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Now I am not going to try to pretend this entire Nature article. But I read about this as a small article on ScienceNow and decided it might be worth mentioning. Noah Planavsky and his colleagues recently reported in Nature about the evolution of the marine phosphate reservoir, and surmised that phosphate enrichment after the earth was encapsulated by ice 635-750 mya led to the explosion of metazoan evolution around that time period.
The basic idea is that photosynthetic organisms are limited by nutrients, most often nitrogen or phosphorous (although there are a myriad of other macro- and micro-nutrients that might also be limiting in certain conditions). Plants utilize these nutrients and sunlight to undergo photosynthesis – creating sugar and oxygen from carbon dioxide and nutrients. Oxygen is a requirement for higher organisms, as it is the primary and most efficient electron acceptor for metabolic reactions. Without plants producing oxygen, there would be no animals. This is the basic premise behind the authors leap from phosphorous enrichment to animal evolution.
Ok, back to the story at hand. The researchers were able to investigate dissolved phosphorous concentrations in the ancient ocean over 3 billion years (!) by looking at iron-to-phosphorous ratios in sedimentary rocks. (A chemist might be usef
ul to explain this linkage). Over the geologic history of the earth, dissolved phosphorous remained relatively constant. Well, with one exception. A period starting ~750 million years ago and lasting ~100 million years experienced a dramatic increase in phosphorous, as indicated in the geologic record. This time period was preceded by the snowball earth – the term describing the period of earth’s history when ice reached the low latitudes, essentially encapsulating the earth. The thought is that this severe glaciation stirred up the terrestrial rocks and soil, and delivered this massive pulse of phosphorous to the oceans.
According to the authors, both snowball earth glaciations and Neoproterozoic oxidation have been suggested as triggers for the rise of metazoans that occurred immediately after this period in earth’s history. The authors further conclude that these two events are linked via phosphorous. Then, the hypothesis goes that this pulse led to an increase in primary productivity and pumping of oxygen into the atmosphere as well as burial of organic matter. This dramatic rise in oxygen was necessary to support life. So, the glaciations led to high phosphorous concentrations, which led to high productivity, which led to high oxygen in the oceans and atmosphere, which allowed for animal evolution to be triggered and thus the rise of the metazoans. Sounds really good, right?
Obviously, there needs to be more solid evidence than just these correlations. But it is a very interesting idea none-the-less.
Planavsky NJ, Rouxel OJ, Bekker A, Lalonde SV, Konhauser KO, Reinhard CT, & Lyons TW (2010). The evolution of the marine phosphate reservoir. Nature, 467 (7319), 1088-90 PMID: 20981096 | <urn:uuid:0382e35d-313d-4d37-8907-8dcdd785d7f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://coz.southernfriedscience.com/?cat=42 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942962 | 625 | 3.359375 | 3 |
The U.S. Pork Center of Excellence has upgraded Pork Information Gateway (PIG) to provide expert answers to swine-related questions.
“PIG is free and a great tool, not only for pork producers, but also the entire pork industry,” says Claire Masker, communications specialist for the U.S. Pork Center of Excellence.
The pork checkoff-supported site (http://isu.porkgateway.org), which now supports Mozilla Firefox and Safari Internet browsers, has been revamped for improved usability.
The newest feature is the PIG library, which provides questions and answers, fact sheets and references about pork production. The site’s search engine has also been improved to mirror the capabilities of powerful, user-friendly search engines like Google.
PIG was launched in 2006. Producer favorites include the Factsheets and Answers link. Producers also like being able to get specific questions answered by clicking on the “My Questions” tab and contacting Extension swine specialists.
“This is a great tool for producers, especially if they don’t have easy access to a swine Extension specialist,” says Masker.
Producers should click on the “Register” button to obtain a user name and password, which are required to view all of the contents of the PIG library. The entire site remains free for all users. | <urn:uuid:04120df7-e484-4d6d-b60b-fe2375552be3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nationalhogfarmer.com/news/0208-pork-info-gateway-services | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934656 | 287 | 1.648438 | 2 |
State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2012 - Ecuador
|Publisher||Minority Rights Group International|
|Publication Date||28 June 2012|
|Cite as||Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2012 - Ecuador, 28 June 2012, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/4fedb401a.html [accessed 25 May 2013]|
|Disclaimer||This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.|
In early October 2011 in the Andean highlands of southern Ecuador, Canadian company Iamgold's Quimsacocha extraction project was voted down by a community referendum. It overwhelmingly rejected mining, with 92 per cent of people voting against.
According to the government, however, the referendum is invalid because it was not authorized by state institutions. In contrast, CONAIE (the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) – the country's most powerful and influential indigenous umbrella organization – not only actively supported the referendum, but also strongly advocated it should be replicated wherever communities are affected by mining. During 2011, other local governments also called for a total ban of mining activities in jurisdictions where such projects are located.
The Andean community referendum – the first of its kind in Ecuador – raised basic constitutional questions regarding autonomy, the extent of state powers and the rights of local governments to control land use and regulate industries.
Since 2008, indigenous organizations in Ecuador have become increasingly critical of government policies on water rights and exploitation of natural resources. They complain that the government has been attempting to divide the indigenous movement over these issues. According to the CONAIE, there are currently 189 indigenous Ecuadoreans charged with terrorism, sabotage and other public safety-related crimes and for protesting against the privatization of natural resources. These include the president of the CONAIE and three other prominent indigenous leaders who have been protesting against state control of access to water. Meanwhile, President Rafael Correa has accused protesters of 'standing in the way of development' and argues that resource extraction revenues can be used to develop other economic sectors such as agriculture.
Words or deeds?
The conflict is all the more pertinent given that, after his 2009 second term re-election, President Correa has spoken out vigorously on environmental justice. As in Bolivia, his administration pioneered the granting of special rights to 'Mother Nature' in the 2008 Constitution and has made public gestures towards ending the extraction economy. Ecuador is South America's second largest oil exporter to the United States. Oil revenues account for more than half of the national budget; there are an estimated 1 billion barrels of heavy crude in the Amazon bordering Peru. At the UN in May 2007, President Correa made an innovative offer to leave Ecuador's largest oil reserves underground in the Amazon. The country was willing to forego an estimated US$ 9.2 billion in revenues in exchange for international community compensation and debt cancellation for conserving the biosphere. However, by early 2011 there were plenty of promises but very little real cash. Some countries, such as Germany, that initially made financial commitments to the fund had actually withdrawn their offers.
At the end of 2011, this seems to have left the government little choice but to proceed with exploration plans in an area of pristine Amazon rainforest which is home to the nomadic Tagaeri and Taromenane – indigenous groups who voluntarily reject contact with the outside world. This will not only elevate the risk to indigenous communities of more environmental disasters like the Chevron-Texaco oil spills in the Amazon but also increase chances of the extended litigation that seems to be required in trying to obtain redress.
In February 2011 – after nearly two decades of litigation – an Ecuadorean court found the American oil giant Chevron liable for US$ 18 billion in damages stemming from contamination caused by Texaco. Between 1964 and 1990, Texaco – which merged with Chevron in 2001 – drilled roughly 350 wells across 7,000 square km of Amazon rainforest. The company made some US$ 30 billion in profits.
In 1993, Texaco was accused by Amazon indigenous communities of dumping 68 billion litres of toxic materials into Amazon streams and rivers that people used for fishing, bathing, swimming and drinking water.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of 30,000 indigenous and mestizo (mixed) members of some 80 rainforest communities who demanded the company clean up the pollution and pay reparations for the health damages. The trial opened in November 1993 in the US Federal Court, but after nine years of hearings was then moved to Ecuador in October 2003 – at Chevron's request. During the trial, Chevron admitted that Texaco had deliberately discharged 68 billion litres of toxic 'production water' directly into the environment. Texaco also created and abandoned more than 900 unlined waste pits that seeped pollution into the earth, spilled more than 17 million gallons of pure crude oil into the rivers and streams and continually 'flared' contaminants without any environmental controls. However, Chevron argued that Texaco spent US$ 40 million cleaning up the area during the 1990s and also signed an agreement with Ecuador in 1998 absolving it of any further responsibility. Nonetheless, environmental activists visiting the Amazon site in 2009 wrote about finding a tangled jungle landscape with oil slicks, festering sludge and rusted pipelines.
The plaintiffs accused Chevron of trying to hide the extent of its environmental crimes and cited ailments such as leukaemia, cancers, liver failure and respiratory and skin problems. Eventually, in February 2011, after nearly 18 years of legal struggle they won the historic US$ 8.6 billion verdict, which was more than doubled after the company failed to make a public apology. The judgment was also enforceable in the US, based on the 2003 trial relocation agreement.
The Ecuadorean court also found that Chevron repeatedly tried to delay the proceedings as well as threatened judges in efforts to evade liability. Chevron appealed the sentence, and then sued the indigenous plaintiffs in the US, citing Ecuador's violations of the US-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty and international law. The oil giant also took its case to the International Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which, in February 2011, ordered Ecuador 'to suspend any judgment against' Chevron. In September 2011, a US appeals court overturned a decision to block the fine collection and at the end of 2011, an Ecuadorean appeals court upheld the 14 February 2011 ruling in all its parts.
The Amazon petroleum contamination by Texaco is considered by many to be the worst oil-related disaster on record, surpassing the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill on the coast of Alaska as well as the 2010 BP deepwater rig explosion oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. However, in a further example of the long uphill battle indigenous litigants can face against powerful resource extraction companies, Chevron challenged the fine, arguing that lawyers and supporters of the indigenous groups conspired to fabricate evidence. | <urn:uuid:8364c653-e528-4293-a95e-bdcff9e95f6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?page=type&type=ANNUALREPORT&publisher=&coi=ECU&docid=4fedb401a&skip=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957712 | 1,452 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Shmeat refers to a “sheet of lab-grown” meat. To make it, tissue engineers take stem cells from animals and place them in a nutrient-rich culture that, previously, had to be made from substances from animals, such as blood. But scientists have developed a non-animal nutrient option that, like photo synthesis, uses sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow the tissue. So far, says Mother Jones, they’ve only been able to grow meat cells 2.5 centimeters long and 0.7 centimeters wide. A recent report estimated that the world’s first in vitro burger could cost a half a million dollars, a far cry from the items on McDonald’s dollar menu.
Scientists met last week in a workshop in Gothenburg, Sweden, about what needs to be done to make manufacturing shmeat viable. I’ve been a vegetarian for the past 30 years and personally am not interesting in eating even a sliver of shmeat (or of any sort of meat, in general). But, as Mother Jones notes, with the world population continuing to grow, and per capita meat consumption (especially in China) grows along with it, lab-grown meat could be a viable option. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicts that meat consumption will double between 2000 and 2050.
Even more, lab-grown meat also holds some real benefits for the environment:
We wouldn’t need to use as much land for agriculture (both for raising livestock and for growing their feed). We wouldn’t have to use all the water that meat production requires, or the pesticides, hormones, or other problematic additives so common in industrial agriculture.
Indeed, a recent study from Oxford University and the University of Amsterdam found that, when compared to regular beef, synthetic meat would:
And we could reduce the threat of animal-to-human diseases, like bird flu, E. coli, and salmonella. It would also be possible to control things like the fat, cholesterol, or calorie content of a synthetic-meat product.
PETA is offering a $1 million reward for whoever can both create in vitro chicken, and make it commercially viable, by June 30, 2012 — in less than a year. The contest has been going on for three years and has stoked disputes within PETA. Is it all right to eat meat if it is created in vitro rather than by slaughtering animals? Or would it be better for people just to not eat meat at all?
Mother Jones notes that the real challenge for those environmental scientists, ethicists, social scientists and economists who are trying to produce “Franken-meat” and to make it economically feasible is, perhaps, a more basic, less philosophical, concern. There’s still an ingrained “yuck” factor about eating what is, indeed, ersatz meat; about chowing down on what could more properly be dubbed “meat product.” Researchers say they need more funding to continue their efforts to develop lab-grown meat. Might those funds be rather, or even better, used to encourage people to learn how to eat and live without meat?
Related Care2 Coverage
Photo by Nina Pope
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers. | <urn:uuid:854711cd-a07e-4577-adb9-d45d3eea7ff1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.care2.com/causes/would-you-eat-shmeat.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944834 | 690 | 2.921875 | 3 |
An archetype is an original model of a person, ideal example, or a prototype after which others are copied, patterned, or emulated; a symbol universally recognized by all.
Archetypes are scattered everywhere in media. Many writers use archetypes because they provide a guide for the readers to understand the storyline better. As writers, it’s important that we understand the many archetypes out there. Why? Because when we understand the definition and function of an archetype, we may:
1. Tweak the definition to suit our storyline
2. Break the rules of what a particular archetype is supposed to do to spice up our story
3. apply a particular perspective to the archetype according to the message of our story. For instance, we may have an anarchist Mentor, a feminist Knight or a Freudian Hero
(If you are so inclined and have time at your disposal, might I suggest that you read or re-read my article on Archetypes and Characters?)
Following are some of my posts on archetypes:
Archetypes & Characters – How do we use archetypes to build characters our readers can relate to?
231 total views, 1 views today | <urn:uuid:4001e082-8b7f-46f7-9ed9-03fa7c8a1512> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thewritingnut.com/writing-resources/archetypes/ | 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 | 0.902389 | 241 | 2.984375 | 3 |
First hand access to the daily life of President Obama has become the new hot ticket among political journalists. Americans have four more years of Democratic leadership. Correspondingly, they want to know more about thee somewhat shadowy figure pulling the strings inside the Oval Office. Just what is the Commander-in-Chief up to?
Results have been mixed. Brian Williams chose the angle of fellow traveler on the campaign trail fairing on NBC’s “Rock Center.” From his travels, we garnered little, save for the fact that modern politicians fly quite a great deal.
Michael Lewis, writing for Vanity Fair, added a piece of his own. Like Williams, much of the focus seemingly whiffed at a pitch that others might have taken a harder swing at.
For instance, the Moneyball and Blind Side author spends an extended period of time covering Obama’s Spartan taste in furniture. He then documents Obama’s well-covered love of basketball in great detail. However, to say that his was nothing more than a puff piece undersells it. Indeed, there were some highly interesting moments to note. One in particular stuck out.
The scene is as follows: Lewis and Obama are travelling aboard Air Force One. The President’s preferred TV channel, ESPN, plays in the background. An unwitting aide enters the room and switches from sports to a cable news outlet.
After listening for a few moments, the President responds: “Oh, so that’s why I did it.” He then walks out of the room. His abrupt exit is notable given that he had woken Lewis just moments before claiming he had time to spare for the interview.
The episode is indicative of what many on the staff see as a common trend within the White House. The President feels that cable news is “generally toxic,” and spends little if any time watching it.
When you consider that Obama is perhaps, more so than anyone, the focus of most TV news programs, that point is telling. The President apparently prefers five daily newspapers and an assortment of webpages to the country’s three major cable news outlets.
It did not always used to be this way. Some may remember Vice Presidential candidate Nixon’s famous “Checkers Speech” in 1952. The publicized interview came in the wake of an apparent campaign finance scandal. In response, Nixon went on air with both his wife and dog, Checkers, in hand to proclaim his innocence.
The ploy worked. Audiences related to the humanism of the personal appeal. The rest is history.
The juxtaposition of that experience to today’s reality underscores an important point. The paradigm in government-media relations has shifted.
At its inception, the televised press often served as an agenda-advancing instrument among the political elite. Fast-forward sixty years and politicians are the instruments while cable news is the puppet master.
In large part, leaders have lost the ability to control the course of news. Instead, they simply do their best to manage the limelight while avoiding any negative fallout.
By itself, that may come across as a net positive.
This is a Republic after all. Surely, office-seekers know what they are signing up for. If they did not expect a certain degree of invasiveness, maybe they should have picked a different business.
However, it is not that simple. Unfortunately, the renewed emphasis on journalistic independence has come at the cost of increased subjectivity. Further, it has propelled invasiveness to the point of absurdity.
For the media, the line between public and personal life becomes ever thinner. Certainly, Americans need a watchdog to protect their best interests. However, things may have gone a bit too far. What happens when the watchdog makes the idea of public life so unappealing as to repel the best and brightest of the next generation?
Further, the new system in which each news outlet serves its own agenda causes depravation in more ways than one. Voters do not get both sides of the story. In addition, viewers can seek out only those ideas that reinforce, rather than challenge their opinions. The nation’s increasing polarization finds much of its root cause here.
Maybe then, the President is right to simply opt for ESPN. Sports are simple. Modern media is something different altogether – perhaps even toxic.
Tony Lucadamo serves as Sr. Editor for the Virginia Policy Review. He is a Master's candidate studying at the University of Virginia's Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. | <urn:uuid:bc0a6731-d0a4-4b1c-b676-2aba41ff27d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://millercenter.org/ridingthetiger/the-warped-estate-lucadamo | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965006 | 936 | 1.507813 | 2 |
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Many Syrians have expressed hopes that UN special envoy Kofi Annan’s visit to Russia will help end the violence in Syria. Annan is in Moscow to discuss the conflict with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A Damascus resident said, "Annan’s visit to Syria may change the situation. They might do something that can help Syria to end the crisis."
Tarek Al-Ahmad, Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party, said, "Annan’s meeting with Putin is aimed at avoiding the dangerous slope Syria and the whole region might slip down if military operations continue. We could witness a dangerous and bloody conflict in the whole region, between an army fighting inside the country and the remnants of armed groups everywhere." | <urn:uuid:7b784075-5735-46e5-b2d4-2c999fbf1b0d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://english.cntv.cn/program/newsupdate/20120718/102713.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901275 | 154 | 1.75 | 2 |
International Religious Freedom Report: Lebanon
The constitution provides for freedom of religion and the freedom to practice all religious rites, provided that the public order is not disturbed. The constitution declares equality of rights and duties for all citizens without discrimination or preference but establishes a balance of power among the major religious groups. The government generally respected religious rights; however, there were some restrictions, and the constitutional provision for apportioning political offices according to religious affiliation can be viewed as discriminatory.
The government generally respected religious freedom in practice. There was no change in the status of respect for religious freedom by the government during the reporting period, and government policy continued to contribute to the generally free practice of religion.
There were periodic reports of societal abuses or discrimination based on religious affiliation, belief, or practice. There was tension among religious groups, attributable to competition for political power, and citizens continued to struggle along sectarian lines with the legacy of a 15-year civil war (1975-90). Despite tensions generated by the competition for political power, places of worship of every confession continued to exist side by side, reflecting the country's centuries-old heritage as a place of refuge for those fleeing religious intolerance.
The U.S. government discusses religious freedom with the government as part of its overall policy to promote human rights.
Section I. Religious Demography
The country has an area of 4,035 square miles and a population of four million. Because the relative size of confessional groups remains a sensitive issue, a national census has not been conducted since 1932. However, the most recent demographic study conducted by Statistics Lebanon, a Beirut-based research firm, indicate 27 percent of the population is Sunni Muslim, 27 percent Shi'a Muslim, 21 percent Maronite Christian, eight percent Greek Orthodox, five percent Druze, and five percent Greek Catholic, with the remaining seven percent belonging to smaller Christian denominations. Over the past 60 years, there has been a steady decline in the proportion of Christians relative to Muslims, mostly due to emigration of large numbers of Maronite Christians and a higher-than-average Muslim birth rate. There are also very small numbers of Jews, Baha'is, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Buddhists, and Hindus.
The 18 officially recognized religious groups include four Muslim sects, 12 Christian sects, the Druze sect, and Judaism. The main branches of Islam practiced are Shi'a and Sunni. The Alawites and the Isma'ili ("Sevener") Shi'a order are the smallest Muslim communities. The Maronite community, the largest Christian group, maintained its centuries-long affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church but has its own patriarch, liturgy, and ecclesiastical customs. The second-largest Christian sect is Greek Orthodox. Other Christians are divided among Greek Catholics, Armenian Orthodox (Gregorians), Armenian Catholics, Syriac Orthodox (Jacobites), Syriac Catholics, Assyrians (Nestorians), Chaldeans, Copts, evangelicals (including Protestant groups such as Baptists and Seventh-day Adventists), and Latins (Roman Catholic). The Druze, who refer to themselves as al-Muwahhideen, or "believers in one God," are concentrated in the rural, mountainous areas east and south of Beirut. Divisions and rivalries among various groups have existed for many centuries and, while relationships among adherents of different confessions were generally amicable, group identity was highly significant in most aspects of cultural interaction.
Many persons fleeing religious mistreatment and discrimination in neighboring states have immigrated to the country, including Kurds, Shi'a, and Chaldeans from Iraq, as well as Coptic Christians from Egypt and Sudan. According to the secretary general of the Syriac League, 50,000 Iraqi Christians and approximately 3,000 to 4,000 Coptic Christians reside in the country.
Section II. Status of Government Respect for Religious Freedom
The constitution provides for freedom of religion and the freedom to practice all religious rites, provided that public order is not disturbed. The constitution requires the state to respect all religious groups and denominations and declares respect for the personal status and religious interests of persons of every religious sect. The constitution declares equality of rights and duties for all citizens without discrimination or preference but stipulates a balance of power distributed among the major religious groups. The government generally respected these rights in practice; however, there were some restrictions, and the constitutional provision for apportioning political offices according to religious affiliation may be viewed as inherently discriminatory.
The 1989 Ta'if Agreement, which ended the country's 15-year civil war, reaffirmed this arrangement while mandating equal Muslim and Christian representation in parliament and reducing the power of the Maronite Christian presidency. In addition the agreement endorsed the constitutional provision of appointing most senior government officials according to religious affiliation. This practice functions in all three branches of government. The Ta'if Agreement also stipulated a cabinet with power allocated equally between Muslims and Christians. On January 13, 2010, parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri called for the formation of a national commission to abolish political sectarianism, a proposal which drew criticism from various political parties. The constitution also provides for the formation of such a commission. The political establishment was reluctant to change this "confessional" system, because citizens perceived it as critical to the country's stability.
The leadership councils for Christians and Druze nominated candidates for their respective senior clerical posts; however, the nomination of Sunni and Shi'a muftis was officially endorsed by the government's council of ministers, and they received monthly salaries from the government. The government appointed and paid the salaries of Muslim and Druze clerical judges. The leaders of other religious groups, such as Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics, did not receive salaries from the government.
In most cases the government permitted recognized religious groups to administer their own family and personal status laws, such as marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance. The "Twelver" Shi'a, Sunni, Christian, and Druze confessions have state-appointed, government-subsidized clerical courts that administered family and personal status law. However, many of these laws discriminated against women. For example, Sunni inheritance law provided a son twice the inheritance of a daughter. Although Muslim men may divorce easily, Muslim women may do so only with the concurrence of their husbands.
The penal code stipulates a maximum prison term of one year for anyone convicted of "blaspheming God publicly." There were no prosecutions reported under this law during the reporting period.
There were no legal barriers to proselytizing; however, traditional attitudes of the clerical establishment strongly discouraged such activity.
Many families have relatives who belong to different religious communities, and intermarriage was not uncommon; however, interfaith marriage was difficult to arrange in practice between members of some groups. Islamic law, which applies to personal status matters of Muslims, forbids the marriage of a non-Muslim man to a Muslim woman. Druze religious leaders will perform marriages only of Druze couples. There were no procedures for civil marriage; however, the government recognized civil marriage ceremonies performed outside the country.
The government observes the following religious holidays as national holidays: Armenian Christmas, Eid al-Adha, Saint Maroun Day, Islamic New Year, Ashura, Good Friday, Easter (both Western and Eastern rites), the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, All Saints' Day, Feast of the Assumption, Annunciation, Eid al-Fitr, and Christmas. The government also excused Armenian public sector employees from work on Saint Vartan Day.
The government permitted the publication of religious materials of every religious group in different languages.
Formal recognition by the government was a legal requirement for religious groups to conduct most religious activities. A group that seeks official recognition must submit a statement of its doctrine and moral principles for government review to ensure that such principles do not contradict popular values or the constitution. The group must ensure that the number of its adherents is sufficient to maintain its continuity.
Alternatively, religious groups may apply for recognition through recognized religious groups. Official recognition conveyed certain benefits, such as tax-exempt status and the right to apply the religion's codes to personal status matters. An individual may change religions if the head of the religious group the person wishes to join approved of this change. Refusal was not reported to occur in practice.
Some religious groups did not enjoy official recognition, such as Baha'is, Buddhists, Hindus, and unregistered Protestant Christian groups. These groups were disadvantaged under the law in that their members did not qualify for certain government positions, but they were permitted to perform their religious rites freely. For example, a Baha'i could not run for parliament as a Baha'i candidate because there is no seat allocated for the confession, nor could such an individual hold senior positions in the government, since these are also allocated on a confessional basis. However, a number of members of unregistered religious groups were recorded in government records under recognized religions. For example, most Baha'is were registered under the Shi'a sect. A member of the Baha'i community could therefore run for office and fill a seat allocated to the Shi'a sect. Similarly, Mormons were registered under the Greek Orthodox faith. Government decisions on granting official recognition to those religious groups that applied were timely and did not appear to be arbitrary.
Unrecognized groups may own property and assemble for worship without government interference; however, they are disadvantaged under the law because legally they may not marry, divorce, or inherit property in the country. Therefore, these religious groups may choose to register as part of other known religious organizations. For example, Protestant evangelical churches were required to register with the Evangelical Synod, a nongovernmental advisory group that represents those churches with the government. It is self-governing and oversees religious matters for Protestant congregations. Representatives of some churches complained that the synod has refused to accept new Protestant groups into its membership since 1975, thereby preventing their clergy from ministering to adherents in accordance with their beliefs.
Religious workers not working under the auspices of a government-registered religious organization and found to be working while on tourist visas may be deemed to have violated their visa status and deported. The government issued religious workers a one-month visa; if they planned on staying longer, they would have had to finalize their residency permits during that one month. Religious workers were also obliged to sign a "commitment of responsibility" form before being issued their visa that committed them to legal prosecution and immediate deportation if they carried out any activity that may prompt community, confessional, or religious instigation and criticism against the Lebanese state or any other country except Israel.
Government documents referred to Jewish Lebanese citizens as Israelis, although they are not Israeli citizens. In 2009 the interior minister submitted a proposal to the cabinet to amend legislation by referring to "Jewish Lebanese" citizens instead of "Israelis," but the proposal was not approved.
Restrictions on Religious Freedom
The government generally respected religious freedom in practice. There was no change in the status of respect for religious freedom by the government during the reporting period.
The 1989 Ta'if Agreement calls for the eventual elimination of political sectarianism in favor of "expertise and competence"; however, little progress has been made in this regard. Representatives from the lesser represented, or "minority," Christian groups, such as Syriac Christians, stated that the government discriminated against them because no one from their religious classification has been appointed a minister. While they have served in some high-level civil service positions, such as director general, these groups stated that most positions were filled by Maronites and Greek Orthodox. These groups further stated that while they estimated their population at 54,000, they were allocated only one representative in parliament.
There were no reports of religious prisoners or detainees in the country.
Forced Religious Conversion
There were no reports of forced religious conversion.
Section III. Status of Societal Respect for Religious Freedom
There were periodic reports of societal abuses or discrimination based on religious affiliation, belief, or practice. Political tension between religious groups decreased after Sunni Prime Minister Saad Hariri formed a national unity government that included representatives of Shi'a opposition parties. While there were periodic reports of tension and occasional confrontations between religious groups during the reporting period, most of this activity could be attributed to political differences and the legacy of the civil war.
During the reporting period, Hizballah directed strong rhetoric against Israel, with which the country remained in a state of war, and its Jewish population. While Hizballah's Al-Manar television broadcast anti-Semitic material in the past, no examples were noted during the reporting period.
Representatives from the Israeli Communal Council, a legally registered Jewish organization, reported continued vandalism of a Jewish-owned cemetery in downtown Beirut, including damage to a cemetery structure and theft of iron objects there in late May 2010.
On September 28, 2009, Khaled Shebli Khelo allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at the Maghen Abraham synagogue, the last remaining synagogue in the country. Security authorities arrested Khelo the same day, and investigation of the incident was ongoing at the end of the reporting period.
On July 26, 2009, one day before renovation of the Maghen Abraham synagogue was to begin, unknown perpetrators attempted to set the synagogue on fire.
Section IV. U.S. Government Policy
The U.S. government discusses religious freedom with the government as part of its overall policy to promote human rights. The U.S. embassy advanced this goal through contacts at all levels of society, public remarks, embassy public diplomacy programs, and funding projects designed to increase crossconfessional dialogue.
The ambassador and embassy officers met regularly with leaders of religious communities and regularly discussed matters related to religious freedom and tolerance. The U.S. government supports the principles of the Ta'if Agreement, and embassy staff regularly discussed the issue of sectarianism with political, religious, and civic leaders.
Source: U.S. Department of State, International Religious Freedom Report 2010, Released by the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Washington, DC, (November 17, 2010) | <urn:uuid:11ec8dab-ed6e-4ad1-82f3-a2a4fa4d69f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/rellebanon10.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965196 | 2,901 | 3.390625 | 3 |
RSS readers take raw feeds of data—headline, text, timestamp, etc.—and display that information in a stripped-down interface along with many other feeds, which is what makes them so efficient. (Here is the RSS feed for Quartz.) Less obvious is how many RSS readers, including Google’s, serve as anti-censorship tools for people living under oppressive regimes. That’s because it’s actually Google’s servers, located in the U.S. or another country with uncensored internet, that accesses each feed. So a web user in Iran just needs access to google.com/reader in order to read websites that would otherwise be blocked.
Expiration date set for July 1, 2013.
Google Reader is the web application page that I access most by an unbelievable margin. Even more so than reading and posting on this frequently updated web spot here. Hours a day are spent in it, collecting posts to share, starring others to stash for a in-depth perusal later, searching for topics of interest. And I am not alone in this regard, as others are also presently expressing their discontent over this development.
Some, on the other hand, believe this to be excellent news.
Google Reader is a convenient way to sync between our RSS clients today, but back when it was launched in 2005 (before iPhones), it destroyed the market for desktop RSS clients. Client innovation completely stopped for a few years until iOS made it a market again — but every major iOS RSS client is still dependent on Google Reader for feed crawling and sync.
This is a gross misunderstanding on how Google Reader RSS feeds are consumed by avid users. The power of RSS is that it magnifies one’s agility and speed in viewing vast amounts of content scattered amongst colossal numbers of sites. Granted, not everybody has a subscription total of 3,408 like I do, but I venture that for any total less than a couple hundred, there really is not a great benefit in RSS consumption, other than as a ticker toggle alerting you that something new is now available for your perusal. The greater plus is the capability to rapidly traverse articles that would be simply inconceivable from just a list of bookmarks. Having some feeds arranged on a mobile device is groovy and all, but real news feed reading happens on a computer with a keyboard. And the ability to search for a topical phrase, person or reference and quickly locate a recent article containing that text. Confined only to those sites that you actually care about.
Desktop clients have always sucked — since the inception of RSS. Entering more than a 100 feeds or so results in a sputtering smoking CPU that stalls under the load. This is a utility that cries out for a web application. And Google Reader, despite languishing for the past several years, still shines like no other RSS client. At least in the principle matter of accessing and reading feeds. I, nor any avid RSS feed consumer, cares about schmaltzy magazine layouts or predictive AI that discovers new feeds. Simply put, I just want to enter the sites I am interested in, read feeds in a chronological order, and search for things I am curious about.
Now, we’ll be forced to fill the hole that Reader will leave behind, and there’s no immediately obvious alternative. We’re finally likely to see substantial innovation and competition in RSS desktop apps and sync platforms for the first time in almost a decade.
I hope this is true.
But as stated, Google Reader has languished for the past few years, yet there has been no real competition here even though most all had a whiff of what was coming after the arrival of Google+. Moreover, there is the archival factor — it is not just about collecting and reading feeds, it is about the ability to scroll back through history. A typical blog feed only shows the last n items, a value of 10 or maybe a few dozen tops. So it will be a state of tabula rasa for any up and coming application (be it desktop or web), sans anything before the 2013 (or late 2012) cutoff date. In Google Reader, I can click on a feed and flip through 8 years of item history.
Of course, there are those who will be eager to chime in that users of a free service have no grounds for griping. My recourse here is that this is an important web utility that might only be able to be serviced by an entity with the resources of Google. Searching and storage have hefty costs, as those who eagerly shriek at the whining “Bring back Google Reader!” freeloaders will deem. I cannot envision a “for profit” commercial entity eluding the cost prohibitive nature of such an endeavor (done properly). Maybe, Google could open source the application stack and gift a foundation money to carry on the service.
For an outfit that once branded itself “don’t be evil”, Google is certainly doing its damnedest to fulfill the reverse. What’s next? Gmail? Is it all just a procession to funnel all users into Google+?
Google wants you to know you’re being watched. Or rather, the company wants you to know how and when the police get to watch what you do online.
For the first time, the company has posted its policies for when it gives up your information to the government. It’s part of a broader company strategy to push for tougher privacy laws.
Spreading Santorum, the website that helped popularize Dan Savage’s alternative meaning, was stripped of its top search result status two nights ago…
SearchEngineLand took a wonky look at what exactly happened, and came back with a pretty troubling response.
It seems Google has been working behind the scenes to implement new SafeSearch features that are left on even when you’ve turned SafeSearch off. One of these features prevents “adult” results from showing up when Google has deemed them irrelevant to the search.
In other words, if you’ve searched “Santorum,” Google “assumes” you’re not looking for frothy fecaled lube, but for the presidential candidate.
Another newly implemented feature aims to return “official sites” as the most relevant search result, and Google again “assumes” that Spreading Santorum is not Rick Santorum’s official site.
Now that it’s conquered all seven continents, mapped the Amazon, some rivers in the United States, caves, the ruins of Pompeii and captured snapshots of naked women, Google Street View’s next expedition will turn its lens on the mysteries of the deep when it goes under the sea.
Facebook made $3.2 billion in advertising revenue last year, 85 percent of its total revenue. Yet Facebook’s inventory of data and its revenue from advertising are small potatoes compared to some others. Google took in more than 10 times as much, with an estimated $36.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2011, by analyzing what people sent over Gmail and what they searched on the Web, and then using that data to sell ads. […]
Material mined online has been used against people battling for child custody or defending themselves in criminal cases. LexisNexis has a product called Accurint for Law Enforcement, which gives government agents information about what people do on social networks. The Internal Revenue Service searches Facebook and MySpace for evidence of tax evaders’ income and whereabouts, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has been known to scrutinize photos and posts to confirm family relationships or weed out sham marriages. Employers sometimes decide whether to hire people based on their online profiles, with one study indicating that 70 percent of recruiters and human resource professionals in the United States have rejected candidates based on data found online. […]
Stereotyping is alive and well in data aggregation. Your application for credit could be declined not on the basis of your own finances or credit history, but on the basis of aggregate data — what other people whose likes and dislikes are similar to yours have done. If guitar players or divorcing couples are more likely to renege on their credit-card bills, then the fact that you’ve looked at guitar ads or sent an e-mail to a divorce lawyer might cause a data aggregator to classify you as less credit-worthy. When an Atlanta man returned from his honeymoon, he found that his credit limit had been lowered to $3,800 from $10,800. The switch was not based on anything he had done but on aggregate data. A letter from the company told him, “Other customers who have used their card at establishments where you recently shopped have a poor repayment history with American Express.”
Even though laws allow people to challenge false information in credit reports, there are no laws that require data aggregators to reveal what they know about you. If I’ve Googled “diabetes” for a friend or “date rape drugs” for a mystery I’m writing, data aggregators assume those searches reflect my own health and proclivities. Because no laws regulate what types of data these aggregators can collect, they make their own rules. […]
In the 1970s, a professor of communication studies at Northwestern University named John McKnight popularized the term “redlining” to describe the failure of banks, insurers and other institutions to offer their services to inner city neighborhoods. The term came from the practice of bank officials who drew a red line on a map to indicate where they wouldn’t invest. But use of the term expanded to cover a wide array of racially discriminatory practices, such as not offering home loans to African-Americans, even those who were wealthy or middle class.
Now the map used in redlining is not a geographic map, but the map of your travels across the Web. The term Weblining describes the practice of denying people opportunities based on their digital selves. You might be refused health insurance based on a Google search you did about a medical condition. You might be shown a credit card with a lower credit limit, not because of your credit history, but because of your race, sex or ZIP code or the types of Web sites you visit.
Google announced Tuesday that it will integrate users’ information across Gmail, YouTube, search and 57 other Google services.
Google privacy director Alma Whitten, who explained the changes in a company blog post released in the afternoon, said the company will “treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.”
What is Google doing? In a nutshell, Google is taking information from almost all of your Google services — including Gmail, Picasa, YouTube and search — and integrating the data so that they can learn more about you. (Information from Google Books, Google Wallet and Google Chrome will not be integrated, partly for legal reasons.)
Gautham Nagesh for The Hill - Eight of the largest Web companies have endorsed an online piracy bill offered by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) as an alternative to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate counterpart PROTECT IP.
The OPEN Act would direct online patent infringement claims against foreign websites to the International Trade Commission, which would be authorized to order online ad networks and payment processors to sever ties with the rogue foreign sites.
We did it, you guys!
I’ll give you a hint: Facebook. | <urn:uuid:313011d9-1cdd-4d60-94e7-5b9f8f38b114> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lukehackney.tumblr.com/tagged/Google | 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 | 0.950086 | 2,395 | 1.875 | 2 |
What do Google's computers and Facebook's, and Amazon's, and Verizon's, and all the other Internet servers know about me?
They know a lot, says Mark Rigely of San Francisco. His strangely beautiful video shows how emails, ISP data, weblogs and voice data are being used to paint our portraits, and how, with time, those portraits become dense with detail, pattern and personality.
It's almost like there's an image of us accumulating in that Cloud that will become an ever more vivid copy, with information we wouldn't tell our best friends, our family or our spouse. But the Cloud knows.
"The average user will have 736 pieces of this personal information collected every day," Rigeley says. What a specific number! I don't know enough about information technology, but I'm trying to think: Is that phone numbers dialed? How long we talked? Key words? E-mail sent? Bills paid? Sites visited? How long I stayed? Tolls I paid? Subway rides taken? Destinations? Entry points? Groceries purchased? Prescriptions filled? Clicks I clicked? What else? Seven hundred and thirty six is a hard number for my imagination to conjure. And that's just one day.
Rigely is a graphic designer, based in San Francisco. He says that "by visualizing the processes that underlie our interactions, we can trace what happens to the information we feed to the network."
He does it very well. But when he shows me what's happening, I feel so exposed.
Last week I wrote about The Right To Forget, a legal doctrine which may soon become law across Europe. It says that embarrassing pictures, unguarded comments and telltale transactions should not live forever on Internet servers; that if you want to, you should have the right to demand that Google or Facebook "forget" that information, make it go away.
I thought such a law would be hard to design, but valuable. Rigely's video only makes the privacy argument stronger. What he's describing is ordinary data, nothing specifically naughty or embarrassing. But if you collect enough of it, as Michael says, "Over time, this information amounts to the user's digital identity." And who owns that virtual you? Not you. | <urn:uuid:4cb2dda9-ab57-4657-a50d-dc3cb7a9bc28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/02/27/147497042/how-much-do-they-know-about-me-in-the-cloud?ft=1&f=5500502&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950024 | 472 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Dr. Polly Dunn answered:
In the days and weeks following childbirth, women are especially prone to the baby blues. The baby blues usually subside in about a month, but can include symptoms like tearfulness, difficulty sleeping, irritability, anxiety, and feeling overwhelmed by your increased responsibilities. You will probably continue to feel joy and happiness about the birth of your child, but feelings of sadness creep in as well.
For the majority of women, the baby blues will go away on their own after a few weeks. However, for about 10-20% of women these symptoms will develop into something more serious, postpartum depression. Unlike the baby blues, the symptoms of postpartum depression are more severe and longer lasting and may interfere with your ability to take care of your new baby. Without help, mothers can be left feeling depressed, down, and hopeless for months after the birth of their child. A small percentage of women with postpartum depression may even experience thoughts of harming themselves or their baby.
If you’re a new mom struggling with feelings of depression, there are number of things you can do to help yourself begin to feel better. First, try to spend some time with other adults who care about you. Talk with your spouse, friends, and family about how they can help you with the baby and don’t be afraid to tell them about your feelings. Next, make sure to get as much rest as possible. Try to nap during the day when your baby does so that you can make up for those guaranteed sleepless nights.
Just as you make a routine out of bathing, dressing, and feeding your baby, makes sure that you give yourself a normal routine of showering, getting dressed, and eating at regular intervals. Getting out of the house with your baby is also a good way to improve your mood. You can go for a walk, visit a friend, or even venture out to the store for a much needed change of scenery.
Last but not least, talk to your doctor about your symptoms of depression. Your obstetrician is always available to answer your questions and talk with you about treatment options. There are medications that your doctor can prescribe to treat postpartum depression, many of which are approved for use while breastfeeding. In addition, individual therapy provided by a licensed psychologist or licensed professional counselor is an effective treatment for postpartum depression, especially when combined with medication.In the days and weeks following childbirth, women are especially prone to the baby blues. The baby blues usually subside in about a month, but can include symptoms like tearfulness, difficulty sleeping, irritability, anxiety, and feeling overwhelmed... More
Along with the stats and percentages of which women may be affected by postpartum depression, there is also the effect of postpartum depression on the woman, her partner, her family, and of course, the newborn. It can strike anyone. Many women wonder, "why me?" when they become depressed. In my practice, I have seen high functioning women in management positions become needy and helpless; even unable to structure their days when they become depressed postpartum. It's as if they don't know themselves anymore! And this affects their partner, who wonders what happened to the person s/he knew before the baby was born. The partner may actively grieve this loss and not know what to do to support the new mother. In terms of the family, I see it as a hand. "If one finger on the hand hurts, the whole hand hurts". Postpartum depression can affect the "whole hand", i.e. the entire family. They may need support and education, as well. As far as the newborn goes, there are many conflicting studies about the effect of maternal depression on the newborn. Some say "yes, the newborn can be affected by a depressed mom", however, this is often countered with the fact that if the baby receives care, stimulation, and attention from others (father & family), that can help prevent any impact the mother's depression may have on it.Along with the stats and percentages of which women may be affected by postpartum depression, there is also the effect of postpartum depression on the woman, her partner, her family, and of course, the newborn. It can strike anyone. Many women... More | <urn:uuid:c008b273-e306-4419-b94e-132572f36a49> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sharecare.com/question/affected-postpartum-depression | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966676 | 881 | 2.109375 | 2 |
This collection consists of primary sources (mostly copies) and notes that Betty Forsyth (d. 2006) compiled on the Daniel
Freeman family, their Rancho Centinela, and local towns, such as Inglewood, California.
The Canadian businessman and lawyer Daniel Freeman (d. 1918) came with his family to Los Angeles area in 1873, where the Rancho
Centinela became the center of the family's fortune. His wife Catherine leased the Ranchos Aguaje de la Centinela and Sausal
Redondo from Sir Robert Burnett of Scotland in 1873--the name Rancho Centinela was that given to the combination of the two
ranchos under their joint ownership by Sir Robert. During Mexican rule in California the ranches had been owned by members
of the Avila and Machado families. After his wife's death in 1874, Daniel Freeman assumed the lease, eventually buying the
ranchos. The Centinela Adobe was the well-known ranch house of Freeman's rancho. From his rancho holdings came the foundation
of Daniel Freeman's business interests, and from them the town of Inglewood would also be birthed, with his indirect involvement.
8 archival document boxes; 1 oversize box; 7 flat files
Materials in the Department of Archives and Special Collections may be subject to copyright. Unless explicitly stated otherwise,
Loyola Marymount University does not claim ownership of the copyright of any materials in its collections. The user or publisher
must secure permission to publish from the copyright owner. Loyola Marymount University does not assume any responsibility
for infringement of copyright or of publication rights held by the original author or artists or his/her heirs, assigns, or | <urn:uuid:0f7e37f4-1885-4519-8c67-444abfefb0f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8k64jtr/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955698 | 358 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Over 8,000 websites created by students around the world who have participated in a ThinkQuest Competition.
Compete | FAQ | Contact Us
Who's who in plate tectonics research? Who first came up with the idea that the sea floor spreads and the continents drift? Find out at this web site, which has some drifting of its own as far as navigation goes, however the information given about this earth science phenomenon is first-rate.
KasiaWest Hall Middle, Oakwood, GA, United States
Larry E.West Hall Middle, Oakwood, GA, United States
19 & under
Emily SpikesWest Hall Middle, Oakwood, GA, United States
Science & Technology > Earth Science | <urn:uuid:68f5a7a9-a5f8-4e22-b84d-221c6628e297> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thinkquest.org/pls/html/f?p=52300:100:2608266263679283::::P100_TEAM_ID:501571291 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911548 | 145 | 2.109375 | 2 |
The use of street drugs known as “bath salts” are the source of an outbreak of a rare flesh-eating disease.
Numerous cases of necrotizing fasciitis caused by an intramuscular injection of bath salts are being reported across the United States.
So-called “bath salts” are sold as synthetic powders that “often contain various amphetamine-like chemicals,” according to the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, which warned that injections can cause the ravaging skin condition.
It was first noticed when doctors in New Orleans treated a 34-year-old woman who developed forearm pain and redness after she attended a party. She didn’t have any other symptoms but did have a small red puncture wound on her arm. The woman eventually admitted that she injected bath salts two days before her symptoms began.
The doctors reexamined her and determined that she had necrotizing fasciitis. The disease progressed so rapidly that the doctors had to amputate the woman’s arm, shoulder and collarbone and perform a radical mastectomy.
The woman later underwent skin grafting and rehabilitation.
“Despite the drug’s legal status, it must be treated as illicit, and one must be suspicious when examining a patient with this clinical history because the diagnosis of flesh-eating bacteria can masquerade as abscesses and cellulitis,” said doctors who spoke with WWN.
Bath Salt users are running scared. Not only can you get the flesh-eating disease from injecting the bath salts, but if you come in contact with someone who used bath salts, you may get the disease as well.
One woman reported that her boyfriend injected salts and two days later SHE developed symptoms. When the patient was reexamined, she had rapidly progressing redness, skin sloughing, and drainage. Necrotizing fasciitis was suspected and she immediately underwent emergent surgical debridement and exploration, and more antibiotics were added.
The infection moved so fast that pink, healthy tissue was literally dying before the surgeons’ eyes. They had to keep removing tissue until they reached clear margins of healthy tissue to stop the progression of disease.
In another case, a Mississippi woman’s experiment with the illicit drugs dubbed “bath salts” cost her both legs — and nearly her life — after she was ravaged by flesh-eating bacteria that invaded an injection site.
The 29-year-old woman showed up at a Mississippi hospital complaining of pain and redness on her right leg, where there was a puncture wound the woman admitted was a needle stick. She said the symptoms started two days after she injected bath salts at party.
Fearing for the woman’s life, doctors removed her right arm and shoulder and stripped away the dead muscle. They amputated her legs and cut away more unhealthy skin. Why did the doctors do this? Nobody knows, but major medical malpractice lawsuits have already been filed. Tragedy added to tragedy.
Notwithstanding doctors error, the final diagnosis for the woman was “necrotizing fasciitis caused by streptococcus bacteria.” Such flesh-eating infections can kill quickly, with victims requiring surgery within an average of 25 hours of admission in order to survive.
Bath Salts are powerful synthetic stimulants and became popular in Western Europe in 2009 and showed up in the U.S. in Louisiana, Mississippi and Kentucky in August 2010. They’ve been smoked, snorted, taken orally and, now, injected.
In 2010, the American Association of Poison Control centers received about 3,000 calls about bath salts. Last year, the number climbed to more than 60,000, records show.
At least 16 states have enacted emergency bans on bath salts and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency banned three chemicals used to make them last fall. But Russo and his colleagues are warning other emergency department health workers to be vigilant when patients show up with skin infections after injections
The Center for Disease Control says that this bath salt epidemic is completely avoidable. “The best treatment is prevention with public, street-based education and early detection,” said Dr. Ruskin from the CDC. ”Don’t inject yourself with bath salts!” | <urn:uuid:b80d7604-ff6a-44aa-ae94-223437fd507f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/42801/flesh-eating-bath-salts/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=01a7653db7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965384 | 892 | 2.65625 | 3 |
In our second post on the Durban Climate Change Conference, David Howlett asks what was agreed on agriculture.
I am co-author of a new paper – What next for agriculture after Durban? – published in the journal Science. Here are some thoughts from the article and the conference itself.
The 17th conference of the parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ended two days late on 11 December 2011. The extra time was used by governments to agree the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (PDF).
Continue reading Political economy and food security
A digest of the Global Food Security website and blog. Arran Frood reviews.
It’s been more than two years now since the Global Food Security (GFS) website, and this blog, was launched.
This short post I hope will serve as a big ‘thank you’ to everyone involved, highlight some of the content we have published during this time, and most importantly flag some recent improvements, such as the new blog post ‘notification by email’ box to the right, and our Twitter feed: @FoodSecurityUK.
Continue reading Present thanks, future plans
Collaborations between Britain and Brazil are on the up. John Lucas reports.
It is now more than one month since I arrived in Brazil to spend a period working in Embrapa (the Brazilian Government agricultural research organisation) as part of the Labex (Laboratorio no Exterior) programme.
For more than 10 years Embrapa have been sending scientists abroad to work in labs and organisations that they regard as of scientific and strategic importance, and a UK Labex base was established at Rothamsted Research in 2010.
Continue reading New frontiers in food security | <urn:uuid:7cbd17af-cb97-4613-857a-3adb2901104a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/blog/index.php/2012/01/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94989 | 361 | 1.601563 | 2 |
For today's students, life is all about staring at a screen.
They spend hours doing homework, playing games, chatting with friends, reading books and just hanging out -- all on computers, smart phones and e-readers or tablets.
And doctors say they're starting to pay the price: in eye strain, neck pain and wrist aches.
"Kids have a limited degree of awareness, so they'll just play and play until they're exhausted," said Patricia Smith of Triangle Eye Physicians in Raleigh, N.C. "You've got to parent up and limit the amount of computer time."
She offered these tips for parents concerned about their children's eye health.
Make sure your child is viewing the computer at his or her own height. A child sitting at an adult's desk will be looking up at the screen. This exposes more eye surface, increases the rate of blinking and can lead to eye fatigue more quickly.
Take note if your child is complaining of dry or itchy eyes. Sometimes kids can develop "dry eye syndrome" from staring at a screen and not blinking enough.
Watch for excessive eye rubbing. Kids who are heavy eye rubbers can actually damage their corneas.
Make sure that when your kids take breaks, they are not simply moving to another screen-related activity, like watching TV. Encourage them to go outside, play a game or do something else that does not involve a monitor to truly give their eyes a break.
Sitting up straight can do a lot to prevent posture problems or pain in the back and neck, said Amy Howes, a physical therapist. She offered these tips for parents and kids.
Find a chair that supports your lower back. Your feet should be on the floor and should be in line with your knees. If your child's feet do not reach the floor, use a footrest or other booster.
Use a desk. Do not use a computer or laptop sitting on the couch. "That sort of makes you want to slouch and bend over, and that's not always best," she said. "Plus, if you're sitting on a couch, you're much more likely to not be doing your work and to get distracted."
Keep your ears in line with your shoulders and your shoulders in line with your hips. In other words -- sit up straight!
If you find that you have soreness or pain in your back or neck, try these three simple stretching exercises.
1. Sit up straight, put your arms at your sides and try to squeeze your shoulder blades together. Hold for 5 to 10 seconds, relax and then repeat.
2. Tilt your ear toward your shoulder to stretch your neck, hold for 5 to 10 seconds, then look straight ahead and then repeat for the other shoulder.
3. Bring your shoulders up toward your ears like you are shrugging, hold for a few seconds and then relax. | <urn:uuid:9c8b112d-bfc5-45b3-92fc-296f7d6554e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eastvalleytribune.com/local/health/article_d9773fe8-600d-11e0-8591-001cc4c002e0.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952508 | 596 | 3.15625 | 3 |
The viability of WordPress (WP) as a blogging tool is non-existent without the existence of WordPress plugins. These are part of the features that enable bloggers to extend the abilities of their blogs beyond their base installs. Plugins are integral in the addition of widgets. They are also useful in undertaking SEO activities. Currently, WordPress boasts of 18,000 plugins in its database. The following are ten of the most popular WordPress plugins:
1) Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 allows web developers and bloggers alike to manage numerous contact forms. They can also undertake a customization of WP’s mail contents and form. This is usually a flexible process that involves the use of simple markups. Contact Form 7 supports CAPTCHA, Akismet-based spam filtering and Ajax-oriented submitting.
This plugin uses the cloud power from WordPress.com to supercharge self-hosted WordPress sites. It boasts of numerous features that comprise email subscriptions for comments and blog posts. It also allows users to submit comments via social networks. Jetpack comes embedded with widgets that display the most current tweets while commenters can benefit from Hovercard popups via Gravatar.
3) WordPress SEO
The Yoast-made plugin allows bloggers to preview the appearance of their posts in search results. As such, they can adjust certain features of their posts to their liking. These include the title and meta descriptions. WordPress SEO also analyzes the post to check for availability of images, subheadings, meta descriptions and alt tags among others. This enables bloggers to add anything that they may have forgotten.
Its packages do not end there; WordPress SEO also creates XML sitemaps automatically before sending a notification to various search engines. Bloggers can also increase their SEO rankings. This is usually possible through the addition of links to RSS feeds.
4) WordPress Importer
Thanks to WordPress Importer, bloggers or web developers can transfer content from WP export files. Examples of such content include comments, authors, post metas and custom fields. It is also possible to import pages, custom posts, tags and categories.
Today I’m going to share with you the best WordPress widgets that I would recommend for each and every WordPress blogger. I personally use a few widgets on my blog to help my visitors easily browse all of my blog posts. A nice WordPress blog would have proper utilization of widgets, plugins and footer and header bars.
When I started blogging I had lots of widgets in my blog’s sidebar and never really bothered worrying about the performance of the blog. All I wanted was to make my blog look cool. But one fine day lightning struck me and I decided to delete most of the WordPress plugins and widgets which were not necessary to my blog and were intense on bandwidth and resources. Having lot of plugins and widgets on my blog resulted in too much bandwidth consumption and made my blog sluggish, bringing down my site’s overall performance. So keep in mind, too much of something can be as detrimental as too little. A slow website or blog can equal unhappy visitors and a low score for your site’s search engine ranking. A smaller number of widgets means less content visible on your blog to the visitors, ultimately leading to a high bounce rate and/or low page views. The solution is to find a way to balance the two.
Do not confuse yourselves with widgets and plugins though. WordPress plugins are easy to install and activate which helps you to improve your blog’s functionality. Plugins can include widgets as well. Widgets on the other hand are visible and interactive to your visitors. Usually these widgets are shown in the sidebar, but are not limited to only the sidebar. Fortunately there are many themes available now with widgetized footer and header space.
Have you ever noticed how many high profile bloggers like to offer a monthly review post at the end of each month featuring their top posts for that month? This is a common tactic used by bloggers to recycle some old posts and promote some of their best work.
If you’d like to do something like this, or already are, you might want to check out a new WordPress plugin called WP Best Posts Summary. The plugin will automatically generate a summary post daily, weekly, or monthly (you control this from the Options panel) and allow you to set how many posts to use. Here is an example of how it will look:
You can download or get more information about the plugin here. | <urn:uuid:f85aa5ca-8161-4af1-9149-fbd5f05231f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wphacks.com/tag/best-wordpress-plugins/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9304 | 904 | 1.609375 | 2 |
One year ago, Google acquired Slide, a company that developed third-party apps for Facebook and other social networks. At that time, Google mentioned that the goal was to "make Google services socially aware". Slide continued to operate as an independent start-up inside Google and developed photo sharing apps like Photovine and Pool Party. Slide's CEO, Max Levchin, became VP of engineering at Google.
New York Times reports that Max Levchin will leave Google and most of the Slide apps will be discontinued. A Slide blog post confirms that "in the coming months, a number of Slide's products and applications will be retired. This includes Slide's products such as Slideshow and SuperPoke! Pets, as well as more recent products such as Photovine, Video Inbox and Pool Party." Slide's team says that "many of these products are no longer as active or haven't caught on as we originally hoped".
A Google spokesperson informed the New York Times that most of the Slide team will continue to work at Google and many engineers will join YouTube. If Slide was a talent acquisition, then why Slide's team didn't work on Google+ and why popular games like SuperPoke weren't ported to Google+?
AllThingsD offers some answers: "Although Slide as an independent start-up had not matched its lofty expectations and valuations — at as much as $500 million in a 2008 funding round — its acquisition brought Google some key assets: Social Web expertise at a time when it was dearly needed, and Levchin, who famously founded PayPal. But that was last August. Since then, Google has entrusted its social efforts to two of its existing executives, Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, who led the team that created Google+. Levchin was left on the fringes with Slide as an autonomous subsidiary, reporting to Google co-founder Sergey Brin." | <urn:uuid:48a39843-2a4c-43a2-9e84-0f65727bdaaf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/08/slides-apps-to-be-discontinued.html?showComment=1315802969893 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977449 | 380 | 1.515625 | 2 |
By Zoe Yabrove
By Bree Davies
By Byron Graham
By Susan Froyd
By Josiah M. Hesse
By Bree Davies
By Susan Froyd
By Kate Gibbons
Life was rough for the average white male in 1950s America. Although few women had jobs and fewer still had any semblance of power in the political or business world, women actually ran the entire country. At home, they psychologically emasculated their husbands and sons. Outside the house, they helped create a society that forced men into repressing their natural instincts and made them march, single file and gray-suited, into meaningless, soul-destroying jobs. It was women's malevolence rather than McCarthyism, corporatization or racism that was responsible for the stifling conformity of American culture — and this entire battle between the sexes began and ended in the male genitalia. The only woman exempt from devastating masculine critique was the pretty, free-spirited little chick who made her body available to any man who wanted it. Other than rebellious fucking, there were few ways for men to fight the system: They could be loud and bullying, watch sports (men's only), drink, whine and toss sexual insults at any mouthy bitch who came their way.
Welcome to the world of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in which a heroic patient named McMurphy is consigned to a state mental institution (he was incarcerated for sleeping with a fifteen-year-old, but hey, she didn't look it, and she was more than willing, if you know what I mean). Inside, he meets a whole bunch of sad-sack men, almost every one of them destroyed by some woman or other. Young, stuttering Billy Bibbit has an overbearing, anti-sexual mother. Chief Bromden, a tall, powerful Native American whom the others believe to be deaf but who has actually silenced himself as a protest, watched his father broken by a wife who "made him too little to fight anymore."
McMurphy resolves to help these poor shmucks find their balls, but he's up against a fearsome adversary, the Castrating Bitch of All Castrating Bitches, Nurse Ratched, whose punishments range from playing Lawrence Welk and refusing to let the guys watch television (aww, Mom!) all the way to electroshock treatment and frontal lobotomy. Fortunately, McMurphy's up to the task. He swings his cane around and threatens physical violence, gets the guys their sports shows back, involves them in raucous card games, manipulates the female doctor while hurling sexual insults at Ratched, and provides the free-spirited chick who will help Billy Bibbit lose his stutter and find his manhood.
This play, which premiered in 1963, was adapted by Dale Wasserman from Ken Kesey's novel, and from the very start doesn't make a lot of sense. While it's true that electroshock and lobotomy were absolute perversions of anything you might call medical care and were frequently inflicted on helpless victims, including women and children, all of the patients besides McMurphy are here voluntarily. They can leave. Just get up and walk out. Except, of course, that this would end the show, and then they'd be at the mercy of those all-powerful women lurking in their homes. Lest the audience figure out just how puerile all this is, the script includes a lot of half-baked symbolism and moony poeticizing: McMurphy is a rowdy Christ, sacrificing himself for the others; Chief, possessed of the mystic forces we know throb through the veins of all Native Americans, is the powerful potential adversary of all things institutional, and he needs to get his power back.
There are some good performances here — notably, Lucy Roucis as a subtle-voiced Nurse Ratched, Jason B. Dorwart as Billy Bibbit, Sean McGee as Chief, Mark Dissette as Dale Harding and Don Gabenski as Cheswick. Stephen Hahn plays McMurphy with a lot of heart and energy, though his work needs more modulation. Still, it's painful to see PHAMALY's considerable and generous-spirited talents — after all, this is a troupe of actors who understand just how difficult it is to be labeled and misunderstood — expended on such a rancid, dated vehicle.
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Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city | <urn:uuid:ee47c0f7-6c21-4e5e-9faa-694bf262a8a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.westword.com/2008-01-17/culture/one-flew-over-the-cuckoo-s-nest/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97799 | 954 | 1.75 | 2 |
Bush focuses on health care 'transparency' in Minnesota visitby Mark Zdechlik, Minnesota Public Radio
President Bush visited Minnesota Tuesday to promote a new health care "transparency" initiative, at an event in Minnetonka. The White House billed the event as a health care summit. The president used the forum to promote liability reform, new electronic medical record-keeping, and the pooling of small business health insurance.
Minnetonka, Minn. — In his health care forum, President Bush promoted the notion that arming Americans with specific information about the quality and price of health care is criticial, if the nation is to get under control the ever-increasing cost of health care.
Proponets of "transparency" -- the president among them -- argue that if consumers had more information they would begin shopping around for health care, weighing price and quality in the same way someone might buy a house or a car.
That pressure from newly cost-conscious consumers, and ensuring competition for business, the argument goes, would transform the health care industry into one that's more efficient and more affordable.
"If we have more consumer involvement in health care, then it makes sense ... to make sure consumers have got rational data from which to make choices. And that's not the case today in medicine," said Bush. "I don't know how many of you all have ever said, 'Gosh, I wonder how much this procedure is going to cost me, or before I go to see this person I want to know how much it costs, or maybe I need to know how much this hospital charges.' I doubt many of you have done that. I think the new trend in medicine is going to be to encourage transparency."
Joining Bush for the forum were Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt, and some local health care industry and business leaders.
Among them Micheal Howe, the CEO OF Minnesota-based MinuteClinic. Howe explained to the president how his clinics offer consumers up-front pricing.
"In each of our clinics, we post a message board that lists the services and the prices the consumer is going to pay before they ever come in," said Howe.
Bush signed an executive order which Secretary Leavitt said would both require -- and offer incentives for -- health care groups that do business with the federal government to standardize medical record-keeping, and provide quality of care and price information.
"This will move us a big step forward becuase it's going to say, basically, if you're going to do business with the fed government or large employers who are joining with us, and unions and states like the state of minnesota, you'll use these electronic standards to be able to allow for the interchangeability, the interoperability of records.
Bush also heard about an effort among Minnesota's largest HMOs to provide consumers with side-by-side comparative data on the quality of services at primary care providers in Minnesota.
Bush called Minnesota a state that's fortunate to be taking a leadership role in providing consumers with health care information and choices.
He cited laser surgery, a now common procedure to correct vision, as an example of how competition in the health care industry improves customer service and brings down prices.
"Lasik surgery, eye surgery -- it's a procedure that cost a lot of money when it first came on, and yet there was quite a bit of competition" among doctors to provide the service, Bush said. "All of sudden the cost of Lasik surgery has dropped precipitously. It's now an affordable procedure. Markets work when consumers have got options to make in the marketplace."
Several times during the nearly hour-long forum, Bush repeated his oft-stated call for changes in the legal system to prevent what he refers to as frivolous lawsuits. Bush has long maintained lawsuits drive up the cost of health care and force some providers out of business.
University of Minnesota health policy economist Roger Feldman says it makes sense for consumers to have more information about health care. Why, Feldman asks, wouldn't someone who labors over quality statistics of cars, for example, not want to know what they're getting for a $50,000 operation?
The problem, Feldman says, is right now there's simply not enough good information available to consumers to effectively make those choices.
"The concerns I would have about transparency is that the information which is being produced, and the information which I have available to me, is the right information that I need to make an informed decision," says Feldman. "Going back to the car anology again, I can find out pretty much what I want to know about an automobile. But there still is a real question whether I can find out about the things that really matter to me about health care."
President Bush has often said that Americans shopping for health care with the relatively new pay-as-you-go health savings accounts will help force transparency in the industry.
But Feldman says because only a small percentage of peole are using HSAs, as they're called, that force alone won't likely be enough to change the system.
Given the magnitude of what many characterize as a health care crisis in the U.S., Feldman says politicans on both sides of the aisle should be doing more together to bring consumers more information about health care.
Feldman says pressuring health care providers that do business wih the federal government to become more transparent would be effective.
"I think there is definitely a role for the government to play here. ... I think both sides have taken this issue and over-politicized it," Feldman says. "The Democrats can't hear anything about President Bush without seeing red, including some very good ideas like promoting quality in the federal employees' plan. And the president has politicized any opponent of his proposals as being against peace, light and harmony. An example of that would be the debates over malpractice reform."
As Bush held his forum inside the Minnetonka hotel, about 75 people demonstrated nearby, calling for universal health care coverage. They also protested against the war in Iraq, and more broadly, the Bush-Cheney administration.
- All Things Considered, 08/22/2006, 5:19 p.m. | <urn:uuid:97a3886c-8986-4d81-a612-5f1184f609f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/08/22/bushvisit | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969856 | 1,283 | 1.671875 | 2 |
PHOM Indicator Report of Diabetes Prevalence
Why Is This Important?About 130,000 Utahns have been diagnosed with diabetes. Diabetes is a disease that can have devastating consequences. It is the leading cause of non-traumatic lower-extremity amputation and renal failure. It is also the leading cause of blindness among adults younger than 75. It is one of the leading causes of heart disease.
Diabetes places an enormous burden on health care resources, approximately $174 billion annually ($116 billion in direct medical costs and $58 billion in indirect costs such as disability, work loss, and premature mortality). (See American Diabetes Association, http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/31/3/596.abstract). If undiagnosed diabetes, prediabetes, and gestational diabetes were considered in the cost, the total would be closer to $218 billion. In Utah, more than a billion dollars each year are spent on direct and indirect costs of diabetes.
A model using simulated data projected that diabetes incidence will increase from the current rate of 8 cases per 1,000 population to about 15 in 2050. Prevalence of diabetes (including undiagnosed cases) can be as high as one of three Americans by 2050 (http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/8/1/29).
Currently, about 79 million Americans have pre-diabetes, a condtion that puts them at high risk for developing diabetes. For many individuals, taking small steps, such as losing 5-7 percent of their weight or increasing physical activity, can help them delay or prevent developing diabetes.
Percentage of Utah Adults With Diabetes (Age-adjusted) by Ethnicity, 2009-2011
Data SourcesUtah Data: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, Office of Public Health Assessment, Utah Department of Health
Data Notes"Don't know" and "Refused" responses were eliminated from the denominator. Rates are age-adjusted and standardized to the U.S. 2000 population. Beginning in 2011, BRFSS data include both landline and cell phone respondent data along with a new weighting methodology called iterative proportional fitting, or raking. This methodology utilizes additional demographic information (such as education, race, and marital status) in the weighting procedure. Both of these methodology changes were implemented to account for an increased number of U.S. households without landline phones and an under-representation of certain demographic groups that were not well-represented in the sample. This graph is based on the new methodology. More details about these changes can be found at: http://health.utah.gov/opha/publications/brfss/Raking/Raking%20impact%202011.pdf.
Risk FactorsBeing overweight or obese is a major risk factor for developing diabetes. The risk of developing diabetes can be substantially reduced through weight loss and regular physical activity. The Diabetes Primary Prevention Study (DPP) showed that weight loss and participation in regular physical activity can significantly decrease the risk. The DPP clinical trial included over 3,000 people who had impaired fasting glucose and were at an increased risk for developing diabetes. Participants who engaged in moderately intense physical activity for 30 minutes per day and lost 5 to 7 percent of their body weight decreased their risk of diabetes dramatically. This behavioral activity was effective for all participants in the study, regardless of age or ethnic group (http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/news/docs/dpp.htm). Some risk factors cannot be modified, such as older age or membership in a minority racial or ethnic group. Nevertheless, risk can be substantially reduced through adhering to a nutritious diet and participating in regular physical activity.
How Are We Doing?The prevalence of diabetes has risen and will likely continue to rise steadily, both nationally and in Utah. Several factors contribute to this increase. Increasing rates of obesity and sedentary lifestyles add to the number of people at risk for developing diabetes, while improvements in medical care mean people with diabetes are living longer. If current trends continue, it is possible that as much as one-fourth of the adult population will have diabetes by 2050 (see http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/8/1/29).
What Is Being Done?The Utah Diabetes Prevention and Control Program (DPCP) works to increase public awareness of the warning signs, symptoms, and risk factors for developing diabetes. The program seeks innovative ways to encourage people at risk to recognize that they may be at risk and need to be tested. The program is promoting A1C awareness among people already diagnosed with diabetes and has produced television and radio public service announcements stressing the urgency of getting A1C levels under control. The program also developed a brochure, "Wish You Could Reverse Time?" to complement its public service announcements. The DPCP, in conjunction with the Utah Health Plan Partnership, has also developed magnets to remind Utahns with diabetes of the importance of managing their ABCs (A1C, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels). The Program also assists community-based organizations as they work to increase awareness of diabetes and its risk factors among members of their populations.
The DPCP initiated a program, Faces of Diabetes, that allows individuals to post their personal experiences with diabetes online. This resource allows viewers to learn about diabetes management and challenges by listening to others' stories. Visit Faces of Diabetes at http://health.utah.gov/facesofdiabetes.
The Arthritis Program supports Chronic Disease Self-Management Programs throughout the state. (This program is also called the Living Well with Chronic Conditions Program.) This six-week program is usually available at no cost and taught by community members. Information is available from Rebecca Castleton, 801-538-9340, email@example.com.
Healthy People Objective D-1:Reduce the annual number of new cases of diagnosed diabetes in the population
U.S. Target: 7.2 new cases per 1,000 population aged 18 to 84 years
State Target: 7.2 new cases per 1,000 population aged 18 to 84 years
Date Indicator Content Last Updated: 06/12/2013 | <urn:uuid:32c039ad-583b-49c2-b582-ae66d409e6fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ibis.health.utah.gov/phom/view/DiabPrev.Eth.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934167 | 1,276 | 3.125 | 3 |
Front Page Story
historyawarenesssociety Writes About
Recent Comments in New York, United States
Recently Published Story: 3 Years Ago in Culture
The first man Reincarnated
The first man reincarnated still lives in New York in his county of Kings.
Being reincarnated many times in his native land of Turks & Caicos Islands .
Known since 1984 as Kevin Lee who came to America as a boy simply
named Lloyd or King George V . When checking his official records it
was discovered that he was King Jesus Christ the only living God .
With many historic stats and titles like Abdullah Yusef Ali , America ,
Lord King George , Jesus Christ and more . On record he's been living
through reincarnation since the 15th century . In the 19th century the King
and his sons have fought many wars defeating Masonic Slave Mastors ,
Political Asylum Camps and Society's claiming land or power source's stolen
from the Kings home's and secret rooms when he was tranquilized to a kid .
Since the 1900's its been a proven fact that King Jesus Christ known in the
1930's as Yusef or King George living in Turks & Caicos Islands as Yusef and England
as the king at this time , he was also a child
who grew up . Reincarnated again around the 1950's he used the name Loyd George Been
after a murder attempt in 1952.
When family cloned this body in the 1954's and attempt to murder him he changed
his name to Lord George Been in salute of his governing name King George .
In the 1980's the King reached accurate age to excepted his inheritance . When
his daughter gave him a drink that tranquilized him to a child again. Upset with
his family the King then moved to New York . With help from his family
who lived in America . Know the King lives in NYC taking active roles in
company's he owns .Since 1984 baby genuis (Kevin Lee) has played a behind
the scenes role as ghost writer , marketing consultant , and Music Video Treatment Writer
In 2009 he placed hiself as Ceo of Hip Hop at Universal Music Group & Def Jam
and opens his own major label "Gauped Up Records"
The King built many many inventions since the 1950's till now like the
Mobile telephone (cell phone) ,Internet , and much more
Now walking in to the 21st century the King makes his army public
"The Royal Commission" with division's including Department of Reincarnation ,
Royal Army , International Guard , Central Banking System ,
Law & Tax Revisory Board (Known as the Law Makers Office)
Kevin Lee served as script consultant and story line creator for this block buster
Meaning of Reincarnation:
Reincarnation is the act of your soul or spirit exchanging or transfering body's .
Their are many forms of reincarnation because of the various reasons reincarnation came about.
Cloning is one form of reincarnation ,tranqulization,reborncarnation,illegal reincarnation
& modern reincarnation .
Derived from the word "Carnation" meaning human life or living vessel .
For many century's is has been what some may call beyond human knowledge .
The explaination of the material or substance human skin or body organs are made of .
Reincarnation was thought to be myth till after the "Civil War" . The Civil War
was the freeing of slaves some from concentration camps some held in Masonic Slave Camps
after getting caught using the "Underground RailRoad" to escape . But the method
used by King Jesus and his Royal Army can't be explained to date . Some of the
inslaved still live today . Thats where names Abdullah Ali ,Mary, Kathy ,Steve and more
became popular when reaching the states the Federal Government offered these people
numbers when the King heard of this he was furious and gave them citizenship in America.
Reincarnation was ignored by public officials for decades. This decade its prominate to teach
about reincarnation because of the degragation to your body's . The Federal Government
and F.B.I agency's have brought the people of the world harm to their body because of
the unknowledgeable personnel holding and operating the "Kings" power source device's
and historic documents. Disease is one bodily harm that the two agency's have caused
with know proper understanding of human Life . "It takes a human corps and soul to make
a human body" when some of the slaves were freed the souls were sent to any body on land
Souls carry femanine Jean your body corps is a refliction of your soul or spirit . A female
soul in a male body thats where the population of open homesexuality came from of even
femine male . Women in the 1980's till now who refuse to expose reincarnation because of their
past relationships . Some even having baby's in other body's or with other lady's in male body's
expanding the homesexual epidimic . | <urn:uuid:e7b2f694-3209-4571-845e-9ac98492b1de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nowpublic.com/historyawarenesssociety | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946254 | 1,052 | 1.679688 | 2 |
The outcome of the presidential election leaves me cold and fearful. It is not just the outcome that I find disturbing but the reasons people give for voting as they did. The exit polls suggest that the number one consideration among Republican voters across the red belt was "moral values." The incumbent allegedly embodied such values; the challenger, in their minds, occupied some suspect gray area.
But what do we know? We know that the current administration repeatedly misrepresented intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction in order to rationalize an unjustified and probably interminable war in Iraq. We know that they repeatedly misrepresented the non-existent connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq for the same purpose. And we know that many Americans and roughly 15,000 Iraqis have died as a result. Let's not talk about the maimed and wounded on each side. Let's not talk about the long-term security damage the war has done to the US, either.
We also know that when confronted with the reality of such misrepresentations, both President Bush and Vice President Cheney have either blithely maintained their views or blamed underlings in the intelligence community. Neither has acknowledged, let alone taken responsibility for the misrepresentations. We know too that the principals in the administration who now beat the drums of war assiduously evaded military service in Viet Nam. The challenger, of course, volunteered to serve.
Since when are lying, killing, cowardice, and hypocrisy "moral" values? How about self-righteousness? Such questions get no traction in current conservative discourse. The reason is clear. For our Republican neighbors, the phrase "moral values" is little more than code for keeping gays in the closet and women barefoot and pregnant. My concern is not that Republicans apparently ignored issues like the war or security or the economy, but that they turned out and elected Bush and company on the basis of an indefensibly impoverished understanding of "moral values." This is a sad day for Americans.
Jim Johnson, Bloomfield
I have been overcome with grief since the election. I found out quickly that I was not alone. The enormous sadness of millions of Americans cannot be denied. As a psychologist, I know that this grief must be dealt with before healing can begin, before we can move on, and before we can stand again and fight.
I propose a national day of mourning for those millions of us who feel as though we have lost our country, for those many of us who fear Armageddon as we anticipate the takeover of the Supreme Court, the destruction of Social Security, and the iron-clad rule of the coalition between the corporate power structure and the fanatical right-wing Christians.
On Wednesday, the flag at my grandson's elementary school in Warren, Vermont, flew at half staff. It didn't last long before some bureaucrat took it down, but news of this event moved me like nothing else has over these last few days. It was a symbol of our collective, shared grief.
We need more symbols. We need more ways to come together and share our pain. Only then can we rise from the ashes.
Maryanne G. Hamilton, East Avenue, Rochester
Bush is the most hated president we've had in my lifetime, both within our country and (especially) without, and yet over half of the people in this country voted him back into office. This millionaire was able to convince millions that he's "the common man." This C-minus student responsible for the inane "No Child Left Behind" act has managed to convince millions that he cares about education.
He misled us --- and continues to mislead us --- about our reasons for attacking Iraq. And yet he has convinced millions that showing strength is more important than showing intelligence. Look strong. Don't back down. Go it alone. He twisted Kerry's words in obvious ways in the debates, and people just ate it up. Why?
The only reason I can come up with (beyond the fact that Kerry was hardly an ideal alternative) is mind-numbing fear. Terrorism is a scary thing. Bush is perceived as being the most likely to protect us from terrorism because he's attacking other countries, which is historically how we protect ourselves.
Most of the rest of the world disagrees with our tactics, and we don't care. We are spoonfed the idea that the rest of the world exists to serve us, and it doesn't matter what we do as long as we protect ourselves. Yeah, we've got troops on your soil. Oops, we killed some of your civilians. Deal with it.
Of course we have the right to protect ourselves, but is our cowboy president really doing anything that will help us? And even if he is, how many of our troops are pursuing these efforts, and how many are just fighting for oil?
Tim "Shoebox" Crist, North Chili
"Desiring the Everyday" (October 27) was a thoughtful and touching critique of fine art vs. mercenary art as it relates to ceramics and Convergence of Temperament. Although the art world may "seem to value the contemplative above the useful," there is little evidence that "our culture" shares that sentiment.
Mark Mason Oxford Street, Rochester
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As of Friday, April 6, 2012
© Copyright 2013
Gwinnett Daily Post
Ambassador Andrew Young speaks Wednesday at a forum held at Georgia Gwinnett College.
LAWRENCEVILLE -- About 300 students, faculty, staff and guests at Georgia Gwinnett College got a visit Wednesday from a United Nations ambassador and civil rights leader who discussed a variety of global issues as well as his many experiences.
Ambassador Andrew Young spoke during a conversational forum with GGC President Daniel J. Kaufman.
"Ambassador Young's various public service roles have give him a unique perspective on the many issues and opportunities facing our young people as they enter a global economy," Kaufman said. "His experiences as a leader in the civil rights movement, a U.S. congressman, Ambassador of the United Nations, mayor of Atlanta and co-chair of the Atlanta Olympic Committee demonstrate what a dedicated citizen and public servant can do for his community, his state and his nation. I am delighted that our students had this opportunity to listen to his perspective."
During the forum, Ambassador Young discussed the decisions and personal crossroads he encountered through the course of his career. In addition, he talked with a political science class about his experiences as a civil rights leader.
For more information, visit www.ggc.edu. | <urn:uuid:25878f18-94da-4914-8098-efb98477d3f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/news/2012/apr/05/andrew-young-speaks-at-ggc/?news | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973228 | 269 | 1.601563 | 2 |
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No Pledge Signer Voted to Raise Taxes in Fiscal Cliff Bill
No Taxpayer Protection Pledge signer voted for a tax increase this week. No one—except President Obama—has broken their tax pledge to their constituents. President Obama is wrong to say that Republicans voted for a tax increase.
As December 31, 2012 became January 1, 2013, taxes went up automatically on every American. The top marginal income tax rate rose from 35 to 39.6%. The death tax rate rose from 35 to 55%, with an exemption of $1 million. The capital gains rate rose from 15 to 23.8%. The dividends rate rose from 15 to 43.8%. $1 trillion in Obamacare tax increases went into effect. The 2 percentage point payroll tax rebate expired. This was a permanent change in tax law, and a permanent tax hike on the American people.
This tax increase did not happen because of Republican Pledge signers. The House, for example, voted to make all income tax rates permanent as part of the House budget, and also in H.R. 8 in July 2012. Senate Republicans repeatedly emphasized that their goal was to avoid income tax increases on any American. This happened because President Obama wanted it to happen - if the President wanted to extend tax relief for middle class Americans, he would have done so when his party controlled both the White House and Congress in 2009 and 2010. He would have campaigned in 2012 on more than a one-year tax hike reprieve for families making less than $250,000 per year. The President wanted taxes to go up on New Years Eve, and they did. They rose for each and every American family and small business.
Because of this tax increase, Congress’s job after that was to cut taxes for the American people, and that’s exactly what lawmakers did.
On New Years Day, the Senate and House voted on a bill to cut taxes by $3.7 trillion over the next decade. The American people deserved a bigger tax cut; they deserved a cut that made permanent the levels in place from 2003 through 2012. But there is good news. This tax cut bill permanently secures tax relief for 99% of Americans. It sets a tax rate schedule permanently. It patches the AMT permanently. It cuts the dividend tax rate permanently. Importantly, income tax bills for those making less than $250,000 per year will not rise from 2012 levels, ever. As House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said on the House floor last night, this tax bill “settles the level of revenue Washington should bring in.” For the first time in a long time, the tax revenue baseline is permanent.
Because this bill was clearly a tax cut (to say otherwise is to pretend that the Obama tax increase never happened), there were no Taxpayer Protection Pledge implications to this vote. This bill was a tax relief bill. No Pledge signer is obligated to support tax relief, so those who voted against this bill weren’t violating their Pledge, either. Going forward, with the specter of automatic tax increases effectively eliminated, tax increases will be clear and obvious, and questions about the Pledge will be less difficult. If, as is anticipated, Obama presses for tax increases this year, Pledge signers will stop him cold.
Now the focus turns to the real problem: spending. Over the next 90 days, Congress will have three opportunities to cut spending: during debate regarding the sequester, the continuing resolution, and the debt ceiling. These are all opportunities to extract real spending cuts and entitlement reforms out of Washington. The U.S. House won’t be voting for any tax hikes, since (as Chairman Camp put it), the revenue level is now settled.
The House can also turn to fundamental tax reform. As it has done for the past two years, we expect the House to endorse comprehensive tax reform with the new permanent revenue baseline as part of the budget. Chairman Camp has indicated he will produce a revenue-neutral tax reform bill this year.
ATR looks forward to continuing to work with lawmakers to enact spending cuts and oppose tax hikes. | <urn:uuid:56065edd-d60e-4993-a800-3aec3e6facc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.atr.org/pledge-signer-voted-raise-taxes-fiscal-a7394 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969503 | 859 | 1.890625 | 2 |
The NFL is finally stepping up to the plate in trying to deal with concussions. On a personal note, this matter hit close to home as my son missed most of his football season due to a post-concussion syndrome. It was devastating but it was the best thing for him to sit out and recover. The NFL, on the other hand, has been sweeping the issue under the rug for years. More and more studies are showing that early dementia is also becoming an issue in these players. A few years ago Ted Johnson of the Patriots fessed up about his ordeal with concussions and he was treated like a pariah. Now the NFL is being very aggressive in keeping players out with any symptoms. Great. They are also assigning independent neurologists to evaluate their rehab. Great. The problem is that this is all dealing with the symptoms and not the cure. The reason there are so many concussions is that the style of tackling and running and blocking has changed. They all lead with their heads! Watch any game and what you see are human missiles. We need to change the rules. What the hell happened to the spearing rule years ago? That was to protect against tackling with your head due which could lead to paralysis but that is exactly what these guys are doing on every play. My hope is that there are better helmets developed in the future but this is still a band aid approach. From the kids on up there needs to be better teaching of a new way to play the game or else nothing really will change - except more and more players being DETECTED with concussions and nothing more. | <urn:uuid:e9bd36ed-1494-4a29-b3ce-64472809ab5d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://placebojournal.blogspot.com/2009_12_07_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989819 | 323 | 1.625 | 2 |
- Last Updated: 12:33 PM, January 17, 2012
- Posted: 10:42 AM, January 17, 2012
The NYPD is developing a new device that can detect whether a perp is carrying heat without frisking him, Commissioner Ray Kelly announced today.
The large mechanism uses infrared rays to scan a “form of radiation emitted from the body” of someone who is concealing a gun on the streets of the Big Apple, Kelly said at the Police Foundation’s State of the NYPD breakfast.
Since the infrared rays cannot pass through metal, the device provides officers with a digital outline of exactly where the firearm has been tucked away on the subject’s body, Kelly said.
Three years ago, the department started working with the United States Department of Defense and a manufacturer to develop the new technology.
Kelly said the device only works at a short range – 3 to 4 feet away – but that he’s hoping it will operate at a farther distance of 25 meters.
The gadget will be mounted on an NYPD van with the infrared rays shooting up the street at the person. | <urn:uuid:a66251b0-70ff-402d-a0fc-b996fc742134> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/nypd_developing_new_device_to_detect_HpGz6WUXC9Ji7qaifcCxkN?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941295 | 229 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Deke's Techniques 075: Adding Photographic Texture to Vector Type in Illustrator
One of the great things about Deke's Techniques (for me anyway) is that it gives me the chance to explore, not just how vast and powerful programs like Photoshop and Illustrator work, but how they work together, and in real-world scenarios. For example, this week, I show you how to take a couple of cloud photographs (Photoshop) and cram them into some vector-based text objects (Illustrator), replete with strokes and drop shadows.
Here's the official description from lynda.com:
This week's Deke's Techniques demonstrates the relatively simple but oh-so-useful method for filling your Illustrator type with a photographic image. The steps are straightforward: You'll need Illustrator CS5 or better in order to use the handy Draw Inside mode. Then it's just a matter of selecting the text and placing it inside the type.
Of course, if you want to add strokes or drop shadows, you'll need to deftly navigate both the Layers and Appearance panels in order to add those respective effects to the appropriate objects inside Illustrator. The result is this formerly boring text (left) turned into an editable, tweakable, barn-stormin' effect.
For members of lynda.com, Deke's got another video this week that shows you how to create a double stroke around this effect. Sounds simple, no? But it's Illustrator, so good thing Deke has figured out the oddly complicated nuances for you.
And Deke will be back next week with another quick-and-useful technique.
Seriously, that second technique is worth the price of admission. As those of you who know Illustrator well know well, adding a double-stroke effect behind a photograph inside a clipping path is of those things that simply can't be done in Illustrator. And yet, in my Deke's Techniques course, I tell you how. | <urn:uuid:242405b9-ad70-4fd0-8ab6-bc4f7c2b6a61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.deke.com/content/dekes-techniques-075-adding-photographic-texture-vector-type-illustrator | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921047 | 410 | 1.90625 | 2 |
More frequently the Meeting is broken up without a word having been spoken. But the mind has been fed. You go away with a sermon, not made with hands. You have been in the milder caverns of Trophonius; or as in some den, where that fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures, the TONGUE, that unruly member, has strangely lain tied up and captive. You have bathed with stillness.—O when the spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness of the janglings, and nonsense-noises of the world, what a balm and a solace it is, to go and seat yourself, for a quiet half hour, upon some undisputed corner of a bench, among the gentle Quakers!
Their garb and stillness conjoined, present an uniformity, tranquil and herd-like—as in the pasture—“forty feeding like one.”—
The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of receiving a soil; and cleanliness in them to be something more than the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is a lily; and when they come up in bands to their Whitsun-conferences, whitening the easterly streets of the metropolis, from all parts of the United Kingdom, they show like troops of the Shining Ones.
[Footnote 1: From “Poems of all sorts,” by Richard Fleckno, 1653.]
My reading has been lamentably desultory and immethodical. Odd, out of the way, old English plays, and treatises, have supplied me with most of my notions, and ways of feeling. In every thing that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world. I should have scarcely cut a figure among the franklins, or country gentlemen, in king John’s days. I know less geography than a school-boy of six weeks’ standing. To me a map of old Ortelius is as authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not know whereabout Africa merges into Asia; whether Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great divisions; nor can form the remotest conjecture of the position of New South Wales, or | <urn:uuid:b3ccdb88-889e-4fd9-820c-043a61ff9cfd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/10343/43.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94676 | 472 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Brunei: Year In Review 2011Article Free Pass
|Area:||5,765 sq km (2,226 sq mi)|
|Population||(2011 est.): 422,000|
|Capital:||Bandar Seri Begawan|
|Head of state and government:||Sultan and Prime Minister Sir Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Muʿizzaddin Waddaulah|
In 2011 Brunei and Malaysia continued to work on details of a joint resource-exploitation project in the South China Sea that resulted from the 2010 settlement of a long-standing border dispute between the two countries. Brunei retained sovereign rights over two oil-rich areas of the seabed located along the maritime boundary between the two countries. In return, Brunei entered into a 40-year production-sharing agreement with Malaysia. The project was expected to generate billions of dollars for each country.
The 2011 Arab Spring popular agitations against authoritarian regimes in the Middle East raised concerns in Brunei. A major state-sponsored conference was held in May on the national ideology—Malay Islamic Monarchy (MIB)—to reinforce its value as a bulwark against political ideas from abroad deemed potentially subversive.
In late May and early June, Brunei staged a 50th-anniversary celebration of the founding of Royal Brunei Armed Forces that included an international tattoo (performances by military bands), and it hosted the third Bridex (Brunei military exposition) in July; both events attracted large local and international audiences. An unprecedented five senior military officers received promotions to the rank of brigadier general, one of whom, Pehin Tawih bin Abdullah, was appointed to the newly created post of deputy commander of the armed forces.
Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP—50% owned by Royal Dutch Shell PLC) announced a significant new oil discovery in the coastal waters about 100 km (60 mi) offshore. The water depth there was approximately 1,000 m (3,300 ft), which made those hydrocarbon reserves the deepest identified to date by BSP in the Brunei region.
What made you want to look up "Brunei: Year In Review 2011"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:9e1d16df-0cc5-4dac-bb26-bb16bf9ce08e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1804049/Brunei-Year-In-Review-2011 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943302 | 456 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Jenn - posted on 04/22/2010 ( 1 mom has responded )
Hi everyone, it seems as though my 16 month old is constantly sick. I can go maybe a week with no illness. A runny nose/cough isn't overly concerning as he is in daycare afterall. But he's had so many fevers over the last 16 months :( I had to pick him up again today from daycare due to a high fever. I know during their first year at daycare they can get 8-10 colds in the cold/flu season but I swear he's had more. He's had bronchiolitis (sp) and bronchitis a couple of times and nobody else's kid the same age that I know has had this. Is it just that my kid is prone to more viruses? I thought breastfeeding was supposed to help their immune system? I breastfed him until he was 9 months old.
Any tips/stories? Thanks! | <urn:uuid:fe6e5581-3189-498a-b3da-17f4197f952b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.circleofmoms.com/december-2008-babies/constantly-sick-526240 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.996387 | 198 | 1.679688 | 2 |
It’s a classic scene from daily life at an office that may already have been ridiculed by Dilbert. A salesman selling, say, software, arrives at an office; the boss explains he needs the new software to do several things and asks whether the salesman’s product can perform these tasks. He proudly answers that yes, most of these tasks will from now on be performed perfectly, and that the remaining functionalities will be added to the software’s repertoire in the near future. The boss only asks why the new software has not been designed to do these tasks already, suspecting that the developers do not really understand the real needs of the office people.
I was reminded of this when I read about a new interdisciplinary project. Its members, no doubt sincere and hard-working scholars, mention all the benefits of working together. But what they are also saying is that so far, things have not been done as they should have been done, that tax money has been wasted, and that scholars do not understand what is expected of them: to offer the best possible information.
I love scholarship, but as webmaster of Livius.org I have – over the past sixteen years – also received hundreds of e-mail messages. I know that there’s a large group of people who are very sceptical about science and scholarship (21% of the 4200+ people that have written to me). They believe that the universities are large commercial enterprises and that news about discoveries is just like an advertisement by a multinational or a statement by a political party: a misrepresentation. Worse, these sceptics are not always wrong (example).
Statements like “we will from now on use more interdisciplinary approaches” are completely counterproductive, because they prove to many people that until now, things were wrong. | <urn:uuid:bab12c6c-a77b-418b-bf34-3af130397593> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rambambashi.wordpress.com/tag/interdisciplinary-research/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977772 | 371 | 1.671875 | 2 |
1- “See the women and children going to the train, Fair-you-well, my husband, if I never see you again, The engineer turned his head When he heard so many were dead; So many have lost their lives.
Isn’t it sad, isn’t it sad? Excursion left Durham going to Charlotte, North Carolina Isn’t it sad, isn’t it sad? So many have lost their lives.
2- Some of us have mothers standing at the train, Fare-well-well, my daughters, I may never see you again, And the train began to fly And some didn’t come back alive; So many have lost their lives.
3- The firemen said to the Engineer, “We are something late, We don’t want to meet up with the local freight,” The local was on the line And they could not get there on time; SO many have lost their lives.
4- When the news got to Durham, some said it was a lie, But there were some in the Hospital almost ready to die, And there poor old mothers, you know, They were running from door to door; Because so many have lost their lives.
5- Now colored people I will tell you to your face, The train that left Durham was loaded with our race, And some did not think of dying When they rode on down the line; So many have lost their lives;
6- They put the dead in coffins and sent them back to town, And then they were taken to the burying ground, You could hear the coffin sound When they let those bodies down; So many have lost their lives. By Franklin Williams and William Firkins.
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The images and audio files contained in the "So Mote It Ever Be: The Folksong Heritage of North Carolina's Northern Blue Ridge Mountains" collection are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. I. G. Greer/W. Amos Abrams Manuscript Files Series, Folksong Files Subseries, W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials without the written permission of Appalachian State University is strictly prohibited. Please contact the Appalachian State University W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection with specific questions or with requests for further information. | <urn:uuid:b2c5d927-fd42-4572-b656-0f1c5ea77432> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://contentdm.library.appstate.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/abrams/id/361 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965905 | 516 | 2.671875 | 3 |
During the month of “love” most of us will be examining the amount of love that is present within our own lives. Although the word love is often abused in today’s society, the expression of love is an inherent need to almost every creature on this planet. From infants and through our entire adult life, love is an important component in our health. Certainly one of the greatest expressions that I’ve heard is “to love and be loved in return”. This is one of the great truths of life. What I find most intriguing about the subject of love, is its relationship to our internal health and hormonal balance. I have many consults in my office involving couples sitting in front of me who are frustrated, fatigued, and becoming depressed due to the lack of love and spark within their relationship. Life has a way to entangle us, causing excessive stress to affect our hormonal balance and metabolism. I challenge most of these couples to simply reflect on their internal health and hormonal balance after which I often bring them back together for conversation and counseling on issues intimacy and sexuality. Intimacy is a complex entity which is often affected by past experience, present and anticipated circumstances, as well as hormonal balance. Hormonal balance is critical in achieving the feelings of vitality, vigor, and maintaining energy. There is nothing more frustrating than feeling exhausted and not being able to show the affection and nurturing intimacy that is necessary in maintaining a sound relationship.
I would like to give you an example of a patient that I took care of in the past who had issues of stress greatly affecting her energy levels, vitality, and even the physiologic process of ovulation and fertility. This patient came to me in her early 30s complaining of severe anxiety and mental withdrawal. She actually had to pull off the road while driving because she was unable to focus and could not perform driving tasks accurately. When I questioned her during the initial consultation, she stated that she had no menstrual periods for over 4 to 5 months. She also stated that her menstrual periods were irregular for many years. She was told by six previous physicians that she would most likely be unable to have a child. Her initial symptoms upon presentation included facial numbness, mental withdrawal, difficulty with speech, hot flashes, insomnia, and severe fatigue both in the evening and in the afternoon. She complained of difficulty with memory as well as persistent drowsiness.
On initial laboratory assessment, she had very low progesterone as well as suboptimal estradiol. She had extremely low cortisol during a four point saliva test with a flat line response throughout the day. This was indicative of severe adrenal stress and a breakdown of hypothalamic pituitary axis. The hypothalamus and pituitary gland communicate to the body and send signals to the adrenal glands to release cortisol under stressful situations. When these situations are persistent and stress is continual, the system can breakdown and cortisol can be detrimental. Please see a recent hormonal blog I wrote called “The Greatest Super Bowl of Your Life”. This patient’s thyroid was also affected by her adrenal stress as she could not convert the active form of thyroid (T3) from (T4), the most abundant form of thyroid from our thyroid gland. This made her entire metabolic breakdown much worse. Adrenal stress often involves issues of thyroid function, pancreatic function and glucose utilization, as well as imbalance in our immune system. This in turn will affect oxidative stress on the brain and neurotransmitter balance as well.
The breakdown in this example came from an overproduction of stress on the body which affected adrenal cortisol release. Overproduction of cortisol will cause clinical depression, elevated androgens (male hormone), and elevated blood glucose levels. This causes an excessive amount of insulin secretion which leads to insulin resistance. As insulin secretion rises, more androgen hormone production occurs which is then converted to estrone, one of the estrogen hormones. This results in a disruption of the hypothalamus and pituitary gland to regulate the ovulation cycle by having excess LH (luteinizing hormone) and insufficient FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) which will compromise the ability of the ovary to ovulate properly. Lack of ovulation causes infertility and a reduction in progesterone. The patient will become highly irritable through estrogen dominance.
After correcting this patient’s impact of stress on her body, properly balancing her hormones with bio identical hormone replacement therapy, and supporting her neurotransmitter imbalance with the use of amino acids; her response was quite impressive. This patient’s menstrual periods began to return on a regular basis, and she became more calm and focused. Her energy levels began to increase in the vitality returned to her life. She was planning to get married in the near future and having a child was certainly important to her and her fiancé. This patient was instructed to follow-up with me in approximately three months for her third consultation. The patient called me 60 days after her second consultation and stated that she was pregnant. She had tears of joy as she was led to believe that this would not be possible. I referred this patient to an obstetrician for continual care and close observation during her pregnancy. This patient recently contacted me and allowed me to see and hold her healthy baby boy.
This case is an excellent example of the impact of adrenal stress on multi-organ systems. In addressing underlying metabolic issues such as the thyroid impact of adrenal stress, estrogen/ progesterone imbalance, the patient’s outcome was clearly optimize. There is nothing greater through the expression of love than a healthy newborn child. Hormonal optimization is critical in allowing this process to occur. This is only one simple example of the impact on hormonal optimization. Hormones have a great affect on many physiologic processes of the body, mental health, and vitality. If the love in your life is being squashed by mental fatigue, exhaustion, and feelings of apathy, metabolic testing and hormonal optimization can certainly help, and give you hope. Please see the attached testimony which nicely expresses the importance of hormones in our lives. | <urn:uuid:84f53346-72bb-4b59-a4f6-db760ec87818> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drkennethorbeck.com/2012/02/14/hormones-enhance-the-expression-of-your-love/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97094 | 1,240 | 1.78125 | 2 |
(Above) “Dark-skinned” pregnant doll - Edo-Tokyo Museum
(Above) “Light-skinned” pregnant doll - Edo-Tokyo Museum
(Above) Wood carved fetus model set (circa 1877) - Toyota Collection
(Above) Baby doll - Edo-Tokyo Museum
IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURY, SIDESHOW CARNIVALS known as misemono were a popular form of entertainment for the sophisticated residents of Edo (present-day Tokyo). The sideshows featured a myriad of educational and entertaining attractions designed to evoke a sense of wonder and satisfy a deep curiosity for the mysteries of life. One popular attraction was the pregnant doll.
Although it is commonly believed that these dolls were created primarily to teach midwives how to deliver babies, evidence suggests they were also used for entertainment purposes.
For example, records from 1864 describe a popular show in Tokyo’s Asakusa entertainment district that educated audiences about the human body. The show featured a pregnant doll whose abdomen could be opened to reveal fetal models depicting the various stages of prenatal development.
Similarly, records of Japan’s first national industrial exhibition in 1877 indicate a Yamagata prefecture hospital doctor named Motoyoshi Hasegawa showed off an elaborate set of fetus models illustrating seven different stages of growth, from embryo to birth.
Although it is unclear whether the fetus model set pictured in the final image above is the same one Hasegawa showed in 1877, records suggest his model was a hit at the exhibition.
[Source: Geijutsu Shincho magazine, July 2001] via PinkTentacle.
An AM repost from 7/8/09. | <urn:uuid:b7216e03-1c57-4691-afcd-e50ce37ae5fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://accidentalmysteries.blogspot.com/2009/07/19th-century-japanese-pregnancy-dolls.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92978 | 360 | 3 | 3 |
By Alicia Eler / April 2, 2012 4:00 PM
The tiny Instagram app grew to a gigantic 27 million users during its first year in the App Store. It has inspired real-life Instameet-ups, Instagram art shows and a community based on love for the image, where users can post and receive feedback from other visual thinkers. Instagrams are not only the new Polaroids when it comes to party pics, they’ve become a way for users to communicate visually, sharing inspiration and ideas (well, iPhone users anyway – the Android app is due out soon).
But Instagram isn’t the only app capturing smartphone users’ visual imaginations. Photo-sharing apps such as EyeEm, Piictu and Cinemagr.am each offer users opportunities to connect and organize visually and categorically in non-Instagram ways. The Web-based photo social network pasts of Flickr, PhotoBucket, Picasa, Shutterfly and Kodak Slideshare are over. Digital cameras are yesterday; smartphone cameras are today, and the mobile photo app is now. So what’s next for the photo-sharing app?
Instagram owns the mobile photo-sharing space, so why compete with it? As the adage goes, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
“A lot of our thinking starts off with the assumption that we as a platform assume that Instagram is the camera,” Piictu CEO Jon Slimak tells ReadWriteWeb. “We call this photo entraction. It’s the idea that the photograph is changing through applications like Instagram, through iPhones having cameras. Photos are moving from objects of memory to objects of interaction.”
With that in mind, photo apps outside of or using the existing Instagram platform aim to do one of a few things: Help you communicate visually, organize the images from your social networks, or bring some extra value out of those pre-existing images.
Piictu: Visual Communication, No Filters Allowed
Piictu does not offer the filters of Instagram, which can easily be used to one-up other users’ hipness factor. Instead, Piictu is just about talking with pictures, plain and simple. Dubbed “Twitter for pictures,” Piictu challenges users to communicate only through images, making the image seem less showy and more clear cut. In that way, it’s not an Instagram-like photo sharing app at all. Like Twitter, Piictu organizes images around topics that are trending on the network; today 89 piics were posted under “Why i hate mondays ), which is hilariously countered by the 56 piic collection titled “Pics @ work.”
EyeEm: Organize by Content
Berlin-based startup EyeEm is quite literally thinking outside the square box.
Shoot a photo using the EyeEm app, and then choose which category you’d like to place the photo in. This makes the organization on the app more topic-focused, and less about the individual’s social media status or fame. It does, however, give users the opportunity to add an Instagram-like filter. Categories today include blackandwhite, Breakfast, self portrait and Friends. With each category, the user also is able to see how many people have uploaded photos to this category, and how many photos live in this category. If you turn on the location function, EyeEm also shows you photos around you, much like the Twitter location function.
GIF-ify an Image with Cinemagr.am
Cinemagr.am is slightly more than a hat trick. It’s less of a commitment than making a short silent film using your smartphone, yet it asks you to think about animation. The marvelous thing about this app is that you can shoot a few seconds of video using your phone, cut that down to a few images, and then turn it into a two or three-second animated GIF. What was once a boring cup of coffee becomes an endless loop of steam evaporating into the air.
Like most cinephiles IRL, Cinemagr.am isn’t exactly social. The app offers streams of popular and latest GIFs, so that you can get a better idea of the GIF. If you find an image you like, either give it a thumbs up, comment or email it to someone. The GIF works best on the Web, however, so if you decide to make one don’t expect it to end up in your family photo album.
Pixable: The Photo Inbox Future & Social Networks
Photo inbox apps such as Pixable do the job of filtering in images from your existing social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Lomography and Instagram. Pixable organizes images by trending popular and recent hashtags, and it allows you to follow your visually oriented Facebook friends. It also organizes images in categories such as “best of” and feeds like “most recent photos” and “top of the week.” Pixable does all the sorting and organizing for you. The inbox aggregates all of your photos, making it less social and more customized for an individual, visually stimulating experience.
Pictarine: Your Photo Album Home on the Web
Facebook, Path, Pinterest and Tumblr all have a strong visual component, but to bring them together into one space makes for easier viewing. Services such as Pictarine make that possible. The free Web app operates similarly to Pixable, but remains on the Web only. Sign up for Pictarine and you can easily bring in images from Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, PhotoBucket, Instagram, Dropbox, Shutterfly, MobyPicture and a few others. Pictarine wants to act like your Web-based photo album. Pictarine also lets users create slideshows or playlists, which replace the now old-school iPhoto slideshow days of yore.
The Facebook-Only Category: ShoeBox and PhotoBox
Not everyone is jumping to download a new mobile photo app for their smartphone. Some users would prefer a mobile photo app that only deals with Facebook images, where many not-as-socially network-crazy individuals would prefer to stay.
The Facebook Shoebox app from 1,000memories plays on the metaphor of an old shoebox, helping users fill out their own “Facebook past” on Timeline. Such an app might inspire “rosy retrospection,” which Dr. Ashwini Nadkarni refers to as “remembering the past as having been better than it really was,” but hey, what’s the point in remembering the bad times anyway?
The PhotoBox app focuses less on your Facebook photos and more on the photos of your Facebook friends and fan pages. Click on a friend’s profile, and PhotoBox sends you straight to their photo albums, bypassing all text and messages. Similarly with My Likes, PhotoBox sends you to images from fan pages that you’ve liked, pulling up the images that represent that page. It also brings in a collaborative creativity option: Grab a photo from your recent feed, click on it, add a new filter, like it or comment on it, and then share it back to your Facebook page. Just don’t forget to tag your friends. It’s like one-upping an already awesome photo, and then approving it with a high-five by posting it directly to your Facebook Wall. Unfortunately, the application doesn’t retag the person whose photo you ostensibly just stole, so you have to go into Facebook and manually tell them that you just shared it.
The Future of Photo Sharing Apps
It’s clear that mobile photo-sharing apps are happening now. But what will the future hold? More GIFs? Less vintage-y tinted Instagram filters? More integration into existing social networks? As social networks evolve to easier, faster interaction with less of an “expense,” as Slimak says, users can expect the same of photo-sharing apps.
“We’re interested in the expense of a share, which is tied to the idea that users gravitate to a less expensive share,” Slimak says. “First a reblog or a retweet was a very inexpensive share. Pinterest is the biggest evidence of this – you can repin something without having to commit a lot of your personality to it.” | <urn:uuid:d73dac54-f1d8-4b5a-ab6a-8c602712baf0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://passioncapital.com/news/rww-eyeem-the-future-of-photo-sharing-apps/ | 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 | 0.928493 | 1,771 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Brian Campbell of Cambridge sent a long comment attached to a posting from last year, and I thought it would be more visible in a posting of its own. Mr. Campbell is concerned about Fort Washington Park in Cambridge, the lone remaining geographic feature from the siege of Boston in 1775-76. Here are his comments, somewhat edited:
In November of 1775, by order of George Washington, volunteer soldiers constructed the three-gun battery earthworks at Fort Washington Park at 101 Waverly Street. Of the many siege fortifications built, only the three-gun battery earthworks at Fort Washington Park survive in an original condition.Fort Washington Park is now one of Cambridge’s two dog parks. Last year dog-owners petitioned the city to augment the Victorian iron fence around the park because pets could get through it and run away. In Jan 2006 the Cambridge Historical Commission approved a chain-link fence beside the older fence as a temporary measure. Presumably the city is working on a longer-term solution that matches the historic decor.
After the Revolution, the affluent Dana family preserved the earthworks until 1858 and donated the land they occupy to the city. In 1859 Cambridge built the beautiful historic fence around the earthworks to protect them.
In the History of Cambridge, Massachusetts 1630-1877, Lucas R. Paige wrote, “Let no unpatriotic hand destroy this revolutionary relic, now known as Fort Washington.”
Mr. Campbell sees that use of the park as a threat to its survival:
The primary historic preservation concern was the 148-year-old fence, which no longer serves as protection to the earthworks. Instead, it keeps pooches caged in, making Fort Washington a legal off-leash park. Dogs burrow holes in the earthworks with impunity, as there is no protection for these fragile Revolutionary relics our forefathers so bravely constructed under British cannonades while suffering sickness and death in the camps and barracks of Cambridge.Here is Mr. Campbell’s full letter to the Cambridge Chronicle in February. You can read more of his thoughts on the park here. He has also posted slide shows titled “Ft. Washington Dog Damage.”
As a USN Veteran, I feel this not the proper place to allow dogs to run free. The 231-year-old, Revolutionary relic three-gun battery earthworks are a monument to the labor of volunteer soldiers who constructed them, and deserve the respect and protection afforded the earthworks at national battlefields.
On the other side of the issue, folks on such websites as CambridgeDog.org and the SomervilleDog blog are pleased to have the dog park, and pleased that Cambridge agreed to steps that make it better for dogs.
I literally don’t have a dog in this fight. I don’t have a dog, I don’t live in Cambridge, and I have no special feelings about Fort Washington Park compared to other Revolutionary sites. But here are some observations from a historical perspective.
First, there were earthworks and fortifications and artillery batteries all around Boston in 1775-76, and inside the town as well. Soon after the war, most were plowed up or built over. Massachusetts farmers didn’t like to see land go to waste. People weren’t that interested then in preserving such reminders of the war. Since then, the geography of Boston and Cambridge has changed drastically, with large landfills creating new areas for construction. The park is now surrounded by streets, parking lots, and train tracks.
Those facts can cut both ways. On the one hand, as Mr. Campbell says, because these earthworks are the only military features that survive, it might be all the more important to preserve them. On the other hand, it’s not possible to get a sense of the siege—its scale, its strategy, its challenges for both sides—from this patch of land, so its value for understanding history is limited.
Aesthetically, I see Fort Washington Park as a relic of the Victorian period. The earthworks (in some form) go back to 1775-76, but the fence, cannons, and carefully planted trees reflect how people of the 1800s treated history and the land. Even the twentieth-century statues there include, as well as figures of Continental Army soldiers at work, a Victorian woman sitting on an earthwork to enjoy the sun.
I agree with Mr. Campbell that it’s valuable to maintain these formations as a physical reminder of the siege. I’m not sure how much of a permanent threat dogs and their owners pose. Those earthworks were piled up to withstand cannonballs, after all. With proper maintenance (not always certain, of course), they could last for more centuries. How about a community effort to fill in the holes the dogs dig, to make sure grass grows back every spring?
Perhaps the issue the more emotional: should this land be treated as a war memorial, akin to a cemetery or battlefield? There were no fights there, no soldiers killed or buried there. One could argue that using the space as a public park will encourage people to forget the soldiers of the Revolution. Then again, visiting that spot might make folks think about the men who built those mounds. All in all, this consideration seems to come down to symbolism, and the meaning and weight of symbols change over time.
Is making Fort Washington Park into a dog run specifically disrespectful? I’m not convinced, for a couple of reasons. While dogs can’t be toilet-trained, dog-owners can be; there’s been a remarkable change even since my childhood in how many urban and suburban owners pick up after their pets. Of course that’s not a perfect solution, but, as with maintaining the earthworks, it seems possible for people to keep the park healthy and clean. And pet-owners would benefit most.
Finally, from a historical perspective, it seems worth noting that Gen. George Washington was fond of his hunting dogs, owning many over his youth and middle age. His colleague Gen. Charles Lee loved his dogs even more, probably more than any person he met; he once insisted that Abigail Adams shake hands with one of his dogs. Gen. Israel Putnam had dogs at his farm in Connecticut.
Among Patriot politicians, Samuel Adams had a pet Newfoundland, and this week Prof. Richard Brown of the University of Connecticut told me that James Sullivan once offered a reward for the return of his dog. Ebenezer Fletcher, who joined the Continental Army in 1777 as a sixteen-year-old fifer, credited a dog with helping him escape from British troops around Fort Ticonderoga. Pvt. Joseph Plumb Martin mentioned American officers having a “favorite little dog” with them in 1780 (alas, he mentioned this in the context of them finally killing and eating the dog because they were so starved for rations).
For the soldiers of the Continental Army, securing Cambridge’s freedom to choose where to let its dogs roam might have been more important than maintaining their earthworks. | <urn:uuid:f5e0d40a-d121-4cd9-9e37-1c05f2e0addd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2007/04/fort-washington-park-going-to-dogs.html?showComment=1179370680000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96075 | 1,467 | 2.40625 | 2 |
- KNIA / KRLS - http://kniakrls.com -
Prevent Food Borne Illness This Holiday Season
Posted By news On December 24, 2010 @ 6:26 am In Today’s Local News | Comments Disabled
Many times during holiday celebrations crowds of people can be found in kitchen grazing over food while chatting with their loved ones, but it’s important to take the necessary precautions to prevent food borne illness. Registered Nurse Judi Van Hulzen with Marion County Public Health says there are several types of food borne illness out there and the majority of them can be prevented by simple things such as thoroughly washing your hands several times throughout the day, avoiding cross contamination – especially with poultry, making sure you cook everything thoroughly and not leaving food sitting out for more than two hours.
Those who experience food borne illness are urged to contact their doctor immediately to find out how to treat it.
Article printed from KNIA / KRLS: http://kniakrls.com
URL to article: http://kniakrls.com/2010/12/prevent-food-borne-illness-this-holiday-season/
Copyright © 2009 KNIA/KRLS. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:fe4fd124-ede9-4f06-8163-5de6e99422ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kniakrls.com/2010/12/prevent-food-borne-illness-this-holiday-season/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924552 | 256 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Lessons From Our Past
SNCC, MORE THAN ANY other movement organization, left us with a model for grassroots mobilization that sought to empower all and to encourage everyone to reach his or her potential. Yet in today's political climate, we find an unprecedented return to a legacy that was never our own. African-American women have been at the forefront of movement activism, from the ill-fated days on the slave ships to the peak of the civil rights movement. So what has happened? Why has the Black woman's invisibility once again been required?
In this regard, we have much to team from the success of the civil rights movement and its subsequent abeyance. The civil rights movement began to decline, at least in part, because of the philosophical and ideological shift in its primary source for bridging the masses to the movement. Yet, ironically, the decline of this tier -- because of its narrower, more militant stance, its infusion of hierarchy, its negative perception of women's leadership, and the domination of the movement by young educated Black men no longer seeking equality but power by any means necessary -- reshaped the state's posture toward the demands of the primary and secondary formal organizations, the SCLC and the NAACP, respectively. 1 While Dr. King and the SCLC won the hard-fought battle to gain support of an administration, the movement had begun to deteriorate from below.
What we have seen is the necessity to build a mass base of support from the bottom up. Such a task requires the inclusion of all and a commitment to indig
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Book title: How Long? How Long?:African American Women and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Contributors: Belinda Robnett - Author. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of publication: New York. Publication year: 1999. Page number: 203.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means. | <urn:uuid:e30d09d5-780e-41fd-a9cd-0193cec4dae4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.questia.com/read/72349899/how-long-how-long-african-american-women-and-the | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941136 | 431 | 3.328125 | 3 |
The series of tubes famously dubbed the ‘internets’ by president G.W. Bush* constitute a world wide web of interconnectedness. But, as this map demonstrates, there are some black holes in that web. They represent the 15 countries that limit or prohibit their citizens’ access to internet as a way of censoring the free flow of information.
Perhaps most notorious among those countries is China, with its Great Firewall (and its insistence on self-censorship by non-Chinese companies operating within the Middle Kingdom). Other countries also maintain firewalls, notably Saudi Arabia, while less-developed nations might just not allow their citizens to own computers.
This map was commissioned by Reporters Without Borders, which also publishes a World Ranking of press freedom. As the list of the 15 internet-restricting countries (followed by their ranking on said list) indicates, internet censorship is a strong indicator of press censorship in general.
And it looks cool, too. | <urn:uuid:9a6f066b-8d5b-4748-bba1-56262d6c1c1e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.superpunch.net/2007/09/map-of-internets-black-holes.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950747 | 200 | 2.109375 | 2 |
The EZ Nucleosomal DNA Prep Kit is a streamlined procedure for the isolation of nucleosome-associated DNA. The kit includes reagents/procedures for: cell nuclei isolation, intact nuclei enzymatic digestion, and nucleosomal DNA purification. This kit includes two different enzymes for nucleosomal DNA preparation: Atlantis dsDNase and micrococcal nuclease. Atlantis dsDNase is a double-strand DNA specific endonuclease that cleaves phosphodiester bonds in DNA to yield oligonucleotides with 5’- phosphate and 3’-hydroxyl termini. Atlantis dsDNase digestion yields very homogeneous populations of core nucleosomes and purification of the nucleosome-associated DNA is performed using Zymo Research’s proven Fast-Spin column technology. The result is pure nucleosomal DNA ready for analysis in less than 45 minutes.
- Typically, up to 25 µg total DNA can be eluted into as little as 25 µl water. For DNA 75 bp to 10 kb the recovery is 70-90%. For DNA 11 kb to 23 kb the recovery is 50-70%.
- Nucleosome associated DNA isolation and purification from mammalian and yeast cells.
- High quality, purified DNA is eluted with elution buffer or water and is especially well suited for PCR amplification, arrays, Southern blot analysis, DNA quantification, sequencing, and other molecular applications. | <urn:uuid:4f4c7051-dec6-4168-b978-bc71b13bb316> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://epigenie.com/products/ez-nucleosomal-dna-prep-kit/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905603 | 309 | 1.742188 | 2 |
The Image Fulgurator is, roughly speaking, an analog photo camera “working in reverse”. The device enables one to project images on other people’s photographs! The following schematic illustrates quite nicely how this “projector” works:
[ schematic courtesy of Julius von Bismarck ]
The Image Fulgurator was built by German artist Julius von Bismarck. Here’s what Julius says about his creation:
The Image Fulgurator is a device for physically manipulating photographs. It intervenes when a photo is being taken, without the photographer being able to detect anything. The manipulation is only visible on the photo afterwards.
In principle, the Fulgurator can be used anywhere where there is another camera nearby that is being used with a flash. It operates via a kind of reactive flash projection that enables an image to be projected on an object exactly at the moment when someone else is photographing it. The intervention is unobtrusive because it takes only a few milliseconds. Every photo another photographer takes of an object at which the Fulgurator is also aimed is affected by the manipulation. Hence visual information can be smuggled unnoticed into the images of others.
The Image Fulgurator is equipped with a slave flash that is triggered whenever a master flash is fired. Note that if you do not use flash when taking photos, you do not risk getting your photos “fulgurated”. I would say that many people have reacted to this device in an overly negative manner. I believe that the Image Fulgurator is a good idea and that Julius deserves credit for his ingenuity. | <urn:uuid:58402d24-72c5-4373-b496-ed6fa1d7d457> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stochastix.wordpress.com/tag/photography/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945811 | 331 | 2.703125 | 3 |
It was shortly after 10am, in a corner at a primary school near Nottingham, that a police agent using the codename UCO 133 began whispering into a microphone hidden in his watch.
Mark Kennedy was a long-haired, tattoo-covered undercover police officer who had been living for six years as an environmental activist. But the covert agent with a long-term activist girlfriend was about to set in train a chain of events that would result in one of the most intriguing scandals in policing history.
"I'm an authorised police officer engaged in Operation Pegasus," Kennedy hissed into his £7,000 Casio G-Shock watch, equipped with a hidden microchip. "This weekend, Easter weekend, I am together with a group of activists that are planning to disrupt Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. Shortly gonna go … and record briefings that subsequently take place throughout the day. So I shall now switch this device off."
He snatched a look at his wrist and read out the time. At that point – 10.06am on 12 April 2009 – one of the British constabulary's most closely guarded secrets remained intact; Kennedy, perhaps the most successful in a fleet of agents sent to live deep undercover among political activists, had maintained his cover.
More importantly, virtually nothing was known about the secretive police units which, for four decades, had been surreptitiously disrupting the activities of political campaign groups.
But now a series of revelations concerning a network of undercover agents has become a growing crisis for police.
At the centre of the latest controversy is a set of documents, obtained by the Guardian and the BBC's Newsnight, indicating that another police spy, Jim Boyling, who lived undercover among the environmental group Reclaim the Streets, concealed his identity in a criminal trial, giving false evidence under oath about his real name.
The accusation that police deliberately subverted the judicial process, and at worst sanctioned perjury, prompted outrage among lawyers and parts of the judiciary and led to the last-minute postponement of a major report into undercover policing of protests by the newly appointed commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Bernard Hogan-Howe.
Now questions are being asked about the judgment of Britain's most senior police officer, whose report – conducted in his prior role with the policing inspectorate – is being reviewed. Lord Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, described the court deception as a monumental misjudgment, saying police had "crossed the line". There are mounting calls for a full public inquiry.
The truth behind the police spies began to unravel late last year when activist former friends of Kennedy revealed his police background on the website Indymedia.
Two months later – in January this year – the Guardian published the first revelation in its long-running investigation into the undercover policing of protests, revealing how Kennedy, after leaving the Met, returned to his activist friends, expressed sympathy with their cause and attempted to continue living under his fictional identity, Mark Stone.
In the last 10 months, the Guardian has detailed the covert deployments of six undercover police officers. In addition to Kennedy and Boyling, police officers using the fake identities Mark Jacobs, Lynn Watson and Pete Black have been exposed. This week Bob Lambert, a well-known academic, was unmasked as a former spymaster who spent years deep undercover.
Writing in the Guardian , Lambert acknowledges police should learn from mistakes, but defends the work of undercover police officers in "countering political violence and intimidation".
Lambert, who later ran special branch's Muslim contact group, which was tasked with building relations with London's Muslim organisations, said he was not involved in any surveillance at that stage of his career. Boyling also went on to work for the same unit. "I did not recruit one Muslim Londoner as an informant, nor did I spy on them," Lambert said. "They were partners of police and many acted bravely in support of public safety and protection of fellow citizens."
A seventh undercover officer, Simon Wellings, was exposed by Newsnight in March.
All seven spies shared similar modi operandi: they appeared out of nowhere, often had access to vehicles and showed an unflinching willingness to help run the logistics of protest organisation. Unlike undercover officers who penetrate serious criminal gangs, typically for no more than a few weeks or months, agents deployed in protest organisations are authorised to spend years living double lives as campaigners. Only rarely have they been asked to gather evidence for prosecutions; usually, their mandate is to gather intelligence on activists while quietly disrupting their campaigns.
Most of the undercover police officers identified by the Guardian and Newsnight have also had sexual relationships with their targets, in some cases developing long-term relationships.
Some activists argue this has been the most disturbing element of the controversy, equating the operation to state-sanctioned sex abuse. They point to the anger, betrayal and psychological trauma suffered by some of the women who have spoken out about their relationships with men who later turned out to be police spies.
Senior officers have claimed sexual relations were never condoned or known about by the top ranks – a finding Hogan-Howe was expected to endorse in his report. However, the mounting evidence suggests otherwise.
Kennedy said he could not "sneeze" without his handlers knowing about his activities, and gave every indication they knew about the methods he used to gain the trust of activists, including his sexual liaisons. Black has said it was "part of the job" for fellow agents to use "the tool of sex" to maintain their cover and glean intelligence.
Together, these seven agents, and dozens more, have infiltrated a series of groups from across the political spectrum, including groups such as Stop the War, Youth Against Racism, Earth First, and Climate Camp. They have been regularly spying on activists at major demonstrations surrounding summits such as the G8 and G20, as well as local protests such as a campaign to protect Titnore Woods in West Sussex.
However, it was Kennedy's operation to prevent 112 activists from breaking into the Nottinghamshire power station in 2009 that placed the long-running operation under the spotlight.
Late last year, prosecutors refused to admit that the environmental campaigners had been infiltrated by an undercover police officer. The secret recordings made on Kennedy's Casio watch – which would have exonerated the activists if disclosed during their trials – were suppressed. An inquiry by Sir Christopher Rose, the former surveillance commissioner, is investigating claims made by police that their colleagues in the Crown Prosecution Service suppressed the recordings.
Transcripts of those recordings have now been obtained by the Guardian, along with other police materials relating to Kennedy's deployment marked "restricted" and "confidential".
They shed light on the extent of surveillance undertaken to keep tabs on a group of environmental campaigners. They reveal the minute details about the activities of campaigners being relayed by Kennedy, from discussions about football teams to types of biscuits eaten at a planning meeting.
In one document, marked "secret", police chiefs lay out what they believed to be the legal justification for Kennedy's surveillance operation, stating that the environmental campaigners could cause "severe economic loss to the United Kingdom" and an "adverse effect on the public's feeling of safety and security".
Those police claims, along with the broader suggestion that environmental activists threaten the national infrastructure of the UK, have been repeatedly challenged in court. All 26 activists police wanted to prosecute for conspiring to trespass at the Nottinghamshire power station either had their trials abandoned or their convictions quashed following the Kennedy controversy.
Sentencing 20 of the activists in January, a judge at Nottingham crown court said he accepted they had intended a peaceful protest and had the "highest possible motives", describing the group as "honest, sincere, conscientious, intelligent, committed, dedicated, caring".
When their convictions were quashed in July, three court of appeal judges, who included the lord chief justice, said "elementary principles" of the fair trial process were ignored when prosecutors did not disclose the secret recordings to activists' lawyers. In a damning ruling, the judges said they shared the "great deal of justifiable public disquiet", found that Kennedy's operation had been partly unlawful, and even proffered the suggestion he had arguably been acting as an agent provocateur.
What the judges did not mention – but is increasingly becoming clear – was that Kennedy was not a lone operator, but the latest in a long line of undercover police officers who have been spying on activists as part of a classified operation dating back four decades.
Previously known as the special demonstration squad, which operated under the command of the Metropolitan police's special branch, the undercover unit was first conceived as a tool to combat the anti-Vietnam protests at Grosvenor Square in 1968.
The infrastructure of long-term police surveillance of leftwing and far-right campaign groups has remained in place ever since – and continues today. What was previously conceived as a secret plan to disrupt the activities of "subversives" was, more than a decade ago, reinvented under the leadership of the Association of Chief Police Officers as part of a new drive to combat "domestic extremists". The secretive body that controls the spies, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, was recently returned to the command of the Met.
It now falls to Hogan-Howe to grapple with the fallout of the latest controversy over Boyling, who has been placed on restricted duties and subject to a disciplinary inquiry since January, when it emerged he married an activist he met while undercover and fathered two children with her. That inquiry, which is investigating claims by Boyling's ex-wife that he encouraged her to change her name by deed poll to conceal their relationship from his superiors, has yet to conclude.
It is now likely to be overshadowed by the accusation that he lied about his real identity under oath. Details of his false evidence were revealed on Wednesday.
Besides prompting outrage among lawyers, the accusation that police subverted the judicial process appears to have shaken senior police officers. Within hours, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) cancelled its planned publication of the report on Hogan-Howe's review.
The Hogan-Howe report had been expected to ignore advice from other senior police officers, who argued that the unfolding scandal in undercover policing revealed the need for a more robust system of independent oversight. HMIC said it would now seek further details about Boyling's alleged false evidence under oath before reviewing its report. However, what is unclear is how much information – if any – the Met disclosed to the inspectorate about Boyling, his marriage to an activist and his evidence under oath.
A draft of the HMIC report circulated over the summer, as Hogan-Howe believed he was nearing his conclusions, is not believed to have contained any reference to Boyling at all.
Jenny Jones, a Green party member of the London assembly who sits on the Metropolitan police authority, will be questioning Hogan-Howe at an MPA meeting next week. She said: "I will be pressing him to explain how we can stop such mistakes being made again and how we can bring some accountability to a police service which has been given almost carte blanche to spy on its own citizens." | <urn:uuid:3988a473-fb02-4dfc-b1fa-2974bc278006> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/20/met-crisis-activist-spying-operation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980146 | 2,293 | 1.578125 | 2 |
YEP! A high school-level program on climate change
Using the CAM approach, we developed and executed a high school level summer program. By the program's third week, the students had re-named the program YEP!, or "Youth Educating the Public!" While the focus of our grant is on the students who are producing the media, and not necessarily on the broader public (i.e., learning through the process of video production, rather than focusing on the resulting product), their name captures the essence of what their goal was by the middle of the program.
In addition to playing the World Climate simulation game, we developed several interactive science components for the program. One example was the "CO2 backpack:" After calculating their carbon footprints and converting values to pounds per day, we brought in a balance, a large backpack, and household items and asked students to load up the backpack with a weight equivalent to their daily carbon footprint (about 140 pounds/day for the average American). The exercise clearly drove home the scale of human emissions, especially when extrapolated across the global population.
We also combined learning video production techniques with learning science or systems thinking content. For example, students produced a short systems thinking video: after teaching students how to map causal loop diagrams, we asked them to go out in the surrounding area and film a system nearby. We then came back to groups, showed the videos, and discussed their systemic structure.
Some of the videos they produced can be found here: CAM TV page. | <urn:uuid:2cce2d82-82b8-4c38-92a0-da624205c3ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cleanet.org/cced_media/cam_action/yep.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949674 | 307 | 3.21875 | 3 |
|Antique lantern mantle.|
Lantern mantles, which glow very brightly when heated by an oil flame in a camping lantern, used to be made with thorium oxide as the primary incandescent material. Thorium was used right up the 1990's, but has now be replaced with various other rare earth oxides.
These were claimed by the seller to date from the early 1900's, and considering how fragile they are, I can believe it. Two of the three I bought were basically smashed to crumbs (radioactive crumbs) on arrival, the third was in perfect condition for photography, but sadly lost a chuck due to an accidental tap on being replaced in its container. Sad, but it would almost certainly have crumbled on its own soon anyway, the material is basically turning to dust.
This is a picture of the nice cardboard can it came in:
Source: eBay seller boco007
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 11 March, 2007
Text Updated: 12 March, 2007 | <urn:uuid:1bc2b7b6-e33d-42b5-bcb6-bff253105b42> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Samples/090.9/index.qt.s15.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974889 | 211 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Help reduce your eco footprint on our planet. We all have an impact on the Earth - an ecological footprint left behind by our activities and consumption habits.
Shopping with the planet in mind can make a big difference in many ways. Collectively, we can reward environmentally responsible practices, discourage waste, help close the recycling loop and reduce the amount of toxic materials entering our ecosystems. Shop like your life depended on it.
Buying products and services that don't harm the environment is one of the most powerful choices a consumer can make.
Organic products promote the health and wellness of our body and world. Be environmentally conscious! | <urn:uuid:2d10e183-9489-480b-92ed-db0b051ee451> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.superconsciousness.com/eco-mall | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919933 | 127 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Ultrasound testing helps in the diagnosis of a wide range of diseases and conditions, including stomach problems, gallbladder or pancreas problems, and abdominal pain. During an ultrasound test, high-frequency sound waves, inaudible to the human ear, are transmitted through body tissues using an instrument called a transducer, which transmits the information to a computer that displays the information on a monitor.
Ultrasound is used to create images of soft tissue structures, such as the gallbladder, liver, kidneys, pancreas, bladder, and other organs and parts of the body. Ultrasound can also measure the flow of blood in the arteries to detect blockages. Ultrasound testing is safe and easy to perform.
Every year, millions of Americans come down with the "stomach flu," or viral gastroenteritis. It can cause diarrhea, vomiting, cramps, fever, and headache. It’s also highly contagious. What treatments will make life with the stomach flu a little less awful? More importantly, how can you avoid getting it in the first place? Here are some answers.
Studies have shown that ultrasound is not hazardous. There are no harmful side effects and there is virtually no discomfort during the test. In addition, ultrasound does not use radiation, as X-ray tests do.
What Happens During an Ultrasound Test?
Before the Ultrasound
Generally, no special preparation is needed for an ultrasound. Depending on the type of test, you may need to drink fluid before the ultrasound or you may be asked to fast for several hours before the procedure.
During the Ultrasound
You will lie on a padded examination table.
A specially trained technologist will perform the test.
A small amount of water-soluble gel is applied to the skin over the area to be examined. The gel does not harm your skin and will be wiped off after the test.
A wand-like device called a transducer is gently applied against the skin.
You may be asked to hold your breath briefly several times.
The ultrasound test takes several minutes to complete. | <urn:uuid:04da6b77-7c0d-43ee-bb51-948aada2a16a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/digestive-diseases-ultrasound-test | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940673 | 439 | 3.40625 | 3 |
Marley may be as dead as a door-nail, but the great Charles Dickens' classic The Christmas Carol is alive and well on old time radio shows.
The Christmas Carol collection features different versions of the well-loved Christmas story first published December 19, 1843. There have been many dramatic adoptions of this classic tale to theatre, opera, film, radio, and television and it remains a Christmas Classic to this day.
The story follows the archetypal Bah-humbug miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, in a tale of redemption after three ghosts visit him on Christmas Eve. He is so moved by these spirits that he awakens on Christmas morning now grateful and generous. Subsequently, he buys a Christmas goose and much holiday merriment ensues.
The collection includes adaptations by the Lux Radio, Campbell's Playhouse, and Globe Theatre as well as more unusual off-shoots of the story such as A Korean Christmas Carol by Suspense, The Goon Show version of a Christmas Carol, and Gracie's Christmas Carol from the Burns and Allen Show. Also included is the entire original text of A Christmas Carol. | <urn:uuid:74e15b5c-d416-4b8a-b113-99d8b5c82b9a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.otrcat.com/christmas-carol-p-48543.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949339 | 236 | 2.0625 | 2 |
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate threw its support behind the potato Tuesday, voting to block an Obama administration proposal to limit the vegetable on school lunch lines.
Agriculture Department rules proposed earlier this year aimed to reduce the amount of french fries in schools, limiting lunchrooms to two servings a week of potatoes and other starchy vegetables.
That angered the potato industry and members of Congress from potato-growing states, who say USDA should focus on the preparation instead and that potatoes can be a good source of fiber and potassium.
Following a bipartisan agreement on the issue, the Senate by voice vote accepted an amendment by Republican Sen. Susan Collins that would block USDA from putting any limits on serving potatoes or other vegetables in school lunches.
Collins, who is from Maine, a potato-growing state, says the vegetables are a cheaper and nutritious way to feed children when school budgets are strapped.
"This proposed rule would have imposed significant and needless costs on our nation's school districts at a time when they can least afford it," she said.
Amended was a spending bill that includes dollars for the Agriculture Department. The House passed a similar bill earlier this year including language that would ask the department to rewrite its school lunch rules entirely. Republicans have singled out the potato proposal in criticizing the rules, saying the government shouldn't be dictating what kids can eat.
Advocates and government officials say children get enough potatoes already and should have more diversity in their diets "USDA's proposal was about helping kids to eat a very wide variety of vegetables and I think that point has been lost in all this," said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, which pushed for the standards. "Other vegetables have a hard time competing with potatoes." | <urn:uuid:30243dc0-7323-41bc-abec-1dcc03520c32> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iptv.org/mtom/story.cfm/news/8833/mtom_20111021_3708_news_5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972063 | 365 | 2.328125 | 2 |
28 August 1954
You think so foolishly. You write that there is no God, man dies and everything ends with that, there is no life beyond the grave, it is only man's invention.
In his day the prophet David said: 'The fool says in his heart, "There is no God" ' [Ps. 14.1], and here you have joined yourself to this foolishness. You think so flippantly, but I believe deeply and am convinced that God exists, there is a future life, there is eternal torment for sinners and eternal bliss for the righteous.
How could I not believe in God when wherever I look, everywhere I see and contemplate God's wisdom and goodness. With what wisdom everything is created, and how harmonious is the whole earthly sphere! The Holy Church sings: 'How magnificent are thy works, O Lord; Thou hast made all things in wisdom'.26 Thy works are marvellous, Lord; wherever I look, everywhere I see thy creative hand. I look at the sun and see it shedding light like a golden plate and warming the whole globe. And what numbers of animals abound in the forest, each with its own characteristics. The horse is so large and yet it obeys man; the Lord created it to help man. And the cow eats hay and its stomach makes nourishing milk for man. And the meek lamb, how much good it does for man; we get fur coats, stockings and much else. I look at the bird kingdom -simply marvellous, how decorative they are and what a variety of species. And in the earth what a variety of worms and insects; there are even worms that shine at night like lights. I look at the ant and wonder at its labours - it exposes my laziness. And the wise bee gathers such sweet honey for man from the different flowers. And look in the water; there is the special kingdom of fish, how many different species; all live and move according to God's purpose.
I love nature altogether. I come into the forest and wonder at every tree and knoll and I contemplate the Almighty Creator. Now I am thinking and wondering at how I came to appear in God's world. My conception was like this: my father's seed fell on my mother's ground in the form of a worm and grew in my mother's womb for nine months and I gradually came into the form of a man. At the end of the ninth month according to the law of nature I came as if out of prison into the wide world. I received an Orthodox baptism; I thank God that I am Orthodox. I believe with certitude in God, in the Holy Trinity, and I believe in Mary the Virgin Mother of God and in all the saints extolled by the Orthodox Church. I believe in the Ecumenical Councils and the whole of Holy Scripture according to the catechism; I believe in everything that our Holy Orthodox Church teaches us.
But this is sad: our Orthodox do not all know their Orthodox teaching; they waver and some even fall into various sects and schisms. They do not know, poor creatures, that all heresies and sects are based on pride and self-suggestion; they say 'we are saved'. They do not recognize the whole Bible but select only what justifies their teaching. One sectarian told me that they know the whole Bible inside out. But I am not surprised at this knowledge of theirs: the Pharisees too knew the whole Bible, but they did not live by it and did not recognize the Truth; they crucified the Lord.
Again I am wondering at God's wisdom. I love the moonlit nights of winter, everywhere utter silence; I put on my fur coat, felt boots and warm cap, go out into the yard and marvel at God's wisdom — the moon is shining, and so many stars, the whole sky is adorned with them, far away and still farther, just single little stars, endlessly. Marvellous are thy works, O Lord, in wisdom Thou hast made them all!
The more I look at nature, the more I wonder at nnd come to know the omnipotence of the Creator. I was not educated; I have not even read scientific books,; I have written this from my feelings, having read the Bible a great deal. My life has passed; I am already in my eighty-second year.
According to the word of the Holy Spirit, man's life on earth is seventy years. Of course many die without reaching that age, but it is an average number. If a man is vigorous he may live eighty years, with difficulties and illnesses after that. Death is an immutable law; the whole race of man from Adam to the Second Coming will pass into another world, and their bodies, at God's command, will rise again. Even those bodies which have been burnt will also rise again; I have no doubt of this. With God everything is possible. Even this beautiful world will in time be done away with, as is said in Holy Scripture.
Mankind has become so earthbound! People have quite forgotten that this life of ours is the path to eternity and a preparation for it: they get excited and worked up in this vale of tears. You meet very few with whom you can even talk about the one thing needful.
26. Psalm 104, sung at the beginning of Vespers. "
I love Father John's spirited and childlike response to whatever letter he received from this person.
I sense his grief that this person has so easily brushed aside the wonder of creation so easily in favor of not believing, not seeing God in all His handiwork in this wondrous creation.
Every so often I myself am taken aback at what a miracle it is simply to exist and that EVERYTHING is a miracle. but through its familiarity to me now, as well as the mud that smothers my soul through sin, the "wonder of it all" is so hard to know. So I pursue knowledge that is esoteric and heady.
For a time I found refuge here, in these constructs of thought, but I believe now there is no food here for the sustenance of my soul. Food is to be found in the unknowing of that which I know by my insistent will to know so that I may know in order to know.
The goal of a man is union with God. In my pursuit "to know" I have excluded God and replaced Him with knowledge. This is not all, of course, that I have replaced Him with.
I believe it is my duty, for my soul's sake, to guard that "wonder of it all" that I possesed as a child and which possessed me. If I leave this wonder unguarded, it is so easily stolen by what is so commonly esteemed as knowledge but which is a false knowledge which my fallen intellect grabs a hold of and makes me wise in my own estimation. | <urn:uuid:8e9086eb-3739-4bae-8ad1-1ab36efc5645> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://molonlabe70.blogspot.com/2007/09/christ-is-in-our-midst-lixletter-90.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968274 | 1,434 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Recently I wrote my briefest post on record and simply asked what my readers might want me to comment on. To date I have received two replies. I will quote below from one of them:
“I would love to hear more from you about the role of the residence hall on the college campus. I'm a residence life professional, so I'm always intrigued to hear respected folks like yourself talk about your thoughts on the "dorm" and its role.”
So I am going to do exactly as requested. This may be more of a rant than a “talk”.
I think anyone of my generation (college in the 1960’s) knew that the “dorm” experience was a powerful one. But we also knew that it could be more than it was. It is now at many institutions thanks to the professionalization of those who manage college residence halls and the faculty and senior administrators they work with who aspire to more closely integrate the academic with the residential..
My most basic perspective on the importance of the collegiate residence hall is that they are places where the most important influencing on college students takes place: the influence of other students. Hands down the greatest influence on students during the college years is the influence of other students. Many residential students spend more time in residence halls, literally, than in any other context of the college experience. This is an argument then for colleges and universities to pay more attention to the importance of “the halls” than many do. Perhaps the best argument though is that on-campus residents are more likely to be
I like to think of these facilities, ideally, as constituting sanctuaries, places of peace and refuge, and powerful learning, not just places to eat, sleep, and make love. It has struck many of us then that the term “dorm” just does not do them justice. And so we stopped in the last quarter of the 20th century using this terminology of “dorms”. Thank goodness. They were never just dorms.
The other form of truly egregious terminology though is the very name we give this component of the college experience—“housing” and that same term is used as a common descriptor for higher education professionals who manage collegiate residences. About a half century ago, sadly, the higher education accounting rubric was restructured and the fees generated from student residences became classified as “auxiliary revenues”. In other words the halls were being structured to become cash cows. This meant that only the “business” staff of the institution were to care about what went on in these facilities. Unfortunately, the connotations of “housing” did not speak in an inviting way to other educators, particularly faculty.
I believe that the continued use of the term “housing” continues to invite misunderstanding about what these environments are really designed for; the term continues to suggest then that the residential component is divorced from the faculty driven curriculum component. I maintain the term also invites outsourcing. The whole outsourcing movement is truly overtaking our campuses and a myriad of functions which we the faculty used to be responsible for.
The reality is that we are not in the “housing” business. We are in the education business. We need language that follows form and describes the referent point more accurately. To describe this profession which has such great opportunity to influence how and what students learn with such an education-lite term in a continuing exercise in banality.
So what have I done about this over and above simply lamenting it? Well, a few years ago I wrote the board of the professional organization which supports “housing” professionals, an organization which unfortunately has the term housing enshrined in its title (ACUHO-I), Association of College and University Housing Officers-International, and suggested they consider changing their name. My gratutitious and self initiated suggestion went absolutely nowhere. More recently, in October of 2010, I had the opportunity to lay out this argument at an ACUHO-I national conference. They were polite to me as I made my case, but, as I expected, no action. This is an organization that is deeply attached to its traditional name and seems to have little if any idea that its nomenclature is now quite outdated, except for the fact that it is widely used. Maybe I should just give up on this crusade. | <urn:uuid:c5e35b21-fcfa-4050-a24b-6adc058ee58e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gardnerinstitute.org/2011_07_24_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978783 | 902 | 1.921875 | 2 |
Posts Tagged ‘Alleviate’
Government to Provide Michigan Unemployment Extension to Alleviate the Sufferings of the Unemployed, Unemployment-Extension.org
(PRWEB) June 28, 2011
Unemployment in the US has been on the rise although most of the public may think otherwise. After the economic turmoil, millions of people have lost their jobs. Some of them are underemployed, while most of them are unemployed, according to Unemployment-Extension.Org.
The jobs are being axed out by big companies to sustain the global competition. Reports show that number of unemployed people in USA is over 14 million, while only 7 million are collecting unemployment.
This leaves the unemployed people in the lurch and their lives come to a grinding halt. Though, they get the unemployment insurance to meet their immediate needs. However, in the long term it is difficult to meet the needs of the family.
Most of the unemployed people turned out to be discouraged workers and they stop looking for the job considering the lull in the economy. That is when the government decides to provide the stimulus by giving extended benefits.
The government has tried to provide the economic booster by giving the unemployment benefits to those who have lost their jobs. However, most of the people have exhausted their benefits limits. However, according to the sources, the government is providing Michigan unemployment extension for the unemployed masses in the Michigan state. These benefits will be over and above the normal unemployment insurance benefits received by the individuals.
According to a law, the Michigan state workers can get additional benefits up to 13 weeks. Though, this does not help improve the employment status, but it can definitely give a great relief to these unemployed people. Their families can also take advantage of this extension. However, those who are eligible can get Michigan unemployment extension.
Those persons who do not have a full time job and they are not receiving any additional benefits from any other state or Canada and they have exhausted their unemployment insurance under Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) Program. However, those workers who are not willing to apply for work are disqualified for the benefits.
Surprisingly though, Michigan state has the highest number of unemployment rate which is as high as 8.5% and it seems the numbers are going to increase. Therefore, considering the unemployment status in the Michigan state, the benefits have been extended.
Michigan unemployment extension benefits will help those persons who have exhausted their regular 26 weeks benefits to meet their financial obligations. A person can continue to search for a job without any stress.
According to the reports by Unemployment-Extension.Org, an additional stimulus package is also approved by the government for the Michigan state. This package allows people to get additional benefits of $ 25 each week. The additional funds are coming to the Michigan State are coming via American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Latest updates on Unemployment can be found at http://www.Unemployment-Extension.Org. | <urn:uuid:8314d175-6afc-4b2e-99a1-66d4de06214c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://joblessbloggers.com/tag/alleviate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963095 | 603 | 1.945313 | 2 |
What is it with food reaching into our souls?
I’m not a food blogger, and I don’t have beautiful pictures of food to go with my words that compare to a Bon Appetit spread.
But I wanted to share my mom’s talent for bringing us around the table in gastronimic harmony. My brother flies in from Chicago to have roast goose and Yorkshire pudding. My kids want to stay the night at her house just so they can eat ‘Oma’s food’. She’s the pied piper of her kin.
Mom was taught the old fashioned way. Put in the kitchen as a young girl in post World War 2 Germany with her Tante and her Oma. She watched, stirred, sliced and learned. She watched her Oma snap a chicken’s head off for Sunday’s dinner. This chicken was her pet at some point. But hey- this is post war, you’ve got to eat.
My early memories of food also consist of porridge. Porridge is what we called it growing up and what my parents call it. My dad is English, maybe this is why. I always felt like Goldilocks, but I never thought it was ‘just right’. I didn’t like porridge as a kid. But that’s what we had Monday through Friday and you ate it. No question. I couldn’t wait for the weekend when we could have cold cereal. But now I realize as an adult. My parents make really good porridge. It’s funny what you think is gross as a kid. But get used to. Then go off to eat it somewhere else and then realize, ‘hey, this is really gross, they don’t know what they’re doing.” So now I appreciate my parent’s porridge. A pinch of salt. That’s their trick. Not everyone knows this.
The majority of my memories of my mom’s cooking are good (minus the zucchini or cream of mushroom crepes she made when I was 5). Her cooking is the kind of cooking you come home for. The kind of cooking holidays center around. My German mother would make a pizza every Saturday night. She would start with making the dough. There would always be sausage on it and sometimes mushrooms, which I would only appreciate when I was about 15. I picked them off when I was 6. We would eat pizza and watch the Muppet Show every Saturday night. It didn’t need to be Italian, it was just damn good crust made by a German. She’s mastered pie crust, tart crust and bread crust. We like crusts.
Christmas was roast goose that she would flame with a splash of brandy before my dad would carve it. Oh, and my dad can carve better than Chuck Norris. I’m certain. If there was an Iron Chef carving contest- my dad would win.
Red cabbage simmered with apples and vinegar. So German. So good with goose gravy. Goose gravy that she would make for days before with all the giblets and whatnot that comes inside the carcass in that little paper baggy that 80% of Americans throw away, I’m sure. Mashed potatoes mashed only to the brink of fluffy. Not too much so they get gluey. Another mistake of most cooks. Cream, butter, onions. The trifecta of all good things made in the kitchen. Julia Child style.
What’s strange is my mom can cook really good Thai food too. How funny is that? She rarely makes (make that never) speatzle, she says it’s too much work to make. She doesn’t do schnitzle much either. But everything she does has her signature. The signature of decades in the kitchen and knowing what the heck you’re doing. She can make gravy that is rich and dark and poultry that is tender and not cooked a minute passed to the point of dryness. White meat that doesn’t need the gravy. But to not pour it over everything would be a crime because the gravy is so good.
Making Christmas dinner at my house this year, I was searing the prime rib to put in the oven; and I felt confident in my abilities. I thought, everything I do in the kitchen is because I watched my mom, ate her food, asked her questions and now I can do the same for my family. It’s really a bonus when I teach her something she didn’t know. Maybe she just pretends she doesn’t know to make me feel good. I stepped aside though for her to make the Yorkshire pudding and the gravy. Why try to paint Monet when Monet is standing there with a paint brush?
I think people who can cook well, have an intuition, an instinct that can’t be learned from books or classes. I think they are people in day to day life that listen, care and are compassionate to humanity (except Gordon Ramsey, he blows this theory wide). How else would they know to fluff a meringue to perfection, slice plums for a cake, season green beans like summer in a bowl? There’s a nuance that is captured between the food, the cook and who they cook for. It might be love. Yes, it’s love for sure when it comes from mom. | <urn:uuid:c3fa9861-12a7-4248-a88d-49db857b8863> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://frugalistablog.com/2012/01/12/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972954 | 1,145 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Source Newsroom: American Institute of Physics (AIP)
Newswise — College Park, Md. (May 18, 2011) -- Noisy classrooms aren’t just bad for harried teachers’ nerves—they can significantly affect the ability of students to listen and learn. Researchers at the Boys Town National Research Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, have built a unique simulated classroom to help measure the scope of those effects—and how they can be avoided. They’ll discuss what they’ve found at the 161st annual Acoustical Society of America meeting, which runs from May 23–27 in Seattle.
The model classroom—consisting of a desk at which test subjects are seated surrounded by an array of five LCD monitors and loudspeakers—was devised by architectural acoustician Daniel Valente and audiology researcher Dawna Lewis of the Boys Town Listening and Learning Lab (http://tinyurl.com/3e8qddd).
In a recent study, the researchers tested young and older elementary students as well as adults in the classroom. Each subject listened to an 11-minute play read just by a teacher and broadcast over the monitor at the head of the class, or read by the teacher and four students and played on all five monitors; the amounts of ambient noise and reverberation in the room were varied. Afterward, the subjects answered a series of questions to show how well they understood what they heard.
Although increasing levels of classroom noise and reverberation reduced the comprehension of all subjects, the youngest students—8-year-olds—were the most adversely affected. “The combination of the difficult task as well as increased background noise and reverberation led to the younger children having a harder time following the story,” Valente says. The results, he adds, illustrate the importance of designing classrooms that reduce reverberation and ambient noise, and suggest that the standard practice of testing children in a sound booth with a single loudspeaker “may not be sufficient to identify problems students may be having in real classrooms with multiple talker locations, quick-changing talkers, and the interaction between background noise and the acoustical environment.”
The presentation, “Effects of excessive noise and reverberation on listening and learning in a simulated classroom,” by D. L. Valente et al. will be at 3:05 p.m. on Monday, May 23 in Grand Ballroom B of the Sheraton Seattle Hotel.
MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE 161ST ASA MEETING
The Sheraton Seattle Hotel is located at 1400 Sixth Ave., Seattle, Washington, 98101. The hotel main numbers are: 1-206-621-9000 and toll-free: 1-800-325-3535.
Main meeting website: http://acousticalsociety.org/meetings/future_meeting
Searchable index: http://asa.aip.org/asasearch.html
Hotel site: http://www.starwoodmeeting.com/StarGroupsWeb/booking/reservation?id=1009104388&key=980BA
WORLD WIDE PRESS ROOM
ASA's World Wide Press Room (www.acoustics.org/press) will be updated with nearly 50 lay-language papers, which are 300-1200 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio, and video.
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed full-time journalists and professional freelance journalists working on assignment for major news outlets. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact Charles E. Blue (email@example.com, 301-209-3091), who can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.
ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world's leading journal on acoustics), Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. For more information about ASA, visit our website at http://www.acousticalsociety.org. | <urn:uuid:d24ca1f7-8bda-4d9f-b1bb-260ed74cbdf7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newswise.com/articles/simulated-classroom-used-to-study-effects-of-noise-and-reverberation-on-learning | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913047 | 922 | 3.3125 | 3 |
JOPLIN, JANIS LYN
JOPLIN, JANIS LYN (1943–1970). Janis Lyn Joplin, blues and rock singer, daughter of Seth Ward and Dorothy (East) Joplin, was born on January 19, 1943, in Port Arthur, Texas. She grew up in a respectable middle-class home; her father was an engineer and her mother a Sunday school teacher. The future queen of nonconformity is remembered as a bright, pretty, and artistic little girl.
Signs of rebellion, however, against the religious, sexual, and racial conservatism of her environment were evident in junior high school, and by the time Janis graduated from Jefferson High School in Port Arthur in 1960, her vocabulary of four letter words, her outrageous clothes, and her reputation for sexual promiscuity and drunkenness (signs of alcoholism were already apparent) caused her classmates to call her a slut. Bereft of friends, without dates for school dances, ashamed of her acned face and overweight figure, Janis responded with contempt and insults to cover the rejection that scarred her for the rest of her life.
In her junior year she found acceptance in a small group of Jefferson High beatniks who read Jack Kerouac and roamed the nightspots from Port Arthur to New Orleans, thus mining one of the motherlodes of American ethnic music. There were Anglo, African American, Cajun, Mexican, and Caribbean sounds. There were the lyrics and rhythms of country, gospel, jazz, soul, and the blues. Janis did not read music, but at the roadhouses or at home listening to records of Odetta, Bessie Smith, or Willie Mae Thornton, she had an uncanny ability to imitate the sounds she heard. Out of imitation there slowly developed the timing, phrasing, inflections, and talent at evoking changing moods that were the Joplin trademarks.
She found Lamar State College of Technology at Beaumont no improvement over Port Arthur; she was a rebel and a "nigger lover" in both places. She fled to the University of Texas in Austin in the summer of 1962 to study art. Indifferent to classwork, she found soulmates at the Ghetto, a counterculture enclave, and got gigs around Austin, most importantly at Threadgill's, a converted filling station and late night hangout for lovers of music and nonstop partying. The proprietor, country singer Kenneth Threadgill, offered Janis encouragement and lifelong friendship.
Janis craved such acceptance, but her nonconforming behavior often provoked rejection, as when university fraternity pranksters nominated her as their candidate in the annual Ugliest Man on Campus contest. Characteristically, she laughed to cover the hurt, and dreamed of San Francisco, where Beats and Hippies were not outsiders. She spent 1963 to 1965 in the Bay area and won attention from local audiences, until drugs became more important than singing and reduced her to an emaciated eighty-eight pounds. Her friends passed the hat and gave her a bus ticket home.
Parental care restored her health, and fear of relapse produced a period of sobriety. Business suits and bouffant hairdos announced conversion to the Port Arthur ethos. But Janis's mind was torn: Port Arthur was safe but dull. San Francisco offered both excitement and potential self destruction. She made her decision after receiving an offer to audition for a new rock band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and headed west in May 1966, toward four years of meteoric fame—and death at age twenty-seven.
"Imagine a white girl singing the blues like that!" they said of Big Brother's lead singer. And Joplin's belting of rock gathered huge swaying, clapping, shouting, and dancing audiences. For Janis a good audience was an audience in motion, and her body joined her voice in pleading for audience participation. She stopped the show at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 with "Ball and Chain." That triumph and the album Cheap Thrills (1968) elevated her to national stardom. A new manager, Albert Grossman, whose stable of stars included Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan, urged Janis to dump Big Brother for more versatile and disciplined support. The Kosmic Blues band was never satisfactory; the Full Tilt Boogie band was.
Joplin's career now surged forward full tilt, driven by Southern Comfort booze, heroin, bisexual liaisons, compulsive work, and the hope that fame would bring inner peace. Success now meant concerts in Madison Square Garden, Paris, London, Woodstock, and Harvard Stadium; adulation in the New York Times; a guest appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show; and a six-figure salary.
Janis was ready in August 1970 to confront the Jefferson High classmates who had called her a slut. Whether her primary purpose in attending the tenth-anniversary class reunion was revenge, a desire to be worshiped as a hero, or just a quest for acceptance is unclear. What is certain is that she left Port Arthur feeling further alienated from her classmates, her parents, and her hometown. When she died in Los Angeles two months later, on October 4, 1970, of an accidental overdose of heroin and alcohol, her newly drawn will required that her ashes be strewn over California soil.
The judgment of others has been far kinder to Janis Joplin than she was to herself. She has been called "the best white blues singer in American musical history" and "the greatest female singer in the history of rock 'n' roll." Those who missed her live performances must judge her from a relatively small number of albums, audiotapes, and videotapes. Pearl, an album recorded just before her death and featuring "Me and Bobby McGee," shows that Janis was growing musically almost to the moment of her death. The film The Rose (1979), starring Bette Midler, is not faithful in detail to Janis's life, but it captures her mesmerizing power onstage, in contrast to her utter powerlessness offstage to halt her relentless descent to self destruction. Janis's sad life cannot be separated from her greatness. Her tortured soul gave her blues the authenticity of direct experience. After her death she was finally accepted in the hometown she both loved and ridiculed. In 1988 some 5,000 people from Port Arthur, tears in their eyes, sang "Me and Bobby McGee" as a bust of Janis Joplin was unveiled. It now sits in a Port Arthur library. In the 2000s Port Arthur's Museum of the Gulf Coast featured Joplin among its exhibits and she was an inductee in the Gulf Coast Music Hall of Fame. Port Arthur holds a birthday bash every January in celebration of the singer.
In the decades after her death, various Joplin anthologies and live recordings were released as well as numerous biographies. In 1992 her sister, Laura Joplin, published Love, Janis, a collection of letters Janis wrote to her family beginning in 1963. A play with the same title and based on the book opened in Denver in 1995 and subsequently had a long run at the Zachary Scott Theater in Austin in summer 1997. The performance opened off Broadway in April 2001 and ran to January 5, 2003. Janis Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on January 12, 1995. In 2005 she was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. A Texas State Historical Marker was erected in front of Joplin’s childhood home in Port Arthur in January 2008 in commemoration of the singer’s sixty-fifth birthday. She was inducted into the Austin Music Memorial in 2010.
All Music Guide (http://www.allmusic.com/), accessed December 12, 2002. Ellis Amburn, Pearl: The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin: A Biography (New York: Warner, 1992). Austin American–Statesman, June 16, 1994; June 7, 2001. Austin Music Memorial (http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/music/memorial.htm), accessed April 27, 2010. Myra Friedman, Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin (New York: Harmony, 1992). Laura Joplin, Love, Janis (New York: Villard, 1992). Official Janis Joplin Site (http://www.officialjanis.com/), accessed October 22, 2011. Vertical Files, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. Larry Willoughby, Texas Rhythm and Texas Rhyme: A Pictorial History of Texas Music (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1984).
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Richard B. Hughes, "JOPLIN, JANIS LYN," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fjo69), accessed May 24, 2013. Published by the Texas State Historical Association. | <urn:uuid:91700abf-535a-46bc-9306-0b5a414a1203> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fjo69 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961239 | 1,880 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Just stumbled upon this post from The Inner Revolution blog. This is a good description using the metaphor of fire for the healing process. Enjoy!
Into The Fire | The Inner Revolution.
Recent tragic events have dampened the Holiday spirit and left many speechless, in tears, and wondering how to make sense of such senseless events. Simple life events, such as going to the theater, shopping at the mall, and attending school have been tarnished and left many in fear. Continue reading
The sun is out, the weather is warm, and outside my window children are splashing in a pool. The happy sounds of water splashing, laughter, and water games are signs that summer is coming. These are cheerful sounds that warm my heart, even when they never seem to tire of the game “Marco, Polo.” Continue reading
Posted in Grace, Hope, Life
If you want to eat healthy but don’t want to give up on flavor and desserts, check out the Chocolate Covered Katie blog. She has some awesome desserts. I’m sold…or, perhaps I should say, I’m cooking new recipes and loving it!
Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie
We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face… we must do that which we think we cannot. ~Eleanor Roosevelt
Most challenges we fail to conquer are because we allow fear to conquer us instead. However, when we look fear in the face and say, “I do not know you!” we gain strength, grow, and realize we can leap forward in life to accomplish far more than ever imagined and it propels us to become the person we were intended to be.
There are two kinds of fear: healthy fear, such as when we are in danger; and, unhealthy fear which robs us of life and self-worth – that kind of fear is a liar! Don’t listen.
Posted in Fire, Hope, Life | <urn:uuid:81f9c883-6368-4b69-8bc2-a8fc87fc704c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yochana.com/blog/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957545 | 416 | 1.5 | 2 |
UN-HABITAT’s Executive Director, Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka, has established an Advisory Group of Experts on Decentralisation (AGRED) to guide the international dialogue on decentralisation and provide advice on strengthening local authorities around the world.
The inaugural AGRED meeting was held in Gatineau, Canada 9 – 10 March 2004, at the invitation of the Mayor, Mr. Yves Ducharme, who is President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM). AGRED was created pursuant to Resolution 19/12 of UN-HABITAT's Governing Council and will operate as a sub-committee of the United Nations Advisory Committee of Local Authorities (UNACLA).
Mrs. Tibaijuka told the meeting that Mr. Ducharme, as a founding member UNACLA, had been a key actor and privileged witness of UN-HABITAT’s work to promote the role and status of local authorities.
Mr. Ducharme said he believed AGRED would be an invaluable asset to UNACLA in representing the interests of local government within the UN system. It came into being, he added, as Canada’s new Prime Minister, Mr. Paul Martin, had announced a New Deal for Canadian Municipalities, signaling Canada's intention to involve itself more fully in the issues of urbanisation.
Mrs. Tibaijuka noted that the most economically successful and politically stable countries, like Canada, were those where local and regional authorities constituted the “first allies” of their central governments in terms of economic planning and decision-making.
The current AGRED membership includes experts from Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Egypt, India, Norway, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and a representative of Metropolis, and the new world organisation, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). The AGRED group discussed decentralisation legislation based on their national experiences. The committee has agreed on an ambitious plan of work to identify positive components of decentralisation policies, from which all countries can benefit.
It was agreed that AGRED’s mandate will focus on the three pillars of developing recommendations, documenting best practices, and contributing to the international dialogue on decentralisation. For further information AGRED and upcoming meetings see: http://www.unhabitat.org/unacla/ | <urn:uuid:33e376bc-8845-435c-9f6c-49f1816eb0f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unhabitat.org/content.asp?cid=2959&catid=574&typeid=6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93301 | 500 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Steve Jobs' resignation as Apple's CEO has shaken the tech world and is stirring rumors of severe health problems.
"I have always said that if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know," he wrote in the letter to the company's board of directors. "Unfortunately, that day has come."
Jobs did not elaborate on his reasons for stepping down. While the tech guru has remained tight-lipped on his health status since his pancreatic cancer diagnosis seven years ago, many worry the recent development is a sign his health has taken a turn for the worse.
E-mails to Apple requesting comment were not immediately returned.
Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor in 2004. The disease is known to progress more slowly than the more common form of pancreatic cancer, but it can be no less devastating.
"Some people have described them as cancer in slow motion," Dr. Jonathan Strosberg, attending physician at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., told ABC News in January. "Patients tend to live longer, even if it's in its later stages. The average survival is six years from diagnosis."
Treatment options for the disease include hormone therapy, chemotherapy, surgical removal of the tumor and liver transplant.
Jobs' cancer spread to his liver, as this type of tumor often does, and in April 2009, he underwent a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. During that same year, the CEO traveled to Switzerland to receive a treatment that is not yet approved in the U.S., Fortune magazine reported.
But researchers say even after a liver transplant, the likelihood of disease recurrence in the organ "is still really high," said Dr. Richard Alexander, a surgical oncologist at University of Maryland.
Despite taking three medical leaves in the past seven years, Jobs remained Apple's CEO. In March, he received a standing ovation after making a rare appearance to unveil the iPad 2. Clad in his staple black turtleneck, blue jeans and glasses, many people attending the event reported Jobs seemed energetic, but frail.
There is not a large amount of data on these pancreatic tumors, but about half of the people diagnosed with them are still alive after five years, said Dr. Simon K. Lo, director of the Pancreatic and Biliary Diseases Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Nevertheless, Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, warned against speculating on a person's life expectancy.
"There is a spectrum of pancreatic cancer," said Brawley. "Some are very slow-growing and indolent, so indolent that they never kill the person. Some are very fast-growing and very aggressive, so aggressive that the median life expectancy is six to eight months after diagnosis.
"I have seen people who have pancreas cancer who have been told they have six to eight weeks to live alive six to eight years later to tell me about it," continued Brawley. "I caution against any kind of speculation."
Despite his resignation, Jobs expressed optimism for the future of Apple.
"I believe Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it," wrote Jobs. "And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role. I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you." | <urn:uuid:d7f05382-d955-4039-9a96-5ec19583c0b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abcnews.go.com/Health/pancreatic-cancer-led-steve-jobs-resignation-apple-ceo/story?id=14379445 | 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 | 0.980893 | 737 | 1.921875 | 2 |
It’s likely that you’ve been told that dark chocolate and red wine are good for you, but a small part of you doesn’t quite believe it. Surely something that tastes so good can’t be healthy? You’re forgiven for looking a tad sceptical. ‘Healthy’ and ‘indulgent’ rarely go hand-in-hand. To finally convince you, let’s look at the amazing health benefits of red wine and dark chocolate.
Don’t reach for a Mars Bar just yet. Chocolate may be good for you, but unless the cocoa content is more than 70 per cent, it doesn’t count! The darker your chocolate, the better.
Dark chocolate is considered good for you due to the high levels of flavonoids it contains. Flavonoids are antioxidants found in plants that protects them from environmental toxins and helps to repair damage. When a human being consumes flavonoids, they reap some of these health benefits.
Unfortunately, dark chocolate still remains a processed food, so the levels of flavonoids lessen as the cocoa solid levels decrease. Dairy, found in milk chocolate, can even inhibit any flavonoids. Anything above 70 per cent has the highest concentration of antioxidants.
Studies show that dark chocolate has the power to reduce levels of cortisol in the body (stress chemicals). People who were given 40g of dark chocolate every day became more Zen than ever before. If work is really getting your goat, the magical combination of dark chocolate and red wine can help lessen emotional unease. That’s why most of us crave a glass of vin rouge at the end of the working day – it helps us unwind.
Just remember that dark chocolate is still a high-calorie food and should be eaten in moderation. As it’s so rich, you probably won’t want to scoff down a whole bar anyway.
Red, red wine, stay close to me – UB40 has got the right idea. Experts recommend women drink one glass of red wine (men should have two) every day! But why? Isn’t alcohol bad for you?
Red wine has been proven to protect your heart. Although doctors aren’t entirely sure how or why this happens, those who drink the recommended amount of red wine every day are shielded from artery damage.
This wonderful beverage promotes good cholesterol throughout the body and lessens your chances of heart attacks, strokes, cancers (especially ovarian), ulcers, osteoporosis (pay attention, ladies!), premature aging, and contracting neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s.
And if that wasn’t enough, wine can kick-start your digestion, increase your libido, and boost your immune system. It’s best to buy red wine in crates, to save yourself a pretty penny.
Forget fancy face creams, red wine has the magical chemical, reservitol, which slows down the aging process. Reservitol can increase your life expectancy, prevent free radical damage, lower blood sugar levels, and prevent cancer. Dear me, that’s a lot of health benefits!
Take note that drinking more than your recommended amount of red wine every day can reverse the positive effects on your body.
Vivas Wine are wine suppliers, wholesalers and distribute and provide topical advice on a range of areas related to wine and the benefits it can have – visit their site for further information – http://www.vivaswine.co.uk/
About the author:
This post was written by Gail Newland, a miscellaneous freelance writer. | <urn:uuid:33565881-ba36-4157-9d9b-0936a4d91147> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://health-club.org/red-wine-dark-chocolate-health | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937099 | 750 | 2.125 | 2 |
The world's 7th largest country, India has a total land area of more than 1 million square miles and a coastline over 3,500 miles long. It may be most well known for the stunning Taj Mahal, but it is also home to the majestic Himalayan mountain range, which cuts a border between India, Nepal and China.
The country's rich history is still evident in the palaces and temples through Rajasthan, famous for the Rajput warriors who defended the territory and carved the territory into princely states. India is also home to 59 national parks and more than 250 sanctuaries where you may find more than 250 mammal species and 1200 recorded bird species. Nature lovers are drawn to places like Corbett National Park - India's first tiger reserve - in hopes of seeing the elusive and majestic Bengal tiger. You might also find other species indiginous to the region like the white tiger, the Asian lion, lion-tailed macaque and monal pheasant.
We offer two programs on a year-round basis, both of which will provide a first-time visitor with a comprehensive look at this fascinating country. We also offer seasonal safaris to Corbett National Park along with other national parks and sanctuaries. Look for those programs to operate between October-March.
Our India programs are based on just two people traveling together. With your own private car and driver, your trip to India will be enhanced by the up-close look of the countryside you'll get as you travel from city to city. And remember, UTG can customize any program to India. Ask us for details.
Blue Bell, PA 19422
Toll Free: 1-800-223-6486
© 2013 United Travel Group. All rights reserved | <urn:uuid:3fc5d784-2037-4b97-99e0-66ec8ff0e830> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://unitedtravelgroup.com/india/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946819 | 357 | 1.851563 | 2 |
In GIVE ME LIBERTY: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries Wolf investigates the roots of a growing national malaise that has bred “fake democracy” in the United States over the last three decades, a condition marked by equally fake patriotism and a modern notion that we Americans are “the Elect.”
This is direct heresy against the founders’ intent, Wolf says: Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and the rest “did not create liberty for America, but America for liberty, which they understood as part of universal law…. The founders had made it clear that we were not supposed to see ourselves as constituents, voters or recipients of the leadership of our representatives. We ordinary people were supposed to run things ourselves.”
So what has happened to America? The accelerating erosion of the founders’ ideal of liberty is manifest in a political system that excludes the very citizenry it was intended to protect. Wolf sets out to learn how an ordinary American can take a participatory role in government and/or exact change, and discovers it is not easy. She navigates a quagmire of state and federal government websites in an effort to learn how to run for office, encountering confusing language and sometimes contradictory information. Our First Amendment right to public assembly is now thwarted by the need to obtain permits for peaceful protests. The well-oiled bi-partisan political machine excludes outsiders with fresh ideas. Wolf comes face to face with “a great systemic war against us citizens. It is being waged through the propaganda of patriotism,” she asserts, “and through, unglamorously enough, bureaucracy. The erasure of civil education; a proliferation of voter restrictions; the expansion of permit demands for marches; the consolidation of media outlets; and the closing down of access and information about running for office. It is death by a thousand cuts.”
While Wolf documents some remarkable stories of ordinary citizens who have dared to engage the democratic system, often at personal risk, she is nonetheless nonplussed by the solid apathy among younger citizens, even the well-educated, and with GIVE ME LIBERTY she hopes to awaken their participation in taking back America. She incites concerned people of all ages to lead a new American Revolution, based on the truly radical precepts of men like Jefferson, Lincoln, and Patrick Henry, who boldly faced charges of sedition in their quest for liberty. To this end, the final section of this provocative book is a nuts-and-bolts “user‟s guide” that leads budding patriots step by step through the process of making a difference—from running for office, to using the media effectively, to organizing protests.
Despite the lip-service paid to the idea of liberty in the United States, America is no longer at freedom’s forefront, Wolf says. Americans “need to join our brothers and sisters in the tribe of liberty around the world, acting, all of us, like true Americans. When you take your place in the fight, you will lift up the torch Jefferson wishes to carry.” GIVE ME LIBERTY is an insightful, daring, and undeniably timely call to arms for reclaiming America.
Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries (Simon & Schuster Trade Paperbacks -
Publication Date: September 16, 2008 – ISBN-10: 1-4165-9056-0/ ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-9056-9 – Price: $13.95)
© Copyright 2013 Naomi Wolf | http://naomiwolf.org | <urn:uuid:eaae5cd8-7ddb-4fb8-8b1e-42467e6047f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://naomiwolf.org/2008/09/give-me-liberty-a-handbook-for-american-revolutionaries/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936151 | 735 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Cleveland attorneys helping clients injured in accidents caused by texting while driving
One of the most dangerous forms of distracted driving is texting while driving. Most people must look at their tiny keyboards to compose their text messages, requiring them to take their eyes off the road. Consequently, texting while driving is illegal in many jurisdictions. It continues to occur, however, and is a significant cause of motor vehicle accidents.
Using our resources, experience and knowledge to build strong cases
If you were injured in an accident caused by someone who was texting while driving, you may be able to obtain compensation for your injuries and losses. At Elk & Elk Co., Ltd., our attorneys handle all types of motor vehicle accidents and have been doing so for nearly 50 years. We have the experience, knowledge and resources to build strong cases for our clients, using our significant resources to add value to each case. We know how to obtain the smartphone records of the distracted driver and compare that with the in-car computer records to prove that the very moment the distracted driver was using their phone was the exact moment of the accident. Our on-staff nurses, accident reconstructionists, life-care planners and many other experts and specialists help our lawyers pursue maximum compensation for every client.
If you were injured in a car crash caused by someone texting while driving, contact us today. We will advise you about your rights, evaluate your case and discuss your options. Call us at 1-440-252-0445 or 1-800-ELK-OHIO (1-800-355-6446) or complete our e-mail form. We are available 365/24/7.
Ohio and other states have passed laws against texting while driving
Evidence reported by the Governors Highway Safety Association shows that texting is more likely than cellphone use to increase the risk of crashes. In response to this danger, many states have passed laws that ban texting while driving. Texting while driving is already illegal in states such as Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. Ohio recently passed a law making texting while driving illegal.
In some states, municipalities have enacted their own laws prohibiting texting while driving. Some states, however, prohibit cities, counties and towns from developing their own laws. Whatever the legal situation, texting while driving is almost always found to be negligent. This means that the driver who was reading or entering a text message will very likely be found liable for an accident and resulting injuries.
Call 1-800-ELK-OHIO (1-800-355-6446) if you were injured by someone texting while driving
If you've been looking for experienced Cleveland auto accident lawyers who know how to build strong cases, you've come to the right place. Contact us online or call us at 1-800-ELK-OHIO (1-800-355-6446) to schedule your free consultation to determine whether you are eligible for compensation after an accident caused by someone texting while driving.
Get information about about our no fee promise. | <urn:uuid:a5b3afc0-f627-4d97-985f-bd8cb515362a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.elkandelkcleveland.com/Auto-Motorcycle-Truck-Accidents/Automobile-Accidents/Texting-While-Driving.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963449 | 610 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Brigadoon on the Baltic
Cut off from the rest of the world for much of the 20th century, three Estonian islands are now welcoming visitors.
"Is that really all you've got?" he teases. "Pretend that I just dropped your camera and it shattered into a thousand pieces."
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
"Does this even feel good?" I yell over the swishing of the birch leaves.
He flinches at the last blow. "OK, OK!" he begs. "You can stop!"
SAAREMAA: THE SOPHISTICATE
Saaremaa's tidy capital, Kuressaare, is Estonia's answer to Martha's Vineyard: In the summer, the country's well-to-do flock here in their Mercedes and BMW sedans to sip espressos at sidewalk cafés, browse in boutiques, and rejuvenate in the city's many seaside spas. Kuressaare's resort-town roots date to the early 1800s, when the Russians leveled much of the village and then rebuilt it, erecting neoclassical private manors, opulent bathhouses, and gorgeous concert halls. The party came to an abrupt halt during World War I, but Kuressaare has since regained its status as the cultural heart of the islands.
Alex and I wander the cobblestoned streets, popping into stores selling handwoven linens and blown-glass jewelry. At Saaremaa Sepad, blacksmiths forge iron candlesticks, lanterns, and bells by hand, just as they did in olden days. We pass through a farmers market, where elderly women sit gossiping behind bouquets of wildflowers and jars of freshly picked raspberries. From town, it's a quick amble to Kuressaare Bishop's Castle, the only intact medieval fortress left in the Baltic countries—it looks so perfect, it could be the model for every grade-school drawing of a castle. According to legend, criminals got tossed into the castle's pit, where lions waited to rip them to shreds. As Alex and I peer down into the shaft, a loud roar emanates from the darkness, startling me. I'm instantly embarrassed when I realize it's a recording.
As we head out, I spot a poster by the exit: We've arrived during Kuressaare's annual Opera Days festival, and there's a concert at the castle that evening. We buy two of the last tickets and rush back to our hotel to freshen up. When we return, the castle's soaring main hall is set with leather-backed chairs encircling a grand piano. The performance couldn't be more magical, with candlelight flickering off the arched ceilings and Estonian singer Ain Anger's deep bass filling the cavernous space.
The following morning, we're ready for some exercise, so we rent a car and drive to Vilsandi National Park, a sprawling wetland where moose and boars roam and gray seals loaf on rocks. It's a gorgeous day: The Nordic sun is beaming down on fields of wild daisies and poppies, and a breeze is blowing through the juniper pines. After a couple hours of hiking, we make it to Harilaid Peninsula, where a white-and-black-striped lighthouse stands slightly askew just offshore. Alex takes a nap on the beach while I contemplate swimming to the lighthouse. (I quickly decide against it after dipping a toe in the numbingly cold water.) Famished from our excursion, we then pull over for lunch at a roadside farmhouse restaurant, Lümanda Söögimaja, and order a feast: pickled pumpkin and shredded beet salad, bean cakes drizzled with dill cream sauce, and herring rolls in a juniper-berry marinade. Sitting at a simple plank table under a maple tree, we hoist mugs of Saaremaa-brewed beer and toast to the best picnic of our lives.
When we check in that night at the whitewashed Loona Mõis Guesthouse, we're happy to discover that we're the only ones staying there. But our excitement turns to concern when the hotel's lone staffer walks out, bags in hand, and drives off as the sun sets at 11 p.m. Her shift is apparently over, and we're now totally alone, deep in the Saaremaa hinterland.
Just after dark, we hear a noise coming from the driveway. Alex and I look at each other, jump from our chairs, and lock the front door. "It could be a guest," I say. "Wouldn't the receptionist have waited around, then?" he responds. A few minutes go by, and we hear pounding on the door. We both take a deep breath before opening it. Standing on the front stoop is a very confused—and rather tired-looking—Estonian man, who tries to explain in his best English that he and his wife have a reservation, so we show him to one of the empty rooms.
The next morning, the hotel worker has a sour look on her face. "Did you let the other guest in last night?" she asks. I tell her that we did, and she thanks me with the thinnest of smiles. "He was late," she says.
HIIUMAA: THE UTTERLY REMOTE
Meeli Lass greets us warmly when we arrive at the Allika Hostel. Dressed in a flowery cotton dress, she's playing in the front yard with her two small children, who scamper off when they see a pair of Americans coming their way. "We're only here in the summer," she says, explaining that she's an opera singer in Tallinn the rest of the year; coincidently, she studied with Ain Anger. "It's good for my kids to spend time in the country—that's why I bought this place."
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In general, Medicare is designed as a national health insurance program for those 65 and older. However, if you are disabled, you may qualify for Medicare before that age. After a person has received disability benefits for two years, they are automatically enrolled in Medicare. There are two parts to Medicare: the first is hospital insurance, which helps cover a portion of your hospital bills and some other services. This part of Medicare is free, because it's financed by the FICA taxes you paid while working. The other part of Medicare is medical insurance; it's used to pay doctors' bills and other health care. If you elect to take this part of Medicare, you have to pay a monthly premium. In some cases, disabled widows and widowers under age 65 may also be eligible for Medicare, based on their spouse's work record. If you receive a disability annuity from the railroad retirement board, special rules may apply; check with your local railroad retirement office for details. To find out more about Medicare benefits for disabled persons, contact the social security office, at 1-800-772-1213. | <urn:uuid:8a49f32c-bc28-4747-bbdd-c8d910fba18a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.woai.com/guides/legal/socialsecurity/story/Medicare-if-you-are-disabled/4uqpZ4oUD0KE5Fdvz9dA0w.cspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968649 | 223 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Cakes honoring the Magi are served on Epiphany (January 6) in many Catholic cultures, including France and Mexico. In Louisiana, however, they herald the arrival of the dozens of kings and queens who will reign over various Carnival balls and parades.
The decorated brioche rings are a New Orleans specialty seen in bakeries and supermarkets in the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras, from Twelfth Night until Ash Wednesday. If you “get the baby” (a small plastic trinket concealed in one of the slices), you must provide the cake for the next party.
Carnival King Cake
Toast the Carnival season (and the guest who gets the baby) with demi-sec Champagne.
1/3 cup sugar
Grated zest of 1 lemon
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. fine sea salt
1 package (2 1/2 teaspoons) active dry yeast
3/4 cup chilled unsalted butter
3 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
1 ovenproof charm, such as a Mardi Gras baby, or a whole almond
1 large egg yolk whisked with 1 Tbs. water, for brushing
Purpose, green and gold (yellow) decorating sugars
In a food processor, combine the sugar and lemon zest and process for 15 seconds to blend. Add the flour, salt and yeast and process for another 15 seconds to blend. Cut the butter into 12 pieces and distribute the pieces evenly around the processor bowl, pushing them down into the flour mixture. Pulse about 15 times, or until the mixture resembles coarse meal.
In a large measuring pitcher or a bowl with a spout, whisk together the eggs and milk. With the processor running, pour the egg mixture through the feed tube and process for 30 to 40 seconds, stopping to scrape down the sides if necessary. The dough should be very soft and sticky.
Scrape the dough into a large bowl, cover tightly and refrigerate overnight. The dough will stiffen as it chills to the consistency of a dense cookie dough.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Working quickly, before the dough warms up and begins to soften, place the cold dough on the parchment and use your hand to mold it into an oblong ring about 12 inches long and 2 inches wide with a hole in the center. Using damp hands, pat the ring smooth. Push the charm or the almond into the underside of the dough to conceal it. Cover the dough ring loosely with another sheet of parchment paper. Set the pan aside in a warm, draft-free place and let the dough rise until doubled in size, about 3 hours.
Preheat an oven to 375°F.
Brush the surface of the dough gently and evenly with the egg yolk mixture. Sprinkle generously with the decorating sugars, alternating wide stripes of purple, green and gold.
Bake until the cake is golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let the cake cool on the pan for at least 10 minutes.
Transfer the cake to a serving plate and serve warm or at room temperature. Cut on the diagonal into thin slices. Serves 16. | <urn:uuid:6f7b5510-f519-4916-80bd-388c25492457> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.williams-sonoma.com/recipe-carnival-king-cake/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916891 | 658 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Saudi Arabia needs an oil price of more than $100 within the next six years to prevent a deficit in its budget while the breakeven price of its crude could reach as high as $321 a barrel by 2030, a local study has said.
The surge in the breakeven price of the Gulf Kingdom’s crude will be a result of a steady decline in its oil exports, a sharp rise in public spending and the absence of other major sources of income, the Riyadh-based Jadwa Investments said.
Since oil prices are unlikely to reach that level in the long term, the country’s budget could suffer from a massive deficit which can be financed through its foreign assets before it turns to the market for borrowing, it said.
Jadwa projected Saudi Arabia’s total revenue to rise from around SR735 billion in 20010 to SR843 billion in 2015 and peak at SR1,120 billion in 2030.
But it expected expenditure to race far quicker than revenue as it will surge from around SR637 billion in 2010 to SR893 billion in 2015 and 2,453 billion in 2030.
The expected sharp rise in the fiscal deficit could push Saudi Arabia’s foreign assets from a record high of SR1,985 billion in 2015 to SR1,331 billion in 2020 and only around SR375 billion in 2030.
Jadwa said the fall would force the Kingdom to borrow to balance its budget and this would push its public debt back to new peaks after it plunged to one of its lowest levels of SR167 billion in 2010. It forecast the debt to remain unchanged until 2020 before it rockets to an all time high of SR5,889 billion in 2030.
“Based on the above assumptions, we estimate that the breakeven oil price required to balance actual government revenue with actual government expenditure will not rise above $100 per barrel (for Saudi export crude) until 2017 and will stay below $120 per barrel until 2021,” the study said.
“Since prices seem likely to be close to this area for the period, it appears that Saudi Arabia has about a decade where it will only need to run relatively small budget deficits that would not dent foreign assets too greatly…..beyond that, however, the breakeven price begins to rise rapidly.”
The report showed that by 2025 Saudi Arabia would need $175 per barrel to balance actual revenues to expenditures, and by 2030 the breakeven price would reach in excess of $320 per barrel.
By then oil export volumes would be around 1.5 million barrels per day lower than domestic oil consumption, it said.
“We think it very unlikely that oil prices would reach these levels even after 20 years. Our assumption is that oil prices ease slightly over the next few years before rising gradually with inflation from $90 per barrel for Saudi export crude in 2014. As a result, we expect that the budget will fall into deficit in 2014 and will not return to a surplus through 2030,” it said.
“However, drawing down the huge stock of foreign reserves the government has built will ensure that the deficit can be financed comfortably for many years before the government would need to turn to the debt markets……..based on past patterns, we expect that the Saudi government would fund deficits first by drawing down foreign assets, then by issuing domestic debt, and only in a last resort turning to foreign borrowing.”
Jadwa said likely budget surpluses over the next few years would be used to increase foreign assets and future deficits would be financed by drawing down assets until they reach about $100 billion. “After this point, we assume the entire deficit would be financed by the new issuance of domestic debt.”
With a budget surplus expected for this year and the following two years, SAMA net foreign assets are likely to rise to over SRtwo trillion($533 billion) by the end of 2013 as oil prices are expected to remain high.
“Even if all subsequent budget deficits are fully financed by drawing down these assets, they will still stand at over SR1 trillion ($267 billion) at the end of 2021. On our projected fiscal path, net foreign assets would drop to $100 billion in 2024, after which new debt would be used to finance the deficit,” Jadwa said.
“With large budget deficits coming in the second half of the 2020s, the stock of domestic debt would rise quickly, as would the cost of servicing the debt. By 2030 the fiscal position would be very strained….of course, the rapid worsening of government finances can be avoided if the trajectory of the current trends of oil production, domestic oil consumption and government spending are altered.” | <urn:uuid:152c1103-b2e0-4886-95bb-e7184531669b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.emirates247.com/business/economy-finance/saudi-budget-to-need-over-100-oil-price-2011-07-31-1.410464 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958798 | 964 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Prompt: Find and document, both visually and textually, a phenomena. It should include things, frameworks, and clockworks.
For this entry, I decided to choose a phenomenon that many people are familiar with as one of the main mysteries of the world - Stonehenge. Existing today in Amesbury, United Kingdom, this massive structure has caused many controversial arguments through centuries of its study. It is thought to have been built between 3100-1800 B.C., and is presumed to be a way that ancient people observed and predicted the coming of astronomical phenomena like solstices and eclipses.
This structure can be described as phenomenal because it possesses things, framework, and clockwork.
An example of things in this phenomena are the stones themselves - huge, multi-ton slabs of rock that are arranged in a circular fashion. A framework, in the case of Stonehenge, can be classified as the way the rocks are aligned, in a set of circles thought to be used to measure the shadows of the sun and estimate the distance between stars to predict when another important astronomical event would take place. A clockwork at Stonehenge is daylight. The structure is oriented northeast-southwest, so each morning when the sun rises it hits the structure and the sun's rays appear perfectly aligned within the horseshoe-shaped ring in the middle.
Stonehenge is a phenomena because it is something that cannot be fully understood. It is something perceived by the senses and that exhibits behavioral characteristics and boundary conditions.
I think that Stonehenge will continue to be one of the world's biggest mysteries - something that we will never be able to understand completely because of our lack of our knowledge about its history, the people who put it there, why they built it, and how such ancient people were able to understand something about the ways of the world that we to this day cannot.
- - - - -
General Facts/Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge | <urn:uuid:2dd11f78-b9be-4ac5-ae6a-082661bcbea7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blair073/architecture/2006/10/4_phenomena.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944176 | 411 | 3.6875 | 4 |
Computers and Information Systems: Year In Review 2010Article Free Pass
Facebook in August introduced a long-anticipated service called Facebook Places that strongly resembled location-based services for social networking such as Foursquare. Facebook allowed users to “check in” at bars, restaurants, or other businesses via Places so that friends searching online could find them. Facebook Places was controversial because for the first time it allowed a user to locate a nearby friend at a specific site (if the friend had previously allowed such a move), potentially revealing the friend’s presence to other people checked in at the same location. This raised the spectre of stalking. Facebook said that that feature of the Places service was easy to turn off.
Facebook was involved in another controversy when it was discovered that some games and other applications provided to users by third-party firms were collecting personal information that might be of use to advertisers—a problem about which government regulators and consumer advocates had been concerned. The company said that it would block Facebook user information from reaching outside firms.
Facebook also kept finding ways to build its audience. The company established itself as a new online gaming environment where millions of people played general-interest games such as FarmVille. Players could buy virtual goods inside the games by using Facebook’s online currency, called Credits. Some observers said that Credits might one day expand beyond Facebook games and compete with e-commerce companies such as Amazon, Apple, and Google.
Myspace formed a partnership with Facebook to enhance the Myspace user experience. By importing their Facebook topics of interest to their Myspace profiles, Myspace users could find more related information and video on Myspace.
Fast-growing social-networking service Twitter, on which consumers sent messages called tweets, announced that it had a plan to generate advertising revenue, which it called Promoted Tweets. Consumers who searched for key words on the service would receive ads from companies that had bought the right to advertise in connection with those words.
Apple joined the social-networking scene by introducing Ping, a music-focused network integrated with iTunes. This service would enable people to find out what music their friends had downloaded and, in a broader context, what music those friends had reviewed or what concerts they were going to attend. Users could also see event postings by musical groups.
Social networking also caught the eye of government officials who regulated advertising. They sought to curb the practice of company-directed advertising campaigns making misleading claims via social-network postings or blogs. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had already published guidelines for such marketing, and the U.K. Advertising Standards Authority planned to monitor this type of marketing.
The market for cloud computing was estimated at more than $68 billion worldwide in 2010, up 17% from 2009, according to Gartner. The initial interest was mostly on the part of technology companies, financial-services businesses, and legal firms, but cloud computing was not universally accepted. The public cloud involved accessing a remote data centre—one outside a company’s control—and some corporations feared that data in the public cloud could be lost or stolen. Concerns about the security of cloud computing ran particularly high in Europe, where governments already had privacy laws that strictly limited the transfer of data outside the European Union. The problem was that the computing cloud, or remote data centre, might not be in Europe. In addition to security concerns, some corporations were reluctant to give up their own computer centres to use cloud computing because those centres had been built at considerable expense.
Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM all sought to carve out positions in the new cloud-computing field. Amazon, which already operated data centres for its Web site operations, said that it hoped to turn cloud computing into a second major business. Analysts estimated, however, that in 2010 cloud computing represented only a small percentage of Amazon’s total revenue. Amazon’s cloud-computing services included data processing, database software, and disk storage.
What made you want to look up "Computers and Information Systems: Year In Review 2010"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:85d04150-9443-4795-be74-f316d468347c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1725409/Computers-and-Information-Systems-Year-In-Review-2010/298298/Social-Networking | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969642 | 846 | 2.484375 | 2 |
Some of the programs that we use in Windows, have a system menu containing an option – Always on top. If selected, this feature sets a window to be always on top of other windows. This is very useful if you want to work across multiple windows but want to focus more of your attention on a particular window. You can set that window to be always on top and keep an eye on it. I personally use this feature to set my TV Tuner window to be always on top so that I can enjoy TV programs while doing work at the same time.
Unfortunately this Always on Top option is not available in many programs. Possibly because the software designer never thought that users will ever need such a feature. However, if you want to keep a program always on top, you can use the Always On Top application. After downloading and installing this program, you can start it from the shortcut it creates. Now you can drag the hand like icon over a window the you want to make always on top. Later, you can toggle the always on top status of that window on and off using the hotkey Ctrl + F8.
This software works very well for the situations when you have to read data from one application and type it into another, for example, password managers. You can set the first password manager window to be always on top and easily read the information and type it into your login window.
Download Window On Top | <urn:uuid:29d9b3fb-cce1-4e76-86cb-5908a159b52f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mintywhite.com/windows-7/7customization/window-top/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WindowsGuides+%28Windows+Guides%29 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935493 | 288 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Economist Alan Viard is one of the leading scholars of tax policy in the United States. In this article, first published in State Tax Notes in 2010, Viard explains the logic behind the broad consensus of economists that state sales taxes should generally exclude business to business purchases to avoid tax pyramiding.
Viard’s article, Sales Taxation of Business Purchases: A Tax Policy Distortion, is required reading for any serious student of state tax policy.
Here are some highlights of Viard’s careful analysis and rejection of sales tax on intermediate business purchases:
actual state and local sales taxes diverge dramatically from the popular and textbook vision of the tax. One major flaw is the exclusion of a wide range of consumer services from taxation, which renders the consumer tax base much narrower than the textbook description suggests. The other crucial flaw, which is the focus of this article, is the imposition of tax on a wide range of business purchases; taxes on those purchases account for roughly 40 percent of nationwide sales tax revenue. The taxation of business purchases impedes economic efficiency and hides the true tax burden from the public…
A wide range of authors have discussed the economic distortions arising from taxation of business purchases. The following sources of inefficiency have been noted:
• The taxation of capital goods imposes a penalty on saving and investment, replicating the key flaw of income taxation. A recent Cato Institute report finds that state sales taxes, along with asset-based taxes on property, add about 7 percentage points to the effective corporate income tax rate in the United States.
• The choice between production processes is distorted, because firms have an incentive to use inputs and capital goods that are exempt from sales tax in place of those that are subject to sales tax.
• Firms have an incentive to vertically integrate, because production within a single firm is not subject to the tax imposed on sales between firms.
• The tax on inputs pyramids into the price of the final goods in an uneven manner, causing effective tax rates to vary across goods subject to the same statutory tax rate, which can distort consumers’ choices between different goods.
Evidence from statistical studies and simulations of economic models suggests that that the taxation of business purchases significantly impedes economic efficiency…
In 2002 Charles E. McLure Jr. identified the taxation of business purchases as one of many ‘‘nutty’’ features of state and local tax systems. Hellerstein et al. list the taxation of business purchases as a ‘‘structural flaw’’ of state sales taxes. State Tax Notes contributing editor David Brunori noted the ‘‘near unanimity among public finance scholars’’ against the practice and nominated it as one contender for the most egregious flaw of state tax systems…
Despite their image as consumption taxes, state and local retail sales taxes are actually imposed on a large volume of business purchases, resulting in significant economic inefficiency. Whether reform is pursued within the sales tax context or outside it, a reduction in the taxation of business purchases should be a high priority in efforts to improve state and local tax systems. | <urn:uuid:9b293465-9aa2-4510-ab18-321c9c702342> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://johnspry.com/?p=202 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951583 | 634 | 2.421875 | 2 |
|Canto 10: The Summum Bonum||Chapter 59: The Killing of the Demon Naraka|
Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 10.59.2-3
dṛḍhaiḥ sarvata āvṛtam
śrī-śukaḥ uvāca — Śukadeva Gosvāmī said; indreṇa — by Lord Indra; hṛta-chatreṇa — who had suffered the theft of (Varuṇa's) umbrella; hṛta-kuṇḍala — the theft of the earrings; bandhunā — of his relative (his mother Aditi); hṛta — and the theft; amara-adri — on the mountain of the demigods (Mandara); sthānena — of the special location (the recreational area at its peak, known as Maṇi-parvata); jñāpitaḥ — informed; bhauma-ceṣṭitam — of the activities of Bhauma; sa — together with; bhāryaḥ — His wife (Satyabhāmā); garuḍa-ārūḍhaḥ — riding on the giant bird Garuḍa; prāg-jyotiṣa-puram — to the city of Prāgjyotiṣa-pura, Bhauma's capital (still existing today as Tejpur in Assam); yayau — He went; giri — consisting of mountains; durgaiḥ — by fortifications; śastra — consisting of weapons; durgaiḥ — by fortifications; jala — of water; agni — fire; anila — and wind; durgamam — made inaccessible by fortifications; mura-pāśa — by a dangerous wall of cables; ayutaiḥ — tens of thousands; ghoraiḥ — fearsome; dṛḍhaiḥ — and strong; sarvataḥ — on all sides; āvṛtam — surrounded.
Śukadeva Gosvāmī said: After Bhauma had stolen the earrings belonging to Indra's mother, along with Varuṇa's umbrella and the demigods' playground at the peak of Mandara mountain, Indra went to Lord Kṛṣṇa and informed Him of these misdeeds. The Lord, taking His wife Satyabhāmā with Him, then rode on Garuḍa to Prāgyotiṣa-pura, which was surrounded on all sides by fortifications consisting of hills, unmanned weapons, water, fire and wind, and by obstructions of mura-pāśa wire.
The ācāryas have explained in various plausible ways why Lord Kṛṣṇa took His wife Satyabhāmā with Him. Śrīla Śrīdhara Svāmī begins by saying that the Lord wanted to give His adventurous wife a novel experience and thus took her to the scene of this extraordinary battle. Also, Lord Kṛṣṇa had once granted the blessing to Bhūmi, the earth-goddess, that He would not kill her demoniac son without her permission. Since Bhūmi is an expansion of Satyabhāmā, the latter could authorize Kṛṣṇa to do the needful with the unusually nasty Bhaumāsura.
Finally, Satyabhāmā had been miffed when Nārada Muni brought a celestial pārijāta flower to Queen Rukmiṇī. To pacify Satyabhāmā, Lord Kṛṣṇa had promised her, "I'll give you a whole tree of these flowers," and thus the Lord scheduled this procurement of a heavenly tree within His itinerary.
Even nowadays devoted husbands take their wives shopping, and thus Lord Kṛṣṇa took Satyabhāmā to the heavenly planets to get a heavenly tree, as well as to retrieve the goods Bhaumāsura had stolen and return them to their rightful owners.
Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī notes that in the heat of battle Queen Satyabhāmā would naturally become anxious for Lord Kṛṣṇa's safety and pray for the battle to end. Thus she would readily give permission to Kṛṣṇa to kill the son of her expansion, Bhūmi.
Copyright © The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International, Inc.
His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Founder Ācārya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness
His Holiness Hrdayananda dasa Goswami
Gopiparanadhana dasa Adhikari
Dravida dasa Brahmacari | <urn:uuid:2bf2f394-6d23-425b-bd08-a99d3815727a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://srimadbhagavatam.com/sb/10/59/2-3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922505 | 1,123 | 1.71875 | 2 |
The high flexibility of CyBio’s instruments and software control of pipetting parameters enables adjusting pipetting steps to accommodate challenging applications such as those involving bead handling.
Nucleic Acid Purification with Magnetic Beads
Automated nucleic acid purification using magnetic beads is widely used in research and in diagnostics due to their easy scalability, cost-effectiveness and reproducibility. Many kits for DNA purification available can be automated by CyBio pipetting instruments, such as PCR product purification, sequencing reaction clean up, plasmid isolation, RNA isolation and genomic DNA isolation from blood, tissue or plants. We can offer long term experience in adapting pipetting processes to bead- and DNA-based applications and recommend the appropriate software and hardware.
We offer an 8 channel system, equipped with gripper and magnetic bead separators for magnetic bead handling: CyBi®-DiluSpro.
For highest flexibility in changing sample numbers and the capability to handle different plate and tube formats, we can refer you to our CyBi®-RoboSpense.
Powerful screening methods which involve coated beads, such as scintillation proximity assays, AlphaScreen® (Perkin Elmer), Transil®- (Nimbus) and IMAP (Molecular Devices) assays, are only as good as the corresponding liquid handling system is capable of preventing tube clogging or bead sedimentation. CyBio has put its application and engineering expertise into the enhancement of their instruments in order to suit these special demands. Depending on your application, we provide several instruments, all of which handle beads in a reliable and reproducible manner. Benefit from our strength in bead handling. Find the right instrument for your application:
The cell circulation option for the CyBi®-Drop
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HSA Binding Kit on CyBi® | <urn:uuid:6aab9b2a-7e52-426c-a86f-c66c96e97931> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cybio-ag.com/en/site__221/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900577 | 508 | 1.789063 | 2 |
The third annual "Think Pink" Walk in honor of Donna Walls and in memory of Jeanane Martin was held at Manila High School Monday, Oct. 24, with over 100 students, teachers and community volunteers participating.
Groups walked in 10 or 12 around the campus where they were met with student volunteers who shared facts about cancer.
Over $460 was raised.
Ms. Walls participated in the walk. She addressed the students and guests expressing her gratitude to all of them for taking the walk.
"This means a lot to me," she said. "I am thankful to be able to walk with you and I appreciate you walking in my name. I know you are doing this for everyone who has lost their battle to cancer and those who are battling the disease. We will walk today and we will do it again next year. Thank you all."
Walls is a longtime Manila High School staff member who is a breast cancer survivor. She retired last year from the school.
Mrs. Martin is the wife of retired Manila teacher Lloyd Martin. | <urn:uuid:89ab28b0-e595-49e8-899d-65d0c806612a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thetown-crier.com/story/1779972.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984926 | 213 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Mini quake shakes ACT
Seismograph reading from Canberra quake Photo: from Geoscience Australia website
Some Canberrans have been shaken awake a little early this morning by an earth tremor west of the capital.
And while it is unlikely they will be woken again by similar earth tremors, there will almost certainly be aftershocks, seismology professors say.
But professor Brian Kennett, who has been studying and mapping earthquakes in the ACT since 1984, said only those standing directly above the aftershocks would be likely to feel them.
Where the quake was felt this morning:
View Mini quake shakes Canberra in a larger map
This morning's magnitude 3.7 tremor originated about 40km west of the ACT, halfway between Canberra and Tumut, at 5.09am and could be felt by people up to 46km away, Geoscience Australia has reported.
Geoscience Australia duty seismologist Steve Tatham said the agency has received over 100 reports from people across the region who felt the quake.
"People are reporting shaking, earth noises, windows rattling, describing it like a heavy vehicle rumbling past," he said.
"One fellow from Canberra even reported items shaking off his bedside table."
"[It's] a very exciting event, but certainly nothing to be worried about at this magnitude."
Mr Tatham said there have been four earthquakes in the region over the past decade or so, with the largest tremor measuring 4.2 magnitude in February 1998. While the region has a moderate seismicity, Mr Tatham said most tremors usually occur further north, around Gundaroo.
He said while small aftershocks were possible, they aren't normally observed for such small tremors.
Emergency services said this morning that call centres had received a few calls, but no damage has been reported.
Readers contacting The Canberra Times have reported feeling the quake across the region, as far as Yass in the north, Batlow in the west, Clyde Mountain in the east, and Gordon in the south.
Richard from Gungahlin said he was watching the sunrise from the top of Mount Ainslie with friends when he felt the earth begin moving.
"We felt the trembling of the ledge looking over the edge," he said in an email to The Canberra Times.
"It was a slow vibration but you could definitely feel the ledge shaking. We had no idea what it was and joked about it being an earthquake only to come back home to find out it was one! Quite a surprise."
Robert from Dunlop said he was lying in bed dozing when he felt the tremors.
"It felt like I was lying in the ocean and went over a wave. Very bazar [sic]," Robert emailed in this morning.
"I have felt earth quakes before (very loud one that shook the windows and doors of our house to the point that I thought they were going to fall off or shatter), but this one just felt like I was floating in the sea!"
Poll: Did you feel the 3.7 magnitude earthquake that shook Canberra?
- Yes, I felt it.
- No, didn't feel a thing.
Total votes: 2860.
You will need Cookies enabled to use our Voting Feature.
Poll closed 22 Apr, 2012
These polls are not scientific and reflect the opinion only of visitors who have chosen to participate. | <urn:uuid:8f512f55-b371-48da-8e41-51669570e5df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theage.com.au/act-news/mini-quake-shakes-act-20120420-1xaqf.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973031 | 702 | 2.078125 | 2 |
The terms of a secret agreement that became the core of the special relationship between Britain and the US are released today more than 60 years after the deal was signed by senior military officials.
A six-page "British-US Communication Intelligence Agreement", known as BRUSA, later UKUSA, tied the two countries into a worldwide network of listening posts run by GCHQ, Britain's biggest spying organisation, and its US equivalent, the National Security Agency.
Though its existence has long been known, the agreement, negotiated in London in March 1946, is only now being published, and for the first time officially acknowledged, after freedom of information requests in Britain and the US. Under the agreement, the countries agreed to exchange the knowledge from operations involving intercepting, decoding and translating foreign communications, including the "acquisition of communication documents and equipment". In a passage which ensured that GCHQ's activities remained wrapped in official secrecy, the agreement states: "It will be contrary to this agreement to reveal its existence to any third party whatever."
Documents released – and available from today, and free for a month, at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukusa – include amendments and annexes to the agreement. One, dated 1948, states: "The value of Communication Intelligence in war and peace cannot be over-estimated; conservation of the source is of special importance." It adds: "The time limit for the safeguarding of Communication Intelligence never expires."
The documents emphasise the importance of individuals with access to this information – now know as "sigint", short for signals intelligence – to be indoctrinated about its sensitivity and the need for it to be protected. No one who knew about these intelligence gathering methods "shall be committed to a hazardous undertaking which might subject him to capture by the enemy or third party", one document says.
GCHQ's cover was blown by Time Out in 1976, but it was only officially "avowed" in 1982 when Geoffrey Prime, a former linguist at GCHQ, was jailed for 38 years for passing secrets to the Russians over a 14-year period. He was released in 2001.
Many documents have been weeded out of the GCHQ files to be released today. They include an appendix on the "designation of intercept targets" and another on "collaboration in the field". Also missing is a document titled: "Arrangements for emergency location of Comint (Communication Intelligence) units".
A GCHQ spokesman said last night: "The 1946 UKUSA agreement formed the basis for co-operation between the two countries throughout the cold war and continues to be essential in keeping the UK safe from today's threats."
Ed Hampshire, a senior records specialist at the National Archives, said: "The agreement represented a crucial moment in the development of the 'special relationship' between the two wartime allies and captured the spirit and practice of the signals intelligence co-operation which had evolved on an ad-hoc basis during the second world war."
He added: "As the threat posed by Nazi Germany was replaced by a new one in the east, the agreement formed the basis for intelligence co-operation during the cold war. The two nations – linked by common bonds of history, culture and language – agreed not to collect intelligence against each other or to tell any 'third party' about the existence of the agreement."
The UKUSA agreement was later extended to include Canada in 1948, and Australia and New Zealand in 1956. According to the intelligence historian, Richard Aldrich, the British tried to use the Commonwealth as an "equalizer", summoning the Canadians and the Australians to a London signals intelligence summit before meeting the Americans, Shortly afterwards, Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6, met an American team led by Joseph Wenger at Bryanston Square in London to work on a bilateral deal. "When negotiations became sticky, Menzies whisked everyone off to White's Club for a bibulous lunch and – suitably refreshed – they resolved their differences", says Aldrich.
The agreement was signed on 5 March 1946 by Colonel Patrick Marr-Johnson on behalf of the UK's London Signals Intelligence Board and Lieutenant General Hoyt Vandenberg for the US State-Army-Navy Communication Intelligence Board.
The US was reluctant to include Commonwealth countries as equals and on occasions blocked intelligence sharing with them. The 1946 agreement states the exchange of intelligence would not be "prejudicial to national interests".
But, despite occasional rows, the eavesdropping network, sometimes referred to as Echelon, has expanded. Norway joined in 1952, Denmark in 1954, and Germany in 1955. Italy, Turkey, the Philippines and Ireland are also members. Documents released today contain thousands of intercepts from the Soviet Union but stop at 1949, as does the first official history of MI6, to be published in the autumn. Though GCHQ employs about 5,500 staff, significantly more than MI5 or MI6, its budget also remains a secret.
Then sensitivity surrounding GCHQ operations is further reflected in its strong opposition to the product of intercepts being used as evidence in court trials, a ban which critics say would obviate the need for control orders and secret hearings but one which GCHQ argues is needed to protect the capabilities of its technology.
GCHQ, the government's communications headquarters, is based in Cheltenham and grew out of wartime Bletchley Park where mathematicians, scientists and linguists broke the German Enigma codes.
Snippets of life under Stalin in GCHQ files
The GCHQ files reveal examples of repression, censorship, industrial and agricultural upheaval - and plans for Stalin's 70th birthday.
• In 1948, farm workers resettled in Kamchatka appealed to Vyacheslav Molotov, the deputy prime minister. "For four years we have somehow failed to receive accommodation, cattle, seeds, and fodder."
• Patriarch Alexis, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, told the bishop of Tashkent in December 1949: "The Holy Synod has approved the text of the congratulatory address to be presented to Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin on the occasion of his 70th birthday."
• In 1949, "pseudo folksongs" were banned by Dalstroi, the Gulag mining camps in Kolyma. GCHQ's intercept remarks: "Most of these songs were popular in pre-revolutionary days." | <urn:uuid:b9592812-d60b-4f49-a77b-ab2e62a4155a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/25/intelligence-deal-uk-us-released | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96255 | 1,307 | 2.34375 | 2 |
QUEBEC-RESEARCH-L ArchivesArchiver > QUEBEC-RESEARCH > 2004-08 > 1092588071
Subject: Excerpt Of History
Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 12:41:11 EDT
"Champlain gives ample details of the manners and customs of the Indians,
especially of their superstitions. The Indians believed that a God existed who
was creator of all things, but they had a curious manner of explaining the
creation of man. "When God had made everything," they said, " He took a quantity of
arrows and fixed them in the earth, whence came man and women, who have
increased ever since." The sagamo said they believed in the existence of a God, a
son, a mother and a sun, that God was the greatest of the four, that the son
and the sun were both good, that the mother was a lesser person, and so was the
father, who was less bad.
The Indians were convinced that their deity had held communication with their
ancestors. One day five Indians ran towards the setting sun where they met
God, who asked them, "Where are you going?" "We are going to seek our life,"
they replied. Then God said, " You will find it here." But they did not hear the
divine word, and went away. Then God took a stone and touched two of them,
and they were immediately turned into stones. Addressing the three other
Indians, God asked the same question, "Where are you going?" and He was given the
same answer. "Do not go further," said the divine voice, "You will find your life
here." Seeing nothing, however, they continued their journey. Then God took
two sticks and touched two of them, and they at once turned into sticks. The
fifth Indian, however, paused, and God gave him some meat, which he ate, and
afterwards returned to his countrymen." | <urn:uuid:32537c44-6b90-4ee9-bb50-cd7c177bd4c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://listsearches.rootsweb.com/th/read/QUEBEC-RESEARCH/2004-08/1092588071 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988639 | 420 | 2.953125 | 3 |
"No public Twitter messages." — LiberalizeBankr
Slavery used to be done by force but then around 1860 someone had the revolutionary idea to replace the whip and chains with credit and debt to give the slaves the illusion of freedom, boosting productivity and output of the unaware masses. Slavery never ended, it just changed forms and incorporated all available in any race and nationality.
We completed a presentation explaining how bankruptcy works and creates continuous opportunity for the prudent in our society. Both parts are now complete, what happens when individuals go bankrupt and what happens when banks go bankrupt. We are very interested in having this made into a short film to help get the point across in a more entertaining manner.
It is impossible to return the time invested. Instead, we should instead allow graduates who can not find work to go bankrupt to get a fresh start. This will teach the education industry and the complicit mass media not to over-promise in the future.
We would like to get these laws changed so that students who graduate into a bad economy, no fault of their own, can start fresh. Many students were sold thru persuasive media and strong selling from private schools into taking loans they could never repay. Schools have been known to exaggerate the placement statistics to an unknowing public: | <urn:uuid:61f8d9bf-d7fc-4980-bcb3-76211f1b9462> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://liberalizebankruptcy.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955574 | 259 | 2.59375 | 3 |
American Board of Family Medicine
-- ABFM is the second largest medical specialty board in the United States. Founded in 1969, it is a voluntary, not-for-profit, private organization whose objective is to encourage excellence in medical care. Through its certification and recertification processes, ABFM seeks to provide patients the assurance that its certified family physicians have completed the necessary training/experience to provide quality care to the individual and the family and that this commitment to excellence is maintained throughout the physician's years of practice.
Association of Family Medicine Administration
-- Dedicated to the professional growth and development of its members with particular emphasis on administration and coordination of health care delivery, education and research within family practice residency programs.
Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors
-- AFMRD is dedicated to promoting excellence in family medicine graduate education in order to meet the health care needs of the American public. The Association represents family medicine residency program directors at a national level and promotes communication and cooperation between family medicine residency programs and other members of the family medicine area.
Family Medicine Residency Nurses Association
-- FMRNA is a professional organization dedicated to the enhancement of quality health care delivery, education, and research in family practice programs and to the recognition of nurse's contributions to the educational process.
-- Resources for family medicine researchers from the Academic Family Medicine Organizations (AFMO).
Society of Teachers of Family Medicine
-- Founded in 1967 to respond to the needs of family medicine educators, STFM has a membership of more than 5,000 teachers of family medicine. The administrative offices are housed with the AAFP in Leawood, Kansas, enhancing the close relationship between the two organizations.
World Organization of Family Doctors (Wonca)
-- Learn more about this world-wide partnership of family medicine organizations. | <urn:uuid:fc60f200-0ec3-4d6c-9e4e-c86ef5d854e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/aboutus/relatedsites/sisterorgs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948521 | 370 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Electronic medical records (EMR) are extremely useful tools and can help improve patient care and reduce costs — if designed and used properly. Unfortunately, good design is hard to come by in this market. Health IT data standards, privacy laws, and impenetrable health systems complicate an already challenging design process and usually lead to lackluster products.
One of the glaring problems is that it can be difficult for patients to gain access to their medical records. In an effort to combat this problem, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) developed a program called "Blue Button," a feature of VA EMRs that allows patients to download their results.
The program has been a huge success since its launch in August of 2010, with over 500,000 patients in the VA system using the service. The Blue Button functionality has since rolled out to Medicare patients and even private insurers like United Healthcare are in the process of implementing it.
Only one problem: Its output looks horrible.
Ryan Panchadsaram, a Presidential Innovation Fellow and former startup founder organized a competition with the goal of making Blue Button more than a tool for access, but one that would give patients actionable information, stat.
"We were inspired by the creativity of designers, their ability to take something that exists, transform it, and make it more valuable and usable," says Panchadsaram. "Our hope was to challenge some of the best across the country to take the simple text health record and create a better patient experience by improving the layout and applying a layer of visual design."
"We have assembled a showcase of the top entries that challenged the status quo for the entire health community to be inspired by and learn from," he explains. "Our next step is for the curators to select a final design (that may combine elements from various submissions) to be built and open sourced on the code-sharing site GitHub. Our objective is to build the Bootstrap for the patient health record. With these tools, electronic health record software companies across the country should be able to integrate the final design into their products and contribute to the open-source project."
The competition had four goals:
Improve the visual layout and style of the information from the medical record
Create a human-centered design that makes it easier for patient to manage their health
Enable health professionals to more effectively understand and use patients' health information
Help family members and friends care for their loved ones
In the end, 230 individuals and groups responded, and were evaluated by design experts from the government and design worlds, including renowned pixel surgeon Nicholas Felton.
Even though the designers worked independently, certain themes carried through many of the winning entries. iPhone and iPad apps were seen as natural evolution of EMRs even though few exist today. Overall health "scores" presented as a number inside of a circle were also popular, as well as including photos of the patients and their caregivers, a design feature common in social services, but almost unheard of in EMRs. Designers can't replace doctors, but they have produced a clear prescription for better tools.
These eight selections are some of the winners and cooler entries from the contest.
Design: Amy Guterman, Stephen Menton, Defne Civelekoglu, Kunal Bhat, Amy Seng, and Justin Rheinfrank from gravitytank
Nightingale isn't just a record, but an action plan and comprehensive dashboard that stores results from the past, gives patients actionable information in the present (e.g., a medication schedule), and provides a view into future doctor appointments and activities. The application is dynamic and chock full of interactive data visualizations that manage to be understandable and highly personalized for each patient. This project was selected as the overall winner and is worth looking at as an aspirational model of what EMRs could become.
Joseph Flaherty writes about design, DIY, and the intersection of physical and digital products. He designs award-winning medical devices and apps for smartphones at AgaMatrix, including the first FDA-cleared medical device that connects to the iPhone. | <urn:uuid:6424978f-2837-40c1-bcb8-07ef88a9a6e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wired.com/design/2013/01/medical-record-redesign/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966738 | 837 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Well preserved remains of Shakespeare's original "wooden O" stage, the Curtain theatre where Henry V and Romeo and Juliet were first performed, have been discovered in a yard in east London.
The Curtain theatre in Shoreditch preceded the Globe on the Thames, showcasing several of Shakespeare's most famous plays. But it was dismantled in the 17th century and its precise location lost.
Now part of the gravelled yard in Shoreditch where the groundlings stood, ate, gossiped and watched the plays, and foundation walls on which the tiers of wooden galleries were built have been uncovered in what was open ground for 500 years while the surrounding district became one of the most densely built in London.
Experts from Museum of London Archaeology (MoLA) have found two sections of exterior wall, crucial for giving the dimensions of the theatre, and are confident of revealing more as the site is cleared for redevelopment. An outer yard paved with sheep knuckle bones could date from the theatre or slightly later housing.
It has long been known that the Curtain – named after the ancient road it fronted – was in the area, but its exact site was lost after the building fell into disuse in the late 1620s. The site in Hewett Street is only a stone's throw from a remarkably accurate plaque marking the best guess for its location. The Curtain, built in 1577, was only a few hundred yards from another theatre further along Curtain Road, imaginatively named the Theatre, whose foundations were discovered in 2008, also by MoLA. Both were among the earliest purpose-built theatres in London, and intimately connected with Shakespeare.
When the actor-manager James Burbage fell out with his landlord at the Theatre, the company – according to cherished theatre legend – dismantled the timbers overnight and shipped them across the river to build his most famous theatre, the Globe, on Bankside.
Until the new theatre was ready, his company used the Curtain for at least two years from 1597, where Henry V, and it is believed Romeo and Juliet, were first staged. The vivid image of a theatre as a wooden O comes from the prologue to Henry V: "Can this Cock-Pit hold within this Woodden O, the very Caskes that did affright the Ayre at Agincourt?"
Rumours of the rediscovery of the Curtain have caused great excitement in the Shakespearian community, in the middle of the summer-long international festival devoted to his work. Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of the reconstructed Globe, described the discovery as "hugely exciting".
"I love the fact that we are excavating London, and slowly clearing away the miserable piles of Victoriana and Empire, and revealing the wild, anarchic and joyous London which is lurking beneath. It reminds me of the Zocalo in Mexico City, where all the Spanish palaces are slowly sinking into the earth, and the old Mayan temples are being squeezed back up."
Michael Boyd, director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, said: "It is inspiring that the Museum of London has unearthed the foundations of the Curtain Theatre. I look forward to touching the mud and stone, if not wood, and feeling the presence of that space where Shakespeare's early work, including the histories, made such a lasting impact."
The site is part of a large block owned by a development company, Plough Yard Developments, which plans to incorporate the remains as public open space into a proposed mixed office, retail and residential development, now going for outline planning permission. Therese Bak, of the architects Pringle Brandon Drew, said they were thrilled by the discovery, and hope to incorporate a performance and exhibition space in the new buildings.
The only contemporary illustration, showing a tower-like building flying a flag, thought to be the Curtain in 1600, is an implausibly idyllic scene with a horse crossing green meadows and a charming wooded hill in the background. In reality the site is flat as a pancake, and by 1600 it was a lawless and fairly noisome district just outside the City limits, with slaughter houses and tanneries, and the now buried river Walbrook an open sewer and rubbish dump.
Chris Thomas of MoLA, who led the excavation, said the remains were remarkably well preserved, probably because for centuries they remained under open space as the theatre fell out of use and was redeveloped as housing, becoming back gardens, a pub yard – the entrance was probably where the small Victorian pub, the Horse and Groom, a listed building which will be retained, now stands – and then a garage with an inspection pit which, unknown to its builders, almost laid bare the Tudor foundations.
The site has already yielded bits of broken clay pipe, which could date from the theatre, and fragments of later china and wall tiles, but Thomas is confident of finding artefacts as more of the site is uncovered.
"On other Tudor theatres we've found quantities of little pottery money boxes, which the punters put the price of admission into on the way in, which were then smashed at the back of the theatre to get the takings – I'm sure some from the Curtain are still there, just waiting for us to find them."
• This article was amended on 6 June 2012 to correct the spelling of Dominic Dromgoole's surname. It was further amended on 7 June 2012 to remove a reference to the Curtain being Shakespeare's first venue. | <urn:uuid:bcf8e13c-6d58-42f0-9949-b614a4c55593> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/jun/06/shakespeare-curtain-theatre-shoreditch-east-lonfon?CMP=twt_gu | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97694 | 1,132 | 2.75 | 3 |
Pete, a 14-year-old member of a freshmen track team, wonders why he is so much scrawnier than the other boys. According to his coach, it's because he hasn't hit puberty yet. "It's not just how old you are, kids develop at different time," coach Douglas reassures him. Pete's teammate Bill is equally clueless about growing up, as shown in this exchange between him and a more developed boy:
Older boy: Hey, you know something? I had a wet dream last night.
Bill: Wet dream? What's that?
Lucky for the boys, coach Douglas has some free time before practice to explain all the aspects of adulthood, from shaving to dating, and (one day) impregnating girls.
Watch more instructional films
This article available online at: | <urn:uuid:59df3cb5-a38c-4bd1-909d-dde5602cb31e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theatlantic.com/national/print/2011/07/as-boys-grow-a-lesson-in-puberty-from-1957/241834/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973591 | 170 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Since ancient times, models have been an essential tool for all artists depicting the human figure. This November, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art
opens a fascinating exhibition on the role of the artists model, demonstrating the range of bodies that have fueled artistic creativity from the Renaissance to the present. The exhibition showcases more than 50 works from the RISD Museums esteemed collection of prints, drawings, and photographs, including several recent acquisitions never before on view. Organized by Crawford Alexander Mann III., the Museums Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow, Changing Poses: The Artists Model runs from Nov. 12, 2010 to June 5, 2011.
The exhibition begins with a remarkable group of figure drawings created in the first art schools in Italy and France, including the delicate and beautiful Two Male Nudes (1710) by Louis Boullogne the Younger. Certain period-specific themes and trends come through in the exhibition: the focus on the male nude within early art schools, the interest in costume in the 19th century as a signifier of cultural or class identity, the prevalence of the eroticized female body in modern art, and the recent dialogue between the worlds of high art and fashion advertising. Changing Poses concludes with a selection of contemporary works in which models are employed as actors staged in elaborate installations.
Changing Poses shows that the working relationships between artists and models are continually evolving while also responding to the past. At various circumstances, an artists model could be female or male, amateur or professional, anonymous or intimately known, and of any age, body type, ethnicity, or class. Visitors will find pieces by Rembrandt, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol, as well as lesser-known figures.
This exhibition asks questions about how the model was used in each work of art, says Mann. For example, The RISD Museums John Singer Sargent drawings give visual evidence of the artists process for creating complex multi-figure murals. Sargent choreographed his models like dancers, repeatedly shifting and adjusting their positions while he quickly made large and striking charcoal drawings of each pose.
Changing Poses: The Artists Model presents outstanding works from The RISD Museums collection alongside a generous loan from the Annmary Brown Memorial at Brown University: the painting Zeuxis Selecting Models for His Painting of Helen of Troy (ca. 1770s) by Angelica Kauffmann. As a female artist in the 18th century, Kauffmann faced many professional challenges, including exclusion from life-drawing classes at the Royal Academy in London. This painting testifies to the skill she attained despite these obstacles, and also subtly critiques the male-dominated world of Neoclassical art.
Changing Poses is a perfect RISD exhibition. To this day, art students, including those at RISD, work from living models. This selection of works from the Museum collection illuminates these dynamic relationships and the art they inspired," says Ann Woolsey, Interim Director of the RISD Museum of Art. | <urn:uuid:d9dcafcb-6ea8-495d-a1ad-477e2c99b2c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=42508&int_modo=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949785 | 627 | 2.4375 | 2 |
If you're a fan of jazz music, perhaps you have already heard the relaxing music of Hiroshima, a renowned outfit known
for their incredible instrumental tunes. Hiroshima has been burning up the jazz music scene for several decades, with their
modern sound combining musical elements of the Eastern world with those of the Western. If you haven't yet seen Hiroshima
perform live on stage, check out concert tickets to upcoming shows and
come see why the outfit has been so popular over the last several years.
Just by looking at their name, you can tell that Hiroshima isn't your ordinary jazz group. This unique band has been together
since the seventies, making music that mixes smooth jazz with traditional Japanese folk music. In time, they've developed
their sound further, relying more on their "eastern" sound. Hiroshima is a one-of-a-kind outfit that collects fans by the
hundreds for each and every live performance, and they will soon be making their way to a venue near you at upcoming tour
dates. Don't miss out on getting tickets to an upcoming show!
Hiroshima is a renowned worldly jazz band that formed in 1979, with its name referring to the Japanese city subjected to
an atomic bombing during World War II. Several of the band's members are directly descended from those held in Japanese internment
camps during the war. The band has released more than a dozen albums during its time together, and its popularity seems to
be on the rise. Check out tickets today to upcoming Hiroshima shows and get ready to be wowed by this original jazz outfit.
If you're a big fan of jazz music and want to attend an upcoming live show that combines elements of jazz with more depth
in other genres as well, Hiroshima is your go-to band! Hiroshima will soon be heading to a venue near you, bringing their
big hits to the stage and entertaining fans all over the country. Check out tickets to upcoming shows and come see Hiroshima
perform live on stage! The band will be bringing their big jazz hits to a venue near you at upcoming performances, and you
won't want to miss out on the show!
Jazz music tickets
are some of the biggest sellers on StubHub, and they're guaranteed to be in high demand when the outfit Hiroshima comes to
the big stage. Hiroshima tickets are sure to sell out quickly to the most anticipated upcoming shows, and you can be part
of the action when you get tickets to see them live on stage. Get tickets today and come hear some soothing jazz music when
Hiroshima comes to town. Tickets are guaranteed to be big sellers, so get yours today at StubHub and reserve your seat in
the audience to see Hiroshima perform live at an upcoming concert. Hiroshima is an absolute must-see group when they perform
live, so get tickets now and prepare to be amazed by the jazz music of this superband! | <urn:uuid:1a47a2ff-513e-44bc-9c57-7e1b7b5c713e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stubhub.com/hiroshima-tickets/ | 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 | 0.959035 | 598 | 1.5 | 2 |
Manganese: the essentials
Manganese metal is gray-white, resembling iron, but is harder and very brittle. The metal is reactive chemically, and decomposes cold water slowly. Manganese is widely distributed throughout the animal kingdom. It is an important trace element and may be essential for utilisation of vitamin B. Manganese is present in quantity the floor of oceans. It is an important component of steel.
Manganese: historical information
Manganese metal was isolated by Gahn in 1774. He reduced the dioxide (MnO2, as the mineral pyrolusite) with charcoal (essentially carbon) by heating and the result was a sample of the metal manganese.
Manganese: physical properties
Manganese: orbital properties
Isolation: it is not normally necessary to make manganese in the laboratory as it is available commercially. Nearly all manganese produced commercially is used in the steel industry as ferromanganese. This made by the reduction of iron oxide, Fe2O3, and managanese dioxide, MnO2, in appropriate proportions with carbon (as coke) in a blast furnace. Pure manganese is available through the electrolysis of manganese sulphate, MnSO4,
WebElements now has a WebElements shop at which you can buy periodic table posters, mugs, T-shirts, games, molecular models, and more. | <urn:uuid:a38039a2-ffe5-4426-ad69-76a7a6e6b328> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webelements.com/manganese/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930077 | 299 | 3.609375 | 4 |
How Long Does Bankruptcy Take
Most people dread to hear the word bankruptcy, and for good reason. To even consider the notion of filing for either Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection is to admit that one's personal finances have become unmanageable. At least, that is how the popular prejudice goes. In reality, while bankruptcy leaves a big black mark on the credit report of the debtor, it is sometimes the only way to get out of debt. How long does bankruptcy take? That depends on the type of bankruptcy filed, and what the particular circumstances of the debtor are.
How Long Does Bankruptcy Take For Chapter 7 Cases?
Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection is the down-and-dirty method of filing for bankruptcy. Under chapter 7, all non-exempt property and assets and seized and liquidated in order to repay creditors. All exempt property is retained by the debtor. If there are any remaining debts left after all non-exempt property and assets have been liquidate, those debts are discharged, which means the debtor is relieved of the obligation to repay them.
Chapter 7 usually takes around two to three months to completely finish, depending on the individual circumstances of the debtor. It begins with the debtor filing a petition requiring that their debts be discharged under Chapter 7 of Title 11 of the United States Code. The actual court hearing usually takes less than ten minutes. After the hearing, the debtor will receive a notice in the mail from the court notifying them of the discharge.
How Long Does Bankruptcy Take For Chapter 13 Cases?
Until 2005, it was fairly easy to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. Then the United States Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which made it harder to file for Chapter 7 and converted most Chapter 7 cases to Chapter 13 cases. Under Chapter 13, the debts are not discharged but instead the debtor files a repayment plan with the bankruptcy court for their district. Under this plan, the debtor agrees to repay the debt over a period of time.
Chapter 13, like Chapter 7, begins with the debtor filing a petition with the bankruptcy court. About fifteen to thirty days after this petition is filed, the debtor will receive a notice informing them of the date of their hearing. The hearing usually takes about a half-hour or so. After the hearing, the debtor will receive a notice that the repayment plan has been authorized within another fifteen or thirty days.For more information about bankruptcy, visit www.uscourts.gov.
Recently Posted Related Articles
Most Popular Related Articles | <urn:uuid:90013631-36b2-4f1a-b234-ff6e05ecc372> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mergemedia.com/finance/bankruptcy/how_long_does_bankruptcy_take.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938964 | 516 | 1.953125 | 2 |
How to Prevent Trail Closures|
Thursday, April 01, 1999
Prevention is Best
Diffuse the build-up of pressures over potential closures before the crisis stage is reached. Face the issue squarely and plan appropriate early response.
- Start weekend patrols to warn irresponsible riders that they are hurting everyone.
- Start a safe and responsible mountain bike riding program (with shops, clubs, or schools).
- Have local bicycle dealers distribute IMBA's "Rules of the Trail" and explain to their customers why trail etiquette matters.
- Get involved with land and trail management.
- Develop a long-term reputation for caring about the environment.
- Foster the idea that dirt trails are not necessarily a public right of way for bikes; riding on dirt is a privilege.
- Learn who controls the dirt access where you ride, and volunteer with groups to do trail maintenance.
Respect Other Trail Users
- Show a maximum of trail courtesy and respect to all trail users. We're all members of the trail family enjoying the quiet and natural beauty of the backcountry. We must learn to share.
- Take the time to set a good example. Stop, dismount, and talk with other trail users. Our motivations are no different than those of other users regardless of mode of travel.
- Show concern for a clean, quiet backcountry experience. Keep trails as natural as possible.
- Show that you understand other trail user's fears, needs, and desires.
- Get a group together to further your interests and establish regular meeting times and places.
- Develop a consensus on appropriate places to ride and what is best for all concerned.
- Communicate your concerns to other user groups and land managers. Learn about and use the political process.
- Develop appropriate education/training programs to increase public awareness and support.
- Adopt a trail and do other volunteer work.
- Support IMBA and other conservation organizations. Find out what is working in other areas to provide or continue land access.
- Don't become discouraged or bitter; democracy is sometimes slow, but persistence and a cooperative attitude will eventually pay off.
- Develop ways to share and maintain scarce resources. Show you care by actions as well as words.
In Case of Imminent Crisis
- Identify decision makers who will decide the outcome of the issue. Find out where and when public hearings will be. Develop a plan and work with it. Take action!!
- Establish criteria for decisions:
- If public safety is the problem, push for educational barricades and safety patrols.
- If user input is wanted, do an analysis of trail users.
- If affected voters must be mobilized, circulate a petition and begin a letter-writing campaign.
- If there is a broad base of trail users, form a coalition with other user-groups to help in trail maintenance. Volunteer together for projects.
- Ask decision makers if you and others can present oral and written testimony. If necessary, ask for a delay in hearings to gain time to take the actions above.
- Mobilize your groups or organization. Hold meetings, attend hearings, provide information, etc.
- Get those with an economic interest to back you: bike shops, resorts, tourist groups, newspapers, local businesses, etc. Let IMBA and other groups know what is happening.
- Show respect and develop a responsible reputation. Learn from the process so that if you don't get what you want the first time, you will be better prepared in the future. | <urn:uuid:ce416bcb-b108-4861-99ce-d08796ea4847> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dirtworld.com/Trails/TrailStory.asp?id=36 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916292 | 722 | 3.015625 | 3 |
In July 2007 the Queensland Government introduced the graduated licensing system to reduce fatalities on our roads, particularly among young motorists.
Young drivers aged 17–24 years of age are twice as likely to be involved in fatal crashes than drivers aged between 25–59 years of age. That's why the Queensland Government introduced new laws to change the licensing system for young drivers.
The changes that have been introduced since July 2007 include:
- The minimum learner age was lowered to 16 years of age and the learner licence period was extended to a minimum period of one year.
- Learner drivers under 25 years of age must gain 100 hours of certified supervised driving experience recorded in a learner logbook before being eligible to apply for a provisional licence. Note: Learner drivers and their supervisors may choose to use the online electronic logbook* system that has been developed by RACQ to record the required 100 hours driving experience.
- Mobile phone use, including hands-free, blue-tooth accessories and loud-speaker functions, has been restricted for learner and P1 licence holders under 25 years of age.
- Supervisors and passengers of learner drivers under 25 years of age cannot use a phone that is on loudspeaker but can use a hand held or hands-free mobile phone where only a one-way conversation can occur and not distract the driver.
- To be eligible to apply for a motorbike learner licence, you must have held a provisional or open licence of another class for at least one year in the last five years.
- A two-phased P1 and P2 licence system has been introduced.
- L-plates (a black L on a yellow background) and P-plates (a red P-plate for P1 and green P-plate for P2) are now compulsory.
- Peer passenger restrictions were introduced – P1 provisional licence holders under 25 years of age can only carry one passenger aged under 21 years between 11pm and 5am.
- High-powered vehicles are restricted for provisional drivers under 25 years of age.
- Drivers must pass a hazard perception test to progress from a P1 to a P2 or open licence (dependant on age).
- Restrictions, such as no late night driving, have been introduced for disqualified and suspended young drivers.
Instructions for getting a licence (from learner to open), and advice for supervising a learner driver are included in this website.
Please contact us for more information about licensing laws and regulations.
*The content found by using this link is not created, controlled or approved by this department. No responsibility is taken for the consequences of viewing content on this site. This link will load into a new window. | <urn:uuid:1f9fa17b-3fac-487f-8d9b-95a5459600a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tmr.qld.gov.au/Licensing/Learning-to-drive/Young-drivers.aspx | 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 | 0.951953 | 559 | 2.078125 | 2 |
I have an abiding interest in robots and the role they play in our future. I am also a keen observer of where journalism is going. As it happens, the two domains are intersecting.
Robotic journalist conducting interview. Pic source: Singularity Hub, Charlie Catlett
Researchers at the Intelligent Systems Informatics Lab (ISI) at Tokyo University have developed a journalist robot that can autonomously explore its environment and report what it finds. The robot detects changes in its surroundings, decides if they are relevant, and then takes pictures with its on board camera. It can query nearby people for information, and it uses internet searches to further round out its understanding. If something appears newsworthy, the robot will even write a short article and publish it to the web.
I’m in the process of developing completely automated sports content, which will take the form of blogs. I’m not talking just a “stat of the day” or game recaps, but a lot more. I’ve identified 21 different types of sports stories that can be automated. You could say I’m trying to make the process of writing a sports blog so easy you don’t have to do anything at all. My goal for these blogs in version 1.0 is that at least 90% of the readers think the content was created by a human. One of the nice attributes of algorithmic content is that it can be improved over time. A blogger/writer’s internal script is pretty much set. They generally don’t change or improve the quality or comprehensiveness of their content over time in a significant way, but algorithms can be upgraded continuously. The “voice” of the content can be improved.
While we love the personalities (?!) of our newsreaders, when we have computer-generated newsreaders then they can create an entire program without a tantrum. Northwestern University’s News at Seven program does the job:
News At Seven is a system that automatically generates a virtual news show. Totally autonomous, it collects, parses, edits and organizes news stories and then passes the formatted content to artificial anchors for presentation. Using the resources present on the web, the system goes beyond the straight text of the news stories to also retrieve relevant images and blogs with commentary on the topics to be presented.
Once it has assembled and edited its material, News At Seven presents the content to its audience using avatars and text-to-speech (TTS) technology in a manner similar to the nightly news watched regularly by millions of Americans. The result is a cohesive, compelling performance that successfully combines techniques of modern news programming with features made by possible only by the fact that the system is, at its core, completely virtual.
Just joking. But as in every domain, the automation of tasks forces us to do what only people can, ultimately making us more human. But as the border moves, it will definitely change the shape of journalism. | <urn:uuid:78b133f4-d9e0-4957-af00-6aa4f7db3a12> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2010/04/the_rise_of_rob.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941626 | 611 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Our Top Stories
Weekly Address: The End of Combat Operations in Iraq
06:00 AM EDT
With the end of combat operations in Iraq days ahead, the President salutes our troops for their service and pledges to fulfill America’s commitment to them as veterans. 90,000 troops have left Iraq since the President came into office, and by the end of next year even the troops taking part in the non-combat mission will be home. The administration is upholding the sacred trust with our veterans by building a 21st century VA, making it easier for veterans with PTSD to receive the benefits they need, funding and implementing a Post-9/11 GI Bill, and devoting new resources to job training and placement to help those veterans looking for work in a tough economy.
- Join the President, Dr. Jill Biden, and even Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints in saluting our troops for their service. | <urn:uuid:f44e1c4a-af7d-4b5c-ab09-80cd7331464b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/08/28/weekly-address-end-combat-iraq | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946758 | 187 | 1.710938 | 2 |
LAW OF THE LAND Spielberg’s latest chronicles Lincoln’s hook-or-crook campaign to pass the 13th Amendment.
This was always going to be a significant film. Its central character, after all, is among the most mythologized human beings who ever lived. Its director is responsible for some of the biggest, most popular movies ever made. And its star is arguably the finest actor on the face of the earth. By no means, though, was Lincoln guaranteed to be a great film. I’m happy to say it is.
And not necessarily for the lofty reasons a lot of reviews have suggested. Critics sometimes overintellectualize, and I’ve read reviews of this movie that left the impression one would practically need an advanced degree in history or political science to properly appreciate its subject matter. Nothing could be further from the truth.
While Steven Spielberg’s latest portrays an extraordinary man contending with extraordinary circumstances, it’s very much a story about politics as usual. The term “gridlock” might not yet have been coined in the mid-1860s, but the phenomenon was already very much a fact of life on Capitol Hill.
Inspired by Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 bestseller Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Spielberg’s remarkable movie isn’t a biopic in the traditional sense. Rather than recount the events of its subject’s life, the picture conveys his essence through a brilliant delineation of a single pivotal chapter — his improbable campaign to outlaw slavery forever by shoving the 13th Amendment down the throat of an uncooperative Congress.
We’re accustomed to the cliché of a solemn, brooding Lincoln, so one of the film’s revelations is just how much fun he had being the 16th president of the United States. Daniel Day-Lewis is almost otherworldly in the role. He doesn’t so much play the great man as channel him, and the actor makes a point of putting Lincoln’s fondness for mischief and humor at the forefront of his interpretation.
The Lincoln we meet here isn’t merely capable of telling folksy stories and salty jokes, however. He’s capable of bending rules, even breaking laws to get the job done. For every public display of impassioned oratory, we witness a dozen deals and countless bribes. In the hands of screenwriter Tony Kushner — a Pulitzer-winning playwright — the race to pass the bill before the Civil War draws to a close (so the Confederate states won’t be able to vote against it) becomes a thing of back-room beauty. Never before in American cinema have politics and poetry combined to make such spellbinding bedfellows.
The film comes close to flawlessness. Complementing the immensely magnetic performance by Day-Lewis and Kushner’s exceptional script are Janusz Kaminski’s beautifully muted camerawork and Rick Carter’s production design, which conjures a rough-hewn Washington still only a step or two up from a frontier town.
Lincoln also has more fabulous supporting turns than you can shake a stovepipe hat at. They include Tommy Lee Jones at his most cantankerous as abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens; David Strathairn as William Seward, Lincoln’s secretary of state and enforcer; and James Spader having a high time playing a mustachioed scoundrel hired to buy votes for the bill — along with others too numerous to list.
But you can’t review this movie and not give particular consideration to the most curious, controversial member of its cast. Sally Field was either going to be an inspiration or a total disaster in the role of Mary Todd Lincoln, and I’m sort of shocked to report she pulls it off. I can’t imagine the film working nearly as well without her. Field is utterly convincing as a woman who’s smart, tough and haunted equally by the memory of her deceased son and the sense that the man she married is not entirely of this world. | <urn:uuid:36a539d5-7749-447a-8966-238a0a850fa8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.7dvt.com/2012lincoln | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947834 | 856 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Question: If I want to get my chemotherapy treatment at a community hospital or doctor's office, would I have the same options as I would have at a cancer center?
Answer: Most treatments, including chemotherapy or hormone therapy, can be given in the community, particularly if it's standard of care. Convenience and access to care is extremely important.
Cancer centers do have access to new things, to investigational therapies, that might not be available in the community. Also, some communities only have a part time oncologist; a medical oncologist specializing in cancer care -- and they may come only once a week. And then internists, who are not necessarily specializing in oncology, might then cover the practice. It's what you have to be comfortable with.
Cancer centers also may have state of the art new equipment, the newest research and the newest drugs. Also one of the important things that cancer centers can provide is a team of doctors that specialize in the care of breast cancer patients, and so they are used to working together and providing a comprehensive review of your situation. Many patients come to cancer centers for a second opinion to decide whether their treatment options have been fully explored. | <urn:uuid:107e1791-621b-4272-977c-b4ea4be8766b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abcnews.go.com/Health/OnCallPlusTreatment/chemotherapy-community-hospital-doctors-office-options-cancer-center/story?id=3644818 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958496 | 246 | 1.8125 | 2 |
In a previous post, I showed a very brief intro to using an application level event aggregator in WinJS. At the end of that post, I hinted at an option I was looking in to for creating localized event aggregators – basically, objects that can be observed. It turns out the path I was heading down was right, and it’s super simple to implement an evented object in WinJS.
A Brief Detour: WinJS “Class”
Before I show you how to create an evented object in WinJS, you need to know how to create a “class” in WinJS. This is done by passing a constructor function and/or a list of methods as an object literal in to a WinJS.Class.define API:
There are two other methods on the WinJS.Class object, which are also useful but not important to this blog post.
But moving on…
Making An Object Evented
Now that we know how to build a “class” in WinJS, we can very easily add an implementation of the observer pattern to the object, allowing it to trigger events that other objects can listen to.
Here’s how you do that, using WinJS.Utilities.eventMixin:
Yes, it’s that easy. One line of code, and you’re done. This object is now capable of triggering events and having those events listened to, which gives us everything we need to either create a dedicated event aggregator or just have our objects trigger events to facilitate workflow or other event-driven features of our app.
Triggering, Handling, and Removing Event Handlers
Triggering and handling events in an eventMixin object is a little different than in the WinJS.Application, but should be familiar to anyone that has done DOM events, jQuery events or Backbone events.
To trigger an event, call the “dispatchEvent” method and pass the name of the event as the first parameter, with the event arguments as the second parameter.
To handle an event triggered by another object, call the “addEventListener” method and tell it what event you want to listen to, then provide a callback function that receives the event arguments.
Lastly, event handlers can be removed via a call to the “removeEventListener” method.
(You may have noticed the “useCapture” parameter in the documentation for both the addEventListener and removeEventListener methods. I have no idea what this does.)
One last tip with event aggregators and evented objects: You are responsible for memory management with observable / evented objects. While this may not play out the same way that C++ forces you to allocate / deallocate memory, it’s still very true. If you allow a function to be triggered by an event, and that function is a method, then the object that holds a reference to the method runs the risk of becoming a memory leak.
Fortunately the solution to this is easy: remove your event bindings when you’re done with them.
Just remember: it’s your responsibility as a developer to understand that this is the nature of the observer pattern and references. And just because you’re running a managed / garbage collected language, doesn’t mean you can’t create memory leaks and zombies.
Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress. | <urn:uuid:9c52a00f-faf9-413a-8dbe-9418f14ba955> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2012/07/31/winjs-event-aggregators-and-observableevented-objects/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923167 | 717 | 2.125 | 2 |
Part of NASA's mission is to inspire the next generation of explorers and Dryden helped support that goal on Sept. 26 at the 17th Annual Salute to Youth in Palmdale.
More than 2,500 Antelope Valley high school students were bused to an aircraft hangar across from the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility at Air Force Plant 42. They were introduced to a variety of educational and career possibilities, including those at NASA, local aerospace companies, banks, colleges, businesses, military branches and other government employers.
The event was sponsored by the Regional Occupational Program of the Antelope Valley Union High School district and hosted by the Los Angeles World Airports/Palmdale Regional Airport. Other participants included the U.S. Air Force, the cities of Palmdale and Lancaster and numerous Antelope Valley and Southern California-based businesses, government agencies and community service organizations.
"I learned that there are jobs at NASA other than just engineers," said Phylicia Bias, a Quartz Hill High School senior.
That's what the event was all about from Dryden's perspective - offering students a look at potential careers with NASA, said Dryden public affairs specialist Leslie Williams.
"We wanted to help students understand that they too could work for NASA one day - as a pilot, or in different fields of work at the agency ranging from engineering to management," she said.
To those ends, a number of people in different positions at the center were on hand to meet and talk with students. Among them were structures engineer Kia Davidson; operations engineers Michael Holtz and Ryan Lefkofsky; life-support technician Jim Sokolik; test information engineer Jessica Lux; flight surgeon Gregg Bendrick; videographer Lori Losey and photographer Carla Thomas. Students also learned about programs available through which they can find out first-hand about employment at NASA.
The event was about new experiences and broadening students' thinking about their potential futures. In that respect, the Dryden exhibit was a hit for Boron High School junior Eric Sigman, who had never flown an aircraft simulator.
"It was awesome. Landing was the hardest part and taking off and flying over areas I'm familiar with was the most fun," said Sigman, adding that he doesn't know whether he will seek an aerospace career, but he does know that NASA interests him.
Dryden's Nelson Brown, an aerospace engineer, helped coordinate and develop the F-16XL simulator facsimile Sigman flew from salvaged surplus equipment and a commercially available flight simulator software program. He wanted students to have an experience they could take with them from the exhibit.
"It's reasonably easy to learn and manage the F-16XL [simulator]. I like to do this kind of stuff; it gets me excited about my job," Brown said, admitting he also likes to fly the sim. "It gives people a feel for what it's like to sit in an aircraft."
Also on display was the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy aircraft, the X-45A, which was flown at Dryden, and an F/A-18 aircraft used to chase flight research missions.
For Lorna Lizotte, director of operations for the AERO - Aerospace Education Research and Operations - Institute, the idea was showing students they could find challenging careers close to home.
"We wanted to offer exposure to aerospace careers and operations in the Antelope Valley we could tap into to build a workforce," she said. "We're interested in getting kids engaged and keeping them here."
Regardless of what students choose as a future career, the experience at the Salute to Youth event presented possibilities they might not have considered before attending the event.
By Jay Levine | <urn:uuid:bc447a12-6578-4acb-a26a-9ad8ccd8c495> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/X-Press/salute_spotlight.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9755 | 767 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Dressmaking is an amazing and somewhat forgotten skill that allows people to showcase their individuality and their personality. If you have this skill - it can be an excellent money saving option too - when you spot a designer item on a catwalk - you can make a version fitted for yourself!
As a consumer - why not avoid the highstreet shops for once - and try a local dressmaker - you will be surprised at what is available and what you can get for your money. Movie stars and famous people lead the trend of employing dressmakers to make they look special on the red carpet. They apprecaite the impact of having a unique and individually designed outfit compared to shop bought outfits.
How about your current wardrobe - is it full of clothes you no longer wear? Not as stylish as they once wear? No longer fit? Lightly worn? Think about recycling! Bring your favourite items to a dress maker and discuss what you would like - soon you could be wearing an amazingly unique creation and save some money too!
You can have fun too - delight your children with something special, unique and fun - how about these one off costumes. As a parent - we are always challenged to ensure our children's imaginations are feed - a fancy dress costume is an excellent way to do this and have great fun too! Talk to a dress maker about some options - just remember the outfit must be comfortable and easy to move in. No pins or sharp objects should be used - and ideally the outfit is lightweight, so not too heavy or warm. Do you know someone would would love one of these?
Above is an amazing "Twirl" dress - as much fun as it is fashion. No need to dress in boring colours or styles when you use a dressmaker to create wonderful clothes for you and your family.
What you will need to try dressmaking -
Sewing Tools - Sewing Machine, Tape Measure, Scissors, Pencil and Ruler are a good start.
Patterns - which vary in level from beginner to expert
Fabric - depending on what you want - there are animal fibres (wool and silk), plant fibres (cotton and linen) or man made fibres (nylon). Depending on what your concept is - different material will be needed for each pattern.
A Eye for Style - what is best for you - patterns, or plain colours? Lightweight or medium fabric? A good fabric shop can help and advice you here.
We already have some amazing skilled dressmakers listed on ProfileTree. Are you listed - do you know someone who is an amazing dressmaker? Tell me about us so they can add their skills! A special thanks to the wonderful website's ModernKiddo and IMakeIt.YouWearIt where we were lucky enough to borrow these photographs from. | <urn:uuid:c631d6e0-4551-4fc5-acc3-1ef04ee52c97> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.profiletree.com/blogs/dressmaking-tips-how-to-start-offering-your-service | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95023 | 574 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Despite the damage from Hurricane Sandy, 146,000 jobs were added to the economy in November, according to figures from the Labor Department released on Friday morning.
The unemployment rate of 7.7 percent is the lowest since December 2008, according to the Associated Press, and down from October's 7.9 percent unemployment. Twelve million people remain unemployed.
The Department of Labor reports that the number of people unemployed for 27 weeks or more “was little changed at 4.8 million."
The November unemployment rate for Connecticut will not be available for two more weeks. In October the state saw its unemployment rate rise to 9 percent for the third time this year.
The full national jobs report can be viewed on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ website. | <urn:uuid:e3422fb4-d6b6-4579-8cdf-c7b42c6f6d52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://brookfield.patch.com/groups/business-news/p/national-unemployment-down-to-77-percent-e1ed7e3d | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955638 | 152 | 1.945313 | 2 |
- Q How does the sacral nerve affect bladder control?
Dr. May Wakamatsu, Obstetrics & GynecologyWithout your awareness, there is a constant loop of communication between your bladder and one of your lower spinal nerves (the third sacral nerve). About six times per second, the sacral nerve sends an impulse to the bladder to remind it "don't... Full Answer
- Q How is overactive bladder diagnosed?
In the diagnosis of overactive bladder, the doctor may start by asking you about your symptoms and medical history. You may then have a physical exam with attention to your genital region and abdomen. You may have to give a urine sample which can be... Full Answer | <urn:uuid:3f390142-436d-4f3e-ad33-6847d487e088> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sharecare.com/health/overactive-bladder/page/4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938162 | 143 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Posted in Appetizer, Dairy, Shavuot, tagged appetizer, bread, Brie, Brie in Bread, Cheese, Dairy, Father's Day, Melted Brie, Shavuot on June 19, 2011 |
4 Comments »
When I was growing up, Sunday was my father’s day to cook. The menu never varied, it was always broiled steaks and lamb chops, a salad, and home-made french fries. My father prided himself on knowing his way around a kitchen. He would peel and cut the fries in a particular way, preferring a thick cut fry. He used a stainless steel pan filled with oil and would fry the potatoes in batches until they were golden brown. My father was unusual in that European men of that generation didn’t typically spend time in the kitchen cooking. I didn’t realize it at the time but he was modeling a behavior that my children noticed. They grew up around a grandfather and a father who both devoted lots of time in the kitchen, cooking for their families. What a nice legacy to have inherited. My children all know how to cook but I hope that my sons continue this particular tradition and one day cook for their own wives and children. In the meantime, to all the fathers and grandfathers, and especially to my father-in-law, wishing you a Happy Father’s Day!!
Norm loves to bake so after making this French Boule, we used it to make a family favorite, Brie En Croute. We prefer this version as opposed to using puff pastry.
Brie en Croute
1 small French Bread
1 stick sweet butter, melted
3 0r 4 cloves of garlic, minced
16 oz. of Brie
Carefully hollow out center of bread, making a well. Melt butter, add minced garlic and brush mixture on the inside of the hollowed out bread. Cut Brie into large pieces and place inside bread. Take the bread that you had cut out, slice into bite size pieces and brush with remaining garlic butter. Bake Brie en Croute and croutons on a lined tray in a 375 degree oven till Brie is melted and oozing. Serves 4-6
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Matzoh is often used as a base to make all kinds of pies, both savory and sweet. This recipe was given to me by my close friend Ruthie. We met at an engagement party about 6 years ago when she marched up to me, introduced herself and called me two days later to join her for dinner. Talk about determination! Although her permanent home is in New Jersey, Ruthie spends several months a year in Los Angeles. She is one of those women who lights up a room with her sparkling eyes and bright smile. Ruthie, Chag Sameach, and hang in there kid!! We love you!
Inside the Streit’s Matzoh Factory
Ruthie’s Matzoh Lasagna
2 lbs. sliced mozzarella cheese
3 lbs. cottage cheese
1 Quart Marinara sauce
salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 x 13 baking dish with olive oil. Mix cottage cheese with beaten eggs, and season well with salt and cracked pepper. Spoon marinara on the bottom of the baking dish and then cover with a layer of matzoh, a layer of mozzarella and a layer of the cottage cheese mixture. Continue layering till all ingredients are used. Top with mozzarella. Bake for 1 1/2 hours. Serves 12.
Tip: To increase the nutritional value, add a layer of sautéed spinach, or kale. This is an easy recipe to experiment with.
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We get together for so many communal holiday meals and still we plan one more. At the end of Yom Kippur, after a long and difficult day we have this desire to share another ritual with our friends, breaking the fast. One would think that people would want to go to their respective homes to drink their coffee and eat their bagels in solitude. I am not sure I understand it, and I can’t explain it, but I am grateful for it. Grateful to have friends who host it each year, and grateful to be included.
Gmar Hatimah Tovah!
This is the second year that my contribution to the break-fast will be macaroni and cheese. What could be more inviting than hot noodles smothered in gooey cheese and covered by a crunchy topping.
Macaroni and Cheese
1 lb elbow macaroni
6 Tbsp sweet butter
1/2 cup flour
1 quart milk
salt and pepper to taste
2 cups sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
4 cups mixed cheeses, shredded ( I used Gruyère, Monterey Jack and Mozzarella)
5 dashes Tabasco sauce
Panko crumbs or grated day-old challah
1 – 2 Tbs softened butter
In a large pot of boiling water cook macaroni following instructions on package. Melt butter in a heavy saucepan and slowly whisk in flour, stirring for 2-3 minutes. In the meantime, heat the milk until hot (but not boiling) and slowly add to flour mixture. Cook for another 2 minutes until you have a smooth, thickened sauce. Remove from heat and add shredded cheese. Stir till cheese has melted into sauce. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and add Tabasco sauce. Combine sauce with cooked noodles and place in a 9 x 13 baking dish. Top macaroni and cheese with panko crumbs or grate a piece of challah over the top. Dot with butter. Bake at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes or till bubbly and golden.
Read Full Post » | <urn:uuid:dbdfa94a-df35-4dd2-ba8f-21c83b89c09e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bamitbach.wordpress.com/tag/cheese/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9407 | 1,211 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Clarence McCauley quietly passed away at the age of ninety one years on October 2, 2003. His wife, the former Mary Means had died on April 17th of the preceding year. Thus ended the unique farm family of Clarence McCauley.
At the head of McCauley Run, just over the hill from the Burnsville Dam, lies the McCauley farm, the lifetime home of Clarence McCauley, son of Jonathan Hedges and Minnie (Taggart) McCauley. Consisting of approximately 140 acres, the farm provided the sole living for Clarence, his wife Mary Means McCauley, and their six children. It was an exceptional achievement for a family to wrest their living from the soil during the mid-20th century in central West Virginia. Most farm owners in this area had other employment, either full time or part-time, to help them make ends meet. Clarence McCauley and his wife Mary were exceptions to the rule.
The McCauley farm has little flat or tillable land. Most of the farm is made up of sloping hillsides, cleared for the most-part and primarily suitable for grazing stock. The farmhouse is a two story, frame house of unknown age, with the usual farm outbuildings. Clarence McCauley was born in this house during harvest time in 1911. For the next ninety one years, except for service to his country during World War II, this house was his home.
The McCauley Farm in Winter and Summer
Jacob and his wife, the former Cynthia Rohrbough, were the parents of at least ten children: Cora who married Draper Riffle; John J. who died in infancy; Thomas Marion who married Mary Taggart; William who married Lucy Hinkle; Samuel who married Cecilia Murphy; Jonathan Hedges who married Minnie Taggart; Amos who married Anna Crawford; Idena who married John Solomon Heater; Luella who married Benjamin Hinkle; and Clara who died in infancy.
The Jacob McCauley lands at his death were divided between his children William, Amos, Luella, Hedge, and grand-daughter Eva, each of whom received approximately 65 acres on McCauley Run.
Double click on the map to the left, of the distribution of Jacob MeCauley's land.
Jonathan Hedges McCauley, the father of Clarence McCauley, was born on McCauley Run in 1872. His father, Jacob McCauley, was a strong adherent to Methodism. During the mid-1800s, the Methodist faith was propagated primarily by traveling Methodist preachers who visited rural West Virginians with their gospel. One of these Methodist preachers who frequented central West Virginia was Jonathan Hedges. It is believed that the father of Clarence McCauley was a namesake for Jonathan Hedges, Methodist preacher.
To the left is Hedge McCaulley, to the right is his wife Minnie Taggart.
Jonathan Hedges McCauley was known to his family and contemporaries as “Hedge” or by some as “J. H.” Hedge was married to Minnie Taggart, daughter of Patrick Taggart and Sarah Sands Taggart who were neighbors to the south of the McCauley farm. Hedge and Sarah were the parents of ten children: Eva who married Robert Brown; Opal who died in infancy; Masel who married Coleman Conley; Mildred who married Jack Weaver; Venia who married William Zinn; Brent who married Bessie Whytsell; Ercie who married John Graff; Clarence who married Mary Means; Nina who married Lester Hardesty; and Lambert, also known as “Buck,” who married Jean Johnson. Hedge supplemented the acreage he acquired from his father by purchasing the Patrick Taggart farm, which increased his farm to around 141 acres.
To the right are the children of Hedge and Minnie McCauley: Ercie, Brent, Venie, Mildred, Lambert, Nina and Clarence
Clarence was born in 1911 and had worked on the McCauley Run farm of his father since he was old enough to carry a bucket of slop for the pigs. Clarence did take the time from farm work to complete eight years of schooling at the McCauley Run School. He knew that he wanted to be a farmer for his life’s work and that more school would simply be a waste of time, especially since his father was getting older, his older sisters had married and left home, and there were only three boys to do the heavy farm work. Clarence enjoyed the hard work of a farmer and enjoyed even more the birth of lambs, calves and colts. He enjoyed tossing grain for the chickens, building fence, cutting “filth,” and the harvesting the crops.
To the left is the Lord of the Manor.
How Long Does it Take to Hoe a Row of Corn?
Sawahana also relates that her father was not a strong believer in labor-saving devices such as hay bailers. For example, Clarence believed that haymaking should be done as it was in the old days: by building hay stacks from shocks of hay with the help of a horse.
World War II
Above, left, Clarence is the first soldier on the left.
To the right: Clarence & his errant trigger finger.
Clarence continued to raise cattle, sheep, milk cows, hogs, and chickens and was able to squeeze a simple living from his 141 acres. He sold eggs and vegetables in Burnsville and took livestock to the market in Weston. His daughter Sawahana recalls that her dad would arise at about 5 o’clock each morning and would feed his stock before eating himself. He would then work all day with a short break for lunch, and then resume his farm work until late in the evening.
Clarence was forty three years of age when it occurred to him that he might like the idea of being married. A handsome, personable farmer, Clarence set his eyes on thirty five year old Mary Means, a lovely, intelligent lady of Burnsville who lived on a small farm in Stringtown with her parents, W. A. “Dock” and Nora Means. Mary’s parents had operated a general store and a restaurant in Orlando during the second decade of the 1900s where their first child, Mark, was born. Dock Means sold his Orlando store to J. W. “Bill” Conrad around 1922, moved to a small farm in Burnsville, and entered the trade of traveling salesman and wool buyer. Clarence had become acquainted with Dock Means as the result of the wool trade and was aware that Dock had a beautiful daughter. Dock was aware that Clarence was a hard working farmer and approved of the courtship which ensued.
Clarence took Mary for his bride in a Weston ceremony witnessed by his sister Masel and her husband Francis. For the next nearly fifty years of marriage, Clarence and Mary would compete to see who could make the best butter, according to their daughter Sawahana.
Lovely Mary is above left, her dad, Dock Means, is on the horse below left.
To the right are Malora, Mark and Marlece.
In between butter churnings, Clarence and Mary also became the parents of six children, David, who died as a child in a tragic fire around 1957, Mark, Shawn, Sawahana, and twins Malora and Marlece.
Early each Saturday morning, Clarence would load his old 1961 Apache 30 Chevy van with farm produce, butter, cottage cheese, eggs, milk, buttermilk and anything else from the farm which might be sold and would visit usual customers or any other homes that might be a market for the farm products. Prior to using the 1961 Chevy van on his rounds, Clarence used a 1951 Chevy flat bed truck as the produce wagon. Clarence made stops on Riffle Run, and up the river toward Napier and Knawl, and came back to Main Street in Burnsville and on to Copen, Bower, Gilmer Station, Orlando and many places between, to sell his produce. He would never return from his merchandising rounds until dark on Saturday evening. He could sell his goods cheaper than grocery stores and always found customers. Clarence knew that to be successful at farming it was also necessary to know how to sell what was raised. This writer, thinking that he may have taken some of his children on the selling trips, posed the question to Clarence’s son Shawn, who chuckled and said that all of the children had farm chores to do on Saturday which had to be done by the time their father returned late on Saturday evening.
Being a farmer means being a businessperson. This document represents five shares of the Kanawha Grocery Company. Farmers who provided goods owned part of the enterprise.
The Farm StoreA small building, approximately 14 x 16, built atop a cellar stands behind the McCauley farm house. Clarence operated a little store in this building for many years for the convenience of close-by neighbors and in order to make a little profit. Clarence’s son, Shawn, believes that his dad opened this store around 1947 and operated it until around 1976. The glass showcase where he kept candy is still in the building as is the scale on which he weighed salt, coffee, or sugar which he kept for sale. Clarence also sold dried beans, Clorox, laundry soap, and maybe even a little moonshine whiskey.
Frugality was a watchword for Clarence McCauley. Every penny expended in the farm budget had to be justified. An example of his philosophical bent in this regard is illustrated when Clarence fell and broke his arm. Instead of seeking expensive medical treatment, Clarence and his son Shawn set the broken arm and put it in a cast of plaster of Paris. All’s well that ends well, and Clarence made a full recovery without incurring any cost except for the plaster of Paris.
Clarence McCauley has been dead for six years and lies next to his wife Mary in the Quickle Cemetery on the Little Kanawha River side of the McCauley farm. Upon his death, he left his farm to his youngest son Shawn. Although Shawn is not a full time farmer like his father, he does admirably well in keeping the farm much the same as it was when Clarence did his last farm chore the day he died at 91.
To the right is the Quickle Cemetery.
comment 1 by Penny
Shawn has been married to my Aunt Penny for around ten years now, i think. I'm a college student and my aunt and uncle go out of their way to help me any way they can. The McCauley farm is my home when I leave WVU. It's beautiful and very tranquil, especially in the summer. You won't find better people on the planet than the McCauleys. I am old enough to remember Clarence and Mary and they were just as good hearted as Shawn.
comment 2 by Homer Heater
My grandmother was Idena Jane McCauley. That made my father and Clarence first cousins. I grew up on Riffle Run and spent a lot of time on McCauley Run. I remember as a little boy hoeing corn on the Taggart farm. I was so hungry I thought I would surely die, so my father sent me to Mrs. Taggart's house to ask for a sandwich. It was wonderful.Thanks for a great (as usual) story.
comment 3 by Donna Gloff
According to Don Norman, "Jacob [McCauley] traveled to Hillsboro, Pocahontas County in 1862 and enlisted in Company C. 17th Virginia Cavalry. CSA. While recruiting behind enemy lines, he was arrested by Union troops in Roane County VA. In October of 1863 and was sent to Military Prison at Wheeling VA (Atheneum Prison), then to Camp Chase at Columbus, OH and then to Fort Delaware, DE. He was released after taking the Oath of Allegiance on June 20, 1865." | <urn:uuid:d918f1cf-8381-4289-9198-60d93c7f81b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://orlandostonesoup.blogspot.com/2008/03/man-of-soil.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986481 | 2,514 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Does anyone know if there is a contemporary English translation or paraphrase of First Clement?
For those who may not be aware, Clement of Rome was an early Church father. He is believed to have died around AD 100. He probably personally knew Peter. He wrote a letter (possibly two) to the Corinthians. While not considered the level of scripture, the letter is well respected, and was frequently read in the early church.
Anyway, I’ve found several translations, but none of them are real easy to read. If there’s not one available, I’m throwing around the idea of doing it myself. | <urn:uuid:ef89d3fd-07ea-4070-b4d3-4d6b74de2d7a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wesleyanarminian.wordpress.com/category/clement-of-rome/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980345 | 129 | 1.882813 | 2 |
With power plants, involving investments of Rs 100,000 crore (Rs 1 trillion), facing closure due to natural gas shortage, Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily [ Images ] on Wednesday said he will move a note for the consideration of high powered ministerial group to change priority of allocation of the fuel as well as pooling price of imported and domestic gas.
The Empowered Group of Ministers had previously accorded top priority to urea-manufacturing fertiliser plants for receipt of natural gas from Reliance Industries' [ Get Quote ] eastern offshore KG-D6 fields. LPG extraction units were placed second on the list and power plants were given third priority.
This priority list essentially meant that when KG-D6 output started to fall, requirement of top priority customers in fertiliser and LPG sector was first met and remaining gas was pro-rata supplied to power plants.
With KG-D6 output falling to about 17 million standard cubic meters per day this month, there is no gas now left for power plants after meeting requirement of fertiliser and LPG sector.
Heads of leading private power producers including Anil Ambani [ Images ] of Reliance Power, GM Rao of GMR Group, G V K Reddy of GVK Group and Madhusudhan Rao of Lanco, first met Moily and the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia [ Images ] to state that 15,000 MW of gas based plants are getting gas supplies from domestic fields at less than 10 per cent of their operating capacity, making their operations unsustainable and unvilable.
In addition, 8700 MW of new gas based capacities are stranded with no gas available for commissioning of their plants.
Moily said the power products suggested according power and fertiliser equal priority so that the current available gas is equally distributed among the.
Also, they suggested averaging the price of domestic gas with costlier imported gas to make fuel affordable for power plants.
They also wanted augmenting the domestic supply by diverting 6 mmscmd of gas being supplied to non-core sector and reserving the new finds totalling 10 mmscmd for power sector.
"Our Ministry has to go by the decision of the EGoM regarding allocation and priority for supply of gas. One way to change the same is to convene a meeting of EGoM. I have agreed to convene the EGoM meeting to consider the issues raised by them," he told reporters after the meeting.
"Scarcity of gas is a great problem," he said, adding that the ministerial panel headed by Defence Minister A K Antony will discuss the issue after the ministry moves a note on the issue.
Association of Power Producers Director General Ashok Khurana said about 24,000 MW of gas-based power plants are stranded due to gas shortage. | <urn:uuid:a21bddce-a932-4fc1-a166-7e2f9cf6e9a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rediff.com/business/report/oil-min-to-move-egom-on-changing-priority-of-gas-supply/20130320.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95674 | 585 | 1.554688 | 2 |