text stringlengths 213 24.6k | id stringlengths 47 47 | dump stringclasses 1 value | url stringlengths 14 499 | file_path stringlengths 138 138 | language stringclasses 1 value | language_score float64 0.9 1 | token_count int64 51 4.1k | score float64 1.5 5.06 | int_score int64 2 5 |
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Western powers seek to attack nations through spreading drug abuse and addiction in other countries.
"Today, they (Western powers) have begun harming nations, especially the Iranian nation by drugs," President Ahmadinejad said in Tehran's Azadi Stadium on Sunday.
He made the remarks in a gathering of 20,000 of recovered addicts on the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.
"Arrogant states masquerade themselves behind the so-called humanitarian masks and they want to stir a sense of inability in other nations," Ahmadinejad said.
“They put on masks of freedom-seeking, human rights, and protecting people but in fact they are the biggest criminals in the world,” he added.
In April, Iran was re-elected as a member of the International Narcotics Control Board by the United Nations Economic and Social Council for another five-year term.
According to the UN, Iran ranks first among all countries in shutting down drug routes into its territory.
With a 900-kilometer (560-mile) common border with Afghanistan, Iran has been used as the main conduit for smuggling Afghan drugs to narcotic kingpins in Europe.
The Iranian government has spent more than USD 700 millions to seal its borders and prevent the transit of illicit drugs destined for European, Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries. | <urn:uuid:ce774c42-40a0-42a8-802a-31c280113ae8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.presstv.ir/detail/186309.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947211 | 281 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Just order $100 or more in Products and we pay for shipping.
Philip Marlowe Old Time
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared in The Big Sleep, published in 1939. Marlowe appeared in none of Chandler's early short stories, though many of his early stories were republished years later with the names of the protagonists changed to Philip Marlowe; this change was presumably made with Chandler's approval.
Philip Marlowe's character is foremost within the genre of hardboiled crime fiction that originated in the 1920s, most notably in Black Mask magazine, in which Dashiell Hammett's The Continental Op and Sam Spade first appeared.
Underneath the wisecracking, hard drinking, tough private eye, Marlowe is quietly contemplative and philosophical. He enjoys chess and poetry. While he is not afraid to risk physical harm, he does not dish out violence merely to settle scores. Morally upright, he is not bamboozled by the genre's usual femmes fatales, like Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep. As Chandler wrote about his detective ideal in general, "I think he might seduce a duchess, and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin."
Philip Marlowe shows based on the books were broadcast in a variety of venues throughout the years. Some of the Marlowe radio anthology includes:
This collection of Philip Marlowe Greats includes 96 different shows and appearances for a total of 46+ hours of listening enjoyment.
This product is a DVD collection of Old Time Radio mp3s. It is
designed to be played on your computer DVD drive with standard mp3
software - like Windows media player or its equivalent on Macintosh
computers. The mp3 files on the DVDs can be copied onto CDs for
play in your car stereo, home entertainment center, etc so you can
take your favorite shows with you anywhere you go.
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How to learn about an industry or a specific company
This page is being used by companies investigating expanding into new markets with new products or acquisitions, by individual inventors learning more about industries before trying to market their product to them, by financial investors wishing to learn more about the inter-workings of certain companies or industries, by states, and municipalities researching industries and companies they are recruiting to their area, and by college marketing classes.
Knowledge source for market research, marketing plans, internet marketing, marketing careers & much more!
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Communications Equipment Operators
Nature of the Work | Working Conditions | Employment | Training, Other Qualifications, and Advancement | Job Outlook | Earnings | Related Occupations | Sources of Additional Information
Most communications equipment operators work as telephone operators, assisting customers making telephone calls. Although most calls are connected automatically, callers sometimes require the assistance of an operator. Central office operators help customers complete local and long distance calls. Directory assistance operators provide customers with information such as phone numbers or area codes. Switchboard operators usually provide telephone assistance for a single organization; they relay incoming, outgoing, and interoffice calls.
When callers dial "0", they usually reach a central office operator, also known as a local, long distance, or call completion operator. Most of these operators work for telephone companies and many of their responsibilities have been automated. For example, callers can make international, collect, and credit card calls without the assistance of a central office operator. Other tasks previously handled by these operators, such as billing calls to third parties or monitoring the cost of a call, have also been automated.
Callers still need a central office operator for a limited number of tasks. These include placing person-to-person calls or interrupting busy lines if an emergency warrants the disruption. When natural disasters occur, such as storms or earthquakes, central office operators provide callers with emergency phone contacts. They also assist callers having difficulty with automated phone systems. An operator monitoring an automated system for placing collect calls, for example, may intervene if a caller needs assistance with the system.
Directory assistance operators provide callers with information such as telephone numbers or area codes. Most directory assistance operators work for telephone companies; increasingly they also work for companies that provide business services. Automated systems now handle many of the responsibilities once performed by directory assistance operators. The systems prompt callers for a listing, and may even connect the call after providing the phone number. However, directory assistance operators monitor many of the calls received by automated systems. The operators listen to recordings of the customers request, and then key information into electronic directories to access the correct phone numbers. Directory assistance operators also provide personal assistance to customers having difficulty using the automated system.
Switchboard operators work for a wide variety of organizations, such as hospitals, hotels, and other businesses. They often operate private branch exchange (PBX) switchboards to relay incoming, outgoing, and interoffice calls. Switchboard operators may also handle other clerical duties, such as supplying information, taking messages, and announcing visitors. Technological improvements have automated many of the tasks handled by switchboard operators. New systems automatically connect outside calls to the correct destination, and voice mail systems take messages without the assistance of an operator.
Other communications equipment operators include workers who operate telegraphic typewriter, telegraph key, facsimile machine, and related equipment to transmit and receive signals and messages. They prepare messages according to prescribed formats, and verify and correct errors in messages. As part of their job, they may also adjust equipment for proper operation.
Most communications equipment operators work in pleasant, well-lighted surroundings. Because telephone operators spend much time seated at keyboards and video monitors, employers often provide workstations designed to decrease glare and other physical discomforts. Such improvements reduce the incidence of eyestrain, back discomfort, and injury due to repetitive motion.
Central office and directory assistance operators must be accessible to customers 24 hours a day, and therefore work a variety of shifts. Some operators work split shifts, that is, they are on duty during peak calling periods in the late morning and early evening and off duty during the intervening hours. Telephone companies normally assign shifts by seniority, allowing the most experienced operators first choice of schedules. As a result, entry level operators may have less desirable schedules, including late evening, split shift, and weekend work. Telephone company operators may work overtime during emergencies.
Switchboard operators generally work the same hours as other clerical employees at their company. In most organizations, full-time operators work regular business hours over a 5-day workweek. Work schedules are more irregular in hotels, hospitals, and other organizations that require round-the-clock operator services. In these companies, switchboard operators may work in the evenings and on holidays and weekends.
Approximately 1 in 5 communications equipment operator works part-time. Because of the irregular nature of telephone operator schedules, many employers seek part-time workers for those shifts that are difficult to fill.
An operators work may be quite repetitive and the pace hectic during peak calling periods. To maintain operator efficiency, supervisors at telephone companies often monitor operator performance including the amount of time spent on each call. The rapid pace of the job and frequent monitoring may cause stress. To reduce job-related stress, some workplaces attempt to create a more stimulating and less rigid working environment.
Communications equipment operators held about 297,000 jobs in 1998. About 9 out of 10 worked as telephone operators. Employment was distributed as follows:
Most switchboard operators worked for services establishments, such as personnel supply services, hospitals, and hotels and motels. The majority of central office and directory assistance operators worked in telephone companies.
Communications equipment operators receive their training on the job. At large telephone companies, entry level central office and directory assistance operators may receive both classroom and on-the-job instruction that can last several weeks. At small telephone companies, operators usually receive shorter, less formal training. These operators may be paired with experienced personnel who provide hands-on instruction. Switchboard operators may also receive short-term, informal training, sometimes provided by the manufacturer of their switchboard equipment.
New employees receive training on equipment operation and procedures for maximizing efficiency. They are familiarized with company policies, including the level of customer service performance they are expected to deliver. Instructors monitor both the time and quality of trainees responses to customer requests. Supervisors may continue to closely monitor new employees after their initial training session is complete.
Employers generally require a high school diploma for operator positions, and applicants should have strong reading, spelling, and numerical skills. Operators must have clear speech and good hearing. Computer literacy and typing skills are also important, and familiarity with a foreign language is helpful. Most companies place an emphasis on customer service skills; employers seek operators who will remain courteous to customers while working in a fast-paced environment.
After 1 or 2 years on the job, telephone operators may advance to other positions within a company. Many enter clerical occupations where their operator experience is valuable; these include positions as customer service agents, dispatchers, and receptionists. Operators with a more technical background and an interest in telecommunications may advance into positions installing and repairing equipment. Promotion to supervisory positions is also possible.
Employment of communications equipment operators is projected to decline through 2008, largely due to new laborsaving communications technologies and consolidations in the telecommunications industry. Virtually all job openings will result from the need to replace communications equipment operators who transfer to other occupations or leave the labor force.
Developments in communications technologies, specifically the ease and accessibility of voice recognition systems, will continue to have a significant impact on the demand for telephone operators. The decline in employment will be sharpest among directory assistance operators; smaller decreases will occur for central office and switchboard operators. Voice recognition technology allows automated phone systems to recognize human speech. Callers speak directly to the system, which interprets the speech and then connects the call. Because voice recognition systems do not require callers to input data on a telephone keypad, they are easier to use than touch tone systems, and are accessible to rotary phone customers. The systems are also increasingly sophisticated in terms of the vocabulary and grammatical structures they can understand. However, many companies will continue to employ operators so those callers having problems can access a "live" employee if desired.
Electronic communications, such as the Internet and e-mail, provide alternatives to telephone communications and require no operators. Internet directory assistance services are expected to reduce the need for directory assistance operators. Local phone companies currently have the most reliable phone directory data; however, Internet services provide information such as addresses and maps, in addition to phone numbers. As telephones and computers converge, the convenience of Internet directory assistance is expected to attract many customers, eliminating the need for telephone operators to provide this service.
Consolidations among telephone companies also will reduce the need for operators. As communications technologies improve and long distance prices fall, telephone companies will consolidate their operator functions. Operators will be employed at fewer locations and will serve larger customer populations.
Median hourly earnings of switchboard operators in 1998 were $8.76. The middle 50 percent earned between $7.20 and $10.63. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $6.21 and the highest 10 percent earned more than $12.86. Median hourly earnings in the industries employing the largest numbers of switchboard operators in 1997 are shown below:
Median hourly earnings of central office operators in 1998 were $12.61. The middle 50 percent earned between $8.73 and $15.97. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $7.12 and the highest 10 percent earned more than $18.33.
Median hourly earnings of directory assistance operators in 1998 were $14.68. The middle 50 percent earned between $9.94 and $16.32. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $7.61 and the highest 10 percent earned more than $18.42.
Many central office and directory assistance operators working at telephone companies are members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), or the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). According to the CWA, telephone operators started at an average of $235 a week in 1998, and after 4 years on the job averaged $654 a week. According to the IBEW, hourly wages for most telephone operators ranged from a minimum of about $10.50 to a maximum of about $17.30 in 1999. For these operators, union contracts govern wage rates, wage increases, and the time required to advance from one pay step to the next (it normally takes 4 years to rise from the lowest paying, nonsupervisory operator position to the highest). Contracts also call for extra pay for work beyond the normal 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 hours a day or 5 days a week, for Sunday and holiday work, and for a pay differential for night work and split shifts. Many contracts provide for a 1-week vacation with 6 months of service; 2 weeks for 1 to 6 years; 3 weeks for 7 to 14 years; 4 weeks for 15 to 24 years; and 5 weeks for 25 years and over. Holidays range from 9 to 11 days a year.
Other workers who provide information to the general public include dispatchers; hotel, motel, and resort desk clerks; information clerks; receptionists; reservation and transportation ticket agents; and travel clerks.
Disclaimer: Links to non-BLS Internet sites are provided for your convenience and do not constitute an endorsement.
For more details about employment opportunities, contact your telephone company or write to:
For more information on the telephone industry, contact:
An industry employing communications equipment operators that appears in the 2000-01 Career Guide to Industries: Telecommunications
Last Updated: March 30, 2000
|2000-2001 Handbook Contents...||UMSL Govt. Docs...||UMSL Libraries...||UMSL Home...| | <urn:uuid:c76bf127-4e77-40c7-8582-83460bb618a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.umsl.edu/services/govdocs/ooh20002001/293.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94263 | 2,381 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Pacific Southwest, Region 9: Superfund
Serving Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, the Pacific Islands, and Tribal Nations
Intel Corp. (Mountain View Plant)
EPA #: CAD061620217
County: Santa Clara
City: Mountain View
Congressional District: 14
Other Names: Part of the Middlefield-Ellis-Whisman (MEW) Study Area
Aug 2010: EPA announces its selection of the vapor intrusion remedy for the MEW Superfund Study Area in EPA’s Record of Decision Amendment for the Vapor Intrusion Pathway (Click Here). EPA thanks the community for comments received on the Proposed Plan & for participating in the decision making process.
On this page
Description and History
NPL Listing History
NPL Status: Final
Proposed Date: 10/15/84
Final Date: 06/10/86
The former Intel Corp. facility is located at 365. E. Middlefield Road in Mountain View, California. The facility formerly manufactured semiconductors at this 2-acre property from 1968 until 1981. The Intel site is one of three Superfund or National Priorities List (NPL) sites that are being cleaned up simultaneously. The other two Superfund sites are the Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. (Mountain View Plant) site and Raytheon site. The sites are located in the Middlefield-Ellis-Whisman (MEW) Study Area. Site investigations at several of these facilities during 1981 and 1982 revealed significant soil and groundwater contamination by toxic chemicals, primarily volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Contaminants and Risks
- Soil and Sludges
The primary contaminants of concern are trichloroethene (TCE) and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in groundwater. The soil has been cleaned up to meet the soil cleanup standards.
Who is Involved
This site is being addressed through EPA and potentially responsible parties' actions.
Investigation and Cleanup Activities
The contamination addressed in the MEW Record of Decision is both facility-specific and regional. Each individual MEW Company is responsible for investigation, cleanup, and source control for soil and groundwater contamination at their individual facility-specific properties south of U.S. Highway 101. Contaminated groundwater that has bypassed the source control areas and has mixed together with other contaminated groundwater from other source areas is considered part of the regional groundwater contamination plume, or the “regional plume.”
- The MEW Regional Groundwater Remediation Program systems south and north of U.S. Highway 101 are designed to contain and clean up contaminated groundwater where the contaminated plume has mixed together with other contaminated groundwater and where the source of contamination has not been identified. The Navy and NASA Ames both operate groundwater extraction and treatment systems to contain and clean up contaminated groundwater at their areas of responsibility on Moffett Field, in addition to the regional system operating North of 101 on Moffett Field.
It is important to note that groundwater currently is not used for drinking water or other potable uses. Groundwater in the area is, however, a potential future source of drinking water and therefore groundwater cleanup standards have been established.
In June 1989, EPA issued a Record of Decision selecting the soil and groundwater cleanup remedy for the MEW Site. The soil remedy includes: excavation, with treatment by aeration; and soil vapor extraction with treatment by vapor-phase granular activated carbon. The groundwater remedy includes: slurry walls (barriers beneath the surface) to contain contaminants; and extraction and treatment systems to contain and clean up groundwater contamination using granular activated carbon and/or air-stripping systems.
Because the groundwater contamination at the MEW Site migrates northward and has mixed with contamination from sources at the NAS Moffett Field Superfund site, the groundwater remedy selected in the MEW Record of Decision also applies to the commingled regional groundwater contamination area on former NAS Moffett Field (the West-Side Aquifers), but not the entire former NAS Moffett Field facility.
Intel Facility-Specific Work - 365 E. Middlefield Road
Groundwater extraction at the former Intel Mountain View facility began in 1982 from one extraction located on Lot 3 (365 East Middlefield Road). The well was completed across both the upper A Aquifer and the B1 Aquifer.
Between 1982 and 1984, approximately 27.5 million gallons of groundwater were pumped resulting in an approximately 1,600 pounds of VOCs removed. The extraction well was destroyed in 1984 when Intel conducted a source area removal action.
In 1985, four new groundwater extraction wells were installed. Three of these wells were completed in the A Aquifer and one well was completed in the B1 Aquifer. EPA approved the shut down of extraction well PW-1A in 1996 after an investigation determined that taking the well off-line did not effect the overall capture zone at the facility. Intel manages the operation of the extraction wells and treatment system and shares responsibility with Raytheon for the source control extraction well for Lots 3, 4, and 5, including Well I-1B2.
The Intel groundwater treatment facility consists of two 2,000-pound canisters of GAC operated in series. Between June and August 1998, the treatment system was relocated from along the east side of the existing site building to a location near the southwest corner of the property in preparation for tenant improvements. Although changes were made to influent and effluent piping, no changes were made to the two liquid-phase GAC vessels.
In 1998, a diffused aeration tank or air stripper was installed within the treatment pad enclosure to aerate the extracted groundwater prior to carbon absorption, thus decreasing the potential for exceedances of the NPDES effluent requirements. In April 2003, the use of the diffused aeration tank was discontinued and groundwater treated with GAC was plumbed to discharge to the City of Mountain View sewer. The system has the permitted option of discharging to a storm drain located along the eastern property boundary. The storm drain leads to Stevens Creek.
Over 74 million gallons of groundwater have been treated and 2,000 pounds of VOCs removed since system start-up in 1982.
EPA First Five-Year Review
EPA's 2004 Five-Year Review for the MEW Study Area determined that for the groundwater remedy to remain protective in the long-term, the following actions need to be taken: long-term protectiveness should continue to be verified by monitoring the extent of groundwater contamination along the estimated groundwater contamination plume boundaries. This evaluation should be accomplished through routine annual groundwater sampling events. Current data indicate that the remedy is functioning as required to meet the remedial action objectives; however, EPA recommends optimization of both the regional and facility-specific systems to enhance plume capture, evaluation of applicable technologies to potentially expedite contaminant mass removal and cleanup time, and evaluation of the potential need for institutional controls.
Intel has begun implementing an in-situ bioremediation pilot test at its former facility at 365 East Middlefield Road in Mountain View to try to reduce VOC concentrations in the “hot spot” areas in a shorter period of time. During the pilot test, the groundwater extraction and treatment system is not operating. See Intel's annual progress report for more information.
EPA Evaluates Vapor Intrusion Pathway
The existing soil and groundwater remedy at the MEW Site does not address risks from long-term exposure through the vapor intrusion pathway. Since the issuance of EPA’s 1989 Record of Decision, new information has been developed regarding the toxicity of TCE and potential vapor intrusion into buildings overlying shallow groundwater contamination. In 2003, as part of EPA’s Five-Year Review of the MEW Study Area, EPA began evaluating whether VOCs in shallow groundwater are potentially migrating upward through the soils and cracks in the floors or through plumbing conduits and other preferential pathways, and impacting indoor air.
Based on indoor air sampling of both commercial and residential buildings in the area conducted in 2003 to 2007, EPA has confirmed the presence of the subsurface vapor intrusion pathway into a number of structures overlying the shallow groundwater TCE plume. None of the samples taken to date indicate any immediate or short-term health threat to building occupants from this pathway. EPA’s main concern is whether the chemicals from the Site measured in indoor air pose an unacceptable risk of chronic health effects due to long-term exposure (25 years or more). It is EPA’s policy not to set cleanup levels or take action to reduce levels that are less than ambient background levels.
Some of the sampled buildings indicated indoor air contaminant concentrations that were elevated above background levels and above EPA Region 9’s TCE interim action level in indoor air for long-term exposure. In each of these buildings, the MEW Companies and NASA have taken voluntary interim measures (e.g., sealing cracks/conduits, upgrading/modifying ventilation systems, installing air purifying systems) to reduce the indoor air contaminant concentrations. In addition, many new buildings in the MEW Study Area have taken measures to help prevent or mitigate the vapor intrusion pathway. Although EPA has not yet determined what the long-term mitigation and monitoring strategy should be for all buildings overlying shallow groundwater contamination, the results of these interim measures have generally reduced the indoor air levels thus far and are protective of residents and workers.
EPA continues to evaluate this pathway and potential mitigation measures for impacted buildings overlying the shallow TCE plume. EPA is currently conducting and planning the following actions:
- Continue evaluation of buildings overlying the shallow TCE plume to identify potential pathways into buildings, and implement mitigation measures to reduce elevated levels of TCE in indoor air, as appropriate;
- Develop remedial action objectives to address the vapor intrusion pathway;
- Assess various alternatives and propose a remedy to address the vapor intrusion pathway.
- Amend the MEW Record of Decision to select a remedy that addresses potential long-term exposure of TCE and other VOCs at unacceptable levels through the vapor intrusion pathway.
In 1985, the EPA issued an Administrative Order On Consent to Intel, Fairchild Semiconductor, and Raytheon, requiring the three companies to conduct a joint site investigation. In 1991, EPA, Intel and Raytheon signed a Consent Decree, an agreement under which Intel and Raytheon agreed to design and construct the groundwater extraction and treatment systems for the regional groundwater contamination.
Cleanup Results to Date
Under EPA’s direction and oversight, Intel has implemented the soil and groundwater cleanup program at the former Intel facility. The soil cleanup has been completed at the Intel site and all the former MEW facilities.
- Since 1982, Intel has been pumping and treating groundwater by carbon adsorption. By 1986, Intel had removed approximately 4,600 cubic yards of contaminated soil. Other immediate actions performed by the company included removing tanks and sealing contaminated wells to prevent contaminant migration.
Groundwater cleanup will continue to operate for many decades in order to meet the TCE groundwater cleanup standard of 5 parts per billion. The groundwater remedy has reduced contaminant concentrations throughout the multiple aquifer zones. The groundwater is not being used as a potable water supply, and there are no direct exposure pathways to the contaminated groundwater while groundwater cleanup continues.
Potentially Responsible Parties
Potentially responsible parties (PRPs) refers to companies that are potentially responsible for generating, transporting, or disposing of the hazardous waste found at the site.
Under EPA's direction and regulatory oversight, Intel Corporation is responsible for investigating and cleaning up the soil and groundwater at the Intel-Mountain View Superfund Site. In addition, the following individual companies are responsible for investigating and cleaning up the groundwater at the MEW Site. These companies are collectively referred to as the MEW Companies:
- Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation
- Intel Corporation
- Raytheon Company
- Schlumberger Technology Corp. (Schlumberger)
- NEC Electronics America, Inc. (NEC)
- SMI Holding LLC (SMI)
- Vishay General Semiconductor (Vishay)
- SUMCO Phoenix Corporation (SUMCO)
- National Semiconductor Corporation
- Tracor X-Ray
- Union Carbide
National Semiconductor Corporation, Tracor X-Ray, and Union Carbide are not involved with the active investigation and cleanup of the MEW Site.
Documents and Reports
Public Meetings: A community advisory group, the MEW Community Advisory Board, meets to learn about and discuss MEW Superfund Study Area investigation and cleanup issues.
EPA has awarded a Technical Assistance Grant (TAG) to the Pacific Studies Center. The TAG provides money for activities that help the community understand technical information at the MEW Site. Please contact Lenny Siegel, TAG Administrator, at 650-961-8918 or LSiegel@cpeo.org for more information.
Public Information Repositories
The public information repositories for the site are at the following locations:
Mountain View Public Library,
585 Franklin Street,
Mountain View, CA 94041
Monday-Thursday 10 am to 9 pm
Friday and Saturday 10 am to 6 pm
Sunday 1 pm to 5 pm
EPA Site Manager
Mail Code SFD
75 Hawthorne Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
EPA Community Involvement Coordinator
Mail Code SFD
75 Hawthorne Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
EPA Public Information Center
a Project of the Pacific Studies Center,
278A Hope Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
After Hours (Emergency Response) | <urn:uuid:211f11c3-d6c5-4c88-97c5-3481fa75ae42> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/vwsoalphabetic/Intel+Corp.+(Mountain+View+Plant)!OpenDocument&Start=1&Count=200&Collapse=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929563 | 2,813 | 1.875 | 2 |
White House 'wants Feds to draw up cyber-defences' for power plants
Crack council to oversee water and electricity supplies
The White House is reportedly getting all federal agencies together to develop voluntary cybersecurity guidelines for power, water and other critical infrastructure companies.
The Feds will get 90 days to propose the regulations and put together a new cybersecurity council at the Department of Homeland Security with agents from the Defence, Justice and Commerce Departments and the Director of National Intelligence, a former cybersecurity official let on to Reuters.
The draft executive order from the Obama-led administration apparently includes bits out of The US Cybersecurity Act 2012, which was defeated in the Senate over the summer after opposition from industry and Republicans. Despite the bill's defeat, some government officials are still worried about the security of critical infrastructures.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman urged President Barack Obama yesterday to use the "full extent of his executive powers" to help cybersecurity.
"I urge you to explore any means at your disposal that would encourage regulators to make mandatory the standards developed by the Department of Homeland Security pursuant to your Executive Order so we can guarantee that our most critical infrastructure will be defended against attacks from our adversaries," the senator wrote .
"In addition, I urge you to consider using your authority to strengthen information sharing mechanisms to the extent possible under current law. The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 contained important provisions that would have allowed companies and the Government to share cybersecurity threat information while protecting and preserving the rights and liberties we hold dear."
A spokeswoman for the administration's National Security Council confirmed that a draft order was being considered but didn't give any details. ® | <urn:uuid:2ba49895-c597-4023-9fe0-b556dab50c15> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/25/executive_order_cybersecurity/print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957442 | 338 | 1.609375 | 2 |
This poem has been based on a true story that is currently in the media. One of the children of the woman involved, was found starved to death, the other children where not far off. yet this was not about lack of money or food, this woman fed herself continuously, and was found to be well nourished , as was her boyfriend.
The reason I have written this poem, is that so many women call themselves "Mothers", but to call yourself a mother it takes so much more than giving birth to a child.
A “Mother’s” role in their children’s life,
Is to give them protection, from trouble and strife,
To keep them safe and out of harm’s way,
They’ll give them their last breath , any day.
The woman in question is a “mother of six,
Did she do the above, and worship her kids?
Without any doubt, the answer is known,
No protection for her children, was ever shown.
She caused so much suffering, her children she hurt,
Calling herself a “Mother”, this title she weren’t,
Her intentions to starve all six of her young,
Resulted in the death of this poor little one.
They must have been crying in excruciating pain,
Undernourished bodies, skin and bone only remained,
How could she have listened to her children’s cries,
As they vanished through starvation in front of her eyes?
No Motherly instincts, does this woman posses,
If she did, she would never have caused them distress,
How could this woman have fed her own face?,
But not her poor children, it’s an absolute disgrace.
Nobody with a heart will comprehend what she’s done,
The horrors of her deeds, can never be undone,
She can only be described, as rotten to the core,
Cold hearted and callous, lets hope she’ll pay with the law.
The word “Mother” is a title to be earned,
Something that many people really need to learn,
Just because a woman brings a child into this world,
Doesn’t necessarily mean, she’s got the right to use this word. | <urn:uuid:b42c7068-0721-496b-afcd-e45c670a95ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://poetry-by-stacey.blogspot.com/2008/05/mothers-role-in-their-childrens-life-is.html?showComment=1211786340000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979422 | 482 | 1.921875 | 2 |
From nine events in six countries in 1977 to over 398 tournaments in 120 countries in 2012; that is how far the ITF Junior Circuit has progressed in its history.
The Junior World Ranking circuit was started by the ITF in 1977, linking nine of the major events for juniors. John McEnroe won all three tournaments he played, but finished third on the overall standings behind fellow American Van Winitsky. Czech Hana Strachanova headed the girls' year-end standings.
The following year the ITF started the Junior World Rankings and the Czech pairing of Ivan Lendl and Hana Mandlikova became the first Junior World Champions. Both players went on to achieve huge success in the senior game. Lendl, who held the world No. 1 ranking for 270 weeks, won eight Grand Slam titles, while Mandlikova went on to win the Australian, US and French Open crowns.
The next future Grand Slam champion to top the Junior World Rankings was Australian Pat Cash in 1981. Runner-up to Matt Anger in the 1981 Junior Wimbledon final, he went on to capture the senior event in 1987 with a memorable victory over Ivan Lendl.
Sweden's Stefan Edberg created history in 1983 when he became the first and only player to date to complete a Junior Grand Slam. He went on to become world No. 1 in 1990, and enjoyed six senior Grand Slam successes. Only the French Open remained beyond his reach as a professional.
Gabriela Sabatini of Argentina became the youngest girls' champion at 14 in 1984, with five tournament wins including the French Open and Orange Bowl. She went on to defeat Steffi Graf in the 1990 US Open final for her one senior Grand Slam success.
Chile's Marcelo Rios showed signs of a bright future when he topped the end-of-year rankings in 1991, and seven years later he became senior world No 1.
Martina Hingis emerged as the youngest player to capture a junior Grand Slam title when she won the French Open at the age of 12 in 1993. The following year she regained her Paris title, won at Wimbledon and took over as the youngest World Junior Champion. The Swiss player won a total of five senior Grand Slam titles before she was forced to retire at the age of 22.
Heading the end-of-year rankings in recent years have been 14-year-old Anna Kournikova in 1995, Australian Open and Wimbledon champion Amelie Mauresmo in 1996, and Wimbledon semi-finalist Jelena Dokic in 1998. Roger Federer became the boys' singles World Champion in 1998 claiming the Wimbledon singles and doubles and the Orange Bowl titles en route to the crown and finishing runner-up to David Nalbandian at the US Open.
It took Andy Roddick just three years to make the step from year-end junior No.1 in 2000 to year-end No.1 in the professional game in 2003. The US Open title helped Roddick to the top in both the junior and professional game; in juniors the American also won the Australian Open and the Banana Bowl.
More recently, 2005 World Champions Donald Young and Victoria Azarenka have started to make their mark on the professional circuit, with Azarenka having reached the world No. 1 ranking after winning her maiden Grand Slam title at the Australian Open.
The Top 10 Club was introduced onto the Junior Circuit in 2006 and has some of the most recognised names in tennis amongst it's members who receive exclusive benefits as recognition of their acheivements. Members include the likes of Bernard Tomic and Caroline Wozniacki.
The latest group of players looking to make the transition from the junior to pro circuit include Laura Robson, Ashleigh Barty, Jiri Vesely and Luke Saville all of whom have impressed in winning junior Grand Slams and look set to be stars of the future. | <urn:uuid:159aae84-03eb-493e-8db4-f45512ba6aa3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.itftennis.com/juniors/organisation/circuit-history.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969341 | 811 | 1.960938 | 2 |
Selected parts of the COAG Bushfire report are available for download in PDF format:
For further information contact Rob Whelan
Some Images of the recent fires in and around Wollongong. (Opens in new window) Fire Gallery...
Research on the impact of Bitou Bush on Native Communities
Research on weeds in the French lab has focused on coastal systems with over a decade of work having been completed. Our focus has been on bitou bush, Chrysanthemoides monilifera spp. rotundata.
Recently we have been investigating a range of other weeds along the coastal zone as we notice an increase in the prevalence of species such as lantana and asparagus fern.
Here we highlight some of the results of our work and show some of our current research on how bitou bush affects native coastal communities. We have also investigated the impacts of different management strategies on native communities.
Introduction to coastal systems
Impacts on ecosystems
Impacts on animals
Impacts on vegetation
Plant species most affected by bitou bush
Competition of seedlings
Climate change and weeds
For more information or comment contact Kris French firstname.lastname@example.org
This Weed Ecology Website in PDF 450k (N.B. When the final content is added to the website, the PDF will be similarly updated)
In 2006 and 2008 ICB held Photographic Competitions for its staff and students.
Selected photographs from these competitions were exhibited at the Wollongong City Gallery from the 15st August to the 3 November 2009. The title of the Exhibition was "Fire, Water, Earth and Air - the elements of conservation"
Vice-Chancellor's Excellence in Research Awards for 2012
Expedition to Antarctica
PhD research student Jess Bramley-Alves’ recently travelled to the Antarctic region in her quest to develop a greater understanding of climate change and what the world can expect to happen in years to come. Read more
Antarctic mosses reveal past climate, react to present changes
Sharon Robinson studies mosses in Antarctica. They reveal information about past climate and are showing marked changes to current conditions. Changes in ozone and carbon dioxide are driving winds further south, resulting in increased evaporation and a reduction in the growing period. Interview with Robyn Williams. The Science Show. Radio National. | <urn:uuid:9a03aaa8-77c2-4158-a991-da3aab2604bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uow.edu.au/science/biol/icb/features/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915984 | 488 | 2.671875 | 3 |
You Can’t Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom
Nick Cohen (London: Fourth Estate, 2012)
If I complacently accept the idea that freedom is something that happens in some places and is prevented in others, I am implying that freedom is a matter of accident, or privilege, occurring—if I happen to have it—at the place where I live. This attitude to freedom really undermines it, for it is to support the views of those who hold freedom to be a luxury enjoyed by bourgeois individualists. Therefore if I consider myself not just in my role of lucky or unlucky person but as an instrument of consciousness, the writer or scholar deprived of freedom is also an instrument of consciousness, and through the prohibition imposed on him my freedom is also prohibited.
— Stephen Spender, writing in the first issue of the Index on Censorship, March 1972
It all goes back to the Rushdie Affair. In 1988, when an Indian-born Briton wrote a novel that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad in a less-than-reverent light, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, a religious edict, encouraging any Muslim, anywhere, to kill him. It’s irrelevant what parts of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses Muslims might have found offensive. The author could have depicted Muhammad as a whore-mongering, bacon-eating pederast and it ought not to have affected—by one iota—his right not to be killed. What’s relevant is that a clerical fascist in Tehran issued a death sentence for an author living halfway around the world because of something he wrote.
One would have thought that prominent personalities, especially Rushdie’s fellow writers, would have risen to his defense. The truth is that many, if not most, people in positions of political and artistic authority betrayed what is perhaps the most fundamental precept of the liberal society: freedom of speech. As Rushdie’s books were burned around the world and his Japanese translator was assassinated, spy novelist John le Carré pronounced that there was “no law in life or nature that says great religions may be insulted with impunity.” (Actually, there is such a law, at least in America, and it’s called the First Amendment to the US Constitution.) Then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in a remark that should put more than a chink in her Iron Lady armor, blurted that “we have known in our own religion people doing things which are deeply offensive to some of us. We feel it very much. And that is what is happening to Islam.” Rather than direct their anger at the promulgator of the death warrant and those who tried to carry it out, much of the British establishment turned its ire on the man who, just by doing his job, had earned a bounty on his head. The whole event exposed, in the words of Nick Cohen, a “fear that suffused Western culture and paralyzed its best instincts.” To this day, the best barometer of an individual’s commitment to individual rights and classical liberal values is where they stood, or stand, on l’affaire Rushdie.
In You Can’t Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom, Cohen, a columnist for London’s Observer, begins with the Rushdie Affair because its echoes of cowardice and moral asininity have only grown louder with time. Late last year, for instance, when the offices of a French satirical publication were bombed after it put an image of Mohammad on the cover, Time Paris correspondent, Bruce Crumley, claimed that it was not the attempted murderers who were at fault, but the magazine staff, a “victim,” he declared, only of “its own obnoxious Islamophobia.”
Cohen’s book is a full-spirited, wide-ranging defense of free expression, and an unsparing attack on those, like Bruce Crumley, who would try to shut people up and justify violence against those who don’t.
Cohen sees the enemies of free thought and free speech as coming from three separate, though at times collaborative, realms: god, money, and state. Skeptical readers may not think that Britain’s notoriously plaintiff-friendly libel laws or the lack of adequate protections for corporate whistleblowers belong in the same category as religious fanatics suborning the murder of writers and artists, and Cohen does not attempt to equate fatwas with “super injunctions” that prevent reporters from even mentioning the legal enactment of prior restraint. But he makes a convincing case that they are all part of a similar, sinister trend. “All the enemies of liberalism are essentially the same,” Cohen writes, in that they attempt to “restrict the scope for action.” This is the heart of censorship.
In the context of Great Britain, Cohen traces the onerous restrictions all the way back to the thirteenth century, when King Edward I created the crime of scandalum magnatum, which criminalized the publishing or uttering of anything remotely negative about the monarch. By the mid-seventeenth century came the advent of the Star Chamber, a secret court in which those who spoke too freely were judged with no jury or right of appeal. While such archaic notions of justice have been left behind, at least formally, “an element of the feudal concern to defend the mighty remains in English libel law and the laws of many former British colonies.” Thus, Cohen informs us, it costs citizens of the United Kingdom an average one hundred and forty times more in legal fees and penalties than it does other Europeans to defend themselves from libel charges.
Cohen shakes us out of a complacency that sees humanity inching ever more slowly toward a broader understanding of what a true commitment to individual liberty entails. The arc of history is not so straight or predictable. The largely peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union and the Western victory over Communism convinced many liberals that major, transformative political change could forever be effected nonviolently. “History’s lesson was that dictatorships would collapse of their own accord without the usual wars and revolutionary terrors,” Cohen writes. A consequence of this newfound optimism has been technological utopianism, or the belief that the Internet will set us free. While Cohen is happy to concede the power of the Web in democratizing political discussion in the West, where anyone with a computer can start a blog, he scoffs at those who think that Twitter and Facebook campaigns will bring about meaningful liberal transformation in repressive societies. Social networking and other online tools can certainly play a constructive role, but the hard stuff of politics remains.
Writing for the Sunday sister paper of the left-leaning Guardian, Cohen has been a lonely voice arguing for a liberalism that is morally serious and intellectually consistent, and which does not fall into the trap of seeing the crimes of the West as the only ones worth caring about and fighting against. He is the sort of left-of-center writer who makes frequent reference to John Stuart Mill, and has no time for Noam Chomsky. There are few journalists in the English-speaking world who can delineate the boundary between liberalism and leftism as well as Cohen. Partisans of the latter tendency, Cohen writes, have an “inability to oppose racism and support individual liberty simultaneously,” as its followers are more interested in “group rights” than “the rights of individuals not to be persecuted by their own ‘community.’” His is a liberalism rooted in a solidarity that transcends skin color, class, language, ethnicity, and religious background (or lack thereof). This is a trait missing from many on the contemporary left, which, as Cohen convincingly demonstrated in his 2007 manifesto What’s Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way, all too often demonstrates a tendency to sidle up to, or excuse, the most reactionary individuals and movements as long as they fly a banner of
As for European liberals, Cohen argues that they don’t understand how good they have it. “I can think of no better antidote to Western ennui than the writings of poor-world liberals,” he says. This refreshing statement will ring true to anyone who has met, or read the works of, a liberal from a non-Western country. Cohen makes this observation in reference to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the impossibly brave, Somali-born activist raised in a violently misogynist household who escaped to Holland in search of freedom. She rose to become a member of the Dutch Parliament, and used her status to advocate for the rights of women abused in Muslim households. Her agitation brought on a series of death threats from Islamists and the murder of her artistic collaborator Theo van Gogh. In a depressing twist on the maxim that “no good deed goes unpunished,” she was eventually forced to leave Holland after a colleague opportunistically claimed that she had lied on her asylum forms. For her refusal to moderate her message, Hirsi Ali endured withering attacks by a series of Western, so-called “liberal” writers, who accused her of demagoguery and racism.
The sad reality, Cohen reminds us, is that people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali are few and far between. And why would we assume otherwise, when she must live under round-the-clock police protection and men like Salman Taseer, a Pakistani politician, are gunned down merely for questioning the legitimacy of blasphemy laws? In forcing Rushdie to live underground for so many years, by murdering Taseer, or in bombing a newspaper office over a cartoon, the enemies of free thought make their point, and the lesson has been learned. “No young artist of Rushdie’s range and gifts would dare write a modern version of The Satanic Verses today, and if he or she did, no editor would dare publish it,” Cohen writes. And so the fanatics win. We in the West may believe we live in total freedom, but as long as such self-censorship persists, can we really say that we do?
A few quibbles with an otherwise excellent book: in the case of Bradley Manning, the American soldier who leaked hundreds of thousands of confidential State Department cables to WikiLeaks, Cohen writes that “a vindictive Pentagon [that] held him in solitary confinement.” If anything, the US government has been lenient in its treatment of this accused traitor whose actions put the lives of many innocent people in danger and, at least under American law, could warrant the death penalty. (Elsewhere, however, Cohen gives a proper skewering to the megalomaniac recipient and publisher of the memos, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, deriding the self-professed “apostle of openness” as a charlatan and a creep.)
And while Cohen is spot-on in his observation that many on the left “assume that democratic abuses are the major or only abuses of power worth protesting about,” he is wrong to equate such self-absorption with what he describes as “the tendency of democratic elites to succumb to dictator-envy.” Cohen assails “a craving by the U.S. government to have the same ability Islamist militias and Saddam Hussein possessed to torture suspects and hold them outside the Geneva Convention,” what he calls “the shortest and best description for the moral and political disaster of extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo Bay.” But reasonable people should be able to differ about America’s antiterrorist detainment and interrogation policies, the questions surrounding their implementation are hardly as clear-cut as Cohen would have us believe.
“I devoutly believe that words ought to be weapons,” the late Christopher Hitchens, a former member of this journal’s editorial board and the dedicatee of Cohen’s book, once said. “That is why I got into this business in the first place. I don’t seek the title of ‘inoffensive,’ which I think is one of the nastiest things that could be said about an individual writer.” No truer words have been uttered about the role of the political polemicist. It is an affirmation to which Cohen, a worthy heir to the Hitchens legacy, adds his own: “Stop offending, and the world stands still.”
James Kirchick is a fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a contributing editor for World Affairs and the New Republic. | <urn:uuid:7d04bfd1-6214-471d-9d54-45ca43979d8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/read-me-if-you-can-censorship-today | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963475 | 2,606 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Published in Cancer Weekly, December 26th, 2006
The report said that China is developing a new and massive middle class, whose spending power will redefine the Chinese market. "These working consumers, once the country's poorest, will steadily climb the income ladder, with the result that hundreds of millions of households will enter the country's middle class. While some companies are already focusing on this evolution, many others have yet to broaden their...
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NewsRx also is available at LexisNexis, Gale, ProQuest, Factiva, Dialog, Thomson Reuters, NewsEdge, and Dow Jones. | <urn:uuid:65062c3c-d875-428a-bf59-e123a2e25884> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newsrx.com/newsletters/Cancer-Weekly/2006-12-26/111226200639CW.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926955 | 155 | 1.578125 | 2 |
EDITORIAL | Island County recycling issue isn’t over yet
December 28, 2012 · Updated 2:54 PM
Well, they went ahead and did it. Lame duck Angie Homola and fellow Democratic Island County Commissioner Helen Price Johnson adopted a curbside recycling program, appropriately ending environmentalist Homola’s one term with an environmental victory.
Aside from the issue of a lame duck making a major decision that will affect county residents for years to come, the recycling program offers some benefits and concerns.
No doubt the recycle rate on Whidbey Island will increase, something that has been a goal of many Island County citizens for years. Recycling was always a do-it-yourself task, by hauling materials either to the county’s recycle park at Bayview or the privately owned Island Recycling in Freeland. Having a truck stop by the house will be much simpler and create more recyclers.
However, there’s a certainty that Island Disposal, owned by Waste Connections, will lose some customers facing an expected price increase of roughly $11 per month to cover the cost of picking up recyclables from every garbage customer. That’s not chicken feed to a lot of struggling families and seniors, who may find it’s cheaper to cancel garbage service, self-haul garbage and continue to do their own recycling. Some people, no doubt, will find rural roads a fine place to dispose of their garbage at no cost to themselves.
If too many people cancel their garbage pickup, the program could be put at risk. Families already paying for two cans a week won’t see a huge price increase with the added $11, but for one-can families the price difference is substantial. Logically, the burden will fall heaviest on retirees or those with no children churning out garbage.
The fact glass is omitted from the recycling program is another concern. People may resent paying another $11 a month while still having to self-haul glass to the recycling centers. To teetotalers this won’t be a big deal, but wine swillers and beer guzzlers may rebel. The policy does, however, assure that Island Recycling, a beloved South Whidbey institution, won’t lose as much business as it might have.
Ultimately, we may discover that this is another issue that isn’t over until it’s over. If too many Island Disposal customers cancel their service, the commissioners, now with a Republican majority, may face a choice between canceling the recycling program or make paying for garbage and recycling services mandatory for all residents. In other words, it’s a bit early for recycling fans to declare victory. | <urn:uuid:96d9a158-2d1b-4873-9b10-be6e13139ec2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.southwhidbeyrecord.com/opinion/185100151.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949859 | 566 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Russian bombers have stepped up provocative flight exercises off the Alaskan coast, reminiscent of Cold War incursions designed to rattle U.S. air defenses.
U.S. Northern Command, which protects North American airspace, told The Washington Times that TU-95 Bear bombers on 18 occasions the past year have skirted a 12-mile air defense identification zone that protects Alaska. The incursions prompted F-15s and F-22 Raptor fighters to scramble from Elmendorf Air Force Base and intercept the warplanes. The last incident happened in May.
The venerable propeller-driven TU-95 came to symbolize the Cold War, as did its counterpart, the U.S. B-52 Stratofortress.
“They have flown close enough to deem it necessary to ID and monitor them,” said Maj. Allen Herritage, a base spokesman. “They come. We ID. We go back to our base. They go back to their base.” Elmendorf is headquarters for the Alaskan region of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
Air defense identification zones are military boundaries designed to guard the U.S. and Canada against attack. To enter the zones legally, pilots must file flight plans with air controllers. Russian bombers do not file flight plans, so U.S. and Canadian jets are required to scramble to identify the planes and warn them away from the area.
“They have not been filing a flight plan and that is the problem,” Maj. Herritage said.
Moscow’s sophisticated show of force has some in the Pentagon paying more attention to the long-term goals of a Russian military, which is being rebuilt with proceeds from the country’s huge oil and gas revenues. NORAD is more sensitive than ever to wayward aircraft, given the Sept. 11 attacks by hijackers and the lack of military coordination at the time to track, and perhaps destroy, the planes.
Adm. Michael G. Mullen, the Joint Chiefs chairman, talked on Monday of “the challenges we have with a resurgent Russia” while addressing Pentagon workers at a town-hall-style meeting.
Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., chief of NorthCom, said earlier this month that “I think the Russians are not a near-term military threat,” while noting they had “renewed” military flights over the polar region. This is the route U.S. or Russian bombers would travel to bomb the other’s country.
“I think we do have to make sure, you know, post-9/11 world, that we never let an unidentified aircraft come into our airspace, and that we determine who they are and what they’re doing, and if it is a Russian aircraft on a training mission, we allow them to continue to do their job,” Gen. Renuart said on WUSA-TV’s “This Week in Defense News.”
Although Gen. Renuart downplayed the incursions, other air-power authorities said Vladimir Putin, as Russian president, began flexing his military’s muscle last year as a message to Washington.
“Putin is trying to get the military rejuvenated and trying to show they are a military power,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney, who commanded NORAD’s Alaska region. “He’s doing it for a whole host of things. It’s really muscle-flexing.”
When told that 18 Russian incursions had been reported in 12 months, Mr. McInerney said, “That’s a lot.”
Mr. Putin, who relinquished the presidency in May and is now prime minister, has been at odds with President Bush over NATO expansion and the invasion of Iraq. At times, he has made strong anti-U.S. statements that stirred Cold War memories.
A NorthCom statement to The Times said, “Russia has indicated in open press reporting its intention to proceed with navigation and operational training.”View Entire Story
By Elaine Donnelly
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Covering the world of soccer, including the World Cup, Major League Soccer, D.C. United and the English Premier League and other interesting sporting events.
Contributions to the Communities Sports desk from readers.
Straight talk on climate science, energy economics, and public policy.
Uncensored exploration of issues concerning current events, civil liberties, American political advocacy, and the political and social issues facing military veterans.
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NRA kicks off annual convention | <urn:uuid:883d6d1f-1734-43b7-8b79-55fa1e0e98ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jun/26/russian-flights-smack-of-cold-war/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943628 | 1,011 | 1.757813 | 2 |
The Doctor of Pharmacy degree program is designed with 8 semester credits of elective courses. Elective courses have been approved by the Curriculum Committee of the College of Pharmacy. The purpose of elective courses is to allow pharmacy students to broaden their pharmacy knowledge in areas that are not covered at all or in less depth in required pharmacy courses.
Descriptions of pharmacy elective courses are available on the College of Pharmacy website. Elective courses that require graduate tuition above the annualized tuition and fees are identified at this web site.
Pharmacy students can access these electives in the fall and spring semesters of the third professional year and the spring semester of the fourth professional year. The number of elective courses precludes students being able to take all of them or even to take specific ones due to logistical factors such as faculty time, one time offering, and enrollment caps that permit the quality of course design and instruction intended for an elective course.
The faculty must make elective courses available to pharmacy students at all four campus sites. A limiting factor on this mandate is the demand by pharmacy students for specific courses. If the demand is not sufficient as defined by the course coordinator, the elective course may not be offered on that campus. Generally, there must be a critical mass of pharmacy students to take certain electives. If the demand is insufficient, the course coordinator can decide not to offer the elective course.
In addition to the above limitation, the resources to offer an elective course can also be dependent on the availability of faculty facilitators at the campus site, which is correlated with the demand for an elective. If an elective has adequate demand, funds will be expended to hire a faculty member to facilitate and/or teach the course. If the demand for this course wanes due to many drops, then the course may have to be offered regardless of the enrollment or be discontinued. This outcome is not desired because it results in a waste of time, energy, and financial resources by administration and faculty.
In the past, many pharmacy students would register for more elective courses than they planned to take in order to select an elective once they knew more about the class schedule, work schedules, and/or plans to commute to a distance education campus from Gainesville as a 4PD student. This process can promote a waste of resources if a planned elective must be cancelled due to many students dropping the course. In addition, the changing of electives “at the last minute” takes a significant amount of administrative time by administration and coordinators of student affairs.
To better control access to and management of elective courses the following procedures and policies will be followed:
- Specific deadlines for selecting pharmacy courses as electives will be posted on the College of Pharmacy web site. Students will be notified by email about these dates.
- Students will select preferences for electives in rank of 1, 2, 3, and 4 using a form on the College of Pharmacy web site.
- Enrollment for courses will be filled using the number one ranking. If more students select a course than positions available, a random draw will be initiated. Overflow requests for a particular course will be designated for the number two ranked course. If this causes an overflow of requests, the number 2 ranked requests will be randomized. Those not selected will be assigned to the number 3 ranked elective. This process will be repeated if necessary.
- Students will not have the ability to add an elective course through ISIS. If a student drops an elective course through ISIS, he or she will not be added into another elective course. Thus, a non-approved drop of a course through ISIS can possibly result in a delay of the expected graduation date because the student will be out of sequence with regard to completion of elective course requirements for the PharmD degree.
- Once course enrollment caps have been established, changes in the caps will not be permitted to allow students to add a course.
If an elective is not chosen using the prescribed preference system, students will be placed in electives which may or may not be covered under block tuition | <urn:uuid:8e487f85-027b-45aa-8715-d9d59d392a55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pharmacy.ufl.edu/education/student-affairs/academics/elective-policy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940933 | 846 | 1.96875 | 2 |
As you know, I am just a simple unfrozen caveman lawyer. When I hear talk of "turf toe" and other medical ailments, I never really know what the prognosis is. What is the likelihood that Corey Stokes can play through this injury? How can it be repaired?
VUhoops reached out to Dr. Nicholas Marini, B.S., D.C., to have him explain it all. Together with his father, Dr. Stephen C. Marini, M.S., D.C., Ph.D. (both Villanova Alums), he has provided chiropractic care to a number of athletes as well as Joe Schmoes like you and me. As he explains it:
"Turf toe" is a condition where the big toe is "bent back," in what is called a hyperextension or dorsiflexion injury. This causes strain in the bottom (plantar) portion of the joint capsule of the first metatarsalphalangeal joint (see diagram). It can be caused suddenly by falling or stubbing the toe, or it could be caused by repeated hyperextension from shoes that are too flexible.
Generally, when this is an acute injury, the conservative treatment is to rest, ice, compress, and elevate (RICE for short). Further treatment depends upon the severity of the injury. Turf toe injuries are classified into either Grade 1, 2, or 3; Grade 3 being the more severe. Generally, Grade 1 and 2 injuries can be managed easily with taping the toe to prevent any aggravating movements. Evaluation for more stable shoes and orthotics is called for as well. It is in these grades where chiropractic adjustments to the foot yield the most benefits. Examinations of the entire spine and lower extremity, including the pelvis/hip, knee, and foot/ankle, are prudent to evaluate the nervous system, biomechanics, balance, functional short legs, gait, etc. This is especially helpful in athletes, as integrity of the spine, nervous system, and lower extremities are essential for optimum athletic performance and prevention of further injury. Grade 3 injuries are more severe and may require long term immobilization and possible surgery.
Regarding recovery time, that depends upon the severity of the injury and the patients adherence to recovery measures. For Grades 1 and 2, normal recovery time ranges from 2-3 days to 1-2 weeks. Grade 3 injuries may need anywhere between 2-6 weeks for recovery if there is no surgical intervention.
If not properly treated or left untreated, the damage caused by Turf toe could lead to other conditions, such as joint degeneration, tearing of surround ligaments/tendons, and joint deformities.
So there you have it. 6 weeks of rest and recovery would essentially end Stokes' season, but a lower-grade injury could perhaps see him back in action much sooner.
Dr. Marini practices in King of Prussia, PA. If you'd like more information on his practice, please visit http://www.marinichiroanded.com. | <urn:uuid:5580f721-629a-46d8-a56f-48eb3808fe44> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vuhoops.com/2011/02/12/corey-stokes-turf-toe-medical-speak/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957909 | 641 | 2.125 | 2 |
- Students are to arrive at their lessons in good time, in order to start the lessons promptly at the designated times.
- Should a student arrive late, for whatever reason, he/she must first approach the teacher, who will then decide on an appropriate time for the student to join the class.
- No students are allowed in the studio during a different Grade's class times, as this distracts from the lesson in progress.
- Parents are not allowed in the studio during class times. One day per term will be set aside for parents to view classes.
- Students will not be allowed to participate in class if they are not dressed in the prescribed uniform.
- No food or drinks (other than water) are allowed in the studio.
Dancers are polite ladies and gentlemen. They should not lean against the barre or wall; and sitting down, unless directed to do so, is not acceptable. Dancers are in class to work, watch and listen, especially when combinations are being demonstrated. Attention is important. Dancers should never chew gum in class, and rudeness to teachers and peers is unacceptable. Yawning, talking, whispering or having private giggle sessions with friends is considered rude behaviour.
It is good to drink water before and after class. Drinking water between barre exercises or centre exercises is generally not allowed. It is inappropriate to drink water while a teacher is giving corrections or setting a combination. If the teacher allows, students may drink water from a water bottle between barre and moving into the centre. | <urn:uuid:e9f7c8b8-56ef-4653-9d53-2303059a43a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.btoa.co.nz/rules/rules.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952018 | 314 | 2.15625 | 2 |
In my last post I gave a brief introduction to teddy bear making, and this is the first post in my “how to make a teddy bear” sequence. I hope I’ve explained the process properly, but if anything should be unclear, feel free to ask!
As promised, here’s the pattern for the bear I’m making this week. Use this pattern as you will – if you want to make a couple and sell them, that’s fine by me, but please do not incorporate this pattern in any large scale production of teddy bears for sale without at least asking me beforehand. I appreciate it if you would state that this is my pattern if you make any bears for sale.
About the pattern pieces:
All pattern pieces include 6 mm (0.24 “) seam allowance.
The pattern consists of two head pieces, one ear piece, two leg pieces, two body pieces and three arm pieces. A teddy bear made from this pattern is going to consist of three head pieces, four ear pieces, six leg pieces, four body pieces and six arm pieces. In other words, you’ll need to cut out the pieces from a suitable fabric as follows:
Head: Side: Cut two, one of them reversed.
Middle: Cut one.
Ear: Cut four.
Leg: Cut four, two of them reversed.
Back paw: Cut two
Arm: Outer: Cut two, one of them reversed
Inner: Cut two, one of them reversed
Front paw: Cut two, one of them reversed.
Body: Front: Cut two, one of them reversed
Back: Cut two, one of them reversed
Basically you can use any fabric when making a teddy bear, provided it’s sturdy enough but isn’t too thick to work with based on the size of the teddy bear and the pieces used to construct this. When I started I used cotton velvet (grandma’s curtains), and later I started using synthetic knitted furry fabrics. Then I moved on to mohair and alpaca. As a rule, I recommend woven fabrics, as these hold their shape much better than knitted or stretchy fabrics. Don’t buy the expensive mohair and alpaca fabrics to make your first bear if you’re an inexperienced sewer – it’s better to make mistakes using inexpensive fabrics. If you want to start with mohair, I would recommend searching for an old coat at the thrift store and use this to make your first teddy bear.
Joints (30 mm/1,2 “) – These could be bolt or pin based joints, plastic safety joints, or you could skip the joints and join the arms and legs to the body using extra strong thread.
8-12 mm eyes (glass eyes on metal loops are my preferred variant, but plastic safety eyes are a valid alternative. Beads or embroidered eyes also give a nice result.
Fabric of your choice for the main parts of the bear (about 40×50 cm).
Fabric of your choice for the front and back paws (abaut 15×15 cm).
Sewing thread, preferably a strong one.
Extra strong thread (e.g. upholstery thread) for fastening eyes and closing seams after stuffing the bear.
Filling material – wool, wood chippings, synthetic wadding etc. I’ve heard about teddy bear makers who make it their mission to create teddies only from upcycled materials – mohair coats are used as fur, and old sweaters are cut up and used as wadding. It’s a great way to repurpose scraps of fabric.
Thread for embroidering the nose – I recommend pearl yarn.
Small scissors for trimming the bear’s nose hair.
Needles for hand sewing.
Doll needles (extra long needles used in doll making)
Pins or similar for figuring out the eye placement
Tools for fastening the joints in the teddy bear – these depend on which type of joint you are using.
Step one: Cutting the pattern pieces from fabric:
Lay out the pattern pieces on single layer fabric and pin them or hold them in place while tracing the outline of each piece with a pen or tailor’s chalk on the fabric before cutting. Remember to match the pieces to the straight grain. If you like, you could cut out your pieces on the bias, but I wouldn’t recommend it, as the fabric stretches differently and could give your bear a somewhat funny shape.
If your fabric isn’t a furry one, just cut out the pieces as you would do normally. If you’re working with the furry kind, a tip of advice is to avoid cutting the hairs off the fabric. This is done by inserting the tip of your scissors between the hairs as you start cutting, following the fabric surface below the hairs closely as you cut out the pieces.
If you are working with a fabric with thick fur, like alpaca, it could be worthwhile to trim the fur in the seam allowance around every pattern piece – that way you get nice and tight seams on your finished bear. Take caution not to trim the fur other than in the seam allowances.
Step two: Hand basting pieces together before sewing them:
When I started sewing teddy bears, I never basted the seams before sewing them. But as I started doing more and more of the sewing by hand, I found that hand basting the seams before sewing them on a sewing machine had a great impact on the finished product. Today I sew most of the seams on a sewing machine, after hand basting the pieces together. Some seams, however, I always sew by hand. I don’t bother basting the seams I sew by hand, but if you want to, just go ahead.
If your fabric has fur, try to point this inside the seam, towards the middle of the piece (e.g. the body) you are basting – I’ve found this a time saver afterwards, when you need to comb the fur out of the seams on the finished bear.
Start basting the following seams:
Ear: Along the curved line (use either ear A or ear B)
Leg: 14-15 and 16-17 (leave 14-16 open)
Body: Front (along the tummy line): 6-7
Back: 7-9 and 6-8 (leave 8-9 open)
After the above mentioned seams are sewn, rip out the basting thread and baste the following seams:
Head: 3-4 along both sides of the head. Leave the snout open (this we’ll sew by hand afterwards).
Arm: 12-13 (leave the gap between 12 and 13 at the back of the arm open).
Body: 6-7 along both sides of the body.
Step three: Sewing the bear:
I sew most seams by means of my sewing machine, with 2-3 mm long straight stitches. Unless you are working with a fabric which frays very easily, it’s not a necessity to secure the raw edges of the fabric – only minimal stress will occur to them once they are secured inside the bear. If you’re worried of the seam allowances in the openings in the backs of the body, arms and legs, you could threat these with “Fray Check”, a fabric glue made for this purpose.
I sew all hand sewn seams with back stitches, as this creates a neat and strong seam. The stitch length is 2-4 mm. Make sure the thread is pulled taut after every stitch.
After finishing the seams sewn on the sewing machine (or you could of course sew all these by hand as well – it really doesn’t take that long, and the result is nice!), sew the following seams by hand:
Head: 3-1 via 2.
Leg (back paw): 15-17.
Next step will be explained in my next post. Happy teddy bear making! | <urn:uuid:cfcd4a12-1429-4b1a-ba1e-febc6f046262> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mylittlesewingspace.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/how-to-make-a-teddy-bear-part-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931134 | 1,699 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Download our BUMPWATCH Fertility Tracker for your most fertile days & tips. FREE
When you buy a car you usually road-test a few vehicles and when you buy a house you probably go to a few auctions. Just like most other major decisions in life, pregnancy is something that benefits from some careful planning.
To provide the best care for both yourself and your baby, being well-informed and prepared can make the experience much more enjoyable.
Your best chance at conception and safe gestation is by having a healthy body:
- Have a checkup at your doctor, including breast check and pap smear.
- Pregnancy can cause some dental concerns so it is wise to have a full check-up at the dentist before conceiving.
- Learn to understand your body's signs of ovulation and, if needed, monitor yourself to maximise your chances of conceiving at the right time.
- If you smoke, give up. Women over-35 who smoke can take twice as long to conceive. As well as causing harm to you, smoking also puts your developing baby at risk.
- Alcohol and caffeine intake should also be cut or reduced before, and especially during, pregnancy. Remember, caffeine is not just in tea and coffee. It can be found in chocolate, cola products, energy drinks and many over the counter medications.
- Prescribed medication should also be reviewed by your doctor.
Check your private health insurance policy. You may not be covered for maternity-related care and there could be a waiting period for eligibility.
Save money each month in a high interest bearing account. Be realistic about what you can afford to save and try to stick to it. At the end of your pregnancy, use the money to help with those extra ongoing expenses, such as nappies, baby wipes and baby clothes.
Having a well-balanced and nutritious diet is great for you and your baby. Remember: a high-fibre, low-fat diet, with plenty of fresh frit and vegetables, is the best basis for great health.
Getting into the habit of regular, non-contact exercise is a good thing to do pre-pregnancy. Try to avoid high-level workouts that leave you over-heated and exhausted. Aim to be as close to your recommended ideal weight as possible before conceiving.
In the very early stages of pregnancy, your developing baby can be affected by infections and food-borne illness such as rubella, syphilis, toxoplasmosis and listeria. Safe, hygienic food preparation is essential. Your doctor can advise you regarding checking your rubella immunity levels. If your levels are low and you do need to be immunised, you will need to wait at least 28 days before conceiving.
Folic acid reduces the risk of having a baby with a neural tube defect such as spina bifida. Those at high-risk include anyone who has been previously affected, as well as anyone with a family history, diabetes or on anti-epileptic medication.
Folic acid supplements are advisable for all women. Those at risk should take 5mg daily at least one month before pregnancy and ideally for three months. All other women should have 0.5mg tablets daily three months before conception, continuing for three months after.
Genetic or developmental disorders need to be considered if there is a past obstetric history, a family history or advanced maternal age (generally considered over 35).
Genetic disorders include thalassaemia, cystic fibrosis, haemophilia and Tay-Sachs disorder. If you have concerns or questions about getting yourself and your partner tested, speak to your doctor for further advice. Read more on genetic testing.
It is also a good idea to know the blood groups of both yourself and your partner. If your blood group is negative but your partner's is positive, conception will need careful attention.
- Stop smoking
- Stop alcohol and other social drugs
- Reduce or stop caffeine intake
- Review current medications
- Follow a healthy diet
- Take folic acid for three months before conception
- Develop a good exercise routine
- Ensure rubella immunity
- Have a breast check and Pap Smear
- Eat freshly cooked and prepared food
- Consider genetic and family history
- Consider health insurance cover
- Visit the dentist
Find more related articles and links
- Learn more about preparing to conceive
- Prepare a pre-pregnancy diet
- Read all articles on getting pregnant
- Learn what to eat during pregnancy
- Find the best ways to exercise in pregnancy
This article was written by Claire Halliday for Kidspot, Australia's parenting resource for during your pregnancy. Sources include Royal Women's Hospital, Melbourne, Commonwealth Government Department of Health and Ageing (The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating) and the Health Department of Western Australia. | <urn:uuid:f60a6e38-ac8e-4e8f-b2e0-c71a3d8c48cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kidspot.com.au/Pregnancy-Conception-Pre-pregnancy-checklist+1119+121+article.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946754 | 998 | 2.359375 | 2 |
If you follow a gluten-free diet, you probably spend a lot of time thinking about what you put in your body. But should you also consider what goes on your body? Some experts have raised concerns about gluten in cosmetics, prompting calls for better labeling.
Are You Sacrificing Health for Beauty?
Cosmetics used on your hands and face are sometimes produced with oils, extracts, and flours derived from wheat, barley, and rye. This means there’s a chance they contain gluten.
At a recent meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology, researchers from George Washington University discussed the case of a woman with celiac disease who developed a rash and gastrointestinal difficulty after using a lotion labeled “natural.” Her symptoms disappeared when she stopped using the product.
This led the group to study the ease of finding information about the gluten content of cosmetics. The results? Only two of the top 10 U.S. cosmetics manufacturers offer detailed information about the ingredients in their products, and none offered specifically gluten-free options. This means consumers may inadvertently expose themselves to gluten as part of their beauty regimen, researchers point out.
The Harms of Cosmetics Aren’t Clear
However, no studies have shown that the gluten in cosmetics is harmful to people with celiac disease or other gluten sensitivities. That’s true even for those who tend to develop skin rashes when exposed to gluten in foods. Unless you have sores on your skin, it’s unlikely that much gluten from lotion or makeup would enter your system.
It’s also not clear that significant amounts of gluten remain in the finished product, according to a study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. For this investigation, researchers tested lip products and lotions that contained at least one ingredient derived from wheat, barley, rye, or oats. None contained measurable levels of gluten, they report.
Guidelines for Playing It Safe
Still, more research is needed to assess whether cosmetics and lotions contribute to gluten-based reactions. If you’d prefer to keep your makeup bag gluten-free in the meantime, follow these tips:
Search for products specifically labeled gluten-free. An increasing number are appearing on drugstore shelves.
Read labels. Avoid the ingredients wheat, barley, malt, rye, oats, triticum vulgare, hordeum vulgare, secale cereale, and avena sativa.
If there aren’t ingredients on the jar or bottle, look for them on outer packaging. Or they may appear on a separate sheet next to the store display. If in doubt, contact the manufacturer.
Wash your hands after applying lotion or beauty products, especially if you’re eating soon afterward. This can reduce ingestion of any gluten they may contain.
Cosmetics are sometimes produced with oils, extracts, and flours derived from wheat, barley, and rye.
No studies have shown that the gluten in cosmetics is harmful to people with celiac disease or other gluten sensitivities. Still, more research is needed to assess whether cosmetics contribute to gluten-based reactions.
You can now find cosmetics labeled gluten-free. Also, wash your hands after applying lotion or beauty products, which can reduce ingestion of any gluten they may contain. | <urn:uuid:cd6adc80-6bff-4c99-992c-c300d2bfdb00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://inhealth.cnn.com/your-guide-to-going-gluten-free/gluten-in-cosmetics-what-you-need-to-know?did=t1_rss1 | 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 | 0.927335 | 684 | 2 | 2 |
The kayak, known as the Eskimo's boat, was originally made from whale bone and seal skins. It sits low in the water, is small, portable, and highly maneuverable. Until the advent of the modern sea kayak, canoes were used in placid lakes and rivers, while kayaks were reserved for whitewater. To make an educated selection you will want to examine the following:
How will you use it?
Have you kayaked before? Where do you plan to use it? Ocean? Lake? Whitewater?
What activities will you be using it for? Camping? River running? Diving? Fishing? How much gear do you need to carry?
Your first decision will be one of style, which will depend on conditions, intended use and personal preference.
The five basic designs
There are five general types of kayaks. The main differences are length, and whether you sit on top of or inside of the boat. Each type has advantages and general use, although there is some cross-over depending on your needs.
River kayaks are designed so that you sit in the boat, legs inside, and seal out water with a spray skirt. This design allows you to roll and stay in the boat. It can be used in any type of water, but is most often seen on rivers and whitewater. (Shop Recreational Kayaks) | (Shop Whitewater Kayaks)
Sea kayaks are modern versions of the traditional Eskimo kayak and are used for touring, and travel-trekking over long distances. They often have gear storage compartments, rudders to steer with and, like the river kayak, you sit in them and use a spray skirt. They are very long in length which allows them to travel fast and track well. (Shop Touring Kayaks)
Sit-on-top kayaks are a recent design that is a cross between a surfboard and a kayak. These boats are often called ocean kayaks, though this is actually the name of the manufacturer that popularized them. One or two models are made for whitewater, but they are best in slower water or the ocean, and are used to dive, fish, observe nature, play in the surf, and all around family fun. (Shop Sit-on-Top Kayaks)
Inflatable kayaks: The ultimate in convenience is an inflatable kayak. Developed for ease of transportation on airlines, in vehicles, or on foot, they breakdown to fit in a bag that is the size of a large backpack. These kayaks are quick to assemble, and store easily, even in a small apartment.
(Shop Inflatable Kayaks)
Pedal Kayaks are the newest kind of kayak and are particularly nice for river fishing since you can pedal forwards or back to hold your position in moving water while keeping your hands free to cast. The hulls range from pure kayak to hybrid kayak /canoe's like the Ultimate. The prop drive is quiet, efficient, and low maintenance. On the downside, you sacrifice a bit of room though because the peddle mechanism takes up space. These boats are for flat waters only and should never be used in whitewater.
( Shop Pedal Kayaks )
Design and feature
Width, length, and hull shape will determine the kayak's stability and maneuverability. Other features, such as inside storage and accessories, provide convenience and use flexibility.
Width, or beam, is one of the most important considerations. The wider the hull; the more stable, and harder to paddle, the kayak will be. A narrower hull is faster and more maneuverable in fast water, so is recommended for whitewater.
Length affects speed and maneuverability as well. Longer boats travel faster, and track straighter. Shorter boats turn better, but don't track well.
Hull design, or the cross section of the boat, greatly influences its stability.
- Initial Stability is a measure of how far you can lean out before the boat starts to tip. This is influenced by the bottom shape; flat, round or V-shaped.
- Secondary Stability is a measure of how far you can tip the boat before it becomes unrecoverable and flips. This is influenced by the shape of the sides. A long, gentle upwards curve provides the greatest secondary stability.
A flat bottom has great initial stability, and so is steady and secure on calm water, which is great for the sports enthusiast as well as the general recreational. Kayaks with a shallow, slightly arched bottom offer the best all-around performance, with less initial stability, but good secondary stability. This works well in waves and whitewater. A round bottom kayak is designed for specialized use. Fast and efficient, it has great secondary stability, but very little initial stability.
Keels, the ridge on the bottom of the boat from bow to stern, provide better tracking in short kayaks, and help the boat resist crosswinds (by decreasing sideslipping). A keel is not good in whitewater, or situations where quick maneuvers are essential. Straight keels have no rocker (the curve of the keel line from bow to stern), which allows for exceptional tracking ability, but lacks maneuverability. The more extreme the keel's rocker; the more maneuverable it will be, but with decreased tracking ability.
This determines weight, durability, and price level. Folding and inflatable kayaks have very different materials than those that are rigid.
- Polyethylene is a nearly indestructible plastic (Think Tupperware) that is molded to the boat design or, in folding kayaks, to the design of the crosspieces. It is fairly lightweight, tough and can be mass produced easily. It is often combined with recycled plastics. Crosslink polyethylene is a structural sandwich of closed cell foam (for buoyancy) surrounded by layers of crosslinked and high-density polyethylene (for strength and abrasion resistance). Though heavy, it is economical, and can take great abuse and be popped back to its original shape. Even when filled with water it will remain afloat.
- Trylon is a type pf Thermoformed plastic used that in recent years has become ubiquitous in the automobile industry. It has a bit more flexibility then fiberglass (maybe too much flex for some people) and is stiffer then Polyethylene. Trylon's greatest strength is that it is lightweight, making it ideal for small fast boats that are easy to carry and load/unload solo. The material is also easier to repair then polyethylene and cheaper to produce, resulting in a lower average price. It's weakness is that - just like the Thermoformed plastic on your car - sudden impacts can break and deform it. So if you're looking for a whitewater boat Trylon isn't for you; but if you're more interested in Class I & II water it might just be perfect. Hurricane Kayaks is the only brand we currently carry that uses this material and they specialize in fast lightweight recreational boats.
- Royalex (Uniroyal) is an exceptionally tough, multi-laminate composed of layers of ABS, ABS foam, and cross-linked vinyl. Moderate in price, a kayak made from this material can be popped back into shape with a minimum of hull distortion.
- Fiberglass (15 - 25% heavier than Kevlar) easily reproduces subtle and sophisticated shapes, and can be formed into the sharpest of all entry lines. It is moderately expensive, and, though fairly easy to repair, is easily damaged, so is not a good material for technical whitewater use.
- Kevlar is very strong, lightweight, and expensive but, because of the lighter weight, makes a boat that is responsive and easy to paddle. It is difficult to repair and susceptible to UV degradation.
- Aircraft aluminum alloy is used for folding kayak frames, is lightweight, strong, and will not rust. It should be anodized to prevent corrosion, and is usually shock-corded for easy assembly.
- Hypalon (Dupont) is a synthetic rubber coating formulated for maximum protection against the sun's ultraviolet rays, and for superior abrasion resistance. It makes the base fabric totally air retentive, and is used in the hull of folding kayaks.
- Cordura nylon (1000 denier) is very abrasion resistant and, when coated, waterproof. It is used for the deck or body skin of folding kayaks.
Other features to consider include:
End loops (or grabloops) are used for easy transport and/or water rescue;
Knee braces give you something to push against for better control, and/or to assist with rolling in whitewater. Sit-on-top kayaks generally have knee straps instead of braces, and Ocean Kayak's Knee Tree helps you to roll an open, sit-on-top kayak;
Rudders, on sea kayaks, are operated with foot pedals, via a cable system. Retractable rudders allow you to learn to steer with your paddle;
Storage ports with watertight hatches, available in most sea kayaks, and some sit-on-top kayaks, to keep gear and equipment dry.
Molded exterior shelves are convenient for photography, fishing, or diving, and can sometimes be an additional seat.
Rules of the water
- Always, always wear a life jacket.
- Prepare for weather changes. Cold is cold, but being wet and cold can cause you to lose valuable body heat 35 times faster than when you are dry.
- Sun can also be a problem. Reflected glare from the water can hurt your eyes and cause you to burn faster. Good sunglasses, sunscreen, and a hat can help to keep you comfortable.
- Don't discard waste, food, or trash in the water. Shorelines and areas near the water are often fragile; take care when using them.
- If you fall overboard into rapid water, position yourself sitting in the water with your feet in front of you (to protect your body from rocks) and face downstream (so you can see where you are going). Attempt to position yourself upstream of and behind your boat, holding on to the upstream grab loop.
- Drinking and boating don't mix, ever. | <urn:uuid:25c6e57d-a3f9-43e9-a865-24d37574c8f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sonomaoutfitters.com/advice/kayak-buying-advice.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949278 | 2,139 | 2.421875 | 2 |
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Summer is almost here, and with it likely some blistering hot days. A recent study suggests the elderly should beware when the temperature spikes, because they face an increased risk of winding up in the emergency room short of breath on those days. And...
Take a deep breath, Broward County. The air quality in your backyard gets strong marks by American Lung Association standards. Palm Beach County did not do as well, but officials said their performance was still "pretty good." In its 2013 State of the...
The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a controversial rail yard serving the harbor, setting the stage for possible court challenges alleging violations of environmental and civil rights laws. The proposal to build a center for trains...
I remember life before the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. I grew up in Altadena and Pasadena during the late 1930s and '40s. All too often I awoke to thick smog and air quality warnings. I watched as segments of the San Gabriel Valley...
A fast-moving brush fire powered by Santa Ana winds raged out of control Wednesday in Riverside County, forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes and creating a thick pall of smoke that stretched for miles and affected air quality in the region....
A federal court judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power against a state agency it claimed was illegally forcing the city to waste billions of gallons of precious High Sierra water to control dust on dry...
The Hartford CourantConnecticut residents can now get forecasts of the state's air quality. The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection announced Wednesday the start of the 2013 ozone forecasting season. Each day, DEEP officials will monitor air...
When Tesla Motors reports its first-ever profit Wednesday, much of the money will come courtesy of the state of California. In its zeal to push electric cars into the market, the state has created a system in which Tesla can make as much as $35,000...
Tags: Fiat, Tesla Motors, Inc., Honda, Chrysler, Tesla
May 23, 2013 |Story| Reuters
May 17, 2013 |Story| Daily Pilot
May 17, 2013 |Story| Hartford Courant
May 14, 2013 |Story| Los Angeles Times
May 10, 2013 |Story| Baltimore Sun
May 10, 2013 |Story| South Florida Sun-Sentinel
May 8, 2013 |Story| Los Angeles Times
May 9, 2013 |Story| Los Angeles Times
May 1, 2013 |Story| Los Angeles Times
May 2, 2013 |Story| Los Angeles Times
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May 5, 2013 |Story| Los Angeles Times
Original site for Air Pollution topic gallery. | <urn:uuid:72752782-bcdb-422a-b875-230ef34d47ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.radiomichiana.com/topic/environmental-issues/environmental-pollution/air-pollution/06005001.topic | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926131 | 819 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Ethics Professor at Rome's Holy Cross University Discusses Humanity's Loss
ROME, 27 JUNE 2011 (ZENIT)
Abortion is a warning of something pervasive and deeply rooted in our society — the loss of human identity, so that men and women no longer see themselves as called to participate in God's creative power.
This is the observation made by Father Robert Gahl, an associate professor of ethics at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.
Father Gahl spoke with the television program "Where God Weeps" of the Catholic Radio and Television Network (CRTN) in cooperation with Aid to the Church in Need, about the history of abortion and what it means for the future.
Q: Abortion is a universal suffering: More than 53 million abortions are carried out every year worldwide. In some countries, more than 70% of women have had an abortion. Why are these questions suddenly so prevalent today: abortion, euthanasia?
Father Gahl: Well, it is a sad paradox, which is evocative ultimately of Original Sin. With Original Sin, Adam and Eve really tried to supplant God by being gods in his place. When humans today try to take divine power — the power over the origin of life — and supplant him so that they can control the beginning of life in a way that is contrary to God's design and therefore contrary to the design of love, they feel powerful for a moment. They may even see themselves as successful in the product they have achieved. Yet shortly thereafter, they experience frustration and even a denial of their own identity because their identity is one of love, because we are made for love.
Our hearts are made for love. So, rather than people who are in love, instead of our family bonds, we become simply makers — people who are in control of products. It becomes a denial of our own dignity because if our power to give life is simply that of producing elements that entail that "I've been produced" and "I'm simply the end line of a mechanized production system," this will be a denial of my own dignity as a child of God — as the son of my parents.
Q: If we were to look back in history, what was the moment, the trigger if you will, that allowed us to take a step where, for example, abortion and stem cell research has become accepted and euthanasia is on the horizon?
Father Gahl: Abortion is sadly all over the place to the extent that many today, and documents of the U.N. even, see it as a reproductive right. The origin of this is the sexual revolution, which was not a revolution of liberation but a revolution of narcissism, of demise, of cutting bonds, affection, friendship, and of love with others. And central to the sexual revolution, which acted as a kind of a catalyst — like pouring gasoline onto a wild fire — was the development of chemical contraceptives, which allowed people to have sex without having babies so people could enjoy sexuality as simply a selfish pursuit. They were able to disconnect that intrinsic ordering toward the gift of life, and in doing so, they disconnected sexuality from serious commitments of love, from forming a family, and of course from becoming a father and a mother — a diminishing of human dignity really.
I think the problem of abortion is like a warning light. It is a very severe warning light in which lives are being taken, but it's indicative of something even more pervasive and deeply rooted in our society which is deeper that one might think.
Q: And what is that?
Father Gahl: That is this loss of the identity of one's self as participating in God's creative power and being called to being Mother and Father.
Q: Abortion has often been justified as the right to choose but it has also been justified as an appeal to love. For example, I would prefer to abort my child than to raise it unloved. How is it that we have come to this inverse situation where death is justified by love?
Father Gahl: True human love is unconditional. It is when you love someone no matter what. No matter what happens to them you will take care of them. If they get sick, even if they are in a car accident and paralyzed, you take care of them the rest of their lives. Another kind of love — maybe a selfish kind of love — is where you give yourself to someone only for as long as you like it. Abortion becomes this instrumentalized kind of love — as a means for a way out. We need to turn the whole issue around and say that we need to accept everyone, all human life, the way Mother Teresa said, there are no unwanted children. If there is a child that someone said is unwanted, bring that child to me and I will take care of that child because I love that child.
And this is the truth of the matter. So if one were to make a claim that abortion allows us to act out some kind of altruistic care for other people by avoiding hardship, that logic leads tragically, I'd say murderously, to claiming that handicapped people shouldn't exist. Once you do that, it's the denial of all human dignity.
Q: We have moved from life as inherently important to an emphasis on a quality of life. The shift to a quality of life then begs the question: What is my quality of life? Am I enjoying my quality of life? This then points to the handicapped: Are they enjoying the quality of life they should be enjoying, which in fact places their very life in question?
Father Gahl: Exactly. Part of the abhorrent logic that is inherent in what you just described also leads to judgments of each of us according to our performance; my worth is based on what I can do in society. If, at some point, my results would disappoint due to sickness, mistake, or being in a sector of the industrial economy that is no longer desired by the consumer, I would feel no longer desired and therefore I am no longer important. This structure of judgment also comes up with mothers who give birth to babies who, for instance, have Down's syndrome. These mothers are judged severely and negatively; this is horrible, as though it was a bad choice to bring into this world their baby, which is a beautiful human being. This is eugenics, which has been substantiated in Western societies where nearly 90% of Down syndrome babies are aborted before they are born because of this perverse logic.
Q: God's greatest gift to humanity has been this gift to co-create life with him. What is abortion doing in the breaking down of this relationship between man and God?
Father Gahl: Sometimes we forget because of "scientism" — which reduces everything to scientific fact — that a beginning of new human life doesn't just come from man or woman, it also comes from God. It requires three people to be involved because the human soul is immaterial. It is a spiritual soul that is created directly and immediately by God. So when a man and women come together to have a child it's also — and as much or even more — God's child. Therefore, if we can recover this respect for life it will be on account of our being aware anew of God's role in the giving of life and therefore this power that we have within us, which is actually a divine power and is transcended. It is a creative power whereby we almost have God in the palm of our hands because we can, in a sense, tell him when to create a new human soul. So if we renew that respect for God's intervention it will also help us to respect one another as images of God, even as another Christ.
Q: In countries like Russia, more than 70% of women have had an abortion. Abortion rates in some of the Russian provinces can be as high as eight or 10 per woman because it is used as a means of birth control. In China the one-child policy has obliged women to abort. What spiritual and psychological impact does this have on a society?
Father Gahl: In Eastern Europe where we see these high rates of abortion, which is often associated with high rates of suicide, alcoholism and severe depression, there is a sense of nihilism, of total loss as to what life is all about. That occurs in a society that is not built upon love for their children. That needs to be renewed. Thank God that some of these countries have, in fact indicated a tendency in a positive direction. In the Russian Federation, in particular, there has been a recent increase in their birth rate. The abortion rate is still very high but let's hope that this increase in the birth rate will continue in such a way that the abortion rate will be reduced.
Q: What more can and should the Church do with these issues?
Father Gahl: First of all, when we think of "The Church" we tend to think of the hierarchy — we priests, bishops, the Pope — but really, the Church is the whole of baptized Christians. The Church is a family, so we need everyone — all baptized Christians — to accept life with love. We also need to help in crisis pregnancy centers. Of course the magisterial Church, the hierarchical Church also needs to be coherent with the principles of Catholic moral theology in this matter.
The Church needs to continue in following the example of Karol Wojtyła, who as the archbishop of Krakow, opened centers to help women in situations of crises. But what it really comes down to is this: God is love. I'm a child of God. I'm made in the image of God, so I too need to make present among other human beings the face of God, which is the face of love. If we do that in all of our human interaction, if we really show respect for human dignity, if we show respect and love for people who are suffering then we can begin to recover these principles that are needed so that all of human life will be accepted. Life will then never be seen just as a product, like designer babies to be made in a test tube according to the desires of some manufacturer.
If I can just step back, I'd like to also add that our own sexuality needs to be recovered as well as our awareness that sexuality is sacred and therefore our patterns of modesty and respect regarding our sexuality and sexual desires need to be lived with chastity and fortitude in a way that is preparing to give life within a structure of the family.
* * *
This interview was conducted by Mark Riedemann for "Where God Weeps," a weekly television and radio show produced by Catholic Radio and Television Network in conjunction with the international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need.
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On the Net:
Aid to the Church in Need: www.acn-intl.org
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OU’s Yachad New Jersey Teacher and Special Education Conferences Grow to 700 Participants
Yachad and the National Jewish Council for Disabilities (NJCD), in coordination with the National Association of Jewish Schools Serving Special Children, presented dual conferences -- the New Jersey Statewide Professional Development Conference for Elementary, Junior High School and Special Education levels; and the National Special Education Professional Development Conference at the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy in Livingston on Election Day.
“With more than 700 professionals in the field of education, and representation from 60 schools in nine states, these have grown into the largest national conferences in Jewish education,” declared Dr. Jeffrey Lichtman, National Director of Yachad/NJCD.
The conferences, with the shared theme of "Talmud Torah Al Pi Darko (Learning Torah According to His Own Way): Reaching all of Our Students," ran simultaneously and concentrated on general, Judaic studies, and special education; serving children with special needs; providing educational advocacy; leadership development; teacher recruitment and training; and developing programs of inclusion.
Dr. David Pelcovitz, who holds the Gwendolyn and Joseph Straus Chair in Jewish Education at the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education of Yeshiva University, gave the first keynote presentation on, “Understanding the Unique Needs of Children: Reaching Children Who Don’t Fit.”
The foremost authorities on effecting teaching, and the authors of the best-selling book in education, The First Days of School, Harry and Rosemary Wong, ED.DS, gave the second keynote presentation on “How to Be an Effective and Successful Educator.”
“Participants came from across the spectrum of Jewish observance, as our goal with National Association of Jewish Schools Serving Special Children is to enable educators to network and stay on top of the newest advances in Special Education, specifically in the field of Jewish studies,” declared Batya Jacob, Director of Educational Services of NJCD, and Associate Director of both the New Jersey and the National Associations.
Planning ahead, Mrs. Jacob announced that the date for next year’s conference is Tuesday, November 8.
Teachers became the students at the conference, held at the Kushner Academy.
Rabbi David Abramchik, of Mesifta Yam HaTorah in Bayswater, NY, addressed tools to assist in developing the proper attitude towards prayer; and the use of storytelling from biblical and secular sources to teach Torah values to young pupils.
Elaine Haven, of the Educators Training Network, addressed methods for memory retention with respects to mathematics, testing, and literature.
Mrs. Ettie Siegel, of the Bais Yaakov of Queens, gave practical advice and proven methodology for teaching Hebrew easily and effectively with no discipline problems. | <urn:uuid:1be748d0-796c-4c0f-94e9-08e6e42881f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ou.org/general_article/ous_yachad_new_jersey_teacher_and_special_education_conferences_grow_t | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927972 | 582 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Global meeting on tuberculosis opens today
30 January 2012 - Bangkok - The 21st meeting of the Coordinating Board of the Stop TB Partnership opens today.
The Stop TB Partnership, which is hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, was founded in 2001. Its mission is to serve every person who is vulnerable to tuberculosis (TB) and ensure that high-quality treatment is available to all who need it.
"It is a great pleasure and honour for Thailand to be the venue of the 21st StopTB Partnership Coordinating Board Meeting, which is an important forum to mobilize efforts and resources towards elimination of TB, said Dr. Surawit Khonsomboon, Deputy Minister for Public Health of Thailand. "The fight against TB cannot be achieved without universal access to quality care for all TB patients. This means that we need to strengthen our services, which include rapid diagnosis, quicker treatment and effective vaccine management, to be more patient-friendly services."
TB is curable but untreated it is often fatal. In 2010 8.8 million people became ill with TB and 1.4 million people died from the disease.
"We are extremely grateful to the government of Thailand for hosting this important gathering and for working in such close partnership with us," said Dr Lucica Ditiu, Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership. "We hope this event will help highlight both the impact of TB on the Thai people and the efforts the government is making to address the epidemic."
The Stop TB Partnership is recognized as a unique international body with the power to galvanize action in the fight against TB, working hand in hand with WHO and its partners all over the world. The Partnership's nearly 1000 partners include international and technical organizations, government programmes, research and funding agencies, foundations, NGOs, civil society, communities affected by TB and the private sector.
The Stop TB movement has spurred the creation of many national partnerships around the world. The Thailand Stop TB Partnership, founded in 2010, serves as a hub for local partners to collaborate and harmonize action with the National TB Programme.
Global progress on TB has been impressive. Since 1995, 46 million people have been successfully treated and up to 6.8 million lives saved through DOTS, a rigorous approach to treatment endorsed by WHO.
But many challenges remain. TB drugs have not changed for decades, and widespread drug resistance is making the disease more and more difficult to treat.
Basic diagnosis of TB has not changed for more than a century. New genetic tests for TB make it possible to rapidly identify people who need TB treatment, but there is no simple quick test of the sort already available for diseases like HIV and malaria. In addition there is no fully effective vaccine against TB.
In Thailand, as in many other countries around the world, HIV/AIDS is fuelling the TB epidemic, since people living with HIV are about 37 times more likely to develop TB than people free of HIV infection. Worldwide one in four TB deaths is HIV-related.
This week's meeting will set the tone for the work in 2012 of Stop TB partners worldwide as they move forward on achieving the goals of the Global Plan to Stop TB, the Partnership's roadmap for reducing by half deaths from TB, compared to 1990 levels, by 2015. | <urn:uuid:2de30068-0e2f-412f-8331-fdd3dbdd6de2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stoptb.org/news/stories/2012/ns12_007.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964061 | 664 | 2.03125 | 2 |
The internationally renowned Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square debuted part of its newly renovated space: a reconstructed shoe floor with accompanying cafe. The store is currently undergoing a four-year, $400 million makeover, to be completed in 2015.
Since opening in 1902, this is the first time the store is undergoing a reconstruction of this magnitude. The redesign will add 100,000 square feet to the 1.1 million square feet of retail space.
“Macy’s is embarking upon what may be the largest and most expensive renovation of a single store in the history of retail,” said Terry J. Lundgren, Macy’s, Inc. chief executive officer.
NYU professor Mosette Broderick said the architecture of the 34th Street Macy’s
represents an era.
“Macy’s was the final department store built on Sixth Avenue, which had been ‘Ladies’ Mile,’” Broderick said. “It’s a landmark surviving member of the great department store story. The ground floor should not be touched, but the remaining interiors could well be renovated.”
Christine Einerson, 23, a regular shopper at Macy’s, said the store is in need of renovation.
“I just think that it has to be updated to look more modern,” Einerson said. “They need to declutter it because I feel like they pack so many different types of merchandise that it looks cluttered, overly packed and disorganized.”
Indian tourist K.V. Hidayath, 40, found renovations unecessary.
“It’s fantastic. Absolutely perfect,” he said. “Renovation? No need, no need.”
With Burberry and Gucci’s imminent debut in the flagship store. It is becoming increasingly apparent that many more changes are on the way.
CAS sophomore Joshua White stated his apathy for Macy’s pre-renovation condition.
“NYU students and most other New Yorkers generally are not lured to Macy’s because it’s really been an outdated tourist store with dreary lighting,” White said. “The addition of more open space, better lighting, and new luxury shoe and jewelry areas may induce NYU students and other New Yorkers to make that trek to midtown.”
In contrast, CAS junior Zainab Qureshi expressed her desire to uphold Macy’s old design.
“Unless they are just renovating to touch things up and keep the same design, I wouldn’t like it as much,” Qureshi said.
Macy’s will unveil its revamped main floor around the upcoming holiday season.
A version of this article appeared in the Wednesday, Oct. 3 print edition. Zuha Jamil is a contributing writer. Email him at firstname.lastname@example.org.
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- Hester Street Fair hosts diverse vendors, delicious food | <urn:uuid:4e92afa1-35ff-43f5-94f1-78723eb2169d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nyunews.com/2012/10/03/macys/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940762 | 733 | 1.5 | 2 |
Deemed Values Review: Minister of Fisheries Final Decisions
Deemed values encourage fishers to cover their Quota Management System (QMS) stock catches with Annual Catch Entitlements (ACE). Fishers pay deemed values if they don’t balance landed catch of QMS stocks with ACE
In May 2005 a Crown-Industry Joint Working Group (JWG) made nine recommendations on how to improve the deemed value regime to the Minister of Fisheries. Stakeholders were given the chance to comment on the JWG recommendations in a public consultation in late 2006.
Taking the views of stakeholders, the Ministry of Fisheries analysed the recommendations and prepared advice for the Minister. In March 2008 the Minister made final decisions on the recommendations.
Each of the JWG recommendations, followed by the Minister’s decisions, are outlined below. At the end of this page are links to the reports and advice papers referred to above.
The JWG recommended that chronic over-catch should trigger management action.
|The Minister agreed with this recommendation. Where over-catch of the Total Allowable Commercial Catch (TACC) is occurring, consideration will be given to the most appropriate management actions, including: |
(a) Deemed value increase and differential deemed value adjustments;
(b) Reassessment of best information relating to appropriateness of TACCs; and
(c) Other management measures such as overfishing thresholds.
The JWG recommended that sections 14A and 14B be revised to provide greater flexibility for setting management targets for by-catch stocks in a multi-species fishery while still taking into account the rights of dissenting parties.
|The Minister agreed with this recommendation. A review of the section 14A agreement threshold, in conjunction with consideration of other collective thresholds in the Fisheries Act, will be considered for the next review of the Fisheries Act.|
The JWG recommended principles for the setting of deemed value rates. The Ministry’s revised catch balancing guidelines, on which the Ministry bases its deemed values advice to the Minister, implements recommendation 3.
|The Minister agreed that, in general, over-catch should lead to an increase in deemed value rates in the following year so that they provide sufficient incentive to fishers to balance catch with their Annual Catch Entitlement (ACE). The need for extra compliance effort to support increased deemed value rates and differentials will be determined on a stock by stock basis.|
The JWG recommended that a range of information be used in setting deemed values (ACE prices, port prices, catch in excess of TACC, and by-catch to target catch ratios).
|The Minister agreed with this recommendation. Overcatch of the TACC is the major signal that a deemed value increase should be considered. The ACE price, informed by other information sources, is the primary information for determining at what level the deemed value rate should be set. |
During the public submission process, one submitter recommended that the Ministry should ensure opportunities to reduce deemed values are identified. The Ministry’s catch balancing system guidelines have been amended to ensure they are responsive to situations where a reduction on deemed values may be appropriate.
The JWG recommended that deemed values could be set in the first month of the fishing year so they can reflect information on whether the previous year’s deemed value was sufficient to keep catch within the TACC.
|The Minister decided that this recommendation will be considered for the next review of the Fisheries Act|
The JWG was concerned that lower interim deemed values, relative to the ACE price, increases incentives for fishers to delay balancing. The JWG therefore recommended that the use of interim deemed values be phased out as the other JWG recommendations are implemented. The exception would be where the deemed value is set well above the ACE price; here interim deemed values may continue to be appropriate to provide flexibility to fishers.
|The Minister agreed with this recommendation. Legislative amendment would be required to set interim deemed values rates at the same level as the annual deemed values rates. This recommendation will be considered for the next review of the Fisheries Act. Prior to this legislative amendment, incentives for fishers to balance more frequently can be improved by reducing the difference between annual and interim rates. The Ministry’s catch balancing guidelines, on which it bases its advice to the Minister, provide for interim rates to be set closer to annual rates in case where interim rates may be contributing to over-catch.|
The JWG noted that differential deemed values can serve as a backstop to protect stocks from over-fishing and as an indicator to assist the tuning of deemed values. The JWG noted that differential deemed values can cause distortions in ACE markets and should not be applied as a general rule. The JWG also noted that differentials should be available for use where the TACCs have been exceeded in the previous year.
|The Minister agreed that differentials should be retained until changes to the deemed value/catch balancing policy have proven effective. But even where over-catch is minimised, differentials continue to perform important functions. The Ministry’s catch balancing guidelines provide that differentials will not automatically be applied to a stock. A case by case approach will be taken and differentials may be applied if individual over catch is a problem.|
Recommendations 7 and 9 relate to the return of deemed value revenues to quota owners, and recommendation 8 discussed risks associated with some recommended policies including the return of deemed values. For commercial only stocks, the JWG recommended that deemed values for catch in excess of the TACC or an agreed and binding lesser catch limit should be returned to quota owners in proportion to quota ownership. For shared stocks, the proportion of deemed values for catch in excess of the TACC equal to the TACC/Total Allowable Catch (TAC) ratio should be returned to quota owners.
The JWG noted that the return of deemed value revenues to quota owners may weaken incentives, on fishers who are also quota owners, to cover catch with ACE, and thereby lessen the chances of constraining aggregate catches within the TACC. The JWG recommended that this risk be managed by increasing the deemed value rate for each stock to counteract this “discount effect,” so that the level faced is greater than the economic value of gained from the catch.
The JWG also made recommendations on whether, and to what extent, deemed values collected in the past would be available for return to quota owners.
The Minister carefully considered the implications of implementing these recommendations. The Minister was concerned that returning deemed value revenues to quota owners would reduce their incentives to take responsibility for how their ACE is fished. The Minister was concerned that it would reduce quota owners’ interests in ensuring the TACC is defended.
The JWG also suggested addressing this risk by increasing deemed value rates to mitigate the impacts of the return of deemed value revenues to quota owners. The Minister was concerned that this proposed solution removes important benefits and flexibilities of the deemed value regime. Increasing the deemed value rate to mitigate against the loss of incentives for large quota owners would remove much of the benefit of the deemed value regime for other fishers.
|The Minister did not to agree to recommendations 7 and 9, or any variants of them.|
The other issue discussed under recommendation 8 is the need for penalties to be brought to bear on individual fishers or companies that are deeming catch excessively, despite the application of the standard incentive framework. The JWG recommended the use of overfishing thresholds where other measures are not proving effective, and focused compliance attention should be paid to behaviour where deemed value rates exceed port price by a significant margin.
|The Minister agreed with the intent of the JWG recommendation. Overfishing thresholds will only be considered in light of the results of effective deemed value rates. Until the effects of such rates on fishing behaviour have been assessed, the Minister considered it would be inappropriate to consider setting overfishing thresholds.|
Review of Implementation
The JWG review developed a number of valuable improvements in the implementation of the catch balancing regime as well as suggesting several legislative amendments.
|The Minister would like to assess the implementation of the agreed changes to the regime to ensure it is being reflected in the management of fisheries. An important indicator of success will be a downward trend in the total deemed values revenue collected. The Minister directed the Ministry to conduct this review by 2012.| | <urn:uuid:2cf272fb-dec5-4546-83e5-052339563acb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fish.govt.nz/en-nz/Consultations/Archive/Consultations+from+2006/Deemed+Values/Final+Decisions.htm?WBCMODE=PresentationUnpublished%2CPresentationUnpublished | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939658 | 1,736 | 1.601563 | 2 |
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Rattlesnake Bites and Your Pet
Posted By admin On August 14, 2012 @ 10:43 am In Variety | Comments Disabled
By Dr. Danielle Huval, DVM
As we all know, this has been a dry and hot summer. One thing that we have seen a lot more of at Animal Emergency and Critical Care is rattlesnake bites. The majority of the bites we see are from the Lyons area but there have also been a few from rural areas as well. Rattlesnakes and the dogs involved are generally both in the wrong place at the wrong time. Acting fast can save your dog a lot of pain and suffering. If you suspect a bite, get your dog to a veterinarian immediately.
The primary rattler found in Colorado is a prairie rattlesnake, which is a subspecies of the Western Diamondback. If you see the rattlesnake that bites your dog, note its size, as juvenile snakes tend to have less control over their venom and their bites can be more severe. A single bite may leave from one to six puncture wounds. Dogs are most commonly bit on the foot or head. The venom of the prairie rattlesnake contains toxins that affect the blood vessels, circulatory system, and the nervous system. These toxins can cause your dog to go into shock very rapidly. It is not unusual for a dog to seem okay for the first few minutes and then be completely unresponsive in seconds. Signs are generally more severe in smaller patients. The first signs most people notice are severe swelling and pain at the site of the bite. Cats often are more severely affected as they often antagonize the snake and receive a larger dose of venom and then hide after being bitten, delaying treatment.
When a rattlesnake bite victim enters the hospital, our first response is to give pain medications and start IV fluids to counteract shock. The bite wound is then shaved and swelling and bruising is noted. Swelling and bruising at the site occurs very rapidly and is very painful. In order to continue providing adequate pain management, dogs are generally hospitalized from 2 to 3 days. Blood tests are done to rule out other systemic disease and to monitor platelets and clotting times.
Antivenin is the mainstay of treatment and it can be extremely beneficial the earlier it is given (within 4 hours). However, the antivenin may still have some beneficial effects even 24-48 hours after the bite occurs. Antivenin is an anti-toxin that neutralizes the toxic effects of venoms of pit vipers native to North, Central, and South America. This includes rattlesnakes, copperheads, and cottonmouth moccasins. It has been proven to shorten hospitalization stays and decrease the severity of pain and swelling at the site. Antivenin is expensive and most patients need between 1-2 vials depending on the severity of the bite.
The toxins from the venom also cause a decrease in platelets and clotting factors, so excessive bleeding and bruising are common in bite victims. These lab values are monitored closely during hospitalization and generally start to improve within days.
With aggressive treatment, most rattlesnake victims will fully recover. A pet’s prognosis is based on the size of the pet, the location of the bite, and time from bite to treatment. Although some of these factors may be out of your control, there are things you can do to hasten your pet’s recovery.
What to do if a rattlesnake bites your pet:
There are also ways to avoid bites as well. Remember rattlesnakes are not aggressive and generally try to avoid contact with humans and pets. They only strike when startled or threatened. Snakes tend to be out more at night, so when taking nighttime strolls, keep pets on a leash. When out on the trail, stay on the trail, keep your pets leashed, and check out rest spots before you sit down. If you live in rattlesnake populated areas, snake-proof fences can be made using galvanized hardware cloth with a 1/4 inch mesh buried 6 inches deep and slanted outward at a 30 degree angle. (Fence information obtained from CSU Extension website article, Coping with Snakes)
AMVS is a 24-hour veterinary facility providing specialty internal medicine, surgery, emergency and critical care, physical rehabilitation, pain management, and blood bank services for pets. They are located in Longmont at 104 S. Main St. For more information, go to www.AspenMeadowVet.com .
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It's a good bet that few people spend their days contemplating toilets, either the considerable virtues they possess or the finer points of their design. Toilets are, after all, ubiquitous and ostensibly simple devices. But the modern loo deserves respect; for sophistication, it may not match, say, CERN's Large Hadron Collider. But for all its humility, it's a serious engineering feat.
That, anyway, is the opinion held by Jim McHale, a Ph.D. chemist by training who has made a career in the toilet industry. McHale's job is to ensure that his company's toilets have the most advanced technology possible while keeping an eye on, if you will, the bottom line. You may not have known such careers even existed. But now that you're, um, privy to this information, can you think of a more important way to earn a living?
As senior director of ceramics engineering and product development at American Standard Brands in Piscataway, New Jersey, McHale (pictured left) is responsible for keeping the company's toilet technology on the cutting edge. His charge, he says, for the one product you'd rather not have stolen from your house.
"I make toilets," he tells people who ask his occupation. More formally, the 40-year-old McHale is an "engineering leader," leading a team of 65 engineers and scientists in three countries designing and improving toilets and other vital fixtures, such as urinals, bidets, and lavatories.
While pursuing a bachelor's degree and a Ph.D. in solid state and inorganic chemistry at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, McHale didn't picture himself working in the toilet industry. He was planning, rather, to become a professor, "because that was all I knew," he recalls. "I had no idea what it was like in industry." Then, during a postdoc at Princeton University, he collaborated with a scientist from Alcoa Inc., the world's leading manufacturer of aluminum products whose U.S. headquarters are in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and decided that industry was a good match.
His first job was with GE Superabrasives, part of the General Electric Company, in Worthington, Ohio, just outside Columbus. The position allowed him to "really learn how science and technology are applied to industry," he says. "In graduate school and postdoctoral work, one learns how to think rigorously and apply this rigor to scientific pursuits, but this does not guarantee success in industry."
McHale worked in GE's diamond division for 4 years. Later, he became manager of polycrystalline engineering, leading a team of scientists and engineers developing ceramic composites containing diamond and cubic boron nitride. His experience at GE "was in some ways even more valuable than my Ph.D.," he says. He learned that "You can be the greatest scientist in the world, but if you don't understand the business you are in and how science and technology can be used to improve the bottom line, you won't get very far. Companies hire scientists and engineers to make more money. Good scientists and engineers in business never lose sight of this."
In 2004, McHale joined American Standard as director of research and development, a new position designed to bring more innovation to their bath and kitchen products. "I started with a team of three Ph.D. engineers and over time added two Ph.D. materials scientists, two M.S. engineers, one B.S. ceramics engineer, and one B.S. microbiologist." Within 2 years, he was promoted to the head of ceramics engineering, for which today he is responsible for all the development and manufacture of toilets and other ceramic fixtures.
Few people consider the familiar toilet the "modern marvel" McHale sees when he looks at it, yet "there's a lot of technology in it." Making a toilet, he says, is "really quite an interesting engineering challenge."
It's also an interdisciplinary challenge. First, there's physics, including fluid dynamics and flow optimization. Then there's chemistry and materials science: Understanding the properties of the clay used to manufacture a toilet, McHale says, is vital. Then there's statistics: Every element of the toilet's geometry and engineering must be analyzed statistically to ensure that it will function reliably.
For students and mid-career professionals interested in commode-related careers, McHale recommends studying fluid dynamics and mechanical engineering, learning software used for industrial design such as Pro/Engineer CAD, and having a basic understanding of the science of ceramics. He emphasizes, however, that when hiring he doesn’t seek those with specific experience in the ceramics industry. Instead, McHale says he looks for candidates at any degree level with a strong background in the fundamentals of science and engineering--especially basic physics--interpersonal skills, "broad industrial experience, and a proven track record of being able to apply their fundamental knowledge to improve a business."
Today's toilet engineers are also, in a sense, environmental scientists. "Because the demands for water usage in the U.S. are going to change in the next 5 years, it is likely that toilets will be required to use less water than they use now," McHale says. Toilets using 20% less water than today's norm--6.06 liters per flush--are already on the market.
Biology, too, factors in to modern toilet design. Recently, McHale launched a microbiology laboratory to develop a cost-effective antimicrobial agent that could be incorporated into a toilet's glaze without causing environmental problems. It had to work in concert with the clay the toilet was made of and survive the high temperatures of the kilns that fire the toilets during the manufacturing process. It also had to function as part of wastewater-processing systems in which bacteria play a crucial role.
McHale and his team discovered that a mixture of silver and zinc, concentrated on the surface of the glaze in a certain manner, would produce the desired effect, safely. "Inorganic antimicrobials like silver and zinc are widely viewed as the safest and most natural method of controlling bacterial growth on surfaces," he says. Because it works on the ceramic surface and leaches very slowly, it doesn't cause problems downstream.
McHale has also used his knowledge and skill to streamline testing and operations processes. For example, he devised a cheaper, simpler, more effective method of examining the geometry of water pathways within a toilet. Prior to his innovation, the only way the company was able to understand flushing patterns was to take a model of a toilet, fill it with silicon rubber ,and then break the toilet open to examine the casting they had made out of the rubber. "I looked at that and said, 'That looks like the most ineffective method I've ever seen for trying to do that.' " So he borrowed a CT scanner from a doctor's office to look inside the toilet without smashing it. "Nobody thought it would work at first," McHale says--but it did. They were able to measure "down to a tenth of a millimeter to make sure everything was exactly the way it should be compared to the CAD files it started with."
McHale enjoys "interaction with the team," which is, he says, "like playing the role of coach." His organization is made up mostly of engineers, but, he says, "I would prefer to hire physicists and chemists," especially for positions involving project management and data analysis. Science, he says, let's "you learn how to think rigorously, and you learn how to make good assessments." He currently has two Ph.D.-level scientists on his staff and open positions for three more.
"I don't do a lot of pure chemistry anymore, but the kind of thinking I learned in getting my Ph.D. and doing my postdoc work, I use all the time," McHale says. Scientists are "people who can drive change."
Photo (top): Courtesy, Jim McHale
Alaina G. Levine is a speaker, writer, performer, and public relations strategist, who has authored over 50 articles, which have appeared in national, regional, and local publications, and two newspaper columns. | <urn:uuid:987470b7-0f7b-4715-8d9d-0be67473d7b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/print/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2008_10_24/caredit.a0800157 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974673 | 1,706 | 2.578125 | 3 |
McPherson Valley Wetlands
Dove Management - 2012:
All of KDWPT's share of the two dove managment fields have been mowed. A few strips will be left standing for hunter cover and future wildlife benefits. Harvest on the 70 acre field began yesterday (8/29), and will hopefully be finished today. Moisture content on the smaller 30 acre field is still unknown, but will likely be tested today. Hopefully both fields will be harvested prior to the Saturday opener. Observed approximately 1,000 doves yesterday.
Harvest was attempted early last week, and moisture content was too high. This is not an uncommon problem, and in the past we have used a round-up type herbicide to burn down the sunflowers and help dry them out a little faster once the seed has made. However, according to our local agronomist, this year's drought has basically shut the plant down. Spraying with roundup will not do much as the plant will not "take in" the herbicide. Basically, we have to let the plant dry down naturally. Recent rains have compounded the situation. We are still hopeful that harvest will occur next week prior to the opener, but it will depend on a little help from mother nature.
Staff did mow several strips in the sunflowers to scatter a little seed and help attract doves. Over 1,000 doves were observed during mowing activities on 8/21. Hunting opportunity will be available whether the sunflowers get harvested or not by the 1st. It will just be a little more difficult to locate down birds in standing sunflowers if harvest is not possible prior to the opener.
This year McPherson Valley Wetlands will have two dove management fields, both located at the Farland Lake / Little Sinkhole marsh unit southeast of Inman. (see map below). Harvest of most of this field is planned for later this week (August 15 - 19), depending on moisture content. Updates will be posted as available.
Field 1 is located 1/2 mile south of 9th and Buckskin Road, and is approximately 30 acres of sunflowers. This field will be restricted to youth and their mentors only on the opening morning of dove season (one-half hour before sunrise - noon on 9/1/12). This is a first come, first served opportunity, with no need to register. After noon on opening day, this field will be open to all hunters.
Field 2 is located 1/2 mile south of 10th and Buckskin Road and is approximately 70 acres of sunflowers. This field will be open to all hunters.
Please check back for updates on these fields. Remember, non-toxic shot is required to hunt doves at McPherson Wetlands.
Staff at the McPherson Valley Wetlands will be producing a newsletter that will include season results, upcoming projects, special opportunities, fall flights, and other information that hunters / users may need to know if planning to visit the area. The newsletter will be produced bi-annually, prior to hunting season (mid August to mid September) and following waterfowl season (mid March to mid April). This document will be distributed electronically, and if you are interested in getting on the mailing list Click here.
The newsletter is an attempt to get information to more of our constituents since attendance at our public informational meeting has been very low due to a variety of reasons.
In the past, area staff has (after the fact) been informed of regulation violations during the hunting season. Even though selective law enforcement by Public Lands and Law Enforcement division employees, is done routinely at the wetlands, we can't be everywhere all the time. If you witness a violation, please call the area office at (620)-241-7669 and leave a description of the violation including the vehicle tag number if possible. | <urn:uuid:aa2212a8-0c1f-4fdb-85a8-09aee1396f33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kdwpt.state.ks.us/news/layout/set/print/KDWPT-Info/Locations/Wildlife-Areas/Region-4/McPherson-Valley-Wetlands/Area-News | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959412 | 799 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Ever wanted to rule an empire? Well now you can, virtually at least. Register with Historvius and you can be the king of the castle, or the emperor of the Colosseum! Sign up now and start uploading comments and photos to historic sites you've visited. You'll get points for your activity and those with the most points on any historic site get to rule. Don't get complacent though, as any ruler knows, there's always someone waiting in the wings to usurp your crown…
The National World War II Memorial
- The National World War II Memorial
- THE AMERICAS
- Alt Name:
- United States
- World War Two
- 1900AD - 1999AD
- Washington DC
- Washington DC,
- The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, The Korean War Veterans Memorial ,
United States Holocaust Museum , Arlington National Cemetery,
about The National World War II Memorial
The National World War II Memorial in Washington DC is a US monument commemorating the Second World War, particularly those who fought in the US armed forces and those civilians who assisted in and were affected by the conflict.
World War II was a multi-national conflict initially prompted by Germany’s invasion of Poland and which took place from 1939 until 1945, when the Allies emerged victorious. The US entered the war in 1941 as it declared war on Japan for its attack on Pearl Harbor. A staggering sixteen million US troops participated in the war.
The National World War II Memorial is a circular fountain surrounded by fifty-six columns and two arches. To the west of the National World War II Memorial is a wall, known as the Freedom Wall, containing 4,048 stars, each representing 100 Americans who perished in the conflict. Also displayed are films and photographic depictions of the war and those who fought in it.
Just as empires rise and fall so do entry fees and opening hours! While we work as hard as we can to ensure the information provided here about The National World War II Memorial is as accurate as possible, the changing nature of certain elements mean we can't absolutely guarantee that these details won't become a thing of the past. If you know of any information on this page that needs updating you can add a comment above or now.
Address: The National World War II Memorial, 17th Street SW, Washington DC, USA
Phone: 202 426 6841
The National World War II Memorial is located between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument within the National Mall in Washington DC. By metro it can be reached via the orange and blue lines to either Smithsonian Station or Federal Station
The National World War II Memorial is open daily at all times. Rangers are on site daily, 9:30am-11:30pm.
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Topological Vector Spaces, Normed Vector Spaces, and Banach Spaces
Before we move on, we want to define some structures that blend algebraic and topological notions. These are all based on vector spaces. And, particularly, we care about infinite-dimensional vector spaces. Finite-dimensional vector spaces are actually pretty simple, topologically. For pretty much all purposes you have a topology on your base field , and the vector space (which is isomorphic to for some ) will get the product topology.
But for infinite-dimensional spaces the product topology is often not going to be particularly useful. For example, the space of functions is a product; we write to mean the product of one copy of for each point in . Limits in this topology are “pointwise” limits of functions, but this isn’t always the most useful way to think about limits of functions. The sequence
converges pointwise to a function for and . But we will find it useful to be able to ignore this behavior at the one isolated point and say that . It’s this connection with spaces of functions that brings such infinite-dimensional topological vector spaces into the realm of “functional analysis”.
Okay, so to get a topological vector space, we take a vector space and put a (surprise!) topology on it. But not just any topology will do: Remember that every point in a vector space looks pretty much like every other one. The transformation has an inverse , and it only makes sense that these be homeomorphisms. And to capture this, we put a uniform structure on our space. That is, we specify what the neighborhoods are of , and just translate them around to all the other points.
Now, a common way to come up with such a uniform structure is to define a norm on our vector space. That is, to define a function satisfying the three axioms
- For all vectors and scalars , we have .
- For all vectors and , we have .
- The norm is zero if and only if the vector is the zero vector.
Notice that we need to be working over a field in which we have a notion of absolute value, so we can measure the size of scalars. We might also want to do away with the last condition and use a “seminorm”. In any event, it’s important to note that though our earlier examples of norms all came from inner products we do not need an inner product to have a norm. In fact, there exist norms that come from no inner product at all.
So if we define a norm we get a “normed vector space”. This is a metric space, with a metric function defined by . This is nice because metric spaces are first-countable, and thus sequential. That is, we can define the topology of a (semi-)normed vector space by defining exactly what it means for a sequence of vectors to converge, and in particular what it means for them to converge to zero.
Finally, if we’ve got a normed vector space, it’s a natural question to ask whether or not this vector space is complete or not. That is, we have all the pieces in place to define Cauchy sequences in our vector space, and we would like for all of these sequences to converge under our uniform structure. If this happens — if we have a complete normed vector space — we call our structure a “Banach space”. Most of the spaces we’re concerned with in functional analysis are Banach spaces.
Again, for finite-dimensional vector spaces (at least over or ) this is all pretty easy; we can always define an inner product, and this gives us a norm. If our underlying topological field is complete, then the vector space will be as well. Even without considering a norm, convergence of sequences is just given component-by-component. But infinite-dimensional vector spaces get hairier. Since our algebraic operations only give us finite sums, we have to take some sorts of limits to even talk about most vectors in the space in the first place, and taking limits of such vectors could just complicate things further. Studying these interesting topologies and seeing how linear algebra — the study of vector spaces and linear transformations — behaves in the infinite-dimensional context is the taproot of functional analysis. | <urn:uuid:8f71d805-25a5-463c-9245-ed0904ea9431> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://unapologetic.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/topological-vector-spaces-normed-vector-spaces-and-banach-spaces/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=420e8d64d7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920461 | 913 | 3.34375 | 3 |
US 20060046565 A1
A high frequency coaxial cable having a foil (7 a) between the cable insulator (5) and cable braid (7 b), is terminated to a coaxial connector (40) in a manner that allows fast and easy cable preparation and results in a termination with minimal axial electric field lines that cause a high insertion loss and a high VSWR (voltage standing wave ratio). A bore (46) at the rear portion (42) of the connector outer conductor, receives the cable insulator with foil around the cable insulator. The bore has a front part (54) that forms an interference fit around the foil, to avoid an axially-extending gap which might contain axially-extending field lines. The front of cable insulator and foil are flush and both abut the insulation (25) of the connector.
1. Apparatus which includes a high frequency coaxial connector that has inner and outer connector conductors and a connector insulator between them that are centered on an axis and which includes a coaxial cable that has inner and outer cable conductors and a cable insulator between them, said cable inner and outer conductors having front end portions connected to rear end portions of said connector inner and outer conductors, respectively, wherein the cable outer conductor includes a conductive foil that lies against an outside of said cable insulator, wherein:
said connector outer conductor has an inner surface with a foil-engaging part that lies closely around said foil and forms an interference fit therewith to thereby prevent the distortion of electric field lines between said foil and said connector outer conductor.
2. The apparatus described in
said braid is initially cut even with said foil, and said braid has a front end part that is expanded in diameter, said connector outer conductor having a rear end part of greater inside diameter than said foil-engaging part, and said expanded braid front end part lies around and is connected to a rear end portion of said connector outer conductor.
3. The apparatus described in
said connector outer conductor inner surface has a rearmost part that is of larger diameter than said foil-engaging part and that lies directly inside said crimp tube with a gap between said inner surface rearmost part and said foil.
4. The apparatus described in
said conductive foil and said cable insulator have extreme front ends that are flush with each other, with said cable insulator being compressed in diameter by the fact of said outer conductor radially inwardly compressing said foil.
5. Apparatus that includes a high frequency coaxial connector that has inner and outer connector conductors and a connector insulator between, and that includes a coaxial cable that has inner and outer cable conductors centered on an axis and a cable insulator between them, said cable inner and outer conductors having front end portions connected to rear end portions of said connector inner and outer conductors, respectively, wherein the cable outer conductor includes a conductive foil that lies around said cable insulator and a conductive braid that lies around said foil, wherein:
said connector outer contact rear portion has a largely cylindrical outside surface, and said braid is expanded and lies around and against said largely cylindrical outside surface;
said connector outer contact rear portion has a cylindrical inside surface part that lies around and against said foil and that radially inwardly presses the foil against said cable insulator.
6. The apparatus described in
said foil and said cable insulator have extreme front ends which are flush with each other, said connector insulator has a rear end portion lying at a rear end of said cylindrical inside of said connector outer contact rear portion, and said extreme front end of said cable insulator abuts said connector insulator rear end.
7. The apparatus described in
said inside surface of said connector outer contact rear portion includes front and rear parts, said front part forming said surface part that lies around and against said foil, said rear part having a greater inside diameter than said front part and generally lies out of contact with said foil.
Applicant claims priority from British patent application 0419303.3 filed 31 Aug. 2004.
This invention relates to a coaxial connector for terminating to a high performance coaxial cable of the type that has a wrapped conductive shield. A coaxial cable includes a solid or stranded inner cable conductor surrounded by a layer of polymer dielectric material. The dielectric material is precisely centered within a woven braid outer cable conductor, and the cable has an outer jacket of polymer material. The outer cable conductor defines a ground return path which is necessary for microwave signal transmission.
High performance, low loss coaxial cables have been developed to transmit higher frequencies with minimal impedance discontinuities. With low loss dielectrics, these cables may transmit higher power levels with minimal attenuation. The high performance cables generally comprise an inner cable conductor surrounded by a low loss dielectric material such as cellular polyethylene, a thin wrapped metallic outer shield such as a conductive foil, a woven plated copper braid shield, and a polymer outer jacket such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC). This type of cable is desirable for use in the transmission of high rate digital signals such as those used in the High Definition Television (HDTV) industry, of a frequency of about 1 GHz and higher.
Cables are generally prepared for termination to a coaxial connector by stripping, or removing, from around the center cable conductor, the dielectric material, the braid and the cable jacket to strip lengths specified by the manufacture of the RF coaxial connector. In the case of the high performance coaxial cable having a wrapped metallic foil shield, the foil is generally removed and stripped back approximately evenly with the jacket, as shown in
A preferred termination technique would be to leave the metallic foil intact, i.e. flush with the dielectric material and/or braid. However, this presents a problem in terms of electrical performance. At lower frequencies, cables prepared and terminated in this way exhibit no electrical performance problems, with particular respect to return loss. However, at higher frequencies, a convoluted signal path occurs, and a higher than expected return loss or VSWR (voltage standing wave ratio) is exhibited.
According to the invention, there is provided a radio frequency coaxial connector for terminating a coaxial cable of the type that includes a center cable conductor, a dielectric cable insulation surrounding the center conductor, and a cable outer conductor that includes a conductive foil surrounding the dielectric material. The connector includes a tubular metallic connector having a rear end for receiving the coaxial cable and having a front end for interfacing with a complimentary connector, and a tubular insulator located within the connector outer conductor. The rear end of the connector outer conductor forms an open bore for receiving the cable center conductor, cable dielectric material and the conductive foil. A part of the bore is of a reduced diameter to provide an interference fit between walls of the connector bore and the cable conductive foil. The reduced inner diameter of the bore is preferably located adjacent to the connector insulator.
In use, the cable center conductor, the cable insulator surrounding the center conductor and the cable conductive foil, are received into the bore in the rear end of the coaxial connector. The conductive braid is placed around the rear end portion of the connector outer connector. The cable portion with foil on the outside is easily received into a rear part of the bore in the connector outer conductor, but the reduced diameter of a front bore part provides an interference fit between the conductive foil of the cable and the inner surface of walls of the bore in the connector outer conductor. This interference fit eliminates any clearance space between the conductive foil of the cable and the inner surface of the bore, and thereby eliminates a longitudinal electric field between the conductive foil and the connector body.
It has been found that prevention of such a longitudinal electric field is an effective way of maintaining the radial orientation of the electric field, thereby ensuring good electrical performance at higher frequencies.
The novel features of the invention are set forth with particularity in the appended claims. The invention will be best understood from the following description when read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
Electric field lines of a high performance coaxial cable in the normal transverse electromagnetic mode of transmission are purely radial, and thus terminate perpendicular to the surfaces of the center and outer conductors. However, at sudden transitions in the diameter of the conductors, such as a step change in the conductor diameter of a coaxial connector, the electric field lines distort as at L3 in
It is almost impossible to avoid discontinuities in a connector design. For example, methods of terminating a cable to a connector often result in diameter variations between the cable and the connector. These variations require changes in conductor diameters to maintain the proper impedances, thus creating discontinuities. Below about 1000 MHz (1 GHZ), these discontinuities usually have no significant effect on the resulting return loss or VSWR. However, at higher frequencies, the discontinuities have a major impact on the performance of the connector.
The terminated cable shown in
As shown in
A rear end portion 42 of the outer connector conductor 19 has a rearwardly R opening bore 46 for receiving the coaxial cable 44. The rear end portion 42 of the outer connector conductor may be a different part than the rest of the outer conductor 19, different sized rear portions 42 being provided for different sized cables 44. An interface 19 b is of the prior art design and provides a BNC plug for interfacing with a complimentary jack. The connector insulator 25 is located between the ends of the body 19 so as to be coaxial therewith. The insulator 25 comprises two insulator blocks 25A, 25B through which are formed holes on the connector axis 50, the insulator 25B being of harder material to guide the cable center conductor. The center, or inner conductor pin 27 is located in an axial hole of the insulator 25. The pin comprises a pin portion 27A for receiving, via the bore 46, an end of the center conductor 3 of the coaxial cable. The connector 40 may also comprise a number of other components (not shown) such as a bayonet collar, gaskets, spring washers and split washers. These components are all known from existing connectors and will not be described further.
The bore 46 in the rear end 42 of the connector outer conductor leads to the insulator 25. The inner diameter of the bore steps from a first diameter A at the open rear part 52 to a second, smaller diameter B in the bore front part 54 which lies adjacent to the insulator 25. The outer surface of the rear portion 42 of the outer conductor preferably has a knurled surface.
In use, the high performance coaxial cable 44 is prepared in the same way as the cable shown in
In the specific example shown in
As noted above, the elimination of the axial electric field lines reduces return loss and VSWR at high frequencies.
In the connector described above, the bore of the rear end of the connector body has two inner diameters with a step between them. However, other bore profiles are suitable. For example, the inner diameter of the bore may gradually ramp from the first diameter to the second diameter, or more than two discrete inner diameters may be provided. What is important is that an interference fit is provided between the bore and the conductive foil of the cable adjacent the insulator arrangement of the connector.
Although particular embodiments of the invention have been described and illustrated herein, it is recognized that modifications and variations may readily occur to those skilled in the art, and consequently, it is intended that the claims be interpreted to cover such modifications and equivalents. | <urn:uuid:86d656a4-f08e-46f3-b6c4-ee65b622f59e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.google.com.au/patents/US20060046565 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941075 | 2,434 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Today's WSJ has an interesting story about the potential impact of the Supreme Court's decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, a 5-4 decision rejecting Javaid Iqbal's effort to sue various high-level government officials for his alleged mistreatment and detention after September 11.
Ashcroft v. Iqbal, released in May, will make it harder to bring a lawsuit without specific factual evidence, raising the threshold for moving a case into expensive litigation and possibly saving companies millions of dollars in legal fees. The case was overshadowed by other business rulings on consumer lawsuits, environmental and employment law and other matters in a term set to end Monday, but legal experts said it may be the most important. . . .
In the case, a Pakistani named Javaid Iqbal sued government officials over his detainment after Sept. 11, 2001. The Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Iqbal didn't have sufficient factual evidence to proceed with his discrimination claims.
"While legal conclusions can provide the framework of a complaint, they must be supported by factual allegations," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the 5-4 opinion. He cited the 2007 decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, an antitrust case that outlined what plaintiffs must assert to make it through initial court proceedings.
As a result of the Iqbal ruling, businesses may find it easier to fend off lawsuits by persuading courts to dismiss complaints early in litigation. . . .
The decision translates most easily to business cases that list not only a single company, but also its parent company and affiliates, Ms. Willis said. The court didn't allow Mr. Iqbal to assert that government officials had "supervisory liability" for the orders that resulted in his arrest.
More broadly, the opinion clarifies that the Twombly ruling applies beyond antitrust cases. It also makes it harder to press a lawsuit without making more substantive, factual allegations. | <urn:uuid:8cb55a0e-6cfd-41e4-8978-0f8316616b2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.volokh.com/posts/1246114122.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9678 | 392 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Vision, Mission, Philosophy & History
Our vision is to be a recognized national leader in the preparation of skilled professionals in: civil engineering technology; environmental, health and safety management; safety technology, facility management and construction management. We envision our graduates as prepared and committed to moving us toward a more sustainable and socially responsible future.
The CETEMS mission is to achieve its vision by creating and maintaining an optimal teaching and learning environment in which staff and faculty grow professionally and students receive unsurpassed knowledge, skills, insights and the tools for lifelong learning in their respective disciplines.
Philosophy of Education
Adapting and combining the musings on education of several great philosophers, CETEMS views education as the key to creating and sustaining civilization (Plato); recognizes that human nature, routines of behavior, and social reality are important influences in the process of education (Aristotle); and seeks to cultivate curiosity in students as a primary behavioral manifestation of human education (Rousseau).
We recognize and value that:
- Our academic programs are all about designing, building and maintaining the infrastructure of civilization;
- Human beings and the places that we live, work and play are indeed part of the environment; and
- Having a safe and healthy environment is requisite to a prosperous civilization.
- Work effectively with industry to provide cooperative education experience and applied research opportunities for our students.
- Deliver academic programs in multiple formats to meet the needs of full-time and part-time students and the needs of distant as well as local students.
- Provide state-of-the-art facilities that encourage learning, student project work and applied research.
- Incorporate continuous improvement into the work plans of faculty and staff, as well as into maintain and upgrading curriculum and facilities.
Established in 1972, the BS degree in Civil Engineering Technology prepares students to enter careers in construction management, civil design, structural design, or environmental controls. The curriculum uses a combination of challenging academics, hands-on laboratory experiences, and practical cooperative work education to cultivate students who are grounded in applications-oriented approaches to solving the world's problems.
In 1991, in response to a growing demand for environmental professionals, RIT created the nation's first BS degree in Environmental Management, which has now evolved into Environmental Sustainability, Health and Safety.
The first MS degree in Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS) Management was launched in 1997 to further address the educational needs of EHS professionals and their employers. The EHS Management MS degree program may be almost completed entirely online with only one required three-day executive leader event held on campus. In addition, the program may be completed through a combination of online and traditional means for those students who want to attend the RIT campus.
2006 was a busy year for CETEMS. In 2006, the department created:
- A minor in Construction Management
- A minor in Structural Design
- A dual BS/MS degree in Environmental Sustainability, Health and Safety Management that combines the two degree programs. Students who successfully complete this dual degree are awarded both the BS degree in Environmental Technology and Management and the MS degree in Environmental Health and Safety Management
- A new MS degree in Facility Management. This degree may be completed entirely through online learning.
There are a number of other certificates and distance learning options available, so please continue into our site to read more about them. Welcome to CETEMS! | <urn:uuid:d46227cd-ec9c-4adc-84d9-75a8ff6383ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rit.edu/cast/cetems/vision-mission-philosophy-and-history.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948654 | 694 | 1.953125 | 2 |
EDITOR'S NOTE: With books such as "Misquoting Jesus" and "Jesus, Interrupted," New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman has taken his questioning of the authenticity of Scripture straight to the New York Times bestseller list. Ehrman's background as an evangelical "believer" turned chief skeptic has also made him a favorite of the media. This is the third part in a five-part series on Ehrman.
May 18, 2011
September 18, 2009
September 17, 2009
September 16, 2009
September 15, 2009
September 14, 2009
February 23, 2009
February 12, 2009
July 25, 2008
July 24, 2008
ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP)--Agnostic Bart Ehrman states with most biblical scholars that the New Testament Gospels were written 35-65 years after the events they purport to describe. Ehrman regards this time gap as too long, since historians desire sources that were written much closer to the events they describe.
He adds that this time between the events and when they are reported in the Gospels is similar to the distance in time between World War II and now. While that may be true of John's Gospel, the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark and Luke) are closer to the distance in time between the Vietnam War and now. If the History Channel interviewed three veterans of that war about their combat experiences that occurred in 1974, should we regard their testimonies as untrustworthy given the distance in time between the events and their interview? Even the 65 years for John is not that long. If Ehrman truly believes what he's saying, he should notify the History Channel that all documentaries that include recent interviews of World War II veterans are unreliable.
Let's now consider an ancient example. Caesar Augustus is regarded as Rome's greatest emperor and was ruling when Jesus was born. Historians rely on five chief sources to learn about Augustus' adulthood: a funerary inscription that is around 4,000 words in length, an author who wrote around 90 years after Augustus' death, and three others writing 100-200 years after his death. When we consider that this is what we have for the greatest Roman emperor, four biographies of Jesus written within 35-65 years of his death is pretty good. And when we consider that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony about Jesus, the matter of when the Gospels were written is not nearly as challenging as Ehrman would have his readers believe.
The error of Ehrman's historical thinking does not stop here. He further claims that the stories about Jesus in the Gospels were carelessly passed from one Christian to another and that the stories became grossly distorted over the period of several decades' time. This is surprising and reveals a naiveté on Ehrman's part pertaining to how Jewish tradition was transmitted in antiquity.
For well over a decade, I trained in the Korean martial art of taekwondo, earning a second-degree black belt. From 1986-89 I had my own school where I trained a number of students to the black belt level, even winning an "instructor of the year" award in 1987. A component of traditional martial arts training is "the form," a series of movements simulating a fight against multiple opponents. In some martial arts, the forms are very old, having been passed from instructor to student for centuries. Students are carefully trained to perfect the forms of their particular art in order to master various techniques. Sometimes the original interpretation of a particular move may no longer be known. One instructor may interpret a leap as being over the body of an imaginary opponent just disabled while another may assert one is jumping over a small creek. However, the movement itself remains unchanged. In the mid-1980s, I learned forms from an eighth-degree black belt who had received instruction from General Choi Hong Hi who founded the art of taekwondo in 1955. Given the emphasis on passing along the same form, I was confident that my instructor had passed along to me the same form he had received from General Choi, although it was three decades after the forms had originated.
In antiquity, much learning occurred by means of oral tradition, since only about 10 percent of the general population could read. When Paul communicated apostolic tradition concerning Jesus, he did not take liberties to alter it. And we can test him on the matter. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul gives his non-binding opinion, followed by a teaching of Jesus (i.e., Jesus' tradition) which was binding, followed by Paul's apostolic ruling which was also binding. It is noteworthy that Paul did not invent a teaching and place it on the lips of Jesus in order to answer a situation Jesus had not addressed, but instead made his own ruling as an apostle. The Jesus tradition was not to be touched but was instead to be passed along intact and unaltered. For this reason, non-narrative tradition was preserved in formulas, creeds and hymns for easy memorization. Paul wrote, "I passed along to you as of first importance what I also received" (1 Corinthians 15:3). It is demonstrable that the early Christian practice of passing along the Jesus tradition more closely resembled the passing along of the forms in the martial arts than it did the game of telephone.
Paul had learned the Jesus tradition from those who had walked with Jesus. His letters contain oral traditions, peppered throughout, that are even earlier than the Gospels, and in some cases much earlier. Although Paul does not write a biography of Jesus, his letters reveal he is familiar with a number of details pertaining to the life of Jesus that had been communicated to him by the disciples and their colleagues. In Galatians 1:18, a letter certainly written by Paul, Paul tells us he visited with the Apostle Peter for 15 days. Noteworthy is the Greek term Paul uses for "visited": "historesai," from which we get the English term "history." Paul had met with Peter and had inquired of him about the life of Jesus. So, Paul provides us with a few details about Jesus he had received from those who had known Jesus very well. We observe such traditions in 1 Corinthians 11:23-25 and 15:3-7 that report details pertaining to the Last Supper with Jesus, His death and His resurrection. There are about a dozen references to Jesus' teachings in Paul's letters and about 30 additional possible echoes. Because Paul was well-acquainted with the life of Jesus, he is able to instruct the Corinthian believers to "imitate me just as I imitate Christ" (1 Corinthians 11:1). How could Paul imitate Christ if he knew nothing of Him?
In summary, although Ehrman contends that the Gospels were written too long after the events they purport to describe to be regarded as reliable accounts, we observed that this is simply not so. Moreover, his contention that the tradition about Jesus was changed dramatically during the 35-65 year period before it was put into writing is based on a naïve understanding of how oral tradition was preserved and passed along to others in the early Christian church.
Mike Licona is the apologetics coordinator at the North American Mission Board. For a better understanding of today's world religions and for resources that will help you defend your faith, visit NAMB's apologetics website at www.4truth.net.
A four-part video series featuring an interview with Mike Licona about Bart Ehrman accompanies this series. To view the videos, go to http://bit.ly/1oPRbA | <urn:uuid:cc81f20f-8e12-41b5-b1b1-1e500422ab71> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/BPFirstPerson.asp?ID=31268 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979783 | 1,558 | 2.140625 | 2 |
V.20 No.33 | 8/18/2011
New Mexico intrigues revealed by former CIA officerE. B. Held wasn’t a spy, but he was a spy recruiter. He worked as a clandestine operations officer with the CIA for 27 years, stationed around the world in Asia, Latin America and Africa. His book, A Spy’s Guide to Santa Fe and Albuquerque, details a number of spy activities that took place in the two cities before and during the Cold War. | <urn:uuid:34ba992f-6cda-4b87-8697-8ab651269061> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://alibi.com/index.php?tag=e.b.+held | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968361 | 103 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Page 1 of 6
What is the flu?
Influenza is a respiratory infection that produces fever, chills, sore throat, muscle aches, and cough that lasts a week or more. The flu can be
deadly for the elderly and those with compromised immune systems or who are suffering from diabetes, kidney dysfunction and heart disease. Each year about 20,000 Americans, mostly in these high risk groups, reportedly die from flu complications such as pneumonia.
What is the flu vaccine?
The flu vaccine is prepared from the fluids of chick embryos inoculated with a specific type(s) of influenza virus. The strains of flu virus in the vaccine are inactivated with formaldehyde and preserved with Thimerosal, which is a mercury derivative. Every year, federal health agency officials try to guess which three flu strains are most likely to be prevalent in the U.S. the following year to determine which strains will be included in next year's flu vaccine. If they guess right, the vaccine is thought to be 70 to 80 percent effective in temporarily preventing the flu of the season in healthy persons less than 65 years old. For those over 65 years old, the efficacy rate drops to 30 to 40% but the vaccine is thought to be 50 to 60% effective in preventing hospitalization and pneumonia and 80% effective in preventing death from the flu.
However, sometimes health officials do not correctly predict which flu strains will be most prevalent and the vaccine's effectiveness is much lower for that year.
Does the flu vaccine protect against all throat, respiratory, gastrointestinal and ear infections?
The flu vaccine only protects against the three specific viral strains which are included in any given year's flu vaccine. Throat, respiratory, gastrointestinal and ear infections caused by bacteria or other kinds of viruses are not prevented by getting an annual flu shot. Vaccination against the flu does not protect against SARS or the complications of SARS. The World Health Organization is urging a worldwide flu vaccination campaign in the belief that high vaccination coverage can decrease the possibility of misdiagnosing flu as SARS and help in the early identification of a SARS outbreak. The CDC however is not recommending the flu vaccine for this purpose since the flu vaccine is not 100 percent effective and the suggested benefits in regards to SARS cannot be reliable. | <urn:uuid:cc820621-1913-4405-8f24-0f214e803088> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://icpa4kids.org/Wellness-Articles/the-flu-and-the-flu-vaccine.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947903 | 464 | 3.4375 | 3 |
The school provided a well-equipped facility for its disabled students, and was a pioneer of "accessibility" with automatic doors and extra-wide elevators. Facilities included a medical department on school premises which housed an infirmary, dispensary and exercise room. The services of a physician, physical therapist, full-time registered nurse and a "physical medicine consultant" were provided free to the students. The school also housed an extensive horological library, recreation facilities, and a full kitchen and dining room.
The school received its financial support from the Joseph Bulova Foundation.
* "Joseph Bulova School of Watchmaking Training Manual", 9th edition, pub. 1968.
Time Line of Events:
1946- The Joseph Bulova School of Watchmaking Opens its doors. Funding for the school provided by the Bulova Foundation
1948- 200 Graduate from the School
1949- Two Bulova school graduates are hired by Tiffany & Co.
1950-300 Veterans have graduated from the school
1950-53-400 Have now graduated from the school
1959-590 Graduates from the Bulova School find employment
1961- By this time 700 have graduated
1963-760 total Graduates
1964-796 have completed the program
Due to the collapse of the mechanical watch industry and the advent of inexpensive quartz watches, the school fell into decline and closed . | <urn:uuid:6563f844-a48f-4441-a5fb-68dac96c2432> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.veteranswatchmakerinitiative.org/history.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966561 | 280 | 1.84375 | 2 |
I was studying about several results related to Tiling Theory. Tiling Theory adds formalism to the question " Given a simple rectangular region (R) can we find a valid tiling by using tiles from a set (T) ". If our tile set (T) is a singleton set with a unit square then we can tile any region. However what if the the tile set contains only a 2x1 rectangle (domino)? what if the tile set contains a set of polymino's (tetris game)?. Although the question may seem very simple there is a rich combinatorial work based on this question. In fact the study about the tiling problem originated from Wang's Conjecture about periodic tiling. Actually the algorithmic research about tiling theory was dormant for quite some time, even the proof for 2x1 dominoes is fairly recent see this . I was reading about the proof and was really impressed by its elegance. Often people consider simple things useless or don't have enough respect for simple facts, however I always find that good results are based on several very simple facts. In fact I would like to highlight simple ideas in every algorithm I study about.
In this proof to prove that the problem is NP-complete for 2x1 domino's a simple fact that " There is exactly only one perfect matching (if at all one exists) in a Tree " is used. This can be proved intuitively as follows.
Let M be the perfect match in the Tree T, if M is not a unique perfect match then there should be some other perfect match lets call it M'. If we observe the leaf nodes in T which have only one edge adjacent on them so both M and M' should agree on the matched edges which have leaf nodes of T as the vertices . We can now delete all the leaf nodes and their adjacent edges and continue the argument until we don't have any leaf nodes. Thus from this argument its clear that both M and M' are the same and hence there is only a unique perfect match if at all if one exists in a tree T. | <urn:uuid:f9f5158d-8dbe-4d10-844d-77fc41900eb4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://vkundeti.blogspot.com/2008/10/tech-on-uniqueness-of-perfect-match-in.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961864 | 429 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Check out our resume examples.
The climate of the current job market often requires a little innovation. If you are having a difficult time landing a position it may mean that you should take a brief review of the resume that you are using. By having a top notch sample resume on hand, you can get a clear idea of the professional layout that employers are looking for and quickly learn how best to restructure your own.
Many people have never even considered using a sample resume. They often think that it is sufficient to take advantage of software templates that make it easy to fill in the necessary data. These offer a clean, professional-looking layout that is easy to use. Many people simply highlight the areas that they wish to change and begin randomly plugging information in. The difference between the two however is huge, and a sample resume can do more than just offer a professional layout.
It serves instead to offer the best methods of constructing the necessary data so that the look is not only clean, but the information that is provided is clear, concise and accurate. Individuals that opt to use these find that it is much easier to mentally locate the proper wording for past duties and experience. They also rapidly see how much to include and which information to leave out.
Often this is the problem that many people face when constructing their own resumes from scratch. It is often difficult to distinguish valuable information from the information that only serves to clutter the page, and take up unnecessary space. Unknowing individuals frequently submit resumes of two or more pages that are over-worded and yet say far too little. Because of the massive response that most job postings currently get, cumbersome resumes such as these often find their way to the bottom of the pile. Having a sample is like having a guide that enables you to discern valuable information from useless data that does not need to be included.
There are several other things that you would also do well to remember while the job market remains tight. The first and most important thing is that it always helps to be flexible in the jobs that you are willing to take on. While you may have your heart set on a particular position in a particular industry, the money, availability and opportunities may simply lie elsewhere. Being willing to consider other niches or areas where your current skills and former experience may serve to your advantage will certain serve to improve the likelihood of your becoming gainfully employed.
Using the sample resume you can determine how to present your qualifications so that they help to make you more appealing as employee in numerous industries. While you may have years of experience in customer service, you may be well qualified for an administrative position. Being willing to open up to these new avenues of employment will drastically open up the number of positions that you are actually able to apply for. Having a resume that has been tailored to present you as a highly flexible individual will certainly make you far more marketable.
While you are on the job hunt it is beneficial in a broad range of ways to take small measures to enhance your current skills. The old adage, "A watched pot never boils" will never seem more true than when you are waiting for a phone call or e-mail response to a resume submission or interview. Instead of waiting around home it can be extremely beneficial to take advantage of the inexpensive and cost effective courses that are offered at local adult schools and community colleges. These are often weekend, evening or short term courses that will help you get certified for various skills that work to make your more marketable. You can increase your typing speed, learn accounts receivable and payable or even payroll processing. This will enable you to submit a resume that is well-filled with valuable skills that serve to make you an asset to any company that chooses to hire you.
Using a sample resume will help you get the insight that you need to create a phenomenal first impression. With a little due diligence on your part, you can work to enhance yourself, your skills and your performance in the initial application process to help ensure that you land the position that you want. All these things working in tandem will help you get the job that you need in no time at all.
Resume Examples for Various Professions
There are certain jobs, which only require mini resumes. The information included should be the qualifications and career highlights. This type of resume is useful for sharing or networking, and is useful for those who need to have an overview of your achievements. The resume should include the contact information.
The health care resumes for medical professionals
These resumes are specially designed for health care workers such as Doctors, Nurses, Technicians, Medical Assistants and Allied Staff. The health care coordinators can also use these resumes for putting in their applications for jobs. These resumes are basically similar to the executive resumes, but need to include the following headings. The resume can be extended to 3 pages.
*Summary should be included in bullet form rather than the block form *Include a section on the medical and technical skills. These are especially required for jobs such as Radiologists, Radiographers, Sonographer and other diagnostic medical professionals etc.
The Financial and Accounting Professionals
If you are applying for positions such as Financial Controller or Accounting consultant, the resume needs to include the following and should be restricted to one page preferably.
*Achievements *Core Skills *Responsibilities *Skills such as cash management, budget preparation, taxation, planning, organizational re-engineering and business analysis *Do mention if you have Certified Public Accountant (CPA) certification.
The legal job positions
The legal sector includes both legal and paralegal job positions. The resume can be sent for positions such as judges, lawyers, corporate counsels, paralegal assistants etc. The resume can be between 1-2 pages. The information needs to be included as follows.
*Degrees *Employment including dates *Affiliations *Specializations.
In the resume, at the end, mention the names of the referees or just say that the names of the referees will be provided on request, depending on the type of position you are planning to apply.
If the resume needs to be sent to the recruitment agencies, make sure to include as much as possible. This will enable the agent to match your skills with various jobs available in the market. These are some of the resume examples, which provide comprehensive information on the headings to be includes in various forms of job applications. | <urn:uuid:92823051-8591-4c9a-b4f5-0ab27bf7a7c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theresumebuilder.com/resume-examples | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959273 | 1,308 | 1.5 | 2 |
Tim Bell, General Manager of Lancaster House summited all 19,340ft of Africa’s famous Kilimanjaro on 21st September after a gruelling final day involving almost 21 hours of walking.
Tim, along with fellow Lancaster House staff member Nichola-Jayne Harrison as well as Tim’s paramedic sister Amanda Singleton, made the ascent in aid of North West charity Children Today.
Children Today is a North West based charity that raises funds to provide specialised life changing equipment for severely disabled children in the local area.
The ascent of Kilimanjaro is a gruelling physical challenge, with many people failing to reach the summit due to altitude sickness. Temperatures can range from 30c at the base to as low as –25c at the summit, and the team had to battle through a blizzard before finally reaching the summit.
Eight of the thirteen strong team who set off managed to complete the ascent, raising a total of over £15,000 between them. The five who didn’t reach the summit due to the effects of altitude sickness had to agonisingly turn back only a few hundred feet from the top.
Staff from Lancaster House have been supporting Children Today with a range of fundraising events already this year, from washing cars to walking on hot coals.
Tim Bell, manager of Lancaster House says:
“No amount of training in the Lake District fells can prepare you for the effects of the altitude, and at its worst it feels like your brain’s in a vice. It affects people differently regardless of physical fitness.
“The climb was physically and mentally exhausting but the trek was a truly life changing experience.” | <urn:uuid:18c6f938-8022-4aa6-ba2f-d2a6f78f87bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.englishlakes.co.uk/2011/10/06/kilimanjaro-conquest-for-lancaster-house-manager/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=a4d6f3de1a | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962702 | 350 | 1.617188 | 2 |
The Apinae is the subfamily that includes the majority of bees in the family Apidae, including the familiar "corbiculate" bees (honey bees, stingless bees, orchid bees, and bumblebees), plus all but two of the groups (Nomadinae and Xylocopinae) that were previously classified in the family Anthophoridae. Most species (other than honey bees, bumblebees, and stingless bees) are solitary, though several of the tribes are entirely cleptoparasitic, such as the Ericrocidini, Isepeolini, Melectini, Osirini, Protepeolini, and Rhathymini.
Certain behaviors are known from members of the Apinae that are rarely seen in other bees, including the habit of males forming "sleeping aggregations" on vegetation; several males gathering on a single plant in the evening, grasping a plant with their jaws and resting there through the night (sometimes held in place only by the jaws, with the legs dangling free in space). Also known from Apinae is the habit of gathering floral oils instead of pollen for use as a larval food; this behavior is otherwise known only from a few lineages in the family Melittidae.
Euglossa is a genus of orchid bees (Euglossini). Like all their close relatives, they are native to the Neotropics; an introduced population exists in Florida. They are typically bright metallic blue, green, coppery, or golden.
Euglossa intersecta (formerly known as E. brullei) is morphologically and chromatically atypical for the genus, and resembles the related Eufriesea in a number of characters including coloration. | <urn:uuid:d917cfac-9225-46b5-b9c3-306a3469f0f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fotopedia.com/wiki/Apinae | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950938 | 368 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Youth on dole up by 310%
THE number of youths who are now long term unemployed in the Craigavon area has exploded by 310% since the recession began.
Youth Charity The Princes Trust warned about the dramatic rise as they embark on a new campaign to help young people in the poverty trap.
Figures obtained from the government’s official statistics show that the number under 24s claiming Job Seekers Allowance in Craigavon for more than six months was just 100 in August 2008 whereas in August 2012 the number mushroomed to 410.
In response to this steep rise in long-term joblessness, Prince’s Trust Ambassadors Alesha Dixon, Mark Ronson, Brooke Kinsella and SBTV-founder Jamal Edwards, will take part in the charity’s first live-streamed Youth Forum - reaching out to unemployed young people and those struggling with other issues in the UK today.
Against The Odds will be streamed live on The Trust’s Facebook page on Wednesday (17 OCT), giving young people the chance to have their questions answered by the celebrity panel - all of whom have overcome barriers to get where they are today.
And more than 462 local disadvantaged young people will be given the opportunity to get their lives back on track with the launch of an innovative new series of Get Started programmes themed around arts, music and sport, delivered by The Prince’s Trust and supported by the Big Lottery Fund.
A total of 42 one week courses delivered over the next five years at four locations in Northern Ireland – Craigavon, North Belfast, East Belfast, Newry are aimed at young people aged 16-20, who have left care, have an offending background or are at risk of offending, have disengaged from mainstream education and are furthest from the job market.
The Princes Trust was awarded £484,319 from the Big Lottery Fund’s Reaching Out: Empowering Young People programme to run the Get Started programmes which will aim to improve the self esteem, confidence, education and job opportunities of the young people involved.
Speaking at the launch Ian Jeffers, Director with The Prince’s Trust in Northern Ireland said: “With almost 24,000 18-24 year olds currently unemployed locally, it is crucial that we act now and intervene at an early stage to tackle the very real threat of a lost generation.
“This new series of Get Started programmes is specifically targeted at geographic areas we have identified as having the greatest need. Each themed course is specially designed to re-engage young people to take control of their lives, build their confidence and motivation, and set them on the right path to education, training and employment.”
Three Get Started programmes are scheduled before the end of this year including Get Started with Hair and Beauty, Get Started with Film, Audio and Animation and Get Started with Boxing.
Young people aged 16-20 can find out more about The Prince’s Trust Get Started programmes by calling 028 9074 5454.
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Weather for Lurgan
Monday 20 May 2013
Temperature: 8 C to 16 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: North west
Temperature: 8 C to 15 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: North west | <urn:uuid:4257137a-0a2c-4e85-867e-745e8d6a2c1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lurganmail.co.uk/news/local/youth-on-dole-up-by-310-1-4380446 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937295 | 693 | 1.570313 | 2 |
September 5, 2011
High water prevents most vehicles from entering and exiting the Venetian Isles on Highway 90 in Orleans Parish, La. after rain from Tropical Storm Lee, on Sunday, Sept. 4, 2011. The vast, soggy storm system spent hours during the weekend hovering in the northernmost Gulf of Mexico. Its slow crawl to the north gave more time for its drenching rain bands to pelt a wide swath of vulnerable coastline, raising the flood threat. (AP Photo/The Times-Picayune, Matthew Hinton) MAGS OUT; NO SALES; USA TODAY OUT;
Stories this photo appears in:
While Lee's winds have lost some of their punch, forecasters warn that its slow-moving rain clouds pose a worse flooding threat to inland areas with hills or mountains in the coming days. | <urn:uuid:d3301701-90cd-46ba-9291-33fcc4ef108e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/photos/2011/sep/05/26250/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924734 | 171 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Posted on 13 April 2013.
Students in the Osborne Association’s Green Career Center in the Bronx practice pitching themselves to potential employers in front of their class.
Listen to the full piece:
Governor Andrew Cuomo is pushing a new statewide initiative that gives employers up to $2,400 for each formerly incarcerated person they hire. But first, they’ve got to get the job. Christie Thorne reports.
We’ve all filled out job applications. You write down your name, your employment history, add a few reference contacts. And then you’re asked about your criminal history. Each year, about 700,000 people have to mark YES to that question. That’s the number of men and women leaving the U.S. prison system.
RONALD DAY: Often times it’s like, well, if that person has checked off on an application that he or she has been convicted of a crime, sometimes those applications get put in the garbage.
Ronald Day is the Director of Workforce Development at the Osborne Association, a non-profit that offers practical skills and support for the formerly incarcerated.
RONALD DAY: What we want to do is try to level the playing field for individuals because we know that there’s a great deal of discrimination and a lot of stigma.
SOUND: Students chatting in class at The Osborne Association
It’s a busy Monday morning at the Osborne Association’s headquarters on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx. Fifteen grown men sit in a classroom staring at the front of the room.
SOUND: Teacher talking to students in the classroom
They’ve all spent time in prison, but none intend on going back.
SOUND: Student presents a pitch exercise
Today they’re crafting one-minute pitches – written to sell themselves to potential employers.
SOUND: Student presents a pitch exercise (Continued)
He’s fine practicing one on one, but when he reads in front of the class he stumbles. Disappointed in himself, he gest choked up. But he’s encouraged to keep going by the class, and he does.
SOUND: Students applaude
Then comes the important part. Getting feedback from his classmates.
SOUND: Students critique pitch exercise
After weeks of work on their resumes and practice interviewing, they’ll move on to technical skills, like plumbing and construction. When they make the transition in a few weeks, they’ll be come students of Alvin Banks.
ALVIN BANKS: I think it’s important to provide that inspiration or that template for people to see, like listen – there are opportunities out here and if you work hard enough you can be afforded them and life is not over.
Banks knows what they’re going through first hand. He graduated from here about two years ago, after he struggled to find a job when he got home from prison.
ALVIN BANKS: I came home from the Federal system February 10th, 2011. I did approximately 10 years altogether.
Ten years for fraud. The first thing Banks did when he got out was spend time with his four kids.
ALVIN BANKS: My youngest is 5. She was born while I was on Rikers and I actually was listening to her mother give birth on the phone. I made a decision the last time I was in prison to not come back.
A big part of staying out? Finding a job.
ALVIN BANKS: I was promptly told that I was basically unemployable because of my record.
And this is where a big problem lies for people that are trying to re-enter normal life. Ann Jacobs is the Director of the Prisoner Re-Entry institute at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.
ANN JACOBS:It’s human that when we get discouraged, when we can’t think of the next thing to do and be hopeful about it that we revert to old patterns. I mean, I do think that’s the essence of recidivism.
About 40 percent of people leaving prison will be back in the system within three years. That number is even bigger in New York City – as many as half will go back.
ANN JACOBS:We should want to welcome them back to society and to have them have a stake in the larger whole.
Another problem is that many people returning from prison are going back to places that aren’t equipped to support them. Jacobs says to tackle recidivism we also need to look at these communities. But Alvin Banks says his main goal is to keep them focused on the uphill battle ahead.
ALVIN BANKS:I tell the participants that we have to be more diligent, we have to work harder. We have to get up earlier, we have to be smarter, we have to be more resilient than the average person because of our background.
And the strategy behind Governor Cuomo’s Work for Success program is to help ex-prisoners help themselves. Because lowering recidivism is ultimately good for everyone. Christie Thorne, Columbia Radio News. | <urn:uuid:79d6d221-b3bb-4f45-b846-9080ed1fb6db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uptownradio.org/tag/april-12/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958899 | 1,078 | 1.695313 | 2 |
The Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) went into effect in July 1993, followed by important modifications in January 2008. The FADP would prohibit the transfer of personal data to countries that do not meet Switzerland’s “adequacy” standard for privacy protection. While the United States and Switzerland share the goal of enhancing privacy protection for their citizens, the United States takes a different approach to privacy from that taken by Switzerland. In order to bridge these differences in approach and provide a streamlined means for U.S. organizations to comply with the FADP, the U.S. Department of Commerce in consultation with the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner of Switzerland developed a "safe harbor" framework and this website to provide the information an organization would need to evaluate – and then join – the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor program.
Please note that the form used for self-certifying compliance with the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor Framework is identical to that used for self-certifying compliance with the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework; nevertheless, an organization is not required to self-certify to one of the Safe Harbor Frameworks in order to self-certify to the other. Organizations should also note that when they select “Switzerland” as a country from which they receive personal data, they are self-certifying compliance with the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor Framework. It is critically important that an organization read the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, 15 FAQs, and enforcement documents before submitting a self-certification form.
If your organization is considering joining:
If your organization decides to join:
Upon receipt of your organization’s self-certification submission and corresponding processing fee, the submission will be reviewed for completeness. If and when the submission is deemed complete, it will be posted to the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor List, available on this website. | <urn:uuid:978117ae-796c-4566-b1fe-c15c39ac3536> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://export.gov/safeharbor/swiss/index.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945161 | 404 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Recall -- Firm Press Release
FDA posts press releases and other notices of recalls and market withdrawals from the firms involved as a service to consumers, the media, and other interested parties. FDA does not endorse either the product or the company.
Back to Nature Foods Company Conducts Nationwide Recall of Nantucket Blend Trail Mix Containing Pistachio Nuts Because of Possible Health Risk
Media Help Line
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- MADISON, WI (March 25, 2009) – Back to Nature Foods Company announced today a voluntary recall in the United States of its Nantucket Blend trail mix containing pistachio nuts that may have the potential to be contaminated with the Salmonella organism. This possible contamination is not connected with the recent outbreak associated with peanuts or peanut butter.
The following products are being recalled and consumers should not eat them:
- Back to Nature Nantucket Blend trail mix, 28 oz. bag, UPC code 59283-00020 and a “best by” date between 08 20 09 and 12 12 09.
- Back to Nature Nantucket Blend trail mix, 10 oz. bag, UPC code 59283-31039 and a “best by” date between 11 04 09 and 12 12 09.
Consumers can find the “best by” date on the back of the package and should discard any product they have. Consumers can contact the company at 1-866-538-8280 with any questions.
There have been no cases of Salmonellosis reported to date in connection with these products and the company is issuing this recall as a precaution. These products were distributed to retail stores nationwide.
Salmonella can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Healthy persons infected with Salmonella often experience fever, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. In rare circumstances, infection with Salmonella can result in the organism getting into the bloodstream and producing more severe illnesses such as arterial infections (i.e., infected aneurysms), endocarditis and arthritis. | <urn:uuid:b2274701-2a33-4cd8-a19f-6b85519515e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ArchiveRecalls/2009/ucm128385.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907556 | 441 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Facebook, over the last few years, has become the number one site for social networking and has many millions of members. With this ever-expanding social networking site finding its reach continually growing, it has become a major source of advertisement for individuals, companies, businesses, media and groups. With million of users from across the world, it lets people share their likes and dislikes with others and cast influence upon them with their choices.
People like to join fan pages and share their fan pages with others just for fun, but this also helps the page owners to advertise their cause and make money too. Seeing the popularity of Facebook and its wide consumer base, companies now have made it an important source to use to market and advertise their business; people who they could never target are now in their reach and their brand or name is spread all over the world from a single platform.
On the other hand, for Facebook users, it has now become possible to interact directly with their favorite celebrities and brands. When users join, like or dislike a fan page, this fact gets posted on their own wall and their friends and family can see this and follow their link to join the same fan page. This process can snowball and in a flash a fan page has hundreds of thousands of fans.
Making a fan page is a very simple task. With very little knowledge of website layout, one can easily make his own fan page. In many ways, a Facebook fan page is just like one’s own website and offers the liberty to place any type of content including videos, images, banners, links and logos to decorate your page according to your own needs.
Once the page is setup, now comes the phase of advertising it. For this purpose, one can start from his own friend list post on their walls and on friends of friends’ walls. These are also known as nepotism links. As soon as a few users become your fans, your user-base will start growing by itself as friends of friends and their friends will also visit and become a fan of your page.
In order to keep your page alive, you have to update with new posts on a regular basis to make sure that your page is current and people can see something new every day on their wall and keep visiting your page.
Most of world’s famous brands, companies, organizations, media groups, TV channels, celebrities and individuals now have their own fan pages and have millions of fans who visit their pages. This has helped them not only advertise their business but turn this advertisement into actual sales.
Claire Jarrett runs Marketing By Web, who offer SEO in Bristol and Social Media Marketing
Popularity: 3% [?] | <urn:uuid:cd3f41f5-fa3e-4ea8-9b81-49dedf323138> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://seodesk.org/profiting-from-facebook-fan-pages/ | 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 | 0.971544 | 547 | 1.789063 | 2 |
A New Legislature Begins Work
California’s 120 legislators were sworn in December 3 for the two-year session that runs through 2014. Both houses have “super-majorities” of Democrats meaning there are enough Democratic votes to pass taxes or place constitutional amendments on the ballot without the need to compromise with Republicans to win the necessary votes.
While not a stampede, several Democrats are introducing constitutional amendments that lower the approval threshold for local taxes and bonds.
One drops the approval level for local tax increases and bond measures for l improvements to libraries from 66 percent to 55 percent.
“While demand for library services is growing, many libraries are struggling to meet the needs of their users in light of ongoing state and local budget cuts,” said Sen. Lois Wolk of Davis, in a press release touting her measure.
“We’ve seen major reductions in hours and even closings. Lowering the voter threshold to 55 percent will give more local communities the ability to keep libraries open and serving their needs.”
Similarly, San Francisco’s Sen. Mark Leno wants to lower the approval of local parcel taxes for schools from two-thirds to 55 percent – the current approval level for local school bond measures.
While it takes a two-thirds vote to place constitutional amendments on the ballot, voters need only approve the changes on a majority vote.
Democrats are exercising some restraint. A move by one senator to return vehicle license fees – branded the “car tax” by some – to the level they were before being reduced by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
That reduction costs the state some $6 billion in lost revenue annually. (License fees are also deductible on federal taxes.) Fearing a spate of media coverage proving their super majorities will inexorably lead to higher taxes, the senator was asked to shelve his proposal – at least temporarily.
Gov. Jerry Brown must meet a lot of new lawmakers. There are 27 freshman Democrats in the Assembly and 12 new Republicans.
(Editor’s Note: The California Chamber of Commerce might be of help to the Democratic governor. Here’s their collection of photographs of the state’s constitutional officers and lawmakers.There’s several faces on the list Brown should already recognize.)
- Capitol Cliches (16)
- Conversational Currency (3)
- Great Moments in Capitol History (1)
- News (1210)
- Opinionation (26)
- Overheard (215)
- Restaurant Raconteur (21)
- Spotlight (85)
- Trip to Tokyo (8)
- Venting (184)
- Warren Buffett (32)
- Welcome (1)
- Words That Aren't Heard in Committee Enough (7) | <urn:uuid:4495b6d9-1ee3-49f9-a38e-bc6ca9d85cdb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.californiascapitol.com/2012/12/a-new-legislature-begins-work/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941158 | 572 | 2.109375 | 2 |
The visit, sponsored by Apple Computer in partnership with Piedmont’s schools, is the second such visit in two years. With just more than 1,200 students and three schools, the district is small. But many consider Piedmont a leader for its use of technology in education.
“Since Apple has partnered with Piedmont, I think their stocks have gone up,” Piedmont Mayor Brian Young said in an early-morning meeting Tuesday, drawing laughter from the visiting educators.
But Piedmont schools Superintendent Matt Akin said the site visit wasn't about selling computers.
“This isn't an Apple commercial,” he said, adding that while it's up to each system to choose which vendor to use, he believes Apple has a vision for blending technology and education.
Three Apple representatives were on hand for the visit, as well. They declined to speak for the record. One said she couldn’t speak for the company. Another said the focus should be on Piedmont’s schools.
The district began in 2010 by leasing Macintosh laptops for each student in grades four through 12 to use 24 hours a day. The four-year, zero-interest lease from Apple will cost the district about 4 percent of its budget –- $850,000 -– and will be paid for with a $150,000 federal grant and with local funds. The district will own the computers at the end of the four-year lease.
An additional federal grant paid for 80 percent of the $800,000 cost of a school-wide wireless broadband network.
A $160,000 grant from the Susie Parker Stringfellow Health Fund of the Community Foundation of Northeast Alabama last year expanded the program to include computers, iPad tablet computers and iPod Touch handheld devices for K-3 students.
A city-wide wireless Internet system, currently being installed, is being paid for with an additional $750,000 grant, plus $250,000 in matching local funds, through the Federal Communications Commission's “Learning on the Go” program. The district is one of 20 such FCC pilot projects across the country.
Once the project is complete, students and teachers will have free Internet access at home, bridging the gap, administrators say, between parents who can afford home Internet and parents who can’t.
Along with the obvious, and most common, question from the visitors Tuesday -– how did you pay for all of this? –- many wanted to know about the basic nuts-and-bolts of running such a large technology program.
“How do you pay for and handle laptop repairs?” asked one visiting technology coordinator.
Answer: Dedicated help desks staffed with newly trained library media specialists and Jacksonville State University students (paid for by JSU) and Piedmont students. The cost of repairs is covered by parents, who each pay a $50 yearly use fee, though technology director Rena Seals said area churches have stepped up to help parents who cannot afford the fee.
“What happens if a student leaves his laptop at home?” asked another.
Answer: There are loaner computers ready to go at a moment’s notice.
Harold Jackson came to Piedmont Tuesday curious to see what kinds of changes are taking place in the classrooms. Jackson is the technology data administrator for Jefferson County Schools.
Coming from the second-largest district in the state, with 56 schools, Jackson said undertaking a one-to-one laptop initiative would be difficult to do all at once.
“I think you'd have to start small and build up to this,” he said. “Possibly a few pilot schools and then work towards this.”
And as always, cash-strapped districts across Alabama are constantly battling for funds. Jackson said paying for such a program would be problematic for any system.
“I think that will be the biggest obstacle anywhere,” he said.
For Piedmont though, Akin said prioritizing and looking for money everywhere, from grants to low- or no-interest loans, was the right thing to do for the students.
He showed recent tests scores to help make his argument. The percentage of Piedmont students scoring in the advanced range on the Alabama High School Graduation Exam has increased by 20 percent from last year, Akin said.
“My only answer is, it's probably student engagement,” he said.
Attendance rates have remained roughly the same for the past three years, but Akin said he believes computers are helping students become more engaged while at school.
Devvon Pettway is responsible for technology at Midfield City Schools, a small three-school system southwest of Birmingham.
Like Piedmont, Midfield has a large percentage of students on free and reduced-price lunch, about 80 percent, and it has about the same enrollment. Children qualify for free or reduced-price lunch based on their family’s income, making it a relative measure of poverty in a school district.
Funding is something that would have to be solved, Pettway said, but walking along a hallway in Piedmont Middle School, he said he was impressed with what he'd seen so far.
“Especially the partnerships between the schools, the city and the community,” he said. “That's what I hope we're able to do.”
Staff writer Eddie Burkhalter: 256-235-3563. On Twitter @Burkhalter_Star. | <urn:uuid:6e63cb18-0d5e-4d91-9736-b12d240e11c5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.annistonstar.com/view/full_story/18427054/article-School-leaders-flock-to-Piedmont-for-lesson-in-technology?instance=news_right | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969871 | 1,145 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Colorado Beetle Threatening Potato Crops in Finland
November 3, 2011 2 Comments
Finland is experiencing a longer and warmer summer than normal which is threatening their potato crops. The warmer temperatures have led to increases in the prevalence of the Colorado potato beetle which has been attempting to establish in Finland for the past decade. The Colorado potato beetle itself is a highly effective reproducer and necessitates a wide range of control methods to prevent its spread.
The Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata) is an important and potentially devastating crop pest. The Plantwise distribution map shows that it is present in North America and Central Europe but has not yet been able to establish a population in Scandinavia. This is due to the vigilance of national authorities in early detection and control measures being enforced.
Despite the control measures in place the Finnish Food Safety Authority (EVIRA) have recently detected a record number of beetles in the country’s potato fields. EVIRA believe that the unusually long and warm summer has worked in favour of the beetles.
The beetles emerge from the soil and begin to eat the potato plant leaves before laying their eggs. The summer weather conditions are important in their development, with the hot weather accelerating their growth. This means that they will lay their eggs earlier and that these new offspring will develop quicker than normal. The increased offspring development may lead to multiple generations of the beetle emerging in the same season with the potential to significantly reduce crop yields.
The Colorado potato beetle is a highly effective reproducer and one beetle can produce hundreds of offspring in a single season. These beetles were recently sighted in September when the potatoes were being harvested. During the day they are found at the top parts of the potato plants before they burrow back into the ground overnight. They are found on small household allotments as well as large farms and the presence of round holes in the ground are a sign that the beetles have pupated.
If the beetles are not controlled or destroyed then devastating crop losses can occur after only a few summers. The most efficient way to control them is to collect them by hand, however there are a range of alternative options. The Plantwise datasheet on the Colorado potato beetle has a large amount of information on methods to control them. A simple control is crop rotation which delays the colonisation of the farmer’s potato crops by the beetle. If the beetle reaches the potato crop later then they will be unable to produce more offspring until later in the potato season. Biological controls, using Edovum puttleri (an exotic egg parasitoid), have had limited success in eastern USA and have been largely discontinued due to the high cost.
More information on Finland’s response to the Colorado potato beetle can be found on the EVIRA website. | <urn:uuid:b372a072-9dfe-442a-9937-d74fb1737df6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.plantwise.org/2011/11/03/colorado-beetle-threatening-potato-crops-in-finland/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964997 | 567 | 3.171875 | 3 |
STORM IS COMING!
When a white-bearded farmer announces, "Storm is coming!", Dog panics. He warns the sheep, the yellow duck and the cows, and they all gallop for shelter, their bodies stretched out and legs flailing as they repeat the warning. Two spreads, one tracing a diagonal path downhill toward the reader and the other directed uphill to a distant red barn, magnify the intensity by use of steep perspective. "The barking, the flapping, the bleating and the mooing awoke Cat from her nap in the hay…. 'And who is Storm?' she meowed." No one knows, but the sheep baa that "He must be-e-e very sca-a-a-ry!" The menagerie cowers at the looming purple-gray clouds ("Storm can't find us in the dark," Dog reminds them) and the bright, zigzag bolts of lightning ("The sky is going to blind Storm so he can't see us!" he decides). Spengler (Clickety Clack) conveys the sense of emergency with close-ups of the worried duck and glimpses of wind-tossed trees, but alleviates the anxiety with well-lit, warm pastel imagery and a peek at the snoozing, unconcerned gray cat. In her picture-book debut, Tekavec wisely leaves it to readers to point out the animals' faulty logic, and soothes fears of thunder by making a game of "Storm's" delayed arrival. Ages 4-8. (Mar.) | <urn:uuid:ddc2731f-b2cc-44a6-89b2-1e0682a62986> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://publishersweekly.com/978-0-8037-2626-0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927364 | 323 | 2.484375 | 2 |
Simple Steps Enhance Computer Privacy, Security
After the first virus invaded her computer through an "always on" high-speed cable connection to the Internet, Annie Williams, from Wisconsin, considered buying antivirus software. Getting rid of the virus required reloading all the computer's software, a process that wiped out the family's documents, e-mail addresses, and anything else stored in memory. This first headache cost a lot of time and frustration--but no cash.
Yet once the virus was gone, antivirus software quickly fell to the bottom of Annie's list. The demands of managing a household of five and Annie's work as an emergency medical technician seemed much more important than computer security. Then a second virus attacked the computer. That virus gets at least part of the blame for the nasty grinding sound that led to the metallic "ping" that signaled the demise of Annie's hard drive.
The second time around, antivirus software was one of the first items loaded onto Annie's replacement hard drive. This instance was more costly than the first. A new hard drive runs about $200 and a new copy of Windows XP can cost up to $330. Because Annie and family members did the work themselves the cost was reduced considerably. If a professional does it for you, you'll pay more. Today, Annie and her family are careful to regularly access updates from the software vendor. She sums up the experience with just three words: "Live and learn."
Annie's story is real, although her name was changed at her request to conceal her computer naiveté. Annie and her family can be thankful they escaped with only a fried hard drive. The significant consequences that can arise from connecting an unprotected computer to the Internet vary depending on whether a computer invader takes something, such as information that enables a thief to create a false identity, or whether the invader leaves something behind, such as a virus or program that allows the invader to return to take control of your computer for dubious purposes.
'Casual' risksThe Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently launched a campaign on its Web site to educate consumers about the need to protect information stored on their personal computers. Ellen Finn, an attorney in the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, says a surprising number of consumers share Annie's casual attitude toward computers.
Software can protect the computer with minimal interference in everyday operations.
"People just don't have an instinct for how important information is these days, how easily it can be misused, and how many people are interested in capturing it," Finn says.
Finn says some consumers appear to view unreliability and occasional operating problems as the price of using a computer. These casual computer users fail to comprehend that the risks are much greater than coping with a virus or even replacing hardware.
"People need to educate themselves about the reality of the threats they face and the steps they can take to protect themselves," Finn says.
Finn says the first step is developing an awareness of the type of information that identity thieves need to pretend to be you. Regard account numbers of any type as sensitive information. That goes beyond credit union/bank accounts to utility accounts and cell phone accounts. Hackers who sneak into your computer to "steal" your identity also are interested in any type of relationship that offers significant personal information, which then can be used to stage an impersonation.
This impersonation is the basis of identity theft, which occurs when someone uses details about you or your relationships to obtain credit or open new accounts. Identity theft hurts your credit rating when the criminal defaults on a loan or credit card, fails to pay a cell phone bill, or writes bad checks on a new account opened in your name. Experts say that fixing the damage to your credit typically takes two years of diligent effort.
Hackers also can use a "Trojan Horse" program to get inside your computer and take over its Internet connection to hide illegal online activity or to launch denial-of-service attacks that bombard corporate Web sites with an overwhelming volume of e-mail, sometimes forcing the site to shut down completely. Even computer owners who unknowingly "lend" their computer to these attacks by hackers can come under investigation by law enforcement agencies.
Hackers can easily steal the information used to create common passwords.
Everyone who connects to the Internet potentially opens his or her computer to invasion by viruses or hackers. Computer users with high-speed or broadband Internet connections carry additional risk, since hackers are drawn to their enhanced online capabilities. Fortunately, you can take simple steps to protect your home computer.
Finn notes that software vendors are helping consumers face threats to computer security with inexpensive software that is easily installed. Configured properly, this software can protect the computer with minimal interference in everyday operations. In the future, Finn says virus and firewall protections should be standard on every new computer.
While security tools are vital, Finn says understanding safe computer operation is equally important. This is especially true for young users who know how to make the computer perform complex tasks but take safety for granted. The FTC hopes that kids will respond to the appeal of its "cyber security spokesturtle" Dewie, who embodies the message that users should carry a security "shell" with them whenever they roam the Internet.
"Kids are so computer savvy. They know how to download music files, and instant message, and do all those things," Finn says. Unfortunately, they may not understand the consequences of all their actions. As an example, Finn tells the story of the executive who allowed a teenage niece to use his home computer, which contained company files that allowed him to work at home. When the niece downloaded software to share music files, she unwittingly set it up in a manner that made every file on the computer accessible via the Internet.
To prevent similar security lapses, Finn says users of all ages need to develop computer intuition that helps them define appropriate online conduct, so they quickly can identify inappropriate behavior that poses a risk for users of any age.
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I have the book as well and find it very appropriate for this age - or at
least for my students. Students of this age are into making things look
"real" and they can learn about perspective, overlapping, and shading in a
more fun way. In fact, I have used some of the pages as a 5 minute sketching
| Melissa Enderle |
/)| melissae |(\
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__( ( art teacher/ adaptive art /_) ) )__
((( \ \ /_) / / / ) ))
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> Dear Colleagues,
> I bought Mark Kistler's Drawing in 3-D, for my nephew who is in seventh
> grade. Does anyone know if the book appropriate for that grade level? I am
> worried that it may be too childish, but it looked like it contained some
> things that would be fun for him to try. I've only seen some of his
> drawings, but he seems to be working on making things look three
> dimensional. He does quite well drawing from observation, and I thought the
> book would help him with some techniques. I'd like comments about the
> book's age appropriateness (as opposed to its educational value). I just
> want my nephew to enjoy his present!
> Thanks, Leah
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--- You are currently subscribed to artsednet as: hm-aen.edu To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-artsednet-4261K | <urn:uuid:e21dab3e-88f5-4dcb-9287-b49f23a20972> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.getty.edu/education/teacherartexchange/archive/Dec99/0795.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92148 | 423 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Project creator Anna Powell-Smith wrote for the Open Knowledge Foundation blog:
Domesday Book might be one of the most famous government datasets ever created. Which makes it all the stranger that it’s not freely available online – at the National Archives, you have to pay £2 per page to download copies of the text.
Domesday is pretty much unique. It records the ownership of almost every acre of land in England in 1066 and 1086 – a feat not repeated in modern times. It records almost every household. It records the industrial resources of an entire nation, from castles to mills to oxen. | <urn:uuid:d926ad13-04bb-4151-a2b6-f79ebcb1ae5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://halfblog.net/2012/01/07/open-domesday-book/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91672 | 127 | 2.375 | 2 |
Let us spread the fact of creation together
The proofs of Creation consist of all knowledge and facts that reveal the existence and oneness of God and His sublime power, omniscience and artistry. These are means whereby people become aware of and turn to God.
Revealing to the eyes of the heedless the details of many proofs of Creation and perfections that they are unaware of taking place all around them every day will be highly effective in doing away with that heedlessness. There are many signs leading to faith that everyone has grown used to seeing over the years and very few people even think about. A person’s own body is by itself a great proof of Creation. Our eyes are more complex and superior to even the most advanced cameras. All the systems in our bodies work together in great harmony and equilibrium, and chemical processes that can only take place in giant laboratories are carried out far more perfectly by our own internal organs. Jews, Christians and Muslims must work together in order to eradicate this culture of heedlessness and replace it with a culture based on thanks and obedience to God.
In many verses of the Qur’an people are called on to reflect on the facts cited above and to see and grasp these proofs of the existence and greatness of God. A few of the hundreds of verses on that subject are as follows:
Do you not see how He created seven heavens in layers, and placed the Moon as a light in them and made the Sun a blazing lamp? God caused you to grow from the earth then will return you to it and bring you out again. God has spread the earth out as a carpet for you so that you could use its wide valleys as roadways. (Surah Nuh, 15-20)
There must be an end to the historic problems, prejudices, misunderstandings and arguments and disputes based on bigotry between Christians, Jews and Muslims. It must not be forgotten that there is no time to lose. It is obvious that both sides must approach one another with understanding and compassion. The important thing is to mention common points, rather than differences, to be constructive rather than destructive, to help rather than to obstruct, to make things easy rather than difficult, to complete rather than separate and to unite rather than divide.
An intense propaganda, both overt and covert, has pervaded everywhere in the name of so-called evolution or so-called science. A newspaper you glance at, an advertising poster, a book you read, a film you see or a documentary you watch on television or on the Internet, they are all full of messages denying Creation and our Creator. Yet the proofs of Creation are everywhere. God created everything in the universe, what we see around us, from the cells in the depths of our bodies to the boundless galaxies. The perfection in these, the magnificent artistry and the grand order are proofs of that Creation.
The universe is full of countless such details. Yet most people never stop to think of them in their daily lives. For that reason, preaching and describing the proofs of Creation that people never think about will encourage the other party to reflect, and play an important role in their appreciation of the might and power of God.
Every truly believing Christian, Jew and Muslim has a duty to do all he can in that regard. The correct course of action for Jews, Christians and Muslims who believe in the One God, seek to earn His good pleasure, fully submit themselves to Him, who are genuinely devoted to Him, who praise Him and basically share the same values, is to act together. | <urn:uuid:681569fb-b1e0-4d91-80d3-89900e9e5851> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.harunyahya.com/en/books/29045/A_Call_For_Unity___leaflet/chapter/8160/Let_us_spread_the_fact_of_Creation_together | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966595 | 722 | 2.3125 | 2 |
A superior example of Rhode Island commercial architecture. A brick building with Greek-Revival details, it was used by the Fall River Ironworks, the Rumford Chemical Company and the Phillips Lead Company. Renovated in 1977 by the Rhode Island School of Design for reuse by its Department of Architecture. There is no public access to the building for the safety of our students and their work.
Services / Features / Restrictions: Attraction, Educational, Cultural, Greater Providence
Handicap Service: Contact property for current services | <urn:uuid:5943b7d6-05a0-4eec-8977-75f62897bcce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.visitrhodeisland.com/what-to-see/art-galleries/106/bayard-ewing-building/?mobile=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932496 | 106 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Washington, September 16 (ANI): Networks of giant polygonal troughs etched across crater basins on Mars have been identified as desiccation cracks caused by evaporating lakes, providing further evidence of a warmer, wetter Martian past.
The findings were presented at the European Planetary Science Congress by PhD student M. Ramy El Maarry of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research.
The polygons are formed when long cracks in the surface of the Martian soil intersect.
El Maarry investigated networks of cracks inside 266 impact basins across the surface of Mars and observed polygons reaching up to 250 meters in diameter.
Polygonal troughs have been imaged by several recent missions but, until now, they have been attributed to thermal contractions in the Martian permafrost.
El Maarry created an analytical model to determine the depth and spacing of cracks caused by stresses building up through cooling in the Martian soil.
He found that polygons caused by thermal contraction could have a maximum diameter of only about 65 meters, much smaller than the troughs he was seeing in the craters.
“I got excited when I saw that the crater floor polygons seemed to be too large to be caused by thermal processes. I also saw that they resembled the desiccation cracks that we see on Earth in dried up lakes,” said El Maarry.
“The stresses that build up when liquids evaporate can cause deep cracks and polygons on the scale I was seeing in the craters,” he added.
El Maarry identified the crater floor polygons using images taken by the MOC camera on Mars Global Surveyor and the HiRISE and Context cameras on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The polygons in El Maarry’s survey had an average diameter of between 70 and 140 kilometers, with the width of the actual cracks ranging between 1 and 10 meters.
Evidence suggests that between 4.6 and 3.8 billion years ago, Mars was covered in significant amounts of water.
Rain and river water would have collected inside impact crater basins, creating lakes that may have existed for several thousand years before drying out.
However, according to El Maarry, in the northern hemisphere, some of the crater floor polygons could have been formed much more recently.
“When a meteorite impacts with the Martian surface, the heat can melt ice trapped beneath the Martian crust and create what we call a hydrothermal system. Liquid water can fill the crater to form a lake, covered in a thick layer of ice. Even under current climatic conditions, this may take many thousands of years to disappear, finally resulting in the desiccation patterns,” said El Maarry. (ANI) | <urn:uuid:e3818d2a-e976-49e4-9a52-49e67741de55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://silverscorpio.com/tag/m-ramy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947703 | 561 | 3.515625 | 4 |
What does 11:11 mean? Many of us have been seeing this number combination for some time now. We know it means something. We feel the energy of it in a magical way; it's captivating, this sense of meaning hidden in the geometry of these numbers.
For many, 11:11 has served as a wakeup call. Nothing is, after all, random; the world and our lives are FULL of signs and symbols. Order IS. Seeing this number repeatedly to the point where one begins to seek understanding and wonder about the meaning of it, has led many to consider the reality of their true nature: as spiritual beings having a human experience, and to begin consciously participating in their own evolution.
As we understand the multidimensional import of such patterns, it becomes easier to see how this has taken place.
We are energy. Numbers and sequences of numbers have an energetic quality and essence, like music or sounds--all of which are vibration; which when organized and coherent are beautiful and transmit meaning through experience and through content/information. This information comes directly through the "melody" of such "music" and also our cells receive overtones we cannot even comprehend with our physical senses. We internalize the intelligence and structure of this energetic transmission holographically.
All-That-Is transmits waves of energy in wholeness; expanding and changing wholeness.
These waves exist in a completeness that is received and then revealed in alignment with divine timing. Many of us have had this experience of only understanding things later, or in hindsight, or with further information and/or change. Or from a different perspective!
The symmetry and structure, the "song" of 11:11 is affected in part by it's own contained blueprint and also by the spiral return to this configuration in different locations in time and space. We approach 11:11 this year in a particular collective version of the unified field, and for each of us--unfolding our own expanded lineage as is perfect and appropriate--we receive the specific messages and it's overtones, as our "hearing" allows. Our expectations, beliefs and focus also create and influence the unified field; thus altering instantaneously the wholeness which is transmitted and continuously known.
The numeric pattern of 11:11 is a sequence of codes. These energetic structure communicates directly to our DNA. At a cellular level we receive these incoming energies that are more available and affected, in particular, because of the timeline shift of the 10-10-10 triple Stargate.
1 is a magical number: a number of wholeness, unity, and new beginnings. 1 tends to primarily be associated with pure, positive energy! Consider what 1111 means in terms of the amplification of this energy!
In addition, for those Lightworkers participating in the collective movement toward expanded consciousness and the creation of a civilization based on unity and love, 11:11 cannot help but create within us an anticipation and hope for the triple date Stargate of 11:11:11. This date, along with the 10-10-10 Stargate we just experienced, and the 12:12:12 Stargate two years from now, are enormously powerful points at which our cultural and energetic templates may jump to new, more expansive and love filled versions; tipping points in reality!
Recently I channeled a message from Archangel Michael while completing the Monthly Infusions, and he speaks to this unfolding:
55 ... The Crystalline Earth Grid 88 is infusing you with waves of Divine Knowing flowing since the 10-10-10 Stargate. All resistance to self-love and identifying with your expanded state of being are arising, which is challenging to all in different ways.
2 We are already preparing and progressing toward the December Solstice Alignment 333 and preparations are underway to elevate your body structure as fully as possible to receive the powerful energies that will come forth at that time, and in the month of December in general. 33 There is a need to continually integrate the specific transmissions of light for they build upon one another and as your Lightbody is stretched it is increasingly tempered in its ability to hold more light and to shift to a crystalline form
The 11:11 Stargate will find us having a clearer sense of our Divine I AM Presence. More and more we are becoming familiar with this newly expanded aspect of our energy.
We are moving into a continually expanding experience of our nature; multidimensional. We have become more aware of the elemental earth energies, and have moved into a perspective that allows us to see the duality of the 3rd dimension. The fourth dimension initiates us to Unity Consciousness, the fifth dimension to our own divinity. The sixth? Sacred geometry. All of these dimensions exist simultaneously and becoming a conscious multidimensional being is about learning the qualities and cultivating the frequency that allows access to the creative energies within these dimensions. As a planet we are aspiring to shift to a 5th dimensional home base frequency. As individuals, we can explore many of these dimensions as we continue in our ascension journey of expanding consciousness.
11:11 is a powerful stargate in which our focus influences the potential shift of the Earth's timeline and the dominant experience of reality may be refined and further transformed by collective focus.
The New Reality Transmission taking place on 11:11 is an inspiring manifestation reflecting the expanded focus on collective co-creation and the belief in the value of such an endeavor.
More and more as each of us claim our Divine I AM Presence, we will be drawn to collective co-creation; for collaboration is powerful and a lot of great change and learning is accomplished when we come together.
Whether you are new to considering such things as powerful days of alignment, transformation and collaboration, or familiar and full of anticipation for these amazing moments of converging energy and focus, you and your choices upon that date, matter.
Each of us carry divine unique energy within our physical body. We each came to Earth with particular mixes of DNA in our lineage; specifically chosen--planetary, cosmic, and personal--for participation in this legendary moment of Earth's collective move toward a new dimensional level and the reinvention of our civilization and culture to reflect our new ideals and informed by wholeness.
Honor yourself on 11:11 by taking seriously and with dignity, your own presence.
Choose in some way to pause and contemplate the things you value most, and how you would create a New Beginning or a New Earth based on the highest ideals you have for beauty, order, love, unity, balance, harmony, oneness and in recognition of the divinity of each other being sharing this planet with you, as well as the planet our home, herself.
Your own vibration, the geometry and sensibility of your "song" and how you choose to focus it have more impact on this day than you may realize. Claim what is yours to create.
Likewise, if you're willing to receive the infusion of this new beginning; this holus-bolus transmission from the Unified Field on this particular spiral point revisiting the 11:11 energies, then say so: declare you're open and willing and wish to receive and integrate and with ease.
New Beginnings. We're creating one right here, together. Awareness is collective; we all draw from a common unified field. The direction of life is flowing from duality toward Unity and Wholeness. Be aware what direction you're looking in, thinking about and thereby creating.
At this intersection of the known and the unknown, is the essence of every NOW. As you evolve so does the Universe evolve. As we identify more and more with our collective awareness we move increasingly into freedom! Love! The more you act knowing your influence, your "song" is heard everywhere and affects everything, the more alignment, inspiration and ease you experience. Ironic but true. It's a bonus!
Assume today is going to feel new. Be unique. That you will feel at peace. That you will know harmony, that love will show up in a surprising way. That something amazing is taking place that YOU are an important part of. That you will discover something beautiful about yourself. That you will feel profoundly whole and connected. And that all of this could be the start of something entirely new. And big.
P.S. If you find this message, or learn about all this AFTER 11:11? Guess what? Time is just a construct of our dominant reality. You can access this point just by intending to. Everybody's in. | <urn:uuid:da7ba4b1-420c-498b-9fe7-afafce98e21e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.expectwonderful.com/2010/11/the-energy-of-1111.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946401 | 1,746 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Welcome to the Forum. To be honest, I am skeptical that your initial symptoms are reflective of an STIs acquired through condom protected sex, irrespective of whom your partner was. Condoms are the single best protective measure a person can take to avoid STIs and your symptoms are really not suggestive of any typical STI. Your culture results reflect this...
Welcome to our Forum. This was a no risk event. There is little risk that there person who had blood drawn before you had HIV or other blood born infections and even if they did, these infections are not spread by the sort of contact you describe or by transfer from one person's hand to another. The organisms do not live well outside of the body and t...
Welcome back to our Forum. I'll be pleased to comment. Your concerns suggest a misunderstanding of how HIV and other STIs are transmitted, For sexual transmission of HIV to occur, there must be penetrative genital or ano-genital sex. HIV is not transmitted by rubbing without penetration, not by masturbation, even when partners get each other's ...
The situation reported for health care workers are very different. These reports are for KNOWN exposures with DIRECT inoculation.
I will not play the "what if" game. This thread will now be over. I recommend you relax and stay off of the Internet. EWH
Brief, final answers.
1. No, all of this is within the normal spectrum for HSV-1.
2. No this is not a sign of HIV.
3. The only way to rule out HIV for sure is to have the blood tests. Other values may or may not be abnormal.
There will be no further answers to this thread. EWH
1. The Mayo Clinic is correct, most epididymis is in men under 40 is due to STDs but trich does not cause it. This could be prostatits which is not an STD.
2. Contact is not penetration. You would know if you had penetrated her.
3. This is an unanswerable, "what if" question. There is no reason to think she or you have ...
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On August 14, the New York Times addressed one of the significant worries for U.S. media outlets covering the Israeli bombing and invasion of Lebanon: Civilians in Lebanon were the primary victims, dying in far greater numbers than Israeli military personnel and civilians combined. (Amnesty International estimated that the fighting killed about 1,000 civilians in Lebanon and about 40 in Israel—8/23/06.)
The problem for U.S. media was how to obscure that fact. As the Times put it, “Particularly vexing for many American news organizations is the struggle to determine how and in what proportion images of civilian dead and injured should be displayed in their coverage, when one side’s casualties greatly surpass the other’s.”
What’s “vexing” about this issue is that news consumers might have more sympathy for a country where many hundreds of civilians are being killed than for another where a few dozen have died—a reaction news outlets certainly don’t want to be seen as encouraging.
To avoid this, the Times reported that some outlets declare that they “do not impose a formula for fairness,” meaning they don’t feel bound to report civilian deaths in the proportions in which they occur. CNN president Jonathan Klein told the paper, “This is not a sporting event, where we’re toting up the scores of both sides.”
Others took the approach that there should be a formula—one that gave the same amount of coverage to deaths on both sides, no matter what the relative numbers. The executive producer of ABC’s World News With Charles Gibson explained to the Times that the newscast handled the problem by, in the Times’ words, running “one segment from Lebanon and one from Israel as a way to tell both sides of the fighting.”
ABC’s admission confirmed something that J.J. Goldberg, editor of the Jewish newspaper the Forward, had noted on the radio program On the Media (7/21/06):
Goldberg added: “And if you’re simply looking at victimization and the human casualties, you would have to ask, why is the Israeli side getting equal time?”
Not all media watchers would agree. On the July 30 broadcast of the CNN media show Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz asked numerous times if reporters were giving a misleading view of the conflict—that is, focusing more on Lebanese suffering—“just because the scale of destruction is greater on the Lebanon side.” Kurtz reiterated the point in a piece for the Washington Post (7/24/06), lamenting that “the very technology that enables reporters to show footage of a Lebanese father soon after his young son has been killed by a bomb blast carries not just an emotional punch but the power to distort the overall picture.”
The “distortion” of the “overall picture” according to Kurtz, was that
Kurtz’s evidence of “distortion” was itself dubious: Israel had already “retaliated” by shelling and bombing Lebanon months before the July escalation (Chicago Tribune, 5/29/06), and had itself frequently violated the “U.N.-sanctioned border,” sometimes on a near-daily basis (London Guardian, 8/8/06). And the notion that Hezbollah fighters’ mixing with the civilian population explains Israel’s killing of civilians has been questioned (Human Rights Watch, 8/2/06; Salon, 7/28/06).
Even after the ceasefire, Kurtz wondered if journalists were going too easy on Hezbollah in reporting on the destruction in Lebanon (CNN, 8/20/06):
It is hard to imagine Kurtz complaining that a story about domestic activities in Israel did not mention that Israeli forces had recently been killing hundreds of civilians in Lebanon.
Perhaps Kurtz was happier with reporting that took some trouble to obscure the death toll. An August 9 AP report, for example, combined the casualties on both sides of the border: “After four weeks of fighting, nearly 800 people have died on both sides.” An August 14 USA Today editorial framed the issue the same way, welcoming the cease-fire that would hopefully calm “the month-long war that has killed hundreds of civilians in Lebanon and Israel.”
The full picture of Lebanese civilian deaths was obscured in other reporting. An August 11 New York Times report on possible U.S. shipments of short-range cluster rockets to Israel noted that “some State Department officials have sought to delay the approval because of concerns over the likelihood of civilian casualties, and the diplomatic repercussions.” The paper added that the “prospect” of the use of these weapons had “raised the intense concerns over civilian casualties,” while noting matter-of-factly that Hezbollah’s Katyusha rockets “have killed dozens of civilians in Israel.”
A reader might get the impression, then, that civilian casualties in Lebanon were not yet much of a problem, but could become one. That notion was further underscored by a reference to the Human Rights Watch investigation of civilian casualties in Lebanon. The Times mentioned only the report’s documentation of one cluster bomb attack that killed one civilian.
Please also see the sidebar to this article: Newsworthy and Unnewsworthy Deaths | <urn:uuid:b7b60024-82e3-4e56-9635-d65285251011> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/lives-in-the-balance/3057/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962161 | 1,124 | 1.984375 | 2 |
June 30, 2011
Charles F. Bolden, Jr.
Administrator National Aeronautics and Space Administration
300 E Street, S.W. Washington, D.C. 20546
Dear Administrator Bolden,
We believe that the planned retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet after the flight of STS-135 next month will create an unacceptable flight risk for maintaining safe and reliable operations of the International Space Station (ISS). As you well know, the shuttles are the only spacecraft that can provide independent spacewalks for critical ISS repairs.
If an incident or life support failure rendered the ISS uninhabitable, repair spacewalks to restore operations would not be possible from the space station. In a worst case scenario, deterioration and loss of systems on an abandoned ISS could result in an uncontrolled, catastrophic reentry with risks to populated areas around the world. This would have significant ramifications to foreign relations and liability for the United States, Russia and the other countries who participate as partners on the International Space Station. The recent near miss of space debris, which caused the ISS astronauts to seek shelter in the Soyuz spacecraft, is a reminder that a catastrophic accident is a stark possibility.
This issue was the subject of a commentary article we co-authored, published in the June 12th edition of the New York Daily News, which is enclosed.
The Space Shuttle fleet is the only spacecraft, now operating or under development, that is equipped with the airlocks, life support supplies and robotic arm needed to support the required two-person spacewalking repair crews. We believe the Space Shuttle fleet should be kept in service to provide the capability of independent repair spacewalks in the event that the International Space Station is crippled by a systems failure or accident. The Space Shuttles would also be available to support one or two logistics and science missions per year, provide unmatched capacity to return components and scientific experiments to Earth (with low gravitational loads on crew and cargo during reentry) and extend the reliability of space station operations with a Service Life Extension Program.
The capability of the Space Shuttles to provide the independent repair spacewalks, critical for restoring operations on a disabled ISS, would also be vital for protecting the ISS cargo and crew transport business of the emerging commercial space industry. Keeping the shuttle fleet in service would also comply with a new, internationally accepted flight criteria that we believe should be established: Any object placed in orbit that is too large for an uncontrolled reentry must have a spacecraft available to support independent EVA repairs.
To maintain this vital life safety margin for long-term ISS operations we are requesting the following:
* Congress should request an immediate, 3 week, impartial study and hold emergency hearings on this matter.
* In these hearings, Congress should consider passing emergency legislation ordering NASA to halt all work on modifying the Space Shuttle fleet for museum display. Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour should be stored at Kennedy Space Center in the Orbiter Processing Facility and maintained in such a manner as to keep them flightworthy. Moreover, the Vehicle Assembly Building, Crawler-Transporters, Launch Complex 39-A, Shuttle Landing Facility and other facilities and support equipment needed for Space Shuttle operations should be maintained in place to support future Space Shuttle flights.
* NASA and its International Space Station partners should consider the shared responsibility of developing funding solutions for the continued operation of the Space Shuttle fleet to ensure the long-term safety of space station operations. NASA led plans, as well as commercial alternatives to operate the shuttles commercially, should be presented to Congress and considered to reduce costs and budget impacts.
* To avoid any gap in providing independent repair spacewalks as a safety contingency for the space station, Congress, NASA and the ISS partners should evaluate the option of postponing the launch of STS - 135 until more external fuel tanks and other parts can be built to support additional shuttle flights in 2012.
We appreciate your consideration of our recommendation for NASA and Congress to take immediate action to reverse the retirement of the Space Shuttles. The Space Shuttles are the only solution for restoring space station operations with independent spacewalk repair capabilities. Given the risks and liabilities for NASA and the ISS partners if the International Space Station is crippled by a systems failure or accident, the Space Shuttles are too valuable an asset to be retired into museums. Sincerely,
Christopher C. Kraft
Former Director of NASA Manned Spaceflight Center
Scott R. Spencer
Transportation Management Consultant
Robert L. Crippen, Pilot STS-1, Commander (STS-7, STS-41C & STS-41G)
Frederick H. Hauck, Pilot STS-7, Commander (STS-51A & STS-26)
Walter Cunningham, LM Pilot, Apollo 7
Neil A. Armstrong, Commander, Apollo 11
James A. Lovell, Jr., Commander, Apollo 13
Eugene A. Cernan, Commander, Apollo 17
Gene Kranz, Director of Mission Operations - Flight Director
Tom Moser, NASA Space Station Program Director
John W. Robinson, Chairman, Space Propulsion Synergy Team
cc: President Barack Obama
Vice President Joseph Biden
U.S. Senator Bill Nelson
U.S. Representative Ralph Hall
Why we must save the space shuttle: If the Int'l Space Station is disabled, we need a rescue fleet
BY CHRISTOPHER KRAFT AND SCOTT SPENCER, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, June 12, 2011
For more than 10 years, space crews from the United States, Russia and other countries have successfully lived and worked year round, in six-month shifts, on the International Space Station, where they have conducted scientific research. In the coming years, that work will continue - but with a crucial safeguard missing: the space shuttle fleet that gives human beings a unique capability to fix the space station's guidance system and rocket thrusters in the event of a terrible failure.
The shuttles are now about to retire - all of them, with no true replacements. This is an extremely dangerous development.
Loss of control of the space station would mean a catastrophic reentry into the Earth's atmosphere of the massive structure - the largest object ever placed in orbit around the Earth, measuring over three football fields long and weighing more than 400 tons.
The tons of falling debris that would survive reentry would pose an unprecedented threat to populated areas around the world.
Such an international catastrophe would have significant ramifications for foreign relations and liability for the United States, Russia and the other countries who participate as partners on the space station.
To be sure, the space station has numerous, triple-redundant life support and control systems that makes such a total technical failure unlikely. However, to say that it is so redundant that it could never happen ignores the tragic lessons learned due to the overconfidence in fail-safe technology in disasters throughout history, from the sinking of the Titanic to the nuclear reactor crisis in Japan.
In fact, the numerous space station backup systems offer little margin of safety in the event of damage from a fire, space junk impact or a potential collision from the more frequent docking of manned and unmanned commercial spacecraft resupply missions.
If the life support, guidance systems or rocket thrusters are damaged, the station could need a rapid rescue mission to stay in orbit. And as repair vehicles, the space shuttles have unique capabilities.
It's true that pallets on the space station are packed with spare parts needed for critical repairs, but none of them could be installed to repair and regain control and use of the $100 billion space station if it is deemed uninhabitable for repair crews. In that case, an independent repair spacecraft will be needed. And the Russian Soyuz space capsules and other commercial space capsules that are intended to replace the space shuttles lack the life support systems needed for the multiple six-hour repair spacewalks.
Only the space shuttles have the vital airlocks and life-support supplies - as well as the robotic arm that is needed to move the hardware necessary for the required two-person spacewalking repair crews.
Before the last scheduled shuttle flight lifts off early next month, an urgent discussion needs to take place between the United States and its International Space Station partners to keep the shuttle fleet in service to provide a vital safety margin for repairing the space station in the event of a critical systems failure.
In fact, to prevent any gap in this crucial repair capability, we urge NASA to delay the last shuttle launch so that additional external fuel tanks and other parts can be built to support additional shuttle flights in 2012.
We also request that Congress hold hearings on this matter. The space shuttle fleet provides the only insurance against a catastrophic reentry of the space station. With such valuable equipment in orbit - and the dangers should that equipment fall to Earth - it is never wise to play Russian roulette in space.
Kraft is the former director of NASA's Manned Spaceflight Center in Houston. Spencer is a transportation management consultant in Wilmington, Del. | <urn:uuid:66d7899c-fca5-4b76-a4ab-a530d6406dd0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=37583 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919577 | 1,862 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Saturday, 04 February 2012 10:22
I have added an SQL console to the pgAdmin3 plugin "PostGIS viewer". It allows you to run SQL queries on PostGIS data in order to filter them or execute spatial functions on them.
Saturday, 14 May 2011 06:00
I have written an introductory tutorial of the Dimensionally Extended 9-Intersection Model (DE-9IM) in PostGIS for a Qualitative Spatial Knowledge class. I share it in this post.
Monday, 14 March 2011 06:00
I have added a QGIS plugin to the PostGIS Viewer for building SQL querys allowing the results to be displayed as a new layer. The plugin is RT Sql Layer from the Faunalia's repository, extracting just its SQL Query Builder.
Sunday, 06 March 2011 06:00
Due to some suggestions from Ivan Mincik and Iván Lizarazo, I have been adding a couple of functionalities to the postgis viewer plugin for pgAdmin. Now, it has raster support (PostGIS-WKTRaster) and a layer list widget for displaying layer properties. Additionally, some minor bugs have been fixed: antialiasing and map units detection.
Thursday, 24 February 2011 17:30
A couple of months ago, Ivan Mincik released a PostGIS viewer for pgAdmin using the Python version of QGIS libraries. I have taken the source code to add some functionality: now, every new layer is added to the same application and the scale and cursor coordinates are displayed. | <urn:uuid:1dcade22-2173-4be5-b720-88eaad90f3f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://geotux.tuxfamily.org/index.php/en/component/k2/itemlist/tag/PostGIS%20viewer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9004 | 327 | 1.734375 | 2 |
MONTREAL - Authorities found themselves relying on snowmobiles and snowshoes to respond to some emergency calls as a historic hibernal blanket smothered a 1,200-kilometre stretch of Eastern Canada on Thursday.
The snowstorm squashed plans to travel by air and land.
There were hundreds of flights cancelled and rampant delays — first at airports around Toronto and then, as the storm barrelled eastward, in Ottawa, Montreal, Fredericton and Halifax.
Montreal was walloped with record-setting strength.
The city had expected a storm but nothing like the swirling tempest that forced Environment Canada to drastically revise its forecast over the course of the day.
At least 45 centimetres had fallen on Montreal by day's end, and 50 cm on its south-shore suburb, eclipsing the previous one-day recorded high of 43 centimetres set in March 1971, according to Environment Canada.
There were scores of road accidents.
One involved a pileup of at least 15 vehicles on a highway east of Montreal, near St. Cuthbert. Quebec provincial police also said many vehicles had skidded into snowy ditches in different parts of the province.
Still, police there were counting their blessings late Thursday.
The same storm had killed at least 16 people in the United States this week. Montreal's previous record blizzard in 1971 killed 17. But there was cause for optimism, as of Thursday evening, that Eastern Canada would be spared a similar human toll this time.
"There were no serious injuries," police Sgt. Martine Asselin said, speaking Thursday evening of the numerous Quebec road accidents. "We're lucky."
Because of the multi-car pileup, a stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway was shut down near Montreal, with provincial police using snowmobiles to access the closed portion of Highway 40.
There were other examples of authorities resorting to rare, even rustic, solutions.
For example, Hydro-Quebec used some old-fashioned travel techniques to reach customers who had lost power in a previous storm, days earlier.
"We're talking snowmobiles and snowshoes," said Hydro-Quebec spokeswoman Sophie Lamoureux.
She said 99 per cent of the customers who had lost power last week had their service restored, with the exceptions being customers in hard-to-reach outlying areas. Meanwhile, new outages were being reported with Thursday's storm.
In Laval, Que., next to Montreal, the bus service was shut down. Police vehicles there were being sent to the shop to help equip them for the fluffy obstacle course.
Several patrol cars in the suburb were outfitted with chains.
A police spokeswoman, however, sought to allay any public concerns about law enforcement being paralyzed.
"We're not overflowing with 911 calls. People wisely listened to the warning to stay home," said Nathalie Lorrain of the Laval police.
"It's really (being done) in the goal of limiting emergencies. We ourselves are having a hard time getting around."
The storm arrived in Canada after having already pounded the midsection of the U.S., dumping a record snowfall in Arkansas and lashing the Northeast with high winds, snow and sleet.
The weather, which was blamed for at least 16 deaths in the U.S., knocked out power to thousands of utility customers, primarily in Arkansas.
Hundreds of flights were cancelled or delayed out of U.S. airports and, on Thursday, numerous departures were also cancelled at Canadian airports.
In Montreal, over a span of several hours Thursday afternoon, a majority of flights were either subjected to lengthy delays or cancelled entirely. A similar pattern was repeated in different Canadian cities as the storm spread east.
Travellers were urged to call ahead to check on their flight status before heading to the airports.
Southern Ontario was spared the worst of the storm.
Toronto received about 10 centimetres of snow into Thursday morning while the Niagara region and Hamilton area received 15 to 20 cm.
Still, Ontario Provincial Police said they were busy responding to numerous reports of vehicle accidents from Windsor all the way to the Greater Toronto Area.
They said most calls had been for minor fender-benders and one-vehicle collisions, except for one potentially serious incident in London on Wednesday.
West Region Sgt. Dave Rektor said an officer had his parked police cruiser rear-ended on Highway 401 around 5:30 p.m. when he went to assist another motorist who had driven into a ditch.
The officer was not injured because he was out of the car at the time, but the cruiser was extensively damaged.
In New Brunswick, blowing snow began falling midday Thursday in the southwest and eastern regions, with about 25 cm or more expected.
Parts of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island also lay in the storm's path, where winter storm watches or rainfall warnings had already been posted.
Environment Canada had said the Montreal region could receive up to 30 cm of snow accompanied by widespread blowing snow — but that was before the storm hit the area harder than expected.
The tally was upgraded Thursday morning.
The city's previous record storm, in 1971, saw 47 cm of snowfall during a period of more than one day. That was aggravated by 110 km-per-hour winds, more than twice as powerful as what the city experienced Thursday.
Environment Canada recalls that the winds in that 1971 storm snapped power lines, causing people to go without electricity for up to 10 days.
Other regions of the country have, on occasion, seen far greater snowfall.
According to Environment Canada, Victoria received 80 cm within 24 hours in 1996; Toronto got 48 cm on Dec. 11, 1944; southern Alberta had 175 cm over a two-week period in 1967; and Toronto famously called in the army after receiving 118 cm over two weeks in 1999.
But the greatest single-day snowfall record in Canada, according to the federal agency? Tahtsa Lake, B.C., which received 145 cm of snow on Feb. 11, 1999.
Environment Canada notes that even that generous heaping pales in comparison with the mind-boggling 192 cm dumped on Silver Lake, Colo., on April 15, 1921 — nearly four times what Montreal received Thursday.
— With files from The Associated Press
© Copyright 2013 | <urn:uuid:f93e0cf6-924b-4b8a-8309-d5b77d23e4a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timescolonist.com/news/a-record-storm-cancels-flights-causes-15-car-crash-has-cops-using-snowmobiles-1.35285 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978192 | 1,312 | 1.65625 | 2 |
One of the things that can go a long way in the spiritual development of children is to help them set up an altar of their own in their room. The altar set-up in Ár nDraíocht Féin is a bit different from most other forms of modern Paganism. We don’t follow an “elements” system, but rather, we venerate the Triple Hallows of Well, Tree, and Fire. ADF is a very family-friendly, child-friendly, budget-friendly tradition. No expensive tools are necessary, nor even desirable. In fact, an ADF altar could be just three bowls and a stick! However, most people (including kids!) want to be more creative than that, and it doesn’t really cost much more to do so, perhaps a little more time and craftiness. Most of these ideas have the option of crafting something, so as to really personalize this sacred space. Any of the ideas listed below could be used for an adult/family altar as well.
- Fire Hallow: glue fire-colored tissue paper all over a re-purposed small jar and put an LED tea light in it. (No actual fire, of course.)
- Well Hallow: use a plastic “cauldron” salsa server. Aside from aesthetically pleasing cauldron shape, they won’t break or rust (and I’m always finding them cheap in thrift stores). You may have one in the kitchen already, or a small bowl you’d like to use instead.
- Tree Hallow: put sticks or branches in a jar or can. (The branch holder in the picture below is a vegetable can with variegated green & brown yarn wrapped around it.) Add pebbles to keep it from tipping over. Another option for the Tree Hallow is to make a paper bag tree or a woven tree.
- Offering Bowl: make a salt dough bowl (for dry offerings only; like cereal and dried fruit), or use an ordinary bowl or plate from the kitchen. Remember to place your offerings outside after your rituals/devotions, so as not to attract pests. (Under a tree is a good place to leave offerings.)
- Deity Images: these can be drawings or coloring pages. In the picture below, you’ll notice the coloring pages are small black & white print-outs colored with crayons and pasted to colored paper. You may want to frame or laminate yours so they’ll last longer, or just fasten them to the wall, as is, with ticky-tack. If you want to try sculpting deity images, salt dough is a very good (and inexpensive) medium for experimentation.
- Ancestor Images: these can be memoirs, or photos/drawings of one’s Ancestors, or Ancestor dolls. Another option could be to make a salt dough skull to represent them. It is optional to have Ancestor imagery here, as the Ancestors may have their own shrine elsewhere in the home, or their regalia only brought out for special holidays.
- Nature Spirit Images: can be represented in a small nature collection. Given how kids love to collect feathers, rocks, seedpods, etc., Nature Spirits imagery may soon threaten to take over the entire altar! It may be a good idea to give the Nature Spirits their own altar/shrine.
- Blessing Cup: this can be any kind of drinking vessel, perhaps a favorite cocoa mug. Sometimes you can find neat plastic goblets at thrift stores or in dollar stores around Halloween. Any kind of juice, mint-infused water, or just plain water are all great choices for a child’s (or anyone’s) “waters of life”.
- Divination Tool: there is a wide variety of divination methods to choose from that may be suitable for children or beginners. The simplest would be those that give just yes or no answers like a magic 8 ball. Simple answers can also be read through certain methods with runes, serpent stones, and dowsing, as well. The Wise Gal Tarot book describes 7 different kinds of divination and has a simple, yet colorful tear-out tarot card set in the back.
- Extras: your child may want a bell (or bell branch), symbols/pictures of the Three Realms of Land Sea, and Sky, and silver-colored beads/coins for ‘silvering the well’ (they need not be real silver)
After you’re all set up, see my article, “A Druid Devotional for Kids” for further inspiration. | <urn:uuid:1de965dd-b883-4f22-a5e9-badb16306a04> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tressabelle.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/a-druid-childs-altar/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92868 | 967 | 1.664063 | 2 |
It is currently Sat May 25, 2013 1:34 pm
Interesting that most of the chat has focused on 1974. A more apt comparison might be 1931, and the first National Government led by Ramsay MacDonald. This was not formed immediately after an election but after the collapse of the minority ruling party (Labour). In few words, we got hammered.Neil Foxlee wrote:Is there any remote chance of a provisional government of national unity, I wonder? At least that way, the main parties would be sharing the poisoned chalice and consequent unpopularity.
David Flower wrote:scanning the results the highest turn out by miles seems to be Warwick at a massive 85% where Con gained the seat from Labour. Which suggests the Torys did a good local campaign and shows what can happen if you mobilise everyone. Most turnouts between 58-72% which still seems quite high compared to recent decades as far as I remember.
Clegg is in a cleft stick: he has to take his party with him, but for different reasons, different LibDems would have very strong feelings against a deal with either the Tories or Labour (especially under Brown), while insisting on a referendum on electoral reform.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests | <urn:uuid:2058bcec-2bff-41d6-afc1-06223a139853> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.charliegillett.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=82208 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972766 | 258 | 1.546875 | 2 |
||This article needs additional citations for verification. (December 2009)|
An heir presumptive or heiress presumptive is the person currently entitled to inherit a throne, peerage, or other hereditary honour, but whose position can be displaced (in legal terms, is "subject to divestiture") by the birth of an heir or heiress apparent or of a new heir presumptive with a better claim to the position in question. The position is however subject to law and/or conventions that may alter who is entitled to be heir presumptive.
Depending on the rules of the monarchy the heir presumptive might be the daughter of a monarch (if males take priority over females and the monarch has no sons), or the senior member of a collateral line (if the monarch is childless); the birth of a legitimate child to the monarch will displace the former heir presumptive by a new heir apparent or heiress presumptive.
Heir presumptive, like heir apparent, is not a title or position per se. Rather, it is a general term for a person who holds a certain place in the order of succession. In some monarchies, the heir apparent bears, ipso facto, a specific title and rank (e.g., Denmark, Netherlands, United Kingdom), this also sometimes being the case for noble titleholders (e.g., Spain, United Kingdom), but the heir presumptive does not bear that title. In other monarchies (e.g., Monaco, Spain) the heir to the throne bears a specific title (i.e., "Hereditary Prince/Princess of Monaco", "Prince/Princess of Asturias") by right, regardless of whether she or he is heir apparent or heir presumptive.
An heir can fail to inherit for other reasons than displacement, for example by death or incapacity of the heir, abolition of the title, or changes to the rules of inheritance.
For more detailed information, and a comparison between the positions of heir presumptive and heir apparent, see heir apparent.
Several simultaneous
In the English common law of inheritance, there is no seniority between sisters; where there is no son to inherit, any number of daughters share equally. Therefore certain hereditary titles can have multiple simultaneous heiresses presumptive. Since the title cannot be held by two people simultaneously, two daughters (without a brother) who inherit in this way would do so as co-parceners and before they inherit, both would be heirs presumptive. In these circumstances, the title would in fact be held in abeyance until one person represents the claim of both, or the claim is renounced by one or the other for herself and her heirs, or the abeyance is ended by the Crown. There are special procedures for handling doubtful or disputed cases.
Heirs presumptive as of 2013
- Caroline, Princess of Hanover, is the Heiress Presumptive to the throne of Monaco. If her brother Albert II, Prince of Monaco, fathers a legitimate child, the child will be heir apparent if male or heiress presumptive if female.
- Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck is the Heir Presumptive to the throne of Bhutan. If his brother Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck fathers a legitimate child, the child will be heir apparent if male or heiress presumptive if female.
Heirs presumptive who inherited thrones
- Queen Isabella I of Castile, who succeeded her half-brother Henry IV in 1474
- King Manuel I of Portugal, who succeeded his cousin John II in 1495
- King Louis XII of France, who succeeded his cousin Charles VIII in 1498
- Queen Juana of Castile, who succeeded her mother Isabella I in 1504
- King Francis I of France, who succeeded his cousin Louis XII in 1515
- Queen Mary I of England, who succeeded her half-brother Edward VI in 1553
- Queen Elizabeth I of England, who succeeded her half-sister Mary I in 1558
- King Charles IX of France, who succeeded his brother Francis II in 1560
- King Henry III of France, who succeeded his brother Charles IX in 1574
- King Henry of Portugal, who succeeded his grand-nephew Sebastian I in 1578
- King Henry IV of France, who succeeded his very distant cousin Henry III in 1589
- King Charles X of Sweden, who succeeded his cousin Christina in 1654
- King James I of England (who was James VI of Scotland), who succeeded his first cousin twice removed Elizabeth I in 1603
- King Pedro II of Portugal, who succeeded his brother Afonso VI in 1683
- King James II of England, who succeeded his brother Charles II in 1685
- King Charles III of Hungary, who succeeded his brother Joseph I in 1711
- King George I of Great Britain, who succeeded his distant cousin Anne in 1714
- Queen Maria Theresa of Hungary and Bohemia, who succeeded her father Charles III in 1740
- King Charles III of Spain, who succeeded his half-brother Ferdinand VI in 1759
- Queen Maria I of Portugal, who succeeded her father Joseph I in 1777
- King Frederick William II of Prussia, who succeeded his uncle Frederick the Great in 1786
- King Leopold II of Hungary, who succeeded his brother Joseph II in 1790
- King Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia, who succeeded his brother Charles Emmanuel IV in 1802
- King Charles Felix of Sardinia, who succeeded his brother Victor Emmanuel I in 1821
- King Charles X of France, who succeeded his brother Louis XVIII in 1824
- Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, who succeeded his brother Alexander I in 1825
- King Anthony of Saxony, who succeeded his brother Frederick Augustus I in 1827
- King William IV of the United Kingdom, who succeeded his brother George IV in 1830
- King Charles Albert of Sardinia, who succeeded his very distant cousin Charles Felix in 1831
- Queen Isabella II of Spain, who succeeded her father Ferdinand VII in 1833
- King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony, who succeeded his uncle Anthony in 1836
- Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, who succeeded her uncle William IV in 1837
- King Ernest Augustus I of Hanover, who succeeded his brother William IV in 1837
- King Christian VIII of Denmark, who succeeded his cousin Frederick VI in 1839
- King John of Saxony, who succeeded his brother Frederick Augustus II in 1854
- King William I of Prussia, who succeeded his brother Frederick William IV in 1861
- King Christian IX of Denmark, who succeeded his cousin Frederick VII in 1863
- King Oscar II of Sweden, who succeeded his brother Charles XV in 1872
- King Otto of Bavaria, who succeeded his brother Ludwig II in 1886
- Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, who succeeded her father William III in 1890
- Grand Duke Adolphe of Luxembourg, who succeeded his very distant cousin William III in 1890
- King William II of Württemberg, who succeeded his uncle Charles I in 1891
- King George of Saxony, who succeeded his brother Albert in 1902
- King Albert I of Belgium, who succeeded his uncle Leopold II in 1909
- Grand Duchess Marie-Adélaïde of Luxembourg, who succeeded her father Guillaume IV in 1912
- King Ludwig III of Bavaria, who succeeded his cousin Otto in 1913
- King Ferdinand I of Romania, who succeeded his uncle Carol I in 1914
- Emperor Charles I of Austria, who succeeded his grand-uncle Francis Joseph I in 1916
- Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg, who succeeded her sister Marie-Adélaïde in 1919
- King Rama VII of Thailand, who succeeded his brother Rama VI in 1925
- King Rama VIII of Thailand, who succeeded his uncle Rama VII in 1935
- King George VI of the United Kingdom, who succeeded his brother Edward VIII in 1936
- King Rama IX of Thailand, who succeeded his brother King Rama VIII in 1946
- King Paul of Greece, who succeeded his brother George II in 1947
- Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, who succeeded her mother Wilhelmina in 1948
- Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, who succeeded her father George VI in 1952
- Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, who succeeded her father Frederick IX in 1972
- Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, who succeeded her mother Juliana in 1980
- King Albert II of Belgium, who succeeded his brother Baudouin in 1993
- King Tupou VI of Tonga, who succeeded his brother George Tupou V in 2012
Examples of past heirs presumptive who did not inherit thrones
- Richard, Duke of York, was heir presumptive to King Henry VI of England until the birth of Henry's son in 1453.
- Princess Caroline of Orange-Nassau, first child of Willem IV of Orange, was heir presumptive until the birth of her brother Willem V.
- Sophia, Electress of Hanover, declared British heiress presumptive by the Act of Settlement 1701, but died before acceding to the throne of her distant cousin, Queen Anne.
- Victoria, Princess Royal, the eldest child of Queen Victoria was heiress presumptive of the United Kingdom from her birth in November 1840 to the birth of her younger brother, the future Edward VII, in November 1841.
- Isabel, Princess Imperial of Brazil was the heir presumptive to the throne of the Empire of Brazil. However, a coup d'etat in 1889 proclaimed a Republic in the country, deposing the monarchy.
- Prince Philippe, Count of Flanders was the heir presumptive of his older brother king Leopold II of Belgium after the death of his nephew Prince Leopold, Duke of Brabant until his own death in 1905.
- Afonso, Prince Royal of Portugal was the heir presumptive of his nephew Manuel II of Portugal until the monarchy was abolished in 1910.
- Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was the heir presumptive of his uncle Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria until his assassination June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo.
- Prince Knud of Denmark was the heir presumptive of his brother King Frederick IX of Denmark, but an amendment to the Danish Constitution in 1953 proclaimed King Frederick's eldest daughter Princess Margrethe, later Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, heir presumptive.
- Prince Bertil, Duke of Halland was heir-presumptive of Sweden between 1973 and 1979, until the birth of Carl Philip, Duke of Värmland, who superseded him.
Examples in popular culture
In the Disney animated film The Lion King, Scar is the heir presumptive of the Pride Lands, his inheritance being displaced by the birth of Simba, the heir apparent, thus sparking the entire plot of the film.
In the first three seasons of the television series Downton Abbey, much of the drama centered on Matthew Crawley, the heir presumptive to the current Earl of Grantham, following the death of two closer cousins. Upon Matthew's death at the end of Season 3, his son took his place as heir presumptive. | <urn:uuid:23304a74-7e35-4b7e-a67e-99f277441c8d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heir_presumptive | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953962 | 2,319 | 2.625 | 3 |
Of the Second Vatican Council’s 16 promulgated statements, a total of over 100,000 words, by far the shortest is the “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions,” also kno
The Catholic Church is unique in having a magisterium, a hierarchical structure through which declarations on teachings can come formally from “the center.” This, however, raises the question of wh
The Latin words nostra aetate mean “in our time,” a fitting opening phrase for the declaration promulgated by the Second Vatican Council in 1965 that has truly transformed our time.
For the Catholic Church in India, Nostra Aetate came more as an encouragement than as a new beginning.
The final volume of the History of Vatican II series (Orbis 1995-2005) presents Nostra Aetate as “the outcome of one of John XXIII’s original insights.” Ever since the idea for that declar | <urn:uuid:163df64e-bc69-4d71-8730-5bdc3bd7694d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americamagazine.org/toc-past/2005-10-24 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937119 | 209 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Congress eyes limit to mortgage interest deduction
As Congress tries to reach a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff, lawmakers are considering a cap on the mortgage interest deduction.
As Congress and the president try to reach a deal to address the federal deficit and avoid the harsh package of spending cuts and tax increases better known as the Fiscal Cliff, they’re eyeing something once considered untouchable: The mortgage interest deduction.
Republican senator John McCain is one lawmaker who mentioned the formerly unmentionable on Fox News Sunday, saying a budget deal should involve closing a lot of tax loopholes, including “a limit on the amount you can take on your home loan mortgage deduction.”
An estimated 40 million homeowners take advantage of the mortgage interest deduction, which lets you write off a percentage of the interest you pay monthly on your home loan. For the average homeowner, that savings adds up to about $600 a year.
If the deduction were eliminated entirely, it would increase tax revenue by over $98 billion in 2013, according estimates by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. But eliminating the deduction entirely isn’t likely. What may be discussed is some sort of cap on how much high-income households can deduct, while attempting to leave most middle class families untouched by any changes to the deduction.
Mark Fleming, chief economist for the housing data company CoreLogic, says any limits to the deduction would effectively make buying a house more expensive, which could make homebuyers more likely to purchase less expensive homes, and in turn push home prices lower.
“The question we need to ask ourselves,” says Fleming, “and I don't know the answer to it: Is that something we want to do to a nascent housing recovery right now?”
Even with the risk, Fleming says putting limits on mortgage interest deductions is still an option worth considering, given the growing deficit. | <urn:uuid:2403a919-ebce-40b1-b869-e9334b6223ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/fiscal-cliff/congress-eyes-limit-mortgage-interest-deduction | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963414 | 386 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Broadcom just announced its next round of portable device wireless chip, the BCM4335, which includes the ability to connect to the superfast 802.11ac networks. Apple exclusively uses Broadcom chips in this family for its iOS devices (and a different family for its Macs). The current iPad and iPhone use the Broadcom BCM4330 802.11a/b/g/n baseband/radio with integrated Bluetooth 4.0+HS and an FM transceiver—and the xxx5 is just a minor step up.
The 40nm chip will continue to deliver Bluetooth 4.0 and FM, but its 802.11ac networking could save some power using the new standard. It also features the “industry’s most advanced idle power consumption performance, which significantly extends a mobile device’s battery life.”
Sample chips are already available with a full production expected to be delivered in Q1 2013, just in time for next year’s iPads.
The press release follows: Read more | <urn:uuid:7c0587fd-6651-4270-9c0a-ac07fead706a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://9to5mac.com/tag/fm-broadcasting/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93242 | 213 | 1.625 | 2 |
CHICAGO -- Fundamentally, American society doesn't value a college education as the necessary prerequisite to gaining knowledge or becoming a responsible citizen. Instead, it is promoted as the guaranteed means to gainful employment.
In fact, the value of a college education is dropping so much that certain graduates who are dissatisfied that their diplomas did not yield the job placements of their choice want to shirk their responsibility to pay back their student loans. I'm referring to the portion of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators and their supporters who have made "free college education" and "immediate across-the-board debt forgiveness for all" a rallying cry.
They haven't gotten their way, but certainly won an enthusiastic nod from President Obama. He was at the University of Colorado, Denver, on Wednesday sprinkling tasty but unsubstantive campaign trail breadcrumbs. It was similar to his limited mortgage refinancing plan, which will assist very few homeowners but sounds good in stump speeches.
Obama empathetically told the college students that they deserve a break because he too thought paying back those pesky student loans was a bummer. "We want you in school," the president said, "But we shouldn't saddle you with debt when you're starting off."
I hear you Mr. President. My family has more outstanding student loans than the value of our house. But there's not a lot in his bundle of breaks that is new or different, or that will have much impact on the millions of borrowers currently in repayment or already defaulting on student loan debt. The College Board estimates that debt will exceed $1 trillion -- more than credit card debt -- for the first time this year.
The "Pay As You Earn" plan Obama is implementing through executive order is a tweak of an already existing plan that caps monthly student loan payments to 15 percent of a borrower's discretionary income and forgives the remainder of the debt after 25 years. But not many people have exercised the option. The change, starting in 2012 -- two years earlier than outlined in a recently passed law -- will be available only to new borrowers, offering a 10 percent cap with forgiveness after 20 years.
The administration also announced that certain eligible borrowers will be able to consolidate their disparate loans and reduce their interest rates -- an option that's been available both through private lenders and through Sallie Mae, the country's largest student loan servicer, for years -- by a whopping one-half of a percentage point.
Lastly, Obama pushed what he called a simple fact sheet titled "Know Before You Owe" so students will "have all the information you need to make your own decisions about how to pay for college."
This implies that students are in trouble because they don't understand what they're getting into when they take out student loans. How can that be?
Back in 1992, when I accepted the first of my many student loans, my signature was required on a separate form that, in very plain English, said, "Yes, I understand that I am responsible for paying back these loans plus their interest in full." Since 1965, colleges and other student lenders have been required to make borrowers sit through either in-person, video or interactive webinar entrance and exit loan counseling designed to drive home the point that loans must be repaid, and can't be cleared through bankruptcy.
There is little excuse for students not knowing that repayment was expected and even less excuse for default. During those same counseling sessions, students are instructed about the six-month grace period, their right to postpone, reduce or suspend repayment for various economic hardships or military service, or extend their payment plans.
It's true that tuition is ballooning -- though, to be fair, the amount of federal assistance in the form of both loans and grants is keeping pace pretty well -- and well-paying jobs are not plentiful. But attempting to ease student-loan burdens is not the answer. There should be a focus on skyrocketing college costs, and the responsibility of students to choose more affordable schools or earn degrees in fields that have ample job openings.
Reinforcing the notion that you shouldn't have to repay money no one forced you to borrow is certainly not the way to lay the foundations for a healthy long-term economy. But then again, preaching the basics of personal responsibility and sound financial planning to students, recent grads and Occupy Wall Street supporters sure wouldn't go over well on the campaign trail.
Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com. | <urn:uuid:a3679401-b850-4fb0-aa63-a9c18fc63310> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/news/2011/oct/29/cepeda-those-pesky-student-loans/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97221 | 924 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Jan. 14, 1924 – Feb. 17, 2013
Norma Kassirer, a Buffalo author, poet and artist who influenced generations of local writers and artists, died unexpectedly Sunday in Buffalo General Medical Center after going to the movies with friends. She was 89.
A Buffalo native, the former Norma Kelly grew up in Hamburg. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in social work from Case Western Reserve University. She went on to do casework for Buffalo Family Service and, after the birth of her two daughters, began writing.
She was best known for her two novels for children, “Magic Elizabeth” in 1966 and “The Doll Snatchers” in 1969.
Mrs. Kassirer wrote “Magic Elizabeth,” intended for children ages 8 to 12, after reading family letters that dated from the 1700s. Called a modern classic, it is included in Eden Ross Lipson’s New York Times “Parents’ Guide to Best Books for Children.” It has been reprinted several times and is currently appearing in newspapers throughout the world through Breakfast Serials serialized stories.
Her other books include “The Hidden Wife,” a collection of stories with artwork by Willyum Rowe published in 1991; the story cycle “Milly,” published in 2008; and her novella “Katzenjammered,” published in 2010.
Her short fiction and poetry were published in various literary magazines and collections. This year she was selected by the University at Buffalo’s esteemed Poetry Collection as a featured writer for the forthcoming “Three Poems” series.
Mrs. Kassirer came from a long line of writers. Her father wrote articles about his experience in World War I. Her brother David was a prize-winning poet. A great-great aunt wrote poetry for Harper’s Magazine in the 1800s. And a great-great-great uncle, C.F. Briggs, founded a literary journal in New York City, partnered with Edgar Allen Poe and, under the pseudonym Harry Franco, produced a number of best-selling seafaring novels.
Mrs. Kassirer helped run a children’s musical theater many years ago at the Buffalo Museum of Science, writing and directing plays. She also worked as a writer and editor for publications of Sisters Hospital and reviewed books for The Buffalo News.
She also was an artist. Recently, her paintings were exhibited at Betty’s on Virginia Street. She is known for her stunning and original handmade artist’s books, one of which is owned by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Her paintings and books were exhibited at Western New York Book Arts in conjunction with the release of “Katzenjammered.”
She often painted at the MollyOlga studio, and taught classes there and in the Poets in the Schools program.
She was long involved with Hallwalls from its inception. She painted murals on the ceiling of the gallery’s former space on Essex Street.
Her husband, Earle, died in 2002.
Survivors include a daughter, Susan.
A memorial gathering will take place later. | <urn:uuid:67b4c000-6bdb-4c7b-9206-099b42bfe1a7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130221/CITYANDREGION/130229801/1024 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980235 | 673 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Earlier this week, the United Nations confirmed that the tragic death of 11-month-old Omar al-Mishrawi, previously blamed on Israel, was actually the result of a Hamas missile. The missile, it seems, fell short of its target. Instead of hitting the innocent Israeli civilians it was aimed at, it landed in Gaza and killed innocent Palestinian civilians.
Most of the media outlets which rushed to blame this death on Israel have been far more cautious about their retractions. And some have shunned retractions altogether. Here’s how the Washington Post’s Max Fisher explained away his rush to implicate Israel in this death:
It’s difficult to see how knowing whose rocket or missile killed Mishrawi would resolve the larger questions for which that debate is a proxy. … These are notoriously thorny debates. As with so many protracted geopolitical conflicts, neither side comes out looking as angelic or demonic as its partisans might wish.
Fisher is wrong. The conflict between Hamas and Israel is not a “thorny debate.” Hamas is a terrorist organization, and is recognized as such by both the United States and the European Union. Just as responsible journalists reject a moral equivalence between the United States and the al Qaeda terrorists who seek to kill Americans, they should likewise shun such equivalence between Israel and the Hamas terrorists determined to kill Israelis.
Mr. Fisher and his colleagues would do well to remember that Hamas isn’t interested in a two-state solution. In fact when Israel and the Palestinian Authority were close to reaching peace, Hamas began blowing up Israeli buses, restaurants and cafes in a desperate effort to derail the peace process. Nor does Hamas simply want the Israelis out of Gaza. The Israelis — all of them — left Gaza in 2005. Hamas wants to destroy Israel and kill Jews. They say so in their charter. And they say so with their intentional mass murders.
Here’s what Hamas does to protect innocent human lives: nothing. They are terrorists. Their goal is to kill civilians, not to protect them. Hamas aims its missiles at Israeli civilians. And it fires these missiles from behind Palestinian civilians. Hamas wins if they kill Israelis — because they are able to terrorize the Israeli population. And Hamas wins if the Israelis kill Palestinians in their effort to stop the missiles — because they know that Israel alone will be blamed for these deaths. Hamas even wins if they kill Palestinians — because Israel will so often get blamed for these deaths as well.
Here’s what Israel does to protect innocent human lives. First, it waits. Israel does not respond to Hamas rocket fire after one or even one hundred missiles have hit her southern cities. Israel responds after thousands of such missiles have been fired. No other democracy waits so long to perform its fundamental duty to protect its citizens. | <urn:uuid:471d46aa-eeed-4869-967a-e86406dc5bf3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dailycaller.com/2013/03/14/the-medias-true-failure-in-gaza/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958285 | 576 | 1.625 | 2 |
Agnos is a cross-language, cross-platform, lightweight RPC framework with support for passing objects by value or by reference. Agnos is meant to allow programs written in different languages to easily interoperate, by providing the needed bindings (glue-code) and hiding all the details from the programmer. The project essentially serves the same purpose as existing technologies like SOAP, WSDL, CORBA, and others, but takes a minimalistic approach to the issue at hand. Unlike the aforementioned technologies, which tend to require integration with Web servers, using verbose XML-based protocols on top of textual transports (HTTP), often also requiring complex topologies (such as name servers for registering objects, etc.). Agnos is designed to be simple, efficient, and straightforward, allowing for direct communication between two ends using a compact binary protocol.
Puppet lets you centrally manage every important aspect of your system using a cross-platform specification language that manages all the separate elements normally aggregated in different files, including users, cron jobs, and hosts, along with obviously discrete elements like packages, services, and files. Its simple declarative specification language provides powerful classing abilities for drawing out the similarities between hosts while allowing them to be as specific as necessary, and it handles dependency and prerequisite relationships between objects clearly and explicitly. | <urn:uuid:c8acfde7-8591-45e9-90dd-203d365d29cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://freecode.com/tags/apache-20?page=1&sort=created_at&with=14962&without=726 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92695 | 269 | 1.851563 | 2 |
CAMPBELL SPORT KILT (NEW!)
Clan Motto: Ne obliviscaris “Do Not Forget”
The name Campbell comes from the Gaelic “Cam Beul” meaning ‘curved mouth’‚ a nickname given to Dugald on Lochawe‚ who supposedly used to speak out of one side of his mouth. The Earl of Campbell fought alongside James IV at the Battle of Flodden‚ fought as Convenanters during the Civil War and led a number of bloody attacks against the Jacobites‚ even help defeat them at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. During the 18th Century‚ the Campbells formed half of the companies of the Black Watch (along with companies‚ one each‚ from Clans Fraser‚ Munro and Grant) with their warrior natures to guard and protect the Highlands‚ and authorized to wear their kilt and bear arms. The Campbell tartan Sport Kilt is the tartan associated with the Ancient Black Watch and heralds its proud past.
Septs of Clan Campbell are: Arthur‚ Burns‚ Connochie‚ Gibson‚ Hastings‚ Isaac‚ MacColm‚ MacTavish‚ Thomas‚ Thompson‚ Pinkerton and Torrie‚ among others. | <urn:uuid:531e2f0c-1f3b-4800-bec2-f35b316c86ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sportkilt.com/clan_history/6131/Campbell+.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924292 | 279 | 2.21875 | 2 |
The supply of ash to make hurleys is under serious threat from a rampant disease which is sweeping across Europe.
The Government's decision to ban all imports into Ireland of young ash plants and seed from countries hit by the fungal infection known as Ash Dieback that has spread like wildfire may be just the start of tighter controls.
The biggest pathway for the disease is through live plants and seed but the authorities have not ruled out banning imports of partially processed or processed ash in the future if these measures, announced on Friday night, do not stem the rapid spread of the fungus Chalara fraxinea.
That would spell disaster for hurley-makers and Gaelic games. Eight out of ten hurleys used on Irish GAA pitches are made from imported timber, or from completed hurleys manufactured overseas.
"As well as living plants and seeds, wood is also seen as a pathway for the disease and this ban which comes into immediate effect only applies to plants and seed," a senior Government source told the Sunday Independent. "However, banning importation of wood from affected areas will also have to be looked at.
"Once you start moving away from plants, the risk of spreading the disease falls dramatically. Once you get down to wood then potential spread comes down to the degree that it has been processed," the source added.
At the moment Ireland is 90 per cent self-sufficient in plants and there is no problem sourcing saplings for planting. However, another worry is that growers and farmers considering growing a tree plantation may decide to move away from ash because of the disease potential, posing another long-term threat to the national game.
The big problem is that while Ireland has an abundance of young ash trees most are many years away from maturity and so are not suitable for hurley manufacture.
More than 34,000 young ash trees have already been destroyed here after Ash Dieback disease was discovered in a Co Leitrim forest earlier this month, raising new fears about the fungal disease that has already wiped out 90 per cent of Denmark's ash population. Demand for hurleys is growing and the country needs 350,000 hurleys a year.
The disease was found at a site in Leitrim where 5,000 imported ash saplings were planted in 2009. They were part of a consignment of 35,000 saplings imported at that time.
Following the discovery, officials have now tracked down the surviving saplings from that consignment planted at ten other Irish sites and in all 33,400 young trees from the imported batch have now been destroyed, regardless of whether they were symptomatic or not. The young trees were chopped down and burned.
On Friday, a department spokesman said: "Surveys are continuing and public reports are also being followed up on. To date there have been no further findings; however forest owners, forest nursery staff and members of the public are asked to be vigilant for the disease and report, with photographs if possible, any sites where there are concerns about unusual ill health in ash to the Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine by email to email@example.com or by phoning (01) 6072651."
Ash is a native broadleaf and is an important species in the Irish landscape. Currently around 10 per cent of the ash planted under the Department's afforestation scheme is from imported sources with the remaining 90 per cent home-produced. In all, three per cent of Irish forests are ash forests.
The Irish Guild of Ash Hurleymakers (IGAH) have already outlined their concerns regarding the threat to the hurley ash industry.
Even before the introduction of new controls in force from this weekend they had agreed to call on their members to ensure that ash wood for hurley-making is either imported from countries free of the disease or that any hurley ash being brought in from Continental Europe would be in plank form with the bark sawn off.
Minister of State Shane McEntee said: "This is a very aggressive disease in ash trees and we must do everything possible to keep it out and it is for these reasons that new legal measures are now in place." | <urn:uuid:19925d55-438f-4b4f-90f2-0443325a2f2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.independent.ie/sport/hurling/hurley-suppliers-facing-disaster-over-ash-disease-28824383.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972325 | 850 | 2.828125 | 3 |
||This map shows where industrial centers were developing in Europe in the mid-1800s. It also shows varying degrees of urbanization. Notice that Britain, which industrialized first, already has at least 20 percent of its population living in cities of 100,000 or more. The regions on the continent with between 6 and 10 percent of the population in such large cities are also the regions that experienced greater industrial development. Industrialization and urbanization went hand in hand. | <urn:uuid:f7cceb7b-bb3f-457c-a32a-0eaf11162ddb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://go.hrw.com/hrw.nd/gohrw_rls1/pKeywordResults?keyword=st9%20eur%20indus%201800 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970832 | 92 | 3.140625 | 3 |
This is news: Ted Cruz’s name didn’t hurt him.
This is why it’s news: Xavier Rodriguez, Tony Garza, Victor Carrillo. Each lost a Republican primary for statewide office and either the candidates or someone nearby blamed their losses on their Hispanic names.
Maybe it’s true. But political candidates and campaigns never blame themselves for losses, and it’s hard to tell whether the name thing really hurts. It became conventional wisdom without any scientific testing. And it may be fading away.
Republicans are trying to win Hispanic votes in Texas and to wipe out their reputation as the party of Anglos in a state where they are no longer the majority of the population. So the name thing is encouraging. The bad news for Republicans is that they’re not always great at protecting the Hispanics they have already elected.
Cruz battled his way into a Republican primary runoff for the U.S. Senate with David Dewhurst, a sitting lieutenant governor. It’s been a knock-down, drag-out fight featuring Chinese tire companies, dancing suits, pocket Constitutions and dozens of forums featuring everyone but the front-runner.
The race turned, arguably, on voters’ conflicting desires to stick with proven, experienced conservatives and to replace incumbents with fresh faces and ideas. Dewhurst isn’t an incumbent — Kay Bailey Hutchison’s Senate seat is up for grabs — but he acted like one. Cruz hasn’t run for office before, but he has seized on the national taste for insurgent politics.
Maybe Texas Republicans ignored his Hispanic surname because they like the fire in his voice when he asks for their help storming the castle. Maybe it’s no longer an obstacle. Either way, it didn’t seem to play in this election.
Texas Supreme Court Justice David Medina was also on the Republican ballot, asking voters for another term. He’s in a runoff, but don’t blame his name. Blame a 2007 fire that started in the garage of his uninsured home, a complicated story that got the judge indicted on an arson charge — which was thrown out by Harris County prosecutors and never pursued. Medina and his lawyers said the fire was caused by an electrical malfunction. Suffice to say that the judge’s name isn’t his most formidable political problem.
After the 2010 elections and a few party-switching raids on the Democrats, Texas Republicans boasted of their growing number of Hispanic officeholders, particularly in the Texas House. But they haven’t protected them.
Aaron Peña of Edinburg switched to the Republican Party after the 2010 elections. He was rewarded in the new maps with a Democratic district and decided not to seek another term in the House.
John Garza of San Antonio won in a House district that was mildly surprised to find itself electing a Republican. Now he is in a district — blame those mappers again — where Democrats have an even shot.
Larry Gonzales of Round Rock, a former political consultant who won a House seat, is a bright spot for the Republicans. He drew only a Libertarian opponent this year and will almost certainly be back.
Dee Margo of El Paso has a House district that can swing from the Republicans to the Democrats. He’s always in danger, and remains so this year in spite of Republican attempts to map him into a safe seat. The courts redrew it, and he will face a serious challenge in November.
J.M. Lozano of Kingsville was elected as a Democrat in 2010 and now has switched to the Republicans. In his first crack at that, he landed squarely in the runoffs, where he'll face Bill Wilson II, an architect who apparently didn’t get a memo telling him that the new member of the family was supposed to get a free pass.
Jose Aliseda of Beeville decided to go home after one term to run for district attorney. If he had stayed, he would be in the same district as Lozano, facing an electorate that could easily elect a Democrat instead of a Republican in November.
And Raul Torres of Corpus Christi decided to run for the state Senate after being paired with another Republican in his House district. It’s an uphill fight against Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, on turf more hospitable to a Democrat.
At least his name won’t hurt him.
Texas Tribune donors or members may be quoted or mentioned in our stories, or may be the subject of them. For a complete list of contributors, click here. | <urn:uuid:16269967-47a2-4aab-aca1-621358856a5f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2012-elections/game-name/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969422 | 954 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Port Authority Seeks to Increase Tolls as Overtime Pay ‘Flows Like Water’
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which wants to raise tolls by as much as 88 percent, paid $85.7 million in overtime last year and has “no clear strategy” for cutting costs, New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said.
The agency paid overtime to 5,360 of its 6,977 employees in 2010, according to an audit from DiNapoli’s office released today. Employees of the Port Authority Trans Hudson Railway, or PATH, and public-safety workers made up the majority of those receiving overtime, according to the report.
“Before the Port Authority asks for more money to fund its operations, the agency should take a long, hard look at whether its business model for managing overtime really makes sense,” DiNapoli said in a statement. “Overtime flows like water at the Port Authority and management has no clear strategy to achieve its own benchmarks and goals for curbing costs.”
Ron Marsico, a Port Authority spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to a telephone message and e-mail requesting comment.
The agency, which doesn’t receive tax revenue and relies mostly on tolls and transit fares, is seeking to boost the cash cost for the George Washington Bridge and Lincoln and Holland tunnels to $15 from $8 next month. Drivers using the electronic E-ZPass device would see peak-hour tolls go to $12 from $8. Those increases would also apply to three bridges connecting New Jersey to Staten Island.
World Trade Center
The agency says it needs the money to fund a 10-year, $30 billion capital program and to help rebuild the World Trade Center. Board members are scheduled to vote on the fare increase this week.
The plan would boost agency revenue by about $240 million from September through year-end, and $720 million a year starting in 2012, according to the agency. An additional $2 increase in 2014 would add another $290 million a year, raising the total annual gain from the increase to more than $1 billion.
Christie, who said last week it was “unlikely” the plan would move forward as proposed, told reporters today that he may support an increase. He said he hasn’t decided on the full proposal to raise bridge and tunnel E-ZPass fares by $4.
Agency employees accounted for 71 of the top 300 pension earners in the state’s retirement system, with annual pensions ranging from $125,612 to $196,768, DiNapoli said. Most of those retirees were eligible to use overtime to inflate their pensions, he said.
Overtime costs dropped 3 percent in 2010 from 2009, even after the agency planned to reduce them by 20 percent, DiNapoli said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Esmé E. Deprez in New York at firstname.lastname@example.org
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at email@example.com | <urn:uuid:35694dc2-1c39-4172-b1fd-b33314e2ab9a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-17/port-authority-seeks-to-increase-tolls-as-overtime-pay-flows-like-water-.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95665 | 650 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Sarah Rich of Inhabitat writes about the Ecohouse Brazil "..In the Urca neighborhood near the base of Sugarloaf mountain and the shores of Rio de Janeiro, architect Alexandra Lichtenberg tackled a remodeling project that demonstrates that being green isn't the exclusive domain of high-cost, luxury residences and backwoods off-grid dwellings. A good green remodel is within reach of the average well-intentioned homeowner in the average urban neighborhood anywhere in the world, and the EcoHouse proves it..."
Photos Courtesy of Inhabitat
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Galinsky writes "....The Centre Culturel Tjibaou, dedicated to Jean-Marie Tjibaou who died in 1989 while leading the fight for his country's autonomy from the French government, is devoted to the cultural origins and search for identity of the native Kanak people of New Caledonia and the South Pacific. In the native tongue of Jean-Marie Tjibaou, pije language, it is also known as Ngan Jila - meaning cultural center.
The Center itself is similar to that of the villages in which the Kanak tribes live; a series of huts (or case in French) which distinguish the different functions and hierarchies of the tribes (les tribus) and a central alley along which the huts are dispersed. More specifically, the Cultural Center is composed of three ?villages? made up of ten ?Great Houses? of varying sizes and functions (exhibition spaces, multimedia library, cafeteria, conference and lecture rooms). The ?Great Houses? are linked by a long, gently curving enclosed walkway, reminiscent of the ceremonial alley of the traditional Kanak village.
The identity of the Kanak is not only reinforced through the form of the building but also through its relationship with the natural landscape. Located on a peninsula between the storm-tossed Pacific Ocean and a calm lagoon the design of Renzo Piano takes advantage of the prevailing winds from the ocean side through its system of natural ventilation. Horizontal wood slats composed of iroko wood (a type of wood that is impervious to rot and can withstand cyclone-force winds) of the outer facade on the ocean side filter the wind into a second layer of skin, an inner facade of glass louvers which open or close according to wind speed, allowing wind to flow through the building for passive ventilation. The double layer of skin also filters the warm air upward functioning similar to a chimney.
The sound and feel of the wind is something that can only be experienced by being there and seems to transcend any kind of technological terms or mechanisms. It is a feeling of being inside, yet outside at the same time; of being protected yet still close to nature.
The Center is also composed of various exterior spaces which further explore the relationship of the Kanak culture to nature and the landscape; a Kanak pathway which winds through the dense natural vegetation, traditional ceremonial grounds of the Kanak with traditional huts, an outdoor auditorium and residences for visiting artists, lecturers, scholars and students. These spaces, as well as the main building, integrate themselves and take advantage of the natural beauty of the site.
Photos Courtesy of Renzo Piano Building Workshop
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Developing countries produce there own fair share of broken glass that often ends up in landfill sites or on top fences as a burglar deterrent. Apart from recycling broken glass back into bottles and drinking glasses, this raw material can also be incorporated into floor and wall tiles.
In an article posted by Jill for Inhabitat she writes "...Glass is an amazing material. Not only is it durable, smooth and transparent, but it also has the unusual quality of being infinitely recyclable. Whereas other materials like plastic and metal gradually deteriorate over repeated recyclings, glass has the unique ability to be melted down and turned into something else over and over again, without ever experiencing any loss in quality. Add this to the fact that post-consumer glass containers now make up the second highest consumer waste product after paper, and you can see where I'm going here..
You can do your part to conserve this great resource by recycling glass containers, and by supporting industries that recycle and use recycled glass products. One good place to start is in your interior design. In the past decade, architects and material designers have begun to realize that the unique qualities of glass make it an ideal material for building - and not just in flat-paned windows and doors. Recycled glass is now making appearances in everything from kitchenware, to bathroom tiles, to the aggregate in floors and countertops.
Probably the most stunning architectural use of recycled glass can be found in Vetrazzo a ceramic aggregate material made by Berkeley based Counter production. Made from 85-90% post-consumer recycled glass, Vetrazzo is as smooth as marble and four times as strong as concrete. Is is usually used in countertops and tables but can also be used in floors and walls. The material comes in a wide variety of colors, can be custom-ordered in any combination of colors and aggregate sizes.
I once worked in a building with an all white Vetrazzo floor, and it was beautiful. The light would reflect and flicker off the glass specs, and I repeatedly found myself kneeling over to stare at the floor..." | <urn:uuid:b36ca875-3067-45a4-932b-d082508e6e58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://africanarchitecture.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953987 | 1,104 | 1.953125 | 2 |
These are some of my notes from the presentation “ ‘Wanted Dead or Alive!’ Looking for Southern Vital Records” that I attended at the 2010 Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference. The lecture was presented by Russell P. Baker. This is not intended to be a transcript or even a synopsis of the lecture, but rather reflects some of the things that I learned.
I attended this presentation because, as everyone who does research in the South knows, vital records are notoriously difficult to locate. Not only did we start keeping records late in comparison to some other parts of the country, but also we have been plagued by courthouse fires and other disasters which have destroyed many of our government records. The introduction for this lecture stated that it would “explore alternate sources for these kinds of records.”
The syllabus included a list of Southern states and the address, website, and phone number for the state vital records office; it also listed the year that record-keeping began in that state. I’m not including that information here; however, if there is a specific state for which you need information, leave a comment and I will email you that state’s information.
One of Mr. Baker’s first remarks regarded the book: International Vital Records Handbook by Thomas Jay Kemp. He says this book should be in the library of every serious Southern researcher.
He then suggested that we adopt a “family-oriented research strategy,” which means to widen one’s search beyond the direct line. I know from my own experience that I’ve often found information for direct ancestors on documents belonging to collateral lines. For example, I found a birthplace for a 3rd-great-grandfather on his son’s death certificate (the son being the brother of my ancestor).
Following are some strategies for finding “vital record” information:
- Check existing birth records for every family member.
- Check for “Delayed of Prior Birth Certificates” – especially for people who filed SS-5’s as they would need proof of birth.
- Get death certificates for all possible family members and compare the information from all siblings (the comparison refers to parental information on the death certificate).
- SSDI – look for all siblings and spouses of siblings.
- Check Railroad Retirement Board records
- The DAR library is a source for Family Bible records.
- U. S. Civil War Pensions – U. S. means “Union” records. Mr. Baker made the point that one shouldn’t assume all Southern soldiers fought for the Confederacy. (I have an ancestor who served in both armies; I made a note to order his U. S. pension from NARA.)
- Property records can provide incidental proof of marriage, because the wife had a dower interest in the property, which she was required to sign away in the event of a sale.
Many other potential sources were mentioned during the lecture, but these are the ones that I think will be most useful in my own research. What other sources have you found useful in finding birth-death-marriage information when no vital record can be located? | <urn:uuid:fdd00bc5-d47b-4397-a7ea-bd58f53ec127> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.toniasroots.net/2010/09/17/looking-for-southern-vital-records/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961739 | 660 | 1.976563 | 2 |
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20 April 2011
World Bank unease: On the eve of the recent Group of 20 (G20) meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Washington - set against a backcloth of a fragile world economy - the World Bank said rocketing food prices have created "a toxic brew of real pain contributing to social unrest."...
16 April 2008
HUNGER AND malnutrition are getting far worse due to rising food prices. Even those fortresses of global capitalism, the World Bank and the International, writes Jon Dale and Jan Rybak.
19 April 2007
WORLD BANK president Paul Wolfowitz is under fire, mired in a corruption scandal...
22 September 2000
ON 26 SEPTEMBER, capitalism's globetrotting circus stops in Prague, the Czech Republic's capital city. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank are in town, writes Manny Thain.
15 September 2000
WHILE PROTESTS against fuel prices were taking place in France and Britain, 10, 000 protesters blockaded the entrance to the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia...
Search entire database: | <urn:uuid:b754697c-644f-4ecf-b9c7-f19af7b7ad61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/keyword/World_Bank | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90876 | 242 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Fifty-six years after the Allies landed in France, the National D-Day Museum opened. The museum was the brainchild of UNO historian and author Stephen Ambrose, who was motivated by the forgotten history of New Orleans’ role in building thousands of landing craft used to storm the beaches.
Within three years the museum had broadened, and was rechristened the National World War II Museum. It has continued an ambitious expansion program that has made it a leading historical center.
The idea for a museum came out of a conversation in 1985 between Ambrose and fellow UNO historian Nick Mueller. The early fundraising capitalized on Ambrose’s fame as an author. But Mueller was the hands-on organizer and became the driving force for the expansion of the museum after Ambrose’s death in 2002.
The opening of the museum on June 6, 2000, was accompanied by a parade with scores of military units, including a rare flyover from a B-1 bomber.
The museum's opening came two years after Steven Spielberg’s movie “Saving Private Ryan” renewed interest in D-Day. NBC anchor Tom Brokaw’s book, “The Greatest Generation,” also peaked interest in the museum. Brokaw hosted the "NBC Nightly News" from New Orleans during the opening, and Spielberg and “Saving Private Ryan” star Tom Hanks spoke at the ceremonies.
The original museum building was once a brewery. The state donated millions for an opening hall which is filled with World War II vehicles and airplanes. The exhibit includes restored New Orleans-built Higgins landing craft.
Congress declared it the official National World War II Museum in 2003, as the museum began an ambitious expansion plan, including several new buildings. The newest is the Kushner Restoration Pavilion, a glass-walled structure that allows people to watch museum artifacts being restored. By the time the $300 million plan is completed in 2015, the museum will have quadrupled in size.
Tomorrow, 2001: Former Gov. Edwin Edwards is convicted. | <urn:uuid:ccb32eb9-7485-486e-8343-007a3b76867a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nola.com/175years/index.ssf/2012/01/2000_national_world_war_ii_mus.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964787 | 421 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Not so rare after all: Lynas Corporation’s rare earth refinery in Malaysia
By Hilary Lewis
September 23, 2011
We use rare earths in a wide range of modern conveniences, from consumer electronics to hybrid car batteries.
Recently, rare earths have been in the news thanks to skyrocketing prices. High prices are a result of increased demand due to new technologies and artificially limited supply – artificially limited by China, which currently controls more than 90% of global rare earth mineral production, but less than 40% of known deposits.
Rare earth minerals are expensive and dangerous to mine, not to mention the environmental impacts common to all mining, in addition to radioactive waste concerns.
Now, companies like Australia’s Lynas Corporation Ltd. are trying to even the playing field by developing mines outside of China -- and making a buck, or $1.7 billion, while they’re at it.
This brings us to Malaysia.
In 1985, Mitsubishi Chemical of Japan opened a rare earths processing facility in Buhit Merah, Malaysia. The plant operated until 1992 without plans for dealing with the radioactive waste it produced.
Subsequently, the company has spent $100 million since closure on insufficient cleanup measures that have left the community poisoned by their mistakes. The thousands of tons of low-level radioactive waste left behind in Buhit Merah remains one of Asia’s largest radioactive waste cleanup sites.
Their failures didn’t make many friends for Lynas’ new, $230 million rare earth refinery currently under construction in Pahang, Malaysia. Lynas hopes to complete the refinery by the end of 2011 to process rare earths produced at its Western Australia mine, Mount Weld. If completed, the Lynas refinery will be the largest rare earth refinery in the world and the first project completed outside of China in almost three decades.
Given the history of radioactive waste in Malaysia, citizens are outraged about the concerning construction record and plan to store radioactive waste on-site for 1,500 years. Local members of parliament have vocalized opposition and organized over five months of protests, slowing construction. With concerns about water pollution, regional economic impacts, and radioactive waste, community opposition to the processing plant has been steadily growing. | <urn:uuid:de9f46a9-6c93-4bdf-92d5-7b007d3217dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.earthworksaction.org/earthblog/detail/not_so_rare_after_all_lynas_corporations_rare_earth_refinery_in_malaysia | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934729 | 464 | 2.46875 | 2 |
When I arrived to Cuyagua, I thought it was nothing short of a little piece of paradise on earth. I went there with an old friend from my years living in Caracas. We arrived late at night so we just left our things at the hotel and then we went to the beach to enjoy a magnificent starry sky. As soon as we got there, I saw a shooting star. It was so beautiful that I didn’t dare to ask for a wish, I was only able to whisper an astonished “thank you” to the universe. A few minutes later, another shooting star crossed the sky; this one was bigger and even more beautiful than the first one, I could not help laughing when I asked this time for a wish.
Cuyagua is located within the Henri Pittier National Park, the oldest national park in Venezuela. We actually came here because my friend has started a project for building a baseball field for the town, so he knows his way around quite well. He tells me that people here are very much involved in the upkeep of their town and that they prefer to personally take care of their own safety rather than leave it to the police. In fact, at the entrance of the beach there is a sign that warns: “El que robe será coñazeado”, which translates to “those who steal will be beaten up”. It seems to work, there is a more relaxed and peaceful feeling here, and you don’t find that in other places in Venezuela these days.
When visiting Cuyagua, a good thing to keep in mind is that if you go during the week you will probably enjoy the beach all to yourself. I was there on a Friday by myself, while my friend was running his errands in town, and the people that were closest to me were about 250 meters away. The next day the same beach was unrecognisable, full of cars and people camping with loud music.
For more photos check out my SmugMug
Share and Enjoy | <urn:uuid:14315afd-125f-4d6b-83ed-2b1c2ad8ce75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nomadbiba.com/wp/2011/02/cuyagua-a-piece-of-paradise/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986898 | 421 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Lighting fixture or light fittings are one of the most important requirements of a house today. Also known as luminaries, they are used to create artificial lights by the usage of electric lamps. Light fixtures have a body, sockets and a switch to operate it in order to make them work. It also requires an electric connection through the main power source.
Light fixtures are also used as reflectors for directing light in a particular area to make it look stunning and attractive, thereby enhancing the beauty of the house.
Light fixtures come with few basic products which include brass tubes, LED luminaries, streetlight luminaries, light fittings and sheet metal fixtures. The type of fixtures includes Balanced-arm lamp, Gooseneck lamp, and nightlight.
Suitable and apt lighting fixtures can change the whole look of the home dcor and can bring in a complete dramatic effect to it. Even the ordinary and regular looking objects look new and transform into something else if bright and dazzling light fixtures work their magic. So, while using light fixture at home, one needs to keep a few things in mind, for the safety of the inmates. Big lights should be used in big rooms that connect lights to other rooms, in order to avoid any accidents. Outdoors should be properly lit, as they not just enhance the beauty of the house but also serve for the safety and security. Fixtures are completely different for exterior and interior of one's home.
Every component of the home has to be properly thought of while installing lights, as home is the place for relaxation, party and spending most of the time. Lighting creates a perfect look of the house and adds style to various corners and areas.
A recessed lighting, uniform lighting and accent lighting are very important while keeping in mind the perfect fixtures for a home.
It is very important to know what kind of light will suit a particular room and according to space and dcor, a fixture can be planned so as to make it look wonderful. For example, in the living room, a chandelier can be placed along with designer lamps. Small pendent dim lights can be used to give a modernized look. For kid's bedroom, one can even plan for ceiling light fixtures again with dim lights which can be put on when they sleep. In a garden, pole lamps can be used to give a different look to the exteriors. | <urn:uuid:644f2fdc-1fc4-427d-a6dc-c54172293195> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://light.ezinemark.com/lighting-fixture-322fbf1e84e.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956104 | 485 | 2.203125 | 2 |
We are all aware that more and more people are accessing the Internet “on-the-go” with the use of their mobile devices. People gain access to the worldwide web via their mobile devices (day in and day out) to do pretty much anything and everything which the Internet allows them to (check out their social networking accounts, do online banking, browse their favorite websites, go online shopping, etc. ). The explosion in the number of Internet-enabled mobile devices or mobile technologies concurred equally with the dramatic boost in mobile internet users worldwide. Of course, the business world was one of the first to embrace the strength and power of mobile technologies online.
With the inception of internet business marketing campaigns via mobile devices, entrepreneurs have found a faster and more accessible way to reach their target market. If you think about the fact that most people feel incomplete without their mobile devices, then a business can surely find a way to promote and market its products or services via mobile media. The steady shift in how many consumers access the Internet will become an advantage for many entrepreneurs to help them gain leverage, close sales, and increase revenues.
Marketing for business via various mobile technologies has proven to be a goldmine for many large-scale companies. Although small in coverage compared to large businesses, small-scale business can still benefit from the powerful marketing technique which mobile technologies have provided.
Yet, a number of small-scale entrepreneurs still need more convincing for them to accept, support, and employ mobile marketing for their business (or for some, creating their mobile presence). So, how can mobile marketing give small businesses a boost?
Current Mobile Web Usage Statistics
There are some small businesses that haven’t created their mobile presence yet. They haven’t completely realized how consumers are changing the ways they purchase products and services online these days. Of course, many of these entrepreneurs don’t know how mobile marketing works and how effective it is to increase their business productivity and profitability.
Let’s take a look at current mobile internet stats. These statistics may motivate more small business entrepreneurs to strengthen their use of mobile technologies for mobile marketing and inspire other small-scale businesses to put up their mobile presence.
- Smartphone sales bigger than PC sales. The increase of smartphone users also created an equal increase in the demand for access of business information and access. The massive growth of Internet-enabled mobile technologies, along with various software and applications, provided: a. employers easy medium of communication and collaboration to employees, b. customers to reach businesses, and c. businesses to communicate with customers and market products and services to potential clients.
- 86% of adults have cell phones and nearly 1 in 2 adults now use mobile internet. In first quarter of 2012, many reports have shown that online cell phone internet browsing is at its all time high. Many consumers are spending more of their time on their mobile phones than their PCs. As mobile devices improve, users accessing the Internet via cell phones and other mobile devices will become more common than ever.
- 62% of smartphone Internet users have gone online via their phone every day. The domination of smartphones and other mobile devices as medium for Internet access has become more evident.
- Mobile internet use will become more than double. Many studies disclosed that mobile internet devices will reach up to billions by next year. This means mobile internet use will increase resulting to more activities on online shopping and blogging, as well as increase access to business applications and software.
With these statistics alone, it is impossible for those small-scale businesses not online to jump on the bandwagon and experience the benefits of creating mobile presence. And for those who already have, regular strengthening of their mobile marketing strategies will definitely help a lot more.
Mobile Marketing Boosts Small Business Profitability and Productivity
Without the various Internet-enabled mobile technologies, mobile marketing can’t prosper until today which has brought about increases in business profitability. Mobile technologies have also helped businesses to increase their productivity.
The mobile technologies available today have definitely opened a new dimension in advertising and marketing of business globally. Potential customers and clients can now immediately notice or spot business using their smartphones and other mobile devices. Entrepreneurs can make use of various mobile marketing techniques such as mobile websites, mobile applications, banner ads, SMS (text) messaging, etc.
There are many opportunities to thrive in the business world through mobile marketing. Entrepreneurs can use the following to boost their mobile marketing strategy and increase the awareness of their business among their target audience.
- Optimize Websites for Mobile. Of course, websites have been a great help for most online business. However, sometimes websites can look crappy when viewed on smartphones and other mobile devices or takes a long time to load. If that happens, customers or potential clients will start to look elsewhere. Entrepreneurs must make sure that their websites are optimized for mobile browsing. If not, you can create a mobile site out from scratch. A business can’t afford to lose business opportunities which a mobile presence can provide.
- Signing up in social sites. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google Places, and other social sites have revolutionized an avenue where businesses can spread their online presence to reach their market. Since many people check out their accounts in various social sites via their smartphones daily, businesses can take advantage of the free advertisement. People usually check out new businesses through these portals.
- Running promotions through mobile messages. This is a strategy which can guarantee entrepreneurs that they can reach their target market. Compared to email marketing which can’t be read or even treated as spam, SMS (text) or MMS messages will surely be read. Mobile promotions can be a great and creative way to engage for customers to spot a business.
- Creating a mobile app. The possibilities are endless for a business that has a mobile app. Entrepreneurs can create mobile apps providing services related to their business. It is a new, creative, and innovative way of getting discovered and staying in the minds of potential customers.
Business mobile marketing can seem like a shot in the dark. But for those who have already started on their mobile business campaigns, mobile marketing has proven to be a very powerful tool to grow a business and gain more customers. | <urn:uuid:465baaea-2578-4282-8668-44343b9a8bcf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newblood.com/blog/mobile-marketing-how-to-add-a-boost-to-your-business/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941927 | 1,270 | 1.5625 | 2 |
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The Natural Map of the Middle East
"Apart from political maps of mankind, there are natural maps of mankind. ... One of the first laws of political stability is to draw your political boundaries along the lines of the natural map of mankind."
So wrote H.G. Wells in What Is Coming: A Forecast of Things to Come After the Warin the year of Verdun and the Somme Offensive.
In redrawing the map of Europe, however, the statesmen of Versailles ignored Wells and parceled out Austrians, Hungarians, Germans and other nationalities to alien lands to divide, punish and weaken the defeated peoples.
So doing they set the table for a second world war.
The Middle East was sliced up along lines set down in the secret Sykes-Picot agreement. But with the Islamic awakening and Arab Spring toppling regimes, the natural map of the Middle East seems now to be asserting itself.
Sunni and Shia align with Sunni and Shia, as Protestants and Catholics did in 17th-century Europe. Ethiopia and Sudan split. Mali and Nigeria may be next. While world attention is focused on Aleppo and when Bashar Assad might fall, Syria itself may be about to disintegrate p.
In Syria's northeast, a Kurdish minority of 2 to 3 million with ethnic ties to Iraqi Kurdistan and 15 million Kurds in Turkey seems to be dissolving its ties to Damascus. A Kurdish nation carved out of Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran would appear to be a casus belli for all four nations. Yet in any natural map of the world, there would be a Kurdistan.
The Sunni four-fifths of the Syrian population seems fated to rise and the Muslim Brotherhood to rule, as happened in Egypt. The fall of Assad and his Shia Alawite minority would be celebrated by the Sunni across the border in Iraq's Anbar province, who would then have a powerful new ally in any campaign to recapture Sunni lands lost to Iraqi Shia.
With its recent murderous attacks inside Iraq, al-Qaida seems to be instigating a new Sunni-Shia war to tear Iraq apart.
The fall of the Alawites in Damascus would end the dream of a Shia crescent—Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah—leave Hezbollah isolated, and conceivably lead to a renewal of Lebanon's sectarian and civil war.
The losers in all this? Certainly Iran, which seems fated to lose its only Arab ally, Syria, and its land link to Hezbollah.
That would make Israel a winner. But Israel's situation appears more perilous than it was a decade ago.
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has replaced Hosni Mubarak, who kept the peace in Sinai and the lid on Hamas. Recently, new Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi met with Hamas' Khaled Meshaal at the presidential palace in Cairo. The Sinai is becoming a no man's land where terrorists plot and Africans cross to Israel.
To Israel's east, there is no true peace with the Palestinians, and the Jordanian throne has rarely been shakier. On the Golan Heights, quiet for decades, the future may see Syrian troops loyal to a militant Sunni regime in Damascus. Hezbollah sits on Israel's northern border. Beyond is a Turkey no longer friendly.
Israel is blaming the atrocity in Bulgaria, in which Israeli tourists were massacred, on Iran. But neither the Bulgarians nor the Americans appear to know who did it. And why would the Iranians, who, following the slaughter, publicly denounced such atrocities against civilians, do it?
Were an Iranian hand to be found in this act of barbarism, it would give Israel justification for an attack, igniting a war in which America could be dragged in.
Why would Iran want a war with the United States when that would mean destruction of its air force, navy, missile force and nuclear program, a crippling blockade and perhaps destruction of its vital oil facilities on Kharg Island?
Whoever was behind the attack on the Israeli tourists seems to want a war between the Jewish state of Israel and the Shia state of Iran.
Who would benefit from such a war?
Answer: Al-Qaida, which, during the Iraq War, urged the United States to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. An al-Qaida affiliate has also attacked Israeli vacationers before, at Egyptian resorts on the Gulf of Aqaba.
"There is an international plot against Gulf states in particular and Arab countries in general ... to take over our fortunes," says Dubai's chief of police. "I had no idea that there is this large number of Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf states."
What is al-Qaida's goal? Ignite Sunni-Shia wars and Muslim-Christian clashes in Arab states. Draw in the Americans to smash Iran. And when the Sunni are ascendant, expel the Americans and Christians, isolate Israel and set about creating the caliphate of Osama bin Laden's dream.
If a U.S. war on Iran is good for al-Qaida, how can it be good or us?
Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, can be ordered from Amazon.com. His most recent published book is Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, reviewed here by Paul Craig Roberts. His new book Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? was released October 18, 2011. | <urn:uuid:00a41e3a-2f8f-4f4f-bffc-bb3e57451c4d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vdare.com/articles/the-natural-map-of-the-middle-east | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953164 | 1,160 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Pregnancy Symptoms: What They Never Told You
Morning sickness isn't the only one. Here's a list of pregnancy symptoms you might not be expecting.
Many women find they gain a bra size or two during their pregnancy. (For
better or worse, the change is usually not permanent.) The swelling, which
signals an increase in fat reserves and milk gland size, may be accompanied by
"Itching is a very common complaint and can occur throughout
pregnancy," Lindsay says. The usual areas are the breasts and abdomen,
where the skin is stretching to accommodate your growing shape.
Here's one pregnancy symptom your mom may not have warned you about - you're
likely to get constipated, especially in the late second and third trimesters.
According to Lindsay, constipation may result from a number of factors:
- Changes in digestion caused by the hormone progesterone
- Increased water absorption in the large intestines
- Iron supplements
- Pressure of the uterus on the rectum
"Constipation may be eased or prevented by eating high fiber foods,
drinking plenty of water and exercising regularly," Lindsay says.
Also common in the second and third trimesters is heartburn, a burning
sensation between the breastbone and the throat. Lindsay says progesterone is
once again to blame. The hormone relaxes the sphincter at the bottom of the
esophagus, allowing gastric acid to come up. Lindsay's tips for easing
- Avoid spicy foods
- Don't eat immediately before lying down
- Elevate the head of the bed -- try blocks under the head of the
- Take antacids (Check with your doctor or midwife first.)
Seasonal allergies and asthma may become unpredictable during pregnancy.
Stein tells WebMD some women see their symptoms improve, while others notice
the opposite. She says expectant moms with asthma generally should continue
using their inhalers. "If you don't breathe, your baby won't
Changes in Balance
In the third trimester, many women find they are perpetually off-balance.
"This change happens later in pregnancy, but I notice very few women expect
it," Stein tells WebMD. While a growing belly tends to throw off your
center of gravity, there's more to it than that. "A hormone called relaxin
kicks in toward the end of pregnancy," Stein explains. "Its main
purpose is to loosen the pelvic joints so they are more flexible during labor.
But this hormone also works on the hips, knees and ankles. This makes
[expectant mothers] more wobbly and achy and likely to fall."
Abnormal Pregnancy Symptoms
With so many changes taking place in your body, you may be tempted to
dismiss any new discomfort as normal during pregnancy. But certain symptoms
could signal a serious problem:
- Bleeding or spotting - According to Lindsay, "bleeding or
spotting is never felt to be normal during pregnancy." Spotting is common
in the first trimester and probably not a cause for alarm. However, in the
second and third trimester, bleeding could provide advance warning of a serious
complication, such as preterm labor or problems with the placenta. Always
report any bleeding or spotting to your doctor or midwife.
- Severe itching - In the late second and third trimester, severe
itching may signal a rare liver problem that sometimes develops during
pregnancy, known as intrahepatic cholestasis. "This condition requires
increased fetal surveillance and early delivery," Lindsay says.
- Blurred vision, severe headaches and pain in the right side of
abdomen - These symptoms, whether they occur alone or in combination, may
indicate severe preeclampsia - the medical term for dangerously high blood
pressure during pregnancy. "Women who experience any of these symptoms
should contact their health care provider immediately," Lindsay advises.
Early delivery may be necessary "to avoid life-threatening maternal and | <urn:uuid:c65eb36f-7280-4ac5-b0c5-fa5351d28a21> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webmd.com/baby/features/pregnancy-symptoms-what-they-never-told-you?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940545 | 841 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Welcome to Resolutions Week! Today we'll be discussing exercise and its importance as viewed from the Chinese medical perspective.
Many many MANY people make exercise a part of their New Year's Resolutions. (It's definitely made my list!) We all know that to be truly healthy, exercise is an important building block. So why do so many of us struggle with the motivation to get up and move our bodies regularly?
We are a society of stress. Our jobs are stressful. Our families are stressful. Traffic is stressful. We're expected to do so much in so few hours! In Chinese medical theory, stress is associated with the Liver and the Wood element
. Stress prevents the Liver from doing its job of keeping our Qi moving in a smooth fashion. If our Qi isn't moving properly, we start to get symptoms of unhealth.
When we exercise regularly, we are mechanically making our Qi flow. Think of all those muscles moving. That blood pumping. The sweat pouring. Your Qi follows each of them. So even though the stress may be making it difficult for your Qi to move smoothly, when you exercise, it is being forced to do so, which will help ease your levels of stress. See how that works? It's a great feedback loop!
One of the reasons we may find it difficult to get motivated to get moving is because of our Qi not moving properly. Think of it like a car with a dead battery. If the battery isn't sending power to the engine to start it, you're going to have to push-start it. It's hard to be motivated to push that car, especially if it means having to get up earlier in the morning! However, if you know that if you push that car and get the battery fixed so it'll start easily when you tell it to, it's much easier to get out there and start pushing!
So get out there and fulfill your New Year's Resolutions, and know that you're doing your body good to get that Qi moving! Remember, it'll get easier to continue with your new habit once all those little bits of Qi get unstuck!Resolutions Week - IntroResolutions Week - Part II - Healthy EatingResolutions Week - Part III - Quitting SmokingResolutions Week - Part IV - Willpower
I liked this article from Natural News (copied below) and wanted to share it with you all. Apparently I am in the mood for some autumnal foods. Bonus recipe at the end!In Traditional Chinese Medicine, autumn is represented by the metal element, which corresponds to the Lungs and Large Intestine. Weakness in this element shows up as ailments in the Lung and Intestines: allergies, asthma and constipation. The remedy can be found in this season's most notable food: the pumpkin or squash.
The pumpkin is round, orange and sweet. It corresponds to the earth element in the five element cycle. Earth is the mother of metal. In Chinese medicine there is a saying: when there is weakness in the child (in this case metal: lungs and large intestine), nourish the mother (in this case earth.)
Weakness in the lungs will show up as:
Because the lungs open onto the skin, one may also see acne, eczema and psoriasis. The paired organ to the Lungs is the Colon, so weakness here will show up as constipation, diarrhea, or IBS.
In Chinese medicine, the pumpkin is known to relieve damp conditions such as dysentery and eczema. It promotes discharge of mucus from the lungs, bronchi and throat, easing bronchialasthma. (1)
Not only does the flesh of the pumpkin benefit the Lungs and Large Intestine, the seeds are especially good for the intestines, easing constipation and acting as a parasite cleanse. Known as nan gua zi, pumpkin seeds are especially known to alleviate tapeworm and roundworm. For this purpose pumpkin seeds are taken by boiling into a strong tea known as a decoction or grinding into a powder to be taken with water.
Nutritionally, pumpkins are high in beta carotene which is converted by the body to vitamin A. Beta carotene protects the mucous membranes of the body and has been shown to protect both the lungs and large intestine against cancer. (2)
Soup is an excellent way to nourish the body this time of year. The following soup can be made with pumpkin or any kind of yellow winter squash. Make sure to save and wash the seeds, which can then be salted and baked at 350 degrees until dry.
Nourishing Pumpkin Soup
- 1 pumpkin or squash, halved, seeded, and baked face down on baking sheet at 350 until soft (1/2 hour to an hour depending on thickness of squash.)
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 2 carrots, chopped
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- 2 Tbsp maple syrup
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 6 cups water
- In soup pot, saute onions, garlic and carrots in olive oil until softened.
- Add water, flesh of the squash scraped from the skin, maple syrup, salt and pepper and mix well.
- Bring to boil and simmer for 20 minutes.
- Cool and blend until smooth.
- Reheat and serve.
- Pitchford, p.508
- Ibid, p.313
Pitchford, Paul. Healing with Whole Foods. North Atlantic Books. Berkeley, CA.
Bensky, Dan and Gamble, Andrew. Chinese Herbal Medicine, Materia Medica.Eastland Press, Seattle.
Shanghai College of Traditional Medicine. Acupuncture, A Comprehensive Text. Eastland Press. Seattle.
Wood is our fifth and final element to discuss, so here we go!
Wood is the element that controls our abilities to make decisions, make goals and achieve them. When Wood is out of balance, we have trouble making decisions. We are unable to make goals, let alone complete them.
Wood is associated with the organs Liver and Gall Bladder. The Liver helps our emotions to flow smoothly, so if Wood is imbalanced, we may have trouble expressing emotions. Or we may get easily frustrated and irritated. In extremes, Wood that is way off track may lead to controlling, abusive behaviors, anger or addictive personalities with possible substance abuse.
Some physical signs that your wood is out of balance may be:
- Painful cramping during menstruation
- Alternating constipation and diarrhea
- Eye problems
The color associated with Wood is green - the color of spring. And much like in spring, when new growth is springing forth, the Wood element is all about new ideas and personal growth. This is typically the cause of frustration for an imbalanced wood element - the inability to grow, change and make a difference in the world.
Try some of these to keep your wood element in balance:
Go hiking through the woods. Trees are pure wood energy, and they'll help you balance out your wood element.
Make simple plans and follow through with them.
Wear the color green! I really like jade for this purpose. Alternately, you could wear something made from wood.
I hope you've had a lot of fun talking about the 5 elements and have learned a lot about yourself and your environment!
We're nearly through our 5 element discussion! The next element is the element of Water.
Water is the source of fearlessness, determination and sense of will-power. When our water element is weak, we may be anxious, withdrawn or fearful.
Aging, as well as the organs Kidney and Bladder are related to the water element, so physical complaints that one may experience are:
- Urinary complaints (incontinence or frequent urination)
- Menopausal symptoms
- Hearing problems (including deafness and ringing)
- Sexual dysfunctions (low libido, erectile dysfunction, etc.)
The color associated with Water is black. This didn't make sense to me when I was first studying Chinese medicine until someone explained that Water was also related to the season of Winter and the time between death and birth.
Think of being in the womb - there is no light.
Think of Winter when the sun might not make much of an appearance (especially here in Portland!) for days, weeks or months.
So, how do we strengthen our Water element?
Go swimming. What better way to honor the water within us than to immerse ourselves in it?
Like all of the other elements, surround yourself with items that are black. Some sources also link dark dark blue with Water.
Hibernate. Okay, not really. But get a lot of rest, and go easier on yourself, especially in the Winter. Winter is the time of Water and of preparing yourself for Spring when life will begin anew.
Tomorrow is the last stop on our Element discussion. We'll be talking about Wood - one of my favorites!
Woo! We're half way through our discussion of the five elements, are you enjoying yourself? I am! Today we're going to talk about Metal.
The metal element controls our sense of organization, self-control and conscience. Also our boundaries and sense of right and wrong. When we are balanced, the above qualities are exhibited. When our metal element is out of balance, we may become unorganized, socially inept (think self-control), we may become inflexible in our lives and unable to let things go - both physically (think hoarders) and emotionally (think grudges).
The organs associated with metal are the Lung and Large Intestine. People with metal imbalances may notice some of the following physical symptoms:
- eczema and other skin conditions
- changes in bowel habits (because of metal's relation to the Large Intestine)
The color of metal is white, so to strengthen your metal element, consider surrounding yourself with items or clothing that are white in color.
Go through your closet and get rid of clothes that no longer fit or no longer like. Someone else would probably love these items, and it's a great way to practice letting things go.
Organize your kitchen junk drawer (yeah, we all have them!). Putting things in their place will make your metal element feel much calmer!
If you find yourself dwelling on a situation from the past where you were wronged, take a moment to quiet yourself and focus on letting go of the grudge/anger/sadness. How do you do this?
Forgiveness might be the right word for you and your situation.
You might find that what works for you is to see some good that came from the situation. Yeah, your boyfriend may have cheated on you, but look at the wonderful person who came into your life because he was no longer occupying that space. Finding the positive can help you let go of the bad!
Tomorrow we'll discuss the element of water. I bet you can't wait! (I know I can't!)
The next element in our discussion is the element of Earth.
Earth is the element of being grounded, nurturing and compassionate. When our earth is strong, each of these traits are exhibited. When we're out of balance, we may worry about things, or over-think them until we're blue in the face. You know that test you took last week? If you're still thinking about the answer to number 27, then you need to strengthen your earth element. Weak earth may also exhibit as being meddlesome (it's not exactly compassionate or nurturing to get in on other peoples' business, is it?).
Unlike the fire element, which we discussed yesterday, the earth element doesn't appear in excess, only in deficiency. Some physical symptoms of weak earth may be:
- Loose bowel movements
- Being over weight
- "Fuzzy Thinking"
- Other digestive complaints
So what can we do to strengthen our Earth? As with any element, we can surround ourselves with clothing, items and foods that come in the color associated with the element. For earth - think "earth tones" - browns, oranges, yellows.
Since the earth element has to do with nourishment and digestion, consider eating easily digestible foods (fully cooked, not raw) and those coming from the ground that have earthy colors. My favorites are carrots and sweet potatoes. Squashes are also great earth-building foods!
My favorite way of building my earth is to go camping. Being away from the city with all of its straight lines and hard surfaces and really enjoying the dirt under your fingernails is a great way to connect with your earth element!
What's your favorite way of grounding yourself and connecting with your earth?
The first element we're going to talk about in this five-part series is Fire.
Fire is the element that relates to drive, passion, desire and enthusiasm. When our fire element is strong, we are able to experience all of these without trouble. When the fire element is out of balance, one may experience a feeling of being "burned out" (literally!) or being anxious.
Symptoms that you may feel if your fire energy is too low are:
- A lack of enthusiasm
- Restless sleep
- Muddled thinking
- Decreased sex drive
Some symptoms that may signify an excess of fire energy are:
- Heart palpitations
It should come as no surprise that the ancient Chinese linked the Heart to the element of fire (and all that passion!) but they also linked the Small Intestine, Triple Burner and Pericardium to fire.
So how do we keep our fire element strong? You could wear more red items, since red is the color associated with fire. Consider a necklace that has red in it. Or a new red shirt!
Meditate on the color red.
Eat red bell peppers!
Remember that fire has to do with enthusiasm, and try to foster that in your day to day life. Find something small to be excited about. It could be that you're going to try making a new dinner tonight (or an old favorite!). Get excited about it!
So, tell me, what are some of your ideas for keeping your fire element strong?
Over the next five posts, I'm going to talk about each of the Chinese elements. In Chinese medicine, the elements of fire, earth, metal, water and wood affect every aspect of our environment, our health and our lives.
We'll investigate their associations with color, certain bodily organs and functions, emotions and much more!
I hope you're as excited as I am to dig into each element in turn and see how they intertwine and affect our lives and our health!
Our family is putting a vegetable garden in our backyard. This is something we've wanted to do for a long time now and it just didn't ever seem to happen. We're super excited about it and look forward to our bounty! We're going to keep it simple this year - plants that pretty much grow like weeds - tomatoes, zucchini, beans, etc.
I'm not sure which part of it I'm most excited about.
Our backyard had been destroyed by the dogs, so we're really getting it put back together this year. That makes the organizer in me pleased. This is the metal in me.
I'm excited to get my hands in the dirt and to connect with the soil directly. I love being in the dirt. Being soild. This is the earth in me.
I look forward to watching all of our little plants change daily and to watch them reach for the sky. They're so adventurous! This is the wood in me.
The sun beating down on my back while I tend to my garden, absorbing that heat, that warmth - can't wait to bask in it! To let it empower me! This is the fire in me.
To water my little plantlings and watch the water snake its way around the garden, to watch it soak down through the earth, finding resistance, finding a way around, a way through - whatever it takes to make it to the roots of those little plants. This is the water in me.
Gardening can fulfill so many needs - exercise, sustenance, a breath of fresh air. Who knew it could also fulfill so many elemental needs as well? | <urn:uuid:5a83c7b3-b8c9-45f6-a2a3-1a25ead9c2d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thriveacupuncture.org/1/category/elements/1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952384 | 3,394 | 2.046875 | 2 |
|This page is an archive. Please do not edit this archive, instead try editing the page this archive originated from.|
When did Nagato become Jiraiya's student
I am having a doubt here. When did Nagato become Jiraiya's student? I mean did he become before Minato became a student of Jiraiya or after Minato. To put it simple, who became Jiraiya's student first, Nagato or Minato? I think you all must be interested in this question. So someone who knows about it, please answer the question.
nagato, read the manga! Vik0z0z 22:00, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Actually shouldnt it be Minato, since when Jiraiya taught minato he was only a squad jonin leader, and when he taught Nagato, Yahiko, and Konan, he was already a sannin.Shuhei Hisagi 22:49, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
No Jiraiya taught Minato after and plus just because he was a sannin doesn't mean his rank changed.
As of Chapter 432 the following Pains' are deceased, although they may be able to be brought back by Naraka Path: Animal Realm (Second Body), Asura Realm, Human Realm. Preta Path is incapacitated. Does anyone disagree with this? Revan46 01:38, 23 January 2009 (UTC) I think Preta is dead I mean Look at this! Image:Preta_dies.jpg It looks like his body was torn in half! He's dead.
GohanRULEZ 19:45, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
- That's his cloak, if you notice he's spinning around, as such his cloak is spinning and flying in the hair. 126.96.36.199 14:48, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
Well he hasn't move yet and we don't know if the punch killed him or not.
GohanRULEZ 19:55, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
- I think it wise, considering Pains ability to resurrect bodies to not label them deceased until they are actually replaced.--TheUltimate3 20:01, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
Actually it would probably be reasonable to mark all of the bodies as deceased since they are just corpses being controlled from a distance.WolfMaster 20:38, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
this should prove he is dead.http://www.onemanga.com/Naruto/431/16/
Seeing as how Pain's Naraka Path is dead shouldn't all those that have been actually killed (all but Deva & Preta) be considered deceased? --- Klross1.
- No because Pain can probably just get more bodies like he did when Jiraiya "stole" one. SuperN 01:14, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
Well we can definatly consider preta path deceased Pain can't turn crumbled stone pieces into skin and bones so if he survives the fight with Naruto he would have to find a new preta pathWolfMaster 20:11, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
- No we can't. In fact, we can't consider any of the bodies deceased in the context of the Six Paths. They are all corpses being used as puppets. They can be destroyed, but they can't die again. Besides, they can likely be repaired by Naraka Path. "Deceased" simply isn't a good word to describe Pain's bodies. --ShounenSuki (talk | contribs) 20:59, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
Yes that is a matter of difficulty considering they are dead anyway but we have the old animal path deceased since pain replaced it and naraka path is incapacitated so it can't revive any of the other bodies so pain's six paths will all have to be replaced so they are all effectively deceased for good having lost their usefulnessWolfMaster 14:29, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
- Still, "deceased" isn't the proper word to use. "Destroyed" or "incapacitated" are far better. These words are better suited to describe puppets that can be repaired and didn't actually die in the conventional sense of the word. One wouldn't say Kankurō's puppets were deceased, right? --ShounenSuki (talk | contribs) 15:47, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
No we wouldn't but however Kankuro's puppets where never alive in the first place but i have an idea why don't we just do the same thng as done with the old animal path put next to the paths Inapacitated and then beside that either Replaced or Needs ReplacementWolfMaster 20:14, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
- Well, the problem with that is that we don't actually know if they need replacement. The only reason the former Animal Path needed replacement was because he was taken to Konoha, outside of Pain's reach. Right now, the only thing we know for certain is that they are currently incapacitated/destroyed. --ShounenSuki (talk | contribs) 20:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Technicality, they ARE dead. But, in my belief, I think that the Pain bodies are pretty much puppets. Except, without chakra ropes and everything. So, I'm going to agree with Shounensuki and say that they're incapacitated/destroyed. You can't kill a dead when it isn't alive at all. -- Rasengan888 (talk)(Narutopedia Editor) 20:59, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
You have no proof that Pein's hair color is orange. And that picture from he anime,you could've mistaken it for brown or red. So untill you have more proof get a picture from magna. And not all Peins have to have the same hair color.
- I'm going to assume you completely ignored the picture of several colored pictures of Pain. Including the info box, and the two images of Human and Petra Paths. So far his hair has been consistently, orange.--TheUltimate3 01:30, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
i repeat not all Peins have to have the same hair color. and that picture of pein with orange hair is clearly FANDUB
- Page 1, Chapter 377. That is not fan colored. There you see three of his six bodies with orange hair. The infobox picture, comes from the newest databook. So far, as I have stated, Pain has consistently orange hair.--TheUltimate3 01:43, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
human naraka and preta were on page 1 chapter 377.no matter what u say ill find proof that pains hair color is unown
the spoilers(which look pretty real) for chapter 442 shows a color page with nagato's hair being red as a kid and currently.
- You have about as much proof as I do. Except I have the edge because all his bodies hair has been consistently orange.--TheUltimate3 01:56, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
Four bodies of Pain have been shown having orange hair: Deva Path;Animal Path(former);Preta Path;Human Path. And while I'm at it... Why was the colored image of Human Path changed to black and white? Paths 12:02, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
Guys, all of Pain's bodies are orange-haired, except for the Demon Path who is quite obviously b-b-bald! Another thing: I suppose someone should switch the order between Human and Asura paths. Human is after God, while Asura should follow God. Asura is a superior being to a human. It should go like Deva > Asura > Human > Animal > Preta > Naraka. —This unsigned comment was made by 188.8.131.52 (talk • contribs) on 08:26, December 13, 2008.
- No, the ordering is fine. The ordering has absolutely nothing to do with the names, Pain's bodies are listed in the order that they appeared in the series. ~NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) Dec 13, 2008 @ 22:15 (UTC)
Shouldn't it be listed as black, because nagato's hair color is black(or some other dark color), but the real question is why is Pain's hair color orange (or someting like that) and why is nagato's hair color black???????
- At least Deva Path's hair is orange because Yahiko (apparently) had orange hair. He may have gathered other orange-haired bodies after that just to remind him of Yahiko or something. As for Nagato's hair, we technically don't know that for sure that he's Pain's real body. Besides, we have a picture of Nagato on the page already.
look, apparently we have enough proof that his (Pain's Deva Path) is orange, or an auburn of some sort. The colored manga proves it and if u look on the Pain article, u can see the anime pic of him and see a little bit of his hair which, by the coloring, shows dark orange, brownish auburn-colored hair, so yeah... AMTNinja 18:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm putting Asura Path's status as "currently deceased" - he is deceased at the moment, for the time being, but he can still probably be brought back by Naraka Path. - Xfing
Good question???? --Tansl Retor 07:18, 30 December 2008 (UTC)Tansl Retor hey i thought pains name was spelled with an e like pein? Pain in Japanese is Pein. There are also other reasons why we use an A and not an E.SuperN 12:52, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
- See Talk:Pain/Archive 1#Pein?, "Pein" is the romaji, "Pain" is the official English listed in the databook. ~NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) Jan 29, 2009 @ 07:28 (UTC)
Deceased VS Incapacitated
I think using "deceased" for the Pain bodies is rather superfluous and actually a bit ridiculous. Not only are they already deceased (as all seem to be simply corpses being controlled by Nagato), they can also be easily brought back to "life" by Naraka Realm. I suggest we change to using "incapacitated" or something similar. --ShounenSuki 23:13, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
- Agree: Based off the infomation we know deceased is an incorrect termonology to use describing their current state. They're like Zombie Puppets, Reanimated Corpses if you will. I believe that until the real 'Pain', Nagato if you will is dead another word should be used.
I need to ask can they be brought back now since Naraka Realm has been destroyed?
- Probebly not the old ones, but as long as Nagato is alive he can replace them with new ones. Jacce 19:43, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
Pain, Yahiko, and Nagato are never given an official age, but the infobox does give one. Can someone remove it?
God Realm's Jutsu
Shinra Tensei is just the name for "repelling force". In the latest manga "attracting force" has a different name. I mean they both must have a common name and it is not "Shinra Tensei".
It's called bansho tenin
I found a picture of Nagato how he looks as of now.Can I put it up?
gohanRULEZ 21:33, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
- Wait for some high quality scans to surface. FF-Suzaku 11:56, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
gohanRULEZ 21:33, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
Can someone clean up the speculations area? Some of these things have been proven false by recent issues (Including 436). Maybe these points could be moved to Past Speculations like disproved rumors in other articles. 184.108.40.206 06:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
Yahiko vs Nagato
Shouldn't age, height and weight be removed from this page? (Those are Yahiko's data) Geohound 06:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
Pain's real Identity
Now that Pain's real identity has been revealed to be Nagato, don't you think Nagato should be given his own page? Pain/Deva Realm from what we see is now confirmed to be just one of Nagato's 6 bodies he's controlling, whereas Nagato is an actual person.
- My initial impulse was that the Six Paths of Pain should perhaps get their own seperate article, but it's hard to say right now. Really, all that's changed from last week is we know what Nagato currently looks like. Might be more prudent to wait and see how Nagato stands within Akatsuki, etc., first? FF-Suzaku 20:07, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
It would make sense.
gohanRULEZ 22:44, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
Realm vs Path
Would it be better to refer to Pain's bodies as Paths, or as Realms? In a slightly different note, I thought that the correct name for Pain's Main body was "God Realm/Path", not Deva?The World Platinum 15:34, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
- "Path" is a more literal translation of the kanji 道. "Realm" would be more appropriate (in my opinion) considering the Buddhist use of the words (although "path" is also quite accurate). I prefer using "realm".
- Pain's main body is called Tendō (天道) in Japanese. This is the Japanese term for the Buddhist concept of the Deva Realm. Literally (without taking into account the context), the kanji for tendō mean "heaven path". However, the "ten" in tendō refers to a specific type of being, the Deva. These beings are often called gods in English, but that is really an inaccurate translation. The Deva are quite unlike the gods Westerners are familiar with. Therefore, using Deva would be more appropriate and would also show the link between Pain and Buddhism. --ShounenSuki (talk | contribs) 16:59, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Alright, thank you very much, because I've seen it in multiple ways and was unsure which was correct.The World Platinum 22:14, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
I think we should upload a image of the previous six paths of pain for reference. User:Minato
Can a mod or someone with power add Chibaku Tensei to Pein's main moveset please? --Lou Diamonds 14:22, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Now that the page has become "Nagato", shouldn't his birthday be added to his infobox (since we can't do it)? It's September 9 or 19.
- Where or when did it show Nagato's birthday? I think we only know Yahiko's.
¥Super Novice ↔ Talk 2 Me ¥16:41, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
- I read it in the Third Databook
- Sign your posts please. Edit it in on this page. Here
¥Super Novice ↔ Talk 2 Me ¥16:44, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks man, but when I edited it, It didn't show up! Does it take time to change or something? User:Shock Dragoon | <urn:uuid:185213f1-5ba7-4cbd-936d-e8e45da4ec99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Talk:Nagato/Archive_2?oldid=248618 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979982 | 3,378 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Herman was the fourth of eight children born to a religious Jewish family in the small town of Sirma, located near the city of Sevlus. The Kleins had a small plot of land, which they farmed, and they also ran a shoe shop. At age four Herman began attending religious school. When he started public elementary school, he continued his religious lessons in the afternoons.
1933-39: In March 1939, the region of Czechoslovakia in which I lived was annexed to Hungary. Our teacher at school was replaced by a Hungarian and Hungarian became the official language. Except for us Jews, all the students joined the pro-Nazi youth group "Levente." While the group marched and trained in military drills with wooden guns, we'd get sent outside to clean the yard.
1940-45: When I was 16 my family was deported to Auschwitz. Separated from my mother and sisters, I was placed in an all-male barracks. One day, a neighbor from my hometown and I were looking across the barbed-wire fence. I asked him, "What are all those white trees thrown on top of one another?" "They're not trees," he said, "they're people. Don't you see the crematorium? Can't you smell the people burning?" After a week in Auschwitz, my father, my brother and I were deported to a labor camp built in the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto.
In 1944 Herman was deported from Warsaw to the Kaufering labor camp. He was transferred in an open wagon to the Dachau camp only hours before it was liberated by U.S. troops. | <urn:uuid:333b0c2e-0f1b-4c42-b6b4-35b88d17f920> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/idcard.php?ModuleId=10006415 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.992781 | 340 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Dec. 25, 2006 A new study suggests biochemical changes associated with schizophrenia aren't limited to the central nervous system and that the disease could have more encompassing effects throughout the body than previously thought. The findings, scheduled for publication in the January 2007 issue of the American Chemical Society's Journal of Proteome Research, could lead to better diagnostic testing for the disease and could help explain why those afflicted with it are more prone to type II diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and other chronic health problems.
Researcher Sabine Bahn, M.D., Ph.D., and her colleagues at Cambridge University in England and the University of Cologne in Germany, detected abnormal proteins linked to schizophrenia in the liver and red blood cells of people who have the disorder. It is the first time the same altered proteins have been detected both within brain tissue as well as in non-brain tissue, according to Bahn.
In time, Bahn says, these protein "biomarkers" could be used to trace the progression of the disease throughout the body.
"If changes in the rest of the body can be observed, and if these changes reflect what is going wrong in the brain, we can use these (findings) to learn about the cellular dysfunction that causes schizophrenia and this will allow us to develop better drugs and diagnostics," Bahn says.
About 1 percent of the world's population -- including 2.4 million Americans -- has schizophrenia, a complex and puzzling mental illness that can lead to delusions, hallucinations and disordered thinking. It is one of the world's most common causes of psychosis, according to Bahn. Since it was first described more than 100 years ago, scientists have made little progress in unraveling the causes of the disease, and no definitive test is available to diagnosis it, she says.
"We desperately need a better understanding of this illness. It is, however, difficult to study the disease, as the brain can't easily be investigated. We can't take multiple biopsies from patients to look at the disease-related changes," Bahn says. "We need a new concept."
While most scientists investigating the disease believe it only affects the brain, Bahn notes that researchers have long known that people who have schizophrenia are at higher risk than the general population for a number of chronic diseases. Some evidence suggests these health problems might be somehow tied to schizophrenia, she adds, but most studies have been inconclusive. Bahn's latest discovery could help bridge this gap.
Recently, Bahn and her colleagues discovered a set of abnormal proteins in post-mortem brains of people who had schizophrenia. In this new study, they sought to detect similarly altered proteins in other organs and tissues of individuals living with the disease. After looking at thousands of proteins, they found that people with schizophrenia had 14 liver proteins and eight red blood cell proteins that were significantly altered compared to individuals who didn't have the disease. These altered proteins were strikingly like those found in the post-mortem brains.
Several of these abnormal proteins appear to promote oxidative stress and disrupt energy metabolism in cells, Bahn says. She theorizes that schizophrenia is caused, at least in part, by these two problems. In her earlier work, for instance, Bahn found evidence that schizophrenic brains might have difficulty producing or using energy properly and are more susceptible to cell-damaging free radicals than healthy brains. The new findings, she says, suggest that the same sort of energy starvation, increased free-radical damage cycle could be occurring in other tissue and, in addition to schizophrenia, possibly be contributing to the onset of other chronic diseases.
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Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead. | <urn:uuid:5f62bede-2ddc-4c05-846f-bdd6abafd325> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061220143658.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961432 | 776 | 3.46875 | 3 |
Protests Don’t Kill People, Plastic Bullets Do
June 22, 2012 · by
Last month, the Metropolitan police confirmed that following the riots in August 2011, its stockpile of plastic bullets, or baton rounds, had increased to over 10,000 by the end of the year; just prior to that, the Met had around 700 bullets. Through a freedom of information (FOI) request made by former Liberal Democrat member of the London Assembly, Dee Dorcey, the Met revealed that in 2010-2011 the use of plastic bullets was authorised 22 times.
The use of plastic bullets is very much a British method of crowd control. Pioneered as a “safer” alternative to rubber bullets, they were first used in Northern Ireland in the mid-1970s. In that decade alone, over 40,000 plastic bullets were fired. This “safer” method claimed its first victim in 1975 in 10-year old Stephen Geddis.
Since then, 13 other people have died. Hundreds of others have suffered upper body injuries, been blinded or suffered brain damage, most often not in riot situations, and children in particular have been affected. Plastic bullets were not designed for crowd control and are only to be used when absolutely necessary. Although the former chief constable called for an end to their use in 2007, plastic bullet use has increased in the past couple of years, with over 350 rounds fired in June to July 2011 alone.
With the fresh rise in plastic bullet use in the North of Ireland and stockpiling across other parts of the UK, in the same week as the inquest into the death of Sean Riggs in police custody and the trial of PC Simon Harwood for the death of Ian Tomlinson, a press conference was held in parliament on Thursday 21 June, “Use of Plastic Bullets will Fuel Racial Tensions”, chaired by Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. Speakers included veteran campaigner on the issue, Clara Reilly, from the United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets (UCAPB), Paddy Kelly from the Children’s Law Centre in Belfast and Stafford Scott, from the Tottenham Defence Campaign (TDC), a supporter of the Mark Duggan family.
The UCAPB has been campaigning for almost 30 years against the use of plastic bullets in the North of Ireland and calls for an outright ban on the use of these “lethal and excessively dangerous weapons”. Clara Reilly, of the campaign, said that they were “dismayed” last year at news that plastic bullets could be deployed during the summer riots in England. Mrs Reilly said, “it is obvious there is much work to be done in local communities around racial tension and abuse, police accountability, poor housing, unemployment and how the promotion of human rights must become a policing priority.” She also expressed concern that the further escalation of the use of plastic bullets in the North of Ireland could put an end to the peace process.
Paddy Kelly of the Children’s Law Centre in Belfast expressed concern that at least one child will be murdered this summer by a plastic bullet. In 2010, a 17-year old suffered serious injuries. She described them as a serious breach of children’s rights and had only served to escalate tensions in the North of Ireland. She also expressed her worry that with the stockpiling of plastic bullets in the aftermath of the riots in England, the upcoming Olympics and rising racial tensions, plastic bullets could be used against black and Muslim youth this summer in England. She urged people in London to be vigilant “as the consequences are severe to bear”.
Stafford Scott of the TDC expressed concern that the government appears to have a greater interest in the police having and using plastic bullets than the police force itself. Mr Scott stated that in view of the recent riots, it appears that the government is well aware that its policies will fuel more unrest. He urged the government to rethink its strategy against protesters, as the use of plastic bullets, CS gas, water cannons and other heavy-handed deterrents to protest will not stop people taking to the streets to exercise their legitimate rights.
John McDonnell MP agreed with Stafford Scott’s analysis that there is a considerable political dynamic to this policing issue. Jeremy Corbyn MP said that under the current government there has been a move from policing by consent to policing by enforcement and that there is a security paranoia developing in the UK, making it easier for the police to access and justify large stores of such weapons.
The two MPs attending stated that they would take action on this issue. John McDonnell said that stopping the cuts and austerity measures is the only real viable alternative to preventing the type of social disorder such violent tactics are intended to quell.
The solution does not lie in arming the police or heavy-handed and dangerous policing but in dealing with the underlying causes of the increasing social unrest, embodied in the wide-sweeping cuts to public services, growing (youth and) general unemployment and the closure of facilities that foster social cohesion. Stockpiling these weapons creates hysteria and an impetus for their use, given their ease of access.
Recently, measures have been introduced further restricting the right to protest around parliament and severe sentences have been given to people taking part in student protests. Coupled with the austerity and privatisation agenda, the CEO of private security firm G4S also predicted this week that in five years’ time, large parts of the police service, a crucial public service, will be run by private firms. The prospect of unaccountable private “policemen” running around with plastic bullets is frightening.
In the North of Ireland, accountability has also been an issue with the public authorities. Families and individuals who have been affected have attempted to take legal action. Many court cases have been brought and while large amounts of compensation have been paid, an admission of wrongdoing in itself, only one policeman has ever been charged, in 1984 for the murder of John Downes; he was, however, acquitted. The police, army and government have not been held accountable in any way.
Plastic bullets are used elsewhere, including in Spain and the Occupied Territories. In spite of its use in the North of Ireland over the past few decades, there has been little reporting about this issue in the mainstream British media. Clara Reilly said, “the public has no idea of what plastic bullets are and what they can do, or they would otherwise be opposed to their use”. | <urn:uuid:f56510cf-7e4f-4dd1-a269-7578e75d1212> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://familiesfriendsassociation.blogspot.com/2012/06/campaign-against-plastic-bullets.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970965 | 1,322 | 1.554688 | 2 |
You don’t know what toxic chemicals lurk in the products you buy. Manufacturers won't tell you, and the government doesn't require disclosure. So PSR is joining with allies across the country, calling on major retailers to identify voluntarily whether the products they sell contain specified hazardous chemicals. If they do, we're asking the store to develop a plan to remove them.Read more »
In March, countries from around the world will gather at the U.N. to negotiate a potentially historic Arms Trade Treaty. This is a unique opportunity for us to push for the type of international standards that would begin to protect innocents from an unregulated global arms trade. Every year, 12 billion bullets are produced and the devastation that they create must stop. Join PSR and push our government to support a robust Arms Trade Treaty.Take Action »
PSR chapter leaders gathered in Tampa, Florida in early February for two days of learning, sharing best practices and planning for 2013. The annual gathering brought together more than 40 leaders ranging from first year medical students to 25 plus-year members. Sessions on fundraising, administrative effectiveness, online outreach and capacity building were featured and running through the sessions was an emphasis on collaborative partnerships. The conference was hosted by PSR/Florida's Lynn Ringenberg and Marybeth Palmigiano Dunn.See photos »
With your help we are working to reduce the threat of nuclear war, educate the public about the dangers of climate change, and demand safe, clean energy. In 2012, members and chapters across the country worked together to make a difference. So many of you helped in so many ways, we made this video for you. See some of the scenes from expert tours, testimony, Facebook chats, member events and media outreach.
Toxics and global warming create pervasive threats to health. PSR responds via chemical policy reform, climate policy advocacy, practitioner education, and “Code Black,” a campaign to reduce pollution and global warming.More on Environment and Health »
The nuclear weapons danger is real and growing: nuclear terrorism, proliferation, and thousands of weapons still on hair-trigger alert in the United States and Russia. Fortunately, there also are new opportunities to eliminate this threat.More on Nuclear Weapons »
The Safe Energy program focuses on protecting public health, taxpayer dollars, and national security by preventing the construction of expensive, dirty, and dangerous new nuclear reactors.More on Safe Energy »
This article on fly ash from coal cites PSR's report "Coal Ash: The Toxic Threat to Our Health and Environment" on the health effects of coal ash.Source: CBN
Dr. Andrew Kanter, Past President of PSR and NYC Chapter Leader draws the link between 'Nukes, Militarism and Public Health,' while providing perspective and helpful activism tips.Source: Access for All
In documents filed Tuesday with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a wide range of national and grassroots environmental groups said it would be impossible for the NRC to adequately conduct a court-ordered assessment of the environmental implications of long-term storage of spent nuclear reactor fuel in the two short years the federal agency envisions for the process.
Make a difference in the challenge to confront global warming and prevent nuclear war and the development and use of nuclear weapons.
Climate change’s threats to human health and life are growing. Will you join our latest effort to roll back climate change?
Many products we buy are seriously toxic – they can disrupt the hormone system, cause cancer, even birth defects. Join us in asking major retailers to remove toxic products from their shelves.
In 2012, we saw members and chapters across the country work together to make a difference. Watch this video to see some of the scenes from our expert tours, testimony, Facebook chats and media outreach. Read more »
The Toolkit is a combination of easy-to-use reference guides for health providers and user-friendly health education materials on preventing exposures to toxic chemicals and other substances that affect infant and child health. Read more » | <urn:uuid:9165c68e-9c05-4a87-8ba4-4a37a5ac540e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.psr.org/chapters/new-york-city/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926384 | 819 | 2.21875 | 2 |
NZ: mounting pressure on Government to support GMO labelling
There is mounting pressure on the Government to push for all food, animal feed and seeds that may contain genetically modified organisms to be labelled when the issue is discussed at a biosafety conference in Brazil next week. A visiting South African farmer and advocate of poor farmers in Africa, Thoko Makhanya, says unlabelled shipments pose a huge threat to countries there.
Ms Makhanya is calling on the New Zealand government to help protect African countries by shifting its stance on GMO labelling when it joins the third meeting of the Cartagena Protocol, which starts on Monday. Ms Makhanya says developed countries such as New Zealand have the infrastructure to be able to identify and deal with unwanted GMO shipments but in Africa, it is a different story.
But Simon Terry of the Sustainability Council says the Cartagena Protocol also has the potential to be a leading tool in checking the unintended flow of GMOs into New Zealand. And he says the Government needs to shift its stance on the issue, arrived at at the Montreal meeting, where along with Brazil it opposed the labelling of unintended GMO content in food and feed. | <urn:uuid:85f6354a-95b4-4b88-8d27-2772509817ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.freshplaza.com/2006/10mrt/2_nz_gmolabel.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954729 | 238 | 2.171875 | 2 |
In 1940, the Soviet leader Josef Stalin ordered the killing of tens of thousands of Polish prisoners of war, captured after the Soviet invasion of their country. Stalin described the POWs, most of them military officers, as “enemies of the Soviet authorities… full of hatred towards the Soviet system”; his NKVD security forces executed prisoners one after another, shooting them in the back of the head, in the infamous wartime atrocity known as the Katyn Massacre.
But to this day the full truth of what happened in 1940 has not come out.
As the first bodies were discovered in 1942 and 1943, the Soviet Union first sought to blame Nazi Germany for the killings, then tried to add the massacre to the charges before the Nuremberg war crimes trials. In 1959, six years after the death of Stalin, Alexander Schelepin, then head of the KGB, acknowledged in a memo to Nikita Khrushchev, who succeeded Stalin as head of the Soviet Communist Party, that “21,857 persons were shot” in the “operation.” Schelepin then recommended the destruction of most, but not all, official records of the killings.
Schelepin’s 1959 memo became public as the old Soviet empire crumbled, and after a criminal investigation was launched in 1990 by the the Russian Chief Military Prosecutor’s office. But in 2004, the Russian authorities closed the investigation down, classifying the reasoning, and one-fifth of the investigation record, as “top secret.”
Family members have continued to fight to find out the full truth about what happened at Katyn. One of those executed in April 1940 was Andrzej Janowiec, a 49-year-old lieutenant in the Polish Army. His son is now among a group of 15 family members of victims who are seeking a proper account in a case before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, Janowiec v. Russia. The case highlights “the right to truth”—which means, in the words of Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, that “victims of gross violations of human rights and their families have the inalienable right to know the truth about past events concerning the perpetration of heinous crimes against them.”
The court heard arguments in the case on February 13. Lawyers for the families of the victims have challenged Russia’s failure to conduct an effective investigation as a violation of the right to life (Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights). They also argue that their treatment by Russian authorities constitutes a violation of the prohibition against inhumane treatment (Article 3).
In a third-party intervention filed with the European Court of Human Rights, the Open Society Justice Initiative argued that the Court can legitimately consider the violation of the duty to investigate the killings, despite the fact that the massacre occurred decades ago, and that the Russian Government is obliged to disclose documents establishing why it closed the investigation as well as archival documents concerning the circumstances of the massacre.
States have an obligation to investigate international crimes and gross human rights violations as long as it is practically feasible to do so. Prosecution of crimes from World War II remains possible, and indeed, hundreds of such cases are ongoing in Germany and Poland. In Latin America, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has considered numerous cases of human rights violations committed during the dictatorships and civil wars in the region during the 1970s and 1980s, sometimes 40 years after the acts.
Further, in exceptional cases, in the context of gross human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law, the right to truth requires effective access to the results of investigations, and to archives and investigative files. Restrictions on access to such information must be narrowly construed, and more so with the passage of time.
More than 70 years after the atrocity, Lieutenant Janowiec’s son, and the public, must learn the truth of what happened. | <urn:uuid:a64e3b88-1be2-4fcd-b33c-be02d45ee727> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/families-world-war-two-massacre-victims-invoke-right-truth | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955259 | 819 | 3.09375 | 3 |
More Space and More Money: Birmingham Looks to Improve Greenwood Cemetery
With residents asking for plots at Birmingham's historic cemetery, but no where to put them, the city considers adding grave plots at Greenwood and setting up an endowment fund.
There's a waiting list of more than 100 Birmingham residents who want to be buried in Greenwood Cemetery, the historic cemetery on Oak that serves as the final resting place for Martha Baldwin and many more of the city's most lauded citizens from the past 200 years.
Unfortunately, there's no room left.
That's why the city of Birmingham is embarking on a project to improve Greenwood Cemetery, including finding more burial space and identifying ways to increase revenue and decrease the cost to taxpayers.
At the Oct. 29 City Commission meeting, commissioners heard a report from L.F. Sloane Consulting Group, Inc. — a professional cemetary consulting firm — that outlined the current state of Greenwood and ways the cemetery could better serve Birmingham residents.
Cemetery brings in $7,500 in revenue in 2011, grave reclamation hits dead end
Greenwood Cemetery was established in 1821 on donated land and was managed by a non-profit until operations and maintenance were taken over by the city in 1946.
Despite its age, L.F. Sloane representatives said Greenwood is in good shape, with the records maintained by the City Clerk and burials provided by the Department of Public Services (DPS). Lawn care at the cemetery was outsourced last year.
Due to the lack of space, the consultant said the only revenue the city receives from the cemetery are in modest service fees — around $7,500 in 2011. Meanwhile, the DPS spends around $12,000 a year in labor costs at the cemetery, while the price for lawn care is $18,000 a year.
At the January 2012 long-term planning session, City Clerk Laura Broski noted the city would be conducting an inventory of all the Greenwood grave plots to determine which are still empty. If a plot is empty, Broski said her office would contact the owner to ask whether it can be reclaimed — and thus re-sold — by the city.
According to the consultant's report, no graves at Greenwood have yet been reclaimed this year.
What the city could do: increase fees, add more burial spots
L.F. Sloane noted that Greenwood's fee schedule could be updated to reflect current market prices.
"The current service fees at $600 for a casketed burial and $150 for the internment of cremated remains are well below what area cemeteries are charging," the report reads.
Allow for cremated remains to be buried in a grave along with a casket:
According to the consultant's report, the city could also allow grave plot owners to bury up to two cremated remains at the site, even if a casket is already buried there.
As part of the consultant's proposed fees, Birmingham could charge up to $750 for the internment of cremated remains. In addition, the city could sell the right to bury cremated remains in an occupied grave for $750 each.
Should someone to bury cremated remains in an occupied grave site, it would then cost them $1,500. Should this happen 10 times a year, that equals a yearly revenue of $15,000.
Add new grave plots, build columbarium:
A diagonal road in the cemetery's northeast corner could also be removed, the consultant's report reads, so that the property can be used for additional burial sites.
According to the report, should the area be developed properly, the city could build a columbarium — a structure used to house cremated remains — with 288 niche spaces inside. Removal of the road could also result in 80 new burial sites, many of which could be developed with pre-installed vaults that would double each site's burial capacity.
According to the report, this development could be completed for $250,000-$300,000, while there's a potential the city could see $1.2 million in revene from the sale of the burial plots and niche spaces in the columbarium.
Create an endowment fund:
The report also recommends establishing an endowment fund that would eventually pay for the continued upkeep of the cemetery — a move that would take the burden off taxpayers.
Since the annual fee to maintain the cemetary is generally around $30,000 a yaer, the report recommends establishing a $720,000 endowment fund over a 10-year period. With a 4 percent return rate, the fund could maintain the cemetery in perpetuity.
What the city should not do: buy new land
What the city should probably not consider, however, is purchasing adjacent lots on Oak and Lakeside, a suggestion introduced by Commissioner Rackeline Hoff at a city commisison meeting in late March.
"In our opinion, the cemetery should not be expanded into adjacent vacant lots," the report reads. "The lot to the northwest of the cemetery would not be accessible from the cemetery due to the presence of burials along the entire edge of the cemetery. The lot on Oak is accessible, however, it would be an awkward area to utilize."
"Additionally, it may be costly to acquire, properly fence, lay out and landscape (the lot on Oak)," the report adds, noting the adjacent lot on Oak costs $500,000.
Commissioners looking for more input
While city commissioners took no action on the report's recommendations last Monday, Hoff was worried that before Birmingham does anything, it should get more feedback from residents.
"It seems to me that we should let our residents be aware of it," Hoff said. "There are residents who are interested and might have some input."
As part of its report on Greenwood, L.F. Sloane sent surveys to the 104 families with people on the waiting list. Sixty percent of those surveys were returned.
According to the surveys, 93 percent said they were still interested in being buried in Greenwood Cemetery, with 54 percent looking to have a full burial.
Of those who indicated they want to be cremated, 74 percent said they wanted their remains to be buried in the ground (as opposed to houses in a columbarium), though 73 percent of those wishing to be cremated said they would be interested in being buried in a spot already occupied by a casket.
As for now, the city commission directed city staff to study the report and create a final recommendation for the commission at a later date. | <urn:uuid:c213bd6e-00cb-4ace-8be0-036e00f47126> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://birmingham.patch.com/articles/more-space-and-money-birmingham-looks-at-improving-greenwood-cemetery?logout=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968728 | 1,347 | 1.921875 | 2 |
U.S. and Kenya Agree to Install Radiation Detection Equipment at the Port of Mombasa
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) signed an agreement to work with the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kenya and other Kenyan agencies to install radiation detection equipment and associated infrastructure at the Port of Mombasa. NNSA will also train Kenyan government officials to use this equipment.
"The Port of Mombasa is a major cargo-container hub in Africa and a strategic transit point in the international maritime trading system," said NNSA Principal Assistant Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Ken Baker. "NNSA appreciates the Republic of Kenya's partnership in our efforts to prevent the smuggling of nuclear and radiological materials."
The Port of Mombasa links the trade corridors of the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf, and its strategic location makes it the maritime hub for countries throughout eastern and central Africa. Work at the Port of Mombasa will be performed under the Megaports Initiative, a key component of NNSA's Second Line of Defense (SLD) Program, which seeks to strengthen the capability of foreign governments to deter, detect, and interdict illicit trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive materials across international borders and through the global maritime shipping system. The Megaports Initiative provides radiation detection equipment, training, and technical support to key foreign seaports to enable them to scan cargo containers for nuclear and other radioactive materials.
The Megaports Initiative is currently operational in 21 ports, and work is underway at over 20 additional ports in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
A fact sheet on NNSA's Second Line of Defense program is available.
Established by Congress in 2000, NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science in the nation's national security enterprise. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, reliability, and performance of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear testing; reduces the global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the U.S. Navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the U.S. and abroad.
NNSA Public Affairs (202) 586-7371 | <urn:uuid:29174198-f464-4da0-8a8f-49b60bb4d659> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nnsa.energy.gov/print/mediaroom/pressreleases/u.s.-and-kenya-agree-install-radiation-detection-equipment-port-mombasa | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906578 | 486 | 2.265625 | 2 |
It Was Only A Matter Of Time Before The Cory Booker Criticism Began
One who tweets much can only expect this to happen.
In an article for PolitickerNJ, Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver expressed an interest in running against Cory Booker for the Democratic nominee spot in the upcoming 2014 New Jersey Senate race. And, right off the bat, she brought some fighting words with her.
"I want to know what his platform is. What is your position on gun control, what is your position on public education? I don't care that you're in Vogue magazine or Esquire. That's not important to me as a citizen of this state. What's important to me is what will your positions be on Capitol Hill?"
When Cory Booker filed his papers for a senatorial race next year, the main question he faced was whether or not veteran Senator Frank Lautenberg would seek re-election for an office he has occupied for a few decades or so. But, now, it seems as if he has another obstacle to face from potential opponents: himself.
Oliver used this criticism as an underlying theme of the gender difference in New Jersey politics: "I am very concerned about the lack of women in our congressional delegation. And I don't feel that an assumption should be made that because Cory has national celebrity that national celebrity translates into who should be our next U.S. Senator."
Except star power in politics is a damn strong dynamic to work against, especially in 2013.
As government digitalizes, voters are gravitating towards candidates that can navigate the Web better than most of your old relatives. This was a major force behind the election (and re-election) of President Barack Obama. In Michael Hasting's "How Obama Won the Internet" piece for Buzzfeed, the point was repeated again: if you win online, you win offline. Whether it's a powerful Twitter presence or an AMA on Reddit, the more sociable candidate has a definitive advantage over the more backwards rival.
Cory Booker is aware of that. He's gone above and beyond with his electorate interaction, whether it's him blogging a food stamp challenge or tweeting back at followers the most simple of conversational gestures. Hence why he's become the national star that he is; any politician that does well on the Internet will pick up traction nationwide.
So, towards Oliver's point, yes, it's significant to say that star power needs to be paralleled with substantive policy platforms. But, at the same time, this is the direction politics is moving. And the last thing you would want is to get caught on the wrong side of that. | <urn:uuid:3d51aefc-fca3-4e63-8fe4-42c3a617f975> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/01/it_was_only_a_m.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965735 | 535 | 1.5 | 2 |