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On November 3 and 4, the Virginia Downtown Development Association (VDDA) hosted their annual conference, this year focusing on sustainability in a traditional downtown environment. The conference was held in Charlottesville, where the 40 participants were able to witness first-hand the benefits of employing “green” development strategies.
Charlottesville is committed to having a green downtown by 2025. At the conference, the Local Energy Alliance Program (LEAP) presented several strategies that Charlottesville is employing to make its vision of a sustainable downtown a reality. For example, the innovative City Hall and Police Building Green Rooftop Project, in which conventional rooftops are replaced with large gardens, has been highly successful in reducing stormwater runoff and pollution while also reducing cooling costs in the summer.
How is your community “going green?”
Visit the Virginia Municipal League’s Go Green Virginia website to learn about strategies incorporated in the Green government challenge.
Designated VMS communities are also encouraged to fill out the National Trust Main Street Sustainability Survey by November 17 to help shape national strategies and for a chance to win a flip video camera.
Filed under: Development, Downtown | Tagged: Annual Conference, business, Charlottesville, Charlottesville Virginia, Environmentalism, sustainability, University of Virginia, virginia | Leave a Comment » | <urn:uuid:7c55d7bb-1ed4-44b2-bf0f-3c1cea1cacf2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dhcdvms.wordpress.com/tag/business/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934987 | 267 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Make safety a priority. Use a "do not drink the water" sign. Make sure danger is identified clearly.
• Signs are a critical part of making your facility compliant with safety laws.
• Safety is easier when you remind everyone to take their time and observe safety precautions.
• A sign is a proven and effective reminder to keep your policy clear. | <urn:uuid:1e1c693b-9740-460a-9444-53096d24eb8b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.recyclereminders.com/Safety-Signs/Do-Not-Drink-The-Water-Sign/SAF-SKU-S-2818.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945752 | 73 | 1.664063 | 2 |
American soldiers in battle don’t fight for what some president says on TV, they don’t fight for mom, apple pie or the American flag, they fight for one another.
—Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore, U.S. Army, We Were Soldiers Once, and Young
On May 27, 2010, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the so-called “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” (DADT) law of 1993 that, while leaving intact the military’s ban on homosexuals serving in uniform, prohibits the military from inquiring into the sexual preferences of military personnel or requiring them to answer questions about it. The Senate is expected to follow suit in coming weeks, though the public dissent by the chiefs of the individual Armed Services in opposition to Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shows how contentious the issue remains. Just a month earlier, the Navy announced that it would allow women to serve on submarines, further eroding the military’s traditional prohibition on women to fill combat roles.
Both issues—women in combat and gays in the military—are different manifestations of a single problem: the failure of America’s political leadership to understand the factors that motivate men to fight in battle and to continue fighting under the most horrific conditions—what professionals call “combat effectiveness” and “unit cohesion” respectively. In all the discussions of the issue, these terms seldom come up; when they do, it is only to be dismissed out of hand by those who wish to see all military positions opened to both women and homosexuals.
Those who have never served in combat have no idea what it is like. The most graphic books and movies do not even scratch the surface. Take the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan, amplified by an order of magnitude, plus the smell of blood, vomit, excrement, explosives and burning vehicles would still not be sufficient. After more than thirty years investigating the experience of men in battle, I don’t even pretend to understand it as well as a soldier who has been through just one firefight. This is why combat veterans are so reluctant to speak of their wartime deeds—civilians, and even rear-echelon military types, lack the frame of reference that would make understanding possible.
Most people think men fight in war for patriotism, or abstraction like democracy, freedom or “the revolution.” But this is incorrect. Men enlist for such reasons, but they do not explain why men fight, and more importantly, why they keep fighting and do not simply run away at the first opportunity. As the French philosophe Montesquieu noted, “A rational army would run away”; i.e., war is so terrible no one in his right mind would choose to fight.
Until the advent of modern warfare, men were held in the ranks by “external” discipline. Fighting in close formations, under the watchful eyes of their officers, it was difficult to shirk or to flee. The tactics of the time also meant survival depended on staying in ranks, while the closeness of the formation itself lent psychological support to the individual soldier. But intelligent commanders found other ways to bolster morale, including smart uniforms, distinctions on regimental flags, and shiny medals.
But the most effective of all was the creation within the larger unit of small groups of eight to ten men (what the Romans called a contubernium), who lived and served together. Often recruited from the same village or region, these men, if not already friends, neighbors or even family, soon established a very close personal bond as a “primary group.” Through shared hardship they became a “band of brothers” who would look out for each other, fight for each other, die for each other. Fear of death is ubiquitous in combat, and the desire to hide or run often overwhelming, but for a man there is a worse fear—being perceived as a coward in the eyes of the primary group, of letting down his friends, his mates, his buddies. The instinct for self-preservation fights with loyalty to the primary group, and the stronger the primary group, the harder and longer the men in it will fight, the more pain and suffering they will endure, before, finally, the flight instinct takes over and the rout begins.
If this was so in the age of musket and sword, it is far more important today, because one can no longer control armies through external discipline. The lethality of modern weapons requires modern armies to fight dispersed. Instead of standing shoulder-to-shoulder in serried ranks, they spread out, several yards between men, deliberately exploiting cover to avoid detection. The frontage held by a 600-man battalion in the Civil War is today held by a platoon of just 40 men. With everybody diligently cultivating invisibility, the result is an apparently “empty battlefield.” But if the enemy cannot see the soldier, neither can his officer, most of the time. Effectively alone, it is much easier for the individual soldier to just cower in his foxhole, or even slink away to the rear, with nobody the wiser.
Modern “fire-and-movement” tactics are based upon the principle of “shared risk”: one element of a unit shoots to suppress enemy weapons, while a second element rushes forward to positions from which they can fire upon the enemy, at which point the two groups switch roles, repeatedly, until the enemy position is overrun. This demands a high degree of trust: the fire unit is not going to expose itself to enemy fire unless it is sure the movement element is actually going to rush forward; and the movement element is not going to rush forward unless it is sure that the fire element is going suppress the enemy. Even within elements, every man has to be sure the other will do his job, otherwise he is less likely to do his own.
Modern armies try to ensure this through “internal discipline”—training and indoctrination intended to inoculate the soldier against the noise and chaos of the battlefield, reducing the necessary actions to an instinctive drill that enable him to respond automatically to commands and other stimuli. But even more than this, modern armies rely on small unit cohesion, the bonding of the primary group (still, after two millennia, your basic 8-man squad). If the group bond is strong, then the men will shoot and move rather than let their buddies down. Conversely, when the group bond is weak, it’s every man for himself.
In World War II, the U.S. Army ignored small unit cohesion. Rather than pulling units out of the line to rebuild and integrate replacements were inserted directly into combat from “replacement depots,” like interchangeable parts in a machine, without time to acclimate to combat or to form bonds with the men in their squad or platoon. Strangers fighting among strangers, they were far more prone to “combat fatigue” (now called PTSD) and took casualties at a far higher rate than men who had trained together for months or years. Major General Charles Gerhardt, commander of the 29th Infantry Division from D-Day to VE-Day, observed: "Our first replacements, right after D-Day, had to be put right into units, and many a man joined the division at night—and if his unit was heavily engaged, he was dead before anyone had really known him."
The U.S. Army repeated the same mistakes in Korea and Vietnam; not until the 1980s was small unit cohesion given the attention it deserves.
So what has all this to do with gays and women in the military? Everything.
In Stephen Pressfield’s novel Gates of Fire, the Spartans at Thermopylae, knowing in the morning they will “Dine in Hades,” debate among themselves the question, “What is the opposite of fear?” The men give various answers—courage, hatred, anger, duty—but Deinokles, the hero of the piece, has the last word. Looking at his comrades, tired, filthy, bruised, many wounded, he shakes his head and says, “The opposite of fear is love.”
This is absolutely true. That which overcomes fear in battle is love—the love of the members of the primary group for each other. But it is a very special sort of love. The Greeks had a word for it: agape, the total and selfless love that God has for mankind. Opposed to agape stands eros, passionate love with overtones of sexual desire and possession. The military cultivates agape in its ranks, but has no room for eros. Agape will inspire a man to sacrifice his life for a comrade. Agape keeps him in his place alongside his friends. Countless observers have seen and written about this. Combat veterans intuitively understand it, even if they have difficulty putting their feelings into words. This particular type of agape is unique to men in a purely military setting—because nowhere else are the conditions as extreme and the stakes as high. Whenever sex is introduced, whether hetero or homo, eros raises its head and group cohesion crumbles.
The issue of women in combat is relatively easy to address. Leaving aside legendary Amazons, only two armies in history have deliberately allowed women to fight alongside men—the Soviet army in World War II, and the Israel Defense Forces in the 1948 War of Independence. Both had an ideological commitment to radical egalitarianism, and both discontinued the experiment almost as soon as it began, for the same reason: it didn’t work. Women did not stand up as well to the rigors of life in the field, and most literally could not pull their weight. In addition, discovering that they were being opposed by women tended to enrage the enemy—whether the Germans or Arabs—causing them to fight with extra ferocity (not to mention what they did to women soldiers who fell into their hands). This, in turn, caused the male soldiers in their units to coddle them all the more, to protect them from the most dangerous tasks, and to endanger the mission to avoid endangering the women.
In the Soviet army, women were also subject to sexual abuse by male soldiers, and most attached themselves to a male officer for protection, becoming pokhodno-polevy zheny (field-service wives) for the duration.
Even when such blatant abuse was not present, women tended to have a corrosive effect on unit cohesion, simply because they were young women living in close proximity to equally young men under stressful situations. It was impossible to keep male and female soldiers from “fraternizing,” and when a woman in a unit paired up with a man in a unit, it created unnecessary friction and jealousy. In some cases, female soldiers took advantage of their position to unload onerous duties on the men in return for the promise (or delivery) of sexual favors; others played one man off against the other. This was true not only in combat units, but in combat support and combat service support units as well. At the end of the day, the presence of women had a negative effect on both combat effectiveness and small unit cohesion, which is why both Israel and Russia dropped women from combat units—though the same problems were found in mixed support units as well.
Similar phenomena have been seen in mixed U.S. units (Military Police, Signals, Transportation, Maintenance, etc.), as well as aboard U.S. Navy vessels, exacerbated by a politically correct atmosphere that is widely perceived as promoting a double standard, both physical and behavioral. For instance, the physical fitness standards for women are more lax than for men, which means that most women cannot carry the same loads as men, forcing men to carry more than their share. In addition, the impact of sexual misconduct seems to fall more heavily on men than on women. A man who contracts a venereal disease that renders him unfit for duty is subject to military penalties. A woman who gets pregnant is offered either a transfer to a desk job, or a general discharge from the service—even if she became pregnant through fraternization with her fellow soldiers, which is normally a military offense. The problem is extremely serious in war, since pregnant women transferred out of their units leave a hole in the organization at a critical moment. Some ships, for instance, have lost upwards of 25% of the women in their crews in the course of a single deployment. Some women have deliberately become pregnant to get out of deployment altogether.
Proponents of women in combat roles note that some women do have the upper body strength, and should be subject to the same disciplinary standards as men, thus are just as capable as men. The logic is faulty. While some women can be adequate warriors, the military is not simply an aggregation of warriors, it is a collective of soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen organized into units and formations, and it is the performance of those units and formations, not the individual that counts.
By their nature, women disrupt the combat effectiveness of those units, while the special accommodations that have to be made for women exert a significant cost on military budgets. The Air Force, for instance, now has to make aircraft cockpits suitable for pilots from 5’2” all the way to 6’5”. On ships, they require separate berthing areas, showers and heads. The problem on submarines is even more serious, since space is always at a premium, and on most submarines sailors are required to share a berth (“hot bunking”). The number of women serving on subs is bound to be small, and there are no small berthing areas for enlisted personnel, so women will have to displace either petty officers or officers. If one female officer is assigned to a submarine, she would have to occupy a stateroom meant for two, forcing a male officer to hot bunk with two other officers. No matter, we are talking equality here.
In the matter of homosexuals serving openly in the military, physical differences are not a factor. Nor is it simply that, as Colin Powell once put it, Men don’t like to take showers with men who like to take showers with men. Rather, we’re back to the problem of eros vs. agape.
Historically, most armies have seen homosexual behavior as undermining military discipline. Even the Spartans didn’t tolerate it in the field, while the Romans considered it a capital offense. There is just one noteworthy example of open homosexuality in military service—the Theban Sacred Band, 150 pairs of homosexual lovers who swore an oath to stand by each other to death (and who were wiped out by Alexander the Great at Cheironeia). So even fairly tolerant societies found homosexuality unacceptable in the army, for the same reason that women were unacceptable: they introduced sexual tension into small group dynamics, undermining unit cohesion.
That tension has several causes. First, heterosexual men in the unit may not like becoming potential objects of sexual attraction to their fellow soldiers (the same thing also applies to women in mixed units), especially given the close quarters and lack of privacy that is part of field service. Second, there may be the suspicion that one or more soldiers may actually have entered into a sexual relationship, with the disruptive effect that can have on both discipline and performance (i.e., favoritism—will this guy risk his life to save me, or will he look out for his “special friend” first). If the homosexual involved is an officer, it creates all sorts of opportunities for abuse, which we have already seen in sexually mixed units. Given the kind of minefield that civilian workplaces have become due to sexual harassment laws, one wonders about the wisdom of tossing metaphorical mines in among the real ones with which our troops have to contend.
None of the arguments for homosexuals serving openly have much merit if one understands the dynamics of small unit cohesion. The more common are easily dismissed:
Military professionals ought to know that both allowing women to serve in combat and homosexuals to serve openly, undermine military effectiveness by injecting sexual dynamics into primary group relations. So far, the United States has not paid for its policy of allowing women to serve in positions that increasingly expose them to combat. The U.S. military has not really been tested against a first-rate adversary since the Vietnam war, and we do not know how well our units would perform under pressure from competent opposition in extended combat. We have no idea what effect gays serving openly will have, but we have every reason to believe it will be far more disruptive than either racial integration or the expansion of the role of women. But given that we are at war, do we really want to use the military as a laboratory for social experiments?
Stuart Koehl is a frequent contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD Online. | <urn:uuid:95891433-1837-44b2-abc2-59d5e4844071> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/dont-repeal-dont-askdont-tell?page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968023 | 3,496 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Campbellsville University will offer short-term certificate and degree course offerings at the Brockman Center in Hodgenville beginning Aug. 20.
Carol Sullivan, director of the Technology Training Center at Campbellsville University, said the Tech Center will offer allied health certificates in state registered nurse aide; CPR healthcare provider; clinical medical assistant; pharmacy technician; and phlebotomy technician.
“The Brockman Center is a base for many of our university operations in LaRue County and Hardin County. Our friends in Hodgenville continue to support higher education for our region, and we anticipate university service will maintain solid growth,” said Dr. Keith Spears, vice president for regional and professional education.
Also, being offered and taught by Campbellsville University full-time business professors, will be degree course offerings in the organizational management degree. Some courses will be online and others will be taught at the Brockman Center.
Sullivan said the certificate programs begin and end at different times and are being taught at different times and days of the week. She said the best idea is to call the Technology Training Center at CU at (270) 789-5400 to get further information for each class.
Descriptions of the certificate programs follow:
Students interested ingoing into the field of nursing can earn their SRNA certification in just 75 hours including 16 clinical hours. Many nursing schools require SRNA before applying for LPN or RN programs. Upon completion of the SRNA program, a nurse aide will have a working knowledge of the physiological, psychological and sociological impact of institutionalization on the nursing facility resident. This space is limited to 15 students per class. SRNA clinical hours will be completed at the new Sunrise Manor in Hodgenville.
A phlebotomy technician is a medical professional who draws blood from patients for various lab tests and procedures. Students who enter the phlebotomy training are required to have a high school degree or GED and be at least 18 years of age. Those taking the class must have proof of current immunizations and a TB skin test and be able to complete a criminal background check and pass a drug screen. This class consists of 25 classroom hours and 100 clinical hours. Once the student passes the class, he or she is able to sit for the national exam offered through the National Center for Competency Testing.
Clinical medical assistant training provides students with the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed for employment in doctors’ offices, medical clinics and hospitals. Upon successful completion of the course, the student will be able to carry our various administrative and clinical duties required for entry-level positions. Students will also learn about and use some of the technology in the healthcare field as they undertake and engage in clinical externships within the surrounding communities’ healthcare facilities. The instruction will be a mix of lecture, skills demonstration, computer simulation and clinical externship. The course will encompass both the administrative and clinical applications. The clinical medical assistant program is a 320-hour program where the participant will take the clinical medical assistant certification exam administered by the National Center for Competency Testing.
Pharmacy technicians work in hospitals, home infusion pharmacies, community pharmacies and other health care settings – working under the supervision of a registered pharmacist. Course objectives include: learn medical terminology specific to the pharmacy profession, read and interpret prescriptions, define drugs by generic and brand names, learn dosage calculations, IV flow rates, drug compounding, dose conversions, and prescription dispensing. The pharmacy technician training program is a 150-hour program that participants will take the pharmacy technician certification exam administered by the pharmacy technician certification board.
The organizational management degree programs are divided into eight-week classes with the first eight-week classes beginning Aug. 27. These are: CIS 100 computer concepts and applications, taught by Chrys Hines, assistant professor of administrative technology/computer information systems, on Wednesday nights;
BA 314, human resource management on Monday nights, taught by Chuck Crain, instructor in business and economics; and ACC 222, accounting 1, taught online.
The first eight-week classes run from Aug. 27 through Oct. 20.
The second eight-weeks classes include: ENG 111, composition I, the professor who will be named soon; BA 301, marketing I, Monday nights, taught by Crain; and ACC 224, accounting II, taught online.
The second eight-week classes run from Oct. 22 through Dec. 15.
Sullivan said community education classes, those being taught for personal enrichment, will be offered soon at the Brockman Center which is located at 813 Old Elizabethtown Road in Hodgenville, one mile north of the public square on Hwy. 210.
For more information, call (270) 789-5400. | <urn:uuid:a1e6e0de-c748-419d-8beb-38ccb0fa2f98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.laruecountyherald.com/content/brockman-center-offer-fall-classes?quicktabs_2=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932398 | 976 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Industry, administration meet on cyber order
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says an executive order on cybersecurity is coming soon.
A White House official met Oct. 17 with representatives from the Information Technology Industry Council to discuss the forthcoming cybersecurity executive order, an ITI spokesperson confirmed.
While the spokesperson declined to provide details, the meeting with some of industry’s most prominent IT companies comes within weeks of the administration’s meetings with congressional aides to discuss the executive order, The Hill reported. It is expected that White House representatives will meet with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in coming weeks as well.
Draft versions of the executive order have called for a voluntary program, under which private companies operating critical infrastructure could implement government-instituted standards and best practices.
Rumors about a cyber executive order have been swirling for more than a month, and top government officials have confirmed the measure is being drafted and reviewed. Members of Congress, who failed to pass bipartisan cybersecurity legislation this session, have been vocal in expressing their views of the executive-order approach. Some legislators have said a cyber bill could be taken up again when Congress returns for the lame duck session after the elections. And there is broad consensus that legislative action is still needed, even if President Obama issues and executive order.
“The executive order is being drafted and in the interagency process. I can’t give you a firm timeline. It can’t do a few things only legislation can do, such as liability protection for companies when they are sharing information,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said at a Washington event on Sept. 28. “An executive order will help but, we still need comprehensive cyber legislation. It’s something that Congress is going to have to come back and address.”
In an Oct. 11 appearance in New York, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta underscored the importance of cybersecurity action, including the implementation of legislation, calling on lawmakers to set aside the partisan squabbling that has served as a roadblock so far.
“This legislation has bipartisan support, but is victim to legislative and political gridlock like so much else in Washington. While we wait for Congress to act, the administration is looking to enhance cybersecurity measures under existing authorities, by working with the private sector to promote best practices, increase information sharing,” Panetta said. “They are considering issuing an executive order as one option to try to deal with the situation, but very frankly there is no substitute for comprehensive legislation…Congress has a responsibility to act and the President of the United States has constitutional responsibility to defend our country.”
Amber Corrin is a staff writer covering defense and national security. Connect with her on Twitter: @AmberInsideDOD. | <urn:uuid:830d57d6-b301-4c81-95ee-7b46e53abcd7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fcw.com/articles/2012/10/18/executive-order.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953917 | 569 | 1.53125 | 2 |
As Hurricane Sandy barrels into the Northeast, many farmers are feeling the impact of this superstorm. Family farm organizations, state departments of agriculture and emergency management agencies have issued warning, urging farmers to prepare for the storm’s damage. The National Young Farmers’ Coalition has compiled a list of preparedness suggestions to help farmers minimize destruction to their crops, livestock, equipment and farmland.
As the storm continues, farmers are encouraged to take important steps to prepare for the after-effects:
- Compile important phone numbers and documents for your county extension agent, crop insurance agent, emergency management district, county Farm Service Agency (FSA) and veterinarians.
- Document and photograph farm losses to report to your state’s FSA office.
- Visit the FSA website for more information on Disaster Assistance Programs.
- Any damage to homes or barns should be reported to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) at 1-800-621-FEMA.
For state-specific information about Hurricane Sandy, contact your state’s department of agriculture.
This post will be updated with more resources as they come in. Please let us know if we are missing any important information or assistance programs. Stay safe!
**UPDATE** For information on how to support recovery efforts in state’s affected by Sandy, visit the Responding to Sandy resources page compiled by The Vermont Community Foundation. Visit Farm Aid’s Disaster Assistance for Family Farmers page for a comprehensive list of recovery resources available to farmers facing natural disasters.
USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) has announced expansions to crop insurance options for blueberry, cherry and grape growers in Oregon and Washington state:
- Blueberry Crop Insurance
Expanded availability for Benton, Cowlitz, Franklin, Grant, Snohomish, Walla Walla and Yakima counties in Washington.
- Cherry Actual Revenue History (Cherry-ARH) Crop Insurance
Expanded availability for Gilliam and Sherman counties in Oregon and Kittitas County, Washington.
- Grape Crop Insurance
The Mourvedre variety is now recognized as a separate type in the central Washington counties; previously insured within the ‘all other red & pink varieties’ grouping.
RMA reminds growers throughout the country that November 20, 2012 is the last day to apply for coverage of many fruit crops (apples, blueberries, cherry “Actual Revenue History” pilot, cranberries, grapes, pears, and stonefruit). Growers who currently hold insurance policies, as well as currently uninsured growers, must make decisions about their insurance needs for 2013 before this date.
RMA encourages growers to contact their insurance agents as soon as possible – find a list of agents here. If your county does not have coverage for a specific crop under the traditional Multi-Peril Crop Insurance Program, be sure to ask your crop insurance agent if you’re eligible for coverage under a “written agreement.”
Visit the RMA website for more information on crop insurance.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is accepting applications for the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). The REAP program offers grants and loan guarantees for farmers and rural small businesses to implement renewable energy systems and energy efficiency improvements. REAP has several components, with the following deadlines:
- Renewable energy system and energy efficiency improvement grant applications and combination grant and guaranteed loan applications until March 30, 2012;
- Renewable energy system and energy efficiency improvement guaranteed loan only applications
- on a continuous basis up to June 29, 2012;
- Renewable energy system feasibility study applications through March 30, 2012; and Energy audits and renewable energy development assistance applications through February 21, 2012.
In addition, applicants who applied for REAP funding in FY2011 and were determined to be eligible, but
were not funded, may submit a written request to USDA to consider the application for FY2012 funds.
Click here for more information.
Deadlines for the USDA Food & Nutrition Service (FNS) Farm to School Grant Program are quickly approaching! In this first funding cycle, FNS anticipates awarding up to $3.5 million to support Farm to School planning and implementation efforts in eligible schools. Be sure to mark your calendars: all eligible applicants are encouraged to submit a Letter of Intent by May 18, 2012, and final Farm to School grant proposals are due by June 15, 2012.
National Farm to School Director Deborah Kane and Grants Management Specialist Greg Walton will present two upcoming webinars to provide more information about the Farm to School Grant Program:
- Tuesday, May 15, 3:00 pm EST – Implementation Grants webinar
- Thursday, May 17, 1:00 pm EST – Planning Grants webinar
All webinar participants must register in advance.
For more information about the program, check out the new FAQ guide and sample planning and implementation grant proposals, now available on the Farm to School Grant Program website.
The National Sustainable Agricultural Information Service (ATTRA), managed by the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT), offers two publications for farmers interested in integrating environmental, economic and social sustainability on their farms.
Applying the Principles of Sustainable Farming provides practical examples of how to apply new sustainability principles on the farm. Holistic Management: A Whole-Farm Decision Making Framework helps farmers establish long-term goals, detailed financial and biological plans, and monitoring programs for their farms by incorporating Holistic Management principles.
For more resources on sustainable farm management options, visit ATTRA’s website and the Sustainable Options Resource Guide from Farm Aid.
Now you can follow @FRNspotlight on Twitter to be informed about all Resource Spotlight updates on the Farmer Resource Network.
Farm Aid’s Farmer Resource Network will re-launch soon. Please stay tuned for further updates.
The Farmers’ Legal Action Group has created a useful guide with tools for struggling dairy farmers. Click here to download the PDF. | <urn:uuid:71b3857a-fe93-454b-a1d6-4370f2e10037> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://resourcespotlight.farmaid.org/author/admin/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907473 | 1,226 | 1.96875 | 2 |
< Current issue
Dermatopathology: Practical & Conceptual October - December 2009
3. New Insights: What really is known about regression of melanoma
Juliana Jung, M.D.
Almut Böer, M.D.
The majority of the articles on regression in cutaneous melanomas concern the patients' prognosis, and there is no unanimity among the authors. While some authors found histological evidence of regression to be a bad prognostic sign, [
] others stated that it had no meaning in regard to prognosis, [
] and still others identified it as a signal of a favorable prognosis. [
] One reason for these contradictory results is that the authors had very different definitions of an unfavorable course. Whereas some used the evidence of metastasis as a criterion, [
] others used the disease-free survival, [
] and still others the overall survival [
] as indicators of a good versus a bad prognosis. But even in studies that used a similar definition of an unfavorable course, predictive value of histological regression was controversial. Interestingly, the majority of studies using only metastasis as a criterion identified regression as a bad prognostic sign, [
] whereas the majority of studies using overall survival demonstrated that the histologic feature of regression was of no prognostic significance. [
] Strictly speaking, only overall survival is a valid criterion to estimate a patients prognosis.
Even though Gromet et al, as early as 1978, alerted to the fact that regression may limit the ability to asses tumor depth accurately, only very few articles have focussed on the histopathologic features of regression. [
] In many of the other studies, no mention is made how, precisely, the authors identified regression. When criteria were given, they differed considerably between the studies and included very subjective features. In addition, regression is often a patchy phenomen and most studies have failed to quantify the process. A summary of criteria used by various authors is given in
In contrast, authors of textbooks of dermatopathology attempted to give more precise criteria for recognition of regression. [
] According to Ackerman et al., regression of primary cutaneous melanoma usually involves the papillary dermis in the form of either "fibrosis" or "melanosis," the former being fibroplasia and the latter a broad sheet of melanophages, both occurring in a thickened papillary dermis. Ackerman et al. admitted, however, that clear separation between both types of regression was not always possible. Sometimes, "fibrosis" and "melanosis" occured together in the same section of tissue, and although melanosis, by definition, consisted entirely of melanophages, "fibrosis" was accompanied nearly always by some melanophages, lymphocytes, and telangiectases. Ackerman and colleagues further classified regression into "total regression" (melanoma destroyed in its entirety, no residuum); "focal regression" (regression occuring in a discrete locus devoid of any sign of melanoma
); and "partial regression" (regression occuring in a locus together with evidence of melanoma
in the overlying epidermis). [
Detailed also, but slightly different, Massi and LeBoit provided criteria for diagnosis of regression. They differentiated between a regressive lesion, one with dense, band-like inflammatory infiltrates extending into junctional nests and blurring the dermoepidermal interface, with variable amounts of plasma cells, melanophages, necrotic or entirely absent melanocytes, and a regressed lesion typified by a slightly inflammed fibrotic band in papillary dermis which progressed to a greatly thickened papillary dermis replaced by a delicate network of fibrillary collagen, few fibroblasts, and scattered lymphocytes. Areas of edema, ectatic capillaries, melanophages, residual atypical melanocytes, and epidermal atrophy were mentioned as inconsistent findings. [
None of the reviewed studies on regression applied such detailed criteria and classification of regression in melanomas or correlated them with overall survival.
Articles that attempted to understand the mechanisms of regression in melanomas mainly focussed on the analysis of the cellular infiltrate, assuming that regression is a sign of immunological destruction of the malignant neoplasm by the organism that bares it. [
] As of this date, it is not known why regression occurs in some melanomas and not in others, why it is seen more commonly in thin melanomas, and whether it is consequent to spread of melanoma cells to a lymph node or unrelated to it.
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Is the Cyborg – a person who's body is integrated with technology, augmenting their physical abilities – moving from the realm of fiction to fact? It would appear so.
I was struck yesterday by an article I read on The Verge about new artificial hearts that have no pulse. The story originally hails from Popular Science who delve into the details.
The heart is an incredibly difficult organ to reproduce artificially because it's constantly beating. Any artificial materials that will need to go through the work a heart actually does seem to break down very quickly. So the doctors in question have decided to address the beating problem, looking at creating an artificial heart that does the job but doesn't beat. Rather, it provides a continuous flow throughout the body. And apparently it works.
Think about it – a human being who is alive but has no pulse. This is the first time that such a thing is possible. And it leads to incredibly deep questions.
One lady who has the continuous-flow system installed remarks in the story of how she feels perfectly fine – even though she carries no pulse. The system runs on a small battery packpack and a controller which plug in through a hole on her side.
As per the article: “My cousin once disconnected me, though, by mistake,” she said. “I was showing her how to change the battery. She disconnected one, and then—I was distracted for a second—the other. I yelled, ‘You can’t do that!’ and then passed out. The device blares at you. She reconnected it, and I came back. I was probably out for 10 seconds. She was completely freaked out. She wanted to go right back to Switzerland.”
Think about it: needing to plug yourself in at night and give yourself a charge? It seems all rather odd. Without a pulse the questions a game like Deus Ex: Human Revolution asks around what makes a human a human suddenly become very relevant.
Here's a video about the heart. It's fascinating:
To do a bit of Deus Ex: Human Revolution promotion, Square Enix got Rob 'Eyeborg' Spence involved. Spence has an artificial eye that is in fact a wireless camera. Spence travelled around the world and put together a 12 minute documentary on cyborgs, which includes interviews with people with artificial legs and the latest developments in eye technology. It's all very interesting. See it below.
Governments have already begun to use cyborg technology to create spy insects. That in itself is another fiction becoming reality. According to Weburbanist, in 2006 researchers in a Tokyo University were able to create cockroaches that they could direct with remote controls. Now the roaches' own bodily functions are being used to power up the spy devices they need to carry. Beetles can also now be remote-controlled with chips planted into their brains. Sounds a bit like the chip technology in Syndicate, doesn't it?
The website Oobject has a list of sixteen current cyborg technologies. These include bionic limbs, skin, artificial livers, pneumatic muscles, artificial kidneys, artificial stomachs, bionic lungs and retinal implants. But more than just replacing what we already have, the technology also includes vision enhancing contact lenses and tooth and ear cellphone implants.
According to Wikipedia, the Cyborg Foundation was formed in 2010 – the world's first international organisation that is dedicated to helping humans become cyborgs. It was formed by real-life cyborgs Neil Harbisson – the first person to wear an Eyeborg that allows him to differentiate colours artificially, something he can't do naturally as he has a rare disease called achromatopsia, which only allows one to see in black and white – and Moon Ribas, a performer.
Rob 'Eyeborg' Spence, real-life cyborg
"The foundation's main aims are to extend human senses and abilities by creating and applying cybernetic extensions to the body, to promote the use of cybernetics in cultural events and to defend cyborg rights," says Wikipedia.
How long before cyborg technology becomes cheaper and is used to augment our current abilities? It seems to me that this might be exactly where things will go. All it needs is one serious capitalist to see the potential. Then humankind will start asking questions it's never asked before and who knows what conflict could result? The next 50 years could be very interesting indeed.
About Ryan Peter
Ryan Peter has been an avid gamer for over 25 years, seeing the industry evolve from King's Quest to what it is today. He is the deputy editor of Do Gaming and a writer of fantasy and sci-fi. His books are available at Amazon.com, in the iBookstore for the iPad or at Smashwords.com.
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Baker, James Addison, 1930- ;
Law firms -- Texas -- Houston;
Statesmen -- United States -- Biography;
Statesmen -- United States -- Interviews;
Cabinet officers -- United States -- Biography;
Cabinet officers -- United States -- Interviews;
Statesman James Baker III examines his political career. He served as the 10th White House Chief of Staff during President Ronald Regan administration, and the 16th White House Chief of Staff during George H.W. Bush administration. He also served...
Noriega, Richard Joel "Rick";
Texas--Politics and government;
Houston (Tex.)--Politics and government;
Richard Joel "Nick" Noriega was first elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1998. Since then he has served 5 terms in this capacity. During hurricane Katrina Mayor Bill White requested his help to oversee the evacuee shelter operations...
Hispanic American scholars--Texas--Houston--Interviews;
Minority college teachers--Texas--Houston--Interviews;
American literature--Hispanic American authors--Publishing;
Hispanic American literature (Spanish);
Dr. Nicolás Kanellos, a scholar whose expertise is the literature of the Hispanics in the United States, talks about the contributions of this minority group in all aspects of cultural life; his career as a scholar, college professor, and... | <urn:uuid:b4147f98-46e2-4ed7-8dfa-b596ff42e280> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digital.houstonlibrary.org/cdm/search/searchterm/populations | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915395 | 283 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Progress in South Pacific fisheries management
16 March 2008
“New Zealand continued to negotiate for a sustainable management regime for fisheries in the huge high seas area of the South Pacific – stretching from Australia in the east to south America in the west – at a meeting in Equador this week,” Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton said today.
Participants from over 30 countries around the world met in Guayaquil, Equador, for the fifth round of negotiations to establish a South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) to manage non-highly migratory fisheries on the high seas. These fisheries include orange roughy and pelagic species such as jack mackerel.
Jim Anderton said the South Pacific was one of the last high seas fisheries that is not being managed.
“It is a chance for New Zealand and like-minded countries to help establish a sustainable management regime on our back door-step, similar to the management we have in our own Exclusive Economic Zones.”
The purpose of the meeting was to progress negotiations on the Convention text, which will form the legal basis for fisheries conservation and management on the high seas. It was successful in progressing some of the key issues facing the future organisation, such as how to manage fish stocks that occur in both national waters and on the high seas.
“I’m pleased with the broad agreement on the precautionary approach and ecosystem approach being established as underlying principles for fisheries management.
“The precautionary approach advocates that fisheries managers should consider long term sustainability of a fishery over short term fishing opportunities, especially when information about a fishery is uncertain. The ecosystem approach advocates taking into account the environmental impacts of fishing. These are both very sound approaches to managing fisheries.”
This was the first meeting since the establishment of the Interim Secretariat. The newly-recruited Executive Secretary was able to report for the first time on the implementation of the interim measures adopted in May 2007.
New Zealand reported back on its management of high seas bottom trawling, which is including the application of the move on rule and area closures to protect deep sea corals and other vulnerable marine ecosystems.
Progress in reporting and implementing the interim measures by other countries was mixed however.
“We are very concerned over the rapid build up of vessels from distant fishing nations targeting the jack mackerel stock that straddles Chile’s waters, which is the largest fishery in the South Pacific,” said Jim Anderton. “Such increases in fishing capacity are contrary to the spirit of the interim measures and threaten the sustainability of the jack mackerel stock before the SPRFMO has even been established.”
The data being submitted by countries on their catches and number of fishing vessels will however enable a debate for the first time on how to ensure the sustainable management of this fishery.
New Zealand, Australia and Chile, as the co-sponsors of the negotiations, and other coastal states continue to work closely together on these issues.
“New Zealand is at the forefront of developing the new Organisation, with the Interim Secretariat of SPRFMO being established in Wellington earlier this year. New Zealand also chairs the Science Working Group.” | <urn:uuid:804c5095-d51d-4104-b854-6781bd0f5c11> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fish.govt.nz/en-nz/Press/Press+Releases+2008/March+2008/sprfmo.htm?wbc_purpose=basic+and+8 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946547 | 667 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Brandeis University dishonors its name
September 24, 2008
by Nat Hentoff
For years, I have reported on many cases of college and university administrators infected with "political correctness," punishing students and faculty members for allegedly prejudicial and otherwise "offensive" remarks - as if there were a constitutional right not to be offended. I have now found the most outrageous case of all.
At Brandeis University in Massachusetts, professor Donald Hindley - on the faculty for 48 years - teaches a course on Latin American politics. Last fall, he described how Mexican migrants to the United States used to be discriminatorily called "wetbacks." An anonymous student complained to the administration, accusing Hindley of using prejudicial language - the first complaint against him in 48 years.
After an investigation, during which Hindley was not told the nature of the complaint, Brandeis Provost Marty Krauss informed Hindley that "The University will not tolerate inappropriate, racial and discriminatory conduct by members of its faculty." A corollary accusation was that students suffered "significant emotional trauma" when exposed to such a term.
An administration monitor was assigned to his class. Threatened with "termination," Hindley was ordered to take a sensitivity-training class. With no charges against him, no evidence of misconduct given him and no hearing, he refused - in the spirit of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, for whom this university is named.
A passionate protector of freedom of expression in a series of seminal Supreme Court opinions, Brandeis wrote in Whitney v. California (1972): "Those who won independence believed ... that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are ... indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth."
The Brandeis Faculty Senate - joined by Brandeis's Committee on Faculty Rights and Responsibilities - objected to this assault on elementary fairness and academic freedom. So did the Massachusetts affiliate of the ACLU, and in what would have greatly pleased Justice Brandeis, so did the university's student newspaper, "The Hoot," declaring:
"The administration's instant punitive response made Hindley's guilt a foregone conclusion. ... With this kind of an approach, how will the University attract the high caliber professors who will be able to give the incoming classes of students the education they deserve? How will it draw students who want a free and open academic environment?"
Hindley tells me that despite the response of the faculty Senate and the committee on faculty rights, individual tenured members of his department, though outraged, would not stand up publicly on his behalf. One of them explained to him, "I'm about to retire." He and others fear retaliation.
I first heard about this dishonoring of the name of Brandeis University from FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, where I'm on the board of advisers but never have time to attend any meetings. FIRE has advocated, and sometimes litigates for, the free-speech rights of students and professors across all ideologies and beliefs - showing, as Justice Brandeis said, that "sunlight is the best disinfectant."
Notwithstanding the indignation on campus, and elsewhere, on how this university, despite its name, has harassed Hindley as if he were a danger to what Provost Marty Kraus accusatorily describe as "the welfare of the University's students," the administration remains certain it is acting in the best interests of its students - present and future.
Indeed, this January, Krauss actually wrote Hindley - not with a pledge to give him a fair hearing, let alone an apology, but with this imperial statement: "I trust (by now) you understand your responsibilities regarding the University's policies on nondiscrimination and harassment. The University now considers this matter closed."
No, it isn't. Says Adam Kissel, director's of FIRE's Individual Rights Defense Program: "Brandeis has yet to explain how administrators could have so grossly misinterpreted normal classroom speech as 'harassment.' FIRE will pursue this matter until Brandeis finally applies basic standards of academic freedom and fair procedures to Donald Hindley's case."
So will I. Before writing this column, I left a message for Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz (781-736-3001) asking for his response. My call has not been returned. If Louis Brandeis were still here, I am sure he would call Reinharz instantly - and would get a response. How I would like to hear that conversation!
Said Justice Brandeis: "It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears." And from undereducated college administrators?
Are any of the trustees of Brandeis University at all concerned with restoring its good and once-honored name? FIRE has written to each of the 45 trustees. There has been only one response, saying that the matter is being handled "competently."
- Brandeis University dishonors its name, PDF, 43.6 KB , WorldNetDaily | <urn:uuid:8baf7e5a-c263-40bf-9edb-9f3423346f91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thefire.org/index.php/article/9719.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962706 | 1,035 | 1.710938 | 2 |
There are two types of anatomical changes (restriction and malabsorption) created by weight loss surgery. Restriction limits or reduces the stomach volume and malabsorption separates the small intestines into two separate channels. For the past forty years each one of these methods has been applied alone or in combination. Currently, all operations create restriction by making a small stomach pouch. Two operations (Vertical Gastrectomy and adjustable gastric banding) utilize only restriction whereas the other two procedures (Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass and the Duodenal Switch) utilize both restriction and malabsorption (hybrid procedures).
This year, we have started placing a new type of adjustable band- the Realize band. Patients who are interested in only restrictive procedures, will now need to be and understand their three choices: the Lap-band system, the RealizeBand™ and the Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy. All of these operations have been present in various forms and techniques for almost 20 years. The lap-band system was first placed in Belgium in 1994 and was FDA approved in the United States in 2001. Our earliest experience with this band dates to the FDA trials in 1998. The Realize band, formerly the Swedish Band (Obtech), was purchased by Johnson & Johnson, then FDA approved in 2007.
Adjustable gastric banding has been used in Europe, Central America and Australia since 1990. To date, more than 400,000 procedures have been performed worldwide. Banding is generally performed in an outpatient setting or only requires an overnight stay in the hospital. Insurance companies do tend to authorize both gastric bands if the patient BMI is greater than 35 Kg/M2. Banding has been shown to be safe and effective enough in medical studies to gain FDA approval. We have found it extremely useful for people who either do not wish to permanently alter their anatomy or who are higher risk patients (many other medical problems or older age groups). It does tend to have slower weight loss, 1-2 pounds per week, and overall less weight loss when compared to other procedures.
Both lapband surgery and Realize band surgery work by creating a point of narrowing at the top of the stomach. There is an inner balloon on the band that can be inflated and thus function to narrow the top of the stomach as needed. Adjustments, also called band fills, and can be done in the clinic. The main difference between the bands is in the design of the balloon. The Lapband ballon is a high pressure, low volume balloon and functions as a more rigid ring. The Realize band is a high volume, low pressure and functions as a less rigid, more weighted ring. The 3 year weight loss results from the FDA trials show that they are similar with 40% excess weight loss being reported.
The other restrictive option that many of our patients seek is the Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy. This is a stapling procedure and a significant portion of the stomach is removed. It does not have an intestinal bypass, so many patients will choose this procedure as it avoids a bypass yet gives similar weight loss as the bypass procedures.
To date, we have performed and actively follow up on almost 2,000 patients with these three operations. We urge anyone considering weight loss surgery to contact us for further information. We understand that all patients seeking lap band weight loss surgery are in a “research” mode and may not be able to obtain accurate information. Our highest priority is patient education and providing accurate information.
Paul Cirangle, MD
Director, Bariatric Surgery at California Pacific Medical Center | <urn:uuid:15e77424-865d-41a7-b711-ddd42bbbc94c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lapsf.com/blog/?p=58 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94686 | 732 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Serving up all the latest food news, cool foodie products, gossip, and good deals that are fit to print!
State Department Enlists American Chefs to Join First Chef Corps
Look out, world! The American government put together an army of chefs! The newly established American Chef Corps will attempt to foster international diplomacy through food.
According to the Washington Post, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton enlisted more than 80 chefs to join forces as the first American Chef Corps. Clinton believes strongly in the use of food as a way of helping people come together.
The new Chef Corps are a group of chefs from all over the U.S. who will be called upon to help prepare meals for dignitaries, travel to U.S. embassies, or host chefs from around the globe at their restaurants across the country. The focus on food is a way of using, "every diplomatic tool at our disposal," stated Capricia Penavic, Marshall U.S. Chief of Protocol.
This is not the first time that Clinton's team has sought to use food in a particular manner. Instead of serving traditional French fine-dining fare to those visiting the U.S., the State Department often makes a statement with its meals. Chinese-American Chef Ming Tsai was hired to create a fusion menu of Chinese and American food when the Chinese Vice President, Xi Jinping, was in town. Additionally, British-born chef April Bloomfield was hired to feed Prime Minister David Cameron.
Marshall explained, "by incorporating elements of our visitor's culture, we can demonstrate respect and a desire to connect and engage." The State Department takes this philosophy a step further by offering guests snacks or tea that mimic flavors from home.
Chefs who have prepared a diplomatic meal are being named State Chefs and given special navy chef's coats complete with the American flag and their names written in gold. Big names in food, such as Bryan Voltaggio, Rick Bayless, Jose Andres, and Mike Isabella, are all joining the ranks, hoping to assist their country by way of food.
Do you think that food can help foster diplomacy? What do you think of the newly founded Chefs Corps?
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Jones Beach State Park
Located 20 miles from New York City on a barrier island off Long Island’s southern coast, this state park was conceived by Robert Moses as the highlight of an extensive network of interconnected parks and parkways. The 2,400-acre park’s signature feature is the 6.5-mile white-sand beach, intended to provide city residents with healthful outdoor recreation in a quiet, clean, and safe environment. Opened in 1929, Jones Beach was the first public beach created to provide resort-like activities for ordinary people.
As president of the Long Island State Park Commission, Moses oversaw a massive land acquisition campaign and major infrastructural projects that involved dredging sand from the State Boat Channel to create Jones Island; raising the island to 14-feet above sea level; spanning it with Ocean Parkway; and linking it to the mainland via causeways. Moses visualized the park’s general plan and directed the commission’s design team, which included chief architect and engineer Earle Andrews, landscape architect Clarence C. Coombs, chief engineer Arthur Howland, and engineer Herbert Magoon. Collectively, they created a Beaux-Arts landscape design and Art Deco architecture with a nautically-themed decorative program, bringing a level of order and a revolutionary sophistication to beach park design.
Jones Beach State Park features a two-mile boardwalk and two vast bathhouses with swimming pools which flank the entrance and central campanile-like water tower. Jones Beach never permitted carnival amusements, but contains athletic fields, baseball diamonds, tennis and volleyball courts, and an amphitheater. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. | <urn:uuid:6f879d75-4c8a-400c-b413-25ec6822f658> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tclf.org/landscapes/jones-beach-state-park | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944465 | 348 | 2.90625 | 3 |
The building consists of three stacked, orthogonal volumes with glazed opposite sides.
The western facade is shaded by opaque, concrete walls.
Photographs are by Francisco Lubbert and Jorge Cajiga.
Here are some further details from the architects:
The site is located at a suburban lot of a middle size city in northern Mexico. As one drives towards it and away from the city, the building appears aligned with the road as an arched gate of a medieval town: looking through it one gets the scenery of the rural fields that surround the city.
The building was conceived as a frame that captures part of the landscape and at the same time defines a plane that divides the intercity from the suburbs. The skin of the building plays a dual role: on one hand it is the transparent material that allows the view through it, and on the other hand, it is the opaque continuous skin that defines the shape of the frame and protects the interior from solar irradiance.
This skin was manipulated in order to differentiate the public space from the internal activities of the company: the main reception and the custumer rooms are outside the envelope raised above the ground as a Piano Nobile and organized as self defined entities.
The operation space is contained within the envelope and flows throughout the building in a three dimensional open plan that honors the hierarchical organization of the company. In order to solve the continuity of the circulation the mass of the building was divided in various transversal slices, each presenting an intentionally different profile and two of them defining the geometry of the north and south elevations.
The sequential juncture of all the slices creates deviations and convergences between the internal operational route and the external costumer route.
The geometry of the volume is shaped according to a juxtaposition of three rotated orthogonal axis structures.
This was primarily done in an effort to recreate the space complexity produced by a urban grid designed in the style of the 18th century.
The west elevation also benefits from the rotated planes by casting shades onto itself and minimizing direct sun exposure.
The rule was meant to be broken at the main entrance where the opaque skin suddenly sift direction to frame a cantilevered volume that flies above the portico.
This creates a gesture of urban scale to emphasize the hierarchy of the entrance and contain the atrium of the building prior to the stair flight.
Location: Delicias City, Chihuahua, Mexico.
Use: Office Building
Size: 15,134 Sq ft.
Design Period: 2005
Completion Period: 2008
Project Name: Darcons Headquarters
Chief Architect: Jorge Cajiga, Raúl Rodríguez, Roberto Villarreal, Reyes Baeza
Design Office: Arquitectura en Proceso
Client: Darcons Construction Company
Structural Design - Estructuristas y Consultores
Project Managment - Urbanismo y Edificación Mexicana
Structural Engineering: EASA construcciones
Photography: Francisco Lubbert, Jorge Cajiga | <urn:uuid:91300a7e-60aa-4c5d-97ba-084c05788124> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dezeen.com/2009/06/21/darcons-headquarters-by-arquitectura-en-proceso/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919714 | 631 | 2.09375 | 2 |
The world’s governments and economists are now catching up with what this blog – and, indeed, practically any entrepreneur – could have told them months ago: recession is upon us.
However, this is not necessarily being negative. Every cloud has a silver lining and one man’s threat is another man’s opportunity.
There is money to be made in recession. Indeed, some businesses make more in “bad years” than good.
Of course, it helps to be in the right business. It may be difficult to get into it at short notice, but here are just some ideas of businesses that have little to fear from the dreaded r-word:
1 Insolvency practitioners and debt collectors – obviously
2 Lawyers and accountants – who find that there is as much work in break-ups as start-ups, and who are usually good at making sure that they get paid
3 Businesses with government contracts – who enjoy the nearest thing to immunity from recession because government spending rarely stops just because the poor taxpayer is hurting
4 Businesses with cash reserves – who can buy assets while they are at their cheapest
5 Businesses that are strong enough to survive the recession while their competitors go under
Recession is like a forest fire: it looks horrible, and it feels worse if you are caught in it, but one may be necessary from time to time if the environment as a whole is to thrive. | <urn:uuid:40616fdf-0a83-4696-958a-d582164b4ebc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.myobpod.com/blog/post/5-WAYS-TO-MAKE-MONEY-IN-A-RECESSION.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979629 | 294 | 1.6875 | 2 |
We have much to celebrate on the occasion of World Environment Day. We can be especially motivated by a fast-expanding environmental and social justice movement in civil society, says Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International.
We're at a critical stage in our journey as activists. As a movement we're easy targets, and we've endured all manner of strife along the way. Today in many countries we face serious political and legal challenges, designed to punish and discourage dissent; designed to have a deliberate 'chilling' effect. At such times I am greatly encouraged by those who refuse to be bowed or deterred. I think of Gandhi, whose campaign mantra keeps us warm and resolute: 'First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.'
Today, on World Environment Day, I'd like to pause and reflect on where we are as a united effort, that in my view, is still standing ever strong. On what do I base such a claim, which I know some would dispute? Well, echoing Gandhi, Salvador Dali once said, "the thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents." In recent months, our offices - and staff - in Korea, Mexico, Indonesia, Canada and India have been unduly harassed, attacked and intimidated by local authorities. We expect these waves; in our line of work we're even conditioned to them, but we're also galvanized by them. History has taught us at least that lesson about repression.
In Canada, this April, we were labeled "terrorists" and "white supremacists" by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, with a vow by the government promising more red tape and audits funded by taxpayers to intimidate groups like ours. In Korea, in April this year when I arrived with our East Asia Executive Director Mario Damato to meet the Mayor of Seoul, he and two other colleagues were denied entry and deported without explanation. Our work in Fukushima providing independent radiation monitoring and opposition to nuclear expansion were obviously so great a threat that some of us had to be excluded.
India is a country that proudly lays claim to being the world's largest democracy, but Greenpeace India Executive Director Samit Aich paints a picture of corporations and industry regularly usurping the democratic agenda. The state machinery has moved frequently against us; our invited Japanese guest, Maya Kobayashi, due to share experiences of nuclear fallout, had her visa cancelled this February. More recently, tax officials turned up to inspect our offices on very tenuous grounds, a clear act of intimidation.
If the level of fight we are experiencing from some Governments is any measure, I know we're doing very well indeed, that we'll continue to strengthen our resolve - and that in some ways we're about to win. The fact is, we have much to celebrate on the occasion of this World Environment Day. We can be especially motivated by a fast expanding environmental and social justice movement in civil society.
World Environment Day is a good time for taking stock but it is also a time to be inspired. There are many people who provide that inspiration and here are just a few I am proud to stand beside: | <urn:uuid:249e361a-055b-4849-937c-f7f3cd7ff87c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-06-05/the-good-earth/32055019_1_world-environment-day-gandhi-canada-and-india | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97266 | 646 | 2 | 2 |
Goodstein to discuss 'Climate Change Avatars'
Posted: March 15, 2012
LEWISBURG, Pa. — Environmental educator Eban Goodstein will visit Bucknell University Monday, March 26, to lead two discussions about environmental sustainability.
Both events, which are free and open to the public, are sponsored by the Bucknell University Environmental Center (BUEC).
An economist and author, Goodstein is director of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy and director of two national educational initiatives on global warming. He was the driving force behind "Focus the Nation," the largest teach-in in U.S. history.
The environmental educator believes the best hope to avert eco-disaster lies in deploying a new generation of leaders for sustainability who understand the urgency of making major changes in the next decade, early in their professional careers.
Goodstein will participate in the BUEC Lunch Bag Series, "Futures in Environmental Sustainability," from noon to 1 p.m. in the Environmental Center, located across from the Observatory. He will discuss preparing for and developing a career in sustainability, including graduate school opportunities. Participants are invited to bring lunch; light snacks and beverages are provided.
Goodstein also will present the talk, "Climate Change Avatars: Building a Leadership Career in Sustainability," in the Gallery Theatre of the Elaine Langone Center at 4 p.m.
During his presentation, Goodstein will outline the challenges and timelines of climate crisis and provide solutions that focus on promoting professional careers with sustainability at their core.Contact: Division of Communications
Next story >> | <urn:uuid:c72e5ae0-3ec2-4691-a322-f6b054d18eee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bucknell.edu/x75171.xml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955649 | 324 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Page:Melbourne and Mars.djvu/40
MELBOURNE AND MARS.
appears as a solid gem; electricity is the force that welds the ten billion suns into that solid.
Ever since human life began to be civilised men have been trying to harness the various forms of force. The winds, falling water, steam, have all in turn played their part, and are still used in some places and for some purpose. I have no need to show how each of these are merely protean forms of the same face.
For several thousands of years we used these as our motive powers, and our world grew civilised and populous during this period. For some hundreds of years in the latter part of this time we used electricity. First it was a plaything of scientists, and then it began to he used as a messenger over the lands and under the seas. It was not long before we found that it could be made to carry and record sounds, and he would let us hear the voices of the long since departed. At this time it came into use as an illuminator, and the world became brilliant with the electric light.
Invention succeeded invention until steam was superseded as a motive power, and electricity had taken its place on sea and on land. To provide electricity winds, tides, falling waters and melting snows were all laid under contribution, and force was often carried by wire and used hundreds of miles from where it was generated. On the great plains where water had but little fall, and where the winds could not be relied upon, steam was used to generate electric force in great dynamos. This tended to rapidly use up all our combustible minerals, all surface combustibles having been used up long before. Peat, brown coal, lignite, oil shale, hard coal, bitumen, and such soft limestone as would burn with other substances hut not alone, got used up in turn, and our vast population of three thousand millions of people were brought face to face with one of the greatest problems that ever a mass of human beings were called upon to solve, viz., how to generate heat to cook their food and keep themselves alive on the surface of a cool planet without the aid of combustible materials.
A great inventor found out the method of releasing electrical force in slower vibrations, so that heat instead of light was produced; but at first there was little gain in this transaction, for the electricity itself had frequently to be produced by steam power. The gain was more apparent when wind and water were utilised. Millions of people felt relief when they could make their light into a fire hot enough to cook with, or into a nonradient warmth that made the winter temperature of their rooms something like pleasant.There were still great districts in the north and south where neither fuel nor water-power were available, and the inhabitants were put to sore straits. Those who could left their homes and spent the winter in tropical regions, but the whole population could not migrate. In some instances a community would take possession of a dry cavern, store it with provisions, and spend | <urn:uuid:c9caf784-be8b-4309-ab7a-79bf0c2772fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Melbourne_and_Mars.djvu/40 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983206 | 634 | 2.734375 | 3 |
This semester I have been participating in an online chat #makthinkvis with @lizdk and others addressing the book Making Thinking Visible by Ritchart, Church, et al. Its been very challenging at times-pushing me think outisde my norm for ways to integrate these thinking routines into my instruction. As well as causing me to step outside my comfort zone as I attempt to put them into action.
I had intended to blog about my experiences and reflections as I’ve tried these thinking routines, however, time seems to evade me. Hopefully, I can find time here and there before the end of the semester to get a few things shared.
As we finished up chapter 7 this past week, one idea from page 243 keeps coming to mind. A key force that shapes the culture of thinking is the environment. Sure, we all come in our classrooms, organizing, putting some thought into the layout, neat desk (maybe on open house night, but definitely not now for me), where/how papers are turned in, supplies, flow of the room, etc.
But if someone walked in my classroom, after hours, empty of students, no teacher around, what would serve as evidence of learning/thinking? How much could you discern about the thinking and learning that goes on in my classroom just by stepping inside?
Sure, they may see an agenda and “I can” statements posted daily – but is that evidence of student thinking/learning?
What is hanging on my walls? And who put it there?
What does the room arrangement say about student interactions?
Where is my desk? Can this indicate anything about our learning environment?
If there is nothing on my walls, what does that communicate?
If you knew nothing about me, but you walked in my classroom – I wonder…
What you would see? What would you notice?
What do you think is going on?
What does it make you wonder? What questions do you want to ask?
What does it say about about me as a teacher, about the learning opportunities I provide my students?
I wonder what evidence of thinking and learning you might find…
Pictures to come later…I invite you back to step inside my classroom soon! | <urn:uuid:b49978b3-df31-4e8d-af47-ad3a4b2a432c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pamjwilson.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/environment-shaping-a-culture-of-thinking-makthinkvis/ | 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 | 0.975155 | 462 | 1.84375 | 2 |
I asked Haraki. I love his response...
First, some important elements that I think important for garments....
1) good pattern
2) good material
3) good sewing
Triple works means these 3 elements always make our garment right. I think it's important.
Also, like the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in Christianity, in the East, there is an idea of three element making this world - heaven, earth and man.
This idea is from ancient times. So I named triple works. | <urn:uuid:82885de9-d97f-455c-8c1f-9e8d691faa1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ironheart.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=3216.msg172437 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932837 | 109 | 1.5625 | 2 |
With so many factors to consider—health, environmental impact, cost, taste—choosing healthy foods can seem like a mission impossible. Enter the Good Food on a Tight Budget guide from the Environmental Working Group (EWG). This brand new guide, which helps you buy the most budget-friendly, super-healthy eats, comes from the same group that brought us the Dirty Dozen (a compendium of the fruits and vegetables with the most pesticides).
To compile this budget guide, which you can find at ewg.org, the EWG analyzed over 1,000 foods, first ranking them for how nutritious they are and then screening them for cost. Foods that scored high marks were then further screened for three more factors: pesticides, packaging chemicals and how much they were processed. The guide is a handy reminder that a healthy diet can be affordable when you focus on whole, unprocessed foods.
Here are the “best buys” or the most affordable, nutritious options in each food group:
Must-Read: 12 Superfoods for $1 or Less
These fruits offer the most vitamin C, fiber, folate and potassium for the lowest cost:
• Orange juice
(Just a reminder: the majority of your daily recommended fruit intake should come from whole fruit, not juice.)
Eating vegetables from a spectrum of colors helps you get a nice variety of nutrients. The EWG reminds us that 7 out of 10 Americans don’t eat enough vegetables. Up your intake with these choices:
• Dark Green: Broccoli (frozen tends to be a cheaper buy), collards, romaine lettuce, mustard greens and parsley.
• Red/Orange: Calabaza (Spanish pumpkin), carrots and tomato juice were the best buys here. (Again, the majority of your daily vegetable intake should come from whole vegetables, not juice.)
• Starchy: Potatoes.
Think beyond bread and other more processed grains, such as pasta, for this category.
• Breakfast Cereal: Puffed corn and toasted oat cereal were the EWG’s best buys.
• Rice & Other Grains: Barley is the “best buy” pick in this category. It’s a relatively quick-cooking whole grain that makes a great addition to soups or can stand in as an alternative to rice in pilaf.
This list is a good reminder that there are many healthy options out there. Take advantage of the variety and get cooking!
• Seafood: Perch, tuna, squid, whiting or silver hake. The EWG recommends limiting perch and tuna to just once a month to limit exposure to mercury and other contaminants, a more stringent guideline than that suggested by the FDA.
• Beans & More: The most common beans made the list as best buys—black beans, black-eyed peas, chickpeas, lentils, pinto and red kidney beans. And with good reason: they’re high in protein and fiber and deliver a decent amount of iron. Eggs also fit the bill as a best buy.
• Nuts & Seeds: Hazelnuts, peanuts (roasted and unsalted), sunflower seeds and walnuts made the list. Walnuts are a particularly good choice, offering heart-healthy omega-3 fats.
• Meat: Turkey—don’t save turkey just for Thanksgiving. It’s a bargain year-round, says the EWG.
• Milk: Low-fat and nonfat dry milk are the best buys. Regular (fluid) low fat or nonfat milk are still a thrifty choice, according to the EWG, but not a “best buy.”
• Cheese: Cottage cheese, queso fresco and ricotta are the best buys in the cheese department.
• Yogurt: Nonfat plain yogurt is the only option in this category. The EWG recommends sweetening it with fresh fruit (so do I).
Cooking Fats & Oils
• Canola, corn and soybean oil are the best buys on the EWG’s list.
Recipes to Try: Healthy Weeknight Dinners for $3 or Less
Photo Credit: Environmental Working Group
What favorite healthy foods do you consider a good value? Tell us what you think below. | <urn:uuid:6a25eef4-194f-4cf2-b8e8-f4bca6d6b042> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eatingwell.com/blogs/food_news_blog/best_healthy_foods_to_buy_on_a_tight_budget | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912732 | 895 | 2.875 | 3 |
AUGUSTA, Mont. - Locals call it "the Front," a name that conjures up a battleline between armies. But for now, the fight is over between environmentalists who want to protect the wildlife that flourishes here, and oil and gas executives who want to drill for up to 3.6 trillion cubic-feet of natural gas that may be buried here (HCN, 6/26/95).
The victors, according to Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisor Gloria Flora, are the many Americans who demanded protection for the area.
"It's time for everyone to sit back and say, 'Gee, we've been working for decades to protect the Rocky Mountain Front and, by George, we did it,'" Flora said.
"We're ecstatic," said Gene Sentz, a Choteau, Mont., resident and longtime fighter against industrializing the Front.
In a final environmental impact statement issued Sept. 23, Flora approved no gas or oil leasing along her forest's section of the Overthrust Belt, a geological formation that runs under the mountains from Glacier National Park to Yellowstone National Park.
In that portion of the Front, stark, jagged peaks dramatically thrust out of the prairie, attracting many tourists and hikers. The area is home to a diverse collection of wildlife, including the last remnant of plains grizzly bears. Thousand of hunters flock to the Front every autumn.
For decades, the grandeur of the Front's massive granite walls deterred most development here. But with the booming Waterton gas field to the north in Alberta, Canada, Montana wildcatters wanted to see what's hidden in their section of the Overthrust Belt.
Gail Abercrombie, head of the Montana Petroleum Association, called the decision not to lease, "unfortunate." "
"We know that there is the potential on the Front for one or more gas fields with the production capacity of the Waterton field in Canada," " she said. "The revenues to the state and schools over the life of such a field would be in excess of a billion dollars and the land disturbance would be less than one half of 1 percent of the forest's 1.2 million acres." "
Flora's decision came as a surprise to many environmentalists, since originally she had leaned toward allowing some restricted leasing. Alternative 7 would have banned wildcatters from setting up rigs along a mile-wide corridor of national forest land abutting the Front, and stretching 70 miles north and south. But they would have been able to put rigs on adjacent private lands, drilling at an angle to reach oil or gas under public lands.
Also, at some locations - such as Blackleaf Canyon, northwest of Choteau, and Elk Creek and Cuniff Basin, outside Augusta - wildcatters could have explored along a one-mile corridor bordering existing roads.
Now that's out of the question, although a few existing leases in some drainages will not be affected.
Oil and gas companies claim that modern drilling technology can extract gas with minimal environmental harm. But Flora said she thought the 50-50 chance of striking paydirt was not worth the risk at a time when there is already plenty of natural gas available.
Mark Good of the Montana Wilderness Association, which has appealed many Forest Service decisions during the last decade, said of this one: "We're delighted. I think we dodged a bullet because of broad-based public support. It seems as if the Forest Service is actually following its original mandate to protect wildlife and wildlands legacy."
It is true that many Montanans cherish the Front. Despite the allure of potential jobs and state revenues generated by the gas industry, a dramatic majority of Montanans polled by the Great Falls Tribune in September said they wanted the Front left alone. Fifty-two percent opposed drilling, while 24 percent favored it. The rest hadn't made up their minds.
In her record of decision, Flora wrote that many people from around the country contacted her to "express heartfelt emotions about a place they considered special." " That helped her make the decision, she said.
If not reversed through the appeal process, the decision will stand for at least 10 years, the normal run for a forest planning cycle.
If conditions have changed at that time - a national security crisis emerges or a new drilling technology is developed - then the forest supervisor could take another look at the issues.
Flora expected more support for her original plan to allow restricted leasing, but says she's more than satisfied with the outcome.
"I'm happy," " she said. "This makes me feel good." "
Mark Matthews writes in Missoula, Montana.
You can ...
- Write the Montana Wilderness Association at P.O. Box 635. Helena, MT 59624 (406/443-7350), or,
- Write Lewis and Clark National Forest at 1101 15th St. North, P.O. Box 869, Great Falls, MT, 59403 (406/791-7700).
- Contact the Montana Petroleum Association at P.O. Box 1186, Helena, MT 59624-1186 (406/442-7582). | <urn:uuid:6a83b8b9-27de-4618-b588-90b000c76790> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hcn.org/issues/116/3711 | 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 | 0.954453 | 1,074 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Your Health: The Vectra System
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Twenty-two-year-old Whitney Herrick says she hasn’t been happy with her nose since middle school. She doesn’t think it fits her face, which is why she is talking to plastic surgeon Jennifer Walden about getting a new nose.
Before Whitney goes under the knife, she gets a snapshot of how she could look. A software called Vectra system shows Whitney what her new nose will look like in 3D.
“From that image I can morph or change things on the patient’s anatomy whether it’s the nose, or the breasts, or the torso or the face,” Walden said.
Before Vectra, patients could only see their new look with a flat, 2D image. This system shows the whole thing back, front and side to side.
“There are some limitations to the software imaging and there are some limitations to what we can do with a scalpel, but it will look somewhat close to what we can do with surgery,” Walden said.
For Whitney, it’s the best thing yet for a glimpse of a new nose, and makes the decision for surgery a bit less painful.
Dr. Walden is the only plastic surgeon in Austin using the Spectra 3D system. Click here for more information. | <urn:uuid:08834c59-1f43-449b-ac27-435e90d2f652> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://austin.ynn.com/content/health/289053/your-health---the-vectra-system | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927978 | 313 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Applied University Research, Inc. (AUR, website: www.aurinc.com) was founded in 1973 by Dr. Roger L. Simpson with the goal to develop unique, state-of-the-art instrumentation systems that deliver real information to understand tough fluid flow problems. Since that time, Dr. Simpson has continuously conducted cutting-edge research to develop and apply the most capable laser Doppler turbulence instrumentation systems in the world. AUR now offers to share some of this extensive experience in solving real-problems to help tackle tough flow and flow-instrumentation problems facing researchers today.
In addition to our laser instrumentation expertise, AUR has capabilities for complex flow modeling and experimental validation using proprietary turbulent flow simulation software and our mobile aerodynamic test facility. Please contact AUR’s VP for Research and Development, Todd Lowe (email: firstname.lastname@example.org), with your water or air flow applications.
Barrel Cave Wines
Barrel Cave Wines is an online retailer of specialty wines from across the globe. Barrel Cave
Wines has a website currently under construction at www.barrelcavewines.com. Please contact
email@example.com until the completion of the website.
Blue Ridge Satellite
Blue Ridge Satellite joined the Center in September 2008. Greg McCracken, Owner/Installer, started the business as a home-based business in December 2003, providing Dish Network as the sole satellite system. During the next several years, the company continued focusing on Dish Network as their primary product and numerous successes were achieved. In 2006, the company added Wildblue Satellite Internet to their product line and Tracy Shelton was brought in as a partner. During 2007, Blue Ridge Satellite established an office and brought on DIRECTV to their product line. As the company continues to expand Blue Ridge Satellite will continue to position itself in the commercial market place.
The company has leased approximately 240 square feet of office space in the Center, conducting business operations. Blue Ridge Satellite continues to help the Center increase visibility throughout the Region. To learn more about the products provided by Blue Ridge Satellite, please contact Tracy Shelton or Greg McCracken at (540) 633-0797 or send an email to firstname.lastname@example.org for further information.
Electrical & Control Solutions, LLC
Electrical & Control Solutions, LLC was formed to serve industry with electrical, automation,
and control services, which include: complete system design, programming (both PLC and HMI), system modification, upgrades, custom control system panel building installation and
commissioning, and several other services. Electrical & Control Solutions can be contacted at email@example.com.
Emisshield is thin film, ceramic nanoparticle material with high emissivity and heat re-radiation capabilities. The core technology of Emisshield was originally developed by NASA to be used as the heat shield for the X-33 and X-34 Space Planes. After a license for the technology was secured from NASA, intense efforts by the Virginia Tech’s Center for Adhesion and Sealant Sciences, combined with extensive research and development, resulted in 20+ Emisshield products ready for sale in today’s market.
Emisshield products optimize heat applications by changing basic system physics and enabling positive improvements in any combustion or energy transfer. This technology can be used on existing or new materials utilized in all combustion processes including metals, refractory, ceramics and high technology fabrics. The optimization provided by Emisshield can provide significant improvement in most energy consuming, producing, or related heat systems. For further information, visit www.emisshield.com.
Enertronics is working on next generation electronic products for renewable energy and utility grid applications. At its initial R & D stage, prototypes of utility scale transformer and electric vehicle fast chargers have been developed for field testing.
The Company has teamed with major utilities and equipment manufactures to continue the development and testing. For further information, please contact firstname.lastname@example.org.
Hall and Sons Developers, Inc.
Hall and Sons moved into a small office
with expectations of needing more space. The developers are currently
removing timber from a lot across from the Center in preparation for the
start of construction of a new restaurant. In addition, they have plans
for other commercial projects in the future. For futher information, please
call Mark Hall at (540) 633-6772.
Joined the Center in September 2009 and occupies 1900 square foot of space. INTER Materials, LLC, is a small company incorporated in Richmond, Virginia, with two major SBIR Phase II Research & Development programs: 1) Development of a low cost manufacturing process for thermoplastic matrix ballistic helmets for the US Army, and 2) Development of a scratch and abrasion resistant coating for polymer windscreens for rotary wind aircraft for the US Army SOCOM. For further information, please contact (804) 378-6034.
Mobile Medical Diagnostic
Services of New River Valley, LLC
has as its purpose to serve the community’s diagnostic needs for
Mobile X-ray and EKG studies. As an extension of a national corporation,
MMDS, Intl., headquartered in Kingsport, Tennessee, the firm currently
employs mobile units which house an array of technologically advanced
and patented equipment to achieve this function. The equipment in the
units is highly mobile and is used to provide diagnostic procedures for
patients without being removed from the familiar and comfortable surroundings
of their home or nursing facility. This service eliminates the inconvenience
and stress of dislocating patients from surroundings in order to have
image procedures performed. Research has shown that patients, families
and medical care givers alike, list the difficulties associated with dislocating
patients, as a major problem. In addition to this trauma, there is the
increased risk of causing additional medical complications, especially
since many geriatric patients are more fragile and prone to injury. Call
them at (540) 633-6760 for services!
Formed in 2010, the owner of MS Contracting, Mike Sayers, saw a hole to fill in the construction industry. MSC specializes in demolition, grading, site preparation and utility installation. Being licensed, bonded and fully insured, MSC can be the main contractor for your project. For additional information, call Mike at 540-605-0604.
New River Security Investigations
New River Security & Investigations, Inc. (NRSI), a diversified outsourcing services company based in Wytheville, Virginia, was formed in 1986 expressly for the purpose of providing a variety of quality security support and investigative services for personal, corporate, non-profit and government organizations. NRSI professionals are specifically trained in state of the art surveillance equipment to obtain and document the evidence their clients require. Their services include
Employee/Employment Background Investigations
Internal Covert Investigations
Vehicular Accident & Reconstruction by Court Certified Experts
For more information, please contact Frankie Scott at FScott@nrsiinc.com, ( 276) 228-7632 or visit www.nrsiinc.com.
RBI Builders joined the Business Center in April 2012 and is owned and operated by Randy Burdette. Randy is a Class A Contractor, Licensed and Insured in Virginia. Randy studied building construction at Virginia Tech and has been building homes since 1987. RBI's mission is to make building your dream home, remodeling, or renovating your home a pleasing experience. The team at RBI Builders will guide you through the many steps, listen to your requests, and make sure the project meets your demands. RBI Builders places a focus on detail to ensure quality that you can be proud of. For further information, contact Randy at (540) 639-1310 or visit www.rbibuilders.biz.
20, 2004, Safe Water Incorporated (SWI) is a water analysis and research
corporation, that provides bacteriological testing services for drinking
water, and wastewater as a Virginia State certified laboratory. The services
are offered to residents/homeowners as well as public waterworks owners. The Company intends to expand
its services as it grows, and to pursue research opportunities
in drinking water and wastewater monitoring through funding by governmental
and/or private agencies.
The mission of SWI is to
provide the community with high quality scientific services at minimum
possible cost. Customer satisfaction is their number one priority. They
expect profits, but only from work that satisfies customer needs and benefits
Sample collection bottles can be picked up
at New River Valley Competitiveness Center (NRVCC) main Lobby, or mailed
to your address. Samples for testing can be mailed to: SWI, 6580 Valley
Center Drive, Box 16, Radford, VA 24141; or delivered (Monday-Friday: 8:00
a.m. - 4:00 p.m.) to SWI collection box at New River Valley Competitiveness
Center’s main Lobby. In most cases results will be ready a day after
samples are received. Samples must be received by SWI within 24 hours of
collection. For further information, contact safewater
at (540)633-6739, email email@example.com, or visit www.safewaterinc.com.
Adam Thompson opened this franchise in
September 2005 to provide janitorial service to businesses throughout
Southwest Virginia. They currently lease storage space and will have an
office by the beginning of 2006 and also have first refusal on a 125 square
foot space. For further information, please call (540) 381-0757.
TPG Staffing, a division of The Prillaman Group Inc., provides human resources support to businesses through applicant flow, interviewing, reference checks, assessment, and selection of candidates for the type of positions that businesses want to fill. Additional information on TPG
Staffing can be found at tpgstaffingfirm.com.
REMSI utilizescareer personnel to provide services during periods when Pulaski
County squad personnel are not available. The Training Center provides training
and continuing education for Emergency Medical Technicians throughout the
NRV. Additionally, the Center is preparing to offer both CPR and first aid
courses to local businesses and industrial facilities. For further information,
contact Joe Trigg at (540) 633-6738.
The Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM) works with local government, state and federal agencies and voluntary organizations to provide resources and expertise in four major areas: Preparedness, Response, Recovery and Mitigation. When citizens face an emergency situation, they call 911. When local governments need assistance in responding to a crisis, they call VDEM. For further information, please contact Stan Crigger (540) 831-4076 or Willie Richardson (540) 831-4075. | <urn:uuid:559f1eb5-f999-4a72-9185-4d7f78414fa9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nrvdc.org/tenants.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921634 | 2,292 | 1.617188 | 2 |
All Photos from MetropolisMetropolis > All Photos
View the latest pictures, photos and images from Metropolis - Sometime in the future, the city of Metropolis is home to a Utopian society where its wealthy residents live a carefree life. One of those is Freder Fredersen. One day, he spots a beautiful woman with a group of children, she and the children who quickly disappear. Trying to follow her, he, oblivious to such, is horrified to find an underground world of workers, apparently who run the machinery which keeps the above ground Utopian world functioning. One of the few people above ground who knows about the world below is Freder's father, Joh Fredersen, who is the founder and master of Metropolis. Freder learns that the woman is Maria, who espouses the need to join the "hands" - the workers - to the "head" - those in power above - by a mediator or the "heart". Freder wants to help the plight of the workers in the want for a better life. But when Joh learns of what Maria is espousing and that Freder is joining their cause... | <urn:uuid:7ea30c70-027f-4b67-af84-f53522e920ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/mediaindex?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938832 | 229 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Mama and a Boxer
Mary Kom earned her reputation as a boxer in the 46 kg and 48 kg categories. In the Olympics, she will have to fight in the tougher 51 kg category. She says she’s ready. In about a month from now, 5 August 2012 to be exact, Mary Kom will start the most serious quest of her sporting life—to win a medal in the London Olympics. After five world championship titles, Mary is now single-mindedly pursuing her goal to become the first female boxer from India to win an Olympic medal.
“I cannot guarantee the result, but I can guarantee my preparation,” she says. She has just finished her statutory 40 minute morning run. “I am prepared and will do all I can to win a medal for India. I had to move up two categories, from 46 kgto 48 kg, and now to the 51 kg category, to participate in the Olympics.
The boxer from Manipur is already a legend. Winner of five world championship titles and awarded the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna in July 2009, she returned from a two-year sabbatical to take a shot at the Olympics. Women’s boxing had made it to the 2012 Olympics and Mary wanted the most coveted medal of all. In the interim, she had given birth to her twins. Since her comeback, she has done everything in her capacity to prepare herself for the Olympics.
-- Text by Boria Majumdar | <urn:uuid:2c0acfac-8b66-4570-9207-d281ae5d2a51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/photographic/mama-and-a-boxer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97671 | 303 | 1.648438 | 2 |
The 1945 Model of Extraterrestrial Advanced Technology
Introduction to The Roswell Game Series
The definition of lunacy is being rigid in methodology and expecting different results. I do suspect very strongly that something strange is occurring in the atmosphere.That being said, it has been my experience, that this Roswell Game has been the greatest hindrance to the exploration of the causes of these anomalies and I also strongly suspect it is a misdirection of attention. That being said as the postulate for this series, my aim is to take the best ax I can find and smash this ridiculous obstacle into little pieces as best I can. The reader can judge for his or herself how useful this is to open up the weak foundations of "because the nebulous they said so" as the central critical assumption that is a straw dog.. The possibility that a exquisitely constructed hoax based on this premise is easy to plant and plan, based on only the utilization of self referential logic as the fulcrum of a free floating myth is more probable than the composite sum of the evidence if it is analyzed by logic rather than goofy belief systems.You might want to jump to the postscript.
The Evidence Cited is The Missing Evidence
Structures used in the structure of a spacecraft must take into account axial loading, strain, torsion, shearing, and buckling. What is the purpose of an I-Beam? Simply put the I -Beam was invented to ensure the rigidity of a engineered structure to avoid bending and shear loads in the plane of the web. On the other hand, the cross-section has a reduced capacity in the transverse direction, and is also inefficient in carrying torsion. Torsion is the action of twisting or the state of being twisted which is to be avoided to ensure the rigidity of a structure. The reported I-Beam allegedly recovered from an alien spacecraft was bendable. However once free of torsion, it would supposedly resume it's previous semi-rigid state. This is exactly what you do not want in a spacecraft. Once the torsion that occurs in flight occurs, the structural integrity is compromised, therefore the craft loses it's capability aerodynamically to fly. Did such a material exist and if so, is there any evidence beyond it's alleged existence, to support it's efficacy in the integrity of a spacecraft? The simple answer appears to be no. Ask any engineer to put a bendable metal as a support structure in a aircraft they will get a good chuckle out of your naivety.
If this is so, how did the misdirection of attention occur in the critical assumption that a bendable metal is advantageous to spacecraft and air craft design?
Because someone said it existed.
Lets discuss the reasoning behind the engraving of writing on a bendable I-Beam that is falsely or simply assumed to be a integral member to the structural integrity of a spacecraft. Is an bendable I-Beam a good location to place instructions or flight characteristics of the material if it is bendable? The critical assumption is that it was accessible to read. and was critical enough to engrave. Was this due to a recurring lapse of memory, a means to reconstruct the craft, flight instructions,? Well if it was engraved it was not graffiti. The assumption that it was engraved to be read by the flight crew must be taken into account.
Was this a necessity if they had the required navigational equipment, sensory monitoring, flight feedback and control modules? Was it a engineering post-it note?
Lets say this is unlikely. Then what could the writing on the beam represent? Anyone who works with structural shapes knows that at times depending on the purpose and the materials used, structural shapes can be found to be engraved. Usually this can include information such as the date of manufacture, its weight, its dimensions and it's place of manufacture.The reason for this is the chain of distribution. In other words, someone not directly involved in the manufacturing of the shape would not have to look hither and yon to determine if this was the correct material as it appears to be, etc. Many users can have different purposes for the same material. So is there an alien distribution chain that has many users of the same material for differing purpose that would require them to be able to verify these data points in a post manufacturing scenario.?
Here is where we make a distinction between purpose built materials and general materials and specialty materials. Spacecraft and aircraft use specialty materials. You cannot use off the shelf aluminum as an example that is used to side a house to skin a high velocity aircraft as it's structural and mechanical characteristics are not applicable. So what would take the place of an engraving on a structural member of a specialized, one use material?
Its called the specifications with a scope of work A document that specify' s all the material to be used, how it is used and where it is used. Think of it this way, what would it be like to make a duplicate of an aircraft if you had to dissemble the first one to determine what was used to build a second one? This is extremely unlikely .Recall that this alleged artifact that is cited as evidence while it is missing allegedly represents a craft that is centuries ahead of us in the technological design, execution, and materials. Take another look at that I_Beam at the top of this post and consider the illogic of a bendable structural support that encourages a failure due to torsion during flight, an unnecessary engraving, and a willingness to believe any old tale because someone said it was so. Nothing more than that.
Further consider the state of our own comparatively primitive technology in relation to a hypothetical one that is centuries advanced of our own. Composite matrix filaments, molecular engineering of materials, advanced thermoplastics etc Consider that these are some of the materials that are in the public domain and are proprietary and does not represent a full listing of advanced materials whose composition is withheld for security compartmentalization..Now consider a bendable hypothetical I-Beam with engraving of hieroglyphics on it. Seems appallingly primitive arising from an assumed technology so far beyond our capabilities we may as well fly paper airplanes.. A dream like icon worthy of being excavated from a Mayan temple, an archaic totem, a wishing well for free floating associations ad naseum. No endless cobbling of the hypothetical on the innuendo that comes from the imagination is required. This alleged artifact's writing may as well say "tie your shoes"or "drink ovaltine" The selling of a product packaged to a market of consumers that is meant to self perpetuate it's consumption. It could be Kool Aid.
What of the writing itself? Is there a way to determine what if anything it said if it existed and was used in a hypothetical craft navigated by hypothetical extraterrestrials, in a hypothetical mission, that was hypothetically the victim of structural failure, that was hypothetically obtained, in a hypothetical coverup that justify's the creation of more circular logic that is a misdirection of attention? . Does this strike you as goofy rationale for "serious" game playing?
Hows that for a sentence? I have Thomas Wolfe beat by a mile.But that is the domino effect due to the causation of of self hypnotism, the willingness to suspend critical thinking in search of a mirage that is based solely on inference and innuendo.
Again in Part Two, we will examine this alleged example of "hieroglyphics" that were "hidden" in a hypothetical conspiracy to determine if this hypothetical artifact can be analyzed is as well as apply John Nash's Game Theory to this endless Roswell Game that is inadvertently as well as intentionally sucked the wind out of Ufology because it's point is simply self continuation.
Twistable metal has twisted some minds. The real phenomenon is deftly hidden by those who seek it by inane posturing.
This post was intended to be the first of a series on the Roswell Game in order to refute a state of enthrallment that has served as a barrier to applying other methodologies. The more I have thought about this situation, the more I think it is hopeless. I have come to the conclusion that going further down this path of refuting a hypnotic state is a waste of my time. Roswell had pulled me into it's gravitation field by the babble of 99 % of others and so I created this post and now I am pulling back into a more sober state. It eats time and energy with no return. | <urn:uuid:53bb6304-7183-4823-bc6a-ecaa158546fe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://materialintangible.blogspot.com/2012/01/part-one-ofthe-roswell-game-fallacies.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965577 | 1,768 | 2.484375 | 2 |
Houston Field House
The Houston Field House began its existence as a Navy warehouse in Davisville, Rhode Island. The structure was acquired by the Institute in 1946 for use as a sports arena. The warehouse shell was dismantled, moved to the Rensselaer campus, erected and an interior constructed. The new field house was dedicated during the 125th Anniversary of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in October, 1949. It was named after RPI President Livingston Houston who spearheaded the project.
See the Houston Field House web site for more on the history of the facility.
1960 Map Location Back to Rensselaer Buildings | <urn:uuid:bfd391a9-7f90-408e-9ec5-0da84c8764cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rpi.edu/dept/library/html/Archives/buildings/houston_fieldhouse.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968392 | 126 | 2.09375 | 2 |
It would be nice if they’d stop talking to us about “the city” and the “countryside,” and even nicer if they’d stop bringing up their ancient opposition. What surrounds us isn’t like that at all: it’s a single urban sprawl, without form and without order, a desolate, undefined, and unlimited zone, a global continuum of museum-ized mega-downtowns and natural parks, huge complexes and immense agricultural operations, industrial zones and land parcels, rural inns and networks of bars: the metropolis. There certainly was the ancient city, the medieval city, or the modern city; but there is no such thing as a metropolitan city. The metropolis is the synthesis of the whole territory. Everything lives there together, not so much geographically as by the meshing of its networks.
It is precisely because it is about to totally disappear that the city is being fetishized these days, as History. The huge factories in Lille are now concert halls; the concrete downtown of Le Havre is a Unesco heritage site. In Beijing the hutongs that once surrounded the Forbidden City have been destroyed, and replicas reconstructed a ways away for anyone who’s curious. In Troyes, half-timber façades are stuck onto cinder-block buildings, in a artsy pastiche reminiscent of the Victorian style boutiques in Disneyland Paris. The historical downtowns, which had long been hotbeds of sedition, are integrated wisely into the metropolis’ organizational structure, as ostentatious tourism and consumption centers. They are the commodity fairy islands, upheld with fun-fairs and esthetic attraction... and by force. The asphyxiating vapidity of Christmas marketplaces has to be paid for with ever more security guards and police patrols. Control integrates marvelously into the commodity landscape, showing its authoritarian face to whoever wants to see. It’s a blended era; a blend of bland music, telescoping billy-clubs, and cotton candy. All the police surveillance our total enchantment needs!
And it’s a taste for the quote-on-quote “authentic,” and the taste for control over it, that accompanies the petty-bourgeoisie in its colonization of the poor neighborhoods. Pushed out of the mega downtowns, seeking a “neighborhood life” that they’d never find in “Phénix” brand tract-homes. And, chasing off the poor, the cars and the immigrants, and making a clean place out of it, expelling all the microbes, they pulverize everything they came there looking for. And on a municipal billboard, a janitorial employee is pictured shaking hands with a security guard; the slogan reads: “Montauban: A Clean City.”
The decency that has obliged the urbanists to stop talking about the “city” they’ve destroyed, and to start talking about “the urban area,” should also lead them to stop talking about “the countryside,” which doesn’t exist anymore either. What there is in its place is a landscape that gets exhibited to the stressed-out, uprooted masses, a past that can easily be shown off now that there are so few peasants around anymore. It’s a marketing device deployed over a “territory” where everything must be either priced or marked off as a heritage site. It’s always the same freezing emptiness that wins out, all the way to the most far-off of bell towers.
The metropolis comprises this simultaneous death of city and countryside, at the intersection where all the middle classes converge, in the middle of this middle class crowd, which extends indefinitely, from rural exodus to “peri-urbanization.” The glassing-in of the global territory suits the cynicism of contemporary architecture. A school, a hospital, a multimedia library; just so many variations on the same theme: transparency, neutrality, and uniformity. Massive, fluid buildings, designed without any need to know what will go on in them, and that could be here just as much as they could be anywhere. What is to be done with the La Defense buildings, the Part-Dieu towers, the Euralille ? The phrase “fire-new” (brand new) contains their whole fate within it. A Scottish traveler, after the insurgents burnt down the Paris City Hotel in May 1871, bore witness to the singular splendor of power in flames: “I had never imagined a more beautiful sight: It is superb. The people of the Commune are dreadful rascals, I won’t deny that; but what artists they are! And they weren’t even conscious of their work! ... I have seen the ruins of Amalfi, bathed by the blue waves of the Mediterranean, the ruins of the Tung-hoor temples in Punjab; I’ve seen Rome and many other things: but nothing can compare to what was before my eyes tonight.”
Certainly within the metropolitan web there are a few fragments of city and a few residues of countryside left. But all the real liveliness has gone and taken up residence in the ghetto areas. The paradox is that those places that look the least inhabitable are the only ones to still be truly lived in. An old squatted shack will always feel more populated than these “social standing” apartment blocks where all you can really do is insert your furniture and perfect the decoration while waiting to pick up and move to the next place. In many mega-cities, the shantytowns are indeed the last truly living, livable, and unsurprisingly the most mortal, places to live. They’re the other side of the electronic decor of the global metropolis. The dormitory towns of the Northern suburbs of Paris, abandoned by a petty bourgeoisie that’d gone pheasant-hunting out at their villas, but brought back to life by mass unemployment, now shine even more intensely than the Latin Quarter -- with language as much as with fire.
The firestorm of November 2005 was not the result of extreme dispossession, as so much rambling on has been done about; rather it was the result of the full possession of a particular territory. Sure, you can burn cars because you’re pissed off, but to propagate the riot over a whole month and keep the police in long-standing check, you have to know how to get organized, make alliances, know the terrain to perfection, and share a common language and enemy. Kilometers and weeks couldn’t stop the spread of the fire. Other fires burst up in response to the first blazes, and in places they were least expected. Whispers don’t try to be heard.
The metropolis is a terrain of constant low intensity conflict, of which the occupation of Basra, Mogadishu, or Nablus are the culmination points. The city, for soldiers, was for a long time a place to be avoided, or perhaps to beseige; the metropolis on the other hand is perfectly compatible with war. Armed conflict is merely another episode in its constant self-reconfiguration. The battles waged by the great powers are like incessantly repeated policing tasks in the black holes of the metropolis – “whether in Burkina Faso, the south Bronx, Kamagasaki, Chiapas or the northeastern suburbs of Paris.” These “interventions” aren’t really so much aiming for any victory or to restore order or peace, but rather they are performed in the maintenance of the great enterprise of forced “security” that’s always/already at work. War can no longer be isolated within time, but is diffracted in a series of military and police micro-operations to ensure security.
The police and the army adapt to it in parallel fashion, and step by step. A criminologist asks the CRS to organize itself in small, highly trained mobile units. The military academy, cradle of their disciplinary methods, questions its hierarchical organization. In his grenadiers’ battalion, a NATO officer applies a “participatory method involving everyone in the analysis, preparation, execution, and evaluation of an action. Plans are discussed and re-discussed for days, throughout all drills, and depending on the latest information received... There’s nothing like a plan elaborated in common to increase adhesion and motivation.”
The armed forces don’t just adapt themselves to the metropolis; they give it its form. And so, after the battle of Nablus, the soldiers became interior designers. Forced by the Palestinian guerillas to abandon the streets, which were too hazardous, they learned to advance vertically and horizontally, through the urban constructions, smashing walls and ceilings to move about. An officer of the Israeli Defense Forces, a philosophy grad, explained: “The enemy interprets space in the classical, traditional manner, and I refuse to follow its interpretation and fall into its traps... I want to surprise him! That’s the essence of war. I must win... and so that’s how I decided on the method that ended up with me going through walls... Like a worm crawling forth and eating whatever’s in its way.” The urban realm is more than just the theater of conflict; it’s the means. It recalls Blanqui’s councils, where, this time on the side of insurrection, future Paris insurgents were advised to take over the houses on the barricaded streets to protect their positions, break down walls to bring rooms in contact with each other, smash the first floor staircases, knock out holes in the ceilings to defend against any potential attackers, rip down the doors to barricade the windows with, and station gunmen on every floor of the building.
The metropolis is not just this urbanized heap, this final collision between city and countryside; it’s just as much a flow of beings and things. A current that passes through a whole network of fiber optics, high-speed train lines, satellites, video surveillance cameras, so everyone runs to keep up until they’re lost. A current that tries to pull everything into its hopeless, constant movement, which mobilizes everybody. Where everyone’s assailed by news as if it were some hostile force. Where there’s nothing left but to run. Where it becomes hard to wait, even for the umpteenth commuter-train ride.
The proliferation of displacement and communications resources everywhere tears us constantly from the here and now, with the temptation of being somewhere else all the time. Grab a TGV train, take an RER , pick up a phone, and you’ll already be there. This mobility only implies a kind of constant being pulled away, isolation, and exile. And it would be intolerable for people were not to always be a mobility of private space, of a kind of portable “indoors.” The private bubble doesn’t burst; it just floats. This isn’t the end of the cocooning, it’s just that it’s starting to get moving. From a train station, an office park, a business bank, from one hotel to the next, there’s always that foreignness, so commonplace, so well known that it feels like the least familiar thing. The luxuriance of the metropolis is a random brew of defined, infinitely permutable environments. Its downtowns offer themselves up not as identical places but as original offerings of ambiances, among which we evolve, choosing one and passing up another, like a kind of existential shopping among the different styles of bars, people, designs, or iPod playlists. Advertising tagline: “With my mp3 player I’m the master of my world.” To survive the surrounding uniformity, the only option is to reconstitute your own inner world constantly, like children building little Wendy houses just the same anywhere. Like Robinson, reproducing his grocer’s universe on the deserted island, it’s almost like our deserted island is civilization itself, and we are thousands of people constantly being washed up there.
Because of the fluid nature of its architecture, the metropolis is one of the most vulnerable human formations that have ever existed. Supple, subtle, but vulnerable. A sudden, total closure of the borders because of a rampant epidemic, any kind of shortage of vital supplies, an organized blockade of communications points, and the whole scenery changes, and no longer hides the scenes of carnage that haunt it at all times. This world wouldn’t be on the move so fast if it weren’t for the fact that its collapse is so hot on its trail.
Its network structure, its whole technological infrastructure of nodes and connections, and its decentralized architecture attempt to keep the metropolis safe from its own inevitable malfunctions. The Internet is supposed to be able to withstand nuclear attack. The permanent control of the flow of information, people, and commodities has to secure metropolitan mobility and track it, and ensure that there’s never a missing pallet from the merchandise stockroom, that there’s never a single buck stolen from a shop or a terrorist on a plane. Thanks to a RFID chip, a biometric passport, and a DNA index.
But the metropolis also produces the means of its own destruction. An American security expert explains their defeat in Iraq by the guerilla’s ability to profit from the new means of communication. When they invaded Iraq, the USA didn’t care so much about democracy as they did about cybernetic networks. They brought with them one of the weapons now defeating them. The proliferation of cell phones and internet access points gave the guerillas unheard-of means of organizing and making themselves hard to attack.
Every network has its weak points, the nodes that have to be taken out to stop circulation, to implode the latticework. The last big European power outage proved it: a single incident involving a high-tension power line and the lights go out over a good chunk of the continent. To get something happening in the metropolis, to open other possibilities, the first step would have to be stopping its perpetuum mobile . The Thai rebels that knocked out the electrical relays understood that, the anti-CPE protesters that blocked the universities to then try to block the economy understood it, and the American dockworkers that struck in October 2002 to save 300 jobs, and blocked the main west coast ports for 10 days understood it too. The American economy is so dependent on influx from Asian countries that the cost of that blockage was calculated at around a million euros a day. Ten thousand people can shake the world’s greatest global economic power. For certain “experts,” if the movement had lasted one more month, it would have been the cause for the “return to a recession in the United States, and an economic nightmare for Southeast Asia.” | <urn:uuid:c79aff6c-c593-4267-8bfa-6cfa672ee0e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://linsqv.blogspot.com/2008/12/fourth-circle-easier-more-fun-more.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953554 | 3,139 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Breast cancer is a disease in which cancer (malignant) cells are found in the tissues of the breast.
In her own words: living with breast cancer
Medication for women with advanced breast cancer
What promise does Herceptin hold for one of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer?
Breast Cancer Screening: Research and Guidelines
A breakdown of the mammography and breast exam guidelines from the American Cancer Society, American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).
Women should perform a breast self-exam every month. Learn about the exam and how to do it.
Your health may be "all in the family"
Knowing your family's medical history can save your life...and your children's and grandchildren's.
Fibrocystic breast changes: lumps that are normal
Discusses fibrocystic breast changes, a benign condition that affects over half of all women.
Decision making tool: should I have a mammogram?
Weigh the benefits and risks of a mammogram so that you can make an informed decision about your options. | <urn:uuid:272fea5f-e860-4ba6-ac20-f2283a95c44b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.harthosp.org/HealthLibrary/WellnessCenters/WomensHealth/default.aspx?chunkiid=33710 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929961 | 239 | 2.515625 | 3 |
United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. will increase their rates for standard ground shipping—the most common shipping method used by online retailers to deliver goods to consumers—by an average of 4.9% next year after factoring in a one percentage point reduction in fuel surcharges, the companies say.
At FedEx, the average 4.9% rate hike will take effect Jan. 7 and cover shipments of parcels weighing up to 150 pounds through FedEx Ground and FedEx Home Delivery. At UPS, the average 4.9% rate hike goes into effect Dec. 31 for UPS Ground Services, also for parcels of up to 150 pounds.
Ken Wood, president of shipping advisory firm LJM Consulting, notes that the lighter the package, the higher the rate increase. And because most online retailers ship packages of 30 pounds or less, their average rate increase will run higher than 4.9%, he says. “Overall, most e-commerce retailers will have a rate increase of about 7% or 8%,” he says.
For shipments forwarded by UPS and FedEx to the United States Postal Service for local residential deliveries under the USPS’s Parcel Select program, the USPS is increasing shipping rates by about 9%, effective Jan. 27, the USPS says.
In addition, UPS and FedEx are increasing for 2013 surcharges and accessorial fees, such as surcharges for delivering to residential addresses and fees for handling packages with incorrect address labels. According to Wood, UPS and FedEx will impose a surcharge of $2.80 for delivering to a residential address, up about 10% from $2.55 in 2012. The shipping carriers also tack on additional surcharges for residential addresses in remote areas. Other surcharges in 2013 will include $12 for correcting an address, up from $11 in 2012, Wood says.
UPS will also increase its rates for air and international shipments by 6.5%, which will drop to 4.5% with a two percentage point reduction in the fuel surcharge.
At FedEx, air shipments via FedEx Express will rise by an average of 3.5% after decreases in fuel surcharges, the company says.
For shipments of furniture or other bulky items weighing 150 pounds or more, UPS and FedEx raised their less-than-truckload freight rates last summer. Less-than-truckload, or LTL, shipments typically consolidate multiple loads from multiple shippers. | <urn:uuid:8b73c6fe-8362-405f-92dd-2cdd5a2c46b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.internetretailer.com/2012/12/03/ups-and-fedex-raise-shipping-rates-2013 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952934 | 492 | 1.75 | 2 |
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It could possibly be you squandered a lot more than you set out to do while on a break and as a result of that you just do not have the funds you will need to survive till you get paid, or maybe you've an Eighteenth or Twenty-first birthday present to buy and don't have enough cash for it. There's no end of reasons that this type of loan is beneficial for, in fact any time you will need just a little extra cash to help keep you affloat until payday. A quick payday loan is a fantastic way of accessing the cash you'll need when you require it whatever the purpose may be.
You need to not forget however that a payday cash loan is just that a loan till you next get paid, that means it should be payed off in its entirety once you next receive your wage.
Neglecting to settle the finance fully whenever it's payable could be really pricey and should be prevented at all costs. If you can't pay off the cash advance loan once it is scheduled, since the lenders interest is normally demanded every month you'll have basically doubled the cost of the finance.
For as long as you are certain that you should be able to settle the finance once it is due you are going to be ok, in the event you cannot you should not get loans of this kind. A payday advance loan may be of great benefit when utilised as intended nevertheless an absolute disaster if it's not. | <urn:uuid:ac335c08-cd86-4951-83d7-cc4151d2b018> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.netlog.com/IxhshamIngesyborg/blog | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977674 | 612 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The Handy Sanitary District offered its plan to bring wastewater treatment service to the Badin Lake area more than a decade ago. Given concerns about leaking septic tanks, few disputed the need, but when people learned the proposal included a discharge into the Uwharrie River, the community rallied to oppose it. Scores attended community meetings, and hundreds more signed petitions. Political leaders took note. Another option was found. The project was reconfigured to tie into an existing facility. The state agreed to reclassify the river and upgrade its designation, making it unlikely a future discharge would ever be permitted.
What if Handy had built a discharge pipe with no notice to landowners along the river? Residents of a small community in the N.C. mountains faced a similar predicament with an open-pit gravel mine. Jay Erskine Leutze recounts their riveting story in his new book, Stand Up That Mountain. Leutze earned a law degree at UNC but was never admitted to the bar. After working for a bookstore in Boston for several years, he turned down a promotion that would have allowed him to travel the world. Instead, he moved to his family’s cabin in Avery County to lead a simple and solitary life – hiking, fishing and writing. He trimmed his expenses to $500 a month. He quit buying clothes and cut his own hair. Much of his food came from his garden and the surrounding forest.
In the summer of 1999, his peaceful existence was disrupted by a droning chainsaw, an unnerving explosion and a phone call from an articulate and informed young woman. She rushed to explain that mine owner Paul Brown had “pulled a shot over at the rock crusher.” The blast had cracked the foundation of their house. Fourteen-year-old Ashley Cook, who had read up on mining laws on the Internet, then handed the phone to her aunt, Ollie Ve Cox. Strong and indignant, she wanted Leutze’s help. “Paul, he’s coming in here like a Scud missile,” she said. (An eloquent mountain woman, Cox is the source of the book’s poetic title.)
Leutze borrowed a cell phone and ran up a bill that far exceeded his monthly expenses. He put thousands of miles on his truck, traveling the state to make his case to journalists in Asheville and Charlotte, bureaucrats in Raleigh and lawyers in Hickory and Chapel Hill. As Leutze distills the case late in the book, “The failure to notify the adjoining landowners of their right to contest it was the original sin, and everything else is the fruit of a poison tree.”
The permit area had been drawn 50 feet inside the property boundary, a maneuver that allowed the mine owner to basically notify himself. This detail had somehow escaped N.C. state government officials during the permitting process, as did the mine’s proximity to the Appalachian Trail. The 151-acre site on Belview Mountain would subject north-bound hikers to a direct view of the scarred landscape for more than a mile.
The author’s lucid and lyrical writing takes us down the rabbit hole into the legal system. The case dragged on for nearly five years, working its way up through the ranks to the state’s highest court. Along the way were victories and defeats, improbable connections, chance encounters and even a fortuitous lightning strike. I’ve never read a legal thriller, but now I’m “rurent,” as Ollie Cox (or my Dad) would say. I can’t imagine Grisham or Turow offering up a more compelling narrative or such complex characters, all shot through with a dose of wry humor.
The Dog Town Bunch, as they called themselves, worked the case on all levels. Ashley Cook trolled the Internet for information, and Cox photographed illegal activities. Her son, Freddy, scouted the site on his dirt bike. Leutze built coalitions across the state and nation. This included dragging people up a strenuous section of the Appalachian Trail so they could see the impact for themselves. On one of these outings, Leutze is overjoyed when their lead lawyer dismisses the possibility of settling for modifications to the mine. “I was not going to be alone on this ever again,” he writes. Here, the book transcends the specific situation and becomes universal. We all want someone to believe our stories, to value the piece of land we hold so dear.
The man who had sought a solitary life had become part of a community and a team. In one of the book’s most touching passages, Cox’s family recognizes they can never repay Leutze for the expenses he has incurred and the time and effort he has put into the case, but they take up a collection and present him with a microwave oven and a satellite dish with two years of service so he can watch Carolina basketball games.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve know Jay Leutze since college. He has also been a friend to the Uwharries. We’re fortunate his dedication to the outdoors extends far beyond his beloved Roan Highlands. He has hiked and paddled with us, and he has advocated at the state and federal level in support of our efforts to protect the Uwharrie River and to reconnect the historic Uwharrie Trail.
Three years into the case, he needed a break and endeavored to visit “10 of the natural wonders of the state” he had somehow neglected to see. Among the likes of Looking Glass Rock and Panthertown Valley, he included the Uwharrie River. It earned a place on his list because a community had come together and fought to protect it, just as they were doing on behalf of Belview Mountain.
Jay Leutze will read from Stand Up That Mountain at the Catawba Center for the Environment in Salisbury at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 23. The event, co-sponsored by the LandTrust for Central North Carolina, is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Visit www.centerfortheenvironment.org or call (704) 637-4727 for more information. | <urn:uuid:93c658a3-cb19-440c-a9ad-cd8f35195d92> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ui.uncc.edu/story/stand-mountain-jay-leutze-appalachian-trail-mine | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975508 | 1,306 | 1.648438 | 2 |
As you read these reports, keep in mind the following which I reported on this blog recently (read here). According to Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israeli branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Center:
"To date, Lithuanian governments have not punished a single Lithuanian war criminal. In spite of our considerable efforts and the large amount of information we have given them, they handled three cases with astonishing slowness. Not one of the three served a single day in prison. On the other hand, they're not ashamed to persecute and harass Lithuanian partisans who fought the Nazis. What is common to all these cases is that they're all Jews. Instead of punishing Lithuanian criminals who collaborated with the Nazis and murdered Jews, they're harassing the partisans, Jewish heroes."
Construction plans at the site of a Jewish mass grave in Lithuania have been scrapped. A site near Marijampole where tens of thousands of Jews were killed during the Holocaust recently had been sold to a company that had begun demolishing buildings at the site, disturbing the remains there.more from the Baltic Times:
Bones began to appear after concrete pavement at the site was dismantled. Heavy rains sometimes would wash new bones to the surface.
Jewish community leaders asked that the town halt work at the site, and Lithuanian authorities said this week the construction work would cease.
A local newspaper, Lietyvoa Zinios, reported that the remains that had risen to the surface would be buried with the cooperation of Jewish community leaders.
The site is located behind a czarist-era military town near Marijampole. Most of the Jews and other victims of the massacre there were killed by Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators on a single day: Sept. 1, 1941. The site had been marked by a memorial, and the bodies had remained under heavy slabs of concrete and buildings.
Authorities of the Lithuanian Jewish community and municipality administration of southern Lithuanian city Marijampole agreed there will be no more digging in the location of mass extermination of Jews. The remains of the killed will be buried, Lietuvos Zinios daily reported.
According to the Marijampole Municipality official in charge Gedeminas Kuncaitis, mass killings of inhabitants on the bend of Sesupe behind a military town built during the reigning of the tsars, took place in 1941.
On September 1st of that year alone, Germans, with the help of some Lithuanians, killed over 5,000 inhabitants here, most of whom were Jews, also killing some Lithuanians and Marijampole's inhabitants of other ethnic origins.
"Approximately some 8,000 people were killed here. The killing site is marked by a memorial, but there are no burial grounds of the victims in the area that is identified in documents as a protected Jewish extermination territory, as they all buried under the buildings of the former military town and its vicinities. This was confirmed by archeological inquiries conducted in 1996", Kuncaitis said.
According to the chief specialist, officers had erected a few military equipment storehouses and an ammo warehouse, and made embankments on the massive killing sites during the Soviet times. After the occupational army left Lithuania following the restoration of its independence, the said buildings were given over to the State Property Fund.
A company owned by Vidas Kalasinskas and Daiva Kalasinskiene bought the buildings this year for demolition. Officials of the Municipality of Marijampole issued a permit for taking down the buildings without prior coordination with specialists of the Department of Cultural Heritage. Human bones were found when tidying up the area and dismantling the concrete pavement. Even though construction works were halted at once and bones lying around on the ground were all gathered, any larger downpour of rain washed new bones afloat to the surface.
According to Kuncaitis, no more demolition works are planned on the burial ground site of massive Jew killings, even though a part of it is still covered in concrete. "It is about a meter thick there, therefore it will be impossible to dismantle it without heavy machinery. It hasn't been decided what to do with embankments made by Russian officers, which also contain the remnants of a large number of people's remains.
An excellent thumbnail sketch of the town is provided by the “Marijampole” chapter from Pinkas Hakehillot Lita translated by Yad Vashem and made available online by the Jewish Geneology website. The following is an excerpt dealing with the massacre:
On Sunday, June 22, 1941, German airplanes bombed Marijampole at dawn and destroyed the center of the city. Some 20 civilians, most of them Jews, were killed. Those made homeless in the bombing found shelter with other Jewish families. The German army entered Marijampole on the following day, June 23, 1941, after they had surrounded the city and blocked the roads leading eastward. Most of the Jews who fled the city were forced to return. Many were murdered by Lithuanians who ambushed the returning Jews. Very few did succeed in fleeing to the Soviet Union. Even during the first days of occupation many Jews were arrested on various and sundry charges. All those arrested were subsequently murdered in a forest 4 kilometers from the city in the direction of Vilkovoshok (cf)[Vilkaviskis]. Every morning Jews were required to leave on various work details; the men in clearing bomb damage and the women in farm work and domestic service. The elderly, including the town's rabbi, R. Heller, were occasionally required to sweep the local streets. Some of the Jewish youth who actively opposed the Germans and their Lithuanian helpers were murdered and some were hanged at the market square.
On July 15, 1941, the Lithuanian regional governor issued an order that prohibited Jews from being found on certain streets, at the local bathing areas, city parks, coffee houses and restaurants, libraries, and other public places. They were forbidden from purchasing food from street vendors, markets, or on the road, but were restricted to stores at fixed hours, which were set by the governor. They were not permitted to make use of services offered by non-Jews and they were required to wear yellow stars on both the front and back of their clothing. One day a group of Jews was brought to the courtyard of the synagogues and were forced to remove the Torah scrolls from the arks and all the other sacred texts from the shelves, gather them into a pile, and set them on fire. That same month an order was issued that required the Jews to abandon their homes and gather in the synagogues and some adjacent houses. In this packed area, it was easier for the Germans to rob the Jews, take them for forced labor, and abuse the young women at night. The Germans would occasionally choose strong young men for forced labor and then murder them on the city's outskirts.
In August, the Germans forced the Jewish youth to dig trenches behind the barracks along the Sesupe River. They knew that these trenches were meant for the Jews. When they told their parents, there were strenuous efforts made to prevent [their mass murder] but to no avail. At the end of the month Jewish communal workers were summoned to the Lithuanian governor who informed them that a large ghetto would soon be established in the cavalry barracks and that all the surrounding area was to be turned over to the Jews. To further mislead them, they were told by the Germans that as long as the war continued, they would be permitted to control the economic and social aspects of their lives [in the ghetto]. The Jews packed their belongings and in a long procession made their way in the direction of the barracks. When they arrived, the men were separated from their families and squeezed into the stables. The following days the men were subject to severe mistreatment that the Germans referred to as 'sporting activities.' Jews from Kazlova-Roda (cf) [Kazlu-Ruda], Ludvinova (cf) [Liudvinavas], and other surrounding localities were also brought to the barracks. On August 30 they were joined by the Jews of Kalvarija. On Monday, 9 Elul, 5701 (September 1, 1941), the Jews of Marijampole were among the 7,000 to 8,000 Jews and 1,000 members of other nations who were murdered in the valley next to the Suspe River. They were all buried in the eight trenches previously dug. Each trench was 70 meters long and 3 meters wide. The mass executions continued from 10 o'clock in the morning until 4 o'clock in the afternoon. The majority of the murderers were Lithuanians and among them were many high school and university students. The men, stripped completely naked, were brought to the trenches in groups of between 100 and 200. They were forced to lie in rows and were shot from above by machine guns. When the turn of the women and children came, chaos reigned. The drunken murderers pushed their victims into the pits and smashed the skulls of the children with clubs and spades. Eyewitnesses among the Lithuanian workers who were brought the following day to cover the trenches said that the earth there continued to move for days. Two Jewish families committed suicide -- Dr. David Rosenfeld poisoned himself, his wife and his daughter. Cantor Lansky did likewise with his wife and three children.
The site of the mass graves near the military barracks and the Monument at the site. The inscription in Yiddish and Lithuanian says:
"Here blood was spilled of about 8000 Jewish children, women, men and of 1000 people of different nationalities, that the Nazis and their local helpers cruelly murdered in September 1941" | <urn:uuid:e8311e5c-c582-4627-bcdc-9f630e2b3de2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://adamholland.blogspot.com/2008/08/lithuanian-desecration-of-jewish-mass.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985249 | 1,995 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Hello everyone, well I am reading a book called Acadian Awakenings by William D Gerrior. It is a great book to read about our acadian ancestors. For instance did you know where some of our ancestors originated from in France? Mister Gerrior states that from the Loudon region of France came the following people to Acadie;
From Aulnay came the Babins, Dupuis,Girouards,Dousset and Poiriers. From La Chaussee came the Belliveaus,Bourgs,Brault,Landry and Robichauds. From Martaize came the Blanchards, Gaudets,Gautreaus,LeBlanc,Savoie and Theriaults. Did you notice how Doucet, and Breau were spelled?
What I would like to know is where the Cormiers were from, I know they were in La Rochelle, but did they arrive at La Rochelle from elsewhere? There have been priests and genealogists looking for the origin of Robert and his family for years. But now with the internet maybe it will be possible to find his birth or Thomas birth around 1636 somewhere in France. I am still looking for a marriage for a Rene Bergeron and Anne Dagault whom I and many others believe are the true parents of Barthelemy Bergeron dit Damboise who was born in Amboise France.
For years we believed him to be the son of and Antoine Bergeron and Catherine Scarron but there has never been any proof of this, but there has been a baptism found for one Barthelemy Bergeron in Amboise France the son of Rene and Anne Dagault and the birth date is the same as was mentioned for Barthelemy but the year is different by two years I believe. How much of a coincidence that if there were two Barthelemy Bergeron born in Amboise France that they would be born exactly two years apart to the day? I don't think so. His father Rene was baptized in the same church as Barthelemy, but no marriage has been found as yet. I am hoping by posting this in my blog that maybe someone somewhere may read this and say OH I found the marriage.. "It is possible you know".
Now on a happy note, I would like to share a story I read in the Reader's Digest yesterday, it was really touching. And it goes to show how strong ties online friends are created The story is not word for word but I will tell you the main part of it.
There was this man who went online quite often and he checked out certain forum , just like we do. Anyway he met this young girl in one of the forums and they struck up a conversation and did so for a while. One day he got probably a chat message from her saying she had just put the charcoal on, and she was getting warm, well apparently she was inside and he knew she was in danger. She did not want to give him her location, she was trying to commit suicide, he asked her where are you? She said she was in an apartment, he was getting very worried, Can you tell me what number? she did not answer. He said at least what floor are you on? Well she said I can tell you I am on the 8th floor and she hung up. Now all he knew she was somewhere in Taipan, so he put an alert on line, and the news started to circulate, someone was in trouble, who was she really? Did anyone know her? Finally someone said yes I know her and that she went to a certain school, she was still a student there. Good , thats good, the hotel must be nearby. What hotels have at least 8 floors? So they hurried and the young man himself looked for a hotel close to the school she went to. He called the desk clerk asked if the girl was there. Yes she is, replied the manager. The man said , hurry, hurry get up there she is in trouble. So the desk clerk went up, she had bolted the door, but they knocked it down and were there just in time to save her. They took her to the hospital and a few months later, she went to where the young man lived and thanked him for saving her life. So the reason I am telling you this story is to let you know, there are so many friends to be made online, you are never alone. Never feel lonely, just go online ,join a group ,they become just like your family.
We have our chat n brag room, we are not a lot in there at the moment and it is unbelievable how close we are to one another. Can you believe we are talking about when us girls were young and wore those long brown stockings. grin. There are also men in our group, the latest said " I wouldn't look good in a dress". grin. See this is what we do.
I do hope you have enjoyed today's blog. I am glad to see that you do come in to read them. A reminder if you want to donate a toy or gift certificat for a needy boy or girl please let me know? I have added the url on the side where you can contact me. I received my first gift certificat so off to WalMart I will go to buy a toy or two.
Have a great day | <urn:uuid:083d17d7-892e-4c0e-8717-f2a5b122f4b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://acadianroots.blogspot.com/2008/09/hello-everyone-well-i-am-reading-book.html?showComment=1222351800000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990662 | 1,116 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Contrary to popular belief, a person who leads a "Thug Life" is not a criminal. The acronym made popular by the great rapper Tupac Shakur has nothing to do with being a "gangsta" or anything of the sort, rather, it stands for all the socially oppressive things we are taught at a young age that negatively affects us (or society) as adults.
When parents teach their children to hate a certain group of people because they are "different" than them, that in turn "fucks everyone," and the people who are victims of that hate, live a "Thug Life"
Many people who aren't familiar with Tupac's work commonly mistaken the phrase as someone who is a "gangsta", lowlife, "criminal," etc. not realising that there is much more to the acronym than meets the eye .
"They wonder what type of nigga be a thug life nigga, we be the craziest" - Quote taken from the Tupac song "Nothing to Lose"
|Thug Life images|
A word Evolved by the late Tupac Shakur. Commonly mistaken for a Criminal. Thug Life is the opposite of someone having all he needs to succeed. Thug life is when you have nothing, and succeed, when you have overcome all obstacles to reach your aim.
"When my heart beats, it screams THUG LIFE."
1) acronym for "The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everyone". This acronyn was made popular by American rap artist 2Pac.
2) The Codes Of Thug Life where a set of codes written by 2Pac. The codes where designed to give order to the rise of gang violence and drug dealing. It made certain immoral actions, against the code which, would become a code of the street.
These codes where signed by heads from the Bloods and Crips at a peace treaty picnic called the Truc Picnic, in California in 1992.
3) Thug Life was a rap group formed by 2Pac which consisted of him and 4 others: Mopreme, Macadoshis, Big Syke, and The Rated R
After 2Pac was imprisoned on rape allegations the rappers would disband. Some would regroup after 2Pac's release and signing with Death Row Records and form the beginning of rap group called Tha Outlawz.
Code OF "THUG LIFE":more...
1. All new Jacks to the game must know: a) He’s going to get rich. b) He’s going to jail. c) He’s going to die.
2. Crew Leaders: You are responsible for legal/financial payment commitments to crew members; your word must be your bond.
3. One crew’s rat is every crew’s rat. Rats are now like a disease; sooner or later we all get it; and they should too.
4. Crew leader and posse should select a diplomat, and should work ways to settle disputes. In unity, there is strength!
5. Car jacking in our Hood is against the Code.
6. Slinging to children is against the Code.
7. Having children slinging is against the Code.
8. No slinging in schools.
9. Since the rat Nicky Barnes opened his mouth; ratting has become accepted by some. We’re not having it.
10. Snitches is outta here.
11. The Boys in Blue don’t run nothing; we do. Control the Hood, and make it safe for squares.
12. No slinging to pregnant Sisters. That’s baby killing; that’s genocide!
13. Know your target, who’s the real enemy.
14. Civilians are not a target and should be spared.
15. Harm to children will not be forgiven.
16. Attacking someone’s home where their family is known to reside, must be altered or checked.
17. Senseless brutality and rape must stop.
18. Our old folks must not be abused.
19. Respect our Sisters. Respect our Brothers.
20. Sisters in the Life must be respected if they respect themselves.
21. Military disputes concern...
The Hate You Gave Little Infants Fucks Everybody, meaning, what you feed us as seeds, grows, and blows up in your face, thats Thug Life.
that was the exact quote from Pac himself!
The Hate U Gave Lil Infants Fucks Everybody
an acronym popularized by the late tupac shakur. The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody
T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. por vida
Pac lived it!!
"Makaveli with that thug life tatted at the bottom of my bell" -2pac | <urn:uuid:22080f55-2296-475b-a5ba-de2cca122ff9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Thug%20Life&defid=3102877 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930872 | 1,018 | 1.6875 | 2 |
TWO QUITE significant political developments occurred in Antigua and Barbuda late last month that could well influence the outcome of the next general election due by March 2014 with both the governing United Progressive Party (UPP) and the opposition Antigua Labour Party (ALP) facing new challenges for state power.
The first development involved a highly controversial 'economic citizenship' scheme that may require an official response not only from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) but the wider Caribbean Community on the sensitive issue of intra-regional free movement of Caricom nationals.
The second occurrence was a surprising leadership change in the opposition Antigua Labour Party (ALP) that ended a 66-year-old tradition of always being associated with the family name of its patriarch, Vere Cornwall Bird.
With his passing, papa Bird's son, Lester, lawyer by profession, became his successor and was to successfully lead the party for 18 years, ten of them as Prime Minister, ending in 2004, and since then as parliamentary Opposition Leader.
Health problems plus the age factor at 74, were advanced as primary reasons by those who favoured a leadership change at the party's scheduled convention for last month.
But Bird's more passionate loyalists felt otherwise and urged him to face the leadership challenge from a once quite loyal and articulate colleague, Gaston Browne, banker by reputation.
Browne emerged victorious by capturing some 56 per cent of the votes declared and by last week both victor and vanquished were said to be working out the modalities for a future "constructive relationship...amid reported post-convention bitterness among their respective supporters.
Their shared commitment is to avoid Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer's ruling PUP, currently in its second term, from exploiting the ALP's leadership change to secure a third term—some 16 months away.
Vexing issues for Caricom
The big vexing political issue currently, however, is the government's passage in the House of Representatives, against the opposition's objections, of what's officially titled the "Antigua and Barbuda Citizenship Investment Act 2012" .
This form of "citizenship...is a device utilised by some developed and underdeveloped states to attract wealthy investors.
It is known to be a risky venture if laws are not carefully framed to avoid loopholes that could be exploited by criminal elements and financial 'sharks' bent on evading taxation while, at the same time, having the effect of diminishing the sovereign citizenship of nationals by birth.
Major developed nations, such as USA, United Kingdom and Canada have laws to grant citizenship that's linked to economic investment but tight conditionalities, among them length of residence, are involved and constantly under review.
In our small Caricom region, however, there have been the early examples of Dominica and St Kitts and Nevis, moving to attract "investors, offering "economic citizenship...while playing 'footsy' politics on residential status with particular clientele.
Among these "investors for "economic citizenship"—at times privately canvassed,could be, for example wealthy Chinese, Taiwanese, Koreans and Arabs, as well as Europeans and Americans—all with little or no requirements for reasonable periods of resident status prior to obtaining citizenship that comes with national passports
Now Antigua and Barbuda, the Caricom state with a long-won reputation as a delightful tourism resort, but also bearing the burden of political and financial corruption under varying administrations of both the ALP and UPP, has come up with legislation by which a foreign national—from wherever—could be awarded citizenship in less than a fortnight.
This quick-to-get 'economic citizenhip' that confers all the rights and privileges of a national by birth, can be facilitated, according to the new 'Citizenship by Investment' legislation, passed by the House of Representatives and soon to be approved also by the Senate—once the potential 'investor' contributes to identified projects, including "a charity designated by the Minister.
In most Caricom states it normally takes between five to eight years for a Community national living and working in the particular jurisdiction to be approved for citizenship. | <urn:uuid:5d1711d9-3f41-43fb-ba1c-31d2c1bd8ad1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/Antigua_engages_in__risky_business_-181774341.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96249 | 852 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The Lee County supervisor of elections shared her explanation of why voters experienced long lines at the polls during the 2012 general election this week at the Greater Pine Island Civic Association meeting.
"There is no such thing as a perfect election," Supervisor of Elections Sharon Harrington told the crowd, adding that she and her staff work to keep problems to a minimum.
If everyone works together - including the state Legislature - she said she sincerely believes they can avoid reoccurrences of what happened in last year's election.
Early voting saw long lines at the five polling sites set up countywide. This contributed to more voters opting to cast a ballot on election day where, at some precincts, they waited hours to vote.
Harrington said they have to restore the confidence of the voters and fix the problems that occurred in Lee and other counties.
"This was not a situation just for Lee County or the state of Florida," Harrington said. "A lot of states had the same issues."
Lee County Commissioner John Manning, of Cape Coral, also attended the meeting and shared a few comments about the past election. He said when the Legislature allows questions on the ballot, they are only supposed to be 75 words per issue.
In 2012, 98 percent of the ballot questions were beyond the word count, which was part of the problem, Manning said.
"Going into 2014, we are not going to have those problems," he said. "We want to nip this in the bud now. The Legislature needs to understand us at the local level and understand our needs."
Those issues were a combination of things that contributed to a "perfect storm" election, Harrington said.
The 2012 general election also was the first election using new precinct boundaries. With the new boundaries, the number of polling places were reduced from 171 to 125 with an average of 2,900 voters per precinct.
Since they were trying to keep cost down, redistricting offered the elections office an opportunity to try and make that happen.
Harrington said they are currently reviewing reports by precinct to see what method individuals used to vote - by mail, early voting or on Election Day. She said that information will provide a better picture of each polling location.
"Early voting is not a science," she said. "It is just a prediction because of the nature."
The polls were open 12 hours a day during early voting, with very long lines each day. The same issue occurred in 2008 as well, according to Harrington.
By looking at each precinct they will have a better understanding of the diversity by which individuals vote, she added.
Unfortunately because of the situation that occurred during the 2012 election, some of the polling sites backed out and will no longer be a location for voters. Elections offices can only use federal, ADA compliant locations for precinct locations.
"It is very difficult to get and keep polling places," she said.
For early voting, they are restricted to the main office, branch offices that have been in existence for at least a year, city halls or libraries. Harrington said if they had more options, they would be able to better serve the voters.
Any expansion in the number of precincts, she said, would take additional funding for additional sites, equipment and manpower.
Harrington said she has met with the Lee County manager and assistant manager to discuss the issues of locating more sites, purchasing more equipment and hiring poll additional workers. She said although no specific amount of money was discussed, it may be better to ease things into the system, rather than running to the store and buying things.
Harrington said the question arises as to whether they would be throwing money at a problem that may never exist again.
"I am not going to take that chance," she said, adding that voters cannot take that chance, either.
Another contributing factor to the long lines were the extremely long ballots, Harrington said. Each ballot page during early voting had to be printed on the spot and with four pages per voter, it took a long time.
"For every voter, we had to multiple that by four pages," she said.
Longer ballots also caused an issue for the vendors with stuffing the envelopes with four pages, instructions and the secrecy sleeves. Harrington said the envelopes in which they mailed the ballots were also smaller and the postage was more expensive.
"These are just a few of the factors that led to early voting and long lines on election day," she said.
Harrington said the issue began a couple of years ago when, under then Gov. Charlie Crist, the state did away with the touch screens. She said 18 out of 68 counties, which included some of the largest counties in Florida, were using them at the time.
"After a specific time, (we were) no longer allowed to use those," Harrington said, which occurred after initially spending $5.8 million for the equipment.
During the 2004 election, she said they only received one scanner for every precinct and one for each early voting site.
"It gave us nothing for backups," Harrington said.
She addressed the question of why did they not use the backups during Election Day.
"These are pieces of equipment that the poll workers train on, set them up and take them down," she said, adding that she was not confident in sending them to the precinct.
On election day, they dispersed five extra machines to some of the precincts and replaced five that went completely down, leaving them with only five.
Harrington also spoke about the deputies, who are the poll workers who stand at the entrance to the precinct. She said they remind the voters to have their driver's license out and ready to proceed with voting.
"These folks have passes in their pocket," Harrington said, which can be given to anyone with a disability that could not stand in line. "We don't want anyone standing in line that can not stand in line."
She said voters can always go to the deputy and tell them they need the assistance.
Harrington said if someone moves up to the front of the line because of their disability, the entire party moves up. | <urn:uuid:358ad684-7220-4d0c-b49a-4351460edfd6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cape-coral-daily-breeze.com/page/content.detail/id/534150/Harrington-explains-long-lines-at-the-polls-for-2012-election.html?nav=5011 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985987 | 1,246 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Music Serving As Balm For Migrant Workers
KOCHI:Music seems to have become the perfect balm for migrant workers while leading a far from ideal life where they often have to face discrimination and hostility from the local community.
Mobile phone has become an integral part of every migrant worker and more than its utility as a communication device it’s the music playback option that has endeared it to them. Mobile handset with the loudest playback voice is the biggest draw among the migrant workers.
Coming across migrant workers in places like bus stops with the music being played out loud from the mobile speakers instead of ear phones is not such a rare sight. Small mobile phone sale and service outlets in the city and elsewhere are tapping in to migrant workers’ this penchant for music.
“Most mobile phones now come with a free memory card and its common for buyers to get songs saved to it. A one Giga Byte memory card can hold up to 150-200 songs,” said a mobile shop owner at Menaka. Thanks to Internet even latest songs can be downloaded. The demand is mostly for Hindi and Tamil songs at the outlets in the city which do not cater to migrant workers in hordes unlike in suburbs with high concentration of migrant workers. The service is charged between Rs. 25 and Rs. 50.
Migrant workers from States like West Bengal sometimes approach the outlets with CDs of their regional language songs to get it copied to the memory card of their mobile phones. “For majority of mobile outlets in the city copying songs is just a part time thing as it brings in only negligible returns. But it’s even a means of livelihood in places like Perumbavur and Aluva where migrant workers are present in large numbers,” the shop owner said.
In Perumbavur, makeshift units equipped with computers operating solely for the purpose of copying songs to mobile phones of migrant workers are common. Assamese, Bengali, and Oriya songs are in demand depending on which community is dominant in the area.
Often a person well versed in the language of the dominant migrant community is engaged in such units to make the service smooth. Papers and stickers inscribed in languages like Bengali and Oriya announcing the service could be seen pasted to the back of computer monitors to woo in prospective customers. | <urn:uuid:6f6e6d27-79bf-47da-a26d-142141a1027a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.haihoi.com/politics/kerala/music-serving-as-balm-for-migrant-workers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959903 | 474 | 1.664063 | 2 |
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Underwater mortgages and missed home- loan payments were almost unheard of when Joe Michna started listening to the troubles of residents in the northern English town of Hartlepool. Now, 26 years later, one in seven coming to him for help are worried about losing their home.
“When I first began as a volunteer, mortgage and rent arrears were comparatively rare,” said Michna, the 59-year-old manager of the Hartlepool Citizens Advice Bureau in a May 3 interview. “Now, it’s quite the opposite.”
The average price of a home in the industrial port town fell 9.4 percent to 115,809 pounds ($186,000) in the 12 months through February, according to research company Acadametrics Ltd. In London, 225 miles (362 kilometers) south of Hartlepool, the average price is 396,094 pounds after rising 1.2 percent.
Prime Minister David Cameron’s effort to slash Britain’s record budget deficit is widening a housing and wealth gap between the north of the country and the London area. The U.K. capital was the only one of 12 U.K. regions tracked where home values rose in April, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said in a May 8 home-price index that fell to a six- month low.
Cameron’s coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are trying to remedy a budget shortfall by 2017 with 155 billion pounds of tax increases and spending cuts to stave off the type of fiscal crisis engulfing countries such as Spain and Greece. The economy shrank in the first quarter as construction output slumped, pushing Britain into its first double-dip recession since the 1970s.
“You cannot separate the wider economic picture from the housing market,” said Iain Wright, Hartlepool’s Labour party representative in Parliament and a member of the Housing Ministry until former Prime Minister Gordon Brown lost the 2010 election.
The number of government workers will fall by 730,000 in the six years through March 2017, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, a government-funded economic research company. More than 70 percent of those cuts will be outside of London, according to the Centre for Cities, a non-partisan research group.
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne may need to slow the pace of his deficit squeeze to accommodate the weakness of Britain’s economy, two former Bank of England officials said yesterday. Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour Party, is gaining ground on Cameron in British opinion polls after weeks of setbacks took their toll on the coalition government.
The northeast of England, encompassing former coal mining and shipbuilding centers such as Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland, is the region most dependent on public-sector employment. Four of the seven council areas with the biggest proportion of employment in public administration, health and education are in the northeast.
Government job cuts and a slump in manufacturing and construction are driving a decline in home values in the north, Standard & Poor’s said in a report last month. More than half of the increase in arrears in the 18 months ending in 2011 was in the north, the ratings company said.
“Unemployment is rising again and interest rates on mortgages are potentially rising too,” Andrew South of S&P’s structured-finance division, who co-authored the report, said by phone. “Arrears seem to be driven by a diverging labor market” and “we expect it to continue diverging.”
S&P defined the “North” as the East Midlands, West Midlands, Northeast, Northwest, Yorkshire and Humber in England, as well as Wales and Scotland, delineating a divide that’s defined as much by geography as culture.
While London is the financial and political capital, areas including Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds were industrial centers that saw declines after the end of World War II. Political divisions grew as unemployment increased and labor industrial relations worsened including a yearlong coal miners’ strike that began in 1984. That strike was the backdrop of the musical and movie “Billy Elliott.”
The fallout marked the premiership of Conservative Party Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose policies of selling state assets and reducing union power hit hardest in the north of England and Scotland.
Tony Blair, who took over as prime minister from Conservative John Major in 1997, and his successor tried to revive northern areas hurt by the decline of mining and other manufacturing industries. For every job that was created in the U.K.’s north and the Midlands, 10 private-sector jobs were created in London and southern regions between 1998 and 2008, Paul Swinney, an economist at the Centre For Cities, said by phone.
Three months after Brown replaced Blair as prime minister in 2007, Newcastle-based lender Northern Rock Plc sought emergency funding from the Bank of England, becoming the first U.K. victim of the subprime mortgage crisis. Days later, customers lined up at branches to withdraw savings in the first run on a British bank in more than a century. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling nationalized the lender in February 2008.
More people are seeking employment in London and are competing for fewer jobs and fewer homes, said Swinney. That’s pushing up home prices in the southeast and those constraints are less prominent elsewhere in the country.
“The probability of finding employment in London is so much greater,” said Swinney, who grew up in Sunderland.
“Once upon a time it was about being near ports and rail networks,” Swinney said. “Now it’s about being close to motorways and being closer to Europe, so you see a shift from the industrial towns in the north to the smaller places around London.”
Northern parts of the U.K. accounted for about 60 percent of the rise in total mortgage arrears from the second quarter of 2010 to the end of 2011, S&P said its report. About 8.5 percent of mortgage borrowers in northern regions were in negative equity, where the loan amount exceeds the property value, in the fourth quarter 2011, compared with 3.3 percent in southern areas, the ratings company said. Borrowers in the north were 30 percent more likely to be behind in mortgage payments than homeowners in the south, S&P said.
Northern Rock mortgages secured on homes in northern regions are also being repaid at a slower pace than other parts of the country. The collateral backing its Granite Master Issuer Plc´s mortgages declined 64 percent since May 2007 to 19.4 billion pounds, compared with a reduction of 60 percent on the outstanding mortgages in the Northwest, Northeast and Northern Ireland, and an 83 percent reduction of home loans in Greater London, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
With unemployment rising and home values falling, lenders are less willing to provide new credit or refinance existing loans. Last year, 141 billion pounds of mortgages were originated compared in the U.K. with 363 billion pounds in 2007, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders.
That’s had more of an impact on areas outside of London, according to Dipesh Mehta, a securitization analyst at Barclays Capital.
“The London housing market has performed better over the last year than the rest of the U.K. and hence provides a safer option for risk averse lenders,” said Mehta.
“Mortgage lenders are starting to turn the screws on some of my residents,” said Jenny Chapman, a Labour lawmaker representing Darlington, a town near Hartlepool, where home prices fell 12.9 percent in a year, the most in England and Wales, according to Acadametrics. “The future is quite scary for them. They’ve had all the leniency that they’re going to get.”
Tighter credit is giving rise to so-called mortgage time bombs, a legacy of the easy credit of the boom years, according to the Financial Services Authority. Two of every five U.K. mortgages are interest-only, where borrowers pay no principal on the actual loan, according to FSA data. About 78 percent of the borrowers had no repayment strategy in the third quarter of 2011, with many relying on home values rising to help pay the principle or refinance, the FSA said.
FSA Director Martin Wheatley warned in March of a “ticking time bomb” of interest-only mortgages. The regulator estimates that 1.5 million such mortgages, valued at 120 billion pounds, are due for repayment between 2011 and 2020.
Hartlepool’s Wright said he’s spoken with residents who are struggling to pay their mortgage as lenders increase interest rates.
“They bought quite a big house at the height of the boom on an interest-only mortgage,” Wright said. “They can’t afford to pay their mortgage.”
The main street is peppered with vacant stores, theme bars and fast-food spots. Unemployment in Hartlepool rose to 14.2 percent in the year through September 2011, the most recent data and highest rate since the Office for National Statistics began collecting information in 2004.
Hartlepool “is a little rough around the edges,” said Susan Grecian, who owns the Skin Deep beauty parlor near the center of town and lives in nearby Sunderland. “I wouldn’t buy a home here because the prices have fallen very far.”
Around the corner from Skin Deep and a half-block from Tasty Bites II, where southern fried chicken and pizza are served until 3:00 a.m., is Michna’s red-brick advice office.
Missed rent and mortgage payments account for about 15 percent of inquiries lately and that’s likely to rise, said Michna, who lives a 25-minute drive away in Middlesbrough. “It’s very worrying,” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Spillane in London at email@example.com
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Salinas v. Texas:
The U.S. Supreme Court held that a suspect who voluntarily provided answers to police questions could not assert that his silence to certain questions resulted in the invocation of his Fifth Amendment rights. The suspect was not in custody and did not receive his Miranda warnings, however voluntarily answered police questions about a murder, but fell silent when the police asked whether ballistic testing would match his shotgun to shell casings found at the scene of the crime. At the petitioner’s murder trial, the prosecutor introduced evidence of the petitioner’s failure to answer questions about the ballistic testing as evidence of the petitioner’s guilt despite his objections. Petitioner was convicted and brought his claim to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Court found that petitioner failed to invoke the privilege in response to the officer’s question. The Court reasoned that there were only two exceptions to when a defendant does not have to expressly invoke the privileged neither of which applied in this case. The first, at the defendant’s own trial, and the second, where governmental coercion makes his forfeiture of the privilege involuntary. The petitioner in the instant case was not facing his own trial and voluntarily accompanied police to the station where he was free to leave at any time. Petitioner argued there should be a third exception to express invocation where the witness chooses to stand mute rather than give an answer that officials suspect would be incriminating. The Court rejected this argument stating that there were a multitude of reasons a defendant may decline to answer the officers’ questions, and that the Fifth Amendment guarantees that no one may be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”, not an unqualified “right to remain silent”. The Court stated that it has long required defendants to assert the privilege in order to subsequently benefit from it.
Read the Full Opinion Here. | <urn:uuid:2aca891e-b1ba-42df-8008-95cbea1f3b74> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.peekandtoland.com/2012/07 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977797 | 383 | 2.203125 | 2 |
NLP In Business Communication – How Does It Work?
A lot has been said about NLP in business communication over the years. There is no doubt that NLP has infiltrated every sector of society, and especially in business (though not necessarily under the guise of NLP) over the last 30 years or so.
But what is not quite so clear, is exactly how NLP in business communication actually works, more specifically, how it can work to enhance not just an organisation’s profit but the potential and fulfilment of everyone, be that client or workforce, through powerful and ethical strategies that go way beyond the reals of what people traditionally call ‘business communication’.
This blog post answers two questions. What is NLP in business communication? And how can NLP in business communication work to increase your profits and also your fulfilment at work?
So, what is NLP and moreover, how does it work in business communication?
Neuro - refers to the idea that human behaviour is based on the neurological processes of seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting. We all experience our environment through the five senses which filter incoming information according to our previous experiences and thinking patterns. We assign meaning to this information based on our own personal history.
Linguistic - refers to the human ability to communicate with ourselves and others using verbal and nonverbal language. Language allows thoughts and experiences to be structured, expressed, and remembered.
Programming - refers to the processes related to thinking, learning, feeling, and changing. As human beings with a brain, we do not have to stick to behaviours we once learned. With the right model and support, these processes can be changed and adapted to fit our current needs.
So NLP is a highly effective methodology based on the notion that all human behaviour has an underlying structure. This structure can be modeled (copied), learned and changed. NLP in business communication can therefore effectively influence thinking processes and behaviours in order to fully develop skills and potential in people and organisations.
Since NLP deals with the ‘how’ or ‘strategies’ that we have for everything we do, the use of it focuses on finding solutions and developing strategies for enhanced communication, influence and lasting change. The success of NLP in business is in part due to the fact that its approach in based on how the mind works and eliciting the ‘difference that makes the difference’.
With regard to the second question pertaining to how NLP in business communication can enhance not just an organisations profits but also the potential and fulfilment of everyone involved, I have given 12 outstanding methods for using NLP in business. Put to good use, these strategies will increase your enjoyment but also rapidly increase your profits, just as one of my clients, Stephnie Smith, did recently (watch this video where she talks about doubling her business in 12 months here).
NLP In Business Communication – Strategy 1
More than perhaps any other technique or strategy for growing your business, enthusiasm, will sky-rocket your succeses. When you are aligned, focused and enthusiastic about what you do it comes across to your clients and colleagues at both a conscious and unconscious level. And enthusiasm more than skills is what people will buy. Which would you employ, someone with loads of enthusiasm but lacking some skills or someone with the sills but lacking enthusiasm?
Remember that people buy on emotion and justify with logic. Double your enthusiasm and you’ll double your sales, influence and happiness.
NLP In Business Communication – Strategy 2
This is a very simple but often overlooked aspect of success is business. What gets measured gets done. What are you measuring currently? And more importantly, are you measuring the right things? For example, how many calls do you need to make in order to speak to how many people; how many ‘pitches’ or conversations do you need to make in order to ‘invoice’ your desired income. And so on…. know your metrics!
You can also start to pay attention to the effect of your communication. Is it getting the desired results or not? Every word counts. The limits of your language are the limits of your experience in life. Expand your language skills and you will expand your influence and capacity to create life on your terms. Measure the effects of your communication and learn to change and adapt to improve its effectiveness.
NLP In Business Communication – Strategy 3
Public Speaking is the best way to build confidence and get your pitch clear. If you are afraid of public speaking, great! All your dreams live on the other side of your fears so get on with it and discover how to communicate with passion, purpose and poise in front of others. People buy from people they know, like and trust so the faster you become adept at speaking in public, the faster you’ll attract success in business. Not only that, you’ll discover that as you begin to use NLP in business communication more and more effectively to groups you’ll also be able to communicate more effectiuvely and influentially people 1on1.
NLP In Business Communication – Strategy 4
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Harold Whitman
If you talk about something it’s a dream. When you envision it, it’s exciting. When you plan it, it becomes possible. But when you commit time, it’s real! Plan your week by what makes you come alive, schedule each day with those activities, outcomes or results that inspire you most and stick to them 100%. If you want some help with this you can go here and sign up for a FREE Webinar to help you move past what has been limiting you until now and create the life you have always dreamt of!
NLP In Business Communication – Strategy 5
Get A Good Philosophy! In other words, one of the best philosophies you can have is one of curiosity, openness and exploration. Find out what your potential or actual clients and colleagues want and help them get it. Dig deep. The only way to influence people ethically and effectively is if they want what you’re offering them. So make them want what you are offering by being curious and open to their map of the world. Ask lots of questions with an open mind. Find out what motivates them. What’s the biggest problem they have that you can help them with? What’s the goal behind the goal? Help them get it!
Part 2 to follow shortly.
In the meantime, if you want to find out more about NLP in business communication you can join a FREE Webinar here. | <urn:uuid:82231131-a7f3-4b2c-a463-acb8472a1118> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bedohaveanything.com/blog/tag/communication/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956204 | 1,399 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Defining personal goals
By Robin Applegarth CRPC®
Goal setting is a creative process that can pay big dividends. Identify where you’re going and your path becomes more clear. Setting goals requires posing some questions to yourself and waiting for the answers. They may come immediately, or they make take a few days or longer.
Personal finance for women starts with discovering your goals. Financial planning is a holistic look at organizing your financial life to reach those goals. The general process can be done with a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioner, or on your own. Most of us focus on short term goals, but pay special attention to your bigger “life goals.”
I like to see people go a little deeper when financial planning, by identifying their most cherished goals or dreams. Identifying these heart-felt wishes can be a strong motivator and keep us on the path to success when some current sacrifices are necessary.
George Kinder CFP® developed a unique “life planning” set of lessons in his book Lighting the Torch (FPA Press). Life planning is a specialized part of financial planning. You can get a sample of how it feels by answering 3 questions Mr. Kinder poses to his clients near the beginning. (Read his book or find a planner who has taken his training if you want to experience the full process.)
The 3 questions that follow help define cherished values and dreams. Find your passion and you’ll be more willing to save for your dreams. Give yourself some quiet, protected time to reflect on these questions.
Question 1: If you were already financially secure, how would you live your life? Would you live differently than you are now? Imagine the details of a life that includes all you really want to do and be.
Question 2: Your doctor informs you that you have 5-10 years left to live with more or less current functioning. What would you do with the time you have left? Are there things you still want to achieve? How would your life change?
Question 3: If you were told you have only one day left to live (ouch), what regrets would you have about unfulfilled dreams or goals?
These are piercing and emotional questions that get to the heart of what you value and cherish and what you want out of life. How does all this relate to money and finances?
Many people feel that lack of money holds them back from achieving all their goals. There are many things we’d like to do that require some financial resources: college education, home ownership, travel, leisure time/retirement, financial support for family or favorite charities, etc. Money is a tool to help us reach many goals, so a basic knowledge of how to grow and manage money is important.
Other goals can be reached without the need for financial support (self-education, building friendships, participation in causes or activities we enjoy, etc.) You may find that your goals fall into both areas–ones that need money and ones that don’t.
Those goals that require financial resources are the ones requiring financial planning, although you’ll want to pay attention to the other side equally. List what goals require your financial support, maybe in a journal or online diary.
Note what time frame the goals need. Example: buy a home near the ocean within 4 years, travel to Europe to see friends next summer, retire with a certain income. Be as specific as you can and focus on those things most important to you. Some Life Coaches suggest making a “wish board” of pictures or words that reflect your goals. Keep it in a place where you’ll see it regularly.
Your goals may get refined over time, with some getting dropped and others added. That’s OK and all part of the process. Most importantly, make the goals reflect what YOU want out of life, not just what others expect from you. This is your chance to play with ideas and dreams and weave your own unique life. Go for it. | <urn:uuid:f98bb660-c6a8-4ab4-9bf0-80a3391fd748> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thesilverpurse.com/Set-Goals/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962276 | 828 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Wikipedia is aiming to use mobile phones to reach a billion people by 2015, a senior executive has said, doubling the present number.
The rapid spread of cellular networks in the developing world is providing fertile ground for this expansion, even as it robs the site of potential
editors, Jay Walsh, senior director of communications at the Wikimedia Foundation, told AFP in Tokyo.
Reaching people in far-flung parts of the world where computers are scarce requires a pared down, text-only version of the collaborative online encyclopaedia, he said.
"It's surprisingly challenging to take your website and make it available on the simplest phone," Walsh said on the sidelines of a conference in the Japanese capital on Sunday.
"In areas like the Middle East, opening your phone and accessing a project like Wikipedia could cost you the equivalent of the couple of US dollars, which is a serious amount of money in those countries.
"We're trying to eliminate that barrier so people don't have to think about that," he said, adding the site's global audience stood at around 483 million.
Tie-ups with telecommunications providers such as France-based Orange and VimpelCom of the Netherlands, are driving this expansion, penning deals that mean waiving data charges for customers accessing the site, in an initiative called Wikipedia Zero.
According to figures from Morgan Stanley, the number of mobile phones and other portable devices accessing the Internet will overtake the number of laptops and desktops this year.
But while browsing is easy on a handset, editing a page on a small screen and without a physical keyboard is more of a challenge.
The number of active editors -- someone who edits a page at least five times a month -- peaked on the English language site in 2007 at 50,000, he said, adding it has been in decline ever since and now stands at around 33,000.
"There's a sense of the project being finished," he said.
Executives hope Wikipedia Zero will help rebalance the editorial brain drain, expanding into markets where local versions of the site remain in the start-up phase. The Swahili language version of Wikipedia -- one of the 285 available -- has just 88 active editors.
But, admits Walsh, the constraints of the mobile phone as a tool for editing, remain a big hurdle.
"Our main focus is on the technological infrastructure to make it easy for this to work," he said. "It's about big ideas, bringing about change and making the world a better place."
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|Author:||By Zulfugar Agayev|
Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that broke away from Azerbaijan after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, said it shot down an unmanned Azeri drone over its territory on Sept. 12.
The unmanned aircraft was downed to prevent similar reconnaissance flights over the disputed area, which have become more frequent along the border in recent days, the Karabakh Defense Army said in a statement on its website today.
Eldar Sabiroglu, the head of the Azeri Defense Ministry’s press service, and Teymur Abdullayev, a spokesman at the ministry, didn’t answer phone calls today seeking comment.
Oil-exporting Azerbaijan is using energy income to acquire modern weaponry, including unmanned planes from Israel, with whom the Caspian Sea nation started joint production of drones, President Ilham Aliyev said in April. Today’s incident marks the first time an Azeri spy plane has ever been shot down over the majority-Armenian populated region.
The Azeri Defense Ministry has previously not denied Armenian media reports that some of the drones produced with Israel are being used to monitor Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan and landlocked Armenia fought a war over the region that left tens of thousands of people dead and more than 1 million displaced. The territory remains a potential flashpoint in a region where Russia in 2008 fought a five-day war with Georgia after separatist tensions flared up.
Russia, which borders the countries along with Iran, Turkey and Georgia, brokered a cease-fire in 1994. Talks on a final settlement, mediated by Russia, the U.S. and France, have failed to produce a binding agreement.
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tel: (202) 223-4330, fax (202) 223-4332, e-mail: email@example.com | <urn:uuid:c39a45ad-621e-4931-b4e6-70bf90b471ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nkrusa.org/news/daily_news.php?id=2289 | 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 | 0.923427 | 442 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Any proposals aimed at taming the banks won't amount to much. Better oversight? The financiers will steal all the good staff and run rings round the regulators. Improved central banking? Short of taking the Bank of England back under government control, little will change.
People like Martin Wolf of the Financial Times have suggested measures like prohibiting leverage of more than 10 to one and protecting the vulnerable from predatory mortgage sellers. Separating investment banking from ordinary deposit-taking and lending is critical to stop the bankers gambling with our money.
Those would be sensible ideas, but bankers would probably find a way round them.
Much of the problem is that banks have become so powerful that they run politics. The Tory party is funded by the banks. At least three Tory donors directly profited from the Libor scandal, according to the Telegraph. Labour hardly turn up their snouts at a few quid from the square mile.
As Wolf says: “Protecting democratic politics from plutocracy is among the biggest challenge to the health of democracies.” Financiers have always had their claws in politics -- we're talking the biggest lobbyists in history here -- and they'll push politicians to change legislation in their own favour. That's unlikely to change soon, and it's why the Tories aren't making the banking inquiry independent.
A development that might really make a difference
Andy Haldane, executive director of financial stability at the Bank of England, recently said that new technology could make "banking middle men ... surplus links in the chain".
The Internet is great at disintermediating between seller and buyer, cutting out the middleman and creating new efficiencies. Look at the success of Ebay.
The web also cuts costs. Email, Skype, Flickr, Facebook and Wordpress. They're all free because they’ve slashed fixed costs and made it almost costless to produce an additional unit. Why should banking be any different?
Banks also bundle lots of functions and services together. While that may have made sense a century ago, it probably doesn't today except as a means for the banks to rip us off.
Powered by the Internet, a host of online companies are doing finance in a new way.
- Zopa cuts out the high street by taking deposits direct over the Internet and lending them on. Loans are parcelled into small amounts so that any single lender bears only a small part of the risk. Borrowers and lenders decide on an appropriate interest rate and loan length. Zopa now represents nearly 1.5% of the UK lending market with monthly lending of £10-15 million. Only 0.7% of loans go bad, among the lowest of any institution in the UK.
- A US website called Movenbank is introducing cashless, teller-free digital banking. Founder Brett King claims that the Internet, like in so many other industries, is revolutionising the business through cutting out the banks.
- Kenya's M-Pesa leads the way in mobile banking. I remember seeing people who'd probably never had a bank account buying food in the Nairobi markets with their mobile phones.
Haldane told the Telegraph that: “At present, these companies are tiny, but so, a decade and a half ago, was Google.”
The magnificence of the Internet is that rather than trying to storm the citadel, it lets the disempowered simply walk round it into new territory. Like many of the best confrontations with power, the solution is to subvert it rather than to wage a war you can't win.
What's odd about capitalism is that it often sows the seeds of its own instability, as a famous bearded German once said. Despite all the protests and tweeting by angry activists, it might be the profit motive that finally hits the bankers where it hurts. | <urn:uuid:e910e162-5266-41f1-8fa7-34fea32886df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.renegadeeconomist.com/news/bypass-the-bankers.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960525 | 793 | 2.03125 | 2 |
December 21, 2012
Dandridge: Rising Federal Tax Regulation and Its Impact on Small Nonprofit Entities
Nicole S. Dandridge (Michigan State), Choking Out Local Community Service Organizations: Rising Federal Tax Regulation and Its Impact on Small Nonprofit Entities, 99 Ky. L.J. 695 (2011):
Small community nonprofit and charitable organizations are a vital component of American life and culture. These organizations encourage community collaboration and are in-tune with the acute needs of their respective local populations. In the face of pressure to downsize government and reduce federal, state, and local spending, small nonprofits have become integral to delivering basic human and social goods and services to the public. These groups endure almost solely on donations of time and money and do not have cash reserves or extensive assets that will allow them to hire legal or other professional counsel to assist in business and legal compliance matters.
Obtaining and maintaining § 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status allows the balance of these groups to operate as viable entities by opening the door to vast grant and donation opportunities with which to fund their programs. Gaining tax-exempt status requires in-depth business and financial planning and a complex application process, which many small nonprofits complete without the benefit of counsel. Until recently, small nonprofit organizations were subject to modest federal regulatory compliance measures in excess of compliance with the tax code under which they gained exemption.
Over the past decade, in the name of strengthening transparency, accountability, and governance, Congress and the IRS have increased federal regulation of nonprofit and charitable entities, which includes many measures that were otherwise within the purview of state rule, and have not spared small nonprofits in this effort. New regulations of significant interest to small nonprofit groups include the 2004 revision of the federal application for tax-exempt status, which now includes extensive governance provisions, and the new annual reporting requirement for small nonprofits and revocation of tax-exempt status for consecutive non-filing, pursuant to the Pension Protection Act of 2006. This increase in regulation creates a certain “federalization” of nonprofit law that has overly burdensome consequences on valuable small nonprofit organizations with limited resources.
This Article begins by identifying and describing the unique and essential roles of, and challenges that face, small nonprofit tax-exempt organizations and their leaders. This Article then reviews the promulgation of new and heightened federal regulatory requirements that most concern small nonprofit groups and the impact and implications of these regulations. Informed by the theoretical models of Responsive Regulation and New Governance, this Article concludes by offering a reasonable regulatory approach as it relates to the restoration of federal tax-exempt status for small nonprofits facing revocation of tax exemption for failure to file consecutive annual returns.
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as a board member, past and present, for small non-profs, no federalization of day to day activities is perceptible. since small nfps still have to do state filings, the 990-n is just added to the compliance pile. as far as governance, you pass the conflict of interest policy and then you're done. and that's about it for IRS compliance
Posted by: jpe | Dec 22, 2012 7:24:22 AM | <urn:uuid:ef235460-3260-45fa-ac6e-3b9becf599d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2012/12/dandridge.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943108 | 681 | 1.789063 | 2 |
I think that the idea of simply recompiling the whole Gentoo system with this is extremely optimistic.
Although this is unlikely to ever replace GCC (same with CLang), it's always great to have more open source compilers out there.
OpenCL kernels running on the GPU should not be impacted by driver optimization while they are running on the GPU, right?
This article is one of the worst I have EVER read... What the hell is this article EVEN TALKING ABOUT!? What is Dirndl?
Q posted what a Dirndl is. A simple google helps too.
At least this time it's software that's already compatible with Linux, unlike the Lightworks video editor, which we probably won't see natively supported on linux for another 5-10 years. | <urn:uuid:6ac34bcd-f23e-47b2-8e57-6b145140355f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?55642-On-The-Heels-Of-An-Impressive-Launch/page3&p=213292 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948004 | 161 | 1.84375 | 2 |
The nearly three century old method for naming newly discovered nature will face a rebellion this Friday at Yale University.
The topic is not just some dusty debate in the halls of academia.
Adventurous scientists who capture previously unknown fish, birds and other creatures and others who work with fossils and microorganisms say they have an increasing problem in assigning accurate names to their subjects.
James Prosek, a naturalist, author and artist, realized while working on a book called "Trout: An Illustrated History" that traditional nomenclature for living things is increasingly unaligned with scientific knowledge.
Genetic research was upending common understandings about the trout he caught with his handmade flies.
For example, he had caught brook trout native to the Connecticut streams where he fished as a child, rainbow trout common in the US west and brown trout of European origin.
All three were called "trout" even though the brook trout was genetically more akin to Arctic char, rainbow trout more akin to Pacific salmon and brown trout to Atlantic salmon.
"Technically, it was no longer correct even to call the book I was working on 'Trout,'" Prosek said.
On Friday, Prosek will join evolutionary biologists and other thinkers from Yale and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC at Yale's Whitney Humanities Center for a symposium titled "Naming Nature: A conversation on the nature, uses and limitations of biological taxonomies."
The controversial idea at the forum is that it could be time to overturn the widely used naming system developed by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus 275 years ago.
The Linnaean system divides the natural world into neat ranks and gives species joint Latin names, such as Homo sapiens for humans, with groupings based on physical similarity.
The reformists at the Yale conference, including Yale geology professor Jacques Gauthier, evolutionary biologist Michael Donoghue, and Smithsonian zoologist Kevin de Queiroz, say the Linnaean system has had its day.
"The Linnaean system is simply not up to the task of handling the sheer amount of information we're amassing about diversity," Donoghue said.
Their idea is to replace the Linnaean system with something called "PhyloCode." Under this system, life forms are ranked by shared ancestors and Darwinian principles -- in other words by their branch on the molecular family tree.
Donoghue and his colleagues have already converted the Yale Herbarium's plant collection from the Linnaean system to PhyloCode.
Converting from one system to the other generally does not require a name change, Donoghue said, except to correct a name to reflect new knowledge of evolutionary relationships.
"The goal is to apply the same names in ways that make more sense," added De Queiroz, who gave the example of the termite as presenting a different outcome under the PhyloCode than the traditional approach.
In a published essay, De Queiroz noted that termites have recently been determined to descend from roaches.
Under the pre-evolution Linnaean system, he wrote, "because roaches and termites were considered mutually exclusive and ranked as orders, it's been proposed that termites be demoted in rank to a family of roaches" to take into account the new knowledge.
However, to make that simple change, he wrote, the Linnaean system dictates that "the name of the group of termites be changed (from Isoptera to Termitidae) and the name Termitidae change its reference from a subgroup of termites to the group of all termites -- even though the hypothesized composition of both of these groups has remained unchanged."
"And that's just the tip of the iceberg, because now all the former termite families have to be demoted in rank to subfamilies, and all of the former termite sub-families have to be demoted in rank to tribes, etc, and all of these changes in rank necessitate changes in the names of the taxa that they designate.
"With examples such as this in mind, it's hard to believe that the rank-based code used in zoology has a stated objective of promoting stability in the scientific name of animals!" De Queiroz wrote.
Applying the PhyloCode, only a single name change would be required to reflect the new knowledge of termite evolution.
But not everyone is in favor of adopting the PhyloCode.
One panelist, Richard Prum -- a Yale evolutionary biologist who reconstructed the red, white and black feathers of a flightless dinosaur by analyzing its fossilized feather structure -- objects.
"The PhyloCode doesn't solve a useful problem," said Prum, winner of a MacArthur Fellowship genius grant and teacher of an evolution of beauty seminar with Yale philosopher and art critic Jonathan Gilmore.
"I suggest a name registry, building up a registry of meanings with names," he said.
As a naturalist on the frontlines who conceived of and organized the panel, Prosek had a practical-minded perspective.
He cautioned that when small groups of creatures are not recognized for their diversity and given their own names, they lose protections afforded by conservation laws.
"How we name things affects their health and well-being, so we must wield language carefully and thoughtfully," he said.
Explore further: 'Images of the inside of a fly' elected as computed microtomography's Best Film of the Year | <urn:uuid:1803a8fb-9d61-4838-88e4-7c6c73a6b1e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://phys.org/news/2011-04-lots-newly.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955996 | 1,137 | 3.3125 | 3 |
This new game by Carl Chudyk is a journey through innovations from the stone age through modern times. Each player builds a civilization based on various technologies, ideas, and cultural advancements, all represented by cards. Each of these cards has a unique power which will allow further advancement, point scoring, or even attacking other civilizations. Be careful though, as other civilizations may be able to benefit from your ideas as well!
To win, you must score achievements, which you can attain by amassing points or by meeting certain criteria with the innovations you have built. Plan your civilization well, and outmaneuver your opponents, and with some luck you will achieve victory!
No. of Players 2 - 4
Duration: 30 minutes
Min. Age: 12 | <urn:uuid:60bb3cf2-92e1-45e8-9b46-d6380f25a7b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gameslore.com/acatalog/PR_Innovation_Card_Game.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965292 | 153 | 1.585938 | 2 |
"I have heard a lot of 'chatter' from the communications bar, Wall Street analysts and reporters, just in the past 72 hours," noted Federal Communications Commissioner Robert M. McDowell during a talk before the Federalist Society on Monday. "This morning, speculation abounds."
McDowell was referring to the ample quantity of buzz out in Capitol Hill-land over whether the FCC is actually going to issue net neutrality rules in the near future.
"Let me say at the outset that, as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, appointed by two presidents and unanimously confirmed by the Senate each time," he added. "I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen… or when… or even if."
"That will happen"
Well, we can be a little more categorical than that. We predict that FCC is either going to issue some kind of open Internet order, or it won't.
Last week FCC Chair Julius Genachowski said it would. "That will happen," Genachowski promised the Hill at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco. "We will make sure that we get the rules right, we need to make sure that what we do maximizes innovation and investment across the ecosystem."
And he even threw a dig at Verizon and Google for proposing their own version of open Internet rules, which would exempt wireless broadband from discrimination restrictions. "I would've preferred if they didn't do exactly what they did when they did it," he explained. "It had the effect of slowing down some other processes."
It was a rather interesting comment, given that the Verizon/Google manifesto was probably at least partially percolated at a serious of controversial "back door" meetings (which everyone knew about) that the FCC set up for various stakeholders.
But the next thing you knew there were all sorts of reports flying about that these aforementioned rules would be proposed at the agency's next open meeting in December. We e-mailed the Commission to find out what was what.
"We haven't circulated the December agenda," came the reply. "These rumors from outside, uninformed sources are pure speculation at best."
And indeed, there's no mention of any open Internet rules on the FCC's Items on Circulation page.
A deal this large
But wait—net neutrality, or something like it, could arrive via another route. The New York Times reports that various government officials are miffed that Comcast has announced a new management slate for NBC Universal, despite earlier promises that it would wait until the FCC and Department of Justice green-lighted the entertainment group's proposed merger with Comcast first.
"For a deal this large, and one that hasn't been approved, Comcast's behavior is presumptuous and arrogant," one official told The Times. The article suggests that the agency might attach some net neutrality strings to deal, or at least prohibit Comcast from denying competitors NBCU content over the Internet.
Two of the biggest boosters of a net neutrality requirement or some variant of it are Public Knowledge and the Earthlink ISP. PK wants the agency to just plain old require Comcast to adhere to open Internet rules in exchange for the merger. Earthlink wants the Commission to require Comcast to sell its broadband lines to smaller competitors at wholesale rates.
In fact, last week Earthlink met with the FCC's entire Comcast/NBCU transaction team and several Commissioners to push this position.
'EarthLink explained that mandating wholesale standalone broadband directly addresses the harms [that the ISP thinks the merger poses] to broadband affordability and online video," the company explained. "Independent broadband providers such as EarthLink are in a superior position to meet the needs of consumers that want or need broadband at an affordable price, rather than an expensive bundle."
Into the abyss
As for McDowell, no surprise that he's not a big fan of any of this.
"I hope that, before the Commission takes a giant leap into a potentially dark and dangerous regulatory abyss, it would seriously consider an idea that I have suggested for several years now," he told the Federalist Society.
The agency should hook up with the Federal Trade Commission, trade associations, consumer groups, and engineers, McDowell suggested, and create a "new alliance" that "could spotlight allegations of anticompetitive behavior and use already existing consumer protection and antitrust laws to punish bad actors and aid consumers."
It sounds something like what Comcast suggested last week—a self-regulatory approach. "My door remains open for discussing the creation of such a framework," his comments concluded. | <urn:uuid:a37e7f04-98a1-4c1d-ab0d-739e5d5d2ebd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/11/fcc-boss-net-neutrality-will-happen-sometime-really/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965932 | 929 | 1.546875 | 2 |
If you suspect you are suffering from allergies, talk with your health care provider about allergy testing. A simple series of tests may help pinpoint your particular allergens. It is not unusual for the first encounter with the allergen to produce a mild reaction, but if you are susceptible subsequent exposures can increase sensitivity to the danger point. Talk to your health care provider if you suspect you may be at risk for a serious allergic reaction.
Allergy testing involves having a skin or blood test to find out what substance may trigger an allergic response. Skin tests are usually done because they are rapid, reliable, and generally less expensive than blood tests, but either type of test may be used.
A small amount of a suspected allergen is placed on or below the skin to see if a reaction develops. There are three types of skin tests:
- Skin prick test. This test is done by placing a drop of a solution containing a possible allergen on the skin, and a series of scratches or needle pricks allows the solution to enter the skin. If the skin develops a red, raised itchy area (called a wheal); it usually means that the person is allergic to that allergen. This is called a positive reaction.
- Intradermal test. During this test, a small amount of the allergen solution is injected into the skin. An intradermal allergy test may be done when a substance does not cause a reaction in the skin prick test but is still suspected as an allergen for that person. The intradermal test is more sensitive than the skin prick test but is more often positive in people who do not have symptoms to that allergen (false-positive test results).
- Skin patch test. For a skin patch test, the allergen solution is placed on a pad that is taped to the skin for 24 to 72 hours.
Allergy blood tests look for substances in the blood called antibodies. Blood tests are not as sensitive as skin tests but are often used for people who are not able to have skin tests. | <urn:uuid:eb575ee3-8e7d-40ec-8a49-6925bfcf7ec6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hollandhospital.org/allergies/diagnosis.aspx?email=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941045 | 422 | 3.8125 | 4 |
Don't pass a cover up just because it's scruffy — it might tell a good story
By Janet Klug
Sometimes in stamp and cover collecting, scruffy is good.Some collectors seek stamps and covers in perfect, pristine condition. Others assess each item and acquire those that interest them, regardless of condition.
|Figure 1. By using the Internet to learn some history and genealogy, the author learned a lot about this burned and torn cover. Click on image to enlarge.|
|Figure 2. A crash cover from a British Overseas Airways Corporation flight that crashed May 2, 1953, near Jalalogori, West Bengal, India, killing all 43 people aboard the flight. The burned corner is part of the story of this collectible cover. Click on image to enlarge.|
For me, a scruffy cover often means there is a great story awaiting discovery. A good example is the United States postal stationery envelope shown in Figure 1.
I acquired this cover and a dozen or so other covers while on a treasure hunt through some dealer dollar boxes. This one looked like it had been through a battle and needed someone to love it.
I brought the cover home and began to puzzle over it.
The cover bears U.S. Official seals (Scott OX7) over some tears on both the front and back.
Scruffy covers are a great source for Official seals, an interesting collecting speciality in their own right. Official seals, also sometimes called post office seals, have been issued by many postal authorities. They are used to repair or seal mail that is damaged in transit, is received unsealed at the post office, or is opened by mistake or by a dead letter office.
Official Seal Newsletter is a quarterly publication dedicated to the study and collecting of worldwide Official seals. An annual subscription to the newsletter is $20. Write to Jim Drummond, 19335 Pauma Valley Drive, Porter Ranch, CA 913261701 or visit the Officially Sealed Mails of the World web site at www.poseal.com.
My scruffy envelope is very roughly torn on the right side, perhaps by the recipient to get to the contents. The envelope was opened so roughly that part of the 2¢ red George Washington imprinted stamp is missing.
The whole envelope is stained, and it is burned and scorched at the top left.The cover is postmarked Ivy Depot, Va., Nov. 21, 1899. There is also a receiving backstamp of University Station, Charlottesville, Va., Nov. 21, 1899, 2 p.m.
The cover is addressed to "J. Heath-Lewis."
A notation in French, "J'ai grand appetit" (I have a big appetite), is written in pencil on the back of the cover (not shown).
The front of the envelope has the numbers "464" written on a dottedline return address that bears a partially visible "Ivy Depot, Va." imprint. So how did this poor, scruffy cover get to be so poor and scruffy? Was it in a train wreck? Or maybe a steamboat fire? It is too early for an airplane crash.
Closer inspection shows that the Official seals were also burned, so it is likely that whatever burned this cover happened after whatever tore it — maybe even decades later. Who knows? I could find no reports of a train wreck between Ivy Depot and Charlottesville on Nov. 21, 1899, and a consultation of an area map quickly ruled out steamboats.
I likely would never know how the cover got burned and torn unless there was something in the recipient's history that could help.I started my investigation by doing an Internet search for Ivy Depot, Va. That brought up a web site linked with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. This gave a fair bit of historical data about Ivy Depot.
Ivy Depot is located in Albemarle County, Va., between the Blue Ridge Mountains and Charlottesville, which is the location of Monticello, the famous residence of Thomas Jefferson.
Nearby Ivy Depot is Locust Hill, the home of Meriwether Lewis. He was the Lewis half of the exploring team of Lewis and Clark whose expedition across the American West began in 1804.
Suddenly, the name of the addressee became more interesting. Was J. Heath-Lewis any relation to Meriwether Lewis? That sent me back to my Internet search engine of choice, Google. The search returned more hits than I could reasonably use, and I was getting nowhere fast.I clicked the "more" link next to the search box, which brought a dropdown box offering more options. I clicked the books tab, and Google searched through its increasingly impressive online library of books that are scanned and archived, accessible free to anyone who wants to use them.
Voila! The first offering was a book titled Lewis of Warner Hall: The History of the Family Including the Genealogy, by Merrow Egerton Sorley, published in 1935.
The book had a short biography of one "J. Heath-Lewis," who was born John Heath Lewis on May 16, 1879, at Fairview near Ivy Depot, Va.
He graduated from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville in 1902, specializing in chemical engineering. He worked as an engineer for seven years in the United States, Canada and Mexico before becoming the headmaster at the Rugby Military Academy in New Orleans. He later taught school in Atlanta. He was married in 1912 to Ida Selma Woltz. The couple produced four children.The reference to "Fairview" near Ivy Depot intrigued me. The online book had the answer to that as well. Fairview was built in 1879 by John Lewis's father, James Terrell Lewis.
The father was plagued by allergies and asthma at Fairview. In 1884, he moved the family to Ivy Depot, where he served as postmaster and agent for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. He was also an inventor and was said to have invented "many useful things." The senior Lewis made a great deal of money. It is recorded that he was generous and gave it all away.
I would speculate that this cover was sent by James Terrell Lewis, postmaster at Ivy Depot, to his son John Heath Lewis, a student at the University of Virginia.
So the remaining question is whether or not these two men named Lewis are descendants of Meriwether Lewis. The genealogical record in the book indicates that they are. There are scores of men and women in the family who bear the name Meriwether as a first, middle or last name, which traces back to the wife of Col. Robert Lewis. Her name was Jane Meriwether.
The Lewis family dates to the earliest days of colonial America, and my scruffy cover represents a tiny part of that history. It is not worth any more than the dollar I paid for it, but look at the entertainment and information that my searching provided.
Another scruffy cover is shown in Figure 2. It was sent May 1, 1953, by a British serviceman from Changi Royal Air Force Base, Singapore, to his family in Southampton, England.
The cover was salvaged from the May 2, 1953, crash of a British Overseas Airways De Havilland DH106 Comet 1 aircraft near Jalalogori, West Bengal, India.
Covers salvaged from plane or train crashes or ship wrecks are known as crash covers or, more discretely, as interrupted mail. Crash covers can be quite valuable, particularly if they are from a famous disaster, such as the crash of the airship Hindenburg.
This crash cover is partially burned at the upperright corner, and it bears a threeline handstamp in purple ink: "Salvaged Mail, 'Comet' Crash Near Calcutta, 2nd. MAY 1953."
The handstamp is an example of an interesting auxiliary marking.
Auxiliary markings are postal markings applied to covers by handstamp, machine cancellation, stickon label, manuscript, or mechanical or electronic methods such as an Addressograph or a computer. Such markings indicate that the covers were given special attention because of some special circumstance.
Crash covers and other interrupted mail offer some of the most interesting auxiliary markings.If you are interested in auxiliary markings, you might consider joining the Auxiliary Markings Club.
Annual membership in the club is $15. Write to Gerald Johnson, 6621 W. Victoria Ave., Kennewick, WA 99336.
The Figure 2 cover was carried on a flight en route from Singapore to London. The aircraft was in its initial climb out of Calcutta, India, when it flew into a heavy tropical storm. Six minutes after taking off from Dum Dum Airport, the plane disintegrated, its wreckage spread over a 15-mile radius.
The crash was caused by bad weather and an overloaded tail section. The mail was salvaged, but all 37 passengers and six crewmen perished in the crash.
The De Havilland Comet was the first commercial passenger jet, but numerous crashes in the first few years of operations caused the aircraft to be a commercial failure.
This scruffy interrupted mail cover is a sad reminder of the early days of jet passenger service. It definitely is worth adding to a collection.
A great resource for aircraft crashes that can relate to covers is www.planecrashinfo.com.
The web site's data base includes the details on all civil and commercial aviation accidents of scheduled and nonscheduled passenger airliners worldwide, which resulted in a fatality since 1908.
There are also interesting sections titled "100 Worst Aviation Disasters," "Famous Deaths" and "Last Words," for those looking for a bit of macabre reading material. | <urn:uuid:c507a668-1852-4770-bfd6-8a826b8dcff0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.linns.com/howto/refresher/scruffycovers_20070723/refreshercourse.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969063 | 2,019 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Ground broken for Geneva School memorial
Geneva High School 1936 graduate Kathryn Strickler sat on the grounds where she had received her education on Saturday morning when community leaders gathered to break ground for a memorial to the former Geneva School.
In her lifetime, Strickler witnessed the demolition of two school buildings, including the one from which she graduated and the one that was most recently demolished.
"It's progress," said Strickler. "I hated to see the school go down but it's progress. I graduated from the old school and they tore it down. I saw both schools come to an end."
Strickler said that she attended school as Kathryn Cole and lived in a house across the street from the old school building where a car dealership now stands.
"I loved it," said Strickler of her Geneva school days. "We got disciplined but we had wonderful teachers. I was part of the National Youth Association back then. I worked in Mr. Hunt's (former principal) office for awhile."
Geneva residents and school alumni are currently in the process of raising funds for a memorial on the site of the school. Alan Baumgartner, who is heading up the project, said that the memorial would stand near the south entrance to the former school building. Construction of the cement pad and erection of the facade will begin in the immediate future.
In addition, those interested in supporting the project are invited to purchase bricks for a walkway at the site. Deadline for information and payment is August 31 of this summer. Construction of the brick walkway will begin as soon as engraved bricks are received in the fall. Donations are also being accepted toward memorial trees which will decorate the landscaping at the project.
"This building gave us a social center for so many people for such a long time," observed Baumgartner. "This will enable us to keep Geneva High School in our hearts. This is what the memorial is all about. There are so many memories for so many people that were made at this school.
"Visitors can come to this memorial and look at the member donors in the walkway," continued Baumgartner. "They can look down at the bricks and see classmates, administrators, friends and teachers. None of this would be possible without the generous contributions of alumni and friends who gave to purchase this land."
Baumgartner praised the Limberlost Conservation Association that was founded in 1947 for its involvement in contributing financially to the historical and memorial heritage of the Geneva community and surrounding area.
"For 65 years this organization has worked to preserve the heritage of this community," said Baumgartner. "It started with the Limberlost Cabin and then the Visitor's Center. Now they have stepped up once again here."
Baumgartner praised construction manager Mike Schwartz for purchasing and donating lights from the original site and Stan Mosser, for his stellar representation of Geneva Proud and its contribution to community heritage.
"I am honored by all the involvement, passion and support which made this possible," Baumgartner said. "This will be such an inspiration to all of us."
Sara Briggs, longtime school teacher and wife of former banker the late Jim (Jimmy) Briggs said that her husband would be absolutely delighted with the events surrounding the memorial.
"He would be so proud. I'm so glad that all four boys started school here," commented Briggs.
"I have so memories of school here," said Briggs' son, Andrew, a Geneva alumni who currently is president of Bank of Geneva. "I remember the ballgames and all of the teachers. This is one of those projects where people of the community have pulled together and it is coming out great."
Baumgartner said that it appears that the monument will stand almost exactly on the spot of the front doors.
"We examined the foundation and it appears that the monument will stand exactly where it had been located over the doors for so many years," said Baumgartner.
For additional information concerning donating toward the project, contact Alan Baumgartner at 260-433-2281 or email@example.com.
You need to be logged in to post comments on this article. | <urn:uuid:fe2bf7c1-d13c-41f5-82fd-e278ad7486f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bernetriweekly.com/news/ground-broken-for-geneva-school-memorial?mini=calendar%2F2012-12 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982232 | 866 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Today Katniss Everdeen makes her debut on the big screen as the movie adaptation of the first book in Suzanne Collins's post-apocalyptic fantasy trilogy, The Hunger Games, hits theaters. At only 16, Katniss is one cutthroat heroine, but not by choice. Her deadly archery skills are her greatest asset in saving her own life and the lives of her loved ones in the game arena and beyond. And she's not alone; Katniss joins the ranks of some of the most kick-ass female characters to grace the pages of comic books and shine on the silver screen.
Each of these strong women is more than just a pretty face. With supernatural strength and street smarts, these strong characters represent female empowerment and the ability for a woman to be in charge of her own fate. Whether you're like Wonder Woman flying solo or you've got a solid group behind you like Jem & The Holograms, each of these heroines with an action-packed history has given us lessons to incorporate in our everyday lives. Now get ready to show your own demons who's boss! | <urn:uuid:1a4d2a91-b872-49d6-8081-5bb499de221c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buzzsugar.com/The-Girl-With-the-Dragon-Tattoo | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93127 | 224 | 1.695313 | 2 |
In order to create change, we must first understand the issues we are facing.
That is why women's organizations around the state have teamed up to research and report on the status of women in Wisconsin. Our goal is to use this information to improve the lives of women in Winnebago County and throughout the state of Wisconsin.
The Women's Fund of the Oshkosh Area Community Foundation is proud to be a part of this effort to enlighten others.
What is the situation with women in our area? The good news: statistics demonstrate that women can succeed in society when given a chance on their own terms. Research conducted in 2004 demonstrates:
Women in Wisconsin are among the most likely in the nation to be in the workforce. Yet Wisconsin women rank 28th in the nation for median earnings.
Wisconsin women are less likely to live in poverty than the national average. But 25% of Wisconsin women live in poverty, compared with 28.9% of the national average.
For more information, please download the Status of Women in Wisconsin report. Full Report | <urn:uuid:0314dde3-db58-4401-bde3-3469f2761092> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://women.oshkoshareacf.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5:status-of-women-in-ne-wisconsin&catid=9&Itemid=201 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939629 | 216 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Adalbert Schnee's U-2511 (April, 1945)
intro. . .
My name is Ion and I started modeling about a year or so ago. This model is currently my 6th model built so far and it is still very much a ‘learner’ model.
I purchased two old Revell (#5081) XXI full hull kits in 1/144 scale and since I paid less than $20 for each of them, I figured it would be a cheap learning experience. The kit itself is meant to depict mainly U-2540 (with optional U-2518, U-3504 and U-2536 decals), but even as U-2540, I find it quite inaccurate.
It is obvious to me that Revell made this model based on the reconstructed Wilhelm Bauer submarine (ex-U-2540) which was not restored correctly to its 1945 shape. The most obvious problem is the shape of the upper side of the conning tower, around the front turret. Due to other modifications I’ve made and the way the kit was designed, I was unable to correct this problem, however, I have corrected other issues, bringing this kit closer to the look of the famous U-2511 in April of 1945 (Bergen, Norway).
the boat, and the build. . .
U-2511’s keel was laid down 7 July 1944 by Blohm + Voss, of Hamburg. She was commissioned 29 September 1944 with Korvettenkapitän Adalbert Schnee in command. Schnee commanded her until May 1945 when he was ordered to surrender. According to some rumours, Schnee approached within 500 meters of the British cruiser HMS Norfolk without being detected, but he had to leave the scene without attacking and headed back to base to surrender.
This fact may or may not be true, however, what interested me the most about this boat was its unique color scheme (I wanted to do something different from the typical two tone grey scheme). According to other rumours, Schnee looked at his boat from an aircraft and decided to repaint the conning tower (no mention of the upper side of the hull) in white.
intro. . .
Based on one of the reference pictures I found of this boat, it appears that the upper side of the hull was also repainted, most likely white. The reason I say that is because the hull color does not match the color of the deck and the color of the boats around it. For this reason I chose to paint the boat in the following colors (by White Ensign Models):
WEMCC C 02 – Black (pre-shading)
WEMCC KM02 – Dunkelgrau 51 (upper deck)
WEMCC KM05 – Schiffsbdenfarbe III Grau (lower side of the hull)
WEMCC KM10 – Schnellbootweiss (Conning tower and upper side of the hull)
The reference picture above has provided me the most clues about the appeareance of this boat. I still had a lot of missing information about its flood hole pattern and I’ve started researching more until I found out about U-2518 (later Rolland Morillot in the French navy). I was able to find some pictures of this boat in drydock (see below), so the boat configuration of the lower side of the hull (including exhausts) is mostly based on the U-2518.
Copyright ©2013 by Ion Soltan. _OPINIONS Model Shipwrights, KitMaker Network, or Silver Star Enterrpises. Images also by copyright holder unless otherwise noted. Opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of Model Shipwrights. All rights reserved. Originally published on: 2007-07-08 00:00:00 | <urn:uuid:d45f8792-ded2-40b3-998d-1c1a3a4aeecb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.modelshipwrights.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=1615 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968001 | 803 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Sierra Nevada Framework update
lhfotoware at hotmail.com
Thu Jun 3 07:46:53 EST 2004
June 2, 2004 North Lake Tahoe Bonanza
Environmentalists: amend forest plan
By Gregory Crofton
Bonanza News Service
Environmentalists say a forest plan that took a decade to develop and
provided protections for old-growth trees has been gutted by revisions
approved by the U.S. Forest Service.
The Forest Service, however, says the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan -
adopted in 2001 and meant to direct work on 11 million acres - was too
complex to use and did not adequately reduce fire danger.
In January, Jack Blackwell, a regional forester for the Forest
Service, approved an amendment to the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan that
allows removal of trees up to 30 inches in diameter. The old rules
allowed removal of trees up to 20 inches wide.
Allowing timber companies to remove some larger trees should provide
enough profit to cover the expense of removing smaller trees and
brush, which can act as ladder fuels in a wildfire, the Forest Service
"We can't afford to do the amount of thinning that needs to be done
with appropriations from Congress," said Matt Mathes, Forest Service
spokesman. "The new decision basically gives us a way to finance the
Environmentalist groups have appealed the decision to amend the forest
plan, but the 11 national forests in the Sierra have already begun to
use the new rules in planning for the project his spring and summer.
The Forest Service says timber companies will not be given a free pass
to cut trees.
"We must make our forest fire-safe," Blackwell said. "Large, old trees
will not be cut. They are not the problem. We need big trees for
habitat and other values. Relatively few trees between 20 and 30
inches in diameter will be thinned. The emphasis will be on
unnaturally dense stands of smaller trees and brush."
Groups such as the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign don't
trust the Forest Service and predict the agency will allow timber
companies to mow down what little remains of old growth in the Sierra.
"We need to treat surface fuels and ladder fuels," said Craig Thomas,
director of the campaign, which is a coalition of about 80
environmental groups. "This is a political decision to line pockets of
the timber industry that goes against all fire science out there
"Logging in old growth under the guise of fire protection not a good
thing. That's misleading. We are real tired of the Forest Service
having to do damage to our forest in order to do good."
Will the amendment affect the unique forest that is the Lake Tahoe
Basin Management Unit? Not much.
There are very few old growth trees in the basin because it was clear
cut in the 1860s to feed the operation of silver mines in Virginia
City. And Lake Tahoe, because it is a national treasure, isn't as
strapped for cash as other national forests in California.
Money started to flow to the Forest Service after President Clinton
participated in an environmental summit at Zephyr Cove in 1997. At the
summit, local, state and federal officials promised nearly $1 billion
to restore Lake Tahoe's environment in an effort to protect the
clarity of the lake.
"That gave us the means to accomplish some fuels-hazard reduction
projects without having to package projects in timber sales," said
Mark Johnson, a fuels specialist for the Forest Service Lake Tahoe
Basin Management Unit. "As I see it, (the forest plan amendment) is
not going to lead us to cut a bunch of 30-inch trees because of all
the environmental regulations in the basin and the Tahoe Regional
Planning Agency's standards and guidelines. Large tree cutting is not
necessary to promote fire hazard reduction."
The Healthy Forest Restoration Act, signed into law by President Bush
late last year, is expected to have an impact on the basin because it
reduces the amount of planning and paperwork that needs to be done by
law before forest projects begin.
"We expect the number of alternatives required to be reduced," Johnson
said. "That could speed up the time it takes to complete requirements
of the National Environmental Policy Act."
The end goal for the Tahoe basin, forest experts say, is to thin the
forest to create diverse stands of old trees where controlled fire can
be used to keep the danger of a catastrophic wildfire in check.
"A universal carpet of green forest is basically what have now," said
Rex Norman, public affairs officer for the Forest Service. "What you
want is a mixture of trees - different sizes, ages and diameters."
Comment by poster: I see that the same "preservationists" have the
same old vague fears that the Forest Service is going to bludgeon our
forests to death. The article also claims that the Lake Tahoe Basin
has "very few old growth trees". Mega-bullpucky! Yes, much of the easy
to get to timber was cut way back when but, there's still lots of old
growth at the upper elevations. 60" dbh western white pines, same size
sugar pine, incense cedar, jeffrey pine and true firs are still
plentiful. Also include in there some big thickets of very flammable
true firs and tons of dead fuels all over the ground from the beetle
kills in the early 90's. At least one third of all trees in the Tahoe
Basin died back then, with minimal salvage as a result of
"preservationist" attitudes to "protect" Lake Tahoe. A big burn at the
lake will do more erosional damage than people can imagine.
Larry, ex-fire lookout at Lake Tahoe
More information about the Ag-forst | <urn:uuid:2c277262-8206-40e1-8227-82ef058661c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/ag-forst/2004-June/018063.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939768 | 1,248 | 1.960938 | 2 |
As described on Wikipedia:
“An automobile powered by his own four-stroke cycle gasoline engine was built in Mannheim, Germany by Karl Benz in 1885, and granted a patent in January of the following year under the auspices of his major company, Benz & Cie., which was founded in 1883. It was an integral design, without the adaptation of other existing components, and included several new technological elements to create a new concept. He began to sell his production vehicles in 1888.”
There have been almost an uncountable number of motor vehicles built around the world since the day Benz received his patent in 1886. Certainly the number would be in the many multi-millions.
Every modern car, while they have different stylings and technologies included, are intrinsically all the same.
Engine. Wheels. Seats. Steering wheel. Brakes.
Look at ANY car and you’ll see all of those features.
Nobody is winning. One side gets a ruling, the other side appeals. That side wins the appeal, and then the other side appeals again. Each side gets banned from selling various products.
Products that people want to buy, while the pettiness of these companies stops exactly this from happening. | <urn:uuid:70d94ca6-280b-4a82-be49-0a713e6d327a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://michaelwyres.com/2012/08/why-apple-and-samsung-should-just-grow-up/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97992 | 256 | 2.296875 | 2 |
1.Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; if you have it yuo have to do certain things or have weird thoughtts believe me, I have OCD. It is the worst disorder there is.
Becausean of my OCD I have weird thoughts about my birthday and constantly have these counting patterns.
A.)Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a mental illness resulting in persistant illogical fears and ideas, and often, particular habits created and followed out so as to avoid the fears and anxiety they cause.
B.) Why I suffer.
A.) In the sixth grade, I was so afraid of choking on food that I would only eat soup or mashed potatoes. I weighed 60 lbs, and almost died before I slowly was brought onto solid foods again.
B.) I'm afraid of eveything now. Its stupid, but I can't stop it. I'm afraid of people, yet I love them. I want love, but I'm too cowardly to look for it. Instead I get caught up in the deluded fantasies in my head and wait for the world to go away.
Short for Obsseive Compulsive Disorder
OCD Is a disorder that cause Obessive thoughts and/or compulsive actions resulting from a shortage of a chemical inside the frontal lobe of the brain. There are many ways to take care of OCD. The two best ways are behavior therapy and medication (what I use). Unlike most other mental disorders people with OCD lead mostly normal lives and are aware of their disorder. The disorder can be extremely stressful on it's victims. In fact is a stress so bad that most people without the disorder have probably ever experienced.
Because of OCD George kept checking to see if the toilet was flushed even though he knew it was.
Because of OCD Jeff constantly washed his hands for germs until they became blistered and raw.
Because of OCD Andrew couldn't handle a gun because he was afraid he would harm someone he cared about with it.
One of the most hardest disorders to live with.
When you have it, its difficult you feel empty, you get headaches when people don't do things your way, you become a perfectionist, you take your anger out by screaming, you don't like to talk to a therapist, you hate germs.
Your therapist continues to tell you to shorten your OCD, "rituals" you feel extremly awkward and empty.
You hate it when people make fun of OCD,
you hate when people call it a " mental disorder"
you hate it when people call you " crazy "
You get scared & nervous, very very quickly.
Sometimes OCD can lead to panic attacks, anxiety disorders, ulcers, and depressions.
incase you didn't notice, i have OCD, so take it from me, not some asshole who's making fun of it.
THERAPIST: try to not do your rituals.
OCD PATIENT: its hard, i feel so strange.
Occasional Cunt Disorder. Most commonly affecting men, and most likely to strike when they've been drinking and their good for nothing sports team have lost. Symptoms include sneering at lifelong friends, ignoring the person who is speaking to you, laughing humourlessly at someone who is just trying to be nice and picking one person to humiliate. The cure is usually to sulk moodily in a corner for a while, but the drastic measure of a slap to the face is sometimes administered.
"Sorry about last night Baz. Didn't mean to tell your mum that story about you being caught wanking by a busload of nuns. A bit of OCD I think."
"Leave him alone to sulk, miserable bastard. It's a good job it's only OCD, or I'd kick his head in"
An anxiety disorder that is characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts, or obsessions, and possible repetitive behaviors, or compulsions. Performing these so-called "rituals," provides only temporary relief, and not performing them leaves a person feeling bothered and anxious.
Every time someone touches me, I have to itch that spot. Yes, my rear too. Gets awkward. But I can control it to extents. Like loving embrace, I can deal with. But when someone deliberately pokes me, or taps me to get my attention, I've got to itch it.
When I'm on the computer, nobody can be standing on my right side. I don't know why, that's just the way it is.
I need to wear a blanket over my shoulders around one of my older brothers. It's only with him too, and I absolutely cannot stand to be around him without something covering my shoulders. I've been told that's OCD, at least.
You must repeat things & things must be "perfect" in your own way.
My OCD makes me turn off every light in my house at night.
I have to shut doors, or I will not feel "right". And will become extremley bothered.
Before I go to bed, I turn the volume on the T.V down all the way. But must leave the T.V itself on.
A mental disorder in which there is a chemical imbalance in the brain.
It really sucks a lot. I keep thinking the world's going to end and every time I hear an airplane or any noise I keep running to my window and stare outside until it goes away because I think it's an asteroid.
I also hide food because I don't want people to think I'm fat or get yelled at by my mom.
It's a very, very depressing disorder and I hate it very much.
I take a small dosage of Anafranil for my OCD. | <urn:uuid:f7c1c16e-753b-4f0d-9760-22649d39488f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=OCD&defid=714574 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966713 | 1,177 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Justice and Law Enforcement:
In a Previous Rate-Setting Proceeding for Some Sound Recordings, the Standard Addressing the Disruptive Impact on the Industries Contributed to a Lower Copyright Royalty Rate, but the Effect of Its Proposed Removal Is Unclear
GAO-10-828R, Aug 4, 2010
- Accessible Text:
Every day, thousands of AM/FM radio stations, as well as satellite radio, cable radio, and Webcasters, use sound recordings to provide music to their listeners. As a form of intellectual property, sound recordings are protected by copyright law. The copyright holder (e.g., a record company or performer) may use a license to grant third parties permission to use sound recordings, in return for compensation and compliance with other conditions of the license. Congress established a statutory copyright regime, including a statutory license, which among other things, avoids the potential problems associated with thousands of music service providers seeking licenses from many copyright holders. Under this regime, a party may invoke a statutory license to allow it to use sound recordings under certain conditions and according to specific requirements, in exchange for payment of a set royalty amount. Since 1976, the Copyright Royalty Tribunal, Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panels, and Copyright Royalty Judges have been responsible, successively, for recommending or setting rates, terms, and conditions for statutory licenses. In the Copyright Act of 1976, Congress established the Copyright Royalty Tribunal. The Copyright Royalty Tribunal operated until 1993, when Congress abolished it and authorized the Librarian of Congress, upon the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, to appoint and convene Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panels. The Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel system consisted of ad hoc arbitration panels; each Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel was selected for a particular proceeding. In the Copyright Royalty and Distribution Reform Act of 2004, Congress replaced the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel system with the Copyright Royalty Judges. The three Copyright Royalty Judges are housed in the Copyright Royalty Board, an establishment created within the Library of Congress. The Copyright Royalty Judges are now responsible for establishing and adjusting the rates and terms of statutory licenses, among other things. When establishing or adjusting royalty rates for statutory licenses, the Copyright Royalty Judges gather evidence and hear relevant testimony, and consider standards codified in law. The judges may consult the Register of Copyrights, whose timely decision on questions of copyright law is binding on the judges. The Copyright Royalty Judges establish or adjust royalty rates for statutory licenses using one of two standards: 1) Willing buyer-willing seller, and 2) Section 801(b)(1). Congress is considering legislation that would alter copyright law as it pertains to sound recordings. As requested, this report examines how the section 801(b)(1)(D) standard has been applied in previous rate setting proceedings.
The Copyright Royalty Tribunal (Tribunal) and a Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (Panel) applied the section 801(b)(1) standards three times. The Tribunal applied the section 801(b)(1) standard twice in 1981. In both cases, the Tribunal first determined a royalty rate and then applied the section 801(b)(1) standards. In the first decision, the Tribunal determined the rate was consistent with each standard, commenting only briefly on each, and in the second decision, it applied the evidence to each of the four standards, sections 801(b)(1)(A)-(D), and made no adjustment to the rate. In 1997, the Librarian of Congress convened a Panel that made a royalty determination for subscription services for digital performances of sound recordings. While the Panel applied the section 801(b)(1) standards, it relied heavily on a benchmark rate submitted as part of the evidence gathering process to establish the value of a performance right that, among other things, did not exist at the time the benchmark came into existence. The Librarian of Congress subsequently reviewed the Panel's rate determination and on recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, rejected the rate, and placing some emphasis on the section 801(b)(1)(D) standard, established a new rate. The Librarian faulted the Panel for its application of the section 801(b)(1)(A) standard and for its failure to reconcile its conclusion with the Tribunal's 1981 decision. Subsequently, a petition for review of the Librarian's decision was denied with respect to these rate-setting issues but granted and remanded on other issues. The Copyright Royalty Judges (Judges) applied the section 801(b)(1)(D) standard in 2008 during the satellite digital audio radio services (SDARS) rate-setting proceeding, and determined that to avoid disruption of the satellite radio industry, this standard warranted that satellite radio providers pay a lower royalty rate than might be appropriate as the industry is established. | <urn:uuid:f83e47a1-aff7-44bc-bc03-df55e159c731> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gao.gov/products/GAO-10-828R | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910617 | 996 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Environment Impact Assessment - Frequently Asked Questions
What is Historic Scotland’s role in Environmental Impact Assessment?
As an executive agency of the Scottish Government, Historic Scotland is a consultee on all qualifying Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) developments in Scotland. This includes some project types which are not typically considered 'development' e.g. forestry. We have a specific remit in relation to EIA which means that we focus on providing advice and comments on impacts on scheduled monuments and their setting, category A listed buildings and their setting and Inventory gardens and designed landscapes. We will also provide advice where an EIA development proposal appears likely to have an impact on an Inventory battlefield.
It is important to note that where an Environmental Statement (ES) is submitted with an application for consent it is not necessarily determinative of the decision on the application. However, it should report the conclusions of the assessment without justification so that the decision maker can decide its outcome in full light of the potential impacts on the environment. In addition to providing information for the decision maker and the statutory consultees EIA is also intended as a means for the developer to share information with the public. The ES is one part of the information that the decision maker will take into account once the consultation period on the application and the ES has ended. Other information includes the comments of the local authority, the statutory consultees and the public.
Where requested, our comments on screening, scoping and the Environmental Statement are returned to the decision-making authority. Our advice on the historic environment will be one of a range of factors that the decision maker will take into account in reaching a view on the application. Historic environment matters are also subject to the comments of the local authority historic environment service.
Can I contact Historic Scotland directly to discuss a development proposal in its early stages?
Yes. We welcome pre-application consultation. However, it is helpful if the following information is provided with your enquiry
- A map showing the location and extent of the proposed development site
- Indicative details of the proposal. For example, for a windfarm we find that however preliminary, an indication of the number of turbines, maximum height to blade tip, initial site layout and Zone of Theoretical Visibility (ZTV) model helps us to identify the sites to be considered as in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the project
Without this information, we may be unable to provide specific comments.
We would be happy to discuss any issues we have raised with you as the design of your development progresses, particularly where the significant impacts are predicted. Further discussion of appropriate mitigation measures may be necessary in these cases and our preference is to address these issues in advance of the submission of any application and accompanying Environmental Statement (ES). Further information of this nature can be submitted to: the Strategic Heritage Management team
. Our response time for such consultations is 21 days.
How far should the area of search extend to?
We would advise caution with this approach since there may be monuments likely to experience a significant impact beyond this distance. The application of a Zone of Theoretical Visibility model may help to identify such sites as part of an initial assessment. We would be happy to discuss the findings of this search with you once you have produced such a model. The ES should make clear the extent of the area within which impacts on setting have been assessed and the reasons for that cut-off point.
Data on scheduled monuments, Inventory Gardens and Designed Landscapes and Historic Battlefields is available from our data services website
. Please contact the relevant local authority archaeology service for information on unscheduled archaeology. The local authority’s conservation advisors will be able to provide information on listed buildings, conservation areas and non-Inventory gardens and designed landscapes. Contact details for Local Authority Archaeology Services in Scotland are available on Archaeology Scotland’s website.
How should I assess impacts on the historic environment?
Historic Scotland recommend that you engage a suitably qualified archaeological/historic environment consultants to advise on and undertake the detailed assessment of impacts on the historic environment and advise on appropriate mitigation strategies.
The starting point for any assessment will be to develop an understanding of the historic environment baseline. Information on the location of all archaeological/historic sites held in the National Monuments Record of Scotland, including the locations and, where appropriate, the extent of scheduled monuments, listed buildings and gardens and designed landscapes can be obtained from www.PASTMAP.org.uk
. Data on scheduled monuments, Inventory gardens and designed landscapes and Inventory battlefields can be found on our data services website. For any further information on those datasets please contact email@example.com
. Historic Scotland would also be happy to provide any further information on all such sites and on impacts on the setting of category A listed buildings.
Information and advice on non scheduled archaeological sites, listed buildings and conservation areas should be sought from the relevant local authority archaeological and conservation services.
Additional baseline information can be obtained from other relevant documentary and cartographic sources and should be augmented by a non-invasive walk-over survey and field evaluation. It should also assess the area’s potential for the discovery of further, as yet unrecorded archaeological sites. It should identify and describe the site and setting of the historic environment assets both within the boundary of the development area and within a wider area within which significant impacts on setting may be expected to occur.
Impacts on historic environment features can depend upon the land-take associated with infrastructure and supporting activities and may be avoided through appropriate locational measures. Impacts on the historic environment should be considered in the following terms:
- direct i.e. loss of and/or damage to a feature of the historic environment
- indirect, including amongst other things, effects on the setting of historic environment assets; changes to surface drainage patterns, removal of peat etc.
Any development should be designed to avoid direct impacts on scheduled monuments. This includes any associated ancillary development. For example, for a windfarm, in addition to turbines, this could include access roads, cable routes, work compounds and laydown areas and other site infrastructure. Where it is considered that direct effects on scheduled monuments cannot be avoided, developers are advised to contact Historic Scotland as early as possible to avoid delays later in the planning process.
Developments should also be designed to ensure that impacts on the setting of heritage assets are avoided or reduced, in line with Scottish Ministers’ policies for the protection of the historic environment as expressed in Scottish Planning Policy. This is only likely to be implemented effectively if these issues are taken into account from the early stages of the design process.
Assessment of impacts on setting should be supported by appropriate visualisations such as wirelines or photomontages. Historic Scotland would be happy to discuss and agree such details.
Mitigation should state how significant impacts can be avoided or reduced, and if possible, remedied. Offsetting methods, including prior archaeological excavation of threatened features may be appropriate in some cases but as Planning Advice Note (PAN), Environmental Impact Assessment indicates, it is at the lower end of the mitigation hierarchy. We would welcome further discussion of appropriate mitigation measures.
What should I include in the cultural heritage chapter?
Since the purpose of EIA is to make environmental information accessible to both specialist and non specialist readers, the assessment contained in the cultural heritage chapter should clearly state the level of impacts predicted for the sites assessed without justification. The chapter should address issues such as direct effects and setting and cumulative impacts. Further information and advice on setting and the assessment of impacts on setting can be found in our Managing Change guidance note
on the topic.
The sites included the assessment and level of detail for each can be agreed as part of any pre-application discussions. Analysis should be clear and assumptions underpinning the assessment explained in the ES. It is helpful if any chapters containing information relating to the historic environment are cross referenced. For example if Inventory gardens and designed landscapes are to be assessed in the Landscape and Visual Assessment chapter rather than the cultural heritage chapter, this should be stated. However, our preference is that the cultural heritage chapter should also contain the assessment of impacts on any Inventory Gardens and Designed Landscapes. This is because these assets are designated primarily for their historic environment interest. The inclusion of visualisations (see below) to support the conclusions reached is also helpful.
The cultural heritage chapter should explain how mitigation measures have been applied to any predicted significant impacts and how those measures have avoided, reduced or offset impacts. We would welcome discussion of the application of appropriate mitigation measures as during the process of the design of your development where significant impacts on scheduled monuments, listed buildings and Inventory gardens and designed landscapes are likely. We also recommend that you seek advice from Historic Scotland where an EIA development affects a battlefield.
The cultural heritage chapter should also contain an assessment of any cumulative impacts.
Should visualisations be included in the ES for the historic environment?
The inclusion of visualisations to support the conclusions reached in the ES is helpful. We would be happy to agree suitable locations for visualisations as part of any pre-application consultations being undertaken although it is generally more helpful to do this once an initial assessment of impacts has been made by your historic environment advisor. The visualisations should demonstrate the likely impact of the development on the setting of the heritage asset. Further information on setting can be found in our setting guidance [pdf, 2.4mb]
. Images should contain viewing information so that it replicates what will be seen if the proposal if the proposal is constructed. Information on the viewpoint location and horizontal field of view should also be included.
Where can I find information on policy and guidance?
Further information on Environmental Impact Assessment can be found on the Scottish Government’s Environmental Assessment web pages
The Scottish Minister’s policies for the historic environment are set out in the following documents:
Our website contains further information on the historic environment as does the Scottish Government’s website
The following guidance is also relevant for offshore and marine EIA projects
Further information about marine archaeology can be found on our Designated Wreck Sites page. | <urn:uuid:6cd89257-564f-42e5-9c5f-6cccfea13e1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.historic-scotland.gov.uk/largertext/eiafaqs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933857 | 2,081 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Fri, Jan 29, 2010
Says New Airplane Is A Competitor To The F-22 Raptor
Russia says it plans to test fly a new fifth generation
fighter by the end of the month, and that the new aircraft will
challenge U.S.-made aircraft for technical superiority.
Reuters reports that the Russians hope to prove they can compete
with the U.S. on stealth technology, and that Moscow can develop
such technologies on its own. But even if the new airplane flies in
the next few days, it would be five to sever years before the new
aircraft would be in production.
The aircraft is considered by Moscow to be Russia's answer to
the F-22 Raptor, which first flew over a decade ago. "The
importance of this project is huge. This is the first and
principally new plane built in Russia after the fall of communism,"
said Alexander Khramchikhin, chief analyst at the Moscow-based
Institute of Military and Political Analysis. "This is good for
Russia's defense capability, because so far only the United States
has built such a jet."
The aircraft is being developed by the Sukhoi company in the far
eastern city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The Interfax news agency
reported that a source there said the first flight could be any
time, "depending on the actual weather."
The Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and
Technologies (CAST) said in a report that "The fifth-generation
plane could easily occupy a niche of at least one third of the
world market for this type of output. Europe is not building such
jets, and China's would-be copycat planes will not match the high
standards." The U.S. is limiting its export of fifth-generation
fighters for reasons of security.
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With President Obama and the Chi-Town hustlers large-and-in-charge, Windy City Proverbs may help many believe what kind of change we’ve stepped in.
In Chicago they play “Chicago Ball.” This is a form of soft ball that is as location specific to the Chicago area as Hoover Ball is to West Branch, Iowa. In this game a sixteen inch softball that is as hard as a baseball is used with no gloves. If at least one or two fingers aren’t broke in each game it must have been in girl’s division. It is a rough sport, and everyone who plays it knows it. Catching a line drive is like catching a cannonball in the stomach and catching a high pop-up is like having an incoming meteorite land in your hands.
In Chicago they also play another kind of ball that is rough, and everyone knows the rules. They call it politics. In other places they call it organized crime.
Back in the Dream Time, elders were honored because of their accumulated knowledge. If Pops knew a better way to saddle horses, that knowledge helped Junior since he saddled horses. Today if Pops knows how to tune-up cars what good is that when cars don’t need to be tuned-up anymore? Now the old are relegated to extolling their own relevance while exclaiming, “I’ve never seen that before.” Doddering ancients who use their cell phones merely to talk wonder why their grandchildren never answer their emails as Gen Z tweet each other: “Don’t trust anyone over fifteen.” The world is moving so fast not only is today tomorrow’s yesterday the generations are living in different todays today. Gen X and Y parents with their once hip lap-tops under their arms stare in wonder as their pre-teen Gen Zs text with one hand while Wii skydiving in the backseat. For these new additions to middle-age who’re just old enough to remember Star Trek imagine Captain Kirk visiting Captain Picard pointing at Commander Data and saying, “What’s that?”
After years of being treated as if the Wisdom of the Ages were as relevant as Confucius in a fortune cookie, now that we have Chicago on the Potomac the wisdom gained in the City that Works is suddenly spot-on. Of course George the Second’s doctrine of pre-emptive war made one old saying make sense beyond the Southside, “Never start fights, but if you have to hit someone back first once in a while that’s all right.” Then again ACORN has shown the everlasting relevance of Chicago’s best known adage, “Vote early and vote often” as well as eternal life or ACORN by another name is still the same corrupt mob of community organizers organizing their way to personal power and prosperity.
With President Obama and the Chi-Town hustlers large-and-in-charge, Windy City Proverbs may help many believe what kind of change we’ve stepped in. Such as “Everybody cheats so if you don’t cheat you’re a cheater,” or “What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is negotiable.” Maybe the taxman could use, “They must not have wanted it they didn’t have their hand on it.”
Looking at our Congress, “If you’re going to get mad at thieves you’ll never have any friends” comes to mind. Thinking of the new Green Home Efficiency Inspectors they want us to deal with when buying or selling a home is reminiscent of the Chicago Fire Marshal conscientiously telling a young business owner, “We’ll save the city some gas money if we just do the inspection right here in my office,” while patting his desk indicating where to place the money.
The Obama Administration started off with some Southside swag calling the biggest earmark in history a stimulus bill aimed at shovel ready jobs. Then again as the President later joked, "Shovel-ready was not as ... uh .. shovel-ready as we expected." After this predictable
Southside of Chicago opening act the poster child for a different kind of politics continued the virtuoso performance calling ward-heelers czars and followed a time-honored Second City tradition in the Minnesota recount by finding a bag of votes giving us a good laugh by installing Al Franken in the once revered United States Senate.
Who says you can’t go home again? They may turn the old neighborhood into Yuppie Heaven by knocking down the middleclass housing and putting up three-story imitation Victorians but right here right now the machine that gave no-show jobs to half the wise-guys on the corner as well as Michelle at the hospital is in the process of not just fixing tickets but fixing everything else. The political descendants of Big Bill Thompson, Richard the First and Richard the Second parlayed community organizing into a national organization that should make the Five Families green with envy.
Having fixed the economy and with health care, hate-crimes, immigration, and cap-and-trade all queued up to flow through the system before the voters get a chance to register their disapproval, Don Barak also had the opportunity to begin fixing the highest court in the land. In the Chicago justice system ( an oxymoron) lawyers give out printed pricelists stating how much acquittals cost verses dismissals and the old saying concerning courthouses goes, “It may say justice on the outside but that doesn’t mean there’s any on the inside.” Since the Democratic Machine and their Me-To Republican allies rubber-stamped Mr. Obama’s first pick for the A-Team, how do the prospects for judicial restraint and the Constitution look? Fine if you fit the profile for the protected or promoted classes, but not too good if you naively look for that lady wearing the blindfold and holding the scales.
Joining the sisterhood on the bench, Ms. Sotomayor felt her gender and her race made her uniquely qualified to reach wise decisions and believes international law should be consulted when weighing appeals. She should feel right at home with the former chief counsel for the ACLU who apparently believes American Citizenship is the right of all mankind. In one decision she said, “You would have a huge statelessness problem if you don't consider a child born abroad a U.S. citizen.” And now they have turned Chief Justice Roberts to the Dark Side. Ah justice, what is it good for? Or as they say in Chi-town, “How much justice can you afford?” The difference between Chicago Prime and Chicago on the Potomac is in the original version mayors serve for life followed by a power struggle. Vive la Différence!
How does Chicago Ball fit into all these old sayings? There are multiple sayings associated with playing ball. Such as, You have to swing the bat to have a chance to hit the ball,” or “I ain’t cheating if they don’t catch me.” So how do our now nationalized Chicago Pols play ball. One recent example is in the financing problem faced by the owner of the Chicago Cubs. The plans to renovate the dilapidated Wrigley Field were being held up because of the current owner’s political associations. And that’s how they play political ball in Chicago.
And how does that translate to Chicago-on-the-Potomac? In 2009 the Obama Administration played Chicago Ball with the Drug Industry to get their support for Obamacare. These types of tactics have become standard operating procedure for the Obama Administration as department after department make their wishes known and their power felt.
And just recently the President strong armed the Supreme Court asserting any interference with his take-over of 1/6th of the economy would be unprecedented. What was unprecedented was his use of manipulation and brow beating to pressure a supposedly independent court to become another place where the fix is in, or as they say in Chicago Ball “When they send out their best hitter, aim for the head.”
And if this article makes you feel politically as if you’ve had your fingers broken, well that’s just the way they play ball in Chicago. | <urn:uuid:095eb49d-2f6c-42a8-8828-5b31da0c48d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=owensr&date=120706 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963129 | 1,760 | 1.664063 | 2 |
For this week’s Tuesday with Tulsa, we asked Rick Arrington, the Assitant Dean of Admission for the Collins College of Business, What can high school students do with their IB Diplomas?
Read his answer below…
Hello, Prospective Students!
Are you an IB student? Working hard? Staying busy with your CAS work? Thinking about finishing up your Extended Essay and your Group 4 project?
That’s all great! It may not seem like it now, but your hard work is really going to pay off. Especially if you check out The University of Tulsa (TU)!
So, what do we have for you? I’m glad you asked!
For IB Diploma students (let’s start small): we waive the TU application fee. Yea! Not too big a deal, but if you’re applying to a lot of schools, those application fees start to add up. Apply to a great university, but save the app fee! Go to http://www.utulsa.edu/admission-and-financial-aid/apply-online.aspx to get started. When you finish the application, don’t send a check; just let us know you’re an IB Diploma student with a note from your IB Coordinator. Your Coordinator may have the Application Fee Waiver to help you. | <urn:uuid:37c59901-5769-483a-96e7-70de05e30f25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utulsa.edu/admissionblog/tag/ib/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928879 | 286 | 1.601563 | 2 |
|About St. Mary's|
Mindful of our rich heritage and present gift of diversity, our mission is to be a parish that is spiritual, clear of purpose and exciting; that enables all of our members to fulfill the Christian mandate to believe in and praise God, to follow Christ's teaching, and to do God's work in our multi-faceted community.
145 Years of Ministry in Foggy Bottom
Foggy Bottom 1885
St. Mary's parishioners come from all over Metropolitan Washington, but they have not forgotten the living witness St. Mary's has borne in Foggy Bottom.
One hundred forty-one years ago, Russia sold Alaska to the US for two cents an acre; the American Civil War had come to a close two years before; and small group of Episcopalians, newly emancipated made plans to hold their first service in a refurbished Union Army Chapel.
Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War, had been persuaded to move the building from Kalorama Hospital to a lot on 23rd Street, NW, between G and H, which had generously been donated by Mrs. Catherine Pearson, a member of St. John's.
The church building now on site was designed by James Renwick, the distinguished architect of the Smithsonian Castle and the Renwick Gallery. The building budget in 1887 was only $15,000, raised by the congregations of St. John's Lafayette Square and the Church of Epiphany. Despite the modest budget the building conforms in every detail to Renwick's design. There have been only minor modifications to the building since the first service over one hundred years ago. The church contains a memorial for Edwin M. Stanton by the Tiffany Studio and a triptych window over the altar, featuring saints of African descent, by Lorin Studios in Chartres, France.
The original hanging gas lights remain in the church and archways. The building is designated and protected as a National Historic Landmark.
There is not enough room to list all the good men and women under whose leadership St. Mary's built a beautiful brick church in 1886, achieved parish status in 1928 and always reached out to those around her.
Boys Club 1906
St. Mary's has many notable accomplishments to her credit. One of the first Boys Clubs in Washington was organized here. A mission to the whole neighborhood, regardless of creed, it was founded with the help of the beloved Deaconess, Mary Amanda Betchler. And out of this grew a special mission in Snow's Court, then the most disreputable and dangerous section in the city. One of the first baby clinics, one of the first vacation bible schools, a sewing school and cooking school were established at St. Mary's. The church also provided facilities for mentally retarded children.
A more recent example of this divine service was the creation of St. Mary's Court, located adjacent to the church affordable housing for seniors, was the brainchild of parishioners and became a diocesan project. St. Mary's has awarded more than 125 Martin Luther King Scholarships to students of all faiths and abilities since the fund was established in 1970.
St. Mary's today
Many changes have occurred in Foggy Bottom since the beginning of St. Mary's Parish, and the church's congregation and its ministry reflect those changes. The character of the parish neighborhood has changed from single-family dwellings to the townhouses, high rise apartment buildings and businesses. As a viable Washington institution, St. Mary's continues to build on its rich cultural and historical heritage by reaching out to the ever changing milieu of the Foggy Bottom community, providing spiritual leadership and service to its parishioners, residents and the surrounding university neighbors. | <urn:uuid:160c315e-05d3-44e9-9268-c25375f775df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stmarysfoggybottom.org/smc/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=40&Itemid=70&fontstyle=f-larger | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970755 | 764 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Donnerstag 28. März 2013 von admin
CALL FOR PAPERS
47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences: HICSS conferences are devoted to the most relevant advances in the information, computer, and system sciences, and encompass developments in both theory and practice. The conferences have become a unique and respected forum in computer and information systems technology for the exchange of ideas among researchers and development communities in North America, Asia and the Pacific Basin nations, Europe, and the Middle East.
Waikoloa, Hawaii, January 6-9, 2014
HICSS 2014 Track on Information Technology in Healthcare
Minitrack: Sensing and Pervasive Technologies and Applications for Healthcare
There are two key challenges in today’s healthcare system: One is the significant cost pressure on healthcare delivery and the second is the rapid growth of the field of medical informatics and e-health, increasingly using sensing and pervasive technologies. In addition there is a trend to foster active patient participation in their care. Patients of all ages are becoming more and more familiar with technology, especially mobile devices. Therefore it is prudent to look at the application of such technologies for healthcare with the goal to facilitate value-driven healthcare delivery.
Here, a new field of research is evolving which is focused on sensing and pervasive technologies for healthcare. This rapidly growing area is expected to play an increasingly important role for healthcare globally. Reasons for this include: the higher mobility of individuals, the need to have active and empowered patients, the pressure to provide effective and efficient care, the growth in chronic diseases and therefore the demand for appropriate applications to monitor and manage these diseases. Sensing and pervasive technologies generate large amounts of data. This big data is a bonanza for enhancing insights into healthcare processes as well as for improving healthcare IT. This minitrack has been designed to provide an outlet for research in this nascent area. Selected papers will be fast-tracked for a special issue in Health and Technology published by Springer.
Completed and research in progress papers are welcomed that focus on any topic within this discipline. In particular broad categories of suitable papers include but are not limited to:
- Network-centric design of applications using sensing and pervasive technologies
- Biomedical applications based on sensor data
- Sensor-based devices for treatment tracking and tracing
- Big data analytics of heterogeneous health data
- Online social networks and health 2.0
- Persuasive technologies and applications
- Apps development and service-orientated architectures
- Theories and studies supporting successful design, development, and implementation
- Methodologies and frameworks to support self-care
- Chronic disease management and preventative solutions
- Developing business models and cost-effective concepts for pervasive healthcare
- NOW Submission opens
- May 1, 2013 Authors are encouraged to submit an extended abstract (1-2 pages) to the minitrack chairs via e-mail for early reactions and guidance
- June 15, 2013 Submission deadline of full papers
- August 15, 2013 Notification of acceptance
- September 15, 2013 Submission of final paper
Instructions for authors
All conference submissions will be double-blind, peer reviewed, and all manuscripts must be submitted using the conference’s online submission system.
For complete instructions for authors and information about the conference, visit the HICSS 2014 conference website.
Prof. Dr. Freimut Bodendorf (primary contact), Institute of Information Systems, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
Prof. Dr. Nilmini Wickramasinghe, Epworth HealthCare and School of Business and IT, RMIT University, Australia
Dr. Carolin Durst, Institute of Information Systems, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany | <urn:uuid:39bd0fc9-19d2-4b7f-a6c6-2d288f061d61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hermes.hsu-hh.de/doctoralstudy/category/allgemein/call-for-papers-allgemein/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900474 | 766 | 1.5625 | 2 |
If you love somebody then you need not be self-conscious; and if you are self-conscious you cannot love, because the ego will become the barrier. If you are not self-conscious, only then is love possible. That’s why the more egoistic a person is, the less possibility is there of love. And when there is no love you are in a vicious circle: you think people don’t love you because you don’t appear beautiful, so you try to be more beautiful; you become more and more self-conscious. The more self-conscious you become the less possibility is there, and if you become absolutely self-conscious it is almost impossible – nobody can love you. You will simply put off anybody who comes near. You are a closed person; nobody can enter you.
An unself-conscious person is simply open. He doesn’t expect much but much happens. If you expect too much then nothing happens. This story is beautiful. Try to understand it.
When Yang Chu was passing through Sung he spent the night at an inn.
The innkeeper had two concubines – one beautiful and the other ugly. The ugly one he valued and the beautiful one he neglected.
This is a parable so don’t take it literally. In fact, everyone has two concubines. You may have one wife, but that is only on the surface. Everybody has two wives, one beautiful, one ugly, because every person has two aspects, one beautiful, one ugly. Even a beautiful person in certain moments is ugly, and just the reverse is also true; an ugly person is in certain moments beautiful, because ugliness and beauty are not parts of the form – they belong to the within.
Have you observed a beautiful person in certain moments when he or she becomes totally ugly? Have you seen a beautiful woman with lust in her eyes? – suddenly everything goes ugly, because lust is ugly. Have you seen an ugly woman with love in her eyes? – suddenly everything becomes beautiful. Love beautifies; lust makes you ugly, anger makes you ugly – compassion beautifies.
The more you think inside your mind, the more ugly and tense your face becomes. If you don’t think, if you live without much thinking, more meditatively, everything becomes beautiful. The faces of buddhas always become feminine. That’s why Hindus never depict their enlightened persons with beards and mustaches, no. Have you seen any pictures of Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna or Rama with a beard or a mustache? Not that beards never came to them, because that would have been a deformity; that would have meant that something was biologically wrong, physiologically wrong, some hormone was missing. No, they had beards and mustaches, but the Hindus have completely dropped them. They don’t depict them because they are depicting something of the inner. They are showing through the statues of buddhas that these men became completely feminine. Why feminine? – because grace is feminine, beauty is feminine.
The body loses all violent concerns; it becomes more round. Muscles are not needed for a buddha; muscles belong to wild animal-hood. The body becomes more and more round, shapely, more and more feminine. When aggression disappears, muscles also disappear, because they exist for a particular purpose: for aggression, for violence. | <urn:uuid:a12cbef9-bb25-4815-8db8-7698a0eaa62a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.osho.com/library/online-library-beautiful-feminine-person-fc912244-538.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971825 | 704 | 1.835938 | 2 |
(CNN)-- The thought of adolescence can bring some frightening images to a parent’s mind: head-butting over the car keys, general contrariness, and the horrified way in which your kid can groan “mo-om!” However, it is becoming increasingly common for girls to begin sprouting breasts and pubic hair before the age of 10, according to the New York Times.
This early onset of puberty may leave young girls emotionally and mentally unprepared for the challenges that come with a more mature body.
Puberty in girls follows an ordered pattern of three events: the growth of breasts, the growth of pubic hair, and a first period. Most researchers now agree that breast budding is starting earlier. A 2010 study reported that some girls were developing breasts by age 7. And while eight used to be the age cutoff for normal pubic-hair growth in girls, it is now seven.
Plus: What to Expect When Puberty Hits
Precocious puberty comes with several risks, including advanced bone age—which is calculated by determining how much cartilage has turned to bone. Girls mostly stop growing after their final growth spurt, which occurs during puberty. If a growth spurt starts too early, it ends earlier as well. As a result, a child who had her period early will spend fewer years growing overall and wind up shorter than a genetically identical girl who gets her period at a later age.
Plus: Maxi Pads for Eight-Year-Olds
Early periods are also associated with breast cancer, though the reason for this remains uncertain. Girls who reach puberty before their peers also tend to experience lower self-esteem, more depression, and more eating disorders. While late bloomers also experience depression during puberty, as compared to typically-developing girls, their depression typically ends once adolescence is over. Early bloomers suffer higher levels of depression and anxiety throughout adulthood. They also start drinking earlier, lose their virginity sooner, and have more sexual partners and sexually transmitted diseases.
Plus: More Companies Offering Makeup to Tween Girls
“It may be that early maturers do not have as much time as other girls to accomplish the developmental tasks of childhood. They face new challenges while everybody else is still dealing with the usual development of childhood. This might be causing them to make less successful transitions into adolescence and beyond,” explains Julia Graber, associate chairwoman of psychology at the University of Florida.
Plus: Father Absence Linked to Earlier Puberty Among Some Girls
Doctors have pointed their fingers at several contributing factors for the rising trend of precocious puberty. Girls who are overweight enter puberty earlier than thinner girls and researchers believe that fat tissue can cause a body to mature. Environmental chemicals can also be to blame, particularly those that mimic estrogen like BPA, a compound found in hard plastics and many other common products. Family stress can significantly speed up puberty, as well.
Families of early bloomers are encouraged keep their daughters active and at healthy body weights. But more importantly, they should treat them as the age they are, rather than the age they look in order to safeguard their vulnerable emotional development.
Do you worry that your daughter will develop early? If your daughter was an early bloomer, how did you handle the situation? | <urn:uuid:777cafd7-4f44-4477-896f-5da86791b840> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wibw.com/features/toyourhealth/headlines/Precocious_Puberty_Might_Be_The_New_Normal_150702605.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965937 | 676 | 2.921875 | 3 |
This collection comprises hand-written correspondence among members of the Amador, Yorba, López, and Cota families in the
region of Orange County, San Diego County, and Baja California from 1853 to 1879. Items include personal letters and business
receipts. The collection documents the family matters of several prominent Californio families in the decades following the
Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and the admission of California to the Union (1850). The correspondence largely concerns
the health of family members, births, deaths, family events, family visits, and business transactions. Several letters also
contain references to national boundaries, language problems, military movements, and epidemics. Members of the López family
in San Diego are the recipients of more than half of the letters, while members of the Amador family, some of whom were based
in San Juan Capistrano, are the largest group of letter writers, accounting for one-quarter of the collection.
The Amador, Cota, Yorba, and López families were four prominent Californio families who received land grants and settled in
California in the nineteenth century. Bernardo Yorba was granted Rancho Yorba, Jose Antonio Yorba and Juan Pablo Peralta
were granted Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, Francisco Cota inherited Rancho de Ballona in present-day Los Angeles, José María
Amador was granted Rancho San Ramón, and Cornelio López and Bernardo Higuera were granted Rancho Rincón de los Bueyes.
Property rights reside with the University of California. These materials are in the public domain. For permissions to reproduce
or to publish, please contact the Head of Special Collections and Archives. | <urn:uuid:f3c1b44b-95ab-46bd-80a4-43f85cbb8c78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oac4.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt2j49q754/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915297 | 367 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Perhaps the most beautiful bather by Pierre-Auguste Renoir remaining in private hands is to be auctioned at Christie's London this month. The 12,000,000 to 18,000,000 pound estimate, while significant, does not seem excessively high to me given the prices fetched recently for first-rate canvases by postwar artists such as Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, Roy Lichtenstein, and Mark Rothko. While I have nothing at all against these artists, I think the art market has slighted Renoir somewhat. Who would think lush, sunlit female nudes by a master of French Impressionism could ever be in the least out of fashion?
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
signed and dated 'Renoir.88.' (upper right)
oil on canvas
26 x 21½ in. (66 x 54.6 cm.) | <urn:uuid:cd2221e0-7079-401e-bf3b-d5d692835520> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://attemptedbloggery.blogspot.jp/2012/06/renoirs-baigneuse.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937062 | 185 | 1.5625 | 2 |
"When breaking news becomes BROKEN news"
AMIC session on 25 June on East and West perspectives on freedom, responsibility and regulation:
Javed Jabbar, Pakistan media activist, provocatively said that “responsibility” should be seen as conceptually prior to “freedom of expression”.
The reason? Because “responsibility” entails fairness, truth, accuracy, balance – and respect for others. This is not necessarily the case with freedom of expression.
He hastened to say that “responsibility” should not be used to restrict free speech, but to make it more humane. It was foundational.
On this basis, he critiqued live telecasts of volatile events in Pakistan. The phenomenon could be incendiary, and “breaking news could become broken news”. But he called for self-regulation, rather than governmental control.
Interesting points, but for me perhaps too one sided. Diametrically different would be the view that it is only through free-for-all free speech that “fairness, truth, accuracy and balance” emerge. In that view, these values are not prior to free speech, but consequential on it. But that’s also one-sided. The answer? A dialectic between “responsibility” and “freedom of expression”. Live telecasts? You could delay them - but not self-censor the footage forever. A balance of "responsibility" and unfettered information flow.
South African activist Jeannette Minnie responded to the whole issue by arguing that the comms explosion meant that audiences really had to be their own regulators. A pre-requisite for this was media literacy, a huge task that needed attention. | <urn:uuid:9a48116e-9b6e-46d8-95de-1e7c06016e3f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nml.ru.ac.za/blog/guy-berger/2007/06/26/when-breaking-news-becomes-broken-news.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959103 | 365 | 2.109375 | 2 |
On The Move
Lexington One schools receive Farm to School grants
Sep 14, 2012
Forts Pond Elementary, Gilbert Primary, Meadow Glen Middle, Pelion Elementary, Pleasant Hill Elementary, Pleasant Hill Middle and Red Bank Elementary received grants ranging from $3,000–$5,000.
The program helps local schools feature at least two South Carolina grown produce items as part of the school cafeteria offerings every month. Students even get to experience growing their own produce by establishing gardens with the help of teachers and community volunteers.
The program also supports nutrition and
agriculture education. Teachers receive nutrition and agricultural
standards-based lessons for use in their classrooms. Other activities
supported by grant funds include field trips to South Carolina farms and
taste testings of South Carolina grown produce.
This is the second year that Gilbert Primary and Pelion Elementary have received the grant. Based on their participation in the program last year, Gilbert Primary received a Midlands School Garden award for excellence in school gardening. | <urn:uuid:5fa1b529-85d7-48af-9688-a24e35f9c7cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://midlandsbiz.com/articles/12005/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952458 | 204 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Best Defrag Mac Software
How often do you use Defrag Mac tool to clean your Mac? If not, there might be problems later on with your computer. A lot of people have made mistakes because they rarely fix their computer’s systems when in fact it’s a must to defrag to keep your Mac computer run smoothly. If you are not familiar with defragging your computer, then you should start learning now because it’s very easy and manageable – even a Mac beginner can do it.
A Windows user may be familiar of the word “defrag” because the computer is required to defrag frequently to operate smoothly. Mac users on the other hand, don’t have knowledge about defrag and Mac computers do not have to go through this process all the time. Still, safety measures must be ensued so that your personal computer remains faster. It wouldn’t hurt to defrag once in a while and perform a cleanup.
How often do you use Defrag Mac tool to enhance your Mac’s performance?
Mac defrag is the new phrase for Mac users when your personal computer is in need of a revamp or a cleanup. Although most Mac computers do not have any specific demands for a system cleaning, but it’s wise to perform it at least a once a month to eliminate any chances of your computer slowing down. Once you notice that your Mac computer is performing quite poorly, it’s high time for a Mac defrag.
Just like a Windows computer, Mac computers need the upkeep it gets and do some maintenance afterwards. The reason why is because your current hard drive may be too full and there is a possibility that the bulk of the heavy space comes from those pointless files, programs, and applications. The more space these files and programs get from your computer, the lesser your Mac performs.
All thanks to the latest technology, plugins and applications, we can now find several Mac cleaning software and Defrag Mac applications to carry out these cleaning activities and be sure that your personal computer gets rid of those wasted space. These types of tools are very helpful in detecting misplaced file and place them in the right folders, delete a few apps which are no longer needed or rarely used, and a few programs which are practically useless and must be taken out at once.
How to use Defrag Mac for your computer’s maximum speed?
You may not notice this but there are times when actual files get lost and become unorganized in your hard disk drive. This gets all confusing especially when you want to run a certain program but a certain data is missing, so you end up deleting that program not knowing that the hidden files are still buried somewhere. Also, due to constant use of your Mac, the speed and performance tends to get slower and it may not be working perfectly unlike the first time you bought it. This may be triggered due to the lack of disk space.
This is where Defrag Mac comes in. This particular tool is very effective because it helps locate those files which are dispersed in other folders and components. If you are having difficulty locating unorganized data files, your Defrag Mac software will be of great help. Another benefit of this tool is that it deletes certain data which are rarely used or are not needed any longer. Once your Mac computer is fragmented, your Mac system may resume its normal speed and it will run efficiently unlike before. Those cluttered files will be soon gone because of the Defrag Mac tool.
How to utilize the Defrag Mac application and clean up your computer?
There’s no clear answer as to how often do you exactly use the Defrag Mac application within your computer. It’s completely within your discretion. As mentioned before, unlike Windows computers where it needs to be fragmented frequently, Mac computers on the other hand, don’t have to do this a lot, but it would be wise also to practice it once a month. Why? To make sure that your Mac stays on top of the game – meaning, your system must always be in good condition.
Do take note that the actual fragmentation process will take up most of your time. It’s a very long process so it’s really not wise to do it often. In this case, you have to be sure on when you do you want to fragment your computer. You can apply the application when you are sleeping, while you’re in the shower, when you’re working, or even on weekends. Just be sure that you have to leave your computer on and idle – there’s no chance of you playing online games or checking your mails while the process is ongoing. It would result to nothing.
While you’re cleaning your Mac OS through a scheduled maintenance or a routine maintenance, be certain to increase your system’s overall performance by defragging your current files. You might stumble a few data files which were actually lost and should be placed in the right locations and folders. Clearing out more disk space is also a good decision by deleting a few applications which are seldom used or no longer needed. You may also transfer a few important files in a flash disk or an external hard drive especially if you are always traveling all the time.
To further increase your Mac computer’s chances of processing faster aside from using the Defrag Mac, is to utilize cleaning software such as the MacKeeper. This software is very effective as it helps scan for extra binaries, record files, storage cache files, language extension packs, identical files, and carefully deletes unwanted files. The software also allows your computer to widen the disk space by checking your item list, cross out programs which are not essential, correct a few files, and even erases dashboard widgets which occupy your hard drive.
Overall, performing a Defrag Mac is actually beneficial for any Mac user who wants their computers to run smoothly and effectively! | <urn:uuid:7a31f6fa-f19f-4b3e-ad98-5314ad2ddc36> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.maccleaners.org/best-defrag-mac-software/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948128 | 1,213 | 1.585938 | 2 |
The author of the New York Times best seller The Maker's Diet is back with an approach to weight management that addresses the whole person: body, mind,emotions, and spirit. As our obesity statistics reach epidemic rates, Americans want information that will help them stay healthy and look and feel great.
Jordan Rubin presents the answer in this holistic approach that will help readers: Eat for their body type, age, gender, and region Maximize nutrients while reducing calories Eliminate toxins inside and outside the body Learn simple steps to live a green lifestyle
Readers will also have access to the Perfect Weight America online health community. By filling out the personal health assessment online, readers will receive their very own online personal health coach who will provide them with customized eating and lifestyle plans. Tracking progress and receiving encouragement and support, as well as recipes, video demonstrations of exercises, and many other online features will help readers reach and maintain their perfect weight. | <urn:uuid:b1aae6de-2f09-44eb-9a20-8d4fc29f2fc7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bookmooch.com/detail/1599792575 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925801 | 188 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Edinburgh which is the capital city of the state of Scotland has an urban as well as a rural area. The city council is located in urban area as well about 30 square miles of rural area is located in Edinburgh.
The city has the house of Scottish Parliament and was declared the Scottish Capital in 1437.
The city is known amongst scholars as the Athens of the North for the major contributions it has made to various academic disciplines. The city is a gem not merely intellectually but also for the rich historical treasure that it holds and is part of the list on the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Both the old and new towns of Edinburgh have monuments dating back centuries and have been re shaped by history. The city is inhabited by more than four and a half million people. There are plenty of reasons for Edinburgh’s popularity including the 4500 historical buildings and the Edinburgh festival that happens every year.
The event comprises of the biggest festival of performing arts of the world called the Edinburgh Fringe as well as the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Edinburgh International Festival and Edinburgh International Book Festival. The city is visited by more than 13 million people per annum.
The most famous tourist destination is the center of the city which is historic and beautiful. The center is divided by broad green swath of Princes Street Gardens into two parts and is a delight for tourists. This is by far the most pleasant site in Edinburgh.
On one hand lies the majestic Castle of Edinburgh and on the other the New Town. The Castle is situated in the Old town and lies on the top of a volcanic crag.
The Princes Street Gardens were inaugurated in the early 19th century at the site of the former Nor Loch. | <urn:uuid:150b7557-284f-4d63-bf06-8d23b96ba2fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.agitproperties.com/europe/united-kingdom/edinburgh/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978347 | 344 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Furmark is one of the applications not loved very much by chip or better GPU designers. It stresses the chips significantly more than most normal applications like games or (other) benchmarks. Sometimes it is referred to as a power virus - which, given Wikipedias current (as of this writing) definition, is just false.
Obviously, the term Stability Test fits the usage model of Furmark-type tools much closer, since it always stays under the users control. Further, it does not - to the best of my knowledge - run any µ-architecture specific functional code.
Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_virus
But what makes it tick - or better: why does it not scale with my Radeon HD 5870? Furmark, after all, is also a benchmark and when run in benchmark mode, I am getting the following results (sorry for the old versions of everything, it's just from my archives) for Furmark 1.3.0 running in 1600x1200:
• X850 XT PE: 8 Fps (Catalyst 8.4, 540/587 MHz)Now, when running Furmark 1.6.5 in Stability Test + Extreme Burning mode at 1280 x 1024, it looks a bit differently.
• X1800 XT: 9 Fps (Catalyst 8.4, 621/747 MHz)
• X1950 XTX: 25 Fps (Catalyst 8.7, 648/999 MHz) -> notice a trend already?
• HD 2900 XT: 38 Fps (Catalyst 8.7, 743/999 MHz)
• HD 3870: 39 Fps (Catalyst 8.7, 775/1125 MHz) -> everyone knows, R600 had just too much bandwith
• HD 4870: 73 Fps (Catalyst 8.7, 750/900 MHz)
• HD 4870: 37 Fps (Catalyst 8.10, 750/900 MHz) -> AMD having decided Furmark is evil for RV770
• HD 5870: 116 Fps (Catalyst 9.11, 850/1200 MHz)
• HD 4870: 51 Fps (Nearly all recent Catalyst after 8.10)Where's the great scaling gone? Note that HD 5770 has the same amount of shaders as HD 4870 and 100 MHz higher core clock. Ok, architectures change, but AMDs wasn't changed that drastically to explain these massive cutbacks in scaling whereas before the Fps increased close to linearly with the number and frequency of the shaders.
• HD 4770: 25 Fps (Nearly all recent Catalyst after 9.10)
• HD 5770: 35 Fps (Nearly all recent Catalyst after 9.11)
• HD 5870: 72 Fps (Nearly all recent Catalyst after 9.10)
• HD 5670: 20 Fps (Nearly all recent Catalyst after 10.3)
So I decided to run my HD 5870 through a series of Furmark-Tests (in Extreme Burning mode) where I scaled core and memory clocks in steps of 5 % of base clocks up (only one 5 % increase possible) and down (more steps possible).
Here's what I got:
While Furmark shows a little bit of memory dependance in pretty low resolutions, the scaling is much more pronounced when looking at the different core clocks, which sometimes even reach linearity. So, there's only few possibilities left, why Furmark should not be twice as fast on HD 5870 compared to the lower clocker HD 4870 - yet, it is not. | <urn:uuid:142a1ebf-b4b3-46c6-b373-8533a74aa354> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gpu-tech.org/showthread.php/13-Furmark-1.7.0-Scaling-with-different-core-and-memory-clocks | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90484 | 751 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Mothers know best, and 40 pearls of wisdom reveal why
THEY are the maternal clichés pressed into every child’s heart. The collective wisdom of a generation of mothers for whom one must “always try your best” has been analysed with the revelation that the average mother passes on more than 40 pearls of wisdom.
These short moral maxims, usually delivered while mum is simultaneously rubbing dirt from a muddy cheek or flattening a spike of unruly hair, have been the subject of a study which discovered that the most popular phrases include “Always try your best” and “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all”.
The study of 2,000 mothers found that, unsurprisingly, they are most likely to encourage their children to do well in life by focusing on the positive rather than the negative and on the virtues of education.
Mums were likely to urge their children to “get an education because no-one can take that away from you” as well as also advising them “you only get out of life what you put into it”.
Additionally, mums are likely to pass tips along the lines of “smile” and “life’s too short to be unhappy”.
The study found that the average mother passes on 41 “pearls of wisdom” to their child during the course of their formative years.
Yesterday, Tim Fairs, a spokesman for Clinton Cards, which commissioned the research, said: “Even as adults we continue to go back to mum for her wisdom and advice on daily scenarios, because, as she says herself, ‘Mum knows best’.
“And it’s these little nuggets of information which we hold dear, and which get passed down from generation to generation. These pieces of advice might be small, but the very fact they stay with us for years on end prove they hold great weight.”
The survey shows mothers regularly display prudence when it comes to food – with some of their more memorable tips including “never take sweets from strangers”, “never swim on a full stomach”, “always eat breakfast” and “don’t eat cheese before bedtime”.
Good manners cost nothing according to the nation’s mums, who regularly tell their young to “eat with your mouth closed”, “never stare at people”, and to “mind your Ps and Qs”.
Other words of wisdom mums give to encourage good etiquette include “treat people with respect”, “treat others how you wish to be treated yourself” and “manners maketh the man”.
The study also revealed the majority of children always remember the advice their mothers pass down to them over the years.
In fact, the advice is so precious that seven out of ten adults regularly repeat the wisdom to their own children.
And 48 per cent of respondents continued to think their mother offered the best advice even when they had grown-up.
Mr Fairs added: “In an age where we’re bombarded with rules, guidance and expert advice, it can often be the little things that our mums say that prove to be the most memorable and help guide us through life.”
Furthermore, the study found two-thirds of people often catch themselves mid-sentence and think “I sound like my mum”, and 43 per cent often think they are turning into their mums.
But more than three-quarters of those people who have their own children hope these “pearls of wisdom” continue to be remembered and passed on to future generations.
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Weather for Edinburgh
Friday 24 May 2013
Temperature: 3 C to 12 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: North east
Temperature: 7 C to 17 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: West | <urn:uuid:94335756-e416-4344-9dbc-71c06b30f8b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/mothers-know-best-and-40-pearls-of-wisdom-reveal-why-1-2164978 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962905 | 856 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Hillary Clinton to discuss South China Sea on Asia trip
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will discuss tensions in the South China Sea during a sprawling trip through the Asia-Pacific that will include stops in China and Russia, the State Department said Tuesday.
The trip, which includes stops in six countries, underscores the Obama administration's heightened focus on Asia, an economically booming region that has sought deeper U.S. ties.Continue Reading
Clinton starts off in the remote Cook Islands for talks Friday with Pacific islands leaders. She then travels to Indonesia, China, Brunei, and becomes the first U.S. secretary of state to visit East Timor.
Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Tuesday she expects the South China Sea to be discussed on several of the stops. The tiny sultanate of Brunei is among the six claimant nations, the largest being China. Although not a claimant itself, Indonesia has been at the forefront of efforts by Southeast Asian nations to forge with China a code of conduct for managing the disputes.
"We don't want to see the disputes in the South China Sea or anywhere else settled by intimidation, by force. We want to see them settled at the negotiating table," Nuland said at a news conference.
The U.S. is not a claimant but says it has a national interest in the maintenance of peace and security. It has supported the Southeast Asian nations' attempts to negotiate collectively with China, and has criticized China's recent establishment of a municipality and military garrison on a remote island to consolidate its expansive and disputed territorial claims.
On her final stop, Clinton heads to Vladivostok, Russia, to lead the U.S. delegation at the annual summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on Sept. 8-9, to discuss trade liberalization and food security. | <urn:uuid:15ba0834-6385-4a74-b478-e6718d8a4b55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80287.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950945 | 371 | 1.835938 | 2 |
by Amye Archer
Summer Reading Ideas
Summer in the city means many things: pools open, air conditioners hum from window sills, carnivals and picnics dot the landscape, but more importantly perhaps than all of that is: summer vacation. And while sitting poolside all season may sound tempting, most teachers and educational experts agree with the importance of keeping your children learning all summer long. In that spirit, here are some of my summer picks for children:
1. The Gruffalo (2006, Ages 5 and up): Julia Donaldson is one of our favorite children’s authors. Her prose is fun and witty, and the lessons in each of her stories are often buried in wonderful storytelling. The Gruffalo is about a very brave mouse who uses his wit and charm to trick a forest full of creatures into fearing him. This book was so popular there was a film made from it, and a well-received sequel: The Gruffalo’s Child. Some other favorites by this author are: The Snail and The Whale and Room on the Broom.
2. Fancy Nancy (2005, Ages 4 and up): Fancy Nancy is a fantastic series by author Jane O’Connor. Nancy is a fussy young lady who loves ruffles and lace and anything, well, fancy. Her family is anything but. The young girl makes it her mission to rescue friends and family from a boring life. This is an ongoing series with many books. As a mom I love these books because they teach the value of friendship. As an English teacher, I love the series because it teaches vocabulary via “fancy words.” Look for the newest in the series, Fancy Nancy: Nancy Clancy: Super Sleuth.
3. The Artist who Painted a Blue Horse (2011, Ages 3 and up): This unique picture book has a lesson for adults as well as children. With the simple premise of a boy who sees the world around him differently, and draws and paints his subjects accordingly, author Eric Carle helps our children understand the interpretation of art. The book is full of non-traditional representations of animals: a blue horse, a red crocodile, a polka-dotted donkey, each beautiful in its own right. With the lessening of arts in today’s public school system, the need for books like this is urgent.
4. The Patron Saint of Butterflies (2009, Ages 11 and up): The debut of local author Cecilia Galante (that’s right! She lives in Kingston and teaches in the Wilkes University’s MFA Program), this is the story of two best friends who grow up in a religious commune. When the girls have to leave the commune suddenly, they discover a world beyond what they had ever imagined. The Patron Saint of Butterflies is a story of friendship and faith. I like it because it is beautifully written. You’ll like it because it strengthens values and teaches about the power to overcome obstacles. Oprah liked it too, adding it to her recommended reading list for young adults.
5. Wonder (2012, Ages 10 and up): With bullying on the rise, Wonder is the perfect book for any school-aged child. Author R.J. Palacio introduces us to Auggie, a soon to be fifth grader at Beecher Prep, who was born with a facial deformity. This is his first year in a mainstream school, and the author cleverly navigates through the points of view of Auggie, his classmates, and even his family, as they deal with his immersion into a new culture. It is a book of friendship and kindness, a story of strength and understanding. I like Wonder because it has an important social message, and that’s why you’ll like it as well.
To get started reading this summer with your little ones you can visit the Osterhout Children’s Library on S. Franklin St. in Wilkes Barre, or the Children’s Library on N. Washington Ave. in Scranton. Both libraries have trained staff who will help you find the best pick for your child’s age and reading level.
Whether you read comics, newspapers, or picture books with your kids this summer, remember: any reading is good reading.
Amye Barrese Archer is a writer and teacher in Scranton. You can read more about her at www.amyearcher.com. | <urn:uuid:4953103e-895c-4fdd-9410-2540ddfa81a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://the570.com/index.php/2012/06/bookmarks-11/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958374 | 922 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Denée Reaves, Program Assistant, International, Washington, D.C.
Latin America Green News is a selection of weekly news highlights about environmental and energy issues in Latin America.
May 4 – 10, 2013
The Chilean government has approved new legislation to regulate emissions from the country’s mining smelters. The new law aims to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide and arsenic by 53% and 37%, respectively. The regulated companies will have up to five years to implement new emissions abatement technologies in their plants, adjustments that are expected to require approximately US$1.5 billion in new investment. (Fundación Terram 5/4/2013)
Power generation capacity from non-conventional renewable energy (NCRE) in Chile exceeded 1,000 MW at the close of the first trimester of 2013. Of this, 41% corresponds to biomass, while small hydro and wind account for 30% each. Solar power generation remains the small portion of the total NCRE matrix, with just 2.5 MW of installed capacity. According to government projections, another 300 MW of NCRE capacity will be added by the end of this year. (Diario Financiero 5/6/2013)
Chile’s Energy Ministry has obtained US$50 million in international financing for the development of solar energy projects in the country. The funding, which comes in the form of concessionary loans—soft loans given at below-market rates—will be used to promote photovoltaic power generation for the country’s northern and central electric grids. The loans are provided through the Clean Technology Fund, which is managed by the Inter-American Development Bank. (Diario Financiero 5/6/2013)
Representatives from Chile’s electricity industry are calling on the government to speed up implementation of state policies and guidelines that would define concrete steps toward greater energy efficiency and encourage the adoption of the “Smart City” concept in Chile. The conditions to promote such projects already exist, claims Luis Cuezzo, CEO of Indra Chile, the challenge is finding committed partners at the ministerial level to develop and implement successful initiatives. (Emol 5/6/2013)
The municipalities of Temuco and Padre Las Casas in the country’s southern region of La Araucanía have been declared “saturated zones” due to daily air pollution levels that have exceeded 50 micrograms per cubic meter, principally due to the burning of firewood. The label is given to areas that surpass ambient standards for air pollutants such as particulates, ozone, and carbon monoxide and will allow the municipalities to develop a forma decontamination plan over the next four months. (24 Horas 5/7/2013)
Seizures of illegally-captured wildlife are increasing in Costa Rica with the entry into force of the reformed Wildlife Act, legislation that bans sport hunting country-wide and extends existing laws barring the keeping of captive exotic wildlife as pets. The seized animals, which include parrots, parakeets, and agoutis, are housed in temporary shelters and will eventually be returned to the wild. Reforms to the Wildlife Act passed in late 2012 but only went into effect in April of this year. (La Nación 5/6/2013)
“Geothermal development in national parks, segregation or permission?” is the topic of a new opinion piece published by Rolando Portilla Pastor in La Nación. Arguing that permitting development in a national park sets a dangerous precedent, the author instead backs proposals to modify park boundaries by substituting zones to be developed—ideally, those that have relatively low ecological and tourist value—with equivalent areas of ecological importance. The current debate stems from proposals to develop geothermal projects in the Rincón de la Vieja National Park. (La Nación 5/8/2013)
Mexican and Spanish authorities are partnering on a program to provide solar energy to remote communities in the mountains of Oaxaca. The four-year program—an effort that combines both public and private resources—aims to bring electricity to 9,500 households, extending to each four hours of light and several electrical outlets. Up to 50% of the cost of equipment will be donated for free, while the rest will be covered by the beneficiaries through a microfinance mechanism. (Crónica 5/8/2013)
New reforms to the Mexican Renewable Energy Law will generate more than 30 million pesos (close to US$2.5 million) for the country’s economy, announced Jacobo Mekler Waisburd, President of the Mexican Hydroelectric Association. The reform, which adds power density as a criterion to assess whether small- and medium-sized hydroelectric projects qualify as renewable, raises the total power generation potential of small renewable hydro projects from 300 MW to 2,000 MW. (La Jornada 5/6/2013)
The Government of the Federal District and the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources have announced the allocation of federal funding for several environmental projects to be developed in the Mexican capital during 2013. Close to 130 million pesos (approximate US$10.8 million) will be channeled to the restoration of the San Juan de Aragon Forest, rescue of the Xochimilco and Tláhuac lake area, creation of 12 thousand square meters of green roofs in the region’s public hospitals, and soil conservation programs in Tlalpan, among other initiatives. (El Universal 5/8/2013)
Because it facilitates access to electricity, renewable energy is a key instrument for social development in Latin America, claim experts at the Second Global Sustainability Forum held in Madrid earlier this week. Several countries in the region have already committed to reducing energy poverty by expanding access to renewable energy. Peru, for example, is developing a photovoltaic project which aims to extend electricity to 98% of the population by 2016. (AméricaEconomía 5/7/2013)
This week’s news was compiled by Maria Belenky.Share on Facebook | <urn:uuid:26320e5f-704b-4bc8-bb30-c665be6de3b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://icommittogreen.net/tag/chilean-government/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916454 | 1,258 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Miller, Moses J. (1811-1897)
Moses J. Miller (Kleine Mose), b. 12 January 1811, d. 6 May 1897, an Amish bishop and leader, was the second Amish child and the third white child born in Holmes County, Ohio. His parents, with three other families, all young people, moved from Somerset County, PA, to the western wilderness in Walnut Township, arriving on 6 May 1810. Indian raids drove them back to Somerset County during the War of 1812, but in 1815 they returned to Holmes County. In 1834 Moses married Katherine Dunn, an Irish girl. They became the parents of ten children, of whom only three outlived their father. He was ordained minister in the Amish Church in 1835 and bishop in 1847. He was one of 14 bishops and ministers in the Holmes-Tuscarawas congregations to attend the first Amish ministers' meeting held in Wayne County, Ohio, in June 1862. Four Moses Millers were present at that conference: Moses P. (Gross or Big Mose) Miller of Walnut Creek; Moses H. Miller of Winesburg; and Moses Miller of Shanesville. The subject of this article was known as "Klein (Small) Mose" and was so designated in the conference report. There was also another Moses B. Miller from Johnstown, PA.
Moses J. Miller did not attend the general Amish ministers' meeting again until it met in Wayne County in 1865. Nineteen Holmes-Tuscarawas bishops, ministers, and deacons attended. Since the report does not include the statements of individual ministers his reactions cannot be stated with certainty. Tradition records that he cast his lot with the old order during the period when meetinghouses were built and other "new things" introduced. He attended no more of the Amish conferences, not even the one held in the vicinity of Walnut Creek, Holmes County, Ohio, in 1869. By this time Abraham Mast and a few other Holmes County ministers had become regular attendants and led one of the five Amish congregations into the progressive Amish Mennonite group. Tradition records that Moses J. Miller was a wise counselor and able leader, keeping his people in the old paths.
Moses J. Miller and Moses P. Miller were contemporaries, relatives, and both ordained ministers of the original 19th century Holmes County Amish Mennonite congregation located at Walnut Creek. Because of their names, they are easily confused but were quite distinct in their leadership and legacy among the Amish Mennonites. Bishop Moses P. Miller (Gross Mose) led the Walnut Creek Amish Mennonites and affiliated congregations into what became the 20th century (Old) Mennonite Church. His nephew Bishop Moses J. Miller (Kleine Mose) led the Walnut Creek Amish Mennonites and affiliated church districts into what became the 20th century Old Order Amish church. In 2009 the Holmes County area had over 200 church Amish districts and Mennonite congregations and 20,000 members; almost all could trace their beginnings to this congregation and these two leaders.
Yoder, Paton, and Steven R. Estes. Proceedings of the Amish Ministers' Meetings, 1862-1878 = Die Verhandlungen Der Diener Versammlungen, 1862-1878 : Translation, Interpretation, Related Documents, Participants. Goshen, IN: Mennonite Historical Society, 1999.
Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Waterloo, Ontario, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, p. 691. All rights reserved. For information on ordering the encyclopedia visit the Herald Press website.
©1996-2013 by the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. All rights reserved.
MLA style: Umble, John S. and Levi Miller. "Miller, Moses J. (1811-1897)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. March 2009. Web. 23 May 2013. http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/M5481.html.
APA style: Umble, John S. and Levi Miller. (March 2009). Miller, Moses J. (1811-1897). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 23 May 2013, from http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/M5481.html. | <urn:uuid:bd99a005-44aa-464a-a559-63e13f76ea58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/M5481.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95115 | 949 | 2.703125 | 3 |
So the progression goes.. We started with vinyl records, moved to eight-tracks and tapes and then, eventually, compact discs came around and made all of them obsolete. Of course, even that doesn’t matter because now the MP3 reigns supreme; bringing music out of the confines of physical media and transforming it into digital data. No longer do we have to worry about our discs scratching, or our tapes unwinding. Now we just have to worry about what kind of device to put the stuff on!
There are the ever-famous iPods, of course, and although the expense for some of the nicer ones border the equivalent of a month’s rent, you get the satisfaction of knowing that you have the coolest equipment on the block. What isn’t told is that although iPods are nice, the extra functions – like games, video support and iTunes downloads – are the real draw, and have little impact on their music playing ability. If you just want to get music on device to go, then just about any MP3 player out there should suffice. In other words, you don’t need an iPod to rock out!
Another misconception is that MP3 players are difficult to get music onto. This process can be as easy as plugging the USB cable that came with your music player into your computer and dragging files over from your hard drive. The iPod family requires iTunes, playlists and other protocol to do this.
It’s a lot easier than you think, and if you want to bring your music collection with you everywhere you go there’s no better way than the MP3! | <urn:uuid:eaf1aafa-1f01-4a5d-b262-20ab38f1a075> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.worldstart.com/mp3-players-and-you/ | 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 | 0.961706 | 334 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Peterson, the longtime regional editor of The Kingbird, an ornithological journal, and Lee, a retired forest ranger, have been birding in the Adirondacks since the 1960s. Both contributed to the Atlas of Breeding Birds in New York State, published by Cornell University Press in 1988, as well as its successor, which was scheduled to be released in December.
In 2004, the authors collaborated on Birds of Hamilton County, N.Y., a brochure that lists all the species observed in the county, with dates and locations. Peterson also has authored or edited similar compilations for Franklin and Essex counties.
But both saw a need for a guidebook that covered the whole 6-million-acre Park and that offered detailed descriptions of sites and their birding potential.
"Hardly a day passes without someone posting a query on birding chat lines asking for directions or suggestions," Peterson said. "Where's this Noblewood place? Any good birding spots near Lake Placid? How do I find a gray jay? Adirondack Birding has the answers."
"The book will show people many of the great places in the Adirondacks to see birds, including some sites few know about," Lee said. "It should take pressure off some of the more popular areas."
Most of the 60-plus sites described in the book are in the Champlain Valley (such as Crown Point and Noblewood Park), the Tri-Lakes Region (including the High Peaks) or the boreal lowlands in the northwestern Adirondacks (such as Massawepie Mire), since these are the places that attract the species of most interest to birders. However, there are some sites in the southern Adirondacks as well.
Adirondack Birding may be purchased in stores or on the Lost Pond and ADK websites. | <urn:uuid:e2cfa13e-c23d-4437-a134-07703a054609> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.denpubs.com/news/2008/dec/26/lost-pond-press-announces/?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96554 | 387 | 1.929688 | 2 |
ERS-2 celebrates 15 years of Earth observation
Originally designed to monitor Earth for just three years, ESA's veteran
ERS-2 was launched on 21 April 1995 to follow on from the first European Remote-Sensing mission, ERS-1, which had been in orbit since 1991. At the time, these two satellites were the most sophisticated European Earth observation spacecraft ever developed, delivering new information to study Earth's land, oceans, atmosphere and polar ice, as well as being called upon to monitor natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods.
Although ERS-2 was launched to replace ERS-1, the original mission was still in very good health and went on to remain in operation until 1999. This unexpected longevity gave rise to a unique opportunity in the field of Earth observation: the satellites could be flown in tandem to generate new data to monitor changes on the surface of Earth.
Both satellites carried Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instruments that generate highly accurate radar images. By combining two or more such images of the same point on Earth through a technique known as SAR interferometry, slight changes between acquisitions can be detected. Taking advantage of this unforeseen tandem opportunity, new interferometry techniques were quickly adopted so that observations of the same point on the ground were taken as the ERS satellites orbited above, just 24 hours apart.
This first tandem mission, which lasted nine months, led to new insights into the physics of Earth's crust and polar ice balance by showing shifts in the surface following earthquakes and the motion of fast-moving glaciers. ERS-2 was further operated in tandem with ESA's subsequent Earth observation mission, Envisat, in 2007, 2008 and 2009. The success of the first tandem operation also paved the way for future tandem operations and missions such as Germany's Tandem-X.
Building on the success of these dual operations, another ERS-2/Envisat tandem mission is planned at the end of summer this year that will yield acquisitions just 30 minutes apart.
ERS-2 was a copy of ERS-1 with one major improvement; it carried Europe's first instrument to study atmospheric ozone and consequently led to a breakthrough in our understanding of the formation of ozone holes at high latitudes. This first Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) was the forerunner of Sciamachy on Envisat and GOME-2 on the meteorological mission MetOp.
ERS-2 has recently completed its 77 777th orbit around Earth and all instruments are in good order and provide valuable data except the Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR). Various solutions were found in the last few years to assure the continued functionality of the instruments on board that encountered problems, such as the new ‘gyro-less’ working mode that was developed.
"Given ERS-2's long life in orbit, the teams working on this veteran mission have applied some clever solutions over the years to keep the satellite in good working order. It is thanks to their ingenuity and the excellent engineering this satellite carries, that we are still delivering data today. The mission is expected to continue to at least mid-2011," said ESA's ERS Mission Manager Wolfgang Lengert.
The data acquired over the last 19 years by both ERS missions are of enormous value, building on the long-term global records of key climate variables that are essential for climatologists to understand the effects of global change. In addition, these data archives and continuing data acquisitions also contribute to Europe's Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) initiative by providing historical evidence of our changing planet, therefore helping to predict what may be in store in the future.
For a mission that was only expected to last three years, ERS-2's fifteen years in orbit represents a remarkable achievement, not only for the contribution it has made to our understanding of Earth, but also in demonstrating the excellence of European industry. The experience gained from the ERS satellites, without doubt, paved the way for our future approach to monitoring Earth from space. | <urn:uuid:45a06bc9-6b57-474b-ab62-6a74969f3df4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/ERS-2_celebrates_15_years_of_Earth_observation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954464 | 825 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Marygrove College offers minors in Ethnic/Cultural Studies and African-American Studies and certificates in African-American Studies and Women’s Studies designed to foster inter-ethnic understanding and to provide a sound basis for educating students and interested others on the activities, contributions, and impact of African-Americans, Native-Americans, Asians, Arabs, Latinos, and Women on the Americas. This is essential in preparing students for a complex world, given the growing importance of diversity in the workplace and in society at large. The two minors and two certificate programs, though multi-disciplinary in nature, are offered through the Social Science Department.
The minor in Ethnic/Cultural Studies requires a minimum of 24 credit hours, including
seven (7) core courses and one (1) elective course.
The minor in African-American Studies requires a minimum of 24 credit hours, including
six (6) core courses, and two (2) electives courses.
The certificate programs in African-American Studies and in Women’s Studies require 18 credit hours each. The African-American Studies certificate requires five (5) core courses and one (1) elective. The Women’s Studies certificate requires four (4) core courses and two (2) electives. At the conclusion of your coursework, apply to the Social Science Group Major coordinator for the certificate.
The two minors and both certificates recommend two pre-requisites: LS 105 and SOC/POL 306.
The two minors and two certificates can each serve as a useful background for individuals whose careers may involve extensive contact with diverse communities. Knowledge of various cultures improves career flexibility. Given the increasing diversity of the workplace, employers hire employees whose knowledge of ethnicity can benefit the organization by facilitating positive work relationships and improving productivity. An Ethnic/Cultural Studies program adequately prepares students to become these employees. If your major is social work, psychology, social science, allied health, or business, you can enhance and combine your career preparation with a minor in Ethnic/Cultural Studies or African-American Studies or a certificate in either African-American Studies or Women’s Studies. | <urn:uuid:ec5dc553-9f68-40e9-b2ae-4ca0b8634e30> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marygrove.edu/academics/undergraduate-academics/undergraduate-programs/ethnic-cultural-studies/item/ethniccultural-studies-overview.html?category_id=136 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905024 | 434 | 1.570313 | 2 |
This BFA degree offers a broad and holistic approach to the performing arts, one that not only concentrates on performance from a participatory perspective (that is to say, on being a performer), but also prepares the student for the wide and exciting range of careers available in the performing arts industry. While performance remains a central aspect of the programme, students are also prepared for the vast array of work that supports and produces performance, such as directing and staging, creating written material for performance, production, management, marketing and funding of the performing arts. The programme is based around live theatrical performance (with elements of recording used for diagnostic and development purposes), but at the same time a graduate is prepared for further study in all cognate specialisms in the performing arts, as well as for direct entry into a professional career. This is because the degree produces a wide spectrum of transferable skills such as effective presentational technique, expertise in using the voice and the body as communicative instruments, interpretational and compositional competency with written texts, management, marketing and fundraising abilities, and organizational skills. These are applicable not only in the context of the many career paths within performing arts, but also in a wide variety of social, cultural and business vocations.
American College Dublin’s BFA in Performing Arts is delivered in association with two outstanding Irish performing arts organizations, The Gaiety School of Acting – The National Theatre School of Ireland (GSA) and CoisCéim Dance Theatre. The programme draws extensively upon the professional experience, teaching expertise, industry contacts, communities and performance spaces of these world-renowned institutions.
The Gaiety School of Acting – The National Theatre School of Ireland
The GSA was founded in 1986 by the internationally acclaimed theatre director Joe Dowling, in response to the lack of full time actor training programmes in Ireland at that time. The school has since established itself as the country’s premier training facility for actors. It offers a two-year intensive acting programme and an extensive selection of part-time and tailored courses for adults, teenagers, children and overseas students. Graduates of the GSA have appeared in all of Ireland’s theatres, in film and television nationally and internationally and in theatres across England including The Royal Shakespeare Company and The National Theatre in London. The school is based in the centre of Dublin city’s cultural quarter, Temple Bar, on Essex Street West. The main studio spaces are located in the basement, ground floor and first floor. In the basement area the school also has a 90-seat black box studio space. The facilities include changing rooms, showers, common areas, meeting room, computer bank and library.
CoisCéim Dance Theatre
Founded in 1996, CoisCéim (the name comes from the Irish word for ‘footstep’ and is pronounced ‘kush came’) has established itself as a dance company with a leading international reputation. CoisCéim’s style of performance is contemporary and vibrant, with a knowing regard for the everyday. Artistic Director David Bolger embraces a selection of dance styles as a creative device to demonstrate and articulate stories and emotions that are relevant to the landscapes in which people live. A sense of fun and vitality set in a visually appealing environment along with a depth of emotion and poignancy are key attributes to CoisCéim’s success. The company’s work is created with highly skilled performers and collaborators and with a care and understanding of the needs for their health and well being.
CoisCéim Broadreach was established in 2006. A dance awareness and education programme, it underpins the performance work of CoisCéim Dance Theatre and provides opportunity for people to participate in a variety of dance activities. CoisCéim Broadreach hosts regular classes and an annual dance event as part of Bealtaine for older people. In addition, it also co-ordinates Creative Steps young peoples dance theatre, The Choreography Project for adults, and evening dance classes for adults.
The programme’s structure combines practical workshops and academic classroom modules. Approximately two-thirds of total weekly contact hours consist of modules devoted to practical aspects of performance. Students receive instruction in rising levels of live performance, including acting, voice control, dance and movement, direction and production. The students’ progress involves development and accumulation of material for a portfolio which provides evidence of their achievement of the programme’s required learning outcomes, and functions as a basis for individual assessment. The remaining one-third of weekly contact hours concentrates on class-based academic instruction that supports and contextualises the ascending levels of practical training, and includes such subjects as theatre history, performance theory, drama and politics, creative writing, management and marketing.
The practical modules are based on a rotating roles model in which all students take turns in specializing in each of six roles in the course of the year: lead performance, support performance, direction, production, writing, and business (management, marketing and finance). Notwithstanding these separations of roles, students are required to demonstrate an understanding of the integration and interdependence of the activities and to provide mutual support, encouragement and help for all activity areas and for the group as a whole. The programme lays great stress on the development of an ensemble ethic; alongside the development of the individual’s creative impulses and abilities, the degree seeks to imbue the student with an awareness of the paramount importance of responsibility to the collective in performing arts practice.
In the first year of the programme students are introduced to fundamental concepts of acting, including action, relaxation, spontaneity, monologues, projection, presence, substitution, gesture, movement, character analyses, voice and diction. These technical perspectives are developed through study of the Stanislavski system and the Meisner technique. Dance and movement foundational skills include a broad introduction to contemporary dance styles, and the development of kinaesthetic, rhythmic, spatial and body awareness; instructional perspectives include the Feldenkrais method, Laban movement analysis and contact improvisation. Classes on directing and production provide a practical analysis of approaches since the nineteenth century, including realism, naturalism, symbolism, epic, Brechtian and post-Brechtian methodologies.
In year two, the focus shifts increasingly towards application and development of the skills encountered in the first year, with an accompanying analysis of key forms and practitioners, including devising, improvisation, clowning, mime, characterization and the Chekhov technique; the directing approaches of Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski and Peter Brook; and ongoing development of dance and movement competencies, including choreography, improvisation, enhancement of bodily coordination and movement vocabulary, improved conditioning to support technical capacity, and further exploration of contemporary dance styles. In the second year students also begin to examine the practice of play writing, initially through adaptations of canonical works, but increasingly by way of producing entirely original works for performances by the class. The movement towards a practical application of performance skills in year two is supported in both semesters by event management modules, which use as their case studies the designing, planning and running of various performing arts events by the class group.
The final taught year of the programme concentrates on the practice of performing arts by the class. Although consideration is given to historical and contemporary approaches, the overriding focus is now on producing from within the group’s internal resources largely or completely original presentations for public performance. Whereas in the previous two years all members of the class have practised in turns the six rotating roles, in the final year the roles are assigned by the programme teaching team on the basis of individual abilities and proclivities identified in each student over the preceding semesters. Master class presentations are provided by established actors, dancers and directors, giving the class the opportunity to engage directly with those who have had significant experience in various aspects of the performing arts. These presentations are combined with workshop classes which prepare the student for participation in the performing arts industry, with sessions offering guidance by experienced practitioners on matters such as curriculum vitae and headshot preparation, interview and audition preparation and mock auditions.
Throughout the course of their study participants are involved in a number of didactic and illustrative performance exercises, culminating in the showcase performances at the end of each academic year, delivered in the three theatrical spaces of The Gaiety School of Acting – The National Theatre School of Ireland, and Smock Alley Theatre. At the end of year one there are two performances in the Black Box Theatre; at the end of the second year there are two performances in the Boys’ School; at the end of year three there are four performances in Smock Alley Theatre. The teaching staff provide guidance and advice in the preparation of these performances. At the same time the class is ultimately responsible for all aspects of the performance, and assessment is based both on individual execution of assigned roles and on the performance of the group as a whole. The process of development of responsibility and preparedness for a career in the performing arts culminates in the 1200-hour internship, completed as a fourth year or incrementally in the course of the three years during summer and other breaks. The internship is sourced by the College and is rigorously supervised and assessed, with regular meetings required with the College supervisor to monitor progress and on-site learning, and final assessment achieved by way of a detailed report.
- Introduction to the performing arts
- History of drama
- Introduction to performing arts management
- Acting and voice 1 (9 hours per week)
- Dance 1 (3 hours per week)
- Principles of marketing
- Drama and politics
- Direction and production 1 (3 hours per week)
- Acting and voice 1 (6 hours per week)
- Dance 1 (3 hours per week)
Two end-of-year showcase performances in The Black Box Theatre
- Dramatic writing 1
- Theoretical perspectives on performance
- Event management for the performing arts
- Acting and voice 2 (9 hours per week)
- Dance 2 (3 hours per week)
- E-commerce and internet marketing for the performing arts
- Direction and production 2 (3 hours per week)
- Acting and voice 2 (6 hours per week)
- Dance 2 (3 hours per week)
- Event design and experience for the performing arts
Two end-of-year class showcase performances in The Boys’ School Theatre
- Dramatic writing 2
- Performance and performativity
- Master class presentations
- Acting and voice 3 (9 hours per week)
- Dance 3 (3 hours per week)
- The business of performing arts
- Direction and production 3 (3 hours per week)
- Acting and voice 3 (6 hours per week)
- Dance 3 (3 hours per week)
- Performing arts project
Four capstone end-of-year showcase performances in Smock Alley Theatre
PA425 Internship (1200 hours, completed as a fourth year or incrementally in the course of the three years during summer and other breaks)
The programme has one intake per year: September.
Applicants should furnish evidence of graduation from high school (secondary school), with final-year subjects to include completion of English.
A prospective student should submit an application for the course directly to the Admissions Office at American College Dublin.
Applicants whose first language is not English should have an IELTS score of 6.5 (or equivalent).
An interview and audition is required for entry to the BFA in Performing Arts course. For the audition you must prepare one classical monologue (ie. pre the year 1900) and one contrasting modern monologue (ie. post the year 1900). Each piece should be approximately three minutes. Students should contact the Admissions Office at American College Dublin for details on the interview and audition process.
Further education students
The College accepts students from further education colleges to all of its courses. Students must have gained three distinctions in a cognate area of the programme that they wish to study. Students must have a full level 5 or level 6 award and this award may have been taken over a number of years. Students with a FETAC qualification can gain access to both American College Dublin and American College Delaware.
Mature student application
Mature applicants can apply directly to the Admissions office. An interview and audition is required for entry to the BFA in Performing Arts course. For the audition you must prepare one classical monologue (ie. pre the year 1900) and one contrasting modern monologue (ie. post the year 1900). Each piece should be approximately three minutes. Mature students should contact the Admissions Office at American College Dublin for details on the interview and audition process.
Other EU applications
Every student who has taken examinations in an EU member state is expected to have completed English in his or her final year. The only exception to this is students who have completed the A-Levels. These students must have taken mathematics and English for their O-Levels.
For overseas students Skype auditions can be arranged. More information is available in the Admissions menu or by contacting the Admissions Office, Tel: +353 1 6768939; Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Do you have a question? Need some advice? Contact the Admissions Office. | <urn:uuid:f5fe5ca0-3bf1-4155-8260-229627fc2243> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.acd.ie/academics/courses/liberal-arts-department/bachelor-of-fine-arts-in-performing-arts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944789 | 2,733 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The participants will experience how a pair programming team works.
Working in a single pair is different from working on your own: You have to articulate what you want to do, the other person (probably) has some different insights, and the result will be different from what you would have done on your own.
But.. this is only half of the story: working in a Pair Programming Team has many more advantages: knowledge is spread, the team creates an own style, parallel development becomes easy, truck factor is reduced. The team creates the product (instead of individual programmers creating the parts), the product is a whole, not a mixture of individual results. You will learn about the necessity of agile tools like daily standup meetings, pair rotation, coding standards and collective code ownership, how they work, and what their effects are. You will experience improvements for the quality of you product, and for the productivity of the team.
How is it possible to gain "real-life-experience" without programming? In this simulation, we want to focus on some of the practices, and we make abstraction of everything that is not crucial. Programming is not crucial, being part of the team, that is what matters. The intention is that everybody can experience how it feels to be part of a Pair Programming team, we don't want to exclude people who don't know how to program.
In this simulation, you will get an assignment to visualize a given story. When you start the implementation, you only have a rough idea about the story content and plot. You will not get all the thiny details up front, you will find out the exact requirements while you proceed with your tasks. And they will change... You will have to change the details! But you are not doing this on your own, when you want to succeed, you have to surrender to the emerging "team spirit". You will see how the team can become an entity, how the whole is more than the parts, how individual decisions always contribute to the team's awareness of the product.
This session is not about how to work well with the person next to you, it is about how it feels to be assimilated in a real team (resistance is futile!).
Benefits of attending
Real life experience, but no programming involved!
See and feel how this can possibly work without putting your real project at risk!
What will the organisers learn
The organisers expect to learn more about the dynamics of a PPT, by running and coaching the simulation teams.
The conference is underway. Watch this space for more news and pictures of the sessions.
Beginning of September 2005
XP Day Benelux Conference
November 17th & 18th 2005
Vera Peeters, Tryx
Marc Evers, Piecemeal Growth
Rob Westgeest, Agidem
Pascal Van Cauwenberghe, Nayima | <urn:uuid:2359be4d-f0f6-4fff-9483-f66955021d4b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.xpday.net/Xpday2005/DrawingCarousel.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936236 | 586 | 1.875 | 2 |
Urinary Tract Infection
A urinary tract infection (UTI) is an infection in any part of the urinary system. Most UTIs start in the lower urinary tract in the bladder or urethra. The urethra is the tube that carries urine out of the body. A UTI can also include an infection in the upper urinary system, including the kidneys.
There are different names for infections in different parts of the urinary system, including:
The infection may also occur in the tube connecting the bladder to the kidney. All of these infections are considered to be UTIs.
The Urinary Tract
Copyright © Nucleus Medical Media, Inc.
UTIs are caused by bacteria that most often come from the digestive tract or rectal area. The bacteria cling to the opening of the urethra and begin to multiply. If the infection is not treated right away, bacteria may move up the urinary system to the kidneys.
Most infections are caused by a type of bacteria called E. coli. E. coli normally lives in the colon. The bacteria may move from the rectal area to the urethra.
UTIs can also be sexually transmitted. This type of infection usually does not spread past the urethra. Both partners need to be treated.
Last reviewedSeptember 2012by Adrienne Carmack, MD
Please be aware that this information is provided to supplement the care provided by your physician. It is neither intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. CALL YOUR HEALTHCARE PROVIDER IMMEDIATELY IF YOU THINK YOU MAY HAVE A MEDICAL EMERGENCY. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider prior to starting any new treatment or with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. | <urn:uuid:e75d89f1-ecd0-4dcf-849f-d480f0648ea1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pslmc.com/health_library/detail.htm?id=108176 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930664 | 365 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Easypass.pl is a short script that can be used to create secure, easy-to-remember passwords. It requires a dictionary file (which is standard on most Unix machines) and Perl. It features a lot of options that can be used to strengthen the password. The script was the focus of an article in the July 2002 issue ('Tools') of SysAdmin Magazine.
Dixie DNS & DHCP Config Tool is a Web interface written in PHP for configuring and administering ISC bind and dhcp. It maintains a database with general DNS and DHCP information, and information about subnets and hosts. It produces config files, or sends dynamic DNS updates if DDNS is used on the server. It has simple DNS and DHCP live browsers, and can produce subzone files for MS Active Directory.
queue-admin is a bash2 shell script for managing the mail queue of the qmail MTA. It can provide a summarized list of the messages in the queue, optionally filtered by number or by whether a message is local or remote. The messages themselves can be listed, viewed, or deleted by the same criteria. It can also search for expressions within the messages, and can return the entire email or only the line where the expression was found. The output is colorized.
@1 Helpdesk XP Perl is a very powerful Web-based helpdesk system. It supports file attachments, hidden remarks, priority marking, etc. Unlike other similar products, this script does not use the conventional "assign/completed" method to close past tickets. Instead, it uses an intelligent method to sort/rank inquiry tickets. You can even tell whether your replies have been read by the visitors.
p-run is a utility that runs a program, script, or series of commands on a large number of hosts in parallel. It simplifies management of machines in computer labs. It uses ssh, and supports password and key-based authentication. p-run uses libexpect, and will run in parallel across as many processes as specified. When run on a large number of hosts, its parallel nature significantly speeds up administration. | <urn:uuid:9594441e-bcf0-4fe1-abfc-00f8e5137390> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://freecode.com/tags/systems-administration?page=9&sort=vitality&with=&without= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910269 | 431 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Students bake cookies, make holiday cards for soldiers and former classmate
NEWTON TWP. - In a week, Spc. Tyler Pensak and members of his brigade should receive sugar cookies with sprinkles and carefully crafted Valentine's Day cards from a class of fourth-graders more than 6,000 miles away.
Around the same time, a 10-year-old boy living in Egypt will get 21 colorful cards, some covered in glitter and heart-shaped cutouts.
Students in Rebecca Kameroski's fourth-grade class at Newton-Ransom Elementary School spent the final period Tuesday baking cookies and designing cards for an Abington Heights graduate stationed in Kuwait with the National Guard and their former classmate, Jefferson, whose family moved to Egypt in December.
Their hands covered in glue and glitter, the 21 students and kitchen supervisor Pat Pensak - Spc. Pensak's mother - spent 45 minutes cutting construction paper and decorating it.
"I feel happy because it will make them happy, and know we are thinking about them," said Tyler Jones, who chose green construction paper because it's an army color. "I wrote good luck and thank you for serving our country."
Since Jefferson left in December, 10-year-old Samantha Brown has remained in contact with her former classmate via Skype.
"He is a very nice friend, who came over to my house once," she said. "These cards will show how much we miss him."
Sailor Castellano had been brainstorming ideas as to how she should decorate her card since her mother bought the materials last week.
After hesitating momentarily, the 10-year-old decided to outline the white construction paper with pink and red ribbon.
"It would have looked too boring without the color," she said.
Holding a tray of freshly baked cookies, Ms. Pensak looked on as each of the 21 students wrote a special note to her son.
"It's going to mean the world to him," she said.
Contact the writer: firstname.lastname@example.org, @miorfinoTT on Twitter Newton-Ransom Elementary School kitchen supervisor Patty Pensak, mother of Army National Guard Spc. Tyler Pensak, who is stationed at Camp Buering in northern Kuwait, helps fourth-grade students make sugar cookies for her son and his fellow soldiers on Tuesday at the school in Newton Twp. At left, other fourth-graders are making Valentine's cards for the soldiers. Spc. Pensak attended the school. | <urn:uuid:b63f83c2-754e-47e5-a7c3-f1b203daa45c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/students-bake-cookies-make-holiday-cards-for-soldiers-and-former-classmate-1.1447344 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973464 | 524 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Congress created the “means test” to determine if you qualify to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Whether you qualify for Chapter 7 depends largely on what the means test calculates as your “current monthly income.” Read on to learn more about how current monthly income is calculated and what it includes.
(You can get more means testing information here.)
What Is Current Monthly Income (CMI)?
For means test purposes, CMI is defined as the average monthly income received from all sources derived during the six-month period ending on the last day of the month before your bankruptcy filing date. This is also known as the “look back period.”
To calculate your CMI, you add all applicable income received during the look back period and divide the total by six to arrive at your average monthly income. In a joint bankruptcy, you must include all income received by both you and your spouse.
Example. If you filed for Chapter 7 on January 19, 2012, the applicable CMI look back period is the six-month period from July 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011. If you received a total of $24,000 from all income sources during the look back period, your CMI would be $4,000 ($24,000 divided by 6).
How Does CMI Affect Your Eligibility for Chapter 7?
The means test compares your annualized CMI against your state’s median income for a household of the same size. If your CMI is below the state median, you automatically qualify to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. If your CMI is greater than the state median, you must complete the rest of the means test and take into account national and local living expense standards to determine if you are eligible to file for Chapter 7. (To find your state's median income, visit our Bankruptcy in Your State area and click on your state.)
Example. Sally has a CMI of $3,000. This means her annualized CMI is $36,000 ($3,000 multiplied by 12). If Sally is single and her state’s median income for a single-person household is $40,000 then she automatically passes the means test and qualifies for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
What Income Does CMI Include?
The CMI calculation includes income you receive from almost all sources. Below, we discuss the most common sources of income you must take into account when calculating your CMI.
Gross wages, salaries, tips, bonuses, overtime, and commissions. Essentially all income you receive from employment is part of your CMI. Keep in mind that you must use your gross income (before tax and other deductions) when calculating CMI.
Net income from business, profession, or farm. If you are self-employed or own a business or farm, your CMI includes your net income (income after deducting business expenses) received from these sources.
Net rental or other real property income. If you receive rents or have other income from real property, your net income after expenses is included in your CMI calculation.
Income from interest, dividends, and royalties. Any interest, dividend, or royalty income is part of CMI.
Pension and retirement income. If you have a pension or receive retirement benefits, you must add them to your CMI calculation.
Regular contributions or support received from another person for household expenses. This includes income from alimony or child support. In addition, even if your daughter is giving you $300 each month to help out, you must include that contribution in your CMI. However, you don’t have to include any contributions from your spouse if you are filing a joint bankruptcy with him or her.
Unemployment benefits. If you receive unemployment compensation, it must be included in your CMI. But unemployment benefits received under the Social Security Act are not part of your CMI calculation.
Income from all other sources. Any income you receive from other sources such as state disability payments or annuities.
What Income Is Excluded from the CMI Calculation?
When calculating your CMI, you don’t have to include income received from the following sources:
Benefits or payments received under the Social Security Act. If you receive Social Security income or other benefits such as Social Security disability payments, you are not required to include them in your CMI calculation.
Payments received because you were a victim of domestic or international terrorism, war crime, or crime against humanity. Payments received as a result of being a victim of these crimes is not part of your CMI.
What If Your CMI Does Not Accurately Reflect Your Actual Income?
Unfortunately, the means test only uses the six-month look back period to calculate your CMI. As a result, your CMI may not accurately represent your actual income if you have irregular or seasonal income that is very high in certain months but low in others. The same problem may arise if you receive a lump sum payment for work performed over a long period of time (such as a commission or bonus from a deal that took years to complete).
In that case, you may still be able to qualify if you explain your situation to the satisfaction of the court. However, whether you will be successful depends on where you live. Each court has a different interpretation of CMI and how much income it includes in the above circumstances.
If your CMI doesn't accurately reflect your current or actual income, consider getting help from a local bankruptcy lawyer. Use Nolo's Bankruptcy Lawyer Directory to find a bankruptcy attorney near you. | <urn:uuid:97b2eaba-28ab-46d8-b5e4-249ef6d69bf6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thebankruptcysite.org/resources/bankruptcy/chapter-7/current-monthly-income-bankruptcy-means-test.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96382 | 1,152 | 2.265625 | 2 |
The free trade agreement begun by New Zealand, Singapore, Chile and Brunei - known as the P4 - two years ago is set to expand even further with two more countries , Australia and Peru, as well as the United States wanting to join.
Other Apec countries will be given a deadline and asked to put their hands ups by March if they want to be part of the next expansion.
The significant development was announced today by Chile Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley at the Apec trade ministers meeting in Lima, attended by New Zealand's new Trade Minister Tim Groser.
The United States announced in September it wanted in, and Australia and Peru, made their commitments today to join P4, now called TransPac the TransPacific Strategic and Economic partnership.
Vietnam has also expressed an interest but has not yet committed to negotiations to join.
Other Apec countries will be invited to decide whether to join by March, when negotiations for the expanded trade pact will begin.
Asked whether the new United States Administration would be likely to continue with the negotiations after Barack Obama is sworn in in January, United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab told a press conference she expected it would.
"These negotiations will be launched in March and it will be up to them to proceed.
"The United States has a proud and successful history of having a truly bipartisan trade policy dating back to the Roosevelt Administration and 1934 and it is our hope and expectation that they will continue with that, in that spirit."
She said the Obama Administration had "articulated an interest in high quality trade agreements. They have articulated an interest in trade relations with Latin America and the Asia Pacific region."
Mr Groser told reporters that there was no doubt that the international economic turmoil had focused people's minds and referring to the Doha round said "and now what we want to see is the same political dynamic occur in Geneva over the next few weeks."By Audrey Young Email Audrey | <urn:uuid:13eb9e72-ab75-4f3d-87e1-9405dbdf04dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10544258 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974602 | 395 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Precious Metal Clay lets you make fine jewelry with little experience or equipment. It works like Fimo clay, except it is more crumbly because it contains powdered precious metal, such as silver, or gold. (It will also dry out faster.) The organic clay binding burns off when you fire it and you end up with pure fine silver or gold in the shape of the clay you made. If you have jewelry skills you can keep working it from there, soldering, shaping, etc.. Since I don’t have much skill I just polish up my pieces or antique them with silver black. There’s an implication that you have to fire PMC pieces in a kiln (that would be nice), but so far everything I’ve done I’ve fired myself on the kitchen floor with a basic propane torch.
All PMC shrinks significantly when fired. However since the shrinkage is proportional, jewlers use this shrinkage to produce very fine detail that would be difficult if you had to work at full size. PMC comes in various formulations with different shrinkage rates. The original PMC shrinks 30%, while PMC+ and PMC3 shrinks only 10%. (I’ve never tried using the torch on anything except silver PMC+ and PMC3 because I prefer the lower shrinkage of these.)
My one piece of advice about firing PMC with a propane torch: This stuff is very expensive (it’s silver or gold, remember!) so take a small piece and sacrifice it to learn how to heat evenly first. It is very easy to overheat it which will melt the silver into a blob., which is bad. If you aren’t sure if it’s metal yet (it’ll be whitish), pick it up with needle nose plier and drop it very gently on the metal surface you fired it on. It should make a satisfying metal-on-metal thunk. When I am feeling more flush, I’ll find out if gold PMC can be fired this way.
– Quinn Norton
Cool stuff, indeed. You can get it thru Dick Blick as well. They also sell a book, “Introduction to Precious Metal Clay” (also on Amazon).
They also offer a special formulation that can be fired in a “hot pot” rather than a kiln. | <urn:uuid:6c63b906-2ab9-455d-981f-1ad6b78921ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kk.org/cooltools/archives/181 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932095 | 495 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Spending endless hours in front of a computer playing virtual fantasy games can ruin real lives and wreck real marriages, and surprisingly, the average player is 35 years old.
If video games can wreak havoc in adult lives, imagine the effect they could have on children. Dr. Phil challenges parents to audit the video game situation in their home. How much money are you spending on these games? Could you or your child be addicted? Check this list!
Watch as Super Phil fends off bad guys in a suit of armor (with cool hair) in his virtual fantasy world.
Thirty-four-year-old Fred plays computer games all day long. He admits to spending up to 10 hours a day in a cyber world. His wife, Juli, says Fred can spend as much as 80 hours a week playing video games.
Like Father, Like Son
Juli says Fred neglects their 3-year-old son, Sean, and even worse, he's keeping their 5-year-old son, Justin, up late gaming, just like his dad. Meanwhile, Juli's son Brandon, says he thinks Fred, his stepdad, is lazy and should get a job.
Brad, 40, says his video game addition took him to the brink of destruction, nearly costing him his marriage and sanity. And, Liz says her 21-year-old son, Shawn, was a young man with a future until a video game caused him to take his own life.
Update: Read how Brad is doing now.
Wendy's husband, a video game designer, oftentimes takes his work home with him and continues to play on the computer even after hours. So, Wendy takes matters into her own hands! | <urn:uuid:9647abbc-cbb6-4856-a2b4-0cc1b28d6436> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drphil.com/shows/show/1149/ | 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 | 0.985682 | 353 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Africa | World |
Economy - Development | Society
MENA growth expected to improve into 2011
afrol News, 25 January - A new World Bank report, “Global Economic Prospects 2010: Crisis, Finance, and Growth,” notes that the crisis is having serious cumulative impacts on poverty, with 64 million more people expected to be living in extreme poverty by the end of 2010 than would have been the case without the crisis, according to updated analysis.
The report states that following the tortuous conditions of 2009, prospects for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) should improve through 2011. Growth is projected to increase to 4.4 percent by that year, the same pace registered on average between 1995 and 2005.
Though domestic absorption will be a continuing source of strength, the forecast for regional recovery is premised on a revival in global oil demand, firming oil prices, and a rebound in key export markets.
Oil prices are expected to remain broadly stable over the projection period, at around $75 a barrel. A rekindling of interest in regional FDI may emerge as financial and economic conditions begin to normalize, said the report, adding that economic recovery in Europe and among the GCC countries will be supportive of a revival for the diversified economies.
The report also noted that impact of the global financial crisis for the developing economies of MENA region varied across oil exporters and importers of the region, stating that the “food-fuel” crisis of 2007-08 was a challenge for the region, the largest net exporter of oil and the largest net importer of food.
Oil exporters were less adversely affected, but food import bills widened sharply, the report said.
Hardest hit were countries in the Maghreb, as well as Jordan and Lebanon, which are large importers of both food and fuel; and the Arab Republic of Egypt which is high food-import dependence.
Over the course of 2009, net terms-of-trade movements for the developing oil exporters (Algeria, Islamic Republic of Iran, Syrian Arab Republic, and Republic of Yemen) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) were favourable, as oil prices increased and food prices declined. But high oil prices have been maintained at the expense of much reduced output.
For the more diversified economies (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia) steep declines in external demand - notably from the dominant Euro Area - had a negative effect on merchandise exports, compounded by falling tourism volumes, lower worker remittances, and declining FDI inflows, notably those from the GCC economies.
However the report also noted that the global economic crisis ended the oil boom that saw oil prices peak at more than $150 a barrel in mid-2008, and prices have settled into a range of $65–$80 a barrel. As part of this effort, regional oil exporters scaled back production by nearly 10 percent (11 percent among high-income producers and 7.3 percent among the developing exporters of the region). The combination of much lower prices and reduced output caused oil and gas revenues for all exporters to drop from $755 billion in 2008 to $485 billion in 2009, it said.
The Euro Area is the destination for more than 70 percent of goods exports from the diversified economies of MENA region. Moreover, the Euro Area is also the host for overseas workers from the Maghreb and Mashreq and an important source of remittance flows and tourism arrivals to the developing region.
Slackening of economic activity and worsening labour conditions in Europe, as well as across the GCC economies over the course of 2009 caused the flow of worker remittances into the developing region to decline by 6.3 percent for the year - in contrast to the strong gains of 23.0 and 11.3 percent in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Among the larger recipient countries, Egypt appears to have been most adversely affected, with flows declining 9 percent, while Morocco experienced an 8 percent drop in receipts. Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia experienced lesser declines, within a range of 1 to 3 percent.
Tourism receipts are also said to be a key source of foreign currency equivalent to 14 percent of GDP for the diversified economies of the region. With Europe suffering increasing unemployment rates, faltering wage growth, and efforts by households to repair balance sheets badly damaged by the financial market meltdown of 2008, tourism receipts are estimated to have declined by 5 percent during 2009.
The report further notes that MENA region was less sharply impacted by the crisis than other regions, with overall GDP growth slowing to 2.9 percent in 2009. GDP is projected to grow 3.7 percent in 2010 and 4.4 percent by 2011.
By staff writer
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On the Afrol News front page now
|Kenyatta secures tight victory in Kenya|
afrol News - The official election results in Kenya have finally been announced, and Uhuru Kenyatta managed to win the first poll round outright with a narrow 50.7 percent. But the main opponent, PM Raila Odinga, is filing a vote rigging complaint to the courts. | <urn:uuid:f9439f17-de16-4eda-b256-49e1184570fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.afrol.com/articles/35137 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951377 | 1,103 | 2.125 | 2 |
The immediate problem facing the biographer of [MENCKEN] is, ironically, the same quality that makes Mencken such a worthwhile subject: his peerless prose. Any study of the author is bound to disappoint when his own words are cited and the reader suddenly feels the galvanic force of the great man's writing -- and, by comparison, the weakness of the biographer's own abilities. Biographies that focus on the development of Mencken's ideas suffer from this problem even when they are well-written. (They suffer also from the inevitable realization that Mencken's ideas, as opposed to his verbal style, simply do not stand up after 70 years.) [Marion Elizabeth Rodgers] circumvents this difficulty altogether by giving us Mencken the man, in impressive and often fantastic detail, while keeping the author's writing and ideas largely in the background. Every lead is chased down: The reader learns about what Mencken drank while in Germany during World War I, the testimony he gave in a censorship case in the 1940s, how much affection this person or that felt for him, and, over and over again, the intimate details of his love life. It is a solid and well-researched work, built on dozens of interviews in addition to heroic feats of archival digging.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission. | <urn:uuid:9837dedf-9d6e-4023-af15-c9794486ba86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/981436621.html?dids=981436621:981436621&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963941 | 288 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Eureka organic-farming pioneer will speak at Robert Trail LibraryFor nearly 30 years, just up Highway 3 from Rosemount, Atina and Martin Diffley sold vegetables from their roadside stand in Eagan. Many of their customers drove up from Rosemount for their fresh, organic fare.
By: Emily Zimmer, The Farmington Independent
For nearly 30 years, just up Highway 3 from Rosemount, Atina and Martin Diffley sold vegetables from their roadside stand in Eagan. Many of their customers drove up from Rosemount for their fresh, organic fare.
The couple started their organic farm, Gardens of Eagan in 1973 and continued to sell fresh produce from the Highway 3 stand through 2007. Atina and Martin sold their farm operation, which had moved to the Lakeville area, to The Wedge Co-Op in 2008.
Atina Diffley published her memoir, “Turn Here, Sweet Corn,” recounting more than three decades of their lives together as organic farmers, first in Eagan and then in Eureka Township. The book also shares their family’s quest to protect their family farm against development and Koch Industries.
Atina said the story is about relationships and raises a lot of questions about land development, where our food comes from and what as communities we want to protect. It also shares Atina and Martin’s love story.
“Storytelling is powerful. When you write about something that’s true and personal it gives the reader a jolt,” said Atina.
Atina will speak about her book and farming experiences at 6:30 p.m. March 19 at the Robert Trail Library and she’s hoping to see some familiar faces in the audience. She will have copies of the book available.
Atina said Martin will be there too. Martin attended Rosemount High School and lived in the area most of his life. Atina said he has an amazing memory for the history of the area and its agricultural roots. | <urn:uuid:4debc761-bd2f-4f2a-b2a5-c449f4113cb8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.farmingtonindependent.com/event/article/id/22479/group/News/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970149 | 412 | 1.546875 | 2 |
I think there ought to be a continuous discussion of [foreign] policy during this session of the Senate... It is part of our American system that basic elements of foreign policy shall be openly debated.
It is said that such debate and the differences that may occur give aid and comfort to our possible enemies. I think that the value of such aid and comfort is grossly exaggerated.
The only thing that can give real aid and comfort to the enemy is the adoption of a policy which plays into their hands...
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