therefore, we decide to make the investment in creating parameter prompt support for this functionality in the MSAS cube, while we are "under the hood," and to carry this capability into our reporting capabilities in Reporting Services (the same concepts are valid with other compatible reporting solutions, such as Cognos, Business Objects, Crystal Analysis Pro, and others). We do not develop this functionality in this article, whose focus is the MSAS calculated measure we have defined, but will delve into the procedures involved in creating these broader business intelligence capabilities in an article in our Reporting Services series.
Regardless of the end applications to which it is made available, a calculated measure that returns the rolling average provides numerous benefits, including easier, more consistent reporting and browsing (as I like to say, such components add a degree of "managed authoring..."). The provision of the measure as a drag-and-drop object frees the intended users from writing calculations, and allows them to focus on mission critical analysis. | <urn:uuid:6d059227-1e71-4bd0-ba4c-761b500ace86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/print.php/10894_3397621_2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930931 | 724 | 2.515625 | 3 |
(visited by Dave Morrison, Eisa Mahmoud, Ruth Ascroft, Mohamed Fayez, Corine Bronke, Jurriaan Reijs, Herman Den Toom, Leo Den Toom, Richard Netherwood, Eric Goodwin and Ihab `Abd al-Razzaq)
18-Nov-2005 -- After our successful climb to 22N 25E we headed northwest, passing the Clayton Craters on route to the monument of Kamāl al-Dīn at the southern point of the Gilf Kabīr. We camped near the monument to one of Egypt's great explorers who discovered the Gilf, before proceeding up the western edge of the Gilf and up Wādiy al-Firāq to visit Shaw's cave, named after one of the area's early explorers and one of the founders of the LRDG. The cave contains some good examples of rock art and lies only couple of kilometres from the confluence 23N 26E. Wādiy al-Firāq has been mined in the past and having a knowledgeable guide and leader was imperative to do this safely. After admiring the art in Shaw's cave, it was an easy drive round to the Confluence which lay high on the side of the wādiy with good driving all the way, which was just as well after the exertions at 22N 25E.
After that we explored Wādiy al-Arḍ al-Akhḍar before heading out the plain to the West to camp for the night. The plain is surprisingly covered with lots of fresh tracks from smugglers running people and goods between Libya and Sudan. We were disturbed later in the evening by the sound of two vehicles running hard through the night so we doused our lights and put the fire out, to avoid unwelcome visitations, just before their lights appeared around the edge of the dunes a few kilometres to our north. We watched them disappear before putting the lights back on and restarting the fire. | <urn:uuid:e62c3ee6-80e1-4075-8855-b4b78f5273e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://confluence.org/confluence.php?id=8107 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9522 | 413 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The Office of Continuing Education offers a number of adult skills courses in non-vocational programs designed to suit the needs and interests of the greater NJCU community through targeted adult learning courses, available adult skills educational opportunities.
NCD90/9279-Math Boot CampMath Boot Camp is an intensive two-week review course that covers topics in arithmetic, pre-algebra, elementary algebra, and elementary statistics. This course prepares qualified students to potentially place into a higher level mathematics course. It is intended that students take this course prior to taking a placement exam.Monday-Thursday, July 8 through July 18 Time: 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Location: Karnoustsos Hall, Room 428Cost: $250.00 (includes MyMathTest access code)Instructor: TBDRegistration Deadline: July 2NCD91/9289-English Boot CampWriting Skills Review is a series of four workshops, each two hours, that will take students, step by step, through the process of writing an academic essay. Over the four sessions, students will go through the full writing process, from prewriting and generating ideas, to organizing and planning, and onto drafting and revising. Tuesdays & Thursdays, July 9 through July 18 Time: 1:30-3:30 p.m. Location: Karnoustsos Hall, Room 228Cost: $150.00Instructor: TBDRegistration Deadline: July 2NCD92/9291-Math & English Boot Camp Combined PackageSee course descriptions, dates/days, times and locations above.Monday, July 8 through Thursday, July 18Cost: $350.00Instructor: TBDRegistration Deadline: July 2 | <urn:uuid:b5b16ea2-3a1e-4fe5-a3a3-12bcbc7b3753> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://njcu.edu/Adult_Skill_Courses.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940668 | 353 | 1.867188 | 2 |
The economy, unemployment, the national debt, and taxes are central issues in the present election cycle discourse. These are important and at times complex issues that deserve an honest airing of the relevant data and facts. Unfortunately, on the topic of taxes, our President and his top advisor, David Axelrod, continue to mislead the public. On national television recently, David Axelrod stated that the Republicans would again favor tax cuts for “the wealthy.” He, of course, wanted listeners to conclude that the wealthy paid less in taxes after the 2003 tax changes.
The fact is that “the Bush tax cuts” were followed by markedly increased Federal Tax revenues and a markedly increased contribution by “the wealthy” to this tax revenue. Two of my recent blog posts, using data directly from the IRS, should have removed all credibility from the notion that “the wealthy” preferentially benefited from the Bush tax cuts (See “After Bush Tax Cuts, Payments By Wealthy Actually Increased,” and “Tax Rates, Tax Revenues and GDP”)
Another example of misinformation. Almost daily, the President reiterates the claim that it is only fair that millionaires and billionaires pay at a tax rate greater than their secretaries. Again, the IRS data is clear: both the top 0.1% and top 1% of earners (which includes all the millionaires and billionaires) already pay over 4 times the rate in taxes than do the over 4 million secretaries in this country (24.3% vs. 5.6%). Fortunately, the public is now hearing that the so-called “Buffett rule” will raise only $47 billion over the next ten years. This is a trivial amount compared to the over $4 trillion of new debt accrued during the first three years of the present administration. Also, this $47 billion assumes no tax revenue destruction by the increased capital gains tax rate that is part of the “Buffett rule.” When capital gains tax rates go up, tax revenues from capital gains go down.
It is more likely that the “Buffett rule,” which fortunately won’t become law, would cause the government to have less tax revenue over the next ten years from capital gains. That decline, plus the possible economic slowdown that accompanies tax increases, could easily offset an estimated revenue increase.
One more example. Not long ago the President stated that you cannot raise tax revenues when you lower tax rates unless you take it from the middle and lower income earners. Wrong again. When tax rates were reduced during the Bush administration, the resultant record (!!) increase in Federal tax revenues came highly disproportionately from the wealthy. But let’s not rely only on what happened after the so-called “Bush tax cuts.”
In the 1920’s income tax rates were reduced from more than 70% to less than 25%. Federal personal income tax revenues grew at an annual rate of over 8% from 1921-1928. As a result of action taken by the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations, marginal tax rates were raised to over 90%. After Kennedy reduced the tax rate from over 90% to 70%, tax revenues increased by an annual average of almost 9%. Finally, after the Reagan tax cuts, Federal personal income tax revenues also increased by an average of 9% per year from 1983 to 1988. (Total tax revenue doubled, as did GDP, during the 1980’s because of the simultaneous growth of the economy.)
But the key question is what happened to the contribution of the wealthy versus the lower income earners every time tax rates were reduced? The share of tax revenues paid by the wealthy grew by over 75% from 1921 to 1928. After the Kennedy tax cuts, again the wealthy’s share of the tax burden rose. The same thing happened after the Reagan tax cuts. From 1981 to 1988 the top 1% of earners saw their proportion of the total tax bill grow by a whopping 55%. Four different decades, four different tax cuts — and every single time the share of total tax revenue paid by the average worker fell while the share paid by the wealthy increased.
So, why would intelligent people with access to the facts continue to make claims not supported by those facts? The goal appears to be nothing more than to gain political support from those folks who do not fall into the ranks of “the wealthy.” Tell them you will fix the “unfair treatment” they are experiencing in order to win their vote. None of what the politicians and pundits talk about during the current tax debate will actually help those in the lower income brackets improve their status. Only pro-growth policies that increase GDP and increase employment can do that. There is not only no evidence that raising tax rates will spur GDP growth but plenty of evidence that the opposite is true.
Deny it as they do, this rhetoric is purely vote-seeking class warfare. We deserve better. But waiting around for better is not going to get it done. American citizens need to start challenging the opinions and conclusions and recommendations that are spinning out of Washington and the media. What facts or data or historical examples support what they are telling us? Let me give one more recent example: Senator Charles Schumer (Democrat, NY), in criticizing Mitt Romney, asks how he is going to pay for his tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. Most folks, without questioning, would echo, “Yes, how can he do that?” Well, the assumption here is that reducing tax rates does two things – first, it reduces what millionaires and billionaires pay in taxes and, second, it reduces the overall tax revenue collected by the Federal Government. Both assumptions are wrong as amply proven by over 80 years of U.S. tax history.
So, is it ignorance or arrogance underlying the continued spin about taxes and personal income? Everyone needs to answer this for himself/herself. Knowing the facts is indispensable in that process. My hope is that more and more of us make that effort. | <urn:uuid:9caa87e1-504e-45dc-85f8-44efca3aa9b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2012/04/23/the-obama-administrations-bad-spin-on-taxes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970719 | 1,229 | 1.882813 | 2 |
The resignation letter heard round the world proves what we already know: Washington would like to think it can change the culture of Wall Street -- and it can't.
OK, so who do we believe? In a cover story in New York magazine
last month melodramatically headlined "The Emasculation of Wall
Street," journalist Gabriel Sherman made the case that the big financial
firms were engaged in "something that might be called soul-searching"
about their many sins and their wildly overcompensated contribution to
the U.S. economy.
Wall Street, under the whip of the giant Dodd-Frank law, was learning to behave. Reduced compensation packages and increased capital requirements were going to tame or snuff out some of the riskier and most reckless practices that brought the nation to the edge of a second Great Depression, Sherman wrote. Best of all, the domestication of Wall Street would redirect the best minds in the nation back into useful things like real engineering rather than financial engineering. Cool!
Now comes Greg Smith, an apparently conscience-stricken renegade from Goldman Sachs, who tells us that not only has nothing changed in the firm's culture, but he "can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it."
Can these two things both be true?
Actually, maybe yes. But the larger point is: We need to pay a lot more attention to Greg Smith than to Gabriel Sherman. There is, first of all, every reason to think Smith was telling the truth.
Some smart observers of the Street, like the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author ("Lords of Finance") Liaquat Ahamed, say that while Sherman is correct to say Wall Street is much more restrained at the moment, much else has not changed. "Greg Smith is dead right," Ahamed wrote me in an email today. "Goldman and all the other investment banks are plagued by conflicts of interest. The problem is that over time all of them, but especially Goldman, have shifted from the business of advising clients or raising capital for clients to trading on their own account. I have the impression (from books about the Pecora hearings) that in the 1930s Glass Steagall was motivated as much by outrage at conflicts of interest (e.g. Citibank famously stuffing the accounts of its deposit holders with foreign bonds that then went bankrupt) as the desire to make the banking system more stable."
But we didn't get a new Glass-Steagall. Instead, courtesy of Tim Geithner and Co., we got the milquetoasty Volcker Rule (which the Treasury only backed, after a year of ignoring Paul Volcker, when Barack Obama insisted on it, as I have previously written), dubious rules about unwinding Wall Street's still-giant firms in a crisis, and a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that is under constant assault on Capitol Hill. So it beggars common sense to think that we're really getting a new Wall Street.
And none other than Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein--whom Smith attacked yesterday for losing "hold on the firm's culture"--has already conceded this point. As I wrote in my 2010 book "Capital Offense,'' Goldman Sachs became the biggest earner and most prestigious firm on Wall Street in part because it had no scruples about simultaneously betting against products it was selling. Goldman justified this by saying that it had more sophisticated customers, like big institutional and professional investors, who didn't mind if Goldman placed hedges against the very investments it was touting to other clients.
Back in 2010, Blankfein admitted, in effect, precisely what Greg Smith is alleging now. In the now-famous hearings held by Sen. Carl Levin's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Levin tried to get Blankfein to concede that Goldman was morally wrong to bet on the sly against securities that it had touted as solid investments to its clients. No, no, the Goldman CEO demurred, that's not how the financial system works any more. "There's been a change in the sociology of the business in the last 10 to 15 years," Blankfein explained patiently. "Somewhere along the line," he said, big clients stopped asking investment banks for good advice and started to seek them out only to set up deals for them -- merely to underwrite the transactions and be on the other side of them. That forced Goldman to transform itself from a private partnership in the late '90s into a publicly traded company in order to obtain the big-time capital it needed to create such deals. It also apparently gave Goldman carte blanche to shaft any helpless investor on the other side of those transactions. Liquidity was all. Nothing else mattered.
We have heard again and again in the past two years how Dodd-Frank is delivering up to us a new Wall Street, how banking is becoming blessedly "boring" again. But Greg Smith now joins a very small group -- an absurdly small group -- of truth-tellers who seem to be telling us that, for the most part, things still work the way they used to. One of Smith's predecessors in this select company, Frank Partnoy, exposed the practices of Morgan Stanley back in the 1990s--a firm that he wrote had evolved from a stodgy white-shoe bank into a furious profit machine that was mainly involved in speculation and scamming, using arcane derivatives and complex new packages of debt obligations and interest-rate payments that Morgan foisted on customers who barely understood them. Another whistle-blower, Eric Kolchinsky, a former Moody's managing director, revealed in congressional hearings in late 2009 that even into the year after the financial crisis, the firm continued to deceive investors by inflating ratings on dubious securities.
How much can we really expect this to change? Not much. Yes, as Gabriel Sherman wrote, Wall Street is going through something of an existential crisis. The Volcker Rule, as shot full of holes as it is, may help to prevent FDIC money intended for traditional banks from being used to bail out firms that continue to deploy hedge-fund practices. But if Sherman had it right, and the habits and culture that pervaded Goldman and Morgan Stanley have been fundamentally altered and have "boxed in" the firms since they were forced to convert to bank holding companies during the crisis (in order to tap the Fed's discount window), then why is Greg Smith writing that even in the aftermath of Dodd-Frank, the Levin hearings and a giant civil suit that Goldman settled (without admitting wrongdoing), the firm is as vicious as it's ever been? "Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God's work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding," Smith writes.
So there's even less integrity than there used to be? That's especially scary considering that giant banks are still giants and are going to remain so and that they are still having trouble passing stress tests, as we saw this week. There is nothing to fix the too-big-to-fail problem beyond a host of as-yet-unwritten "living wills" that are supposed to tell regulators how to liquidate the banks in a crisis. The largest surviving banks--mainly Goldman, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo--are growing bigger and more global relative to the rest of the industry. They are pushing out smaller banks in key areas, having increased their overall market shares in deposits, mortgages, credit cards, home-equity loans, and small-business loans. Beyond that, at more than $700 trillion, the derivatives trade is already much larger than it was during the 2008 crisis. And meager as it is, Dodd-Frank is in the process of being gutted by the GOP-led House (never mind what might happen if Mitt Romney gets elected president, because he has vowed to repeal it). Regulators are starved for staff.
Eric Kolchinsky, the former Moody's derivatives expert, in a conversation with me today, said "things obviously have not changed. Dodd-Frank in my estimation doesn't really do much at all," especially to change the ethics on Wall Street or to help protect Wall Street's clients from getting snowed over the super-complex derivatives they are still being sold. Instead, Dodd-Frank "really just focuses on paperwork without any changes in practices," Kolchinsky said. "What happened is that some of the products that made that kind of money were directly outlawed. You can't do what you did last time. But the attitude [on Wall Street] is, 'Let's find something else.' That hasn't changed. What Greg Smith was doing, as head of equity derivatives, that's another complex product, and it's in that complexity where the banks can make a lot of money."
Indeed, it's no surprise that the bank lobby threw most of its energy during the Dodd-Frank legislative process into watering down rules requiring over-the-counter derivatives to trade on an open and supervised exchange. The reason is that derivatives and structured finance products traded off exchange were still a major source of Wall Street's profitability because they were not exposed to market and risk valuation. And the more complex they are, the easier it is for the banks to charge their customers huge spreads. In other words, the market is still rigged and full of scams, just as Frank Partnoy warned back in the 1990s.
Who to believe? I think I'll go with Greg Smith over Gabriel Sherman. You can take that to the bank. | <urn:uuid:b1c3dda1-9fdd-4fd5-90f4-51bd89efc125> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/why-greg-smith-dead-goldman-140913996.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973674 | 1,974 | 1.53125 | 2 |
View Full Version : Recommend a program to make basic control prints?
03-14-2009, 02:05 PM
I'm wondering if anyone knows an app that would be good for making basic electrical and control flow diagrams. This is just for my own field mod prints and such not full on engineering prints. I've been kludging along with various graphics programs, which is actually not to bad for control flow block diagrams (mostly box, lines and text) but really lacking for basic hvac/electrical.
03-14-2009, 02:21 PM
There is a very recent thread with many programs talked about. TinyCad I think the big winner.
03-14-2009, 03:10 PM
Ah yes, there is the thread back a few pages. Thank you very much! :)
03-15-2009, 09:15 AM
Check out Visio. Alerton Controls uses Visiologic to write the program and the compiles it to down load to the controllers. Visio has many different templates including electrical. It is quite easy to use. You drag images from the template section and snap lines in place. I like it.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.0 Copyright © 2013 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:807ae405-2cd7-41a2-956a-4fa734546b77> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hvac-talk.com/vbb/archive/index.php/t-246542.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908367 | 272 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Washington (D.C.) – Public Schools;
Washington Normal School;
Wilson, James Ormond;
Wilson Normal School;
Wilson Teachers College
The college was named in honor of James Ormond Wilson (1825-1911). Wilson graduated from Dartmouth University. He was trustee of the Washington Public Schools from 1861 through 1869, and the second superintendent of schools for Washington Public...
Human Rights March;
Student Protesters -- Washington (D.C.) -- University of the District of Columbia;
University of the District of Columbia
The National Black Student Association (NSBA) focused on human rights and self determination in Southern Africa and the United States with a march to Lafayette Park, on April 1, 1978. NSBA was a national organization of African-American students... | <urn:uuid:6d666357-25c6-4b88-8443-cb4b18544616> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://contentdm.auctr.edu/cdm/search/searchterm/April/mode/all/order/title/ad/desc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912965 | 159 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Bowline Sheetbend Trust Lean Activity
This Activity is meant for Boy Scouts.
6 foot rope for each scout
Have each patrol stand in their own circle, facing inward, with the ropes in the center.
Have each scout choose a partner across the circle from him. If there is an odd number of scouts in a patrol, the patrol leader will stand out or pair up with a patrol leader from another odd-numbered patrol.
On 'GO' signal, each scout grabs a rope and ties a bowline around his waist. He then joins his rope to his partner's using a Sheetbend. The partners then back apart until the rope is tight and then lean way back with hands stretched out above their heads.
When all pairs in a patrol are finished, they give their patrol yell.
A leader should check all the knots for correctness and then determine the fastest correct patrol. If a timer is used, time deductions can be added for incorrect knots.
Another way of running the activity is to have all scouts choose partners and then line up in two lines, partners across from each other. As each pair finishes, check knots and give deductions. The fastest pair gets points for their patrol, and 2nd, 3rd, 4th place receive diminishing points. If partners are from different patrols, they split the points. | <urn:uuid:aab0aef7-a109-4c54-b4d7-36e296268de5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://boyscouttrail.com/content/activity/bowline_sheetbend_trust_lean-934.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935871 | 271 | 2.109375 | 2 |
A new petition opposing state involvement in the regulation of the press was launched this afternoon.
It comes in response to a petition by the Hacked Off group calling for the Government to implement the recommendations put forward by Lord Justice Leveson in his report last week.
The Hacked Off petition has so far been signed 131,589 times, though questions were raised over the weekend as to how the group was verifying the signatures (the petition asks only for a name and email address).
In response to those criticisms Hacked Off said: “A continuous process of verification is under way and false or repeat signatures, where found, are removed from the total number given on the website. We have uncovered very little evidence of such abuses.”
A separate petition on the Government’s e-petition website has 4,932 signatures.
The latest petition backing Prime Minister David Cameron’s misgivings over backing statutory underpinning to press regulation has been signed by 28 people.
This petition aims to preserve a free press in this country. Already, as many editors have noted, the Leveson enquiry has had a chilling effect on press freedom.
True, the press sometimes abuse their freedom. We need a better way of curbing press excesses. We need a tougher code of practice, with a 'rapid right of reply' to incorrect or libellous articles, and arbitration.
Any new body to control the press must not be run by the press - but by independent people. .
We have existing laws to protect privacy and reputation. These must be enforced, e.g. the police were at fault for not prosecuting phone hacking.
Many demands for government control of the press come from the rich, who use PR to promote themselves, but object when others come up with facts that contradict their image.
It would be wrong to introduce statutory control of the press in response to the demands of celebrities like Hugh Grant and Max Mosley. | <urn:uuid:3f3f3108-2ddb-4098-8ed7-7b8a7c96004c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/new-petition-launched-opposing-state-involvement-regulation-press | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954032 | 403 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Tesla coils and their support equipment are extremely dangerous.There are many known and unknown dangers associated with this type of equipment. "Some" of the known dangers are as follows:
High Voltages and Currents: Tesla coils use and produce extraordinarily high voltages and currents. Output voltages for small coils are typically in the range of 500,000 to 1,000,000 volts. Currents of 1000 to 5000 amperes may be present in the input circuits. Under no circumstances should one come into contact with these voltages and currents. In all cases the voltages and currents used in Tesla coils are considered far beyond lethal levels. Please see special note.
Burns: Due to the high frequencies involved, Tesla coils can cause severe burns without the sensation of pain. These burns are typically very deep and need long term medical attention.
Long Distance Arcing: Tesla coils, by their nature, produce electrical arcing which can travel unpredictably in any direction and can strike at considerable distances. These arcs can be very dangerous.
Electromagnetic Fields: Tesla coil type equipment produced extreme magnetic, electrostatic, and radio frequency fields. These may interfere with pacemakers and any other critical electronic devices in the area. These effects are unpredictable.
Ozone: Tesla coil equipment produces large quantities of ozone, which is poisonous. Adequate ventilation must always be maintained.
Ultraviolet Light: Spark gaps used in Tesla equipment produce intense ultraviolet light. This light can burn the retina of the eye with ease. Always cover any exposed arcs.
Fire: Tesla coils can and have started a number of fires. They can arc to flammable objects with ease. Any fire extinguishing equipment must be rated for electrical fires but still must only be used when the power is removed from this type of extremely high voltage equipment.
PCB Oil: Although rarely used now, high voltage devices such as transformers and capacitors may use oils containing PCBs. These substances can cause very serious and long-term heath problems and fatal cancers.
Explosions: Components used in Tesla coils can explode with great violence. High voltage capacitors especially can store a tremendous amount of energy and can fail catastrophically. Always wear eye protection and physically shield energy storage components.
Energy Storage: Tesla coil circuits can store lethal voltages long after external power sources are removed. Circuits can spontaneously become energized without warning. Power supplies and especially high voltage capacitors must be discharged before approaching this type of equipment.
X-rays: Vacuum tubes, light bulbs, and other evacuated spaces will produce X-rays when exposed to high voltages.
Radio Frequency Interference: Tesla coils always produce intense radio frequency interference.
Electronic Equipment Damage: Tesla coils can easily destroy any type of electronic equipment in the area or connected through the common AC wiring. This includes Computers, Televisions, etc.
Special Safety Note:
There are a number of photographs both historical and modern that show people in close proximity to Tesla coils while they are in operation. In all cases these are either faked or done under very special circumstances. The most famous and unfortunate of these is shown here:
This and similar pictures give the impression that Tesla coils are safe. This picture is a double exposure. The following is an excerpt from Tesla’s notes "To give an idea of the magnitude of the discharge the experimenter is sitting slightly behind the "extra coil". I did not like this idea but some people find such photographs interesting. Of course, the discharge was not playing when the experimenter was photographed, as might be imagined!" Tesla and the photographer went to great lengths planning how they would produce these pictures using camera tricks. Other photographs show people with streamers flying out of their heads and such. They are always on some insulated platform to limit the actual currents passing through them. This is extraordinarily risky. It should also be pointed out that modern designs are capable of producing and maintaining vastly higher power levels than some historic machines (not Tesla’s!).
Some explanation is in order.
We now know that the "skin effect" DOES NOT apply to people. RF currents travel easily within the body favoring nerves and blood vessels as current conductors!!! The effects of high energy pulsed RF inside the body is unknown...RF currents do not stimulate nerves. Therefore, one can have high frequency electric currents flowing through the body without feeling anything. There are at least three problems. First the electric currents can cause severe burns. Numerous accounts of people being burned by high frequency currents state that they first "smelled something burning!" Second once an arc path is set up between a person and a Tesla coil it is very easy for the energy in the primary circuit to short through to the output. You’ll feel that! Third, if the coil tuning is disturbed, the frequency will shift anywhere it wants. This can easily allow a substantial shock to be delivered.
RF (Radio Frequency) burns are nasty! As the skin carbonizes the current burns into the body without any sensation. By the time you find out where all the smoke is coming from you have a hole burned in you. Typically this will require skin surgery to remove the destroyed flesh and close the wound.
To make a long story short.Stay far away from these devices when they are operating! | <urn:uuid:8baba90a-a9b3-4619-83bf-2b9970c9f841> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.capturedlightning.org/hot-streamer/TeslaCoils/Safety/safety.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930778 | 1,081 | 3.125 | 3 |
Source: Huawei UK Gov Business Still Suffering From China Connection
Huawei is struggling to shed the negative perception it has because of ties with China, a source says
Huawei is continuing to find it difficult to sell to the UK government because of the vendor’s origins and connections in China, a source close to the company told TechWeekEurope.
Fears over Huawei kit have stemmed from the firm’s ties with the Chinese military – the People’s Liberation Army – and government. Some have raised concerns that the Chinese might place covert software in Huawei systems to spy on other nations. “There is still that perception of Huawei,” the source said.
The source said they did not expect Huawei UK to gain much work where the government is managing sensitive data, but where non-sensitive data is being handled, the government could “open up”, the source said.
Huawei has brought in a number of former British government employees over the last two years. The biggest name signing was John Suffolk, former government CIO, who now runs global security for the company. The source denied the British additions to Huawei would help it gain extra traction within government, where they only have “a few contracts”.
TechWeekEurope understands one of the chiefs of Huawei’s Cyber Security Evaluation Centre has 40 years of experience in GCHQ, having worked out of the Cheltenham hub.
That centre, based in the UK, was established in late 2010 and is being used to test the security of network products of Huawei and its partners. Huawei has a team of penetration testers and software analysts who try to find security flaws in systems.
But one Cabinet Office source said the government uses a specialist “cell” to screen Huawei gear, saying no other vendor had to go through the same process as Huawei did. This would indicate reservations about using the Chinese firm’s equipment.
Yet when quizzed about what that “cell” was, the Cabinet Office said there was no such body, pointing TechWeekEurope to Huawei’s evaluation centre. CESG, the information assurance arm of GCHQ, works closely with the centre to check product security.
According to a Huawei spokesperson, some workers at the centre are British nationals and all have received formal security clearance.
Despite the source’s claims that the China connection was making life difficult for the vendor in the UK, Huawei has been linked to the black boxes that will be placed in UK ISPs in data centres to store citizens’ communications data. That could come about if the Communications Data Bill or ‘Snooper’s Charter’, in its current form, becomes an Act of Parliament.
Huawei’s kit has already been widely deployed by the UK’s biggest ISP – BT. In 2005, Huawei’s hardware was used as part of a major upgrade of BT’s network.
The company is finding it even more difficult in other regions. This March, it was barred from bidding for work on Australia’s National Broadband Network, a £24 billion initiative designed to bring high-speed connections to the country.
The Huawei spokesperson said the vendor would happily set up similar screening centres to the facility in the UK. At no point has Huawei kit been found to contain backdoors or anything that could be used for surreptitious means, the spokesperson added.
Are you a privacy pro? Try our quiz! | <urn:uuid:011efb84-a859-403e-81d4-00db585b2c59> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/huawei-uk-government-china-85074 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966089 | 712 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Drug Situation Worsens In Honduras
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And I'm David Greene.
The United States has been trying to combat drug violence in Mexico for many years. But we turn now to a lesser-known drug war in the region that the United States is also involved in. The situation in Honduras has grown more violent in recent weeks and it's led to anti-American protests. Damien Cave of the New York Times has been reporting in Honduras, and he joined us from the Times bureau in Mexico City.
Damien, thanks for being with us.
DAMIEN CAVE: Sure, my pleasure.
GREENE: This is not a country, Honduras, that we hear about all that often. Situate us, if you can, and tell us why this is a country that's ripe for drug activity.
CAVE: Well, it's partially an accident of location and weak institutions. For a long time, drugs that move into the United States came through the Caribbean and then American enforcement kind of pushed it to another direction, which was Mexico. And then enforcement from Mexico started pushing it into Central America.
And so basically what you have is you have drug flights that are often coming from Venezuela or Colombia with cocaine. It lands in Honduras and then it's moved into trucks or boats that are then brought into Mexico to cross the American border.
GREENE: Well, we've heard about violence in recent weeks. Who's involved in the violence?
CAVE: In this case what you have - in May there were two very high profile raids involving American DEA agents and this sort of commando force that they work with that had come from Afghanistan, and Honduran police, going into this very isolated area called the Mosquito Coast to stop drug planes. And this is the first time that they've successful done this, whereas last year they had lots of flights coming in and they just couldn't stop them.
And so now what you have is a bunch of helicopters, American owned helicopters, with Honduran police and DEA agents landing in the area where the drugs are basically just as they land.
And so what happened on May 11 was there was a shootout and four people were killed. And according to the Honduran army and just my own interviews in town, it appears that these people were innocent.
GREENE: You reported there were four people killed, including two pregnant women. I mean, give us some details. What actually played out there as we understand it?
CAVE: Well, what happened was the plane landed and they moved the drugs into a pickup truck and then into a boat. And this is all based on American radar. And then the boat moved into the river. And helicopters swooped down. And they said that gunfire came from a second boat, which led the Honduran police to fire back. A few minutes later, the gunfire ends, they looked down, there's a bunch of people who were dead.
As it turns out, the people in the boats say, listen, we were coming home from a long trip to the Caribbean, which we do all the time, this was just a routine trip home to a place in the river where they get off to get into town.
I mean, the thing you have to understand is this is a town without any roads that go out of town. Boats are basically the form of transportation and the river is the highway. And helicopters that came in may not have recognized that or may not have been able to see. This was very early in the morning. And so it looks like it was a mistake. This is at least what the Honduran army's initial investigation has found.
GREENE: Well, what has the United States government said about those events?
CAVE: Well, you know, initially there was a lot of confusion about what happened. And both the Americans and the Hondurans said, oh, we killed two traffickers. And then after that, they started to say, well, listen, we can't talk about this. This is a Honduran investigation.
More broadly, though, the Americans really believe that this is increasingly a model for how to fight the drug war, in which they have these forward operating bases that are very close to where the drugs will land. They have a bunch of different agencies. They have the State Department, they have the DEA, they have the Honduran police, all working together to try and stop drugs from coming into Honduras. And what they're hoping is if they can cut off this air bridge to Honduras, maybe it will make Honduras a safer place.
GREENE: What's at stake here, Damien, broadly? I mean, is this something we're going to see much more in Honduras, and what might the challenge be, looking ahead?
CAVE: I mean, it does seem likely that this is going to continue to happen. Central America has a bunch of very small, very weak countries with very few resources. And the Americans are really pushing a lot into these countries to try and stop drugs.
And don't forget, this is a region that has had a lot of struggle and a lot of pain through the United States over the years, especially during the Cold War when there were civil wars in this area. So there's a lot of skepticism and a lot of fear. And yet at the same time there's a lot of desperation.
You know, this a place that is violent with very weak institutions and a lot of people do feel that the drug problem is an American problem and the Americans have a responsibility to help.
So I think we're at a transition point to some degree. Will the Americans build institutions? Will this create long term gains for Central America? Or will it continue to be a policy that in the '80s they used to call drugs and thugs? They stopped drugs and they get the bad guys and they get out. There's a lot of debate and we'll see how it heads.
GREENE: Damien, thanks so much for talking to us.
CAVE: Sure. My pleasure.
GREENE: That's Damien Cave. He covers Central America for the New York Times, and he was speaking to us about drug violence in Honduras.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio. | <urn:uuid:d55f4cd4-5c47-4262-b65f-f03dd323d697> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.npr.org/2012/05/29/153901344/drug-situation-worsens-in-honduras | 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 | 0.979524 | 1,367 | 1.664063 | 2 |
The latest news on Iceland
REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — A 15-year-old Icelandic girl has been granted the right to legally use the name given to her by her mother, despite the opposition of authorities and Iceland's strict law on names.
Months of volcanic restlessness preceded the eruptions of Icelandic volcano.
In many places, an older retirement age is just a reversal of earlier declines.
The first time I saw Rick Sanchez on TV, I thought he was a new addition to Saturday Night Live.
Radar may prevent a repeat of the closure of European airspace caused by an erupting Icelandic volcano.
The sooner we ban whale slaughter entirely and impose economic embargoes on whale-hunting nations, the better chance we will have to see whales thriving in international waters.
Volcano often erupts in tandem with much bigger one nearby.
The volcano's eruption triggered floods and shooting smoke and steam miles into the air.
An eruption at Iceland's Laki volcano in 1783 altered weathered patterns in western Europe. | <urn:uuid:3fd462ee-a2ff-4c43-a0d6-c552aa49603c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://health.usnews.com/topics/locations/iceland | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950631 | 218 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Discussion about math, puzzles, games and fun. Useful symbols: ÷ × ½ √ ∞ ≠ ≤ ≥ ≈ ⇒ ± ∈ Δ θ ∴ ∑ ∫ • π ƒ -¹ ² ³ °
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Topic review (newest first)
None of that is true, or maybe it is...
Older than i thought.
I think it happened before you started visiting. How is the hiking going? Are you physically well?
I guess you have gone senile, since I last visited the forums
Is bobbym's age still a secret or did I miss out?
Stir frys, bakes beans, soups, chilis, just about anything.
Any other uses that you know for them?
They are the best to use because you can use them in almost anything.
I remember them they are supposed to be shaped like kidneys. I will start with them.
There are lots of different red beans. Kidney beans, Honduran beans, Azuki beans. red rice beans. All sorts. My favorite are kidney beans.
I will try it then. They sell what look like red beans here. Ever heard of them?
Beans in soup is GREAT! My favorite soup has beans, potatoes, and bacon!
You don't NEED to soak them, but it makes the cooking process go quicker. And some recipes actually call for soaked beans. If you don't soak them, the cooking time will be wrong, and some recipes will tell you how long to soak the beans first. Not all, but some. | <urn:uuid:c485bc41-1405-4ca0-94cb-fc90425164d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mathisfunforum.com/post.php?tid=13652&qid=214660 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952232 | 346 | 1.59375 | 2 |
A female executive was having problems dealing with her male colleagues. "They like me, but they never take me seriously," she complained. "It's as if they think I'm flirting with them. Which I definitely am not!"
After watching her interact with various men on the senior management team, I saw the problem. She was trying to discuss work-related issues while using a "social gaze."
Here's what I mean . . .
If you create an imaginary triangle on someone’s face, with their eyes as the base and mid-forehead as the apex, you will have mapped out the "look of business." When you keep your gaze in that area, you nonverbally signal a no-nonsense, business-like approach. But when you invert the triangle and move your focus to the area between the eyes and mouth, you turn your gaze into one more appropriate for social encounters. And a social gaze can be misinterpreted as flirtatious—even in a corporate setting.
It’s a small thing, really. But as this woman found out, one small nonverbal signal can change the dynamics of an entire business interaction.
There are two sets of nonverbal signals that are especially important to all professionals. When first introduced to a leader, followers immediately and unconsciously assess him or her for warmth (empathy, likeability, caring) and authority (power, credibility, status). “Warm” leaders connect with staff in a way that makes them want to do a really good job because of that personal connection, affection and respect. But employees also look for leaders who project stability and authority, who make them feel secure, and whom they believe can follow through and achieve results.
Obviously the most appealing leaders are seen to have both qualities, and the least effective leaders are those regarded as uncaring and insecure. Perhaps not so obviously, many of the nonverbal signals for warmth and authority are divided along gender lines. Although I know several leaders of both sexes who do not fit the stereotypes, I’ve also observed that gender differences in body language most often do align with these two groupings. Women are the champions in the warmth and empathy arena, but lose out with power and authority cues—mostly because they fall prey to ten common body language traps.
TRAP #1: Using too many head tilts. Head tilting is a signal that someone is listening and involved—and a particularly feminine gesture. As such, head tilts can be very positive cues, but they are also subconsciously processed as submission signals. (Dogs tilt their heads to expose their necks, as a way to show deference to the dominant animal.) TIP: Use head tilts when you want to demonstrate your concern for and interest in members of your team, or when you want to encourage people to expand on what they are saying. But when you need to project power and authority, you should keep your head straight up in a more neutral position.
TRAP #2: Physically condensing. Women tend to condense their bodies, keeping their elbows to their sides, tightly crossing their legs, stacking their materials in small, neat piles and contracting their bodies to take up as little space as possible. High status males do the opposite: They expand into available space and take up room. TIP: Remember that status and authority are nonverbally demonstrated through height and space. So stand tall, pull your shoulders back, widen your stance and hold your head high. And at the next meeting, instead of keeping your belongings in a neat little stack, spread them out and claim your turf!
TRAP #3: Using girlish gestures. Everyone uses pacifying gestures when under stress. They rub their hands together, grab their upper arms and touch their necks. But women are viewed as much less powerful when they pacify with girlish behaviors (twirling hair, playing with jewelry, etc.). TIP: Keep your hands on your lap or on the conference table where they can be seen—and where you will be reminded to keep them still. And when you do use gestures, notice if they are reinforcing your statements. If so, you are probably showing your palms when indicating openness and inclusiveness, “steepling” (finger tips touching, palms separated) when being precise, and turning your hands palms-down when you are absolutely sure of your position.
TRAP #4: Speaking “up.” Women's voices often rise at the ends of sentences as if they're asking a question or asking for approval. TIP: When making a declarative statement, be sure to use the authoritative arc, in which your voice starts on one note, rises in pitch through the sentence and drops back down at the end.
TRAP #5: Smiling excessively. Excessive or inappropriate smiling can be confusing and a credibility robber. This is especially noticeable if you over-smile while discussing a sensitive subject, expressing anger or giving negative feedback. TIP: Employed at the right times (for example, during an initial meeting with a potential business client), smiling can be one of the most powerful and positive nonverbal cues, and especially potent for signaling likeability and friendliness. But when the subject turns serious, you need to look serious.
TRAP #6: Nodding too much. When a man nods, it means he agrees. When a woman nods, it means she agrees—or is listening to, empathizing with or encouraging the speaker to continue. In fact, women tend to nod so much that we’ve been accused of looking like bobble-head dolls. TIP: Constant head nodding can express encouragement and engagement, but not authority and power. To project authority, especially when stating your opinion, keep your head still.
TRAP #7: Waiting your turn. In business negotiations, men take control by talking more than women and interrupting more frequently. TIP: One perspective on the value of speaking up comes from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who—when asked what advice she had for up-and-coming professional women—replied, “Learn to interrupt.”
TRAP #8: Flirtatious behavior. Women gain likeability but lose the competitive advantage in a negotiation when they flirt. That was the consensus of a University of California Berkeley study in which female actors played the roles of sellers of a biotech business. Half were told to project a no-nonsense, business approach. Half were instructed to flirt subtly(using the nonverbal behaviors of smiling, leaning forward suggestively, tossing their hair, etc.). The outcome of the Berkeley study was that the “buyers” offered the flirts, dubbed “likeable losers”, 20 percent less on average than what they offered the more straitlaced sellers. TIP: In business, it’s better to come across as competent and professional.
TRAP #9: Being emotionally over-expressive. While a certain amount of movement and animation adds passion and meaning to a message, women who visibly express their emotions with hand gestures that rise above their shoulders can quickly overwhelm an audience (especially if that audience is composed primarily of males). TIP: To engage and motivate people, an emotional presentation can be very effective. But in situations where you want to maximize your authority, you’ll need to minimize your movements and keep your gestures about waist high. When you appear calm and contained, you look more powerful.
TRAP #10: Having a delicate handshake. Even more than their male counterparts, women with a weak handshake are judged to be passive and less confident. TIP: Take the time to cultivate your "professional shake.” Keep your body squared off to the other person, facing him or her fully. Make sure you have palm-to-palm contact and that the web of your hand (the skin between your thumb and first finger) touches the web of the other person's. Look your partner in the eyes, smile—this is one place where a smile is a business asset—and start to speak: “So good to meet you . . .” or whatever. Most of all, remember to shake hands firmly.
Of course, increased awareness of how you stand, gesture, shake hands and employ other nonverbal signals is only half of the equation. The other half is the ability to accurately read the body language of others. And it is here where women leaders really have the advantage. Women are more attuned to relationship dynamics and more skilled at picking up nonverbal cues. It’s a skill that gives them insights that men sometimes miss about what is really going on in a meeting or during a negotiation.
This piece is based on research from Carol Kinsey Goman’s latest book, The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help—or Hurt—How You Lead, published in April 2011 by Jossey-Bass. Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D., is an executive coach, consultant and international keynote speaker, as well as an expert contributor to The Washington Post’s On Leadership panel.
More from On Leadership:
Carol Kinsey Goman | May 2, 2011 5:26 PM | <urn:uuid:be4c93cb-0d2b-4797-8697-fd82de02dece> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/post/10-common-body-language-traps-for-women-in-the-workplace/2011/03/03/AFl0GFbF_blog.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955806 | 1,903 | 2.1875 | 2 |
In the Disney movie The Little Mermaid we see several interactions between the main character Ariel and her father King Triton. Most of these scenes depict the struggle that these two characters have between each other. Once scene in particular is a good example of this.
We find Ariel in an underwater cave surrounded by her collection of human items. She has just been presented with a very large statue of the human Prince Eric that she has been enamored with when King Triton enters the scene. King Triton tells her that he considers himself a reasonable merman. That he sets certain rules and expects them to be obeyed. Ariel tries to respond with “But Daddy!-” but is cut off as he continues. “Is it true you rescued a human from drowning?” Ariel tries again to respond, “Daddy, I had to-” but is interrupted again. “Contact between the human world and the mer-world is strictly forbidden. Ariel, you know that! Everyone knows that!” She tells him “ He would have died-” but she is interrupted again. “One less human to worry about!” Ariel counters her father’s stance with “You don’t even know him.” To which King Triton responds “Know him? I don’t have to know him. They’re all the same. Spineless, savage, harpooning, fish-eaters, incapable of any feeling-” Ariel cuts him off by saying “Daddy, I love him!” King Triton is visibly upset with his daughter’s outburst and counters with “No… Have you lost your senses completely? He’s a human, you’re a mermaid!” “I don’t care.” King Triton is even more upset now. “So help me Ariel, I am going to get through to you. And if this is the only way, so be it.” He raises his trident and begins to take aim at the artifacts covering the cave walls. Destroying all that he sees with blasts from the trident only to finish with Ariel’s prized Prince Eric statue. Seeing all of this leaves Ariel in tears and King Triton exits the cave with his head down. Ariel then proceeds to go to the sea witch to become human so that she can be with her prized Prince Eric.
Several examples of different psychological theories can be observed from this scene. The first of which would be Sigmund Freud’s theories on personality. Freud’s theory is that our personalities are made of different levels of consciousness. The three levels consist of the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. The conscious level is what we are actively aware of at any given moment. The preconscious deals with what we are not currently thinking of but can recall if desired. And finally the unconscious contains memories that we do not remember specifically but the experience has still shaped our personalities.
Within Freud’s theory is the idea that our personalities are also made of what he called the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is with us from birth to death and is responsible for attaining the basic human needs and desires. It knows nothing about practicality or finesse but focuses on instant gratification. In the scene from The Little Mermaid the id is shown in Ariel’s interactions with the human Prince Eric. She wants nothing more than to be with him and ignores all that has been taught to her about the dangers of the humans and what is expected of her from her father. She doesn’t take any of that into consideration. All she knows is that she wants to be with him.
The ego starts to emerge as we experience things in life. The ego starts out only being concerned with making the id happy. However the ego is the part of our personality that contains our practicality. The example of this in The Little Mermaid is when Ariel tells her father that she loves the prince. Her id wants to be with the prince and the ego sees that King Triton is not going to let this happen so it steps in with trying to manipulate the King either by shocking him with the outburst of love or by trying to get him to consider his daughter’s happiness by using it and ultimately attaining what the id wants.
The final part of Freud’s theory is the superego. The superego develops later in childhood and is only concerned with what is “right” and “wrong”. In our example the superego steps into the interaction when Ariel is trying to justify her actions with the human by saying that he would have died if she had not saved him. Thus showing that she was saving a life, the right thing to do, even though it was ultimately a selfish move since the only reason she saved him was to be with him. But the superego only cares that it was the “right” thing to do. If it were any other human the argument would not have been valid because of the rules that have been set forth about the interactions between mer-people and humans.
Part of Freud’s personality theory is the five psychosexual stages. The term sexual is not referring to “adult sexual behavior until the last stage. Rather, sexual refers to any physical pleasure the child feels in its body.” (class lecture notes, Cutolo-Ring) These are the parts of the personality that develop based on what part of the body the child feels pleasure from at the time. One of these is known as the anal stage. It is cultivated approximately from ages one to three and coincides with the child’s ability to control, or not control, his bowels. The control of the bowels parallels the control a child can have over his environment. Anally fixated adults can exhibit the need to have tight control over all parts of their environments or in the other extreme they can exert very little control over what happens. An example of this within the scene described in the movie is King Triton’s need to control his daughter in every way. She has disobeyed his rules in regards to interactions with humans. To further exude control he destroys all of her human trinkets.
Learning theories can also be observed in The Little Mermaid scene. One of which is B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning theory. Skinner based all of his studies on what is outwardly observed and can be measured. It is because of his way of measuring that Skinner could not take into account the basis of the actions seen and therefore could only adjust the environment, by using reinforcements and punishments, in order to observe different results in behavior. Reinforcements can be either positive or negative but both maintain or increase the behavior itself. “Positive reinforcement is a stimulus that follows a behavior that maintains or increases the behavior. Negative reinforcement is a stimulus that is removed after a behavior that maintains or increases that behavior.” (class lecture notes, Cutolo-Ring) Our example shows that the behavior of Ariel interacting with the humans is increased because after her father destroys her collection, showing positive reinforcement, she goes to the witch to become a human herself.
Skinner not only used reinforcements to measure events he also used punishments in order to measure the decrease of a behavior. “Punishment is a stimulus that follows a behavior that decreases the behavior. [It is also] a stimulus that is removed after a behavior that decreases the behavior.” (class lecture notes, Cutolo-Ring) In the movie the punishment would appear to be the destruction of Ariel’s collection by her father. However, since the definition clearly states the result of punishment is a decrease in behavior there is no punishment in this scene. Only positive reinforcement is shown because the behavior increased.
In addition to Skinner’s theory there is also Albert Bandura’s learning theory called social cognitive theory. Bandura developed the theory of observational learning, sometimes referred to as modeling, to add to Skinner’s operant conditioning theory. In its simplest form social cognitive theory is learning by watching others. Bandura posed that modeling takes the basic definition of social cognitive theory one step further by saying that we learn my imitating what we see. There are several factors involved with modeling. The first is attention. To learn a new behavior you must be paying attention to who you are taking cues from. The next factor is retention of what is being observed. Reproduction of the observed actions is the third factor. The fourth and final factor is motivation. A person has to be motivated to duplicate the observed behavior. The movie shows us that Ariel has a deep desire to become human so that she may be with Prince Eric. She shows all of the signs that she is modeling humans in order to achieve her desired outcome. She is paying attention obviously by spending time on the surface observing the daily behaviors of the prince and the other humans around him. She retains knowledge of her observations since she still wants to try to become a human. Thirdly, she gets her chance to reproduce human behavior once she gets turned into one by the sea witch later in the movie. And lastly, she is motivated to behave like a human so that she can ultimately attain and keep the prince.
In addition to the personality and learning theories shown in our sample scene we also observe a cognitive developmental theory in practice. Jean Piaget founded the cognitive developmental perspective to attempt to observe how children learn as they grow. This theory encompasses the idea that despite where a child lives he will go through the same stages in a set order at approximately the same ages as other children all over the world. One of the basis of his theory is accommodation. This concept states that as you go through life you observe things that won’t fit into your current conception of what is true so you adapt what your thoughts of what is true to encompass the new information. One of the stages within Piaget’s theory is the preoperational stage. This stage is primarily focusing on symbolic thought or conceptual understanding about an object. Our example shows this by Ariel’s collection of human objects she keeps in the cave. As a mermaid she doesn’t use the same objects that humans to but she understands the concepts behind them. For example, she knows that the statue is decorative and not used for brushing her hair.
The final theory that The Little Mermaid scene will show us is the information processing theory. These theories are considered continuous because we are always working on them to make them better unlike the other theories that have stages we progress through. Information processing theories hold that there are three continuous processes taking place within us. The first process is input. This is simply gathering sensory information. The next process is processing. Processing is just that, processing the information gathered into concepts that make sense. The last process is output. Taking the processed information and acting upon it. Ariel observes that her father’s body language, tone of voice, and actual words he is saying to her (“Contact between the human world and the mer-world is strictly forbidden. Ariel you know that! Everyone knows that!”). She then she processes that information to conclude that he is upset with her. She responds to this by telling him that he would have died if she hadn’t saved him.
I never would have thought that a Disney movie made in 1989 would have encompassed so many different psychological theories. The movie has shown us that Freud’s theories on personality have a solid base with the id, ego, and superego. It shows us that sometimes positive reinforcement can appear as negative. As well as how a mermaid can model human behavior to ultimately become human. | <urn:uuid:eee5386a-ba16-42f6-a046-9455ca2d56c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://midwesternramblings.com/tag/paper/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97548 | 2,437 | 2.5625 | 3 |
By Timothy J. Finan
Several weeks ago, Olean General Hospital sent letters to patients who may have received insulin pen injections during their hospitalizations. It included a recommendation, as a precautionary measure, to be tested for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV. Many patients have accessed the free counseling and testing services provided by the hospital. The recommendation for testing was made out of an abundance of caution even though the hospital believes the risk of infection is extremely small and very remote.
Within the past week, attorneys have placed billboards and sponsored television commercials and newspaper ads throughout the region regarding this issue. Many of our patients have told us that this recent advertising has been a source of significant concern and worry. Accordingly, the hospital believes it is important that our patients and the community know:
• As a result of a review of clinical literature and after discussion with New York State Health Department officials, we have found no current evidence of a single documented case of a blood-borne infection anywhere in the country (hepatitis B, hepatitis C or HIV) transmitted via an insulin pen.
• We believe the chance of infection from the use of insulin pens as utilized at Olean General Hospital is almost zero. Insulin pen needles were never re-used at Olean General because special safety needles were utilized that cannot be used for more than a single injection.
Approximately 2 percent of the U.S. population is infected with hepatitis C and many do not know it because the virus can lie dormant for years.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone born between 1945 and 1965 be tested for hepatitis C because it is often without symptoms and as a result, many individuals are infected and do not know it.
There are many risk factors associated with acquiring these infections. They include receipt of blood transfusions or organs prior to 1992, when blood was not screened for hepatitis C; current or past injection of drugs; piercings and tattoos; hemodialysis; unprotected sex and exposure to blood of infected persons.
Olean General Hospital decided to contact patients about the use of insulin pens despite our awareness that the potential for infection is extremely remote. We have provided patients the opportunity for free testing at the hospital or at a location of their choice. We believe that openness with respect to this issue is extremely important. Our decision to contact patients was done with the guidance of the New York State Department of Health and with our knowledge that it would potentially result in significant adverse publicity. Regardless, Olean General Hospital’s commitment is, and has always been, to do what is best for those we serve.
Timothy J. Finan is president and CEO of Olean General Hospital. | <urn:uuid:dd68232a-679e-4849-bd5a-371a53dc16a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130226/OPINION/130229359/1117 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964962 | 545 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Hunewill Guest Ranch Annual Cattle Drive
The Hunewill Guest Ranch is nestled at the foot of California’s Eastern Sierra Nevada. Founded in 1861 by Esther and Napoleon Bonaparte Hunewill, the 4,500 acre spread now boasts more than 2,500 head of cattle and 170 horses. Every fall ranch cowboys drive the cattle the 60 miles from Bridgeport, California, to their winter pastures in Smith Valley, Nevada, keeping alive a century-old tradition.
Napoleon Bonaparte Hunewill’s ancestors were French Huguenots from Alsace-Lorraine who settled in Maine, where Hunewill was born in 1828. At the age of 24, Hunewill voyaged to San Francisco to seek his fortune in the gold fields of California. His efforts were rewarded with a sizable fortune in gold dust and nuggets, and he soon returned to Maine to visit his family, meeting and marrying a local girl named Esther Ann Hughes while there.
Hunewill and his new bride returned to San Francisco, where they spent a year providing lumber for the gold fields before deciding to try their luck at mining. They headed east in ox-driven covered wagons over the Sierra Nevadas during the summer of 1861 bound for Aurora, a new gold and silver camp in the Utah Territory. Noticing the local need in Aurora and burgeoning Bodie for more lumber, Hunewill rode into Big Meadows (near present-day Bridgeport) to investigate the heavily timbered mountain slopes overlooking the beautiful valley. By the winter of 1861, he had filed for water rights and homesteaded 160 acres, where he would build his first sawmill.
In 1872, Hunewill acquired even more land—where the Hunewill Guest Ranch is located today—and built a two-story Victorian house, which still serves as the ranch’s main accommodations. By 1879 he had decided to venture into the cattle business, and he continued to work on the ranch until the day he passed away on December 6, 1908.
Hunewill’s grandson Stanley took over the management of the ranch after his grandfather’s death. Having grown up riding horses, Stanley became the first full-time Hunewill cowboy, raising prize Hereford cattle and registered Morgan horses. To avoid constantly feeding the cattle during the harsh winters at the ranch, Stanley decided in 1910 that it was time to winter the cattle in a lower and warmer elevation. He bought property in Smith Valley, Nevada, about 40 miles northeast of Bridgeport, and in 1931—with the Depression in full swing—Stanley and his wife, LeNore, decided to combine the cattle business with a guest operation, which has been a successful venture ever since.
When I arrived for the ranch’s centennial cattle drive in 2009, I gathered with a group of 25 guests inside the ranch’s wooden barn. Most of them were return guests who had developed friendships over the years. Fred Shean had been coming for 30 years; 21 years ago on the drive, he met his wife, Kay. Betsy Elliott, a member of the Hunewill family, gave us a brief overview of the next five days, as well as some pointers on horse safety and “cow sense.” The objective: Driving more than 600 head of cattle for 60 miles to their winter pastures.
“We are proud and happy to be able to carry on this tradition—be prepared for all types of weather!” announced Elliott. At the sound of the dinner bell, we all congregated toward the dining room where a tasty dinner was served family style. Friendships were rekindled while everyone warmly greeted the newcomers.
The next morning, I stepped out of my cozy cabin into the chilly mountain air. After a hearty breakfast, we gathered by the barn where head wrangler Megan Wright and her assistant Jay Joseph matched us with our horses. The sun slowly warmed up the grasslands and shed a golden light on the meadows surrounding the ranch by the time we headed out.
We picked up the herd in a boggy pasture south of town. In the distance, the snow-capped Sierra Nevadas loomed over the valley. After following a highway for a few miles, we veered off on a sandy trail bordered on one side by the Walker River and on the other by sheer cliffs. We worked hard along the way to push cows out of thick willow patches.
We broke for lunch on the north side of a reservoir dam, where the chuck wagon waited for us with a display of tasty vittles. We took turns eating while the rest of the group kept an eye on the herd. After lunch, we resumed the drive for the day. The sun was disappearing behind the ridges by the time two riders finished taking a count as the herd went through the gate: 626 head. Back at the ranch that evening, we all shared the highlights of the day around the dinner table.
Now I’m left with poignant memories: the camaraderie shared by all, the sweet scent of sage or pinyon floating in the air, the grinding noise of the wooden wheels of the chuck wagon on a dusty trail, the sound of a bygone era, the musky smell of horse blankets as you unsaddle your horse at the end of the day, the light clatter of the cattle’s hooves on the highway, the bite of the cold wind in the early morning, the majestic beauty of the Sierra Nevadas’ jagged peaks, the vastness of the Nevada desert, the smell of rain and wet dirt before you even feel the first drops, the celebration at the bar of the Bridgeport Inn after the drive, but most importantly, the rewarding feeling of accomplishment, of having contributed to history and the pride of carrying on the myth of the range-riding cowboy.
For more information, call 760.932.7710 or visit www.hunewillranch.com.
See the Hunewill Ranch in C&I’s “Best of the West” feature in the June issue. | <urn:uuid:36cf1f56-03e2-4122-90e7-5e409669a945> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cowboysindians.com/Cowboys-Indians/June-2011/Hunewill-Guest-Ranch-Annual-Cattle-Drive/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963768 | 1,268 | 2.671875 | 3 |
LONDON - Reuters
Women will box in the 2012 London Olympics knocking out the last all-male sport in the Games. The breakthrough marks an important step in equality in sports. AFP photo
Women boxers have claimed an early victory at the 2012 Olympics by knocking out the last all-male sport but the battle for sex
equality at the Games rages on, and not just among women - male synchronized swimmers are also demanding equal rights.
London marks the first Olympics where women will compete in all 26 sports on offer, a major change from Stockholm 100 years ago when women could only participate in five of 110 events.
Campaigners for gender equality acknowledge there has been progress but stress the battle is far from over and the Games must symbolise, reflect and celebrate the dominant beliefs and values of society.
At the London Olympics, running from July 27 until Aug. 12, women are competing in 30 fewer events than men.
A total of 162 gold medals are up for grabs for male competitors while women can win only 132. At the 2008 Beijing Games there were 165 gold medals for men and 127 for women.
Annie Sugier, spokeswoman for the French
coordination for the European Women’s Lobby, said several women’s groups were planning to hold a demonstration in London on July 25 to put seven demands to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) regarding discrimination and segregation.
“The objective of the Olympics is to build a better world through sport but the reality is that we still have all the stereotypes, discrimination, and prostitution around the Games,” Sugier told Reuters.
“The Olympics is the right place to enforce change as there is just one law for all. You have the instruments to enforce equality and equality is justice.”
inequality and other forms of discrimination at the Olympics is viewed as critical by campaigners. The Games are a high-profile global event where the same rules apply to all nations and these values can filter into other areas of life.
It is also unique for a sporting event as the audience is fairly evenly split between men and women and therefore a platform for women’s sport to be on a par with men’s events, to establish women as role models, and to encourage women to take up sport which can be a way to empower and build confidence.
Sugier, who has been campaigning for equality and neutrality at the Olympics for 20 years, said the IOC needed to act more decisively after stating its support for gender equality at the Olympics but so far failing to meet its targets.
In 1996 the IOC set a target to ensure women held 20 percent of the positions in its ruling bodies by 2005 which included the 205 National Olympic Committees and the 35 Olympic International Olympic Sports Federations.
This has not been met, and Sugier says women on average only hold about 10 percent of these positions. Some of the National Olympic Committees have no women.
The board of the London Organising Committee, LOCOG, has only one woman among its 19 members, former Olympian Princess Anne, while the IOC has 20 women among its 105 members which falls just short of the 20 percent.
“With so few women serving in leadership positions and a lack of commitment among the male-dominated leadership, there has been little progress on supporting women as athletes and leaders,” said sports historian Dr Maureen Smith from California
State University in a report for the U.S.-based Women’s Sports Foundation, founded by Billie Jean King in 1974.
She said this lack of commitment started at grassroots and was typical of developmental levels all the way to the upper echelons of competitive Olympic and Paralympic sport.
The gender gap has narrowed. At Beijing there was 4,746 women competitors which was a record 42 percent of the total.
But this was despite IOC President Jacques Rogge in 2004 stating that: “our ultimate goal must be 50-50 participation.” He did not, however, set a clear date for this proportion.
“No time deadline has been set but we would hope that London will see the highest percentage of female participation in history,” said IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau. | <urn:uuid:e38862e6-dd3b-4fcc-9422-26f73c490df5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/women-boxers-hold-the-flag-for-equality.aspx?pageID=238&nID=25216&NewsCatID=371 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960607 | 859 | 2.203125 | 2 |
January 26, 2012
Re: Guidance Issued on Moving the School Board Election to November
The Division of Local Government Services issued Local Finance Notice 2012-3 providing guidance on moving the School Board Election to the November General Election. As we explained in the January 19 Dear Mayor Letter the school board or municipal governing body or a petition of voters can move the April school board election to the November general election. While there is no set deadline in the new law, in order to move the school board election this year a resolution must be adopted by either the school board or municipal governing body and the County Clerk must be notify no later than February 17. This provides the appropriate time to avoid potentially unnecessary expenses related to preparing for an April election and also provides due notice to any person interested in filing a nomination petition for an April election.
In addition to providing a sample resolution (on page 6), the Local Finance Notice includes a Frequently Asked Questions such as:
Q. What happens if only the board or the governing body, but not both, pass a resolution moving the school election to November?
A. Under the law, the board and governing body each have independent authority to pass the resolution to move the April school election to November. It is not required that both the board and governing body agree on the change of the election date. A resolution to change the date from either government office is controlling.
Q. If a board or governing body passes the resolution, what other government offices should be notified?
A. P.L. 2011, c. 202 requires notification to the applicable county clerk. It is also strongly recommended that a copy of the resolution be provided to the county board of election (and the county superintendent of elections, if there is one in the county); the applicable municipal clerk(s) and school board secretary or secretaries; the State Division of Elections; the Department of Education’s Executive County Superintendent; and the Department of Community Affairs, Division of Local Government Services.
Q. If the election is moved to November, can it revert back to April at a later date?
A. Yes, but once a school election is moved to November, no action can be taken (either by petition or resolution) to move the election back to April for four years.
Q. Does a move to a November election affect a school board’s option to hold a special election, as is currently permitted by law four times a year at specified times?
A. No, the four special school election dates (January, March, September and December) remain available. April is not an option.
Q. Is the November school election a partisan or non-partisan election?
Q. If a school election is moved to November, does that extend the expired term of office for the current board members?
A. Yes, their terms are extended until the January re-organization meeting.
Q. If the election is moved to November, thereby eliminating the vote on the annual base budget, is the board still required to hold public hearings on the budget as currently required by law?
Q. If the election is moved to November, will the school board incur any costs?
A. Unlike an April election, the school board will not incur base costs for the payment of board workers, voting machine transportation, overtime for county election personnel, rental of polling places, or other inherent costs of an election. These costs are already covered by either the state or the county as part of the existing November general election.
The new law states that a school board would be responsible for any increased costs incurred only by a county board of election if the school election moves to November. It is anticipated that such added costs would be minimal, if any. The new law provides that the board of education and the respective board of election can enter into an agreement regarding cost, pursuant to guidelines to be issued by the Secretary of State.
A school board also would not be responsible for ballot printing costs as it is the county clerk, not the county board of election that has such responsibilities. Nor would a school board be responsible for any added costs incurred by a county superintendent of elections, if there is such office in the county.
Q. If a number of school elections are moved to November, will there be any added costs for those boards that continue with the April election?
A. It is possible that there is an increase in costs for districts maintaining April elections as a result of fewer school districts sharing in the overall costs of the April election.
Very truly yours,
William G. Dressel, Jr. | <urn:uuid:2a01f4b4-772a-43b3-8f2c-764e4b343e9a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.njslom.org/letters/2012-0126-school-board.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969738 | 933 | 1.515625 | 2 |
air purifier, or a high quality pleated furnace filter to help out.
Here is a breakdown of the four most popular air pollution sources; animal dander, pollen, tobacco and mold & mildew. If you are allergic to cats or dogs your actual allergy is to the skin flakes which is known as pet dander. Pet dander can stay in the home long after the pet is not around. Pollen is everywhere from flowers, grass and trees. Every time you open your door millions of pollen particles can sneak into your home. There are certain times of the year when certain pollens are more prominent but they still are there year round. One of the smallest allergens is tobacco smoke. Studies show the health effect from second hand smoke is just as bad as the actual smoker. Places that are warm and humid are the ideal places for mold and mildew to grow, but they are typically found in the kitchen, shower and basement.
We believe that an energy efficient home is what we should all strive for for the many great benefits, but don't forget to keep tabs on your indoor air quality. That tightly sealed home is keeping more than the heat in.
If you have any ideas for an upcoming blog article let us know...thanks for reading.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Studies show that most people spend 60 to 90 percent of their time indoors and indoor air can have significant effects on your health. The young and elderly spend a majority of their time indoors and these can be the people that air quality effects the most. Here are some things that can effect the quality of your air that most people do not even think of, because you can't see.
- Asbestos: Not in all homes but if it's in your home it can cause major effects.
- Bleach Mixing: If you mix bleach with cleaning products it can cause harmful fumes that you can not see.
- Carbon Monoxide: An odorless gas that causes dizziness and possible death. In the last 15 years there have been 1,000 deaths in the state of Washington alone. So this is a major issue to watch out for. You can install a carbon monoxide detector in your home to detect dangerous levels.
- Mercury: This is a vapor that can come from broken fluorescent lights and can be very harmful to your health. If you are pregnant you want this to be non existent.
- Mold: If mold is found in your home, it needs to be removed immediately to prevent any mold related health issues.
- Outdoor Air: This can and does sneak into your home every time a door or window is opened. You also want to make sure that no campfire smoke sneaks in either.
- Pesticides: If you live in an area where vegetables and fruits are being sprayed then pesticides could make their way into your home air.
- Radon: This is a radioactive gas that can build up in buildings. This is the second leading cause to lung cancer.
- Tobacco Smoke: Even if people do not smoke inside your home, they can still bring it into your home with them. This kills on average 443,000 people every year in the United States and 49,400 deaths from second hand smoke. | <urn:uuid:2a6b54c3-0136-4617-b358-861d9ec0ab09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.rememberthefilter.com/2012_02_01_archive.html | 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 | 0.95106 | 665 | 2.5 | 2 |
OuagadougouArticle Free Pass
Ouagadougou, also spelled Wagadugu , capital and largest town of Burkina Faso, western Africa. It was the capital of the historic Mossi kingdom of Wagadugu (founded in the 15th century) and the seat of the morho naba (“great king”) of the Mossi people. Islam became the religion of the kings under Naba Dulugu (ruled 1796?–1825?). The morho naba still lives in the city, though his powers were greatly eclipsed by the French colonial and post-independent administrations.
Ouagadougou is a city of large trees and modern public buildings abutting traditional residential neighbourhoods. It has a market, a crafts centre, the national museum, and the University of Ouagadougou (1969). It is connected by rail to the Atlantic Ocean port of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, and has an international airport. Major products include textiles, carbonated beverages, matches, and footwear. Pop. (2006) 1,475,223.
What made you want to look up "Ouagadougou"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:886651ab-815c-49ca-9b4a-c05ac02d05de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/435285/Ouagadougou | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954853 | 260 | 2.46875 | 2 |
The following information is intended to assist you in filling out the attached application to provide home instruction. The purpose of the notice is to inform the school district that the child is exempt from compulsory attendance (NRS 392.040).
You must submit a separate Notice of Intent to Homeschool application for each child you intend to homeschool and return it to the Carson City School District Office. This must be done not later than 10 days after the child has been formally withdrawn from the public school system, or not later than 30 days after establishing residency in Nevada. The educational plan must include instruction and educational goals for the child in the subject areas of English (including Reading, Composition and Writing), Mathematics, Science and Social Studies (including History, Geography, Economics and Government) as appropriate for the age and level of skill for the child.
By signing the application, the parent is acknowledging that he has control or charge of the child and the legal right to direct the education of the child.
Upon receipt of the Notice of Intent to Homeschool, along with the educational plan, the District shall mail a written acknowledgement to the parent. This acknowledgement shall be deemed proof of compliance with Nevada's compulsory school attendance law (NRS 392.040). Receipts are valid for 15 years for each child for whom you submit an application.
Educational Services Department
1402 West King Street, Carson City, NV 89703
Phone: (775) 283-2110
Fax: (775) 283-2092
Susan Keema, Associate Superintendent of Educational Services
Ricky Medina, Ph.D., Director of Assessment and Accountability
Gina Heinz-Administrative Secretary
Susie Harrington-Administrative Secretary II | <urn:uuid:07d7a192-13be-4ab7-8114-9a6d27f9276e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://itsyoursite.com/CCSD/Department.aspx?DeptID=19&DepartmentLinkID=10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927531 | 346 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Crown Prince Akihito, the 125th Japanese monarch along an imperial line dating back to 660 B.C., is enthroned as emperor of Japan two years after the death of his father.
Akihito, the only son of the late Emperor Hirohito, was the first Japanese monarch to reign solely as an official figurehead. His father, Hirohito, began his reign in 1926 as theoretically absolute, though his powers were sharply limited in practice. After the Japanese defeat in World War II, Hirohito was formally stripped of his powers by the United States and forced to renounce his supposed divinity. With the signing by Japan of the amended constitution of 1946, the emperor became the official figurehead of Japan.
Akihito caused controversy in 1959, when as heir to the Japanese throne he broke a 1,500-year-old tradition and married a commoner, Shoda Michiko, the daughter of a wealthy businessman. Upon becoming emperor, Akihito, an amateur marine biologist and accomplished cellist, commenced a new Japanese era, known as Heisei, or "Achieving Peace." The imperial couple have three children: Crown Prince Naruhito, born in 1960; Prince Akishino, born in 1965; and Princess Nori, born in 1969. | <urn:uuid:9254c835-707c-4a07-a55c-ef4c24c78727> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/akihito-enthroned-as-emperor-of-japan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98612 | 269 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Regular readers have seen numerous posts over the last couple of years discussing Walter Bagehot and his rule that central banks never lower rates below 2%.
Mr. Bagehot, the father of modern central banking, laid out this rule in the 1870s. He did this in full knowledge of Mark Twain's famous observation about being more concerned about the return of his capital than the return on his capital.
Mr. Bagehot understood that as rates drop below 2% they create their own economic headwinds including that savers start pursuing Mark Twain's observation.
The solution to weak economic growth may be higher interest rates.
That seemingly paradoxical remedy can apply if the cause of the slump is a confidence shock that cheap borrowing costs are failing to reverse, two Columbia University economists said in a report published this week.
In such a situation, ultra-easy monetary policy risks making fears of deflation a self- fulfilling prophecy as spenders sit tight.
If low interest rates can’t motivate jittery consumers, then the answer may be the opposite: an increase in borrowing costs. Such a shift “can boost inflationary expectations and therefore foster employment,” said Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe and Martin Uribe in the study published Nov. 19 by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass.
“By its effect on real wages, future inflation stimulates employment, thereby lifting the economy out of the slump,” they said.
The academics said sagging confidence among households and companies has played a part in the recent economic slowdown. Evidence from the U.S. as well as Japan during the last two decades “seems to suggest that zero nominal interest rates are not doing much to push inflation higher.”
At the moment, the Federal Reserve pledges to keep its benchmark interest rate near zero through mid-2015.While I am not an economist, I suspect that the transmission mechanism for economic improvement from higher interest rates is that savers no longer have to offset the lack of return on their savings through more savings, but can instead use this money for consumption. | <urn:uuid:63e1ad06-b1c2-4024-86f4-eb7748f24467> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tyillc.blogspot.com/2012/11/two-columbia-university-economists.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9555 | 428 | 2.34375 | 2 |
For those not lucky enough to have a greenhouse, or who have run out of space on window sills, the use of artificial light is a major "plus" to growing
You have a lot of options when it comes to choosing lighting, but you should do some thinking and planning before making a purchase. For example, some things to consider include:
There are four basic types of lighting available - High Intensity Discharge (HID), fluorescent, incandescent, and light emitting diodes (LED) - each having its own pluses and minuses.
High Intensity Discharge (HID)
HID lighting is the most energy-efficient way to provide light in terms of light output per watt consumed, and there are two types of HID lights commonly used - Metal Halide (MH) and High Pressure Sodium (HPS). Sometimes growers will use a combination of both.
They are very bright, and do generate a great deal of heat, so may not be the best choice for living areas of your home.
Metal halide bulbs produces light that favors the blue part of the spectrum, which is excellent for plant growth. If you are seeking a HID light for your primary light source, metal halide is the way to go, especially when you consider that newer technology has led to bulbs having boosted levels of the red end of the spectrum.
High Pressure Sodium (HPS)
High pressure sodium bulbs emit light in the orange-red part of the spectrum, which can induce budding and flowering in plants. For that reason - and because they can lead to "leggy" growth - HPS bulbs are better suited as supplemental light sources, and are often used in greenhouses. The output spectrum tends to override the colors of flowers when viewed or photographed. They are more economical to use than MH, due to the greater light output and longer bulb life. They are often used in conjunction with metal halide bulbs.
20,000 hr life
For years, folks using fluorescent lighting have typically used inexpensive "shop lights" that utilized 4-, 40W T12 bulbs. Those bulbs typically had output levels in the neighborhood of 35-40 lumens/watt, and typically had to be "right on top of" plants in order to provide adequate light levels. Fortunately, technology has advanced to the point of giving us highly efficient, long life compact fluorescents (CFL) and smaller diameter, more efficient T5 tubes. (Incidentally, the "T" number designation indicates the nominal diameter in 12ths of an inch - i.e., a T12 is 12/12ths or 1" in diameter.) Because they generate so little heat, it is possible to place the lights quite close to plants without fear of burning them. Like HPS and MH bulbs, one can find fluorescents that favor the red end of the usable spectrum (those with a "color temperature" of 2700°K to 3000°K) or blue end (greater than 7500°K), but those in the 5000°K to 6500°K range tend to be sufficiently "broad spectrum" to be a primary light source.
T5 fixtures are probably the best choice for lighting plants in a living area, and are excellent for isolated growing areas as well.
The old standard incandescent lamps may be the least expensive to purchase, but they inefficient and put out a poor spectrum of light for plants. You'll note that they are often tinted blue to shift the spectrum away from their strongly red output. If you suddenly need to supplement the light on a single plant, you might get by with an incandescent grow light, but you'll actually do much better with another choice.
Light Emitting Diodes (LED)
LED's are the latest in the evolution of horticultural lighting. They produce the least amount of heat, and as the technology advances, it is possible to get as much as 100 lumens per watt from them. At this stage of the game, however, the cost is quite high for modest-wattage units, and as the LED's put out very specific wavelengths of light, colors need to be mixed in order to approximate the sun's spectrum. So far, the color rendition of LED's is not up to par.
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Revolutionary Worker #1013, July 4, 1999
Since 1981 the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) has spearheaded an attempt to take the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The huge effort expended by the PPD to achieve this end is part of their ugly history of brutality, murder, repression and corruption. In a two-part article, the RW examines some of this criminal history of the PPD from the 1960s to the present.
"The streets are safe in Philadelphia--it's only the people that make them unsafe."
"The leading political figures in the current government of Philadelphia hold three things in common: They have all risen to their positions of power by supporting and directing the thuggery of the Philadelphia police department. They have all taken part in the framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal. And they were all products of the Rizzo era."
|From "Philly's Killer Elite" by C. Clark Kissinger|
In the 1960s the U.S. system was being rocked by the Black Liberation Movement and uprisings in cities across the country. Philadelphia went up in flames in August 1964--one of the first major cities to be hit by rebellion.
Philadelphia's establishment responded with extreme measures: blatant white supremacy, secret political police operations and massive police brutality. The personification of these efforts was Frank Rizzo, who came to be regarded by the rulers as their "super cop." Rizzo made a name for himself as deputy police commissioner when he "put down" the 1964 rebellion. In 1967 he was promoted to police commissioner.
Among Rizzo's first acts as the PPD head was to order an assault on 3,500 Black high school students demonstrating for a Black studies program. Rizzo arrived on the scene and initiated his "riot plan number three." He reportedly gave the command to move on the protesters by saying, "Get their black asses." The police beat the students and anyone else who happened to be in the area. An official from the American Civil Liberties Union said, "I myself was there and saw children who were fleeing from the police lying on the ground, each with three patrolmen beating them unmercifully with clubs."
One of the most notorious moves by Rizzo's thugs in blue were the raids on the Philadelphia offices of the Black Panther Party on August 31, 1970. The raids took place a week before the Panthers planned to convene a "People's Revolutionary Convention" at Temple University. As pretext, the police used recent killings of two cops (which were not connected to the Panthers). Rizzo forced the arrested Panthers to strip and stand naked in front of the news cameras. The picture ran on the front page of the Philadelphia Daily News. It was a sick and deliberate attempt to humiliate the Panthers. According to the book Protectors of Privilege, the police "cleaned out all three search sites--furniture, bedding, clothing, file cabinets, party records, and even, in some instances, refrigerators and stoves. In a rampage of destruction, they demolished the cinder blocks with which Panthers had replaced storefront windows and knocked out house windows and covered them over with sheet metal. They even ripped out pipes in some of the bathrooms." The raids were a declaration by Rizzo of "open season" on Black revolutionaries.
Rizzo's tactics were not really new--they have been used by other occupying forces trying to hold down the oppressed. His actions were loudly applauded by top representatives of the ruling class. President Nixon said, "As I see it, other cities could use Rizzo's ideas." Based on his "accomplishments" as the head of PPD, Rizzo was chosen by Philadelphia's ruling establishment as mayor in 1972.
Open violence by the PPD went hand in hand with spying and other political police operations. PPD Chief Inspector Harry Fox declared in 1967: "Civil disorder is the number one police problem today. Good intelligence in this field is urgently needed to prevent tensions and demonstrations from maturing into fires, sniping, looting, destruction and death."
In 1964, the PPD started a spy unit known as the Civil Defense Squad (CD). The official task of this squad was to "protect the constitutional rights" of people. In reality, the CD was formed to target political activists and groups. Shortly after the November 1967 attack on high school students, the CD went to a school board seminar attended by students, principals and social scientists. CD agents copied a list of those who registered, identified others from license plate numbers, and compiled reports on the participants.
The CD worked closely with the FBI--they jointly carried out spying and raids against the Black Panthers and other revolutionaries and activists. In a 1972 speech, Rizzo made clear what was at stake for the whole power structure: "Our nation is in peril, facing an assault from the radical left that threatens the fabric of American life. These misguided few glorify all that is anti-American and degrade anything pro-American." Rizzo himself had a tight relationship with the Nixon White House and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
The Black Panther Party was one of the main targets of the CD/FBI operations. This was at the height of the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program). As a teenager, Mumia Abu-Jamal (then known as Wesley Cook) was a founding member of the Philadelphia Black Panther Party and became its Minister of Information. In recent years hundreds of pages of secret police files surfaced--revealing that Mumia was put under surveillance by federal and city agents starting when he was just 14 years old.
A 1969 incident in which Philly cops killed a mentally retarded Black youth thrust the Panthers into the frontlines. Rosemari Mealy, one of Mumia's Panther comrades, remembers: "[Mumia] spoke to the murdered youth's family and began to write in a prolific manner of this and other wrongdoings of the Philadelphia police (having himself been a victim of their brutality). When flyers and posters appeared overnight in every Black neighborhood all over the city, Black folks responded to the Party's agitation and organizing around the youth's death.... His writings conveyed an interpretation of the daily reality of an entire community under siege and terrorized by a racist police force and a police chief who condoned their actions and openly advocated `white power."'
Other Black activists and organizations were also targeted by the CD and FBI. A major method of attack was preemptive raids on the headquarters of organizations and homes of individuals.
For example, in August 1966, 80 heavily armed cops supported by hundreds of back up officers staged simultaneous raids on four locations in the Black neighborhoods of North Philadelphia. Nine people were arrested, and six were held on $50,000 bail. The raids were labeled "the SNCC raids" (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)--even though SNCC did not have an organized presence in the city. The raids were apparently aimed at preventing SNCC from organizing there. Charges against all those arrested were eventually dropped.
In the summer of 1967 police raided a house they said was occupied by members of the "Black Guard," an offshoot of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). They confiscated pamphlets, manuals and other literature. The raid came after six members of the group were arrested and later charged with conspiracy to incite to riot and other serious political charges. These charges were all eventually dropped or reduced to lesser charges. Another raid followed in October and then again in November 1968--in all the cases prosecutors eventually abandoned the major charges.
Another focus of PPD's political police operations was the Free Press, a radical newspaper. People working on the paper were under constant police surveillance and frequently arrested on the thinnest of pretexts. At demonstrations, CD agents often surrounded people selling the paper to keep them from getting it out to the people. At an anti-Vietnam war demonstration in 1970, people in the Free Press contingent were singled out, ambushed and clubbed by the police. The Free Press went to court to demand a stop to the police harassment. The PPD was forced to sign a consent decree saying they wouldn't "enter the homes of the plaintiffs, nor limit their freedom of movement, without warrant...". The wording of the decree still gave the police latitude to attack the paper, but under risk of much greater exposure.
Rizzo became mayor in 1972--with a pledge to clamp down on rebellious elements in the Black community, as well as white radicals, hippies and other "social misfits." That same year MOVE--a mostly Black radical organization--was founded. MOVE--with its politics of denouncing the system and rejecting its authority--and the power structure were clearly on a collision course. The Philadelphia Inquirer's description reflected the city establishment's view of MOVE: "[They railed] against anything that smacked of the system.... Its members were disruptive and tumultuous, abrasive and unyielding, hurling obscenity after obscenity at the system they despised."
MOVE had a compound in Powelton Village in West Philadelphia. This became the scene of repeated confrontations between the Philly police and MOVE. Between 1974 and 1976, there were 400 arrests of MOVE members, resulting in bail and fines of more than half a million dollars.
On August 8, 1978--after a 10-month siege--the Philly police invaded the MOVE house with a 500-man army. During the assault, one cop was killed--quite possibly by "friendly fire." The last to come out of the house was Delbert Africa, one of the most well-known MOVE members. He was shirtless and had his arms over his head to make clear he had no weapons. But the cops beat, kicked and stomped him Rodney King style, in front of TV cameras. Nine MOVE members were tried and convicted for the murder of the cop who was killed during the assault. The MOVE 9 received prison sentences of 30 to 100 years each--while the cops who beat Delbert Africa almost to death walked free.
The siege and assault on MOVE's Powelton Village headquarters served as political justification--and military training grounds--for an even more murderous attack several years later. On May 13, 1985 the Philly police dropped a bomb on the MOVE house at Osage Avenue, setting an intense fire. Of the 13 MOVE people in the house, 11--six adults and five children--were killed. The fire spread through the neighborhood, leaving 61 houses destroyed and hundreds of people homeless. (For a detailed account of the bombing of the MOVE house, read Attention MOVE! This Is America by Margot Harry, Banner Press, 1987.)
By the late 1970s Mumia Abu-Jamal was a well-known radical radio journalist in Philadelphia. The people in the streets called him "The Voice of the Voiceless." The PPD hated Mumia because of his Panther history and his exposures of police brutality. One of Mumia's assignments was coverage of the trial of the MOVE people after the police raid on the Powelton Village house.
On December 9, 1981--several months after the MOVE 9 were sentenced--Mumia saw a cop viciously beating his brother, who had been stopped for an alleged traffic violation in downtown Philadelphia. Mumia rushed to the scene, and there was a confrontation. When the smoke cleared, Mumia was bleeding on the sidewalk with a bullet in his chest. Nearby, Philadelphia cop Daniel Faulkner lay dying from bullet wounds. Mumia was charged for the murder of Faulkner. This was the beginning of the political railroad of Mumia.
When Rizzo was mayor, he had a team of homicide prosecutors in the District Attorney's office who shared his hatred of Black radicals. The key members of the team were Ed Rendell, Ron Castille, and Lynn Abraham. C. Clark Kissinger points out: "The DA's homicide division worked hand-in-glove with the homicide division of the Philadelphia police department. The police homicide division was notorious for the mistreatment, even torture, of suspects, some of whom mysteriously died in custody. Homicide prosecutors like Rendell, Castille and Abraham worked with this unit on a daily basis and were skilled at looking the other way when police misconduct occurred--as it did almost daily."
Rendell, Castille and Abraham have played key roles in the attacks on MOVE and the railroad of Mumia Abu-Jamal. And today, they are among the powerful elite in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. Rendell is currently the Philly mayor. Castille sits on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which rejected Mumia's appeal. Abraham, the current Philadelphia DA, is known as "the queen of death" because her office routinely demands the death penalty in every possible case.
|To be continued|
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
Write: Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654
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(The RW Online does not currently communicate via email.) | <urn:uuid:0bd87f03-2843-4cd2-9e0c-547a29d27ef0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://revcom.us/a/v21/1010-019/1013/philly.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9763 | 2,700 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Coxs Creek is an unincorporated community along U.S. Routes 31E/150 (known locally as Louisville Road) in Nelson County, Kentucky, United States, 4½ miles north of the county seat of Bardstown. It is named for Colonel Isaac Cox of Pennsylvania, who built a "fort" (actually an "old time block house") at the site in April 1775 before he fought in the American Revolutionary War, with the help of his brother James Cox. The land had actually been his father's (David Cox), but David moved back to Virginia before he developed it. More of a station, Cox's 1,000 acres was said to be the first pioneer station in Nelson County. Isaac Cox would later have the unenviable position as the last white men to be killed by Indians during the time of the great Indian wars in what later became Kentucky. Kentucky's second Baptist association was formed at Coxs Creek on October 29, 1785. The first post office in the community was established in November 28, 1856, with a descendant of Isaac Cox, John C. Cox, the first postmaster. By the time of the automobiles the post office and adjacent store blocked the view of upcoming traffic on US-31, forcing the Kentucky Highway Department to order the post office moved from Coxs Creek's crossroads of US-31E/US-150 and Kentucky State Route 509 in the 1960s; the new post office is 1/2 mile south of the crossroads. The nearby creek is called Coxs Creek, and is a tributary of Kentucky's Salt River. Elevations in Coxs Creek range from 650 to 736 feet above sea level. It has one school: Cox's Creek Elementary School. Its latitude/longitude is 37.899N and 85.474E. | <urn:uuid:a6182f7c-cc62-402f-9e21-d7f24ba45516> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://openjurist.org/law/nursing-home-abuse-litigation/kentucky/coxs-creek | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978554 | 371 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Our friends at the Hazard Mapping Service (HMS) at NOAA see something in the GOES imagery (left) that we cannot see in the Aerosol Optical Depth data from IDEA (right). There are fire detections in Iowa and north but we don't see the smoke in the GASP product from IDEA.
The ozone problem continues in Southern California under clear skies. MODIS Terra's RGB shows LA clearly but the elevated AQI is due to ozone. The Coachilla Valley has 104 AQI which is due to ozone and is in the Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups range (left). And we can expect that smoke from the Caribbean will be impacting the US south. Fires are replete over Mexico and smoke is pouring north (right image).
Finally, in the Pacific, bursts of what look to be smoke from the Siberian fires continue eastward. This is the image from this yesterday. | <urn:uuid:8b053d64-c72a-423c-96cc-7591c99e801c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://alg.umbc.edu/usaq/archives/004559.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960314 | 186 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Reference: X. Tu and D. Terzopoulos, "Artificial Fishes: Physics, Locomotion, Perception, Behavior", Computer Graphics, SIGGRAPH 94 Conference Proceedings, pp. 43-50, July, 1994
Consider a realistic virtual world of fish. There would be underwater currents, moving plants, unmoving rocks and coral reef that the fish must swim around. There would be food (prey) and predators. Some fish would only be prey, others only predators, some both, and perhaps some none.
When a predator appears, the fish might initially group together for protection, but when the predator gets close, they might scatter. The predator might then choose a victim and chase it. At mating time, the fish might have courtship rituals. This complex behavior is difficult to realistically animate with keyframing techniques.
This paper tries to create realistic fish, fish that not only look realistic, but also move in a realistic fashion, and even behave realistically. This requires the animators to model the form and appearance of the fish, the physics of their movement, their perception of the external world, and their response to these perceptions. Results of this effort are shown in the computer animation "Go Fish", part of the SIGGRAPH 93 electronic theater. Here is a description of the following images from the paper:
"The color plates show stills from our 1994 animation "The Undersea World of Jack Cousto." The detailed motions of the artificial fishes emulate the complexity and unpredictability of movement of their natural counterparts, and this enhances the visual beauty of the animations. "
"Plate1a shows a variety of animated artificial fishes. The reddish fish are engaged in a mating ritual, the greenish fish is a predator hunting for small prey, the remaining fishes are feeding on plankton (white dots). Dynamic seaweeds grow from the ocean bed and sway in the current."
"In Plate 1b, the large male in the foreground is courtship dancing with the female (top). The prey fish in the background are engaging in schooling behavior, a common subterfuge for avoiding predators."
"Plate 1c shows a shark stalking the school."
Here is an animation that was shown at the SIGGRAPH 97 course on Artificial Life. (Quicktime - 14 mbytes)
This work is an example of physically based modeling that has been extended. The fish model is an extension of the snake and worm dynamics model created by [MILLER88]. The fish model is a spring-mass system with internal contractile muscles. This system uses a more sophisticated implicit Euler simulation. This is needed because the dynamic range of forces created in the simulated aquatic environment is larger than for the snake and worm models. The aquatic plants are also modeled as spring-mass systems. The authors have created a motor-control system to simulate the complex motion of swimming fish.
This is also an example of behavioral simulation, an extension of the work on flocking by [Reynolds87]. The authors achieve the complex behavior in stages: first the primitive reflexive behaviors such as obstacle avoidance, and then more complex ones. The behavior is closely linked to perception. In previous work, authors had simulated a virtual roach that retreated when it perceived a virtual hand. The fish have simulated visual perception and other perceptions, e.g., water temperature.
The combination of perception, behavior, and motor systems create fish that are autonomous and do not need to be keyframed. This is analogous to some work in robotics. As the level of sophistication of the simulation increases, unprogrammed emergent behaviors may be created.
Figure 1 shows an overview of the virtual fish. The models used are compromises between realism and computational efficiency. Note that as machines become faster, the models can be moved closer to reality. The motor controllers (MCs) are parameterized procedures with each one assigned to a specific task, e.g., "swim forward", "turn left", etc.
2 Physics-Based Fish Model and Locomotion
Most fish use the caudal fin, powered by the posterior (rear) muscles, to move forward and anterior (front) muscles to turn. To simulate fish motion the authors created a model with 23 point masses and 91 springs. This system allows the fish to flex while it also maintains its structural stability. Twelve of the springs are used as muscles (Figure 3).
For node i: mass = mi,
position = Xi(t) = [xi(t), yi(t), zi(t)],
velocity = vi(t) = dXi(t)/dt
acceleration = ai(t) = dvi(t)/dt
Spring Sij connects node i to node j. It has a spring force constant cij and equilibrium length lij. The spring deformation is given by eij(t) = | Xj(t) - Xi(t)| - lij. Then the force Sij exerts on node i is fij.
2.2 Swimming Using Muscles and Hydrodynamics
The virtual fish swims by contracting its muscles, i.e., by decreasing the rest length lij. The authors assign a minimum length to a muscle spring and express the contraction factor as a number between 0.0 and 1.0. By contracting the muscles on one side and letting those on the other side relax, the fish tail will swing back and forth, thus propelling the fish forward (Figure 4).
|Figure 4: Hydrodynamic locomotion. With tail swinging towards positive X axis, reaction force Fiw at point ni acts along the inward normal. Component Fixw resists the lateral movement, while Fiyw is forward thrust. Aggregate thrust propels fish towards positive Y axis. to control locomotion.|
2.3 Motor Controllers
The fish has three motor controllers: Swim-MC (straight ahead), Left-turn-MC, and right turn MC. The MC's prescribe muscle contractions to the appropriate springs.
According to fish research, the swimming speed of a fish is proportional to the amplitude and frequency of the tail oscillations. The authors tests agree with these observations; both swimming speed and turn angles are proportional to the contraction amplitudes and frequencies of the muscle springs.
The Swim-MC converts a swim speed parameter into contraction amplitude and frequency values for the swimming springs. By testing, the set of parameters which produce maximum speed has been determined. So speed settings are given as a fraction (between 0.0 and 1.0) of these values.
A turn is accomplished by quickly contracting the springs on one side of the fish and relaxing those on the other side. Then the contracted springs are slowly restored to their resting state. Experimentation found four sets of parameters that produce turns of 30, 45, 60, and 90 degrees. Interpolation of these parameters can produce any turn up to 90 degrees, greater angle turns are produced by adding turns together.
2.4 Pitching (up and down motion) and Yawing (side to side motion)
The pectoral fins are used to control pitching and yawing. They can be held close to the body, reducing drag, for rapid swimming or extended, increasing drag, to slow down the fish. Reef fish may use these for very delicate motions, even backwards swimming.
The pectoral fins are not modeled in great physical detail but act by applying vector forces to the nodes in the fish midsection (1 <= i <= 12). These fins are similar to airplane wings and control comes from changing their orientations relative to the body.
|Figure 5: Pectoral Fins|
The fin force is Ff = -A(N*V)N, where A is the fin area, V is the fish velocity, and N is the normal to the fin surface. By varying the angles the fins apply different forces to the nodes. If the leading edges are raised then a lifting or upwards force is generated. If then fins are depressed then a downwards force is generated. If the fin angles are different then the fish yaws and rolls. The fins can also be used for braking, which is useful in maintaining a schooling pattern.
3 Sensory Perception
There are two sensors, a temperature sensor at the center of the body and a visual sensor. The visual sensor has access to the geometries, materials, and illumination, that is in the graphics pipeline for rendering. The vision can also interrogate the object database to identify nearby objects, and can interrogate the physical simulation to obtain information such as the velocity of objects.
The fish vision covers a 300 degree spherical angle that extends out to a radius defined by the waters translucence. An object is "seen" if any part of it is in this view volume and not occluded by another object.
|Figure 10: Artificial fish vision sensor. (a) Visual perception is limited to 300 degree solid angle.|
|Figure 10: Artificial fish vision sensor. (b) Occlusion and distance limits the perception of objects (only the fish towards the left is visible).|
A more realistic simulation would be to use computer vision algorithms to extract information from the scene rendered from the viewpoint of the fish.
4. Behavioral Modeling and Simulation
At each time step (animation frame) the intention generator issues an intention based on the fish's habits, mental state, and incoming sensory information. It then chooses and executes a behavior routine that runs the appropriate motor controllers.
The animator can choose the innate character of a fish by choosing the set of preferences, i.e., whether it is male or female, likes brightness or darkness, cold, warmth, schooling, etc.
4.2 Mental State
There are three mental state variables: H (hunger), L (libido), and F (fear). The range of each is between 0.0 and 1.0. The higher values correspond to a stronger urge to eat, mate, and avoid danger. The variables are computed as follows:
where t = time
5 Intention Generator
Figure 5 illustrates the intention generator.
The first check is to see if there is immediate danger of a collision. If an object comes into the collision sensitivity region (a bounding volume around the fish) then the intention I is to avoid a collision. A "timid" fish would have a large sensitivity region whereas a "brave" fish would have a small region.
If there is no collision danger then the neighborhood is searched for predators.. The fear state variable, F, and the most dangerous predator M for which Fm >= Fi, is computed. If the total fear F > fo ( a threshold value 0.1 <= fo <= 0.5) then evasive action must be taken. If the most dangerous predator is not too dangerous (Fm < f1 with f1 > f0) and the fish schools then the school intention is generated, else the escape intention is generated.
If fear is below the threshold then hunger and libido variables are computed. If the larger of the two is greater than some threshold r, (0.0 < r < 0.5) then either the eat or mate intentions are generated.
If there is no action from the above tests then the ambient light and temperature are determined from the perception system. If the fish is content with these values then the intention to wander is generated, else to leave is generated.
After an intention is generated then the fish invokes the perceptual focus mechanism. This focuses on just the external information needed to carry out the generated intention. For example, if the intention is escape, then the positions of obstacles and the most dangerous predator are located and these determine the motion. For example, if the predator is to the left, the constraint don't turn left is generated.
Real fish have a persistence of action. To simulate persistence in action, a single item short term memory is used. For example, if the fish has the intention of eat, and a collision danger is generated, then the current intention is stored and retrieved after the obstacle has been avoided.
The focuser can be parameterized by threshold values to vary the fish character. For example, assume the intention is to eat, and the current target prey distance is lc and the distance to another prey is ln (example a new fish swims into view). Then if lc - ln > threshold the fish will go after the new prey. By varying the threshold from 0.0 to a large number, the predator fish can be very persistent or easily distracted.
5.1 Behavior Routines
After an intention is generated it passes control, and the data from the perception focuser, to a behavior routine. The fish has eight behavior routines: avoiding-static-obstacle, avoiding-fish, eating-food, mating, leaving, wandering-about, escaping, and schooling. The behavior routines then choose the appropriate MC and pass it the right parameters. Look at each of these routines.
avoiding-static-obstacle, avoiding-fish: These operate similarly. Given the relative obstacle position an appropriate MC, e.g. turn-left, is chosen, and the control parameters are computed, subject to other constraints. The avoiding-fish routine treats the other fish as a bounding box moving in a certain direction. Adjusting the size of the bounding box can usually avoid collisions.
eating-food: tests the distance, d, of the food from the fish's mouth. If d >= threshold then a subroutine chasing-target, is invoked. When d < threshold then the subroutine suck-in is invoked. This simulates a vacuum force that is exerted on the target and other nearby objects. This force is added to the other external forces on the nodes. This is how many fish actually eat.
mating: invokes four subroutines
wandering-about: This routine invokes the swim-MC and sends random angles to the turn-MCs.
leaving: This is similar to wandering-about except that the fish moves without turning.
escaping: The fish choose the best MC depending upon the relative position and orientation of the predator
6 Artificial Fish Types
There are currently three types: predators, prey, and pacifists.
Predators do not prey on other predators so they do no predator detection. Also they do not school, escape, or mate (F = L = 0). All they do is avoid collisions and, if hungry, go after prey. A predator chases prey, k, if the cost Ck = dk(1 + B1Sk + B2Ek/pi) is less than some threshold. dk = distance between the mouth of the predator and the center of the prey's body. Sk = 1 if the prey is in a school, else Sk = 0. Ek is the required turning angle. Current values of the parameters are B1 = 0.5 and B2 = 0.2.
Prey fish do not mate. Their main activities are eating and forming schools. The school routine uses rules similar to the Reynolds paper as shown by the set of rules below (collision avoidance is already handled so these look for velocity matching and flock-centering):
test: >= 2 neighbors within one body length to the front ?
if the answer = no then find the closest schoolmate in front and speed up towards it
else, if the answer = yes then
test: >= 2 neighbors within one body length to the sides?
if the answer = no then find the closest schoolmate to the sides and turn to it
else, if the answer = yes then
test: swim in generally same direction as the neighbors?
if the answer = no then match velocity with neighbors
else, if the answer = yes then just swim along.
In pacifists, escape and school are deactivated and mate is activated. There is a diversity of fish mating habits but there are three main behaviors:
Nuzzling - the male approaches the female from underneath and nudges her abdomen until she is ready to spawn
Spawning ascent - the female swims rapidly towards the surface pursued by the male and releases gametes at the peak of the ascent.
Courtship dancing - there are two common types:
Looping - the male swims up and down in a loop above and in front of the female
Circling - the male and female circle, as if chasing each other's tail
The author's implemented a mating behavior that does the following sequence of behaviors: looping, circling, spawning ascent, and nuzzling. The male selects a female on the following criteria: a female of the same species is more attractive than a female of a different species (from biology this would have to be so) and closer females are more attractive than ones further away.
Once fish i has selected mate j, it sends a signal to j. There are then three possibilities:
j's intention is not to mate - then i approaches j and follows it around using chasing-target with the center of j's body as the target
j's intention is to mate, but not with i - if i is a male then it performs a looping behavior in front of j. If j is impressed then the courtship sequence continues, else i discontinues looping and looks for another partner. If i is female then it just looks for another partner.
If j intends to mate with i then the courtship sequence begins.
The courtship sequence is as follows:
Looping - the female hovers and bobs her head (by motor control of the pectoral fins) while the male invokes chasing-target at a point in front of the females head (which bobs up and down). The male counts the number of times his mouth reaches the vicinity of the moving point and when a threshold is reached begins the next stage.
Circling - both fish invoke chasing-target on each other's tail.
the spawning ascending routine begins after the female has done a fixed number of turns. The male invokes chasing-target to follow the female.
The female stops and the male does the nuzzling routine for a set number of steps.
After the looping routine the female may be attracted to a larger male fish than the original. At the nuzzling stage, if the male comes in at a wrong angle, the avoiding-fish routine may be invoked, so it turns away and tries again. Also, to allow the fish to approach closely, the sensitivity region is set very small.
7 Conclusion and Computation Costs
They were able to produce 4 wireframe frames per second with 10 fish, 15 food particles and 5 static obstacles on an SGI Indigo2 (with the R4400 cpu - probably 100 mhz).
Life in Computer Graphics
HyperGraph Home page. | <urn:uuid:fa00d536-f888-4e50-ba92-6cd831d87d44> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/art_life/fish.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912383 | 3,894 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Small Business Administration 504
The CDC/504 loan program, part of the federal Small Business Administration,
is a long-term financing tool for economic development within a community. The 504
Program provides growing businesses with long-term, fixed-rate financing for major
fixed assets, such as land and buildings. A Certified Development Company is a nonprofit
corporation set up to contribute to the economic development of its community. CDCs
work with the SBA and private-sector lenders to provide financing to small businesses.
There are about 270 CDCs nationwide. Each CDC covers a specific geographic area,
go to www.sba.gov
to find one near you.
USDA – Farm Service Agency Guaranteed Loans
FSA guaranteed loans provide lenders (e.g., banks, Farm Credit System institutions,
credit unions) with a guarantee of up to 95 percent of the loss of principal and
interest on a loan. Farmers and ranchers apply to an agricultural lender, which
then arranges for the guarantee. The FSA guarantee permits lenders to make agricultural
credit available to farmers who do not meet the lender's normal underwriting criteria.
FSA guaranteed loans are for both Farm Ownership and Operating purposes. Like the
Direct Loan Program, a percentage of Guaranteed Loan funds is targeted to beginning
farmers and ranchers and minority applicants.
USDA – Farm Service Agency Direct Loans
"Direct" farm loans are made by FSA with Government funds. The FSA also services
these loans and provides their Direct loan customers with supervision and credit
counseling so they have a better chance for success. Farm Ownership, Operating,
Emergency and Youth loans are the main types of loans available under the Direct
program. Direct loan funds are also set aside each year for loans to minority
applicants and beginning farmers. | <urn:uuid:aafb629e-5ec7-4d7a-903b-2f530dfc5d69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pagrows.com/Lenders_Federal.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932236 | 378 | 1.960938 | 2 |
Charge that BLS employees manipulated jobs data called unlikely
The high-wire act of keeping the country’s economic data secret is guided by a hyper-precise atomic clock and a dryly named 27-year-old rule, Statistical Policy Directive Number 3.
The directive dictates the process for releasing the country’s most closely watched data, including the monthly employment report, the latest of which became public on Friday, and the quarterly gross domestic product readings. Last revised in 1985, the rule spells out who can see the numbers ahead of the release. It is also a framework for keeping a large volume of data processed by a large number of employees top-secret ahead of a pre-scheduled release time.
The stakes of compliance are high. “Fractions of a second can equate to millions or even billions of dollars in market movements,” Carl Fillichio, senior advisor for communications and public affairs at the Labor Department, told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in June. An early release could send ripples through the global economy and reverberate through Washington, particularly in an election year.
On Friday, after the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the headline unemployment rate had taken a surprise tumble from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch took to Twitter to accuse the Obama administration of manipulating the numbers. The issue became a subject of conversation on Twitter and cable television throughout Friday morning.
But economists and other experts familiar with the government's procedures for compiling the data say that is virtually impossible.
The monthly employment report is released by the BLS, an independent statistical agency within Labor that is staffed by career civil servants, many of whom have served throughout both Democratic and Republican administrations. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis is in charge of GDP. Both agencies are guided by the same directive and rely on similar security measures to keep their data secret until the embargo lifts.
Each agency compartmentalizes the raw data. For the employment report, for example, most BLS analysts only see the data for a single sector, such as health care payrolls. Job growth in different sectors varies, making it difficult to get a clear picture of the headline number from a single category. In September, for example, health care picked up 44,000 jobs. Manufacturing, on the other hand, lost 16,000.
Doors to offices where embargoed data is reviewed are locked, and even within those offices, the data is kept in safes, BLS press officer Gary Steinberg said. Just a handful of employees gather in closed-door meetings to compile the final reports. At the BEA, attendees of these meetings adhere to a superstition: They don’t speak the GDP number aloud, said Thomas Dail, a BEA spokesperson. Materials from the meeting are secured; even scraps of paper bearing doodles and ink cartridges are locked up until the BEA embargo lifts.
The Labor Department has had strict policies in place for decades, said Keith Hall, who served from 2008 through this year as the thirteenth commissioner of the BLS. “BLS is keenly aware—I was certainly keenly aware when I was commissioner—that this is data that has a lot of potential value,” he said.
By Hall’s estimate, more than 100 people are involved in the BLS process from collection to its final analysis for the president. It would be very difficult for the administration to manipulate such a crowd.
The data is also compiled under an incredibly tight deadline, leaving little time for manipulation. Hall wouldn’t learn the details of the household survey, which determines the unemployment rate, until Monday of the week it was made public. The payroll data, which determines the number of jobs added or lost, would come to him on Wednesday. All agencies that deal with statistics operate under a similar mantra, he said: “Once you put the data together, don’t hold onto it.”
When the final numbers are ready, Statistical Policy Directive Number 3 requires they be shared with the president through the Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers before they are released to the public. That means the president does not even see the numbers until late in the day before release.
Hall is particularly well-suited to speak to the process. Before taking on his role at BLS, Hall was chief economist to the Council of Economic Advisors from 2005 to 2008, where he and a handful of colleagues were tasked with summarizing the closely guarded monthly jobs report ahead of its release for President George W. Bush.
On Thursday, the day before the report was publicly released, a BLS official would hand-deliver the memo to the White House, usually around 3 p.m., Hall said. There was talk of transmitting it digitally, but officials couldn’t identify a method secure enough. Sometimes data would be entered into a spreadsheet on a computer isolated from the rest of the White House network.
Administration economic advisers would get to work analyzing and summarizing it for the president. “Even within the Council of Economic Advisors, there’s still only a handful—three or four—who get to see the numbers,” Hall said.
The memo would be put into an envelope and sealed. Copies would be delivered to no more than half-a-dozen people—the president, vice president and whomever else the president wanted to see it. The memo, with Hall’s signature, would be delivered to the president by 7 p.m. or 8 p.m.
The next morning, a small group of journalists, cut off from communication with the outside world, get an early peek at the data in a pre-release lockup. The BEA shares its numbers with the agency’s web team at 7:45 a.m. The team, whose communications have also been cut off, prepares the data for its Internet debut.
“I’m not aware of any concerns that data were within BLS were manipulated for political purposes,” said Steinberg, a long-time employee of the bureau.
Safeguarding the integrity of the data has long been considered a crucial priority among government officials in both parties because the economic numbers are tracked closely by investors around the world who buy and sell U.S. Treasury bonds and stocks in American companies. As countries like Greece and Argentina have had to learn the hard way, any hint that the data might be compromised can gravely harm an economy.
Justin Wolfers, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, noted that the papering over of the Greek debt caught Europe and the world by surprise, wreaking havoc on the region. And the clear manipulation of inflation numbers in Argentina has made it difficult for the government to borrow because the debt there is indexed to inflation.
“The madness that’s happening in Argentina really is the first step down a slippery step towards economic ruin,” he said.
Photo by Flickr user WSDOT | <urn:uuid:9231aeb4-795d-48ee-a531-e92ab23bd000> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.govexec.com/oversight/2012/10/charge-bls-employees-manipulated-jobs-data-called-unlikely/58633/?oref=dropdown | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966794 | 1,464 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Vote Early – Vote often!
It is probably a sign of my rather warped and cynical sense of humour, but the phrase ”Vote early and vote often” brings a wry grin to my lips. (Note 1)
Having decided that I would use the phrase, I thought my curious yeomen would appreciate it if I could find the derivation. Imagine my surprise when I found the quotation attributed to Al Capone. I admit I had an inkling that it would be of Merkin origin, but I had thought it would be a lot earlier.
One of the great comforts to me is the wonderful simplicity of the British democratic system. The adult population are asked to register to vote. On polling day, you wander down to your local polling station. A rather bemused lady gently puts down her knitting next to a thermos flask and a Tupperware sandwich box and crosses your name off the list before handing you a ballot paper. You go off to a little booth, place your ‘X’, fold the paper and return to the desk to post into the sealed ballot box.
Polling stations stay open from early morning to late in the evening giving everyone plenty of opportunity to vote. At the end of voting the ballot boxes are taken to a hall where the votes are counted by hand
As the candidates and their chosen invigilators watch, all of the votes are bundled together and stacked up. As the count continues, you can see how the various candidates are doing. For all of the flaws and the expense of what is and old-fashioned process – it is open, transparent and very difficult to cheat.
Which is why I am a Luddite when considering new technology in democratic process. I’m not even comfortable about use of Postal Votes. Even if the postal voting system is 100% foolproof it is certainly not transparrent and therefore is always going to raise doubts when the ‘right’ candidate doesn’t win.
The falling turnout in elections appears to worry politicians who are forever trying to find new, rather gimmicky ways to engage the stay away voters. (Note 2) Sadly, this tends to worry me somewhat as I am a firm believer that the ballot box is one of those things that proves you get out of life what you put in. While people continue to vote based on who has the better smile, the lesser of the evils or because they have always voted that way the longer we will get politicians who rate style over substance.
In a sleight of hand jump of logic, I could suggest that it is our lack of real thought when casting our vote that means we get politicians determined not to be seen as weak by changing their mind. Yes, I know it is incredibly ridiculous, but the way modern politics plays out, if a politician listens to an argument and changes their stance on a topic opposition parties jump on it and portray it as a weakness.
Still, it doesn’t stop us from trying. There are traditions of protest within Britain. The snaking columns of marchers protesting against something or other move through the streets of London accompanied by bemused policemen. The marches are usually peaceful and end with a few speeches in Hyde Park or Trafalgar Square.(Note 3)
The petition is another method of trying to sway the government to act on an issue. The tradition is for activists to go out and collect signatures and then deliver the petition to Downing Street (Note 4)
Then, a couple of weeks ago, technology in the democratic process hit the news headlines. Almost two million Britons had exercised their right to petition the Prime Minister about road pricing using the electronic petitioning system on the Number 10 website. (Note 5)
Suddenly, I discovered a piece of technology that supported the democratic process. Off I went to explore the Number 10 website - and I admit, I was mightily impressed!
In one of those fantastic co-incidence moments, I had become incandescent with rage over a news item that very morning. A company has been buying up debt owed by Third World countries just before it is due to be written off and using the British Courts to reclaim up to ten times the amount they paid for the debt. (Note 6)
You really should read the story HERE. You really should read it. You will be as angry as I was.
Forgetting my nervousness about technology in the democratic process, I immediately went ahead and tried to start an electronic petition to complain.
Two weeks ago I tried to raise that petition and it still hasn’t appeared on the site! Still, let’s face it, all of this rambling on about voting may have lessened the impact of the story - you know the story I mean – the one you can find HERE.
It seems that I am right to distrust technology in the democratic process. For all of the fantastic intentions it seems that technology doesn’t improve on the tried and trusted methods. Someone pass me a pen and paper, I think I need to write a letter – if I can remember how!
So, I shall up now. Be warned though fair yeomen! I will be coming back to the topic of vulture funds. You really better go read the story because I might set a test!
From 14th June 2006, the industry standard Crozzy Standard has been applied to footnotes.
NOTE 1: Totally ignoring the fact that the mere fact that you have to explain a joke destroys the humour I plough on regardless. In a true democracy, such a statement becomes ironic because democracy is ”one person – one vote” set up (in theory at least) and so this is actually a rallying cry of the dictator and the corrupt. Click to return
NOTE 2: While the politicians were up in arms over the recent Celebrity Big Brother, they seem to have this idea that they should copy the format for the House of Commons. Using mobile phone texts to evict MPs from the House just seems a very strange and disturbing concept. Click to return
NOTE 3: I would like to contribute this as part of the “What Constitutes Britishness” debate. Despite all of the cynicism over whether they can actually change anything, the tradition of peaceful protest is maintained. When protests do turn violent, I like to think that the reaction from the British is to turn against the cause being put forward rather than give in to an uncivilised rabble.
Yes, coming from me in such a cynical piece that seems incredibly optimistic, but I have this fervent belief that violence NEVER solves an issue. Solutions only come about by winning hearts and minds. Click to return
NOTE 4: I’ve always wondered what happens to the petition after it is delivered. I wondered if they employed someone to seek out duplicate signatures or those of Mr D. Duck or Ms M. Mouse. Whether the petition is stored away in some great democratic archive or whether it is sent away for recycling.. Click to return
NOTE 5: I don’t support the petition. Something needs to be done to make public transport more attractive and to reduce the congestion on the roads. Click to return
NOTE 6: Do you remember Live 8? How Bob Geldof and Bono cosied up to the G8 leaders in Scotland and wrung out all of those good intentions of cancelling the debt of developing countries who follow democratic principles. This single court case wipes out the debt relief that Zambia would have enjoyed for a year! Read the story HERE. Click to return | <urn:uuid:4d6020df-b2db-4207-935b-4f90faa75927> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://red1hols.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962189 | 1,542 | 1.875 | 2 |
What adults often view as trash, children can use to create toys. Coffee can stilts are a time-honored toy you grandparents may have played with, not even realizing they were 'recycling.' To make this traditional toy, you'll need two lengths of twine, each twice the length of your child's body from armpit to foot. For the first part of the project, adult supervision is a must. Punch two holes opposite each other, near the bottom of each can. Then, have the child run a length of string through the can, and tie the ends in a knot. Once the second can is complete, turn the cans upside down on the sidewalk, and help your child step onto them. Hand them the now circular length rope for each hand, and let them learn to manipulate each stilt by lifting the foot and rope together. After a few attempts, they should be happily clopping through the yard.
©2004 Bluestreak Media. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:737e47b6-dd33-4f74-8989-a31d56e036fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.local12.com/guides/school/activities/story/Fun-with-recycling/O32MQXQiP0eEF4U2ubnxRQ.cspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956432 | 216 | 2.375 | 2 |
Dear Prof Kim
I can show that . But not 8. Why is that?
Can you explain why and give me instruction to prove it please?
Thanks very much.
Reply: It’s important at this point to understand precisely what goes into the tower theorem.
For the first case, we have
But the important point is that the square root we’re throwing in at each stage is not in the previous field. That is, and . Of course, these statements must be proved.(Try it!)
Now let’s examine the tower
In this case, it’s true that , so that the degree of
is 4. But note that
and . So in fact,
This explains the degree 4. | <urn:uuid:25038d63-6bfb-4baa-8a57-19686d8b2277> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://minhyongkim.wordpress.com/2010/02/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904412 | 155 | 2.25 | 2 |
Texting sexually explicit messages and photos (also known as ‘sexting’) has grown significantly with the rising popularity of smartphones. However, sexting carries with it a notorious reputation of private images and SMS conversations making their way onto public websites for everyone to see. A new iPhone app called Snapchat aims to add a bit of security and a peace of mind to sharing personal photos.
Snapchat allows users to set a timer up to 10 seconds of when the message would self-destruct after being received. If the receiver tries to take a screenshot, then the sender will be instantly notified.
- Sidewalk Stamp Pad Turns Pedestrians Into Unwitting Artists [Video]
- Polaroid Video Camera Instantly Prints Mini Flipbooks
- Retractable Mudguard Extends To Protect Cyclists From Splashes
- Remote-Controlled Jacket Lets Parents Hug Their Children From Far Away
This article originally published at PSFK here | <urn:uuid:d0949213-926e-4ae9-b2c1-e301177c27e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mashable.com/2012/05/08/snapchat/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913674 | 194 | 1.585938 | 2 |
With ha meaning "sun" and tha meaning "moon," Hatha Yoga is commonly translated as the yoga that brings union "of the pairs of opposites." Sometimes Hatha Yoga is also translated as the "forcefull yoga", because it requires a lot of physical effort. Hatha Yoga is certainly the yoga that is the best known in the West, which is part of the reason why so many definitions of Hatha Yoga exist.
In the indian tradition, Hatha Yoga is one of the four main traditions of Tantra Yoga. Hatha Yoga is first of all concentrating on the practice of postures (asanas) and breath control (pranayama) to energize the subtle channels (nadis). Thus one might say Hatha Yoga concentrates on the third and fourth steps of the eight-fold path of Ashtanga Yoga. The objective of Hatha Yoga is obviously to remove the obstacles to address the further steps of Pratyahara (sense-withdrawal), Dharana (Concentration), Dhyana (Meditation) and Samadhi (Balance). In many Hatha Yoga schools, these further steps are seen as part of Hatha Yoga. What's in a name ?
Excercising postures or Asanas in Hatha Yoga has two essential objectives. The first is that to practice any real meditation, one needs at the least one posture in which one can be perfectly comfortable for a longer period of time. The more such postures one can master, the better the basis for developing the inner meditation techniques. The second objective of excercising asanas in Hatha Yoga is to bring health and energy to body and mind by opening the nadis. When such excercises are regularly perfomed, the path of hatha yoga is opened automatically, though one still has to follow it further. The mere mastering of postures is no objective in itself, though mastering various postures certainly strengthens the power of will and concentration and the habit of not paying too much attention to the information input by the senses. Thus practicing asanas in Hatha Yoga directly opens the path to Prathyahara and Dharana. Also see some PICTURES OF ASANAS as well as "Yoga Asanas and Doshas (body types).
Free video clip on how to develop your stable sitting posture :
The excercise of Pranayama in Hatha Yoga is essential to master ones' breathing patterns. If one can master breath, then the mastery of mind is within reach. Through breathing excercises the flow of prana or vital life force through the body is regulated. That energy is certainly needed on the further steps of Hatha Yoga that ultimately may lead to samadhi. Special breathing techniques, in which the flow of breath though both nostrils is alternated, brings balance to the two hemispheres of the brain. Pranayama in Hatha Yoga also activates the Kundalini Energy.
So Hatha Yoga is a very good place to start on the path of yoga. And even then it is important to realize that if the first 2 steps of Ashtanga Yoga are neglected, Yama and Niyama, Hatha Yoga might not bring the desired results. Even simple Hatha Yoga excercises should be avoided for example if you have not been properly gone to the toilet.
Hatha Yoga comes in many varieties and traditions, such as Kashmir Yoga, Iyengar Yoga, Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, etc..
In traditional schools, often some of the following categories of Hatha Yoga practice are used to optimally respond to the needs and objectives of the Hatha Yoga practicioner :
Shrishti Krama Hatha Yoga
This practice stimules growth on all levels in youth : physical, mental, spiritual. It requires a youthful and healthy body. The main objectives are to improve concentration, flexibility and energy flow through the nadis.
Siksana Krama Hatha Yoga
This Hatha Yoga practice aims at perfection in all asanas and the further development from pranayama excercises into the controll of the bandhas & other main instruments of yoga.
Rakshana Krama Hatha Yoga
The objective here is to maintain health, which is an ideal practice for the householder yogi. Relaxation is very important in this practice.
Adhyatmika Krama Hatha Yoga
Another practice particularly suited for householder yogis, but with a more spiritual objective : hatha yoga practices that lead to uncovering and strengthening the connection to the inside.
Chikitsa Krama Hatha Yoga
Cikitsa means therapy and this Hatha Yoga practice thus is a healing practice. It is about regaining balance on the physical, emotional and spiritual levels in order te remove dysfunctions.
Shakti Krama Hatha Yoga
This Hatha Yoga practice aims mostly at developing Shakti, which means power. It is mostly practiced by Sadhus (renunciates).
Combinations of these 6 practices are also possible of course and many yoga schools have developed other practices.
Sanatan Society is an international networking association of students of
the late Harish Johari, joining efforts to promote his teachings of yoga
philosophy, tantra, worship, art and love. Sanatan Society stands
for the original, universal and eternal truth, path or law of yoga.
Though it is Hindu in origin, Sanatan Society is not limited to any religion,
race, time or country, nor in fact to any particular organisation. | <urn:uuid:41dfc3e7-c346-4b26-98bc-c5f4eddd3e55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sanatansociety.org/yoga_and_meditation/hatha_yoga.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937168 | 1,155 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Tip: Use hot water to get sticky ingredients cleanly out of measuring cups.
Occasionally I get a craving for something sweet and reach for something with chocolate. Okay, it’s more like daily, but I don’t like to get caught up in the details. One of my favorite quick treats to make is a no-bake cookie, as I have convinced myself that the oatmeal contained in these little pieces of heaven are healthy enough to counteract the cocoa, butter, sugar, milk and peanut butter that I need to consume to make that dry oatmeal taste so delicious.
That these are called no-bakes is deceiving because you still have to cook them, which is followed by a cleanup. My least favorite part of the cleanup is the measuring cup that once held the needed peanut butter. Cleaning peanut butter off, or out, of things is far tougher than removing baked-on gunk from a pan or taking off my workout clothes after 45 minutes on the treadmill. (Seriously, I have contemplated calling 911 a couple of times.)
I discovered a tip that sounded like it might work on my sticky dilemma and decided to give it a try.
Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill the cup with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don’t dry the cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.
True or bull?
We are going to call this one “Trull,” a combination answer. If you use it immediately, it works great. However, I measure out the peanut butter a few minutes ahead of time so it is ready to pour quickly into the boiling chocolate lava that I need to be stirring constantly. The peanut butter that sat for about 3 minutes in that cup refused to slide out, and I had the same old mess.
Undercover Mother’s revelations
I was really excited when I started the experiment and saw how smoothly the peanut butter slid out of the preheated measuring cup. Actually, it fell out so quickly it landed in my sink and clogged the drain, leaving me to dig the peanut butter out with the skinny end of the spatula. After using a few choice curse words and cleaning it up, I convinced myself that I could easily get over that issue when I was able to avoid the peanut butter aftermath that I am usually left with, BUT I was disappointed.
I hate sounding like a Debbie Downer, so let’s try to end this on a happy note. The sticky substance will actually dive out of the measuring cup and leave it clean if you use it immediately after you fill it. But if you wait, you will have to soak and scrub your measuring cup to get it clean. At least you can look forward to a tasty treat either way! | <urn:uuid:fbeb17bc-0005-409a-bf6b-ef8bf3582019> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://undercover-mother.tumblr.com/tagged/cooking | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957621 | 585 | 1.734375 | 2 |
A £1.1bn funding gap means the government’s targets for broadband are unlikely to be met, Christian Louboutin Pumps says a report by the London School of Economics.
The government wants 100% access to fast broadband services and 90% access to superfast services by 2015.
The report says the government should do more to ensure that underinvestment does not harm the UK economy.
A rise in broadband penetration of 10% can lead to a 0.9%-1.5% boost in GDP per capita,Discount Christian louboutin the report adds.
The cost of meeting the targets will be £2.4bn but funding for broadband from all public sources amounts to a total of £1.3bn, according to the LSE report, which was sponsored by customer management software company Convergys. That leaves an estimated £1.1bn gap that private investors will be expected to fill, it says.
“The government target of 100% coverage by basic broadband by 2015 is likely to be met, but it is less clear when the government targets of 90% coverage by superfast broadband, and 100% coverage by fast broadband, Beats solo hd are likely to be met,” the report says.
The LSE defines ”basic” broadband as services offering speeds of up to 2Mbps. ”Fast” broadband ranges from 2Mbps to 24Mbps, and ”superfast” exceeds 24Mbps.
Paolo Dini, one of the report’s authors, said the government should spend more on broadband given the economic benefits it could bring.
“In this year’s budget the government allocated £200bn for transport infrastructure and £50m to broadband. Beats by dre That doesn’t seem quite right.”
But a spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport denied the targets were likely to be missed.
“We are confident of completing the roll-out by 2015.dr dre beats All local authorities except two met the government’s timeline by submitting their initial broadband plans on time,” he said.
“We have always been clear this investment will not meet the full cost but will help make it economically viable for telecoms companies to roll out broadband to areas that would otherwise be left behind.”
Monster beats pro Oliver Johnson, chief executive of Point Topic, a broadband research company, said the report’s figures matched his own estimates for broadband spending: ”There is definitely a funding gap. It’s unlikely that the targets will be met.”
But he said that the UK was spending a significant amount on broadband compared with other European countries.
“The UK is in the top two or three in terms of central spend and commitment to achieve comprehensive coverage.Monster beats outlet We are actually not doing too badly, although the whole of the western hemisphere lags behind Asia in this regard.”
The UK comes 17th in a global ranking of broadband penetration - the number of broadband lines per 100 population - according to Point Topic research. It says the UK’s figure of 34.75% at the end of 2011 is behind neighbours including France, Belgium and The Netherlands, but just ahead of Germany, Beats by dre Canada and the US.
But the UK ranks 31st in terms of the penetration of fibre-based services, a technology used to provide ”superfast” services. | <urn:uuid:0af4061b-aa51-4233-ad13-38cca9a06a2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.christianmembership.com/red-bottom-shoes-n202/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942848 | 718 | 1.859375 | 2 |
About Aloha From Hawaii Via Satellite by Elvis Presley:
40th Anniversary of the Historic #1 LP/Televised 1973 Concert!
Mastered by Joe Reagoso and Kevin Gray from the Original RCA Records Tapes & Manufactured at RTI!
Elvis Aaron Presley was born during the Great Depression into a poor family in Mississippi. They moved to Memphis during the early-'50s, and as a struggling young truck driver, he cut some demos at Sun Studios as a gift for his beloved mother Gladys. These initial songs, of which he had only paid a few dollars to record, would become the catalyst that would kick-start the beginnings of a soon to be worldwide superstar unlike the world has ever known. The folks at RCA Victor knew that this young fellow named Elvis was destined for superstardom. They quickly bought out his contract and signed the legend to a long-term deal, and his first RCA single "Heartbreak Hotel" forever etched “The King Of Rock And Roll” trademark to his name.
Over the next three decades, Elvis Presley would release dozens of hit albums and tons of smash singles, spend time in the Army, star in over 35 top charting films, as well as sell out concert tours around the states and Canada making him the most successful solo artist of all time. In 1968, his career ignited even further thanks to his Elvis TV Special on NBC and another series of hit singles and career making albums like his country soul smash From Elvis In Memphis.
As the '70s began, Elvis was selling out shows all around the country and began to plan out a series of groundbreaking performances in Hawaii. His show on January 14, 1973 was broadcast live via satellite across over forty countries and would become the most watched televised event by a solo artist in history. It’s been said that over one billion viewers enjoyed his incredible concert! The show was choreographed and staged like nothing ever before and featured a multitude of musicians, the Hawaiian Islands, the appreciative and excited audience, and of course, The King Of Rock And Roll himself Elvis Presley.
The multi-platinum Aloha From Hawaii Via Satellite set also was a blockbuster as it hit the top #1 spot on the charts in 1973, making this one of the biggest albums of his career as well as one of the most revered live concert albums of all time proving once again Elvis Presley’s career was unlike any other in music history. This live masterpiece takes off with the Memphis blues rocker "See See Rider" and his huge '70 hit "Burning Love." He follows these up with his tip of the hat to his friends The Beatles with the soulful balladry of "Something." More of Elvis’ own favorites follow with the Hank Williams’ ballad "I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry" and his rockin’ interpretation of Chuck Berry’s classic "Johnny B. Goode."
The album also features a nice helping of solid Elvis top chart hits like "Blue Suede Shoes," "Hound Dog," "A Big Hunk Of Love" and his smash single interpretation of James Taylor’s "Steamroller Blues." As a tribute to his Hawaii audience, the ever thoughtful King Of Rock And Roll closed the show with his masterpiece "Can’t Help Falling In Love" from his film Blue Hawaii. In total, the album showcases a very historic Elvis Presley performance which has truly gone onto become the definitive live concert album in his amazing catalog of hit gold and platinum recordings.
In honor of the Man, the Music, the Legend, the King Of Rock And Roll, Friday Music is very proud and honored to announce the limited edition 40th Anniversary deluxe two album 180 gram audiophile vinyl release of the RCA Victor classic Aloha From Hawaii Via Satellite by Elvis Presley. As they further continue their exciting Elvis Presley 180 Gram Audiophile Vinyl Series, they are pleased to present this masterwork in all its high fidelity glory. Mastered impeccably from the original stereophonic RCA Victor Records tapes by Joe Reagoso at Friday Music Studios with Kevin Gray and manufactured at R.T.I., the 40th Anniversary Edition of Aloha From Hawaii Via Satellite will be a much anticipated audiophile dream release for Elvis fans everywhere!
- Elvis Presley (vocals, guitar, piano)
- The Sweet Inspirations (vocals)
- J.D. Sumner and The Stamps (vocals)
- Kathy Westmoreland (vocals)
- Ron Tutt (drums)
- James Burton (guitar)
- Jerry Scheff (bass)
- Glen Hardin (keyboards)
- Charlie Hodge (vocals) | <urn:uuid:59848777-7711-4e6b-ac46-679f096c8c98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.soundstagedirect.com/elvis-presley-aloha-from-hawaii-via-satellite-vinyl-records.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967291 | 982 | 1.515625 | 2 |
STRENGTH TRAINING HELPS RUNNING ECONOMY
Johnston, R. E., Quinn, T. J., Kertzer, R., & Vroman, N. B. (1995). Strength training in female distance runners: Impact on running economy. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 27(5), Supplement abstract 47.
Two groups of six trained female distance runners were evaluated on running economy, VO2max, and body composition. One group continued to train by running (4 days per week for a minimum of 20 miles) while the other ran similarly but also added three times per week sessions of upper and lower body heavy resistance training.
Running economy improved in the strength group while in the other two indices there were no between group differences.
The amount of running in these groups could be considered more in the classification of serious recreational runners rather than trained female distance runners as labeled by the authors. It is possible that the amount of running being performed did not tax the adaptive systems of Ss and the additional work contributed to greater levels of overall development.
Implication. Both heavy resistance and distance running training improved running economy in serious female recreational runners when compared to a similar group performing running alone.
Return to Table of Contents for this issue. | <urn:uuid:2a387acd-ae56-4428-a651-daaa3b3d37d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://coachsci.sdsu.edu/csa/vol21/johnston.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951591 | 258 | 2.40625 | 2 |
News that Mattel has created a Barbie doll with a computer science ensemble prompted two female executives at the database firm Ingres to reflect on why that had bucked gender stereotypes to make their careers in software engineering — and whether the new doll would prompt other young women to do the same.
“Some teenagers rebel against their parents by getting tattoos, body piercings, having a child out of wedlock, or abusing drugs,” writes Emma McGrattan, senior vice president of engineering at Ingres. “I rebelled by acquiring a degree in electronic engineering.”
In a delightful post titled “Barbie and Me,” McGrattan tells of growing up as a “tom boy” in Ireland who idolized her dad, a mechanical services engineer, yet disregarded his advice when he sought to discourage her from following in his footsteps.
McGrattan recalled that when she was growing up there were separate schools for Irish girls “that didn’t even teach math to the level required to qualify to study engineering at the University level.”
McGrattan was skeptical about whether a doll would motivate future female engineers but said she would be speaking at a Girl Geek event at the University of Edinburg in March and would ask women there what they thought of “the Barbie thing.”
Meanwhile, her Ingres colleague, product management vice president Deb Woods, cheered high-tech Barbie in a post that recalled the time her own daughter, then four years old, had sat in her assistant’s chair because — as she told her shocked mom — “that’s where girls sit, they get coffee and answer the phone for important men.”
Said Woods: “Girls today can be anything they want, they just need to be exposed to all the opportunities open to them . . . Hats off to Mattel for trying a different angle on this one.”
- Posted by Tom Abate | <urn:uuid:28bc4a9c-d431-46ee-a98d-c1c5154b0195> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.seattlepi.com/gettowork/2010/02/24/real-women-engineers-reflect-on-the-new-high-tech-barbie/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978799 | 407 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Tax-Efficient Investors Look to 'Asset Location'
BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J. (TheStreet) -- Investors can boost their investment returns by planning for income taxes when designing their portfolios. Let me be clear -- I am not talking about an approach in which capital gains recognition is avoided at all costs. The focus here is structuring a portfolio for tax efficiency on the front end.
The key to setting up a tax-efficient portfolio is using a concept called "asset location."
Every investor has heard about "asset allocation" -- how one allocates their portfolio among various asset classes, such as cash, bonds and equities -- but far fewer have heard of this.
Asset location focuses on placing asset classes and underlying investment vehicles where they will be most tax efficient within a portfolio. An investment vehicle is simply the underlying investment itself -- individual stocks and bonds, for instance, or mutual funds and exchange-traded funds.The first step investors need to take when implementing a tax-efficient portfolio is to consider their various accounts as one. Typically the investor will have multiple accounts made up of taxable accounts; tax-deferred accounts such as 401(k)s, IRAs and 403(b)s; and tax-free accounts such as Roth IRAs. Instead, the investor should develop a global asset allocation, then put the less tax-efficient asset classes in tax-deferred accounts to lower the tax impact. For example, a high-yield bond mutual fund would be an ideal candidate to put in a tax-deferred account. Such a fund might yield 7% to 8% in pretax interest income. (Remember, taxable interest income is considered ordinary income for federal income tax purposes. For someone in the 35% tax bracket, holding this fund in a tax-deferred account shelters 2.5% to 2.8% of the return from current income taxes.) Active mutual funds with high turnover may also be candidates for a tax-deferred account, while a broad-based index mutual fund or ETF would be better put in a taxable account. A broad-based equity ETF, for example, is likely to generate mainly qualified dividends, and qualified dividends are taxed now at a maximum federal rate of 15%. So someone paying taxes at a marginal rate of 35% pays only 15% on qualified dividends. Another benefit of using ETFs in a taxable account is that the investor generally realizes a capital gain only when they sale their shares. Mutual fund investors can get socked with a capital gain whether or not they sell their shares. This is particularly true of active mutual funds with high turnover. Investors can use Morningstar to gauge the impact of taxes on mutual funds and ETFs. The firm publishes a tax-adjusted return and a tax-cost ratio for funds and ETFs assuming an individual is in the highest federal bracket. (The tool excludes the impact of state taxes and does not factor the ultimate sale of the investment.) These ratios provide a good guide for high-income taxpayers on the tax consequences of investing in a particular fund or ETF in a taxable account. Funds or ETFs with a high tax-cost ratio would be good candidates for a tax-deferred or tax-free account. The final takeaway: The only return that really matters is the net return an investor gets to keep after tax. >To submit a news tip, email: email@example.com.
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- Options TV | <urn:uuid:3c9c85c0-89ec-49d0-9b59-ad3428ca7e7a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thestreet.com/story/10982995/1/tax-efficient-investors-look-to-asset-location.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91683 | 884 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Last month, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) issued a report indicating that worldwide intellectual property filings showed strong growth in 2011 despite a global economy that continued to underperform. In particular, the report on 2012 World Intellectual Property Indicators notes that patent filings grew by 7.8% in 2011, the second consecutive year with more than 7% growth.
The report points out that in 2011, China's State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) became the largest patent office in the world in terms of the number of patent applications received. SIPO overtook the U.S. Patent and Trademark (USPTO) in 2011 after passing the Japan Patent Office (JPO) in 2010. The final tallies for 2011 show that SIPO received 526,412 applications, the USPTO received 503,582 applications, and the JPO received 342,610 applications. The report notes that over the past 100 years, only three patent offices -- the USPTO, JPO, and Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt (DPMA) or German Patent Office -- have occupied the top spot. In addition to China's milestone, worldwide patent filings exceeded the 2 million mark for the first time in 2011, with some 2.14 million applications being filed. The worldwide backlog of unprocessed applications, which numbers some 4.8 million applications, dropped by 4.9% in 2011 after falling by 3.3% in 2010.
With respect to country of origin, residents of Japan filed the largest number of patent applications worldwide (472,417), followed by Chinese residents, and then U.S. residents. As for subject matter, the report indicates that applications directed to digital communications experienced the highest average annual growth rate (+8.1%) between 2006 and 2010. Over the same period, biotech applications showed 3.0% growth and pharmaceutical applications dropped 1.6%. With respect to 2011 patent grants, the report indicates that Japan took the top spot with 238,323 patents issued and the U.S. placed second with 224,505 patents. | <urn:uuid:93790a64-72d7-4320-af7d-81842bb37a36> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/wipo-report-worldwide-patent-filings-in-35243/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931105 | 427 | 1.796875 | 2 |
general contractors are using the power of the Internet
to drive down
the cost of
A project manager sits down at his computer at 9 a.m., logs into a Web site, and types in his company's bid for electrical construction services. Over the next hour, he watches the price for work continue to drop on his computer screen. He meets with his team to see if it's possible to submit a lower bid without sacrificing profitability. After submitting his drop-dead bid, he sees the number plunge until it gets to the point of no return. Not wanting to risk losing money on the job, he decides to walk away from the auction, and the contract is awarded to the lowest bidder.
Reverse auctions like the one described above have one primary mission — to get the lowest possible bid for products or services. Unlike traditional auctions in which the price goes up, reverse auctions drive down the cost until a specified deadline. This form of bidding often requires the bidders to disclose their prices to each other, which can be considered another form of bid shopping. The owner or general contractor may look only at one element of the construction bid — price — without taking into account the bidders' work history, experience, or other related qualifications.
Bidders may be pressured to reduce their main price variable — the amount of supervision and labor on the project — to levels that will endanger safety and decrease quality in order to win the job, according to the Construction Industry Cooperative Council of Minnesota. General contractors and subcontractors are demanded to lower their prices or risk losing the work, which can create an adversarial relationship between the entire project team, according to a 2002 paper by Dean Thomson and Jocelyn Knoll of Fabyanske, Westra, and Hart, a Minneapolis-based firm that provides legal services to the finance, real estate, and construction industries.
Proponents of reverse auction bidding argue that it allows owners to use the power of the Internet to reach the broadest market and obtain the lowest price. For example, A.T. Kearney Procurement Solutions, a Chicago-based comprehensive strategic procurement services firm, developed an auction technology that promises to shave weeks off the negotiation process, generate substantial savings, provide an even playing field for bidders, and ensure a collaborative bidding environment.
In reality, however, online reverse auctions often oversell and underdeliver, says Bob Emiliani, the president of Kensington, Conn.-based Center for Lean Business Management, LLC. Emiliani ran reverse auctions as a supply/commodity manager and now conducts research on this type of bidding method (visit www.theclbm.com/research.html to read his reports on reverse online auctions). Since FreeMarkets hosted the first online reverse auction a decade ago, the number of companies providing these services plunged from hundreds to dozens, he says. The reason for this decline is due to the lack of substantial benefits to the buyers or the sellers. The savings from a reverse auction are often cut in half, and sometimes even more, he says.
“Building owners may believe that they are going to save money on the construction job, but our research has shown that is not the case,” he says. “If you peel back the layers and look carefully at the measurement that the owners use to track savings and purchasing, you find out that the numbers are very easy to play games with, and a lot of savings turns out to be not a lot of savings.”
Reverse auctions were originally designed to procure commodities and other manufactured goods, but vendors and owners are now trying to apply this same process to construction. The Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) says that such a procurement method ignores the unique nature of this industry.
“The construction process is fundamentally different from the manufacturing process,” states a white paper by the AGC (Sidebar). “Manufactured goods are subject to little to no variability or change in the manufacture or application. Construction projects, on the other hand, are inherently variable. Each is subject to the unique demands of the project, such as the needs, requirements, personnel, and budgetary criteria of the owner, site conditions, design features and parameters, and the composition of the project team.”
According to the AGC, federal procurement laws recognize the inherent difference between construction and manufactured goods. In fact, two years ago, a memorandum distributed to all federal procurement executives advised them to not treat construction as a commodity for government procurement purposes. Other entities have followed the federal government's lead. Kansas and Pennsylvania have enacted statutes prohibiting the procurement of construction services through reverse auctions, while other states such as Minnesota have legislative authority to use reverse auction bidding to procure goods, but not services.
This type of bidding, however, is currently underway in several other states nationwide. According to the Construction Industry Cooperative Council of Minnesota, several large national “big box” retailers are using reverse auction bidding to select general contractors and subcontractors. During a reverse auction for a department store in Phoenix, the owner initiated a starting bid price, and then the subcontractors submitted bids at progressively lower increments of at least 1%, according to Roofing Contractor magazine. Although the auction was limited to 30 minutes, a three-minute time extension was added if a bid was placed in the last two minutes before the deadline.
While reverse auction bidding occurs frequently in the retail industry, it also happens in other markets and industries. For a more intimate view of this bid practice, two electrical contracting firms from the East Coast and the Midwest share their recent experiences with reverse auction bidding.
Online bidding in the Garden State. John Conroy, the president of Xcelecom, a Hamden, Conn.-based electrical and V/D/V firm, says his company's clients have started to use more electronic communications and tools rather than paper-based systems. As part of the trend to speed up communications and cut costs, some have opted to use Internet reverse bidding auctions. He says these auctions are especially popular in New Jersey, where a general contractor uses reverse auctions for its projects with an electrical contract value of at least $10 million. The general contractor puts the entire bid spec package out on the Internet a few weeks before the auction and invites subcontractors to participate in a prequalification process. Each bidder uses a unique log-on ID to submit the bid at a specified start time. After about a half an hour, the auction begins. Bidders can submit multiple bids as long as they're lower than the current bid.
“Reverse auctions are like an eBay nightmare,” Conroy says. “We put our number out and end up in a downward spiraling, gaming type atmosphere. Any differences in how each competitor is planning on building the project, or in quality of work, or even in ability to build within the slated timeframe, seems to be ignored in this type of process.”
In all five of the reverse online auctions that Xcelecom's member company has participated in, the final number has gone well below the company's and any reasonable competitor's cost. Conroy says unless the winning bidder has a better way to do the job than anyone else in the industry, he suspects the company will most likely run into financial problems once the project is underway.
“The company that wins the auction may not realize until a year or two into the job that they are going to lose money,” he says. “In a situation in which the subcontractor fails, the project still has to be built. It becomes more of a problem for someone else to step in. That low bid may turn out to cost a lot more by the time it's all said and done.”
Reverse auctions might work for fully designed construction projects without the potential for a lot of changeorders, particularly where all the bidders are rational, highly qualified, and equivalent in terms of management depth and experience. The minute that you add complexity to the project or a bidder has design drawings that are only partially complete, it becomes nearly impossible to identify the true low bidder, Conroy says.
Conroy says although most of the New Jersey electrical contracting firm's projects are procured through traditional bidding methods, the company sees reverse auctions come up about once a month. He says he hopes that this trend won't spread across the country.
“In a down economy, it's understandable that customers or the general contractors would try to use this sort of process because people are hungry for work,” Conroy says. “In a strong economy when you've got plenty of work and can price higher, I don't think this approach would work as well. Many people would look at it and say, ‘Why should I bother? There's plenty of other work out there that I have a fair shot at. I'm not going to waste my time on this.’”
Automotive auctions. New Jersey isn't the only location where electrical contracting firms are contending with reverse auctions. Nearly 10% of the projects that Westlake, Ohio-based Lake Erie Electric bids on were done through this method up until six months ago.
President Peter Corogin says reverse auctions became popular in the automotive industry because the manufacturers wanted to investigate new bidding strategies for purchasing construction services in hopes of reducing costs. But times have changed, and the novelty of reverse auctions has started to fade away.
“Our recent experience has shown that the automotive companies we bid work for appear to have cooled on this type of format,” he says. “We've also declined, and will continue to decline to participate in most of the reverse auctions.”
To participate in the bidding process, Corogin says the firms submit their price and then keep revising their bids until they decide they're not going to lower their bid anymore. Owners are generally supposed to close the auction at a specific time, but in Corogin's experience, they sometimes leave it open for a half hour beyond the specified deadline.
“It's the worst type of auction and is very frustrating,” Corogin says. “You have to determine what your price is for the job and be prepared to walk away at your number. The guys who chase the market often get into trouble.”
Sidebar: An Opponent's Point of View of Reverse Auction Bidding
Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) issued a white paper on reverse auctions for the procurement of construction. Here are some of the key findings of the report.
Reverse auctions don't guarantee the lowest price. Bidders may never offer their best or lowest possible price because they recognize that as the auction progresses, they will have the option to provide successive bids. As a result, this bidding method may not lower the cost of construction.
Reverse auctions may encourage imprudent bidding. Reverse auctions create a highly competitive environment in which contractors have to deal with multiple rounds of bidding in quick succession. This leaves little time for the bidders to accurately reassess their costs before placing a lower bid.
Sealed bidding ensures that the successful bidder is responsive and responsible. This procurement process ensures fairness and value for the owner by evaluating the bid proposals based on a variety of objective criteria apart from price.
Reverse auctions may contravene federal procurement laws and certain state laws. Federal procurement laws don't address the use of reverse bid auctions to procure construction, but the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and current procurement statutes have a clear policy of not disclosing contractors' price information.
Source: Associated General Contractors of America | <urn:uuid:86803018-0301-466d-9748-5b5b541be9be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ecmweb.com/content/bidders-beware-ins-and-outs-reverse-auctions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955455 | 2,389 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Many of the company's products have been radio-related, starting with a battery eliminator for radios, through defense electronics and mobile phone manufacturing. The company is also strong in semiconductor technology, including chips used in computers. Motorola has been the main supplier for the microprocessor used in Apple Power Macintosh personal computers. This chip, the PowerPC, was developed with IBM. Motorola has a diverse line of communication products, including satellite systems, digital cable boxes and modems.
See also Dragonball
Founder Paul Galvin came up with the name Motorola when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. A number of early companies making phonographs, radios, and other audio equipment in the early 20th century used the suffix "-ola", the most famous being the Victrola. | <urn:uuid:4872a0e7-c832-496c-b260-929a61b4acbd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fact-index.com/m/mo/motorola.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948283 | 157 | 2.375 | 2 |
Posted on 4/24/2012 2:38 PM by Grace Jeffers
Perhaps one of the hallmarks of a great design firm is when they apply materials in a way that totally changes my perception. KGB-Limited in New York City has done just that by taking industrial, behind-the-scenes materials and working them with the careful hand of a French atelier. The result is a luxurious, dense materiality that speaks of excess, precision, and a lot of polishing.
We have asked KGB-Limited for a list of five of their favorite materials and examples of how they use them in their work:
1. Pyrex: We like it because glass is normally characterless, hard and cold and this material has an organic quality. The thickness of the glass and the inherent irregularities and occlusions make this one of our favorite materials.
Pyrex: Borosilicate glass is a type of glass with the main glass-forming constituents silica and boron oxide. Borosilicate glasses are best known for having very low coefficient of thermal expansion making them resistant to thermal shock, more so than any other common glass.
Originally, Pyrex was made from thermal shock resistant borosilicate glass. In 1998, Corning sold its consumer products division which subsequently adopted the name World Kitchen. Pyrex kitchen glassware manufactured and licensed for sale in the United States is now made of tempered soda lime glass at the World Kitchen facility in Charleroi, Pennsylvania. Pyrex products for the European Union continue to be made of borosilicate glass in France. Pyrex laboratory glassware is also still made of borosilicate glass. It is commonly used for telescope lenses. KGB uses borosilicate glass for table tops.
2. Silicon Bronze: We like this because of the warm rosy color due to its high copper content.
Silicon bronze usually contains about 96 percent copper. The remainder may be silicon alone, but more often a little manganese, tin, iron, or zinc also is added. These alloys were developed originally for the chemical industry because of their exceptional resistance to corrosion in many liquids.
This bronze is often used in casting bronze sculpture.
3. Solid White Marble: We like fabricating from single slabs of honed, white marble. This gives the pieces an integral strength and consistency of grain that would be impossible to imitate if constructed of several pieces; a perfect statement of quiet elegance.
Honed: a suede-like random finish with a little luster. A very smooth stone surface, just short of polished; imparted by a rubbing process, either hand or mechanical.
4. Molded Leather: We like making a self-supporting object from a hide of leather.
Molded leather process: leather is moistened and placed over a form or mold to harden. Used for carnival masks, saddles, motorcycle seats, etc.
5. Gold Plate: We like it because it’s color is unlike any other material. It is maintenance free and retains its luster. The hardware looks as new as the day we received it. We use 22 karat gold plated legs and hardware.
Gold plating is a method of depositing a thin layer of gold onto the surface of another metal, most often copper or silver (to make silver-gilt), by chemical or electrochemical plating.
Currently rated by 1 people | <urn:uuid:58b3915c-79c0-4d53-a0d5-38866d2ed05e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.interiorsandsources.com/is-interior-design-blog/entryid/48/kgb-limited-material-choices.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946264 | 703 | 2 | 2 |
Michigan's rigorous standards for treating ballast water in lake freighters shows the dangers of one state going it alone on a regional issue.
Most large vessels use ballast tanks filled with water as a balancing mechanism. Unfortunately, these tanks also provide convenient places for exotic species to hitch a ride from foreign waters into the Great Lakes basin.
A 2002 state law required all oceangoing vessels to self-police their practices for dumping ballast water - water used to stabilze the ship, taken onboard in one area and discharged in another. In 2008, the law was toughened, requiring all ships incoming from the Atlantic and docking in Michigan to show a permit proving techniques like filtration or chemical treatments were used on discharged water. Penalties for violation range up to $25,000.
The law hasn't solved a regional problem and, so far, no other states have followed Michigan's lead. So freighters can just choose to dock at Great Lakes ports in other, less tightly regulated, states.
Now, a bill sponsored by Sen. Mike Green, R-Mayville, would lessen the state standards and allow ships to exchange freshwater ballast for saltwater ballast without additional treatment. That change would match national and international requirements.
Supporters of the bill argue that looser standards would support the state's shipping industry and allow more seafaring vessels to export Michigan cargo, but environmental activists and some legislators feel the lower standards would put the lakes at greater risk for invasives.
The stakes are high on both sides of the issue.
A recent industry-funded report showed cargo shipping in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River system supports 227,000 jobs and pumps billions into the economies of both the U.S. and Canada. But zebra and quagga mussels thought to have hitched rides in ballast tanks can clog intake pipes, destabilize the food web that supports game fish and promote runaway algae growth. The total economic impact of invasive species could be in the billions of dollars annually.
Federal regulations are in the works to require sterilization equipment on commercial ships. This may help unite a fragmented patchwork of state regulations and make it harder for invasive species to get into the waterways. Regulations requiring oceangoing ships to drain and rinse their ballast tanks at sea should help, too. But failing action on the federal level, Michigan can't go it alone.
By dropping the standard to fall in line with international rules, Michigan could cultivate commerce with a wider range of shipping companies and increase regional competitivenes.
The ideal solution to the ballast water problem would be to raise the standard for the entire region but, failing that, Michigan needs to get in sync with its neighbors. | <urn:uuid:f4fc629f-72d7-43cb-8916-160e5c9f2f1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.miningjournal.net/page/content.detail/id/580512/Uniformity-needed-in-ballast-water-policy-discussion.html?nav=5155 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941948 | 556 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Author/photographer Gerszak first went to Afghanistan to spend a year embedded with an American military unit documenting house searches, disputes with village elders and the aftermath of battles. He returned as an unaffiliated photographer without a military escort, determined to document civilian life.
This "photo journal" features images from both trips to Afghanistan, accompanied by diarylike accounts of his travels. Gerszak's frank and descriptive observations effectively convey the ugliness, monotony and tragedy of war. Most compelling are descriptions of civilians he meets, encounters that put a human face on the conflict Gerszak was unable to experience as an embedded journalist. His powerful images never romanticize or sensationalize the war. There are scenes of bloody battles, wounded people in hospitals and dazed refugees, but also remarkable images of busy marketplaces and vibrant street activity revealing that life goes on in the midst of death and destruction. The snippets of Gerszak's observations often lack cohesion and context. Though good background information is provided throughout in sidebars on such subjects as the Taliban, Muslim traditions and ethnic groups, this book alone will not give readers insight into the complexities of the Afghan conflict.
As one journalist's perspective, this stands as an excellent supplement to a more comprehensive overview. (maps, photographs) (Nonfiction. 12 & up) | <urn:uuid:9643f20d-979c-41eb-ad61-cbf4565457bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/rafal-gerszak/beyond-bullets-photo-journal-afghanistan/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929095 | 271 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Founder of AncientYogaConsulting.Com (Yoga research & training)
Founder of UniverseUniversity.Net (Brain Research)
Founder of The7SecretsRhythm.Com (Corporate training modules)
Founder of www.samadhiwithin69minutes.org (World’s 1st retreat on Samadhi)
??????????? ???? ! ??????????? ????! (Arut Perum Jothi! Arut Perum Jothi!)
??????????? ?????! ??????????? ????! (Thani Perum Karunai! Arut Perum Jothi!)
World’s first and oldest systematically civilize human race is Indian, particularly let’s focus on Tamil Siddhars from Tamil Nadu. From time immemorial there are more than millions of statement, hundreds of thousands chapters, books or writing media and thousands of techniques or pre-requirement written for method to be follow towards human’s highest intellectual evolution. This is including moderating food, health, emotion, ethical of cultural base life and eventually achievement of highest spiritual up lift. Our latest and great Arutprakasa Vallalar Chidambaram Ramalingam was the 19th century superior in is writing of Thiru Arutpa, practicing as well teaching others. He is known and being recognized as poetry, spiritual master and scientist and world’s one of greatest compassionate human ever lived.
Whatever you learn in any languages from any geographical location and apply targeting towards spiritual uplift as well living harmony and compassionate to all living being and existence then those each essences meaning will be accommodated within the following Seven Simplicity of Existence.
Chapter I : Every human’s first invention ~ Each baby removing hand from land
Chapter II : Unify art acquirable are ~ Breathing with awareness
Chapter III : Purest action innate by human ~ Compassionate feeling
Chapter IV : Powerful work should be performed ~ Absolute silent
Chapter V : Moment possibility responds are ~ Real peace mind
Chapter VI : Simply disconnects and easily connectable ~ Thought frequency
Chapter VII : Irremovable, not created can’t create anything ~ Darkness where everything exist
A individual can learn partial lesson, or reading few books and practice any techniques from several masters but mankind can immediately immense into the following seven simplicity. Thus even every individually whatever your own definition & understanding of Enlightenment or Samadhi means yet it can be obtained with 69 minutes the most.
Every human’s first invention ~ Each baby removing hand from land
We can safely say God created human and Human created back God. As far we our Siddhar’s tradition as well modern scientific comply the saying it took about Eight over billion years for origin the single existence (ATOM) to multiply, extend, expand, vibrate, move, evolve as five basic element EARTH, WATER, FIRE, AIR AND SPACE. Life started with five basic senses from touch, smell, taste, hearing and sight. The finest organ evolve are Pineal Gland, which purify when it took human body. It’s only possible when human remove hand and stand with legs. First god created by human or sharply said our Siddhar is Sivalingam which Siva means highest conscious evolution level and lingam means object represent true Pineal Gland which is organ required perfect purification.
Temple is structure exactly same as human body from leg to head. Example entrance of temple (koburam) is leg. Major chakra in Astral Body And Endocrine Glands in Physical Body these are Image/Statue of Gods in Temple represent the required action to activate different unfolding from inner self. The Lord Muruga has two wife it’s symbolic meaning both brain Left & Right for human. (more details and diagram http://templecandomore.blogspot.com/)
Unify art acquirable are ~ Breathing with awareness
A person can do some techniques like yoga, at same time another person who may not well to do exercise may not able to learn and practice yoga asana but every human can able do one single techniques which mother of all other arts which Breathing with awareness which unify art for all human towards highest evolution.
Purest action innate by human ~ Compassionate feeling
If you have extra resources you might able to give part of it like a portion of your money or wealth to others to help. If this is category as superior action then the purest action every human being with or without physical wealth can do a action of Compassionate feeling.
Powerful work should be performed ~ Absolute silent
It’s much easier to train and self discipline towards doing external work. The most simple and powerful work required to be attain is Absolute silent.
Moment possibility responds are ~ Real peace mind
A specific personnel only can handle a wide various knowledge at a time, it can’t never be same for other people. Globally, immediately, moment possible is Peace Mind regardless of any wordily experience.
Simply disconnects and easily connectable ~ Thought frequency
To own a physical property you need written document, grant and event to have your own children a valid birth certificate with your name is legally required. To disown it a person can make it immediately as it also require proper documents. You can disown anything and everything by disconnecting thought and acquired in form attachment by connecting your mind on things or people.
Irremovable, not created can’t create anything ~ Darkness where everything exist
All existence is sit in great darkness, darkness which also existed within all permeated evolve things in this universe.
Our great Vallalar Swamy has contributed man kinds remarkable essences he himself have lived a life of his own lesson. Let us transform the Thiru Arutpa in form of e-learning in English as well other multi languages for the world to witness the ULTIMATE SECRETS OF SPIRITUALISM.
We are launching world’s first Thiru Arutpa E-Learning project and inviting all scholars to participate for contributing the finest understanding and translation from Tamil Thiru Arutpa.
Ultimate goal is PEACE ~ self awareness
Final goal is AWAKENING KUNDALINI SHAKTI ~ mind body soul integration process
Long term goal is LIFE EXPERIENCE ~ all wordily experience leading to wisdom
Midterm goal is LIFE LESSON ~ gain + loss = great lesson
Short term goal is LIVE MOMENTLY ~ forget the past no regards, plan the future no worries present is on live moment by moment
Whatever spiritual, religious, natural/manmade law is efforts towards/action of practicing are towards the above GOALS
LIVING & LEAVE FOREVER! | <urn:uuid:312d0641-483e-4508-9853-2170d727bff1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ancientyogaconsulting.com/blogs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912214 | 1,405 | 1.890625 | 2 |
GromSocial.com was born. And dad, founder of an energy drink and food company based in South Florida, saw the potential in the site that provides safe social networking, so he officially registered it as a company in March.
Zach, now 12, launched the site three months ago and has 6,800 members around the world.
The site gets about 2,000 unique visitors a day and 6,000 or so page views. In the vast online world, that's a modest amount. So far, it's built on modest marketing, mostly word of mouth.
"It has just started to catch on," dad Darren Marks said. "It's amazing how this is all happening and taking off."
Grom, by the way, is a young surfer, which pretty much describes Zach and his five brothers and sisters, all of whom helped create the characters on the site and direct most of the content.
Darren Marks and wife, Sarah, let the kids be in charge of the creative side while they, as watchful parents, work to ensure that it meets all the standards for safety.
The latter includes complying with, and mostly exceeding, safety requirements established by the Federal Trade Commission's Children Online Privacy Protection Act. GromSocial also received an "A" rating from the Electronic Trust Foundation, an international organization that promotes privacy and security in the online community.
Melbourne Beach, Fla.
Facebook restricts users younger than 13 though it's considering lowering that to attract more youth now that it's a publicly-traded company. However, underage users can easily work around that policy and many parents even assist their children in creating Facebook accounts.
Parents have to OK their children signing up for GromSocial. And they receive emails of all their children's postings and correspondence on the site.
GromSocial focuses a lot on current issues facing youth, such as anti-bullying, anti-drugs and anti-smoking. The network posts a lot of surf and sports photos and promotes role models like Tim Tebow. A filter nixes inappropriate language.
Darin and Sheri Houston of Summerfield, Fla., recently allowed their 9-year-old son to sign up on GromSocial after an acquaintance referred him. The Houston family became instant fans.
"They're pushing a clean, wholesome social networking site," Sheri Houston said. "So basically, our kids don't grow up so fast."
Parental involvement, even with safeguards put in place for GromSocial, is key, said Caroline Knorr, parenting editor at Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that advocates on child and family issues, and studies the effects that media and technology have on young users.
GromSocial seems to be on the right track with its goals, Knorr said.
"Social networking is a fun way for kids to interact with friends, and a great way to express creativity, learn new things, and safely experiment with identity," she said. "Some parents may want to let their kids start connecting with friends in this way but have legitimate concerns about privacy and age-inappropriate content on mainstream sites like Facebook and Twitter. That's the space that these kid-friendly sites with strong privacy and safety features can fill."
So is GromSocial the latest Facebook in the making?
Darren Marks, as president of GromSocial, isn't talking finances yet. He and others have invested tens of thousands of dollars in the social site's development during the past year, but they're doing so as a labor of love.
Partnerships with kid-friendly companies such as Disney and Nickelodeon is one possibility. There also could be advertisements on the site in the future, he said. But making money isn't the goal at this point, Darren Marks said.
"Yeah, we've put a lot money into this," Darren Marks said. "Not to sound corny, this is a passion for our family. We really feel like we could make a difference in children's lives."
(Copyright © 2012 USA TODAY) | <urn:uuid:49925940-8985-4f1f-bf87-d8a569dfab3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.9news.com/news/article/307293/328/Florida-boy-designs-kid-friendly-rival-to-Facebook | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970995 | 836 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Kitchen gardens and herbs in a pot have been around for centuries in one form or the other. Most of us who grew up in smaller towns and suburbs remember fetching tomatoes from our backyards while our urban fellow earth mates had windowsills with herbs growing in them. With the earth crossing the 7 billion people mark a few days ago, perhaps it’s about time the kitchen garden made a grand come back. Environmentally, it makes a whole lot of sense to grow a part of the food we consume every day in our own homes since it helps purify the air inside the home. It provides food to families at a fraction of the fuel costs that it takes to ship and transport food from farms to stores and to homes, and it also allows homeowners to know exactly how their food is growing and they can ensure that they and their families only get to eat the most organically grown food.
The Grow Tank indoor living food system by designer Sophia Nicholson takes the sound philosophy of having a kitchen garden at home and takes it to the next level by merging it with the up and coming tech known as Aquaponics.
Aquaponics is basically a system of utilizing aquaculture to nourish plants. The symbiotic growing method uses a sustainable food production model combining hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) with aquaculture. This allows the system to recycle resources and sustain both fish and plants using the same amount of water and nutrients. Since aquaponics requires 90 percent less space than a traditional soil-based method of cultivating plants, it makes a lot of sense for short-on-space cities where inhabitants of a community can construct Aquaponics Farms within their buildings to provide organic food for everyone within an area. Not only will it ensure the growth of crops throughout the year since the farms aren’t exposed to weather, it will also provide cheaper food to people.
The Grow Tank basically is a compact growing kit that lets people grow their own veggies and herbs in their own homes in a shared space of their apartment buildings and even in supermarkets. The tank can basically be stored in corner of the home much like an aquarium is, and the vegetable seedlings can be bought separately and taken home in baskets and simply placed on top of the tank. This allows users greater control over the growth of their food as well as a great way to reconnect with nature while living in the city environment. | <urn:uuid:75e132fe-da81-4927-ad41-a7cbf703eab5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hometone.com/entry/grow-tank-indoor-living-food-system-sophia-nicholson/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964689 | 487 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Good intentions can often lead to indigenous hell on earth
THERE is something profoundly troubling about the apparent failure of governments - state, federal and territory - to improve lives of indigenous Australians in remote communities, especially when money is no object and the intentions of policymakers are not in dispute.
Too often progress is measured in shades of grey, or even more frustratingly, not at all. Unprecedented spending on housing and moves to improve health and education are yet to produce significant reversals. An alarming disconnect persists between the world of good intentions and the wretched reality of life on the ground.
Perhaps it is unreasonable to expect too much of government. Ministers constantly remind us that lasting change does not come in a three-year term and there is truth in that. But is that always the case?
Rio Tinto, the big mining conglomerate with operations stretched across the top end from the Pilbara in the west to the Argyle in the Kimberley to Weipa on Cape York, has an impressive record of indigenous engagement and achievement that most branches of government can only envy. It certainly helps to be a multinational with deep pockets, but it also helps to be removed from bureaucratic face-saving and red tape.
Nobody would claim Rio's record to be mint perfect. However, one salient fact stands out: it is the biggest employer of indigenous labour in the nation with almost one in 10 employees Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders. That amounts to a workforce of 2000 men and women not including many more employed by private contractors.
As a company Rio Tinto (formerly CRA) decided 15 years ago under the direction of visionary CEO Leon Davis to distance itself from the confrontationist approach of the mining sector to land rights, native title and royalties. ''Aboriginal people are the land owners and we wanted to be good tenants,'' was how one senior Rio executive described the change to The Age. Recent mining agreements in the Pilbara include not only royalties and profit sharing along with mutually agreed employment targets, but also commitments to a vast range of cultural, heritage and environmental objectives.
Today 80 per cent of indigenous apprentices and trainees make it through the Rio recruiting system, a system that teaches not only work but life skills including personal finance. Rio is committed to building an indigenous workforce that equates to the size of the local Aboriginal population; in the case of the Pilbara it is 13.9 per cent.
So what then is different about what Rio does as a company and what governments and their agencies do on behalf of taxpayers? While the comparison may be unfair because governments provide services on a far broader scale, the differences are worth reflecting on because they provide insight into new ways of thinking and engagement.
As a company Rio consults closely and regularly with traditional owners in a way that most governments never do and are probably incapable of. At Argyle Diamonds senior management meets regularly with traditional owners and their respective trusts to exchange views and sort out grievances.
Employees are not left to fend for themselves. The company has work-readiness teams to provide support for young men and women recruited from a milieu of disadvantage. They educate and train people often from scratch, monitor community and family disputes and manage relationships inside the mine when they go off the rails. Few government agencies have such resources.
Trainees can be case-managed and family issues and obligations are factored in when assessing performance. Judgments are made with all the facts. When a young man or woman is away from the work place on sorry business, mine management is informed of the appropriate time to be away from work. There is no goofing off. The relationship between Argyle Diamonds and the Miriuwong and Gidja people is forged on mutual respect and built on self-interest.
Cultural-awareness training is mandatory for all employees, as are rigorous safe-work practices. Everybody from the managing director down is breath-tested each day. Apart from full-time employment, the company hires local community contractors to provide landscaping and mine maintenance services.
Rio doesn't do this out of some misplaced benevolence, but because the company believes an effective relationship based on respect with the traditional owners is good for business. It may cost the company more in the short term but the financial dividends are there with less reliance on a fly-in, fly-out workforce. A close relationship with traditional owners means that disputes are easily settled and formulas for expansion agreed on.
I recently visited a community in the Kimberley that should remain nameless. It was a chaotic mess. Alcohol was a major contributor to domestic violence; the elders struggled to cope with a young generation addicted to anything they could find. The only available government services they could rely on were the police. What was urgently required was an intensity of engagement of the type practised by Rio. I wondered what government could possibly do for them, caught as they were in the welfare trap with no chance of joining the mainstream.
Russell Skelton is a contributing editor.
Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU | <urn:uuid:c2f0e0fb-d8a4-4a62-8fbe-de57fa3d5ea4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion/political-news/good-intentions-can-often-lead-to-indigenous-hell-on-earth-20120410-1wmup.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967238 | 1,029 | 2.359375 | 2 |
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Generally, once you have voted in a poll, you will not be able to change your vote later, so place your vote carefully! | <urn:uuid:563768b9-f494-47c4-84fe-20912d41f410> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hificritic.com/Forum/yaf_help_index.aspx?faq=polls | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915168 | 343 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Of all the commentary and analysis of Iran’s upcoming elections that I have read, this strikes me as definitively the worst. Titled “Iran’s Potemkin elections” and penned by Con Coughlin, of London’s Daily Telegraph, the piece ledes off (pun intended) with this bombshell: “Only candidates vetted by the ruling clerics have been allowed to stand.” No! You mean that the Ayatollah had some say in determining who was allowed to run for election? I am shocked. Shocked.
Sarcasm aside, it is indeed puzzling why anyone would be surprised by the one part of Iran’s power structure that seems relatively transparent. Twelve members of what is called the Guardian Council — six picked directly by the Ayatollah, six more or less indirectly so — are the ones to pre-approve candidates. This year, though more than 400 offered their name — including women, who were allowed to do so for the first time — only four survived the cut.
This is far from democratic; I don’t know of anyone who argues that it is. But one of the odd aspects of the Iranian political system is that much of what follows is, in fact democratic. And partially due to the actual ability of Iranians to vote, partially because we don’t know what un-democratic dynamics are operating behind the scenes, the foregone conclusion that Coughlin assumes, without evidence — that Ahmadinejad is “widely expected to win re-election” — is simply not substantiated.
While many Iran hawks spend the bulk of their time pointing to Ahmadinejad’s hostile and ham-handed provocations, others contend that Iran is the plaything of the “mad mullahs.” Neither of these oversimplifications is accurate. The Ayatollah and his clerics exercise a good deal of power, for certain. But, in a telling example, Khamenei did not, by all accounts, prefer Ahmadinejad to win the first time around — nor was he at all expected to do so — and it is not clear whether Ahmadinejad or Mir Hossein Moussavi (who is not, as Coughlin calls him, a “conservative hard-liner”) will prevail this year. That all we can expect out of what has been a very interesting election campaign is “more of the same” is also very much not necessarily true.
And I know the phrase “Potemkin” has come to mean any sort of façade, but Coughlin definitely has his history backwards. The original Potemkin village was designed to deceive the Empress Catherine the Great; in this case, it’s the Supreme Leader who knows more about what’s going on than anyone else — though not, most probably, who’s going to win this election.
(image from flickr user Shahram Sharif under a Creative Commons license) | <urn:uuid:6e9b3714-2282-4b60-be4e-a16f77ebe514> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.undispatch.com/a-potemkin-everyone-already-knows-about | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969407 | 616 | 1.867188 | 2 |
April 20, 2011 in Education Materials
Grades 8 – 12
20 to 45 minutes
NJ State Standards:
- 5.4.G – Biogeochemical cycles
Students will be able to:
- Model the movement of carbon through different reservoirs.
- Compare and contrast fast and slow processes (short and long residence times) that move carbon.
- Understand that the path taken by an atom through a biogeochemical cycle is complex, not a circle, and provide an example of conservation of matter.
- Put processes such as photosynthesis and respiration in the larger context of biogeochemical cycling.
Students will take on the role of a carbon atom and record which reservoirs in the carbon cycle they visit. They will compare and contrast their trip with those of their classmates to discover information about sources and sinks, and residence times of the different reservoirs. Ocean processes are highlighted to allow the educator to define the biological pump and explain its importance to climate.
Understanding the sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide is necessary to understanding the causes and consequences of climate change. The carbon cycle is complex, with many reservoirs both living and nonliving, each with a number of sources and sinks. To put the carbon cycle in the context of understanding climate change and the issues scientists are concerned with, we focus on the sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and the fate of the carbon after it is removed from the atmosphere. As people burn fossil fuels for energy, large amounts of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere. This introduces a large source of both carbon, and a greenhouse gas. Scientists interested in the long term effects and possible outcomes of this source of greenhouse gas are interested in sinks that not only remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but provide a source of carbon to a reservoir with a long residence time. Understanding the connections between reservoirs, and the interaction between long and short residence times, is very helpful in understanding ongoing scientific research and its importance to concerns about climate change.
- Carbon Cycle Game Dice(Color or black and white)
- Scrap paper (optional but recommended)
- String or lanyard (at least an 8” length per student)
- Pony beads (white, light blue, dark blue, light green, pink, dark green, orange, purple, grey, and brown; if not necessarily these, you will need 10 distinctly different colors)
- Cups (at least one for each station)
- Carbon reservoir Station Markers (Color or black and white)
- Carbon Cycle Game Worksheet (1 per student)
- Pencils or pens
- Unopened undisturbed bottle of seltzer or clear soda (optional)
A. Print out the Carbon Cycle Game Dice (color or black and white, your choice):
It is helpful, but not necessary, to have more than one die for each station.
B. Cut out the dice and crease along the lines between the faces.
C. Tape the open edges together to make a cube.
It is helpful to weight the dice with a ball of scrap paper about the same size as the finished cube. Filled dice roll more easily than empty ones.
D. Print out the Station Markers (color or black and white).
E. Set up each station in a different location around the room. Each station should have:
1. At least one die. (Duplicates are especially helpful for the Atmosphere and Surface Ocean stations; students will visit these often, and not having to wait in line to roll dice will make gameplay faster.)
2. A station marker posted where students can easily see it once moving around the room.
3. A cup filled with the corresponding color of beads.
F. Cut lengths of string or lanyard for each student and knot one end.
A. Review with students why carbon is so important (to biology, and climate).
B. Tell students they are going to pretend to be a carbon atom moving through the carbon cycle. Review the water cycle as a familiar concept, and introduce terms such as reservoir, source, and sink using the water cycle as an example.
C. Go over what reservoirs will be included in the carbon cycle game.
Note for students that there are many other reservoirs we are not including, such as fossil fuels.
D. Review the rules of the game:
1. Students will keep track of their journey by adding a bead to their string to represent each reservoir they visit.
2. Students should add a bead first, so they don’t forget, then roll the dice.
3. Students should read the dice carefully for information about the process that is moving them from one reservoir to another, and then go to their next station as instructed by the dice.
4. If a die tells them to stay in place for a turn, they should add another bead of that color before re-rolling.
5. As students represent carbon, an element, they don’t “want” to go to any particular place. There is no “goal” they are trying to get to and they should go where the dice take them. Each turn they should roll the appropriate die ONCE, and whatever it says is what they do.
(Monitor students during game play to make sure they are not cheating, i.e. “I wanted a ____ bead!”)
6. Students should continue moving through the cycle until they have fifteen beads on their string.
E. Give students their starting location. The carbon cycle is a large and complex topic, so how you distribute them is up to whatever connections you would like to make during the discussion portion.
1. If you would primarily like to discuss residence time, start a couple groups of students in the atmosphere and surface ocean, and a couple in the sediments and deep ocean dissolved reservoirs.
This is where it is helpful to have duplicate dice for some stations – if you would like eight students to start in the atmosphere, you may want to make at least eight atmosphere dice.
2. For the biological pump, start all students in the atmosphere and surface ocean. Be sure you don’t let any students begin in deep ocean particles or ocean sediments.
3. Once students get the hang of it, the game goes quickly, so if you have enough materials you can certainly run the game more than once, with a slightly different focus each time.
F. Monitor students as they move through the cycle and remind them of the rules if needed.
G. When students have finished their cycle, pass out worksheets and have them decode their string of beads back to which reservoirs they represent.
H. Have students compare their cycle to their neighbors’.
I. Use the diagram to represent the journey through the cycle as a series of arrows. Is a cycle a circle?
J. Discuss the journeys students took. Possible discussion topics include:
1. Overall, which reservoirs did students visit the most?
2. Which reservoirs have long residence times? Which have short residence times?
3. What are the processes that move carbon from one reservoir to another? (Choose a few to highlight.)
Use the seltzer or soda to discuss carbon dioxide moving between air and water. Initially many students will use the terms “evaporation” and “condensation” when you ask them how carbon moves from one to the other; remind them that those are terms for the water cycle and for changes in state of matter.
The soda is helpful both to show that air and gas dissolves in water in the same way that solutes such as salt do, and to help them connect to the short residence time of gas in liquid (“If I open this and leave it here overnight, will it still be fizzy tomorrow?).
4. What processes move carbon from the atmosphere to the ocean sediments?
Define the biological pump for students. The biological pump is the set of processes in the ocean that sequester carbon (make it unavailable to be recycled back into the atmosphere for a long period of time).
Identify if any students were sequestered (Atmosphere – Surface Ocean – Ocean Plants – Deep Particles – Ocean Sediments. Can also stop at Ocean Consumers between plants and particles). Scientists are interested in areas of the ocean with a very efficient biological pump, as well as areas of the ocean where the biological pump is either less efficient than expected, or decreasing in efficiency.
Higher level students can research iron fertilization experiments and make connections back to these concepts.
5. Have students brainstorm what reservoirs and processes have not been included in the game (soils, fossil fuels, sedimentary rocks; burning of fossil fuels, subduction of sediment and volcanic eruptions for a few examples). As an extension, have students make sample dice to try and represent the sources and sinks for these reservoirs, and their fluxes and residence times.
This requires students to understand that a) each face of a die represents a sink from that reservoir, b) the larger the flux for a particular sink, the more faces of the die are assigned to it, and c) the longer the residence time the more “roll this station again” faces a die needs.
For upper level students who are spending more time studying biogeochemical cycles, challenge students to adapt the game for another element, such as nitrogen. Students can decide which reservoirs to include and how to represent the sources, sinks, fluxes, and residence times by varying the dice. They can play their created game to see how well they represented the cycle.
Optional: If you don’t have the materials to have the students use beads/make bracelets to record their journey, you may use a simple worksheet to have them keep track of their journey as they go.
Helping students understand conservation of matter (in this case, carbon) in processes like photosynthesis and the carbon cycle as a whole is essential to their understanding of environmental issues surrounding clean energy and climate change.
The inspiration for this game comes from Project WET’s activity “The Incredible Journey.” Find Project WET resources at: http://projectwet.org/. | <urn:uuid:de46d7ac-dfbe-483f-8a30-cf3c48d7e655> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://coseenow.net/blog/tag/ocean-literacy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943847 | 2,099 | 3.8125 | 4 |
This is the story of Hassan and how self-catheterization and LoFric has saved his life. Hassan lives in Lebanon and has a spinal cord injury from a shooting accident in 1989. After the accident, then 17-year-old Hassan was sentenced to a life at home, staying in his bed all day. His quality of life was very poor and his doctors did not have high hopes for him, they gave him only 5-10 years to live. After that, they thought that the health problems he suffered from as a consequence of the accident would lead him to a certain death.
Today, more than 20 years later, Hassan is leading an active life and is more alive and vigorous than ever. He is married to the lovely Maryam and they have a son together. All this has been made possible thanks to the self-catheterization therapy and LoFric catheters.
Testimonials from people with a spinal cord injury | <urn:uuid:dec19620-240d-4f53-9030-76b46fba6ece> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lofric.us/en-US/Stories/Hassan/Hassan-the-movie | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.993029 | 193 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Overview of the Human Rights Framework
WHAT ARE HUMAN RIGHTS?
Human rights are those activities, conditions, and freedoms that all human beings are entitled to enjoy, by virtue of their humanity. They include civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Human rights are inherent, inalienable, interdependent, and indivisible, meaning they cannot be granted or taken away, the enjoyment of one right affects the enjoyment of others, and they must all be respected.
However, only governments are in a position to put in place the laws and policies necessary for protection of human rights and to regulate private and public practices that impact individuals’ enjoyment of those rights. Therefore, we think of national governments (“states”) as the guarantors, or violators, of human rights.
THE INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS SYSTEM
In the post-World War II period, international consensus crystallized around the need to identify the individual rights and liberties which all governments should respect, and to establish mechanisms for both promoting states’ adherence to their human rights obligations and for addressing serious breaches. Thus, in the decade following the war, national governments cooperated in the establishment of the United Nations (UN), the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Council of Europe (COE), each including among its purposes the advancement of human rights.
These intergovernmental organizations then prepared non-binding declarations or binding treaties which spelled out the specific liberties understood to be human rights, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. By the end of the 1950s, these three systems (United Nations, Inter-American and European) had each established mechanisms for the promotion and protection of human rights, which included the (former) UN Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the (former) European Commission of Human Rights, and the European Court of Human Rights.
In subsequent decades, each oversaw the drafting of human rights agreements on specific topics and created additional oversight mechanisms, which now include the United Nations treaty bodies and Universal Periodic Review, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the European Committee of Social Rights.
More recently, other intergovernmental organizations have also established, or begun to establish, regional human rights treaties and monitoring mechanisms. In Africa, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights monitor state compliance with the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The decline of the Soviet Union spurred the formation of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) which recognized dialogue on human rights, political and military relations, and economic development as being equally important to sustained peace and stability across Europe and the (former) Soviet states. In Southeast Asia, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is in the process of developing a regional human rights commission, and the League of Arab States in 2009 created the Arab Human Rights Committee.
In addition, the UN, Inter-American, and African systems appoint individual experts to monitor human rights conditions in a range of priority areas, such as arbitrary detention and discrimination. These experts are often called rapporteurs, and they carry out their work by receiving information from civil society, visiting countries, and reporting on human rights conditions and the ways in which they violate or comply with international norms. The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights fulfills a similar role, although his mandate is not issue-specific. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights supports and coordinates the UN’s human rights activities, in addition to independently addressing issues of concern through country visits, dialogue with stakeholders, and public statements, much as rapporteurs do.
These bodies each have different functions and jurisdiction, as shown in the below diagram and explanatory chart human rights mechanisms’ competencies. Click on the image below to open a PDF version of the diagram with hyperlinks to each body.
When states ratify human rights treaties, they codify their obligations to both refrain from violating specific rights and to guarantee enjoyment of those rights by individuals and groups within their jurisdictions. Regional and international oversight bodies contribute to state compliance and provide opportunities for redress and accountability that may be non-existent or ineffective at the national level. However, becoming party to a treaty or agreeing to oversight by a supranational body remains voluntary. The level of participation in the international human rights framework varies among states.
Classically, “human rights” protect individuals from government action which would threaten or harm certain freedoms thought to be fundamental, such as life, physical integrity, and liberty. The human rights framework is, essentially, a set of rules governing State behavior vis-a-vis individuals and, at its most basic, prohibits States from depriving people of fundamental freedoms. Like national constitutions, which are covenants between governments and their citizens, international human rights treaties are covenants between States and the international community, whereby States agree to guarantee certain rights within their own territories.
The driving idea behind international human rights law is that–because it is States who are in a position to violate individuals’ freedoms–respect for those freedoms may be hard to come by without international consensus and oversight. That is, a State which does not guarantee basic freedoms to its citizens is unlikely to punish or correct its own behavior, particularly in the absence of international consensus as to the substance of those freedoms and a binding commitment to the international community to respect them.
However, the duties incumbent on States have come to include positive as well as negative obligations. This means that, in limited circumstances, States may have a duty to take proactive steps to protect individuals’ rights (rather than merely refraining from directly violating those rights), including from non-State action. In addition, demand for protections beyond the traditional civil and political sphere have increased the number and variety of interests which are now considered rights, particularly in the area of economic, social and cultural concerns.
While the international human rights system implements the provisions of international human rights treaties, a variety of other sources are also relevant to the determination of individuals’ rights and States’ obligations. These include the judicial and quasi-judicial decisions of international and domestic courts on international human rights law or its domestic equivalents; the decisions of domestic and international courts on the related (but distinct) subject of international criminal law; and analysis and commentary by scholars and others. Of course, a necessary component of human rights protection is the factual research identifying the conditions which may constitute violations, which is conducted by intergovernmental organizations as well as civil society.
International human rights law is dynamic and its boundaries are daily being pushed in new directions, which is where IJRC’s News Room can help individuals keep up with developments in the law, its interpretation, and the peoples’ lives it may affect.
RELEVANT JUDICIAL AND QUASI-JUDICIAL BODIES
One can think of the different systems for the protection of human rights as overlapping umbrellas of distinct sizes, positioned around the globe. The different umbrellas include: three regional human rights tribunals, eight United Nations treaty bodies, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and various internationalized criminal tribunals – in addition to traditional domestic courts.
Human rights tribunals decide complaints brought by individual victims or groups of victims against a national government, whereas the International Court of Justice decides complaints brought by one State against another, and the international criminal tribunals – like their domestic counterparts – investigate and prosecute individuals for particular crimes.
In much of the world (generally excluding the Middle East, Asia and Oceania), regional human rights tribunals accept complaints by individuals against State governments in that region. These include the Inter-American, European and African courts of human rights. Such tribunals determine whether the State breached its obligations under the regional human rights treaty and, if so, order reparations, usually including payment of damages to the victims. They cannot hold individuals accountable or assign criminal liability; rather, they determine State responsibility based on the actions or omissions of any of the State’s agents, or the nature of its laws or policies.
Many countries have also signed international (or universal) treaties under the supervision of the United Nations. Eight such treaties are overseen by groups of experts, four of which empowered to receive individual complaints and make non-binding findings regarding the State’s responsibility.
The regional and universal bodies operate separately and independently from on another, and are established and governed by separate instruments.
Additionally, States may bring complaints against other States before human rights bodies or before the International Court of Justice, which from time to time decides cases involving individuals’ human rights from the standpoint of one State’s allegation that another violated the terms of an international agreement (such as by not affording its nationals access to consular representatives when they were detained in the second State).
Further, individuals (as opposed to States) may be criminally prosecuted for violations of international criminal law or of jus cogens norms of international law, or may be sued civilly under domestic law.
For example, in the Western Hemisphere, all 35 countries are members of the Organization of American States and, as such, have signed the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, under which complaints can be brought against them before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Twenty-seven of those States have also ratified the American Convention on Human Rights, under which the Commission can send unresolved cases to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
In addition, each of these countries may or may not have ratified one or more of the core UN human rights treaties overseen by a treaty body – such as the Committee Against Torture – that accepts individual complaints.
Additionally, each State may have agreed to bring inter-State disputes arising under a specific treaty, such as the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to the International Court of Justice.
Further, any of these States may also be a party to the Rome Statute, meaning it is obligated to cooperate with the International Criminal Court in the prosecution of individuals suspected of committing genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or (in the future) aggression.
Accordingly, the layers of protection vary from State to State, depending on the existence of a regional human rights system and each State’s ratification of regional and universal instruments. Use of one system over another will depend not only on State membership, but also on which body has produced more favorable caselaw, the reparations and other outcomes available at each, and practical considerations such as case processing time and backlogs.
CROSS-FERTILIZATION & COMPETING JURISDICTION
Although each of the various human rights bodies operates independently from the others, under a specific mandate and within the scope of its particular treaties, the provisions of the regional and universal human rights treaties are often highly similar. As such, each tribunal often looks to the jurisprudence of the others when deciding novel or delicate questions. Tribunals also look to other bodies’ interpretations when another treaty exists (typically a universal treaty) that is more specific or germane to the topic at hand, such as in when tribunals look to the International Labour Organization conventions in interpreting the scope of labor rights
However, this does not mean that the various tribunals have reached consistent conclusions on similar matters. Neither does it mean that the jurisprudence of each body is as developed as the rest. Some tribunals have decades’ more experience than others; some, such as the European Court of Human Rights, are so well-known in their regions that they are inundated with claims, while others receive only a handful per year.
Further, the fact that various systems exist does not mean that an individual complainant can have recourse to all of them. Indeed, most treaties require that the matter not have been previously determined by another international body. Finally, each body’s jurisdiction is subject to distinct geographical, temporal and substantive limitations.
Charter of the United Nations, Jun. 26, 1945, 1 U.N.T.S. XVI [hereinafter UN Charter].
See Charter of the Organization of American States, April 30, 1948, 119 U.N.T.S. 3, entered into force Dec. 13, 1951; amended by the protocols of Buenos Aires, Cartagena, Washington and Managua [hereinafter OAS Charter].
Statute of the Council of Europe, May 5, 1949, 87 U.N.T.S. 103, E.T.S. 1.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217A (III), U.N. Doc. A/810 at 71 (1948).
American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, May 2, 1948, O.A.S. Res. XXX, reprinted in Basic Documents Pertaining to Human Rights in the Inter-American System, OAS/Ser.L/V/I.4 Rev. 9 (2003); 43 AJIL Supp. 133 (1949).
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Nov. 4, 1950, ETS 5; 213 UNTS 221, entered into force Sept. 3, 1953 [hereinafter European Convention on Human Rights].
See, e.g. ,International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Dec. 16, 1966, 999 U.N.T.S. 171; S. Exec. Doc. E, 95-2 (1978); S. Treaty Doc. 95-20, 6 I.L.M. 368 (1967); International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Dec. 21, 1965, S. Exec. Doc. C, 95-2 (1978); S. Treaty Doc. 95-18; 660 U.N.T.S. 195, 212; American Convention on Human Rights, Nov. 21, 1969, O.A.S. T.S. No. 36; 1144 U.N.T.S. 143; S. Treaty Doc. No. 95-21, 9 I.L.M. 99(1969); Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture, O.A.S. Treaty Series No. 67, entered into force Feb. 28, 1987, reprinted in Basic Documents Pertaining to Human Rights in the Inter-American System, OEA/Ser.L.V/II.82 doc. 6 rev.1 at 83, 25 I.L.M. 519 (1992); European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Oct. 10, 1994, E.T.S. 126, entered into force Feb. 1, 1989.
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, June 27, 1981, 1520 U.N.T.S. 217, 245; 21 I.L.M. 58, 59 (1982).
Charter of Paris for a New Europe, Paris, 21 November 1990, 2nd Summit of Heads of State or Government, Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE); and Budapest Summit Declaration: Towards a Genuine Partnership for a New Era, Budapest, 21 December 1994, 4th Summit of Heads of State or Government, Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE). For details on origins of the OSCE, see http://www.osce.org/who.
See ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, Terms of Reference, http://www.asean.org/publications/TOR-of-AICHR.pdf.
See Mervat Rishmawi, The Arab Charter on Human Rights and the League of Arab States: An Update, Human Rights L. Rev.10:1 (2010), 169-178.
See Council of Europe, Commissioner for Human Rights, Mandate, http://www.coe.int/t/commissioner/Activities/mandate_en.asp.
See Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, About Us, Who We Are, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/AboutUs/Pages/WhoWeAre.aspx.
In order to join the European Union, states must also join the Council of Europe, which requires ratifying the European Convention on Human Rights and submitting to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. Also, the UN Human Rights Council is authorized to review the human rights practices of all 193 UN Member States.
See Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ratification status of international human rights treaties, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRChart.xls. | <urn:uuid:51d6d97b-dc60-4dcd-83a9-0e4e6c1bb02c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ijrcenter.org/ihr-reading-room/overview-of-the-human-rights-framework/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921619 | 3,484 | 4.25 | 4 |
So it is with government. Every time it outlaws failure in exchange for security, a little bit of life is lost, and those who live, live less.
Big government is the enemy of change, the enemy of all growth but its own, the adversary of progress.
Government programs are poured cement: Once they flow into an economy and set, their man-made stone hardens forever. Americans have seen what welfare does to individual initiative, what the Internal Revenue Service has done to economic growth and innovation.
But government imposes a larger penalty, invisible and silent: It taxes our future. The dollar given is celebrated, the dollar taken goes unmourned. Like the farm boy who has never seen the ocean, we do not miss the businesses never started for lack of capital, the jobs never created because of government regulation, the family that could have made it with less economic pressure. Yet we are all poorer in their absence.
Big government taxes what we could be, much more than what we have.
A government that incentivizes progress, at its best, must largely leave its citizen-explorers alone on life's perilous but promising journey, free to fail or succeed greatly.
Freedom, Mr. President, is as perilous and productive as sex.
Still, as our outdated industrial age government grows larger and drives us closer to bankruptcy, strangling economic growth, while failing to govern our schools, our health care, our retirement plans or our economy, Obama assures us that what we need is more commanding, anesthetizing big government.
And the safety and protection he promises are seductive. As we leave the old world of the factory for the new world of communications, a fledgling, techno-economy is reshaping the global economy through a violent and Darwinian process.
Jobs, businesses and entire industries that endured lifetimes now disappear in technological lightning strikes. If today's workingman wanders down the wrong evolutionary path, making fire alarms instead of smoke detectors, he could end up next to the mimeograph machine in an economic graveyard.
With such economic anxiety, it is easier for politicians to feel our pain than our promise. They know they can raise our doubts faster than our confidence. Instead of inspiring us through great fear to greater accomplishments, they take a safer route. They comfort us as our president does: Obama reassures us with "The Plan."
The plan promises security. A social safety net. A soft landing. It offers protection from a dangerous workplace, a dangerous economy, a dangerous environment. "Health Security for All Americans." The plan comes in many shapes and sizes. Government will prescribe the exactly right route for us, our president tells us, and we lunge for that security as if a life raft.
Then we have no more worries than the amoeba. And we forget that Martin Luther King Jr. didn't give an "I Have a Plan" speech.
Neither man's greatest accomplishments nor nature's elegant wonders could have evolved from a 2,000-page government plan.
Somewhere this night, far from Washington, as Obama's second term blooms past infancy, two parents gather around a kitchen table. They are paying their bills. Looking at a report card. Mapping a line to the future for their children. And this night, though nothing in their world seems different, they know everything in their world has changed.
This night, as they tucked their 11-year-old into bed and wrapped him round with covers, they took his phone from his hands and put it by his bedside. He'd fallen asleep texting. And suddenly, through the eyes of another generation, they saw beyond the horizon to another time and place.
The child of today's iPhone's and apps will be a man of another era. Tonight, for the first time, they see it. A new economy, a new world, is building itself around them. They sense this is a time of great hope and opportunity for America, a moment of unparalleled promise and possibility. So they wonder, despite their optimism, why do they feel chained to the present, as if pulling an immense and unidentifiable weight?
Why aren't they getting ahead?
They don't know they spend more for government than for food, clothing and shelter combined -- or they'd march from their grocery to the White House. They don't know they will spend an average of 26,000 hours of their working lives laboring just to pay taxes -- or they'd call it slavery. They don't know government will take 3½ months of what they earn this year, as surely as if it had broken into their home and stripped them of their possessions.
But this they do know: They want to move ahead.
They don't believe Washington can be their doctor, find them a job or lower their gas bill. They have lost faith in those old promises. Like most Americans facing the future, they are anxious and, at times, frightened. But others, no better than they, built the greatest nation on earth in the face of bigger obstacles.
And they are willing to stumble, pick themselves up and try again for something better, if their government will stop growing its economy at the expense of their economy. They don't know why their leaders don't believe in them, summon their courage and confidence, and call on them to do great things.
It is for those Americans that I hope Obama finds his way forward from our antiquated, factory-like public sector.
For somewhere beyond this difficult moment lies a wonderland. Somewhere around ordinary kitchen tables lie real miracles. And somewhere in a country uncertain of its future, but free to create it, lies a remarkable new era of progress, prosperity and real change.
Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter. | <urn:uuid:455da7e3-0e5f-4c90-b721-8f154e14ca54> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ksat.com/news/Castellanos-Sex-politics-and-Democrats/-/478452/19173944/-/item/1/-/xoahxm/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966286 | 1,181 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Tuesday evening, Governor Daniels signed SEA 1, titled "Right to defend against unlawful entry." He issued the following statement about his decision to sign the bill:
"After close inspection, I have decided to sign Senate Enrolled Act 1. Contrary to some impressions, the bill strengthens the protection of Indiana law enforcement officers by narrowing the situations in which someone would be justified in using force against them. Senate Enrolled Act 1 puts into place a two-part test before a person can use deadly force against a law enforcement officer: First, it clarifies and restates the current requirement that a person reasonably believe the law enforcement officer is acting unlawfully. Second, it adds that the force must be reasonably necessary to prevent serious bodily injury to the citizen. This second requirement is not part of the current law.
"Moreover, unless a person is convinced an officer is acting unlawfully, he cannot use any force of any kind. In the real world, there will almost never be a situation in which these extremely narrow conditions are met.
"So as a matter of law, law enforcement officers will be better protected than before, not less so. What is troubling to law enforcement officers, and to me, is the chance that citizens hearing reports of change will misunderstand what the law says.
"Today is an important day to say: Indiana's outstanding law enforcement officers put their lives on the line every day to protect all Hoosiers. The right thing to do is cooperate with them in every way possible. This law is not an invitation to use violence or force against law enforcement officers. In fact, it restricts when an individual can use force, specifically deadly force, on an officer, so don't try anything. Chances are overwhelming you will be breaking the law and wind up in far worse trouble as a result." | <urn:uuid:cafd33ad-7832-430b-89a4-8e0fdb40ca5d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://votesmart.org/public-statement/678297/governors-statement-on-signing-sea-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956488 | 364 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Most Viewed Stories
Preschoolers take tour of Fire Department
Some of the preschoolers squealed with delight as other jumped up and down in anticipation. A few hid behind the legs of grown ups and one or two even shed tears of trepidation.
One thing was certain, the Corning Fire Department was a hive of "busy bees" on Monday as more than 25 youngsters from Busy Bees Preschool took a tour of the fire hall.
Fire Chief Martin Spannaus showed the children the dispatch room, and even went down the fire pole still located in the fire hall, although it is no longer used.
In an effort to explain the sights and sounds of a firefighter coming into a burning home, Martin donned firefighting gear, including mask and oxygen tank, and walked among the kids letting them touch him and get right up close.
"This way if they are ever in the situation where a firefighter has to come in a help them out of a fire, or other situation, they won't be afraid of the sounds the oxygen tank makes or the way a firefighter looks in an oxygen mask," Martin stated. "It could save their lives because now it is a sight they have seen before and hopefully they won't try to get away from the firefighter out of fear."
That said, some of the little busy bees still shied away from Spannaus in fright at what they saw as "scary."
Each of the preschoolers got to sit inside a fire engine, put on firefighters coat and hat, and use a fire hose. "This is heavy," said one little girls as Spannaus placed a firefighters coat on her back.
Spannaus also taught the children about making sure their families have emergency escape plans at their homes.
"Now you go home and tell your family they need to have an emergency escape plan that has two different ways to get out of your home," he said.
Kid-size plastic firefighters hats were given to each child and the tour ended with the group receiving a ride back to the preschool on a fire engine. | <urn:uuid:23f60091-8c8b-4a6a-b2ae-9398a618d14a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.appeal-democrat.com/articles/fire-12694-corning-spannaus-firefighter.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982309 | 427 | 2.375 | 2 |
First day of graduate classes and I’ve already learned something. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is an ardent arts supporter and advocate!
In my “Survey of Arts Management” class, my professor asked us to read this quote by Maddow and give our thoughts:
“Sometimes we choose to serve our country in uniform, in war. Sometimes in elected office. And those are the ways of serving our country that I think we are trained to easily call heroic. It’s also a service to your country, I think, to teach poetry in the prisons, to be an incredibly dedicated student of dance, to fight for funding music and arts education in the schools. A country without an expectation of minimal artistic literacy, without a basic structure by which the artists among us can be awakened and given the choice of following their talents and a way to get to be great at what they do, is a country that is not actually as great as it could be. And a country without the capacity to nurture artistic greatness is not being a great country. It is a service to our country, and sometimes it is heroic service to our country, to fight for the United States of America to have the capacity to nurture artistic greatness.”
This quote comes from a speech given at Jacob’s Pillow, a dance festival based in Massachusetts, where Maddow spoke out on behalf of the arts and the value they hold in society.
I was both surprised and delighted to read this quote. As I don’t have television anymore, I am not able to follow the 24hr news cycle or any of the cable news programming that Ms. Maddow’s show is on. However, it is refreshing and even uplifting to see that there are prominent journalistic voices speaking out on behalf of the arts in this country. And not only speaking about them in ways that we are used to, i.e., arts are valuable, arts create jobs, etc., but speaking to the heart of the American patriotic spirit that runs so strongly through the veins of so many Americans. Could this be a new way for garnering wide spread public support of arts funding? Granted, I am still a newbie when it comes to arts marketing, but I have yet to hear the “arts as patriotism” angle that Maddow seams to be getting at.
She poses a very poignant question and one that I have never heard before. Essentially she asks,“Why is serving your country only thought of in terms of military or elected office?” Artists provide such a great and honorable service to this country, and to every country in which they reside. The service IS the art form; those being inspired ARE the ones being served. Artists provide a service that is sometimes hard to measure in tangible terms. Their product is their art, but the byproduct of that creation is inspiration, self-reflection and innovative though in the minds of those experiencing the art. | <urn:uuid:9720f310-2f86-4bcb-8141-a480b3bbbe50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://zackhayhurst.wordpress.com/2009/08/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96719 | 604 | 1.75 | 2 |
Above- Rich Man’s Frug form the movie Sweet Charity
Legendary choreographer and director Bob Fosse once stated, “the time to sing is when your emotional level is too high to just speak anymore, and the time to dance is when your emotions are just too strong to only sing about how you feel.” Bob Fosse’s unique style and provocative dances have inspired artists for over 50 years. The mere mention of Fosse brings to mind black garbed dancers with bowler hats on heads, white gloves on hands, and bodies that are arranged in a highly specific, sensual yet unusual manner.
Born Robert Louis Fosse in 1927, Bob Fosse was the youngest of six children and used dancing early on to attract the attention he desired from his family. He began performing in burlesque night clubs as a young boy, which left a strong impression on him, leading later to dark sexual tones within his choreography. With the dream of becoming the next Fred Astaire, Fosse moved to Hollywood as a teenager, but premature balding limited the roles he could take in films. Only reluctantly did he agree to enter the world of live theater, his first of many choreographic undertakings being award-winning musical, The Pajama Game.
Fighting scoliosis and painful arthritis throughout most of his life, Fosse never let his limitations impede his artistic ambition. Molding his own imperfections into a distinct sinuous style, Fosse developed a jazz dance style that is now immediately recognizable and brought an innovative dimension of sophistication and sensual energy to the Broadway stage. Some notable distinctions of his unique style include the use of inward knees, rounded shoulders, and body isolations, which he used to emphasize the smallest of body movements.
After his initial success with Pajama Game, Fosse went on to choreograph and direct many more ground-breaking and award-winning musicals including Damn Yankees, Sweet Charity , Chicago, and Cabaret. Musical theater researchers and admirers agree that Fosse has claimed some of the most original and sustained achievements.
In 1973, Fosse became the first director in history to win an Oscar (for movie version of Cabaret), a Tony (for Pippin), and an Emmy (for the television special Liza with a Z) in a single season. More than any other choreographer, Bob Fosse became responsible for making it seem that the Broadway musical served mainly as a vehicle for choreographic expressions and conceptions. His need to focus on the imperfections of a dancer’s body to create new movements separated him from his peers and led to his accreditation as one of the greatest innovator’s in musical theater history. | <urn:uuid:b97ce668-b56b-4d85-9407-79451ca4d57e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sheris-musings.tumblr.com/post/25739332239/fosse | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966843 | 564 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Yet another post of character design class assignments. This was supposed to be a creative leave your normal approach to drawing kinda thing. Hopefully I was successful, as I felt I got a lot out of doing these drawings.
The first image below was especially difficult as it was all done with paper and an exacto knife. Collage is so much harder than I remember it being in elementary school. I wanted it to head into an abstract form but still maintain relatively recognizable character traits. This image was very fun to make but very time consuming.
Does it get any better than Redneck wrestlers? This one is closer to my normal approach but I colored it differently than I normally would have. I also tried to use certain shapes in the face, feet, and digits that I wouldn't normally use. My animal inspiration here was a big pink pig.
The mole is the real character. It controls the old woman's thoughts and tells her what to do. I'm sure that anyone with a mole knows what I am talking about...
These last two are very influenced by the countless hours I have spent watching Fosters Home for Imaginary friends. Great cartoon that I would encourage all to watch, but the main reason that I tried going this direction was to eliminate the need for line as much as possible, as it is one of my artistic crutches I tend to lean on.
As always, comments and critiques are welcomed. | <urn:uuid:dab2f995-5a2f-4b58-8507-596e45707b68> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://joeolson.blogspot.com/2006/09/collage-ape-redneck-wrestler-big-mole.html?showComment=1159375380000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989782 | 289 | 1.648438 | 2 |
You can use woodchuck meat in virtually any recipe calling for small game and in many other dishes as well. My favorites, though, are pie (our traditional Groundhog Day fare) and stew. Here are the directions for making both.
3 medium carrots
1/4 cup of butter or margarine
1 onion, diced
2 tablespoons of flour and piecrust dough
Place the woodchuck and place the pieces in a large pot with enough cold water to cover the meat. Boil it for 10 minutes, then discard the water, refill the pan, and bring the liquid to a boil again. Lower the heat and let the contents simmer for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Add the carrots and potatoes and continue cooking the stew for about another 30 minutes … until the meat is tender and separates easily from the bone. By this time, you should be able to pierce the vegetables readily with a fork.
Now, strain the liquid and reserve 2 cups. The remaining pot liquor can be saved for soup stock, or discarded.
Next, remove the cooked meat from the bones and cut it into bite-sized pieces. Melt the butter or margarine in a large, heavy skillet, add the diced onion, and cook it for 5 minutes. Then add the flour and stir the mixture until it bubbles … put in the reserved liquid and blend the brew some more until it thickens . . . and, when that happens, combine the vegetables and meat, mixing the whole concoction thoroughly.
Finally, butter a large casserole and pour in the meat-and-vegetable mixture. Lay piecrust dough over the top of the filling, brush the pastry with milk, and place the container in a preheated 400°F oven for about 30 minutes, or until the crust has turned golden brown.
Prepare the meat and vegetables in the same way prescribed for woodchuck pie, but strain and reserve all the liquid — instead of just 2 cups — and put it into a clean pot. Then remove the meat from the bones and cut it, as well as the potatoes and carrots, into bite-sized pieces. Add the chunks to the pot liquor and bring the stew to a full boil. That’s it! If you like, you can also add dumpling batter to the broth in spoonfuls, cover the pot tightly, and cook the tasty meal for an additional 12 minutes. | <urn:uuid:4e9fd587-180e-4e47-9c14-b9608f985df6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wflo.net/?p=7511 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917237 | 498 | 1.695313 | 2 |
485 Indian boys aged 10 to 16 join a half-kilometer peace march in central Kolkata, West Bengal in honor of Mahatma Gandhi, the iconic Indian spiritual leader who was assassinated 64 years ago. Mostly poor sons of single mothers, they were dressed in the image of the country’s famous spiritual leader, complete with colored caps, round glasses, moustache, dhoti, shawl and walking sticks.
The march organizer Michael Anthony, who runs the UK-based organisers TRACKS (Training Recourse and Care for Kids), said: 'We don't want the poor kids to forget the rich legacy of Gandhian ideology.
This impressive march called RISE UP established a Guinness world record as their march of 485 children was the largest such gathering ever recorded. Gandhi's granddaughter Usha Gokani, who watched the event, said:
“It's a great feeling. When my children heard of the effort, they convinced me to come to Kolkata.
The trip maybe a bit tiring for you, but it is worth taking, they said
I now know they were right. The passion displayed by these children for the father of the nation touched my heart.”.
Their march aims to bring alive memories of Gandhi's historic Dandi march in March 1930 which sparked India's independence movement.
Mahatma Gandhi was an inspirational leader of India and the Indian independence movement.
Noted for his non-violent means to meet his goals, Gandhi led the early formation of the country's independence.
He is one of the most influential figures in recent history and his methods inspired civil rights movements across the world.
Mahatma Gandhi, which means Great soul was born on October 2, 1869 in Porbandar, a coastal city in Gujarat. He was fatally shot on January 30 1948 while having one of his nightly public walk on the grounds of the Birla Bhavan (Birla House) in New Delhi. He was 78 years old when he died.
The assassin, Nathuram Vinayak Godse (19 May 1910- 15 November 1949) hails from the city of Pune, India. He was a Hindu radical with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha. Sentenced to death on March 8, 1949, he and co-accused Narayan Apte were hanged on March 15, 1949 and their bodies cremated inside Ambala Central Jail. Then their ashes were immersed into the Gaghar river. Godse was 39 and Apte, 38 when they died. The site was ploughed over by weapon carriers to hide identity. | <urn:uuid:2e4b20cd-93ba-412c-917c-54e5ce5fa063> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/11449950-485-mahatma-gandhis-lookalike-join-peace-march-to-bring-alive-his-memories | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978543 | 543 | 2.796875 | 3 |
The rollers of Raymond Mill are wearing parts, so its life is close to their using environment, in general, roller able to use 15 days to 10 months, so we recommend that you periodically do a good job on these easily damaged pieces of maintenance and maintenance.
1. Prior to installation of the equipment, all the people who will be assigned to operate the equipment have to be technically trained to know the principle and rules of operation. Someone should be specially selected and put in charge of the operation.
2. To ensure normal operation of the equipment, a manual containing strict rules and procedures for its operation, maintenance and repair should be well prepared and followed. Tools, replacement parts for maintaining, repairing and lubricating oil and grease must be available for immediate use.
3. After a period of usage, the equipment should be checked, to replace worn-and-torn parts such as rollers, rings and shovels. Be sure to fasten connecting-bolts, nut collars to fix rollers properly. Be sure to lubricate the parts sufficiently.
4. Roller should be replaced after 500-hours use. To check and wash bearings in them and replace broken ones, and then fill enough oil and grease (with oil-pump or grease-gun). | <urn:uuid:7fc6c562-8163-4fe9-8486-1b728d1eec05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sinoraymond.com/knowledge/grinding-mil5.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938366 | 258 | 1.671875 | 2 |
There is no more simple premise to a diet than suppressing the appetite to reduce food intake to reduce weight. And there can be no more simple requirements of a diet plan than to take a regular spoonful of olive oil or glass of sugar water. Seth Roberts' Shangri La Diet is exactly that simple, and even draws its inspiration from some of the most basic functions of the human brain. But the reason the diet works is unexpected and not like other weight loss strategies you've heard about. And the means through which Roberts developed the diet, self experimentation, is also uncommon. Use the link below to hear Roberts explain his research methods and how flavor, calories and appetite interact through Stone Age reflexes in the brain.
© 2013 msnbc.com Reprints | <urn:uuid:2924c3a7-a8b8-49a1-b2df-59b9e9f3a145> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbcnews.com/id/12858720/ns/community-msnbc_com_chat/t/shangri-la-diet/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929861 | 154 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Whole school priced out of O-Level exams
By Felex Share
"HOW can responsible authorities sit back, watch and do nothing when a rural school fails to register a single pupil for Ordinary Level public examinations?
"Why should we keep quiet when a student is left with no option but to drag the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture to court to force him to extend the examination registration deadline?
"Our education sector is in shambles and something should be done to restore sanity," a disgruntled parent complains.
This comes amid shocking revelations that Bambadzi Secondary School in Matabeleland South Province failed to register a single student for this year’s Ordinary Level examinations.
This is despite a deadline extension by the Education Ministry when they realised that thousands of students had failed to beat the initial deadline twice on September 11 and 25.
To cushion the cash-strapped parents, the ministry unveiled a loan scheme, which, however, failed to change their plight, as many could not commit themselves to register their children.
Registration fees for a single subject was US$10 for "O" Level and US$20 for "A" Level.
The loan scheme required the parents to register their children for free and pay the fees over three months.
Bambadzi School Development Association deputy chairperson Mrs Vonolia Ndlovu said most Form 4 students who failed to pay the exam fees dropped out of school while a few opted to join the Form 3 class.
"The entire Form 4 class has collapsed and there are no Form 4 students as we speak," said Mrs Ndlovu.
She said such a crisis requires a bold decision and commitment from both the Government and the Zimbabwe Schools Examinations Council, as thousands of children have been deprived of their right to education.
According to a Government official from the province, 40 percent of the prospective candidates are not going to sit for their exams and some had joined Form 3 classes.
"Some were not patient and chose to drop out of school, leaving them prone to social vices," said the official.
The crisis reached its peak when a Bulawayo student, Gracious Thambo, dragged Minister Coltart to court in a bid to force him to extend the examination deadline.
This proved a further sign of desperation of many students whose parents failed to raise the money needed to write examinations.
Most parents interviewed said the country should fully abide by the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child, which explicitly explains that every child has the right to education and the State has the duty to ensure that primary education, at least, is made free and compulsory.
"The State must recognise that education should be directed at developing the child’s personality and talent, preparing the child for active life as an adult, fostering respect for basic human rights and developing respect for the child’s cultural and traditional values," said Mr James Moyo of Harare.
Zimbabwe is also a signatory of the Millennium Development Goals, which seek to achieve universal education for all by 2015.
Despite efforts to salvage Zimbabwe’s ailing education sector, exorbitant fees are driving away thousands of poor Ordinary and Advanced Level students from writing their examinations, which are a passport to higher education and formal employment.
Surprisingly, while parents complain, Minister Coltart believes the examination fees were "cheaper" compared to Cambridge.
He said this during a question-and-answer session in the House of Assembly last week.
Failure by thousands of prospective students to register for the public examinations prompted analysts to conclude that the low registration level is the "highest in the history of the country".
Former Minister of Information and Publicity Dr Sikhanyiso Ndlovu and founder of the Zimbabwe Distance Education College said the Government should urgently look into the issue.
"An urgent united approach is needed if we are to move forward.
"Are we going back to the pre-colonial era where education was a preserve of the elite with the poor being edged out?" he asked.
While parents worry about their children’s fate, the examination body has decided to hold onto the actual number of students who managed to register.
However, sources within the examination council revealed that thousands of pupils failed to pay the required examination fees.
"They have completed compiling the figures but are refusing to release them because of fear of criticism since the registration levels are so low," said the Zimsec source.
Persistent inquiries did not bear any fruit, as Zimsec remained mum on the issue.
However, Minister Coltart admitted that the registration levels were very low and promised that they would map the way forward as soon as Zimsec makes available the final statistics.
"It is clear that a lot of students failed to register mainly because of poverty but we have to wait for Zimsec to give the final figures and map the way forward," he said.
He also attributed all the problems to poor funding and general poor management that has rocked Zimsec over the past years.
"The nation has lost faith in Zimsec because of its poor performance and people have opted for other exam bodies like Cambridge," he said, adding that Government had no money to undo years of damage.
"Assistance has not been coming as expected so there is no money to subsidise the cost of administering the exams," he also added.
To make matters worse, while students in neighbouring South Africa began writing public examinations on Monday, Zimsec is yet to come up with dates for this year’s "O" and "A" Level examinations.
In the event that the timetable is released, it is likely that exams will spill into December or even next year while in previous years the public exams ended in November.
But what is sad is the fact that innocent children and parents have sacrificed so much to get this far only to be disappointed at the last hurdle.
Hard hit by the chaos surrounding Zimsec exams are children in rural areas and farming communities who travel between 10 and 15 kilometres to school everyday.
However, a large number of those who have managed to register were forced to cut the number of subjects they are sitting for, as they could not afford to pay for all the subjects.
"You will find that students doing eight subjects have managed to pay for only three.
"This defeats the purpose of spending four years in secondary school," said a Harare secondary headmaster who declined to be named.
"This is far beyond what is required when one would be hoping to further studies.
"Students require a minimum of five ‘O’ Level passes to proceed to ‘A’ level or to qualify for an apprenticeship or gain admission to a teachers’ college or school of nursing.
"A school making history by failing to register a single pupil brings to the fore the effect the examination fees announced by Government had on students in poor communities," added the headmaster.
Civil servants have not been spared with many arguing that they do not have the money to pay for their children.
"Where do they want us to get the money considering what they are giving us? It is better for my child to go back to Form 3 and write next year," said Mr Taitus Marimo, a teacher in Seke. | <urn:uuid:8b2e0289-cd1a-4fdb-b6ff-53948efa90af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://maravi.blogspot.com/2009/10/herald-whole-school-priced-out-of-o.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976515 | 1,508 | 1.835938 | 2 |
The world’s largest private marine research organization is based on Cape Cod in the small town of Woods Hole. Dedicated to protecting and exploring the Earth’s oceans while striving to promote an understanding of the delicate balance between a sustainable planet and the health of its marine life, the scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) are on a mission of grand proportions.
Part of that mission is played out at WHOI's Ocean Science Exhibit Center. Visitors can simulate a deep sea exploration experience by entering a full-sized model of Alvin, the submersible vehicle used to explore the wreck of the Titanic, while watching dramatic footage of actual undersea expeditions. A video highlighting the discovery and exploration of underwater relics from the ill-fated Titanic is included in the exhibit.
The 90-minute Summer Walking Tour features a behind-the-scenes look at the WHOI dock area and includes a close-up view of any research vessel that may be in port at the time; history of the institution is also discussed, and an update of the latest research being conducted at the facility is covered with a Q &A session ending the tour. In an effort to engage the community and encourage dialogue on socially relevant topics including climate change, pollution, and hurricane prediction, WHOI hosts a weekly informal gathering every Friday evening, called the Peanut Butter Club, open to both residents and visitors.
The gift shop is definitely worth a visit if only to enjoy the mind-blowing photos of undersea creatures, which grace the covers of books, magazines and posters.
The neighborhood hums with coffee shops, cafés and restaurants; for a slice of handmade goodness, check out Pie in the Sky. Owned by a former ship’s cook and baker, Pie continues to churn out award winning pies, cookies, bread, soups and sandwiches all made from scratch and served with organic fair trade coffee from beans they roast themselves. The Landfall Restaurant boasts creativity both with its menu offerings and with its décor. Try the popular seafood nachos with watermelon salsa while you sit in a building reconstructed from shipwrecked lumber and 19th century schooner ribs. Views of the harbor are at eye level; as retold by a local merchant, “When hurricanes come, the owners just take the French doors off, clear everything out, and wait for the tidal surge to wash through the restaurant. That's how close this place is to the water.”
- Ocean Science Exhibit Center Hours:
- May through October: Monday through Saturday: 10am to 4:30pm
- November and December: Tuesday through Friday: 10am to 4:30pm
- Summer Walking Tours:
- Summer Walking Tours at the Information Office, 93 Water Street, Woods Hole
- Tours begin weekdays at 10:30am and 1:30pm
- Admission: Free, reservations required, call: 508-289-2252
- Suggested donation: $2/person aged 10 and over
- Insider Tip:
- Because public parking is extremely limited in the village of Woods Hole, visitors are encouraged to park in the town of Falmouth and take the WHOOSH trolley to Woods Hole. For trolley information, contact Cape Cod Regional Transport Authority: www.capecodtransit.org/
- Location: Co-op Building, MS #16 , Woods Hole, MA
- Phone: 508-289-2252
- Website: www.whoi.edu | <urn:uuid:fe6ad4bc-82cc-41e2-b154-1b8afafc446a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dguides.com/capecod/attractions/upper-cape-sights/woods-hole-oceanographic-institution/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93092 | 716 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Meralco enters clean energy sector
Meralco, the Philippines’ largest power distributor, makes its first renewable energy investment.
President Oscar Reyes said the company was entering the renewable energy business with an initial investment in a 300 megawatt wind farm located in Laoag City in Ilocos Norte province in northwestern Luzon.
Reyes said the investment was part of Meralco’s plan to install 2,500 MW in new generation capacity by 2020.The Philippines’ energy deregulation law allows Meralco to generate electricity relative to its distribution volume.
Besides wind power, Meralco is also considering investments in liquefied natural gas-fired plants.
Meralco enters renewable energy after the government last month approved the long-delayed Feed-in Tariffs for clean energy developers.
Reyes said the important thing for Meralco is to locate its renewable energy facility in an area where the company can obtain good returns under the FIT, whose approved rates were all lower than those petitioned by clean energy developers. | <urn:uuid:eeca31ff-5148-4e80-b319-965f91c536dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://asian-power.com/power-utility/news/meralco-enters-clean-energy-sector | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93724 | 217 | 1.992188 | 2 |
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About Bethlehem Central
The Bethlehem Central School District's reputation for excellence has attracted families to the Town of Bethlehem since the district was formed in 1930. Well-known throughout the Capital Region for its exemplary and innovative educational programs, BC is dedicated to preparing students to meet the demands of a Regents diploma, and much more, on their way to successful careers and rewarding lives. As public education continues to evolve in New York State, BC vows to meet mandates without losing sight of local priorities. With a philosophy that puts student achievement first, Bethlehem Central seeks to provide a safe and respectful learning environment that promotes academic rigor, embraces technology, and responds to students' individual abilities while remaining responsible to taxpayers. In return, Bethlehem schools have enjoyed the support of active, involved residents who have passed nearly every budget and bond referendum proposed by the district in recent decades and who recognize their schools as the heart of their community.
Bethlehem Central At-a-Glance
Encompassing most of the Town of Bethlehem and part of the Town of New Scotland, Bethlehem Central is a Suburban Council school district that serves about 4,950 students in kindergarten through grade 12. There are five neighborhood elementary schools, serving students in grades 1 through 5; a 6-8 middle school; and a 9-12 high school. The district implemented a full-day kindergarten program in September 2009. We strive to maintain an average class size of 22-24 students, with lower enrollment common in the primary grades and in some advanced and specialized high school courses.
Bethlehem's schools consistently are among the top-performing schools in the Capital Region and across the state. Our instructional staff consists of about 400 professionals, well respected for their competency and contributions to education. This exceptional staff is supported by ten subject supervisors who oversee K-12 curriculum and instruction in addition to teaching. Our educational support staff numbers over 300 full and part-time individuals equally committed to our students.
All district activities, programs, and goals are funded by an annual budget of just over $88 million.
Located just three miles southwest of Albany and about 150 miles north of New York City, Bethlehem is a rapidly growing community of about 28,000 residents, covering an area of 52 square miles. Its natural borders include the Hudson River to the east and the Normanskill, one of several local "kills," or creeks, to the north. The Helderberg Mountains, foothills to the Catskill Mountains, are visible from most parts of the district.
This upper middle-class community successfully combines the qualities of a rural-suburban setting with the benefits of many cultural, recreational, and economic opportunities found in close proximity to New York State's capital. Downtown Albany, steeped in history and home to the Empire State Performing Arts Center and the NYS Museum, is just minutes away. Within a short drive, residents can visit a premiere shopping mall or enjoy cross-country skiing. More than a dozen colleges and universities are nearby, including the State University of New York, Skidmore College, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Historic Saratoga Springs, home of the famous Saratoga Thoroughbred Race Track, lies less than an hour north on the way to the Adirondack Mountains, and Montreal, Boston and New York City are all within a few hours' drive. | <urn:uuid:0ab44e7c-5313-4b46-947c-2fa78551874c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bethlehemschools.org/AboutBCSD/aboutbc.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94929 | 763 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Juniper tree damaged while the marina was closed. Sitting at the end of the marina point, the alligator juniper is exposed to the full force of storms coming up the Narrows and is also a likely target for lightning strikes.
Gangway gap and misalignment. Originally, during the fall closure, the marina was separated from the gangway attached to shore so as to discourage trespassers; however, wind and waves moved the marina close enough so that the gap was only a hazard, but not a major impediment to trespassers.
Rhinos deposited at marina
Note that most of the Rhinos in this view have escaped to the wrong side of the rope that was supposed to confine them.
Rhino on the rocks south of the gangway
Rhinos being herded back toward the marina
Labels: Heron Lake marina | <urn:uuid:3eafc344-b0bd-40bb-9f1f-e05d9bf4f569> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://desertsea.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958535 | 182 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Indigo printing revolutionized Europe’s textile industry in the 17th century, when thousands of companies opened up. Nowadays this handcraft is only practiced by two printers in Burgenland in a workshop where everything is old except the designs.
Indigo printing in Burgenland, Copyright: Blaudruckerei Koó
In Steinberg in Burgenland, half an hour's drive south of Eisenstadt
, you'll find a long white house with dark blue window shutters and doors. As you step over the threshold you breathe in the ancient, earthy smell of the Küpe, a coloring bath in which indigo
, a dye named after a tropical bush in India
, is dissolved with water and lime.
In stone vats sunk into the ground, this solution shimmers with a mysterious blue-black surface; under it lies a bright yellow and a green layer. The typical blue colour only develops after contact with oxygen in the air. When the fabric is dunked into the solution, the pattern has already been applied, because indigo printing is a form of negative printing.
As unfathomable as the surface of the color bath seems, equally impenetrable are the recipes which are passed down the family for generations.
One secret is the solution in the coloring bath and the other is the color-repellent sticky bright turquoise paste which imparts the pattern on the fabric once applied with hand blocks or a hand operated roller
. Along with gum arabic, color pigments, alumina and water, there are a host of secret ingredients, which ensure the success of the printing process. Only where the fabric has been sealed with paste, which is washed off after dyeing, the pattern appears in white - in all its fine details and in stark contrast to the indigo background.
The Koó family works respectfully with their equipment, some of it 200 years old, to combin old handcraft techniques with bold new applications
. While in Burgenland you can purchase Blaudruckerei Koó
products at Esterházy Palace
The Koó family also enbraces cooperations with artists and fashion designers to experiment with fabrics such as silk, wool and linen. And they burst with pride, when e.g. the Japanese-Austrian design partnership Rosa Mosa
produced a leather shoe collection decorated with their indigo print for New York and Tokyo. | <urn:uuid:bc208da2-43aa-45cb-ab32-bb1b6db9d726> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.austria.info/us/passion-for-tradition/indigo-printing-burgenland-1833457.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924857 | 502 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Diagnosis: Cost –
An Initial Look at the Federal Health Care Legislation’s Impact on Texas
In March 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (HR 3590) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (HR 4872) into law. This legislation will have far-reaching effects on the state’s budget as well as its citizens, its businesses and, thus, its economy.
This report, Diagnosis: Cost – An Initial Look at the Federal Health Care Legislation’s Impact on Texas (PDF, 832 KB), includes our preliminary estimates of these effects. It should be noted that many factors are still unknown as the supporting rules have not been written by the federal government. In fact, out of the 78 major provisions examined in this report, there were 50 for which the fiscal impact could not be determined at this time.
The Comptroller’s office continues to monitor the latest developments regarding federal changes to the health care system and will update the fiscal impact estimates included in this report as the supporting rules and other information become available. Sign up to receive e-mail updates.
Upcoming Health Care Report
The Comptroller will publish a larger report examining the effects of health care spending on Texas finances to provide all interested parties with a solid analysis of the overall cost of health care to the state. This report will capture the total costs to the state of health care, including direct health-related services and the accompanying administrative costs. The report also will provide in-depth analysis of factors driving the cost of health care and examine regional differences in costs in the Employees Retirement System and Medicaid. | <urn:uuid:3fd89cfa-81a5-4bc3-922f-4b89d187b784> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/healthFed/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956948 | 339 | 1.757813 | 2 |
April 23, 1999 |
Independent consultants reviewing safety at Tosco Corp.'s Avon oil refinery, where a blast killed four people in February, said in a draft report that worker-supervisor disputes impaired safety at the site. The report, prepared by Arthur D. Little for Contra Costa County Health Services, said an adversarial relationship between workers and their managers had impeded communication at the plant.
March 23, 1999 |
Tosco Corp., an oil refiner and the nation's largest operator of company-owned convenience stores, said it has sold about 320 gas stations and convenience stores in the Midwest, Texas, Utah and Colorado for about $125 million to an undisclosed buyer. Tosco, owner of the Circle K chain, said in a statement that the facilities did not meet company rate-of-return criteria and that it will be focusing on those outlets producing the best returns. Tosco, based in Stamford, Conn.
March 3, 1999 |
Gasoline prices in the state are on the way up primarily because of an explosion last week at a Tosco oil refinery in Northern California that killed four workers. Tosco Corp. agreed Tuesday to temporarily shut down the 156,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Martinez at the request of the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, which had threatened legal action against the Stamford, Conn.-based company. The refinery will remain closed during a safety review, which will last at least a month.
April 16, 1998 |
Tosco Corp. said Wednesday that it is experimenting with selling gasoline that does not contain the controversial additive MTBE at 50 of its 76-brand service stations in Northern California. The gasoline that Tosco will be selling at the stations in Contra Costa, Marin and Sonoma counties will comply with all California and federal standards, Tosco spokesman David Kory said. "This gasoline is completely legal," Kory said. "We're trying to demonstrate that solutions to MTBE gasoline are possible."
October 30, 1997 |
A major oil company, Tosco Corp., has called for the phasing out of a widely used smog-suppressing gasoline additive, MTBE, citing widespread evidence that it has contaminated lakes and underground supplies of drinking water. The additive emerged as something of a double-edged sword in the fight against pollution after leaks from gas station storage tanks forced Santa Monica to shut down a portion of its water supply last year and undertake an expensive cleanup.
October 30, 1997 |
Tosco Corp. is urging the state Air Resources Board to move quickly toward eliminating a smog-reducing gasoline additive because of concerns it could cause widespread contamination of drinking water supplies. The plea by Tosco to stop oil industry usage of methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, could rock an industry that has invested billions in formulating fuel with the additive to make a federally required "cleaner-burning gasoline."
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
October 11, 1997
The Great Pumpkin is alive and well in Wilmington. Continuing a 46-year tradition, workers got out their brushes this week at the Tosco refinery and painted a 3-million-gallon storage tank to look like a huge pumpkin. It took 100 gallons of orange paint, 10 gallons of black paint and three gallons of white paint to accomplish the three-day job, Tosco spokeswoman Agnes Sibal said.
August 15, 1997 |
It's not all cutthroat competition out there. 76 Lubricants Co. says it now gets its basic motor oil supply from Exxon Corp. When it was owned by Unocal, the Costa Mesa-based lubricants company got its raw materials from Unocal refineries. But New Jersey refinery and convenience store operator Tosco Corp. acquired the refineries as part of its $2-billion purchase of Unocal 76 Products Co. and has changed the mix of things being refined.
July 12, 1997 |
Tosco Corp. was fined a record $277,750 for workplace violations as a result of a fatal Jan. 21 explosion at its oil refinery in Martinez, Calif. The fine is the highest ever levied by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health against a petroleum refinery firm. Tosco said it is reviewing the fine and will make a decision in 10 days on whether to appeal all or part of it. | <urn:uuid:379bde5d-32ce-484f-8b98-ffbfc375516c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/tosco-corp/recent/3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95411 | 888 | 1.640625 | 2 |