text stringlengths 213 24.6k | id stringlengths 47 47 | dump stringclasses 1 value | url stringlengths 14 499 | file_path stringlengths 138 138 | language stringclasses 1 value | language_score float64 0.9 1 | token_count int64 51 4.1k | score float64 1.5 5.06 | int_score int64 2 5 |
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Liapis, A., Christiaens, S., De Leenheer, P. (2008) Collaboration across the Enterprise: an Approach for Enterprise Interoperability, In Proc. of ICEIS 2008 (Barcelona, Spain)
In the current competitive industrial context, enterprises must react swiftly to market changes. In order to face this problem, enterprises must increase their collaborative activities. This implies at one hand high communication between their information systems and at the other hand the compatibility of their practices. An important amount of work must be performed towards proper practices of standardization and harmonization. This is the concept of Interoperability. Interoperability of enterprises is a strategic issue, caused as well as enabled by the continuously growing ability of integration of new legacy and evolving systems, in particular in the context of networked organisations. of the reconciliation of the communicated business semantics is crucial to success. For this, non-disruptive re-use of existing business data stored in “legacy” production information systems is an evident prerequisite. In addition the integration of a methodology as well as the scalability of any proposed semantic technological solution are equally evident prerequisites. Yet on all accounts current semantic technologies as researched and developed for the so-called Semantic Web may be found lacking. Still, semantic technology is claimed about to become mainstream, as it is pused by enterprise interoperation needs and increasing availability of domain specific content (for example ontologies) rather than pulled by basic technology (for example OWL) providers. In this paper we present a methodology which has resulted in the implementation of a highly customizable collaborative environment focussed to support ontology-based enterprise interoperability. The main benefit of this environment is its ability to integrate with legacy systems, rescuing enterprises from having to adapt or upgrade their existing systems in order to interoperate with their partners. | <urn:uuid:7ca8d6a9-5c7c-4b4a-8071-3c418041e939> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://deleenheer.wordpress.com/tag/enterprise-20/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945163 | 375 | 1.625 | 2 |
Central MA Regional Public Health Alliance offers healthy New Year’s resolutions
“Health-related goals are very popular when people are deciding on their New Year’s resolutions,” stated Derek Brindisi, Director of Public Health. “Often times we all start off with great intentions and quickly fall back into our old routines. By choosing to make a few simple adjustments to our diet and exercise habits and committing to stick to them, we can make great strides towards better health.”
• Make healthy food choices. Grab a healthy snack such as fruit, nuts, or low-fat cheese.
• Be active. Try simple things such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Be active for at least 2 ½ hours a week.
• Protect yourself from injury or disease by wearing a helmet, sunscreen, or insect repellent when necessary.
• Make an appointment for a check-up, vaccination, or screening. Know where to go for care if you do not have health insurance.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
• Be smoke-free. If you think you’re ready to quit, call 1-800-QUIT-NOW for free counseling.
• Get enough sleep. Remember that sleep is a necessity, not a luxury.
• Reduce auto-related injuries by using seat belts, child safety seats, and booster seats that are appropriate for your child’s age and weight.
• Learn positive parenting tips to keep teens safe on the road.
• Develop and enforce rules about acceptable and safe behaviors for all electronic media.
• Lower the risk of food borne illness as you prepare meals for your family.
• Serve healthy meals and snacks.
• Encourage and support physical activity.
• Gather and share family health history.
• Encourage family members to get check-ups and screenings. Make sure they know where to go for care if they do not have health insurance.
Short URL: http://www.communityadvocate.com/?p=29873 | <urn:uuid:72f25343-17df-4a1c-b12b-5a80f0e91dae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.communityadvocate.com/2012/12/30/central-ma-regional-public-health-alliance-offers-healthy-new-years-resolutions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926601 | 439 | 2.140625 | 2 |
WASHINGTON (CBSDC) — Metro is hoping to crack down on sexual harassment among its riders with a new public awareness campaign that was unveiled Monday.
As part of the first phase of the campaign, Metro launched a new online portal for customers to report incidents of harassment to directly to Metro Transit Police.
The information submitted through the web portal is immediately transmitted to Metro Transit Police for follow-up action.People who report incidents may remain anonymous.
In addition to the portal, tipsters and victims can also email photos or video files to email@example.com to assist in the investigation.
Metro also unveiled a host of new posters, flyers and handouts, developed in English and Spanish, to promote the campaign and raise awareness about sexual harassment in public spaces.
Metro has worked with a groups such as Collective Action for Safe Spaces, DC Rape Crisis Center and Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network to establish best practices for the new project.
Officials say Metro Transit Police are now tracking all reports of sexual harassment incidents, even those which do not violate the law. The reports and data collected will be used to identify trends on the system and deploy officers as necessary.
Metro also plans to create better training for frontline employees in the future. | <urn:uuid:0786562e-b0b8-4154-832c-9b6effde261a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/04/02/metro-goes-digital-to-crack-down-on-sexual-harassment/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944651 | 252 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Unlawful immigration and amnesty for current unlawful immigrants can pose large fiscal costs for U.S. taxpayers. Read More.
We’ve put together an infographic that explains some of the major problems. Read More.
The number one flaw of the bill is it starts by giving amnesty to the unlawfully present population in the United States. Read More.
When Congress implements step-by-step the proper policies, American will benefit greatly from the resulting lawful immigration. Read More.
Immigration reform can move forward on many fronts at the same time, focusing on some commonsense initiatives. Read More. | <urn:uuid:8058d153-58db-4a84-8765-8bf89fa73264> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.heritage.org/issues/immigration | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925324 | 123 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Liu Xiaobo currently resides in the Jinzhou Prison in the Liaoning Province of China, serving an 11-year prison term. His “crime”: drafting and promoting Charter ‘08, a manifesto that demands human rights and democratic reforms in China.
Although well known in human rights circles, Liu first came to widespread international attention when he was named the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. When the prize was announced, Liu’s wife Liu Xia was promptly placed under house arrest, rendering her unable to attend the ceremony. Chinese state media then launched a vicious attack, denouncing Liu for winning an award "undeserved for a criminal".
While Beijing has done everything in its power to suppress Liu’s work and his international recognition, a recent collection of essays and poems allows readers to explore his unique insight. No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems [Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, January 2012] features essays interspersed with poems selected by Liu’s wife. The most poignant are written to her and represent - ultimately - what the struggle is about: the choice between love and hatred. His poems converge with the academic essays, touching on critical reflections of state communist ideology, and diverging from the pedantic to examine instead the writer as a human being. The result is a provocatively sophisticated compendium of observations of contemporary Chinese authoritarian society.
Despite his profound contributions to the human rights movement in China, Liu’s essays are saturated with determined modesty and guilt. In the book’s first piece, "Listen Carefully to the Voice of the Tiananmen Mothers", Liu expresses regret for surviving the tumultuous Tiananmen Square protests while others were murdered by the Chinese government. "What have I ever done for the massacre victims?" he asks. He laments his "self-styled elitism" and the fact that he wrote a confession when in detention for the first time. It is perhaps this humble perception of his own contribution to the cause that drives him to continue to voice publicly his discontent with China’s one-party state: "If we stand up for our dignity," Liu explains, "we live nobly, no matter how much we may risk or suffer."
In the course of his writing, Liu makes an intriguing observation about China’s double standards in its relationship with the West. Despite its overtly anti-Western political stance, Beijing’s dogged nationalism is being chipped away by its people’s desire to "Westernize". In the recent past, "pretty-girl writers", who wrote about sexualized female characters cloaked in Chinese notions of Western clothes, in Western bars and Western notions of sex, became quickly popular in China, and Chinese films and television were filled with storylines of infidelity, prostitution and excess. "The craze for political revolution in decades past has now turned into a craze for money and sex," says Liu. He is concerned that the youth’s interest in political reform is being overtaken by an obsession with material things.
Liu isn’t entirely pessimistic about China’s progress towards democracy. With the help of the internet, Liu believes change can be made in China. He muses about how with the click of a mouse, his words can be made available to the world in less than a second. He is also hopeful the popular egaos (online political satires) will ease the eventual transition to democracy. "Satire of what is wrong implies that something else is right," says Liu.
Liu’s fearless essays are especially compelling because they bridge the gap between academic analysis of China’s political situation and dilettante observations of the country’s cultural and social evolution. They are an invaluable window into Chinese intellectual life and an extraordinary contribution to modern literature. Sadly, forceful discourse and revelatory disquisitions like these constitute a crime in today’s China. And Liu is not the only victim of this kind of political persecution. Human rights violations are state policy in China: forced labor camps hold millions of prisoners; arbitrary detention, media censorship, and blatant disregard for the rule of law are routine. Some may want to turn a blind eye to Beijing’s abuses because of its influence on the global economy or its record of poverty reduction since it abandoned Maoist socialism for Milton Friedman’s free enterprise system, but its draconian repression has made it one of the cruellest dictatorships on the planet.
The similarities with the writings of both Václav Havel and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn are striking. All three possess an uncomplicated ability to inspire the dignified and peaceful fight against totalitarianism. In Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel lecture, he asked what one man - let alone a writer - can do against the pitiless onslaught of naked violence: "violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood," and gave his prescription: "one word of truth outweighs the whole world." In a different decade, Havel observed: "If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth," and Havel’s time in prison is proof that truth - for a regime - "must be suppressed more severely than anything else." Liu’s decision to "live in truth" makes him unique among Chinese intellectuals.
In 1989, before returning to China from the United States, Liu said, "I hope that I’m not the type of person who, standing in the doorway to hell, strikes a heroic pose and then starts frowning in indecision." Liu didn’t frown. We shouldn’t either.
(Photo in frontpage © CHRD) | <urn:uuid:a9e63676-759c-40c5-ac90-06b47c7346c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theglobaljournal.net/article/view/608/ | 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 | 0.959301 | 1,195 | 2.046875 | 2 |
In further proof that the Global Value System has changed from people to money China has gained higher status than the USA because of its economic position and USA because of its humanitarian position takes a back seat.
It’s not just how it’s playing in Peoria: President Barack Obama’s standing overseas has eroded sharply since he took office three and a half years ago, even as many of America’s closest friends increasingly say that China is now the world’s dominant economic power, according to a report out Wednesday. This is of course only because of money.
Solid majorities in Britain, France, Germany and Spain say China—not the United States—is the globe’s most potent economy. That perception has changed markedly in the past four years. In Britain, for example, the margin in 2012 is 58-28 percent in China’s favor, compared with 44-29 percent for the United States in 2008.
Those are some of the stark findings of Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, which also found that approval of Obama’s handling of world affairs has plummeted 30 points in China, from 57 percent to just 27 percent.
That may not matter at the polls in November, but it could complicate Obama’s efforts to hold together international coalitions on issues like Iran’s nuclear program or forge a consensus to bring an end to bloody violence in Syria.
Obama campaigned in 2008 on a promise to restore America’s world standing after the George W. Bush era, which saw widespread global opposition to the war in Iraq and anger at war-on-terrorism policies, such as use of secret prisons and the Guantanamo Bay facility to hold suspected terrorists.
The Pew study suggests that Obama can claim “Mission Accomplished” on that front: Only a handful of countries hold a less sunny opinion of the United States now than in 2008. In Pakistan, for example, 12 percent of respondents expressed positive views of America, down from 19 percent four years ago. At the same time, 60 percent of Britons report warm feelings for America, up from 53 percent in 2008. Approval of America jumped from 53 percent to 74 percent in Japan, and even in China the number has ticked up from 41 percent to 43 percent.
And Obama’s approval ratings in 14 countries surveyed remain better than Bush’s in 2008—his worst showing on that score is in Pakistan, where he ties his predecessor’s score with just 7 percent saying they have at least some confidence in his foreign policy leadership.
But Obama has seen an overall steady erosion of his own numbers. Take Japan, where approval of his foreign policy fell from 77 to 58 percent from 2009 to 2012. In Russia, it sagged from 40 to 22 percent. And many express disappointment with what they had hoped would be a new American commitment to multilateralism. In 2009, 69 percent of Germans predicted that he would consider their country’s interests in making foreign policy. In 2012, just 45 percent say he has done so.
People outside the United States are similarly disillusioned with Obama on issues like the Middle East peace process and efforts to combat climate change. Seventy-nine percent of Britons predicted in 2009 that Obama would be fair with Israelis and Palestinians. Just 47 percent now say he has been. In France, 81 percent of respondents predicted in 2009 that the president would take steps to address global warming. Just 27 percent now say he has done so.
The Pew study also highlights global opposition to the drone strikes that Obama has boasted are a major weapon against suspected terrorists. While 62 percent of Americans (including 58 percent of Democrats) approve of such operations, they are broadly unpopular almost everywhere else. Britons are divided, with 44 percent in favor and 47 percent against, while Indians split 32 to 21 percent against. But 90 percent of Greeks, 89 percent of Egyptians, 85 percent of Jordanians, 81 percent of Turks, 76 percent of Spaniards, 76 percent of Brazilians and 75 percent of Japanese disapprove. Results for Pakistan, where the government has loudly denounced drone strikes inside its territory, were not available but are expected in a subsequent survey.
That suggests an uphill fight for the president to fulfill his re-election campaign promise to “remind the world just why it is the United States of America is the greatest nation on Earth.” | <urn:uuid:a16fe1fc-7c0a-4df9-b662-dc8c517b2f7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://craigeisele.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/china-deemed-the-new-economic-power-takes-shine-of-usa-and-obama/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956689 | 896 | 2 | 2 |
FAMOUS DIVISIONS AND BRIGADES.
The hardest fighting and greatest loss of life occurred in the First Division of the Second Corps,--Hancock's old division--in which more men were killed and wounded than in any other division in the Union Army, east or west. Its losses aggregated 2,287 killed, 11,724 wounded, and 4,833 missing; total, 18,844. This division was the one which Richardson, its first commander--led on the Peninsula, and at whose head he fell at Antietam; the one which, under Hancock, made the bloody assault on Marye's Heights; which, under Caldwell, fought so well in the Gettysburg wheat-field; which, under Barlow, surged over the enemy's works at Spotsylvania; and which, under Miles, was in at the death in 1865. Within its ranks were the Irish Brigade, and crack regiments like the Fifth New Hampshire, the One Hundred and Fortieth Pennsylvania, and the Sixty-fourth New York. Over 14,000 men were killed or wounded in this division during the war; yet it never numbered 8,000 muskets, and often could muster only half of that. After the charge on Marye's Heights it numbered only 2,800.
Close to it, however, in point of loss stands Gibbon's (2d) Division of the Second Corps, and Griffin's (1st) Division of the Fifth Corps.
The heaviest loss sustained by any division in any one battle, occurred in Getty's (2d) Division, Sixth Corps, at the Wilderness, where that division lost 480 killed, 2,318 wounded, and 196 missing; total, 2,994.
Gibbon's Division, at Gettysburg, lost 344 killed, 1,197 wounded, and 101 missing; total, 1,642, out of 3,773 engaged--a loss of 43.5 per cent.
This Page last updated 01/26/02
RETURN TO FAMOUS DIVISIONS AND BRIGADES PAGE | <urn:uuid:006756d1-9449-4254-a3bd-4ba8702a99eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://civilwarhome.com/hancock.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945443 | 431 | 2.859375 | 3 |
The Phnong Education Initiative (PEI) provides dozens of minority students in Cambodia with scholarship and housing assistance so they won't be forced to drop out of school due to poverty and distance to the nearest schoolhouse. Furthermore, PEI supports training for Phnong-speaking teachers so they can return to their home villages and pay forward the gift of education by helping other linguistic minorities succeed in the public school system.
Mondulkiri is home to the Phnong, an indigenous minority who survive on subsistence agriculture. One of Cambodia's most inaccessible provinces with few educated locals, Mondulkiri's instructors often come from outside and do not speak the native language.
This barrier in schools takes a drastic toll: literacy rates for highland minority tribes flounder at 5.3%, far behind the Khmer majority at 48.8%. Ethnic minority females fare worse, with a 2000 study placing their literacy at less than 1%.
The Phnong Education Initiative (PEI) takes aim at gender imbalances and the chronic shortfall of Phnong-speaking teachers. Scholarship assistance is provided at the middle school level as well as for older students who opt to attend a post-grade 9 Provincial Teacher Training College. Teacher trainees are contracted to return to their home communities after graduation to teach primary school, giving native Phnong children the opportunity to succeed in public school despite the language barrier.
Each year, PEI provides 31 children and 20 teacher trainees with basic scholarship packages - including food, housing, books, school supplies and transportation - to ensure they can excel in their studies. Investing in the education of these promising young women will not only improve their individual circumstances, but will ripple throughout their communities and future generations. PEI is further designed to "pay forward" the gift of education by investing in the educators of tomorrow.
I am extremely happy that I will soon become a teacher and will be able to transfer all of my knowledge to all the Phnong children in my village and also conserve my language, culture and traditions. - Savon Phean, A 19 year-old PEI Teacher Trainee
Total Funding Received to Date: $8,558
Remaining Goal to be Funded: $9,442
Total Funding Goal: $18,000 | <urn:uuid:d2410a34-4296-42a8-b53c-6d8d926740e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/pei/?show=gift | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95715 | 466 | 2.9375 | 3 |
St. Louis Blues
For the type of music, please see St. Louis blues.
The St. Louis Blues are an ice hockey team in the National Hockey League (NHL). They began in 1967. They have never won the Stanley Cup championship, though they made the finals in each of their first three seasons. The Blues won the President's Trophy as top team in the regular season in the year 2000.
In their first years, they had a good team because of experienced players such as goaltender Glenn Hall. In 1968 Glenn Hall won the Conn Smythe Trophy as most valuable player in the playoffs. But the team did not win in 1968. They had some trouble in the 1970s. In 1980-81 Mike Liut was named best goalie in the NHL. The 1980s were a good decade for the Blues. Mike Liut, Bernie Federko, Doug Gilmour, and Joe Mullen were all important players for the team in the 1980s.
The 1990s also were a good decade. Brett Hull led the NHL in goals in 1990, 1991, and 1992, with the help of centre Adam Oates. Hull is the son of Chicago Blackhawks star Bobby Hull. Brett Hull won the Hart Trophy as most valuable player in 1991. Curtis Joseph was a strong goaltender in the 1990's. Al MacInnis (1999) and Chris Pronger (2000) each won the Norris Trophy for best defence; Pronger also won the Hart Trophy in the year 2000. Doug Weight, Pavol Demitra, and Keith Tkachuk were also strong players in the early 21st century.
The Blues made the playoffs 25 years in a row from 1979-80 to 2003-04, an NHL record. In 2006 they finished last in the NHL.
|Central Division ||GP||W||L||OTL||GF||GA||PTS|
|x-Detroit Red Wings||82||44||24||14||229||216||102|
|e-St. Louis Blues||82||40||32||10||225||223||90|
|e-Columbus Blue Jackets||82||32||35||15||216||259||79|
GP – Games Played W – Wins L – Losses OTL – OT/Shootout Losses GF – Goals For GA – Goals Against PTS – Points
* – Division Leader x – Clinched Playoff spot y – Clinched Division z – Clinched Conference p – Clinched Presidents' Trophy e – Eliminated from Playoff Contention
- "2009-2010 Standings by Division - NHL.com". NHL.com. The National Hockey League. http://www.nhl.com/ice/standings.htm?season=20092010&type=DIV. Retrieved 2010-05-01. | <urn:uuid:9f6ebc60-58ce-4dcc-a995-adbfcfdf167c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Blues | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929131 | 575 | 1.601563 | 2 |
(Below is extracted from a recent article on tutoring)
Tutoring: A Tool for the Masses
If I could give you a silver bullet to improve your child’s learning more dramatically than anything else, would you be interested? Would you be even more interested if I told you that it required no specialist skills?
Independent research out last week from Edge Hill University revealed that over 2,500 of the lowest achieving six-and-seven-year-olds in England achieved four times the normal rate of progress in maths after only a 20-hour educational intervention. The intervention itself is almost deceptively simple: one-to-one tuition.
Edge Hill’s positive findings not only lend support to the government’s £468m national one-to-one tuition programme for underperforming 7 to 16-year-olds, they also confirm the belief of many parents that paying for private tutoring is necessary in an educational arms race that shows no signs of slowing down. It is plain to parents that tuition has both emotional benefits (increased motivation and self-esteem) and demonstrable cognitive outcomes. It also makes sense intuitively that individual tailor-made learning will work, since this type of instruction can access what the educational psychologist David Ausubel termed ‘the most important single factor influencing learning’: that is, what the learner already knows. In Ausubel’s phrase, ‘Ascertain this and teach him accordingly.’
But wait. The actual mechanisms by which one-to-one tuition achieves its effects have only recently been explored, and the results are startling and counter-intuitive. Research undertaken by Micki Chi and her colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh refutes the traditional assumption that tutoring is effective because of the skills of the individual tutor per se. Neither a tutor’s adaptiveness to perceived needs nor their instructional ‘moves’ (such as scaffolding, explaining and providing feedback) actually seem to have much influence on the learning taking place. If Chi is right (and the evidence is compelling), it is rather the constructive contributions of the students themselves which are responsible for their progress. This is confirmed by the intriguing finding that pairs of students collaboratively observing a video of another student being tutored can produce the same learning outcomes as a real one-to-one tuition session.
This small but growing body of research into tuition should serve as a wake-up call to many. Firstly, the evidence shows us that it is probably the most effective medium for learning anything, and that it achieves its effects in extraordinary and unexpected ways. Secondly, tutoring is essentially a medium of instruction and not a political, social, moral or class issue. It is rather the ends for which it is used that have become controversial. For example, research demonstrates that tutoring is incredibly time-efficient. With this in mind, whether it is a million-pound government programme or a parent’s decision to hire a tutor rather than helping their child themselves, it should be possible to perform a cost-benefit analysis without class-ridden angst or references to sinister tutors robbing children of their free time. Finally, an understanding of the essence of the tutoring process should help policy-makers, teaching professionals and parents make sensible choices regarding its use. The research suggests that so-called expert tutors may well be superfluous; a novice tutor (or parent, sibling or friend) with a good grasp of the subject could instead achieve excellent results through very simple means.
Henry Fagg is the author of Tutoring: The Complete Guide, available for free download from www.thetutorpages.com. | <urn:uuid:0e1f7c0c-4385-4cf6-891d-2e631094691d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thetutorblog.com/2009/10/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948727 | 750 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Lindsay Clandfield delivers some interesting observations about what appears to be hot (or not) in contemporary coursebook design. See the video here.
I watched the video of Lindsay Clandfield's talk on coursebooks at the International House DOS Conference last night, and found it interesting in all sorts of ways. Credit goes to Lindsay for what I thought was an astute, nicely organised and frank look at what would have to be the most influential sector of ELT. He gives us plenty to think about.
Given the almost fundamental role coursebooks play in anything where English language learners and their teachers get together, I think Lindsay's talk would make for an excellent in-house teacher development session, with plenty to think about and discuss.
- Other than coursebooks, what else might we include in a time capsule designed to "capture" or represent ELT in the here and now?
- Lindsay makes the point that while coursebooks for teens and younger learners outsell adult coursebooks, so why do you think we see so much emphasis on the adult coursebooks both as "flagship" products and the target of so much marketing and presentation at things like conferences? Do coursebooks for the younger sectors get an unfair deal?
- Lindsay points out that, in terms of grammar and vocabulary, coursebook writers now appear to be working more around the idea of frequency (as an organising structure) than "ease" (or ease and perhaps logic of teaching/uptake). Do you think this is an effective organising principle? Why or why not?
- Integrated skills appear to be all the go, but focus on individual macro skills (reading, writing, speaking, etc.) as well as micro skills is a "not" -- do you think this warranted?
- The word "real" is huge in coursebook blurbs now. Do you find the coursebooks on offer now any more "real" in their selection of language and activities than coursebooks from the past (or alternatively, would you describe the coursebooks you're currently using as being targeted more or less on realism)?
- Would you agree with Lindsay's observation that coursebooks now have much more emphasis on speaking, and try to feature something speaking-related virtually on every page?
- Discuss what Lindsay means by "pseudo-inductive" grammar learning. Do you see this in your coursebooks, and if so, what do you think of it?
- What is meant by "suprasegmentals"? Are you seeing more emphasis on this in your own coursebooks? Do you think it is good to broaden the approach to pronunciation in this way, and why?
- What do you think about Lindsay's prediction (or call for) more in the way of "writing fluency", based on the idea that more of our spoken language is being called on for use in synchronous online exchanges?
- Lindsay emphasises the role of mobile learning (and mobile devices) in the future development of course work. Do you think "going mobile" should be a major priority? Is this what learners are likely to want (and actually use more of) for their language learning?
There are quite a few other juicy bits in Lindsay's talk, but those are the thoughts that popped up for me in terms of teacher discussion after watching the video once.
Perhaps you could think of some more! | <urn:uuid:6db5dcd7-f9da-4c4a-a940-fadc9c01f6e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jasonrenshaw.typepad.com/jason_renshaws_web_log/2011/01/of-course-books.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967359 | 687 | 1.710938 | 2 |
If for example I run a command from the terminal like this:
$ find . | xargs grep something
The terminal then goes in a sort of pending state and I can type in characters and whatnot as I wait for the command to start printing stuff to stdout.
What happens with that input? Is it saved somewhere, does it do anything at all? I know I can use it to pass signals to the application (such as SIGINT by way of typing in ^C) but what about some other input? I'm referring specifically to the cases where the application is not prompting the user for input.
Thanks and apologies if this is a bit obvious. | <urn:uuid:34499d01-5faf-43ad-9374-68e009fa9997> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://superuser.com/questions/536026/what-happens-to-the-console-input-while-a-process-is-running?answertab=votes | 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 | 0.937504 | 136 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Daily reading for Monday, January 21, 2013
Exodus 1-3, Matthew 14:1-21 (New International Version)
The Israelites Oppressed
1 These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah; 3 Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin; 4 Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. 5 The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy[a] in all; Joseph was already in Egypt.
6 Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, 7 but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.
8 Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. 9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”
11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.
15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”
19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”
20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”
The Birth of Moses
2 Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket[b] for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
5 Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.
7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”
8 “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses,[c] saying, “I drew him out of the water.”
Moses Flees to Midian
11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”
15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. 16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17 Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.
18 When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?”
19 They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”
20 “And where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”
21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom,[d] saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”
23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
Moses and the Burning Bush
3 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father,[e] the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
12 And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you[f] will worship God on this mountain.”
13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.[g] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
15 God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord,[h] the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’
“This is my name forever,
the name you shall call me
from generation to generation.
16 “Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. 17 And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.’
18 “The elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.’ 19 But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. 20 So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go.
21 “And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. 22 Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians.”
- Exodus 1:5 Masoretic Text (see also Gen. 46:27); Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint (see also Acts 7:14 and note at Gen. 46:27) seventy-five
- Exodus 2:3 The Hebrew can also mean ark, as in Gen. 6:14.
- Exodus 2:10 Moses sounds like the Hebrew for draw out.
- Exodus 2:22 Gershom sounds like the Hebrew for a foreigner there.
- Exodus 3:6 Masoretic Text; Samaritan Pentateuch (see Acts 7:32) fathers
- Exodus 3:12 The Hebrew is plural.
- Exodus 3:14 Or I will be what I will be
- Exodus 3:15 The Hebrew for Lord sounds like and may be related to the Hebrew for I am in verse 14.
John the Baptist Beheaded
14 At that time Herod the tetrarch heard the reports about Jesus, 2 and he said to his attendants, “This is John the Baptist; he has risen from the dead! That is why miraculous powers are at work in him.”
3 Now Herod had arrested John and bound him and put him in prison because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, 4 for John had been saying to him: “It is not lawful for you to have her.” 5 Herod wanted to kill John, but he was afraid of the people, because they considered John a prophet.
6 On Herod’s birthday the daughter of Herodias danced for the guests and pleased Herod so much 7 that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked. 8 Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.” 9 The king was distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he ordered that her request be granted 10 and had John beheaded in the prison. 11 His head was brought in on a platter and given to the girl, who carried it to her mother. 12 John’s disciples came and took his body and buried it. Then they went and told Jesus.
Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand
13 When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. 14 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.
15 As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”
16 Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
17 “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.
18 “Bring them here to me,” he said. 19 And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. 20 They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. 21 The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children. | <urn:uuid:d5f39ae5-0ab0-401a-9d34-b1353d3c141b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mobile.biblegateway.com/reading-plans/old-new-testament/2013/01/21?version=NIV | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986438 | 3,076 | 2.375 | 2 |
November 26, 2003 12:06 PM PST
iPod's 'dirty secret' wins Web fans
Brothers Casey and Van Neistat, who collaborate on video projects using Mac editing software, said they were told by a technical support representative at Apple Computer that the cost to replace the dead battery in an 18-month-old iPod would be $255--comparable to the cost of a new device. Irked at what seemed to be the early obsolescence of the music player, the brothers trekked around New York City stenciling the words "iPod's unreplaceable battery lasts only 18 months" on all the iPod posters they could find.
Now the Neistats claim that the video they created of their exploits is getting 50,000 hits a day on the Web site Ipodsdirtysecret.com. As of Wednesday afternoon, the site's traffic counter indicated it had seen more than 194,000 visitors.
As it turns out, it's possible to replace the battery for as little as $49 using third-party kits. Apple itself offers a battery-replacement service for about $106 including mailing, with a 90-day guarantee on materials and workmanship. Apple's program was introduced only in the past two weeks.
Other iPod users have reported that the device's battery life diminishes with use, as is common for many rechargeable batteries. Unlike standard disposable batteries, the rechargeable power supplies used in the iPod and other high-tech gadgets do not come in a standard design. Replacing the battery involves a tricky process of dismantling the gadget, but third parties offer this service for around $70.
More information on the iPod Battery Replacement Program is available from Apple's technical support Web site.
Matthew Broersma of ZDNet UK reported from London.
2 commentsJoin the conversation! Add your comment | <urn:uuid:285cefb5-905a-431b-851e-82f654a04dc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.cnet.com/2100-1027-5112066.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935927 | 377 | 1.554688 | 2 |
The Story (continued)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Sir Robin lays down his own laws - he promises rebellion against anyone who offers allegiance to the "traitorous" Prince John and denounces his plans to usurp the throne. He warns the Normans that he will take a Norman life for each Saxon life:
Robin: What else do you call a man who takes advantage of the King's misfortune to seize his power? Now, with the help of a sweet band of cutthroats, you'll try to grind a ransom for him out of every helpless Saxon, a ransom that will be used not to release Richard but to buy your way to the throne.
Sir Guy: Let me ram those words down his throat, your Highness!
Prince John: Oh no. Later. Let him spout for a moment. (To Robin) And what do you propose to do?
Robin: I'll organize a revolt, exact a death for a death, and I'll never rest until every Saxon in this shire can stand up free men, and strike a blow for Richard and England.
Prince John: Have you finished?
Robin: I'm only just beginning. From this night on, I'll use every means in my power to fight you!
One of John's henchmen aims his spear at the back of Robin's chair, missing him as he dodges to the side at the last instant. Robin overturns the chair backwards, uses it as a shield, and then draws his sword and fights off the castle guard as they attempt to seize him. He sends forth a deadly accurate flurry of arrows from his bow, keeping his pursuers from following him out the large hall's great doors. With acrobatic agility, he escapes into Sherwood Forest on a waiting horse with Will Scarlet and Much the Miller's Son.
Robin is officially declared and branded a rebellious outlaw. His possessions are to be forfeited to the crown, his title is taken away, and Prince John vows to make the people who support Robin feel the pressure by mercilessly collecting the ransom with the most brutal means possible. The arrogant Sir Guy is presented with a death sentence for Robin and promises:
I'll have him dangling in a week.
Robin is committed to rebellion and proceeds to recruit a band of followers from Nottinghamshire. In a legendary moment in the forest, red-clad Will Scarlet watches Robin tackle the boisterous Little John (Alan Hale, who played the same role in the 1922 silent film version). They meet in the middle of a narrow log footbridge spanning a stream and engage in a hilarious quarterstaff jousting duel. Robin is beaten by his opponent and dunked during the bout, but afterwards makes Little John his chief lieutenant. After being defeated, Robin comments: "I wanted to see what you were made of, and I did."
The word is spread from ear to ear that Robin will meet with the peasants in Sherwood, encouraging them to band together to revolt against the oppression:
I've called you here as freeborn Englishmen, loyal to our king. While he reigned over us, we lived in peace. But since Prince John has seized the regency, Guy of Gisbourne and the rest of his traitors have murdered and pillaged. You've all suffered from their cruelty - the ear loppings, the beatings, the blindings with hot irons, the burning of our farms and homes, the mistreatment of our women. It's time to put an end to this! (Cheers.) Now, this forest is wide. It can shelter and clothe and feed a band of good, determined men - good swordsmen, good archers, good fighters. Men, if you're willing to fight for our people, I want you! Are you with me?
The men enthusiastically rally to his call for resistance to the oppression and tyranny of the Prince, becoming his Merry Men of Sherwood by kneeling and swearing to this oath:
That you, the freemen of this forest, swear to despoil the rich only to give to the poor, to shelter the old and the helpless, to protect all women rich or poor, Norman or Saxon. Swear to fight for a free England. To protect her loyally until the return of our King and sovereign Richard the Lion Heart. And swear to fight to the death against our oppressors!
Another historical description summarizes the reign of terror and brutality waged by Prince John:
But Prince John's reign became even more murderous. Terror spread among the helpless Saxons who knew that resistance meant death. Soon death became preferable to oppression and the defiant oath became more than a thing of words.
Robin's elusive men use black arrows to kill and strike down the evil, villainous Prince's men who continue to oppress the common people with hangings, theft and cruelty. One black arrow bears a warning, and strikes the table where the Sheriff and Sir Guy are plotting more brutal extortion with cruel tax collectors.
In a light-hearted moment, Robin steals a leg of mutton from a jovial, pious, fat Friar Tuck of Fountain's Abbey (Eugene Pallette) sleeping at the foot of a tree by a stream. At the point of a sword, Robin teaches him "obedience" and forces the rotund cleric to carry him piggyback in a shortcut across the stream. Halfway across, the friar dumps Robin over his head into the water, and they break into a lively broadsword fight.
Friar Tuck, like Little John, is recruited into Robin's band of Merry Men in Sherwood Forest, promised all the food he can ever feast on in the greenwood. Little John notices the friar's round girth:
Little John: He's well named Friar Tuck. It would take half the deer in Sherwood Forest to fill that cabin.
Tuck: And twice that to fill your empty head!
Will rides up and is assured that the new recruit is one of them. Will responds: "One of us? He looks like three of us."
Will alerts Robin and his men to the next day's rich, but well-armed Norman caravan transporting tax money to London. It was collected to fill the private coffers of Normans rather than to pay the King's ransom. The small army, led by Sir Guy, will pass through the impenetrable Sherwood Forest on its way to London and Nottingham. Robin and his outlaws plan an ambush to waylay the treasure caravan. At a signal, Robin's Merry Men appear out of bushes, fly out of trees on camouflaged vines, swoop and dive down to the ground and bloodlessly subdue Sir Guy's retinue. After swinging from a treetop, Robin delivers another welcome to Maid Marian, who has accompanied the Norman column, riding on a palomino horse [called Golden Cloud - that later became Roy Rogers' horse Trigger]:
Welcome to Sherwood, my lady!
Apparently, Robin has put himself in the path of danger to also encounter the Maid Marian, with whom he has fallen in love. As Gisbourne and the Sheriff are led away, Sir Guy threatens that Robin will hang for his insolent actions. Robin gallantly informs Sir Guy that courting Lady Marian is worth the risk:
Hanging would be a small price to pay for the company of such a charming lady.
Marian is scornful of him and his charm: "What can a Saxon hedge robber know of charm - or ladies?"
The two captive prisoners are forced to dress in poor rags - they exchange their clothes with the Merry Men. Robin and his men attend a feast at a banquet in the woods. Robin speaks to Lady Marian, his reluctant guest, about the joy he has brought to his band of followers:
Robin: To them, this is heaven. Silks for rags. Kindness instead of riches. Limitless food instead of hunger. Why, they're actually happy!
Marian: Are they?
Robin: Aren't you even a little pleased to see them enjoying themselves?
Marian: I think it's revolting.
Robin: Ha. Your life's been very sheltered, hasn't it, Marian? Too sheltered perhaps. But if you could know these people as I know them, their infinite patience, loyalty, goodness...
A member of Robin's band calls everyone to the banquet table: "To the tables, everybody, and stuff yourselves!" At first, Marian hates him for being a Saxon outlaw, and disdainfully refuses to eat: "I'm afraid the company has spoiled my appetite." At the banquet, Robin pledges to divert the collected ransom funds from the captured group (that the Prince was planning to keep for himself) and pay the ransom for the King.
Robin: Are you really interested in learning why I turned outlaw? Or are you afraid of the truth, or of me perhaps?
Marian: I am afraid of nothing, least of all you.
As she hears and sees more, Lady Marian begins to learn the truth of his activities and the justice of his cause, and her opinion and attitudes toward him soften and change. When shown the once-content and harmless people who are now mutilated and oppressed victims of Prince John's injustice, Marian is more convinced and impressed by his dedication. She witnesses Robin's kindness to the poor, lame and oppressed, and hears their gratitude to him, although he realizes for her that it is "hardly an inspiring sight for such pretty eyes."
Marian (questioning): But you've taken Norman lives.
Robin: Yes, those that deserved it, cruel and unjust.
Marian: You're a strange man.
Robin: Strange? Because I can feel for beaten, helpless people?
Marian: No. You're strange because you want to do something about it. You're willing to defy Sir Guy, even Prince John himself, to risk your own life. And one of those men was a Norman!
Robin: Norman or Saxon, what's that matter? It's injustice I hate, not the Normans.
Marian: But it's lost you your rank, your lands. It's made you a hunted outlaw when you might have lived in comfort and security. What's your reward for all this?
Robin: (surprised) Reward? Just don't understand do you?
Marian: I'm sorry. I do begin to see...a little...now.
Robin: You do, then that's reward enough. (He kisses her hand gently.)
Lady Marian is personally escorted to the castle on horseback with a changed attitude and growing love for Robin, something not unnoticed by the Sheriff. During the forest banquet, Bess (Una O'Connor), Marian's flirtatious yet cronish lady-in-waiting/maid servant develops a romance with Much the Miller's Son.
Sir Guy and the High Sheriff are returned after the robbery, on foot, penniless and in rags - they have been taught a lesson in humility. Prince John is furious when the "two nincompoops" return without the tax money. John vows that Robin must be captured. At the Sheriff's suggestion, they plan to stage an archery contest at Nottingham to outwit and trap Robin. Robin, the finest archer in England, is expected to be the tournament's winner even though he might be disguised. He will be irresistibly drawn to the first prize of a Golden Arrow offered by the hand of Lady Marian, especially with his warm regard for her.
The memorable archery tournament challenge [filmed in Pasadena, California in the old Busch Gardens] opens with a fanfare and parade. On the observation platform, the Sheriff's voices his hope: "I hope our little golden hook will catch the fish." Though Robin is suspicious of their conniving trap, he cannot resist and confidently enters the contest, disguised as a tinker. He wins the preliminary rounds and John and Gisbourne suspect Robin's identity. They close in with guards just before the final round.
At the conclusion of the exciting contest when the target is moved back 20 paces, Robin splits the shaft of his opponent's arrow after the latter makes a perfect bull's-eye. "Godfrey of Sherwood" is pronounced "Champion Archer of England," even though John and Gisbourne know that only Robin Hood could perform such a miraculously-accurate feat. Robin is arrested and almost escapes after putting up a spectacular struggle, but he is dragged from his horse by soldiers and captured.
Gisbourne is responsible for Robin's punishment - the outlaw is sentenced for crimes of:
outlawry, theft, murder, abduction, false pretenses, contempt of the crown, poaching in the royal forests and high treason.
Robin requests other counts be added to the charges: "To love one's country, to protect serfs from injustice and be loyal to one's king." Robin is held in a dungeon awaiting execution the next day in a public hanging in the town square.
A converted ally and troubled by the thought of Robin's execution, Marian arranges to help Robin escape. She learns from Bess that Robin's outlaw comrades can be contacted at the Saracen's Head Tavern, a place they often frequent. Under cover of darkness, Lady Marian meets Robin's men there with a message and a plan for rescue. After convincing them of her sincerity, she warns his men so they can organize and position themselves in the crowd during the execution to facilitate his escape.
The next day, Robin is brought to the gallows in a wagon and prepared for the hanging. At a signal, his men shoot a guard and the hangman after which Robin leaps from the gallows onto a horse (even though his hands are still bound behind his back! - an unbelievable stunt) and gallops through the city. His men block the way of his pursuers with carts and wagons.
At the main city gate after all his men have passed through, Robin cuts the portcullis rope, closing the grating over the entrance. Holding on to the rope, the weight of the closing portcullis swings him up to the top of the gate entrance. Acrobatically, he climbs over the main gate, slides down the rope on the other side, and successfully escapes with his men on horseback. [Flynn used a stunt double for this and the previous action stunt.] | <urn:uuid:dbab24c3-7b83-425f-8187-858398f994f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.filmsite.org/adve2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966759 | 2,985 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Discover the key dates in history of the Peugeot brand
The beginning of 200 years of innovation
Considered by most to be the Father of Peugeot, Jean-Pierre Peugeot was born in 1734 and over the course of his life, made many forays into industry with a weaving business, a dye works, an oil mill and a grain mill.
But it was in 1810 that the Peugeot family business began to put down its engineering roots when Jean-Pierre’s two sons, Jean-Pierre II and Jean-Frédéric, founded Peugeot Frères.
They transformed their father’s old grain mill into a steel foundry and turned their engineering skills to a wide range of steel products, making everything from coffee grinders and springs to saws and umbrella frames.
The spirit of innovation had been born…
The unveiling of Peugeot's first motor vehicle
Armand Peugeot, grandson of Jean-Pierre, who was fascinated by anything mechanical, led the company in its quest to produce its first motorised vehicle. In 1889, as a result of a collaboration with steam specialist Léon Serpollet, he succeeded. The vehicle was the Serpollet-Peugeot – a steam-powered three-wheeler.
By the following year, Armand had abandoned steam in favour of petrol, and had built Peugeot’s first four-wheeled, petrol-driven vehicle – the Type 2 quadricycle with a Daimler engine.
Building partnerships with other industry specialists is something Peugeot has continued to do over the years, leading to collaborations with the likes of Ford and BMW, and the development of some unique engines.
A new numbering system for the mass market
In 1929 Peugeot unveiled its first mass-produced car – the 201. This was the first Peugeot to use the now-iconic numbering system of three digits with a zero in the middle, and marked Peugeot’s passage from small-scale business to mass producer.
The 201 proved to be a roaring success and was the catalyst for the first Peugeot range, with the 301 launching in 1932, and the 401 and 601 in 1934.
This numbering tradition still continues today, with the range of new Peugeots including several descendants of the 201 – the 208, the 308 and the 508.
Launch of a Peugeot scooter
Ever since the creation of the first Peugeot bicycle, the Grand Bi penny-farthing in 1882, Peugeot has had a reputation for innovative bikes. And in 1953, the two-wheeled theme was developed further with the creation of Peugeot’s first scooter, the S55.
Peugeot Scooters, still going strong today, is the oldest manufacturer of motorised two-wheeled vehicles in the world.
It has been responsible for many innovations over the decades, including the 80cc SC/SX, the first scooter with plastic bodywork in 1982, the pioneering electric scooter, the Scoot’Elec in 1995 and the first scooter with ABS brakes, the Elystar, in 2002, amongst others.
An icon is born
Peugeot’s interest in mass-market coupés and cabriolets was sparked in 1934 by the success of the Eclipse 401 and 601. Both of these models featured a retractable metal roof designed by automobile designer and hero of the French resistance, Georges Paulin.
But it was in 1962 that the Peugeot coupe-cabriolet tradition really took off, with the launch of the beautiful 404 Cabriolet, designed by Pininfarina.
This 60s icon still remains a collector’s favourite, and was a worthy forerunner to the stylish coupés of today, such as the 308 CC and the stunning RCZ.
A record-breaking Tour de France
In 1977, Peugeot won its tenth Tour de France with Bernard Thévenet in the saddle. This record number of victories remains unbeaten to this day. Thévenet’s ride confirmed Peugeot’s place in the cycling hall of fame, which was reserved in 1904 by Louis Trousselier with his first legendary Tour de France win for Peugeot.
In honour of the beautiful racing bikes resulting from these pioneering days, Peugeot Bikes launched its Legend range in 2011 which features modernised versions of the winning Tour de France bikes.
Peugeot still puts bicycles at the heart of its plans for environmentally-friendly travel, and while bikes such as the electrically-assisted E-bike and the new, urban Allure may take inspiration from the past, they most definitely represent the future.
Another record-breaker is born
In 1983, Peugeot launched the now ubiquitous 205, followed in 1984 by the much-loved 205 GTi. The arrival of the 205 marked the start of Peugeot’s success story in the small car market, and the rally version, the 205 Turbo 16, won two World Rally Championship titles in 1985 and 1986.
Over 5 million Peugeot 205s were built before being superseded in 1998 by the Peugeot 206, which broke this record with over 6.5 million models built.
Then the Peugeot 207, launched in 2006, went on to become the most sold car in Europe. And as for the new 208, well, watch this space…
The fight for the environment
By 1999, the world had realised the extent of the environmental problems facing us, and that the car industry needed to be making huge step changes. It was more important than ever before to think innovatively and harness all the industry’s technical know-how in an effort to reduce CO2 produced by the world’s cars.
Peugeot entered this arena with a world first – the 607 equipped with an HDi engine with a Diesel Particulate Filter. The FAP automatically removes 99.9% of soot particles emitted by diesel engines, and has since been rolled out to a large number of Peugeot HDi engines.
Also in 1999, Peugeot launched its ‘Carbon Sink’ operation in Brazil in collaboration with the ONF (French National Forestry Service). The aim of this operation was to combat the greenhouse effect with tree planting on a huge scale in ‘the lungs of the world’. More than ten years on, the project is a major success with 2 million trees replanted and approximately 111,000 net tonnes of CO2 sequestered.
Peugeot still strives to invent more ways to curb CO2 emissions, and in 2011 launched its e-HDi micro-hybrid technology, which makes it possible to cut fuel consumption by up to 15%. Peugeot aims to have one million e-HDi vehicles in circulation by the end of 2013.
Peugeot doubles its luck
In 2009, Peugeot made motorsport history, coming in in both first and second places in the tough endurance race, Le Mans 24-hour, with the 908 HDi FAP. And in November 2011, the 908 HDi FAP chalked up another victorious double at the ILMC Endurance Championship in Zhuhai, China.
PeugeotSport continues to make history in the world of motorsport, but is also committed to other areas of sporting achievement.
This includes sponsoring the French Open for 14 years, being official partner of the Lancôme Trophy until 2003, and even launching its own golf tournament, the Peugeot RCZ Cup.
Peugeot celebrates 200 years of innovation
In 2010, to mark the bicentenary of the Peugeot brand, the emblematic Peugeot lion changed to reflect a new era. Peugeot’s designers created a simpler, more dynamic logo with a new stance and a new sense of movement.
Peugeot also celebrated with several futuristic launches. First, there was the unveiling of the fully electric concept car, the EX1, which is already set to break several world records for acceleration from standstill. Then came the top-of-the-range RCZ coupé, heralded as a design icon thanks to its unusual ‘double bubble’ roof. And finally, the 100% electric car, the Peugeot iOn, arrived on the city scene.
Peugeot also made its cars more accessible in 2010, with the launch of Mu by Peugeot. The service provides cars, scooters, bikes and accessories for short-term hire in many major European cities.
And with over 200 years of history and innovation now behind us, we can’t wait to see what the next 200 years bring… | <urn:uuid:c2cc54c5-ae3b-4b94-85f1-ac60428af25a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.peugeot.co.uk/history/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947743 | 1,819 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Screenshot of the Library Foundation website
Given the number of bookstores shelving business these days, the fate of the printed word appears to be in a precarious state. Some doomsayers would even say the destiny of one of mankind’s greatest inventions is on a slippery slope towards demise. Despite our current recession within this era of fast lifestyles, small attention spans, and mobile technology, there are institutions progressing with the times and stand proud, staring that “demise” down with a look of defiance. Where, you must be asking yourself, do these heroes of literary salvation reside? You need only look down the road to your local library. And, here in Louisville, we happen to have a library that is a card-carrying member of “The Justice League.”
Who Are They and What Do They Do?
The Louisville Free Public Library was established in 1870 when a group of progressive individuals decided to create a public institution for information and enjoyment where anyone could borrow books free of charge. To maintain such long and successful existence is only possible with the contributions from countless individuals and organizations. Enter the Library Foundation.
The Library Foundation, a 501(c) 3 organization governed by an independent volunteer board of directors, was established in 1980 to benefit, promote, support, encourage, and enhance the programs and services of the Louisville Free Public Library. They solicit, receive, and acquire donations of public or private funds on behalf of the Louisville Free Public Library and serve as the fiscal agent on behalf of the library for grants and donations.
As public libraries are increasingly constrained by municipal budgets, private funding for public libraries is critically important, as it helps to:
- result in change, making possible experimentation, innovation, and adaptation of roles to changing needs;
- provide the margin of excellence that makes good libraries great libraries;
- provide the opportunity to leverage public dollars;
- spur collaborations and partnerships; and
- create a higher level of responsiveness to needs and opportunities.
Through private donations to the Library Foundation, the Louisville Free Public Library has been able to provide programs and services and to pursue capital projects that would not be possible otherwise. Private funding is responsible for:
- the Iroquois Project, an outreach program targeted to the immigrant community in South Louisville;
- the Digital Media Initiative, providing the library with thousands of CDs, DVDs, and audiobooks;
- the Technology 2000 campaign, providing the library with hundreds of public-access computers, software, and electronic research tools;
- the Job Shop, offering a wide range of resources to help unemployed or under-employed people find work;
- the Summer Reading program, the library’s largest and longest-running program, reaching more than 50,000 annually;
- upgraded furnishings and technology for the new Newburg branch library;
- restoration and renovation of the historic Main Library, which made possible highly successful partnerships with JCPS adult education and the University of Louisville;
- scholarships for library employees; and
- supplemental funding for the cost of taking the GED.
Operating within a governmental context can be slow and cumbersome – and usually is. Private gifts to the Library Foundation enable the library to be “nimble,” to take advantage of strategic opportunities as they arise, whether expected or unexpected. Government is risk-averse and generally preserves the status quo. Private funding allows library leadership to be bold and responsive and to pursue experimentation and change.
How Mission Data Helped
Looking to further explore avenues of growth and change while creating a stronger community, one that creates name and face relationships (not just between patrons and the library, but with other patrons as well), the Library Foundation came to Mission Data with an expanded vision and a consistently high level of enthusiasm to help their community succeed in its endeavors.
As evidenced by the aftermath from a sudden flash flood in 2009, and the subsequent outpouring of local support and sentiment, there’s a personal interest for the many patrons who fill the library day in and day out in maintaining and improving its facilities, offerings, and events through contributions. The direct result for them? Visible, physical, and participatory returns on their investment – something that many donors in other capacities may not see. Their donations personally affect a positive outcome and they are, ultimately, doing something good through their donations.
The Library Foundation’s level of commitment and enthusiasm for their cause is infectious, and we were no exception. Focused on creating a sustained audience reach and engagement level, Mission Data’s designer and developers worked in-tandem to take on the challenges ahead while taking on the Library Foundation’s cause as their own! Go to the Library Foundation’s site now and you’ll see the result of various discussions between the designer, developers and client to create a more interactive and information-rich Library Foundation web presence and utilization of the social web. The site’s design is based almost entirely on that which has so strongly defined the library since its inception: being about and for the people. Where once was a site that existed strictly “for informational purposes only” now stands an online avenue for event promotion and registration, news promotion, online donation collection, and continuously-evolving social interaction. The ongoing results of our coordinated efforts will lead to increased donations, increased community interest and engagement, and, ultimately, continuously-improving offerings and services that last well into the future.
In a time when we ARE experiencing an economic downturn and hardships, libraries are actually SPURRING economic investment thanks to available resources, helping people find jobs, and providing budget-friendly education and entertainment options for individuals and families where many places are not. So, to the doomsayers out there, the Library Foundation has something to say to you. When the dust clears, it may be the book worms that fare the best of all.
For more information, visit the Library Foundation or contact them online, by phone (502-574-1654) or by
fax (502-574-1734). And, if you’re feeling especially generous, please take a moment to read this article and then donate to, what we feel, is one of the best types of causes. | <urn:uuid:e5becb17-60cb-4d44-b252-e3db4b4ee0f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.missiondata.com/blog/category/web-development/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936421 | 1,274 | 2.1875 | 2 |
UF studying disease linked to sandflies
Published: Friday, November 16, 2012 at 7:25 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, November 16, 2012 at 7:25 p.m.
University of Florida scientists are searching for clues about a disease that both animals and humans can get called Leishmania siamensis after a horse in Ocala was diagnosed with it in August 2011, marking the first documented case of a horse in the U.S. with the disease.
"It's certainly not anything we want people to panic over. It is here, and there's a lot we don't know," said Sarah Reuss, assistant professor of large animal medicine at the UF College of Veterinary Medicine.
Reuss published a study in the September issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases that raises questions about the prevalence of the disease in U.S. horses and how it spreads to humans.
The sandfly, found in warm climates such as the Middle East, Central America and the Caribbean, transmits the disease, which has been found mostly in dogs, horses and humans. The disease causes skin lesions and is treated with anti-fungal medications.
The Ocala horse, a 10-year-old Morgan mare, recovered after about six months with anti-fungal medications, although horses often self-cure, Reuss said. A more severe form of the disease has been reported in dogs and humans.
"It can get into the bone marrow, liver and spleen, and can unfortunately be fatal," Reuss said, adding that Leishmania siamensis is the second-leading cause of parasitic-induced death in humans, after malaria.
In the U.S., the disease has been reported in more than 3,000 people, mostly in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and in members of the military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Christine Petersen, an associate professor of veterinary pathology at Iowa State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, said dogs can transmit the disease to their puppies in utero, but scientists haven't found that to be the case with other species. Petersen added that the infected dogs were foxhounds, whose bodies are frequently under stress.
Similarly, humans with compromised immune systems are most at risk of contracting the disease.
"It won't happen in a normal healthy adult. It's kids, or elderly or otherwise immunocompromised people who are at highest risk," Petersen said.
And pregnant horses, like the Ocala horse, appear to be more vulnerable to the disease because of changes in the immune system, scientists speculate. Still, scientists are stumped over why some horses get the disease and others don't. None of the other horses on the farm where the Ocala horse lived had any signs of the disease, Reuss said.
Sandflies, a fuzzy insect about a third of the size of mosquitoes, are the only known transmitters of the disease. Their bites don't hurt but can cause itching, and the signature sign of infection with Leishmania siamensis is a red, raised sore that gets bigger and then heals over into a scar.
Sandflies are relatively prevalent in Florida, as they like sandy, brushy areas. UF researchers now are trapping sandflies to understand how prevalent the disease is among the flies and how they transmit it.
"We want to understand how much we really need to worry about this, or if this is sort of like a one-shot deal," Reuss said.
Petersen added, "I think it's something we should keep an eye on, particularly where we have disease-borne vectors in Texas and Florida. People are probably not going to be out anyway when it's really hot and gross, but for our pets, it's a lot bigger problem. Still, it's not a bad idea to use repellent."
Sandflies, like mosquitoes, feed at dawn and in the evening.
Reuss added that one concern is that global warming could spawn a potentially larger population of sandflies in warmer climates such as Florida.
"We know that sandflies are going to spread in their domain … and bring the disease with them," she said.
Contact Kristine Crane at 338-3119 or email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:579116f2-9c6f-471c-a3d2-e873c066151b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gatorsports.com/article/20121116/ARTICLES/121119624/0/misc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972589 | 888 | 2.625 | 3 |
Posted at 11:32 AM on May 2, 2008
by Sanden Totten
What do John Lennon, Steve Jobs and Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick all have in common?
Just thought I'd add a few more thoughts on this topic. One reader sent me some interesting evidence in support of LSD's mind expanding powers. First, it was apparently a big influence on Steve Jobs. During his younger years "Jobs experimented with LSD, calling these experiences 'one of the two or three most important things he has done in his life.'"
Genetic Scientist Francis Crick had a breakthrough while tripping. "He often used small doses of LSD . . . to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD . . . that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize."
And while the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds wasn't actually about LSD . . . It's widely thought that the ground breaking Revolver album was heavily inspired by the band's use of the drug.
Pair that with this story from our recent Story Slam. Dave Good tells a tale about one guy who's habit of taking the stuff didn't yield such "positive" effects. Check it out: | <urn:uuid:b166115e-18da-41e6-9786-91f9064cdd9b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/loophole/archive/2008/05/02/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973634 | 254 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Good job bringing this to light. People won't realise how huge the problem is and municipalities are woefully ill equipped to...
Agreed; mining can never be sustainable, but then how do you get the metals to make all the things you need in the course of...
Very good piece.
PRIME Minister P V Narasimha Rao has approved a plan to restructure the Union ministry of nonconventional energy sources (MNES) to improve efficiency and meet targets. The new structure will also see greater private-sector involvement.
MNES is presently structured along technology lines, which result in similar end-use applications being handled by separate departments and one department often handling technologies that have different end-uses. The ministry will be reoriented according to end-use applications and a horizontal integration of various technologies.
As part of the reorganisation, the Prime Minister is reported to have also cleared a move to transfer the Integrated Rural Energy Planning Programme (IREP) from the Planning Commission to MNES. Experts point out that by taking over IREP, minister of state for nonconventional energy sources S Krishna Kumar has acquired a ready-made programme propagating the use of nonconventional energy devices in rural areas. MNES officials argue IREP's well-developed infrastructure at the state and district levels can boost MNES' rural energy component.
Says Krishna Kumar, "The aim of the reorganisation is to impart a sense of dynamism to the official alternative-energy programme. It is meant to help the ministry generate 2,000 MW of electricity from nonconventional sources by the end of the Eighth Plan." Kumar points out total power generation in the nonconventional sector during the past decade amounted to only 200 MW. "If we generate 2,000 MW, if would be a revolutionary achievement," he added.
The minister says MNES has been handicapped by poor allocation of funds. The Planning Commission had recommended Rs 6,900 crore for this sector in the Eighth Plan, but only Rs 857 crore was allocated.
MNES will now be allowed to solicit private-sector funding and look for multilateral finance, plans for which are already being prepared. Kumar proudly points to a World Bank grant of $195 million and additional funding promised by the Global Environment Facility.
The restructuring of the ministry is expected to facilitate optimum use of the large volume of funds that MNES hopes to acquire. Explains MNES secretary Louis M Menezes, "We want to develop the market for nonconventional energy technologies with the active participation of the private sector."
The fiscal incentives for the private sector will include tax holidays, depreciation allowances and remunerative prices for electricity. The ministry will also increase its budget for technology demonstrations and workshops and provide industrial loans through the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency.
However, private nonconventional energy equipment manufacturers are sceptical about the changes. Says Rakesh Bakshi, director of Vestas-RRB India Ltd, a Delhi-based manufacturer of wind energy equipment, "We have to see how MNES cuts its red-tapism and interacts effectively with industry."
B C Jain, who heads Ankur, a Vadodara-based organisation that propagates the use of alternative energy devices, feels the reorganisation "will still leave loose ends." He points out several industrial groups have shown interest in biomass gasification for captive power generation, but biomass utilisation has stayed in the purview of the rural energy group, which deals with cooking fuel.
Some experts also point to the lack of fresh thinking on MNES' poor equipment maintenance, which has been the bane of the nonconventional energy programme. However, Kumar argues, "With the entry of the private sector, plants will no longer be set up merely to fulfill targets -- maintenance can also be ensured." Clearly, business considerations are seen as the panacea for most, if not all, nonconventional energy sector problems. | <urn:uuid:3b1f87b7-513a-46bf-8245-ee9e57680d0d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.downtoearth.org.in/node/31419 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936003 | 803 | 1.6875 | 2 |
I'd be the first or second person in line to advocate that schooling needs to be more personal and relevant for our students. A key premise behind Disrupting Class speaks to the opportunity we have to provide customized learning for all students. The time is ripe. Of course this is not a widespread phenomena and in reality, we're a long ways off from making learning about the learner. It's still largely about the content and curriculum developed by folks far, far away from schools. In spite of that, there are great teachers who either usurp some of their curricula requirements or masterfully make learning personal and relevant for students. Those teachers are magicians and that's more or less what I believe every teacher ought to strive for. But it shouldn't require as much voodoo as it does.
Our current system and structure fights personalized learning with nearly every new policy and protocol it can generate. The system craves standardization while we desperately need customization. These competing ideals butt heads constantly and for those teachers who do believe in personalizing learning, they live in perpetual frustration. Typically these are the teachers you'll find roaming around blogs, Twitter, Delicious and other spaces searching and asking how to create the type of learning that honors students' passions and allows them to own the learning. In the end, without a restructuring of time and current curriculum requirements the best we can hope for is small pockets of success or the .02 percent of students whose passion happens to be trigonometry or Shakespeare.
When I read posts from Karl Fisch, I can't help but think he's a perfect example of a teacher trying to make the most of his situation. He tells his algebra students what they need to be successful.
...to be successful you're going to have to be a learner, you're going to have to learn how to learn, and go after things on your own. You're going to have to be independent, curious, passionate learners, who don't just sit back and wait for someone to tell them what they're supposed to know, but who go out and try to figure things out for yourself. Who pursue your interests, your goals, your passions with intensity, and who actively participate in everything you do. Who go out and find other learners who are passionate about what you are passionate about and learn from them -- and alongside them.
Wonderful goals and yet I can help but wonder if algebra is the best vehicle to accomplish these goals. Why algebra? I'm not suggesting it has no value but it seems very arbitrary. Karl later confesses,
I'm trying to get you to be actively involved in your own education, to be independent and curious learners in mathematics, even if algebra is never going to be your favorite subject.
Why not study Numismatics or Ogham Divination? (For the record, I had no idea what Ogham Divination was but did a search for obscure courses.) My point is that it seems like Karl might accomplish these broad goals in better, more personal ways but he's working inside a system that isn't all that flexible and so he has to work all that much harder to achieve his goals.
But here's the thing that I'm grappling with. While I'm busy advocating for changes that might support an education that fuels and fosters students' passions, I worry that we lose sight of what a liberal education is all about. They don't know what they don't know. Providing students with broad experiences that invites them to develop a variety of skills, understand and appreciate diverse perspectives and potentially uncover hidden talents and interests speaks to a fairly well accepted purpose of school. Perhaps this is how many see our current model and justify it's existence assuming it's accomplishing this goal. I'm not convinced however that our intent is always to provide a broad experience but we can conveniently label anything that's boring and irrelevant part of this experience. There's lots of work to be done when it comes to getting this part right and it requires as much revamping as the personalized learning does. The back to the basic folks are forgetting the basics, whatever that means, isn't enough anymore. There's also the "life's-not-always-interesting-suck-it-up" camp which once again helps to justify marginal teaching practices and curriculum. If we were truly starting education from scratch today, I can't imagine we'd build the same system we have. There would be lots of discussion as to what types of content all students need. Even if core content and skills could be determined, we'd never teach them all as segmented subjects taught in isolation in 45-minute increments.
So I'm still having a difficult time envisioning this kind of education. One model that seems to be address the "they don't know what they don't know" part is Think Global School. Students get to experience 12 countries in 12 trimesters. Not really a scalable model but the concept of new experiences in interesting, meaningful contexts is worth examining. The personalized approach seems to be the attempt of the German education system which tries to identify student aptitude very early and provide a more direct path. This isn't really the kind of personal education I'm envisioning as it still revolves primarily around vocation as opposed to passion. The uncovering or pursuit of passion becomes a very interesting question as we see young people, even many adults struggle with this discovery. Sadly, many never find their passions. Yet many of our students have passions and interests that simply don't fit into the academia of school and students are left to pursue them outside of school.
So while it may be possible to provide both, I've not seen it done to any degree. Once again our system fails us. So I need to know if my ideas about a balance between passion based learning and a liberal education has merit or perhaps I'm missing something in this equation. I'd also be grateful if any can share some examples of people or institutions who are getting this balance right.
Follow Dean Shareski on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Shareski | <urn:uuid:52804bbf-83a4-4b06-a534-8772582a42d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-shareski/personalization-vs-standa_b_771631.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978674 | 1,229 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Mes, the way i've rationalised it with Izzy is to allow her to watch the likes of dr who confidential (the programmes of the filming of each episode of dr who)
& the makings of of various dvds, this way she see's the film, gets to grips with characters & recognises actors (& their voices in other roles) ..the basic line for anything vaguely gorey being to watch "it" with her & repeatedly explaining that the blood is just tomatoe saucey stuff & the actors wash it off, get changed & drive home to their families every night regardless of what happens on the shows.
this is why she has no qualms watching more grown up material (walking dead fr example), she's processed & understood to differentiate between actors, tv fx, latex masks etc, so the fact that we make things a bit scarey help her challenge concept.
we started her at a very early age, she's a very considerate kid likely to ask questions rather than have gut reactions & immediate disdain.
Think it will stand her in good stead.
more radically (I suppose)? she understands to a large degree brusque language in context, as lets face it she hears stuff all over the place, better she gets to grips & is able to use language in a choice manner at the appropriate time to best effect
..we've recently been using the term Ar$ehole in relation to others behaviour, part of her understanding has actually made her too polite & more likely to be a doormat so we're endeavouring to create balance.
(she won't necessarily say it ..but she will think it & tell us what led to that estimation of someone elses character) ..&As a result she will challenge both childrens behaviour, requesting a modification & even her teachers rather than just doing whatever instructed if she cannot agree, ..yes including the head at her school
(she never actually swears, anything she deems possibly naughty she'll talk through with us generally starting off with the line, please don't tell me off for saying this ..but that .........(insert subject matter / person) is ... so she checks whether it's ok & why if not, strictly adhering to it, judging herself & rationalising thoughts & opinions.
think she'll make a great judge or the worst politician!
The difference between the US & the uk (IMHO) halloween is that dressing up never really existed 25 yrs ago (unless it was dressing up in adult clothes & emulating via play, now children have , disneyfication, adverts, sat channels, comics, parks, disney stores etc, so character play has grown in abundance (partly sat tv) & the inevitable costumes purchased in lieu of actual parent child time over here. so rather than a parent making a costume, it's deemed ok (oh well others are doing it & she likes it , ..& I haven't got time) to wear what the kid wears for parties "she wanted to go as a princess" ..etc
(..point being it's another kids party, he's possibly the special on for a few hours).
So what was a celebration of spookiness transmogrifies in the uk to dress up as anything the hell you wan't ..lazy parenting in the uk, the lines between lazy parent & ok blurred because it's been different in the US & therefore much more acceptable for many many years a few generations.
So we lose out here in the uk based on what is absorbed via foriegn TV ..as with many things
This is another reason I'm not opening the door & handing out candy this year, too many disney princesses, mutters of too scarey amongst some really stupid people who are that glib as to ignore the history & timelines of Halloween celebrations ..making it just a dress up night where kids expect candy at the door without a bloody clue as to the lines "trick or treat"
Halloween should be like a roller coaster ride full of anticipation, putting the wind up yourself in anticipation of the ride, a thrill & a buzz, combined with the satrisfaction of good fun whilst challenging ones self by being that bit braver than on a normal day (or night) ..something Izzy would attest to on her first trip out on a proper grown up roller coaster this summer ...followed by going round it another 5 times!
Whatever else happens in this world i'm determined that she has a conscience grounding her whichever way she go's & something rooted to come back to should she stray, this has meant not stifling stuff with brush aways like "you're too young, you wouldn't understand"
..had a funny "what if" conversation about male & female genitalia last night ..ending with what if they were made of cheese!
Also another reason we stopped at one kid, I want to actually "parent" her & personally I
couldn't do the same (imho) with more than one child,(same with my cat) that & there is terrible overpopulation on the planet already.
it's a gradual process | <urn:uuid:f359926c-c171-45ce-a1a7-39a678491772> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zombiepumpkins.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5627&start=15 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963566 | 1,059 | 1.5 | 2 |
How a movie collector keeps their movies in pristine condition
Movies can go ahead of only giving a few hours of activity for you, your friends and your family members. Indeed, lots of people who believe themselves movie collectors will let know you that collecting the movies has become all the more significant recently. When movies are appropriate unseen digital files, the function of a movie collector is all the more precious. By taking care of the movies, both on tape and on the DVDs, movie collections can position the test of time period - and maybe even become a precious asset.
Keep your fingers off
One of the simplest methods a movie collector can maintain their movies in perfect form is to have their fingers far from the CD backs and also off the VHS tape. Fingers of course have some oils in them which can reason harm to these kinds of surfaces. Still if you suppose your fingers are dirt free, you will desire to keep away from touching every of the surfaces which are use in playing the real movie. And if you can not evade touching to these surfaces, wash your hands carefully with soap and water ahead of time - or utilize latex/non-latex gloves to make sure that you are not destructive your movies.
In the case, not a folder
The simplest method to ensure your movie collector library is kept secure is to keep the movies in their cases at all the times. Never must a movie be out and sitting on one more surfaces. What occurs is that the movie can get contact with some number of dirt particles and some other harmful items. Or the movie can drop to the floor; causing many scratches which may cause damage the movie's playing capability. | <urn:uuid:c6fe2bd4-8a91-40eb-ae1c-ad066abb8584> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dialdirections.com/posts-16.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963097 | 335 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Current Research Projects
Molecular genetics of cell division
The use of chemotherapy to effectively treat cancer is often constrained by the side effects that occur because the drugs kill all dividing cells in the body, not just the cancer. Still worse, many advanced tumours and relapses show drug resistance, even to combined drug therapies. These multi-drug resistant cancers usually exhibit chromosomal instability, gaining and losing chromosomes as they grow. This has led to the theory that Chromosomal INstability (CIN) is responsible for generating massive genetic diversity out of which drug resistant cells can emerge. Although CIN and drug resistance creates problems for traditional therapies, it also presents a potential therapeutic target: if we can develop drugs to specifically kill cells with CIN, the cancer could be effectively treated without damaging normal cells.
We have established a straightforward screening approach using Drosophila to identify genes that can be depleted to kill cells with chromosomal instability. In our first round of screening we tested 485 kinases and phosphatases, and identified 16 that specifically enhanced cell death only in CIN cells. Much of our current work is to characterize how these genes affect cell division and to determine which pathways and mechanisms can best be targeted to specifically kill CIN cells.
If you would like further information on any of our work, please email me (firstname.lastname@example.org), or drop in to have a chat (1st floor, room 1.30 MLS building).
Please note that I will not be taking any further overseas PhD students in 2013. | <urn:uuid:5ff6083d-dd2b-4829-9167-a898a4be1228> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.adelaide.edu.au/mbs/research/cdac/projects/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935719 | 320 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Starting out in 1989, Garming had the goal to create navigation and communication devices to enrich customers' lives with principles of innovation, convenience, performance, value and service. Today Garmin is a leader in the design, manufacturing and marketing of GPS navigation, communication and sonar products for a variety of markets, including:
What is GPS?
GPS, or Global Positioning System, is a satellite-based navigation system that is made up of a network of 24 satellites currently in orbit. These GPS satellites circle earth twice a day in a precise orbit and transmit information to earth. Your GPS receiver takes this information and uses triangulation to calculate your exact location. In order to calculate a 2D position (longitude and latitude) and track movement, the GPS receiver must be locked on to the signal of at least three satellites. When the receiver has four or more satellites in view it is able to for altitude of the user too. When the GPS unit has identified user position, it can then additionally calculate for speed, bearing, track, trip distance, distance to destination, sunrise and sunset time, as well as much more.
Garmin offers a full line-up of marine products, from streamlined, highly-effective fishfinders to an entire plug-and-play marine network with sonar, radar and XM weather to outfit your vessel with.
- Chartplotters - Highly accurate GPS plotters to help keep you precisely on course during your journeys and excursions, so you can navigate with complete and total confidence.
- Sounders - These chartplotters plus sonar will guide you right to the next big fish.
- Fishfinders - Garmin offers a wide range of fishfinders to suit your individual specifications and make finding fish easier than ever.
- Handhelds - Garmin manufactures and huge line of rugged and waterproof marine handheld GPS. Each handheld is packed with features to help you navigate the waterways, and with many options to choose from you are sure to find one that's right for you.
- Radar - Radomes and open array radars show you what's out there on the water.
- Autopilots - These easy-to-use and reliable autopilots lead the way in any sea condition.
- Transducers - Garmin's Intelliducer line of transducers offer a variety of features and mounting styles for your vessel. With these transducers you will bring out the full potential of your marine network.
- Weather - With location-specific XM WX Weather data, you can know exactly what kind of weather lies in your path. XM WX Weather deliver high-resolution animated weather data in chart-overlay form directly to your MFD.
- Communications - Marine radio receivers and wired handset microphones offer and enhance convenience and safety.
Trail and Outdoor Use
Garmin's rugged, waterproof handhelds, track exactly where you are, and where your going while you hike, camp, hunt, explore and geocache. They do all the work for you, so you can focus on having fun.
- Basic Handhelds - Garmin offers a wide range of simple and lightweight navigators for rugged outdoor adventures.
- Mapping Handhelds - This line of tough, handheld mapping navigators give you directions both on and off the road. | <urn:uuid:4765c54c-80ee-4991-8dee-1cde6ed555c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jamestowndistributors.com/userportal/document.do?docId=1042&title=Garmin | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918393 | 676 | 2.125 | 2 |
Guest Post by Jim Wolfgang, University System of Georgia I am Jim Wolfgang, Director of the Digital Innovation Group. The DI Group is a collaborative effort of the University System of Georgia’s Faculty Development Office and Georgia College. The focus is to “Enhance the Learning Experience” through the innovative uses of technology. Note that this is not the “academic experience.” We take a comprehensive look at what the opportunities are in the full spectrum of campus activities. Although primarily focused on higher education in the USG, we also work with private institutions, K-12, corporate partners, communities and anyone else with an idea.
Dr. Malcolm Murray is the Learning Technologies Team Leader at Durham University. Please join him for his session “Letting the Lunatics Run the Asylum: Students Developing Code for the Production Environment,” on Tuesday, July 12, 2011, 8:30-9:15AM, Titian 2303. Dr. Murray will also be presenting at BbWorld. To learn more about that session, read his earlier blog post, “Rethinking Student Feedback.” Last summer I got the opportunity to try something that I’d been wanting to do for the last five years – get some students working on building blocks! What began as an apparently simple task soon revealed itself to be far more complicated – perhaps the term “lunatic” I have used in the title of the presentation applies more to me than the students! That said, ultimately this was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.
Julie Evans is the CEO of Project Tomorrow. Please join Julie for her session on Thursday, July 14 at 10:15-11:10AM in Titian 2201A. Yes, you can! Let’s admit it – our school and district budgets are still struggling and so, now more than ever, we all need to be able to build a solid financial case as well as a compelling value proposition for the adoption or expansion of our online learning initiatives. You know all about the benefits of online professional development for our teachers and expanded course offerings for our students. But how do you get started building your online learning “return on investment” business case? Don’t panic – just follow these three easy steps.
Almost 2,000 of you are registered for BbWorld and now that it’s just 30 days away, it’s time to plan your trip! The MyBbWorld feature is available via BbWorld.com to help you build your itinerary and create a schedule that meets your personal interests throughout the week. But with more than 150 sessions on the program, you might not know where to begin. Some of your favorite Bb employees and well-known clients have provided their list of “must-see sessions.” There’s definitely something for everyone, whether you’re a director of technology, system administrator, instructional technologist, or a professional development coordinator. Take a look here as you plot out your trip:
Stephen P. Vickers is the Technology Enhanced Learning Manager at The University of Edinburgh. Please join him, along with Simon Booth from the University of Stirling, during their presentation, “A Plug and Play Learning Application Integration – Seamlessly Connect to Learning” on Thursday, July 14, 2011 from 10:15AM-11:10AM in Titian 2205. Many go to Vegas in the hopes of a big win. Well come to Vegas next month and I can guarantee you a win-win-win. The IMS Basic Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) specification truly delivers a win-win-win. It is a win for teachers and learners. It is a win for Blackboard system administrators. And, it is a win for developers of elearning applications. One of the great things about the second week of July is that thousands of people with a common goal all come together in a single place. The common goal is enhancing the student learning experience. This year promises to be even more exciting. Not only do we have OSCELOT Open Source Day 6, DevCon and BbWorld, but also the Blackboard Collaborate Connections Summit. This breadth of activity is perfectly mirrored in the impact of Basic LTI on the eLearning community. | <urn:uuid:057c279b-538f-4c7c-8932-b7bb5773bbf5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.blackboard.com/author/andrea-meier/page/10/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946825 | 892 | 1.625 | 2 |
Yoga combines physical postures, called asanas, and breathing practices, called pranayama, to create a meditative and relaxing exercise. Yoga has been used for healing purposes for over 5,000 years, and while the original yoga includes an entire philosophy, the Western version of yoga is typically light on the spiritual aspects. You can be any religion (or atheist, for that matter) and practice yoga.
Yoga for fertility is rapidly gaining popularity, with specially-made yoga for fertility DVDs and books, and yoga studios offering fertility-friendly yoga classes.
Of course, to benefit from the relaxation and feel-good-vibes that yoga has to offer, you don't have to sign up for a fertility-focused yoga class. Any yoga class that emphasizes relaxation and is not extremely competitive should work. Look for gentle or restorative yoga to get the maximum relaxation effect.
In case you're wondering, you do not need to be flexible to do yoga, and you don't need to have a perfectly sculpted body, like the women you see on yoga magazine covers. Non-flexible people and average or overweight people can do yoga, and love it!
More about yoga: | <urn:uuid:ebc3b43a-c25a-423c-97ae-6dce68ac7fb3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://infertility.about.com/od/alternativetreatments/ss/Mind-Body-Medicine-Therapies-For-Fertility_2.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952718 | 245 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Iran may quit anti-nuclear arms pact if attacked: envoy
By Fredrik Dahl
VIENNA (Reuters) - Any attack on Iran's nuclear facilities may lead to it withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a pact aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear arms, a senior Iranian official said on Friday.
Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, also suggested Iran in such a case could kick out IAEA inspectors and install its uranium enrichment centrifuges in "more secure" places.
His comments may strengthen concerns among many Western nuclear experts that military action against Iran aimed at preventing it from developing nuclear weapons may backfire and only drive its entire nuclear program underground.
There has been persistent speculation that Israel might bomb Iran, which it accuses of seeking a nuclear weapons capability. Iran denies the charge and says Israel's assumed atomic arsenal is a threat to regional security.
If attacked, "there is a possibility that the (Iranian) parliament forces the government to stop the (U.N. nuclear) agency inspections or even in the worse scenario withdraw from the NPT," Soltanieh said in a statement in English submitted to a meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors.
Asked about Soltanieh's comments, Israel's ambassador to the IAEA, Ehud Azoulay, said: "I believe that they are going to do it anyhow, in the near future, so I'm not surprised.
"When they make their first nuclear explosion they will have to withdraw, I believe," he told reporters, adding he thought Iran was "following the steps" of North Korea.
North Korea was the first country to withdraw from the NPT, in 2003, and has denied IAEA access to its atomic sites. It carried out nuclear tests in 2006 and in 2009. Continued... | <urn:uuid:3dbbb37a-ab1c-4c75-9a58-c0c3762bc36f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCABRE8AT0JL20121130 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961818 | 393 | 1.625 | 2 |
The official seal adopted by the City of Saratoga Springs, depicts a Mohawk family at High Rock Spring, and is based on an illustration by John Ehninger (1827-1889). The image pays homage to High Rock, and the Native Americans who, in 1771, brought Sir William Johnson to the “great medicine spring.” In the 1770’s, several pioneers attempted settlement in the High Rock Area including Dirck Schouten, John Arnold, Samuel Norton, a son of Samuel Norton, and Gilbert Morgan. In 1783, General Philip Schuyler cut a path through the wilderness, from his home in Old Saratoga, by the Hudson River near Fish Creek, to the High Rock Spring, and built a cabin. While on a northern tour in 1783, General George Washington traveled to the High Rock Spring with his party, and drank the waters before continuing their journey southward. Alexander Bryan is considered the first permanent resident at the springs in 1787. Bryan built a blacksmith shop and an additional log building where he opened a tavern. The area around High Rock continued to develop as the Blakeslys, Risleys and Taylors settled and started businesses in what would become known as the “Upper Village.”
About a mile south from High Rock Spring, in the area of present day Congress Spring and Congress Park, the Lower Village was being carved out of the forest. Gideon and Doanda Putnam had arrived in 1789 and farmed and lumbered a plot of land on Prospect Hill, near where Saratoga Hospital is today. Putnams acquired capital by making staves and shingles and carting them by horse and wagon to the Hudson River, where the materials were shipped to towns and cities south of this area.
The Congress Spring had been discovered in 1792 and was attracting ever-increasing numbers of visitors. Gideon Putnam tubed the Congress Spring and built his Tavern and Boarding House in 1802. Gideon Putnam had the vision to see the possibilities at the springs at Saratoga. Gideon Putnam built Broadstreet, today's Broadway, to be more than 100 feet wide. He expanded his boarding house to become The Union, which later in the 1800's became the Grand Union. Putnam also built the Congress Hall, on land where our Arts Council is today. It was while building Congress Hall that he fell from scaffolding in 1811, and died a year later as a result of that fall. The land along Broadstreet continued to be developed, thrive and prosper, as the Upper and Lower Villages, became one.
The Town of Saratoga Springs was set apart from the Town of Saratoga in 1819. In 1826, it was incorporated as a village. On December 28, 1871, our Town Hall, designed by architects Cummings & Burt Associates at a cost of $109,999.46, opened to the public. The lions were added upon the buildings completion. In 1915 the Village and Town of Saratoga Springs were incorporated to form the City of Saratoga Springs.
Today’s City is over 28 square miles and has a year-round population of approximately 28,000. During the summer season, that number swells to over triple.
The City of Saratoga Springs’ has a commission form of government, also called the ‘Galveston Plan. This form was created in Galveston, Texas in 1901, as a result of a devastating hurricane in 1900. There are five at-large City Council members, all responsible for taxation, appropriations, ordinances, and other general functions. However, each Commissioner also has individual functions as the head of and specific to their respective departments. The five departments are Mayor, Finance, Accounts, Public Works and Public Safety. More information about each can be found by clicking on the ‘Local Government’ tab. | <urn:uuid:97156c57-503c-4312-8869-9f56b37876aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.saratoga-springs.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=95&Itemid=121 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978482 | 802 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Inset course: Drama School Auditions
Teachers and lecturers preparing their students for Drama School auditions are now able to join us on the audition panel for a day to improve the chances for their students at audition.
Observe the audition process with the panel, and sit in on detailed discussions about what you’ve seen. The day ends with an opportunity to discuss the process with senior staff at ALRA.
Maximum places: two per audition day.
Outreach - Talks and Auditions
As part of the ALRA commitment to widening participation and access for all, Adrian Hall runs an extensive outreach programme which covers schools, colleges, sixth form schools and universities.
Each year we visit approximately 40 institutions mostly FE and Sixth form colleges and some universities. In the morning, there is a talk about life at drama school to your students in their first year of college or Sixth Form, lasting about an hour and a half. There's plenty of time to ask questions about funding, course structure, and the crucial differences between different drama school courses and degrees. This talk is a very good general introduction to drama school, and not specifically pitching ALRA. There is a small charge (£25) towards travel and admin for these trips.
An afternoon session can also be added, where students are auditioned on-site at your school or college. This is an opportunity for students to audition for a drama school without paying the expensive train fares to and from London or Wigan. Any school or college which has at least eight students keen to audition for ALRA should get in touch and arrange for us to come out to you.
'Thank you so much for the effort you made to get through the snow. I can't imagine many other people doing that - it really says a lot about ALRA and has put you apart from other schools for me.'
'Firstly, I would like to thank you very much for the talk you gave today, I can honestly say it was by far and away the most inspiring and useful talk I have heard since attending college.
Whilst ALRA was not on the top of my list of drama schools before your presentation, it certainly is now. I feel that if the course shows the level of guidance and professionalism that you showed yourself then it certainly deserves its place amongst the top rankings on any list of drama schools to consider for training.'
'The outreach programme has given our students invaluable help and encouraged them to aim higher. Every year more of our students attain places at Conference Schools and I believe that the visits and masterclasses from Adrian Hall have played an enormous part in helping to achieve this success. A visit from a drama school makes their future aspirations more real and possible. We have also had a production from ALRA tour here and that performance experience and the time that ALRA students gave ours after the performance to talk and answer questions has been a tremendous motivator! It is a relationship which we are grateful for and hope will continue.'
'Your visit to Huddersfield New College to talk to our students was very much appreciated. Students who are applying for courses in performing arts and related fields face a much more complex range of options than most other students We very much appreciated the fact that you were able to offer both a presentation and a practical workshop as together they gave students a real insight into vocational training and education. What certainly did come across to students was the reality of the level of commitment and stamina required for this type of programme of study. The feed back from both teaching staff and students was excellent and we would certainly welcome another visit from you in the future.'
Spring touring of final year shows
Each Spring, ALRA takes its shows out on the road, touring to schools and colleges.
These shows are brought at no cost to the school (though we do appreciate a bit of lunch, and maybe a minibus ride to the station), and can be scheduled for afternoon or evening performances.
'I just wanted to say thanks so much for setting up the visit by ALRA students to Kirklees College. The students really loved the performance and there's been a lot of talk about the impact of the visit already (we're not even back until Monday!). Please pass on my thanks and congratulations to the cast and crew for a well performed and thought-provoking show and also for the generous sharing of thoughts and experiences in the post-show discussion.'
Bridie Moore [Kirklees College, Huddersfield] | <urn:uuid:39cbce37-0fa0-4575-b211-bbc6ff555e27> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alra.co.uk/index.php/About-Us/alra-and-schools.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976932 | 907 | 1.625 | 2 |
Here's an easy way to help a local charity: Download an app.
That's it. Simple enough?
Lakewood-based Emergency Food Network (EFN) receives $2.50 every time someone downloads the WhereURNow app on their smartphone and selects it as the charity of their choice.
WhereURNow is a flash site that provides a link between consumers and local retailers starting with a unique navigation wheel, which provides the user with a quick first step in finding local retailers offering the product or service they are looking for.
Similar to Groupon or Living Social, the site features discounted gift certificates usable at local or national companies. But you don't have to buy anything to help EFN.
In 2011, EFN, which supplies food to 67 food banks, shelters and meal sites across Pierce County, distributed 13.1 million pounds of food worth $16.5 million on a $2.2 million budget. EFN can purchase $12 worth of food for every dollar donated.
That means that every last penny helps.
Download WhereURnow at the Apple App Store, Google Play for Androids or register on its website, www.whereurnow.com. | <urn:uuid:c5a857e9-b7b2-4389-b566-4b20aa950ca1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gigharbor.patch.com/groups/local-connections/p/smartphone-app-helping-local-charity-76012694 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928769 | 244 | 1.59375 | 2 |
From the time he was a high school senior in his home state of Louisiana, anti-creationism activist Zack Kopplin has been speaking, debating, cornering politicians and winning the active support of 78 Nobel Laureates, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New Orleans City Council, and tens of thousands of students, teachers and others around the country. The Rice University history major joins Bill to talk about fighting the creep of creationist curricula into public school science classes and publicly funded vouchers that end up supporting creationist instruction.
“Evolution and climate change aren’t scientifically controversial, but they are controversial to Louisiana legislators,” Kopplin tells Bill. “Basically, everyone who looked at this law knew it was just a back door to sneak creationism into public school science classes.”
Bill Moyers: Welcome to this week’s broadcast and the “troublemaker” of the year. That’s right, my guest is the first recipient of a new award that singles out teenagers who are not afraid to speak their minds on major issues, even when everyone else around them disagrees. Not afraid, in other words, to stir up trouble for a good cause. That’s what Zack Kopplin was doing just the other day at a Save Texas Schools rally in Austin, the state capital:
Zack Kopplin: Do we want Texas tax dollars being used to fund private schools teaching creationism? Say no Texas!
Bill Moyers: Zack Kopplin was chosen to receive the first “troublemaker” of the year award because he’s made waves fighting on behalf of science and against laws making it easier to teach creationism in public schools.
Today’s fundamentalists, with political support from the right wing, are more aggressive than ever in crusading to challenge evolution with the dogma of creationism. But they didn’t reckon on Zack Kopplin.
Starting at the grass roots in his home state of Louisiana, he’s become a formidable adversary nationally, speaking, debating, button-holing politicians, and winning the active support of Nobel laureates, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The New Orleans City Council and tens of thousands of students, teachers and others around the country who have signed on to his campaign. Troublemakers all. Zack is now 19 and a history major at Rice University in Houston. He’s with me now. Welcome to the show.
Zack Kopplin: Thank you so much for having me on.
Bill Moyers: What was it about the Louisiana Science Education Act that you didn't like?
Zack Kopplin: Well, this law allows supplemental materials into our public school biology classrooms to quote, "critique controversial theories," like evolution and climate change. Now, evolution and climate change aren't scientifically controversial, but they are controversial to Louisiana legislators. And basically, everyone who looked at this law knew it was just a backdoor to sneak creationism into public school science classes.
Bill Moyers: Who was behind it?
Zack Kopplin: Nationally, there's this group called the Discovery Institute. They're a creationist think tank that's been pushing these types of laws all around the country for years and years. They even tried to get one nationally included in George Bush's No Child Left Behind with the Santorum amendment. And so they wrote this law and they passed it on locally to the Louisiana Family Forum, which is our affiliate of Focus on the Family. Senator Ben Nevers, who sponsored it, said the Louisiana Family Forum suggested the law to him because they wanted creationism discussed when talking about Darwin's theory. So we know from the horse's mouth exactly what this law is about.
Bill Moyers: What's your understanding now of creationism? What essentially does it hold?
Zack Kopplin: Essentially it's a denial of evolution, mainly based off a literal interpretation of Genesis.
Bill Moyers: That God created the earth, a supernatural power intervened, and that's where we and the universe came from?
Zack Kopplin: Yes. And so there're some versions that say the earth is less than 10,000 years old. There're some where they've, creationists have adapted and said, "Well, we got in trouble in the court case when we said that, so we'll say it's millions of years old. But evolution still doesn't happen. We were created in our present form." And that's intelligent design creationism. Intelligent design creationism is still creationism dressed up to look like it's scientific, but it's really not.
Bill Moyers: When did you collide with this notion?
Zack Kopplin: So the Louisiana Science Education Act passed back in 2008. It was the summer before my sophomore year in high school. And so I knew about it. My dad's been involved in Louisiana politics my entire life, so it was a dinner conversation. We'd be, like, "We can't believe this bad law is just, like, it's passing. But Governor Jindal will never sign it." We knew Governor Jindal. He's a very smart man. He's a Brown University biology major. And so we decided, "Okay, when it gets to him, he'll veto it."
Bill Moyers: He's also a Rhodes Scholar.
Zack Kopplin: He's a Rhodes Scholar, yeah. And so it got to Governor Jindal with overwhelming support. And Governor Jindal started voicing his support for intelligent design creationism, he signed the law and he's defended it ever since. And we were shocked. So for about two years I sort of stewed over this law. I wanted to fight it. I talked to all my friends. And my friends knew I couldn't stand this law. But I never really knew how to take it on at that point. I was still too young to really recognize I had a voice.
Bill Moyers: At what point did you say that to yourself, "This is so important to me for my own reasons of conscience, that I'm going to make it my life as a young man.”
Zack Kopplin: So, my senior year of high school, I had to do a senior project. And I had friends who learned how to cook healthy food, learned a new language. And I was just, like, none of that interests me. But you know what? But what got my attention was this law. And so on a whim, I sent an e-mail to Dr. Barbara Forrest, who's an expert about, an expert on this issue. She—
Bill Moyers: Teaches philosophy, doesn't she?
Zack Kopplin: She teaches philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana. So she was an expert witness at the Kitzmiller versus Dover trial, where—
Bill Moyers: In Pennsylvania.
Zack Kopplin: In Pennsylvania, where intelligent design creationism was ruled unconstitutional. And while it's not a Supreme Court case and doesn't have holding across the entire United States, it essentially has put a stop to intelligent design as a serious method of sneaking creationism into the classroom.
But, so she was an expert witness there and she happens to live 30 minutes away from me in Livingston Parish, a local hotbed of creationism. And so I sent an e-mail to her and said, "I'm a student at Baton Rouge Magnet High and I really want to fight this law." And so she apparently looked me up to make sure I wasn't a creationist plant and then set up a meeting with me. And we got going from there—
Bill Moyers: A mole.
Zack Kopplin: Yep. I didn't really ever expect it to actually take off the way it did. I sent one e-mail, and suddenly this whole campaign began.
Bill Moyers: Who else helped you?
Zack Kopplin: I set up a meeting with Barbara and I asked her, “who should I talk to locally?" We worked out Senator Karen Carter Peterson, who represents a district in New Orleans. And she was one of the few votes against the law when it first passed. So I got her to agree to sponsor a repeal bill. And that was a great meeting. She just said, "Okay, like, when do we get started?" And that was just her response to me, "When do we get started." So, I talked to her and I also talked to Barbara about if we wanted to bring some big names on board, who should I, like, who should I talk to? And one of the people she recommended was Sir Harry Kroto, who is a Nobel Laureate chemist at Florida State. And so I sent him an e-mail. And he immediately called, he sent me an e-mail back and said, "Hey, do you have time to talk on the phone, like, on Friday?" And so we set it up where I had written a letter for Nobel Laureate scientists to our state legislature. I talked to him. And I woke up the next morning with him and about ten other Nobel Laureates having signed the letter. And we just started building from there. And so we have 78 Nobel Laureate scientists onboard.
Bill Moyers: But you haven't repealed the law. It's still in place.
Zack Kopplin: I mean, we would, I would've liked the law to be repealed two years ago, or even five years ago now. But it's going to be a long, tough fight. And I think we know that at this point.
Bill Moyers: You realize that you're bucking public opinion. The latest findings from Gallup last June are that 46 percent of Americans believe in creationism. 32 percent believe in evolution guided by God. I guess they would call that a form of intelligent design. And 15 percent believe in evolution without God's help. You're definitively in the minority.
Zack Kopplin: I would say we've got about 54 percent that are in the majority because there's a difference between intelligent design and what I think that second option about God guided evolutionists, which be theistic evolution. And there's a lot of people who say that God has caused evolution to happen. But they don't, that's not actually intelligent design. Intelligent design specifically rejects evolution, especially on a large scale. Creationists like to break it up into micro, macro evolution. That's not a legitimate thing. That's not what scientists do. But that's how they say, "We can't accept change over millions of years." And—
Bill Moyers: And the theistic theory?
Zack Kopplin: Theistic evolution is to say what the Catholic Church accepts, where Pope John Paul II said there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of faith. And they just say, "We think God started evolution. And it's run the way scientists say it's run."
Bill Moyers: Do you think the Gallup poll is simplistic?
Zack Kopplin: I think it's very simplistic.
Bill Moyers: Doesn't recognize the varieties of ideas on this subject—
Zack Kopplin: Yes, having said that, the 46 percent who think the earth was formed in the last 10,000 years is a very scary number for me.
Bill Moyers: Let me play you a clip from Representative Paul Broun of Georgia. He's a member of Congress. You've heard of him, I'm sure. And this was his appearance at an event organized by the Liberty Baptists Church in his own state.
PAUL BROUN: God's word is true. I've come to understand that all that stuff I was taught about evolution, and embryology, and big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see there are a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young earth. I don’t believe that the earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the bible says.
Bill Moyers: Representative Broun is a medical doctor. He is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. If he were sitting here instead of me, what would you say to him?
Zack Kopplin: We need to change that attitude. I mean, we need to be teaching evolution and embryology and the big bang theory because, you know, while he may think they're lies from the pit of hell, they're not. They're good, established science. And if our students don't learn it, they're going to be at a disadvantage to the rest of the world, to China, to Britain to France. And we're not going to do what we need to really make the advances to keep our way of life and ensure the survival of the human race, if we don't teach our students science.
He has the freedom to be educated and educate his children the way he sees it. But, we have to make a specific distinction. Not in the public schools, not in publicly funded private schools, like voucher schools. And definitely not educating other people's children.
Bill Moyers: You've taken this fight beyond the Louisiana law into the fight against school vouchers. Why?
Zack Kopplin: I didn't initially really care about school vouchers because I was fundamentally a science advocate. And I was worried about evolution. And then last summer I got, a friend sent me an article by Alternet that had exposed a school in Louisiana in this voucher program that was apparently using curriculum that taught the Loch Ness Monster disproved evolution, and the Loch Ness Monster was real.
And so it caught my attention. And I said, "Well, let me look into this more." And so I pulled a list of the voucher schools off our department of education's website and just started going through them. And I'd look up a school and look up its website. And I'd go find a school that said, "Scientists are sinful men." And we are—
Bill Moyers: Sinful?
Zack Kopplin: Sinful. And they rejected the things like theories like the age of the earth and anything else they said anything that, like, that that goes against God's word is an error. And so I found a school like that. I found a school that put in their student handbook that students had to defend creationism against traditional scientific theory. And so these are schools receiving millions in public money.
Bill Moyers: Through vouchers—
Zack Kopplin: Through vouchers—
Bill Moyers: --transferring public funds from public schools to private religious schools.
Zack Kopplin: And recently we, I exposed with MSNBC that over 300 schools in voucher programs in nine states and Washington DC are teaching creationism. We have schools that call evolution the way of the heathen. And so it's become pretty clear if you create a voucher program, you're just going to be funding creationism through the back door.
Bill Moyers: Neal McCluskey at the Cato Institute writes, "Were Kopplin's argument fundamentally that taxpayers should not have their money taken against their will to schools with which they might disagree, it would be one thing: vouchers do transfer taxpayer money, though they provide far more overall freedom than does public schooling. But Kopplin's argument, like the arguments of so many people on numerous education issues, isn't ultimately about freedom. It's about prohibiting others from learning something he doesn't like."
Zack Kopplin: I think Neal McCluskey is forgetting about the First Amendment fundamentally. We have a separation of church and state in this country. And creationism is fundamentally religious. And evolution is just science and is not religious.
And I think as you probably have discussed on the show, the free exercise of religion includes religion and non-religion. So this country is fundamentally secular. And there shouldn't be, you, we shouldn't bring in one specific, not even just Christianity, but one specific version of Christianity that would not teach what the Catholics, or the Hindus or the Muslims or the atheists believe in the public schools and teach it instead of established science.
Bill Moyers: Do you ever wake up in the morning and say, "Hey, I'm only 19. I've got Rice, tough school to get out of and get started in my life, in my work. Why am I doing this?"
Zack Kopplin: I don't think it's a choice. I think it's something that has to be done. And I'm the one who's in the right position to do it, so I'm going to do it.
Bill Moyers: Well, Zack, I've enjoyed this conversation and I wish you well. Thank you for coming.
Zack Kopplin: Thank you so much for having me on.
Interview Producer: Gail Ablow. Editor: Sikay Tang. Associate Producer: Robert Booth. | <urn:uuid:35673b04-fe35-4d8e-9ba5-586bd5642108> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.truth-out.org/video/item/14949-zack-kopplin-on-keeping-creationism-out-of-public-classrooms | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974489 | 3,595 | 1.851563 | 2 |
September 9, 2009 > History: Hayward's Public Art Controversy
History: Hayward's Public Art Controversy
By Marcess Owings, Curatorial Assistant
Art can be described as many things: beautiful, picturesque, emotional... ugly, crazy, nonsensical. Everyone can form a comment about or connect with a work of art. But public art can often be the most controversial, especially when there is $100,000 involved. This may sound like the set-up for a juicy art scandal in a major metropolis, but it is really a story right out of Hayward.
As Hayward geared up for a centennial celebration in 1976, many projects were underway to commemorate the monumental event. The (then) new city hall on Foothill Boulevard had just been completed and a book on Hayward's history was in the works. Another project was a mural for the lobby of Centennial Hall that would illustrate and pay tribute to Hayward's rich history.
Centennial Hall was the former gym of Hayward Union High School. While the rest of the high school was torn down to make way for the new city hall and shopping center, the city did some minor renovations, turning the gym into a convention center. The building was aptly renamed in honor of the city's centennial. Commissioning an artist to create a mural for the building seemed like the perfect addition to the building and simple to complete. The project was even approved for a matching grant of up to $50,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). In May 1977, a committee of representatives from Hayward and NEA met to consider which artist to hire.
After reviewing slides and resumes of some 150 artists, the committee unanimously selected William T. Wiley. Wiley, a Bay Area transplant was a highly acclaimed contemporary artist whose artwork was featured at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) as well as other galleries and museums across the country. Art critic Jerome Tarshis referred to Wiley as "one of the most imitated artists in the United States" in a 1974 article in ARTnews. Surely, Wiley was the artist for the job.
Wiley's terms for the project were a little eccentric: no contract and no sketches were to be shown to Hayward's city council prior to the final work. The artist also stated that he would not paint directly on the walls of Centennial Hall, but would paint 10x16 foot panels of canvas instead. The exact number of canvases was to be determined by when Wiley felt he was done with the piece. The first panel would be shown to the council for approval when it was completed.
Mayor Ilene Weinreb stated at the beginning of the process, "We have a strong local art association, so we have a good strong local basis for the support of public art. Hayward is ready for this." However, the response after the presentation of the first panel in December 1977 might suggest otherwise. The painting consisted of an abstracted landscape depicting imagery of many stereotypical ideas of the "Old West" with just a few specific references to Hayward's past. In the center of the painting was a Wiley trademark, a square of black and white blocks representing yin and yang. The painting was not a traditional representation of Hayward's pastoral history.
Wiley claimed that the bright colorful scene was filled with positive artistic stereotypes, but some found these stereotypes to be generic and derogatory toward Hayward and its history. Some people questioned why Wiley appeared to hate Hayward, while others could not understand why the council did not commission local muralists to do the work.
The response to the first panel sparked the question as to whether or not the city council would move forward with the project. The council was willing to continue if Wiley would supply sketches. They wanted imagery that echoed the area and was more recognizable as Hayward. Wiley was not one to compromise on the terms though. Hayward could either pay for the project when it was complete or they could reject it and he would sell it to someone else. The council agreed. Wiley stated in an interview, "If there is enough positive reaction so that the painting stays in Hayward that would be nice. If there isn't, that's OK, too."
The final work consisted of two more panels in addition to the first, but these two were in stark contrast to the original. Mostly black and white, one panel featured images from Hayward's past and present, including Wiley striding toward Centennial Hall with the murals tucked under his arm. The other panel is a view of the Bay Area shown from Hayward's perspective and featured sayings like "Nomad is an island" and "Support your local color."
Upon its completion in the fall of 1978, the mural sat in Wiley's studio for three months before Wiley's representatives approached Henry Hopkins, director of SFMOMA. Hopkins offered to hang the mural for twenty-five days at SFMOMA, and during the first five days only Hayward council members, administrators, and their guests were able to view the piece.
The panels received a lot of negative criticism from Hayward residents, but Wiley explained that he had created the painting from images in his own mind after reading Hayward...The First 100 Years history book. He did not intend to represent Hayward alone, but Hayward, the Bay Area, California, and the whole world.
Critics of the work claimed that Wiley had not finished it, since the panels were largely black and white. Some thought he was trying to cheat the city and that his view of suburban living was negative. One council member said, "We didn't commission him to spit on us." However, rather than vote on whether or not to accept the mural, the council postponed its decision until just before the June 1979 deadline for the NEA grant. Rumors circulated that if Hayward backed out of buying the mural, other potential buyers like the Whitney Museum in New York were already lining up.
The city council voted four to three in favor of purchasing the mural. However, it took some time to raise the additional $50,000 to purchase it. Finally, late in 1979, Mayor Weinreb and council member Monte Florence threw their full support behind the painting and got the parent company of Mervyns, the Dayton-Hudson Foundation, to donate the additional money. Finally, Hayward owned an original Wiley.
The work still hangs high on a wall in the lobby of Centennial Hall. Many people probably do not know of the paintings existence or notice it when they visit the building for various events. Considering that Hayward does not have many pieces of public art, the fact that the city does have an original work by such a well-known artist is amazing, whether you personally like the piece or not. The controversy surrounding the painting just makes it more interesting. | <urn:uuid:dedc8c86-3dd4-4917-a183-1d10ed5b5b97> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tricityvoice.com/articlefiledisplay.php?issue=2009-09-09&file=Wiley.txt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979662 | 1,380 | 2.203125 | 2 |
March 19, 2012
Is There Anything That Can't be Bought?
Over at The Atlantic, Harvard philosophy professor Michael Sandel looks at the hidden costs of the "market thinking" that permeates our society:
While it is certainly true that greed played a role in the financial crisis, something bigger was and is at stake. The most fateful change that unfolded during the past three decades was not an increase in greed. It was the reach of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life traditionally governed by nonmarket norms. To contend with this condition, we need to do more than inveigh against greed; we need to have a public debate about where markets belong—and where they don’t.
March 19, 2012 | Permalink
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The Detroit public health department is expected to get more than $3.2 million in federal funding for HIV treatment and prevention.
The money from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was announced Wednesday by Democratic Congressman John Conyers of Michigan.
Conyers says urban areas such as Detroit are in urgent need of resources to help in the fight against the virus that causes AIDS.
Read more Local News headlines:
- Golden Corral accused of discriminating against family
- Victim testifies in road rage prelim
- Toddler chips teeth in fall from 2nd floor window
- Detroit mayor offers response to review team findings
- Another mental test ordered for Detroit mom in murder case
- Detroit's deputy mayor leaves position
- Canton Township getting 2 new ambulances
- Harper Woods Police make arrest in Valentine's Day murder
- Awrey's Bakeries to keep ovens hot with new buyer | <urn:uuid:2169084a-de9e-467d-b8b8-6e532e63b268> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/Detroit-expected-to-get-more-than-3-2-million-in-federal-funds-for-HIV-treatment-prevention/-/1719418/19014098/-/nvvl6v/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945312 | 186 | 1.585938 | 2 |
I've been doing some research into representing live statistics visually in web pages. Live meant that bespoke images weren't an option, and I was reluctant (and not well versed enough in the technology) to use flash. This was a perfect opportunity to look in to canvas. Armed with a signed and printed HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet (thanks Dom), Jack and I got busy.
If you're impatient, then skip over to the demo: HTML5 Canvas Chart Demo.
Firstly, we did a bit of normalising of our data. For the pie chart we needed to give each piece of data a proportional slice of the circle, and for the blobs it seemed sensible to give them values to add up to 100%. To draw the pie chart, we used the
arc() method with a large stroke size. We also varied the stroke size based on the magnitude of the data which gives a nice dynamic effect. For the blobs, we used the Polar Co-ordinate System to divide the circle up in to equal angles based on how many data points there are, and plot the blobs with a radius based on the size of the data.
Here's a screenshot of the result:
So that's all pretty and stuff, but it lacks bells and whistles. We decided to introduce some animation and easing. The process goes something like this:
- We want the pie to start off with equally sized sections that animate to represent the data we've got.
- We've got a draw-once type function
drawPie(). Let's factor out the all of the drawing to another method called
drawShapeIncrementFromEqual()which takes an argument called
drawPie()method should now repeatedly call the
progressargument between 0 and 1.
drawShapeIncrementFromEqual()should draw the chart at its start position if
progress = 0, and at it's finishing position if
progress = 1, and a linear progression for all values between.
- Now in our
drawPie(), instead of passing our
progressvariable straight to the drawing method, we can run it through a custom easing method. Here we've chosen a nice bouncing ease.
Creating the Fallback
With a bit of CSS and some help from jQuery we can make the fallback data look nice, and even animate in some bar charts. The check for canvas support is simple:
getElementById("myCanvasId").getContext will be undefined if canvas is not supported. Take a look at the fallback in your normal canvas capable browser; I've broken the canvas tag to make the fallback kick in.
The thing that these charts are missing most is a key. What use is the data if we don't know what it represents? Obviously if we were to use this in a real-life situation then we would make one, but we confess we spent longer on tweaking the easing method than worrying about this!
Like what you've read? | <urn:uuid:13cb4089-45c4-417f-88a2-e502ca0478b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://clock.co.uk/creative-blogs/visualising-live-data-with-the-html5-canvas | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936986 | 606 | 2.3125 | 2 |
"You can't fight (the EPA) alone," Richard Griswold, general manager of Destin Water Users Inc., told the Santa Rosa County Board of County Commissioners on Monday. "Our only hope is if the State of Florida takes this on as a states' rights issue."
The EPA plans to implement numeric nutrient standards for nitrogen and phosphorous in inland waters -- canals, lakes, rivers, springs and streams -- in November and for coastal waters in 2011.
The standards are the result of a Clean Water Act lawsuit against the EPA. To settle the suit, the agency entered into a consent decree in August 2009 with the Florida Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, Conservancy of Southwest Florida, Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida and St. Johns Riverkeeper to develop and enforce standards for acceptable levels of nitrogen and phosphorous in Florida waters.
For more on this story, see the Oct. 14 issue of the Navarre Press or subscribe online. | <urn:uuid:04010b24-e841-4f02-9a82-89ceaefaf3f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://navarrepress.com/news/15/2653-county-may-be-forced-to-accept-expensive-water-standards | 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 | 0.927456 | 192 | 2.140625 | 2 |
JERRY McBRIDE/Durango Herald
How do you know your doctor is legitimate? The letters behind his or her name – MD – are generally a trustworthy signal. Under current law in Colorado, however, anybody can claim to be a Doctor of Naturopathy regardless of education history or training.
Naturopathy is a branch of alternative medicine that avoids invasive surgery and synthetic drugs. Instead, it calls upon herbs, vitamins, massage, diet changes and lifestyle counseling to facilitate the body’s “innate healing” abilities.
“The human body, when you give it what it needs, will reward you,” said Nancy Utter, a naturopathic doctor with Durango Natural Medicine. “I have complete and total faith in that. My patients are living proof.”
Sixteen states plus the District of Columbia have passed legislation licensing naturopaths, but in Colorado, advocates have come up empty handed. It isn’t for lack of trying.
Since 1994, the Colorado Association of Naturopathic Doctors has proposed licensure bills seven different times, most recently in February 2011. Details vary from year to year, but the goal remains the same: clarifying the credentials needed to call oneself a naturopathic doctor.
In the 2011 edition, House Bill 11-1173, criteria included a bachelor’s degree, a post-graduate naturopathy degree from a four-year, Department of Education-accredited institution, at least 1,200 hours of supervised clinical training and completion of board exams.
Just five schools in the United States meet these requirements.
Like all previous attempts, the bill came up short, failing on a 7-6 party-line vote in the House Health and Environment Committee. State Rep. J. Paul Brown, R-Ignacio, cast his vote with the majority despite earlier indications he was supportive.
When asked for comment, he said divisive testimony in committee hearings led him to believe licensure wasn’t appropriate until greater consensus is found.
It could be a long wait, if history is any lesson.
Among those opposed to licensure is the American Medical Association and its state affiliates, which lobby on behalf of conventional physicians. Colorado’s chapter, the Colorado Medical Society, believes licensing naturopaths as doctors wrongly endorses pseudoscience and allows them to prescribe and treat beyond their capabilities, according to a statement from CEO Alfred Gilchrist.
The Colorado Coalition for Natural Health opposes licensure for different reasons but with equal resolve. The coalition worries natural healers without the state-mandated credentials would be put out of business.
“They keep saying the bills are innocuous, but they’re after a monopoly,” said Shauna Young, owner of Assertive Wellness in Durango and an advisory board member of the coalition. Young holds a Doctor of Naturopathy degree from the Herbal Healer Academy, a correspondence school based in Arkansas, and was awarded a doctorate in Natural Sciences from the University of Natural Medicine in Santa Fe for her research on autism. Neither are members of federally endorsed accrediting bodies.
By mandating a license and restricting eligibility to only a handful of schools, Young thinks graduates from the “big five” are creating a sweet deal for themselves at the expense of all other practitioners.
“Think of the overflow of clients. Prices would skyrocket,” she said.
Joanie Coffey, president of the coalition, agrees.
“I’ve been fighting this monopolistic legislation for the past 20 years. They’re after exclusionary control over the natural-health community. Anytime you’re in it for a win-lose outcome, somebody will lose,” she said. “Which is fine, because they’ve lost every round.”
An intractable impasse?
Louise Edwards, a naturopathic doctor who in the 1990s helped legitimize the field in Durango, doesn’t buy this argument. In her view, nobody will lose if licensure is passed.
“It’s a false argument and a distraction,” she said. “It’s much easier to derail legislation than pass it.”
The 2011 bill contained a clause protecting nonlicensed practitioners’ right to advise clients about the use of herbal medicine, homeopathy, nutrition and other nondrug/nonsurgical therapies as long as they do not represent themselves as naturopathic doctors.
“The distinction we’re looking for is the word ‘doctor,’” Edwards said. “It would just mean those folks would have to call themselves something different, like a naturopathic healer or traditional naturopath.”
Young now refers to herself as a certified traditional naturopath.
Former state Rep. Jim Riesberg, D-Greeley, was a sponsor of H.B. 11-1173. He supports licensure for consumer-protection reasons and said infighting between naturopaths muddied the waters during committee testimony.
“I never did understand it myself. The opponents were able to create a lot of hysteria (that jobs would be lost),” he said. “And once (legislators) are convinced of something, you can’t unconvince them.”
Across the board, Durango naturopaths who studied at Department of Education accredited schools strongly favor licensure.
“For me, the licensure debate is not about turf, not about modality preference and not about money,” Utter said. “It’s about clarity for patients and their peace of mind.”
Jennifer Letellier, a naturopathic doctor with Be Well Family Medicine, echoed this perspective. “The patient needs to know what they’re getting into,” she said.
Given the projected 45,000 shortfall nationwide in primary-care doctors by 2020, Letellier said, naturopathic doctors are poised to help: “It’s what we’re trained for – nutrition advice, physical exams, IV therapy, minor incisions. Primary care is our specialty, if the state will allow us.”
Amita Nathwani, a certified Ayurveda therapist, concurred with the naturopaths.
“I support licensure even though I have nothing to gain from it,” she said. “Some of the best healers I know were trained informally, but they don’t claim to be doctors. The bottom line is transparency. Don’t pretend or inflate your knowledge beyond what it is.”
The long-running political battle isn’t over. Licensure advocates are regrouping and plan to continue pursuing legislation.
“The naturopathic community is tenacious. There’s obviously some discouragement when we keep trying and failing,” Utter said. “But I don’t think we’re going away.” | <urn:uuid:44924055-4206-418e-8ec4-d2004f99589e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.durangoherald.com/article/20120720/NEWS01/707209916/0/News04/Naturopaths-%E2%80%93-license-or-no | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939429 | 1,482 | 2 | 2 |
SMART Board® Interactive Whiteboard For Dummies
When you work with a SMART Board® interactive whiteboard, it helps if you know which series you have, because the features differ. Orienting your interactive whiteboard is critical so that all your touches and presses are tracked accurately. On most newer operating systems, you can interact with objects on your SMART Board interactive whiteboard and in SMART Notebookor SMART Meeting Pro software using gestures.
Identifying Your SMART Board® Interactive Whiteboard System
There are many different types, models, and series of SMART Board interactive whiteboards. The features and functions of all of them are fairly similar, though some models have more functionality than others or behave slightly differently. It’s important to know which kind you have because each has its own specific features as well as user’s guides and other resources. Luckily, it’s fairly easy to figure out which kind you have.
There are two main types: the most widely used 600 series and the newer 800 series. The easiest way to tell which series you have is to look at the Pen Tray. If it has four pen slots, it’s a 600 series. If there are only two pen slots, it’s an 800 series. See Identifying Your Smart Board interactive whiteboard or interactive whiteboard system for more information.
The following images identify some of the basic buttons, lights, tools, and features on your interactive whiteboard to help you get to know your product and find your way around the items mentioned in the instructions.
Orienting Your SMART Board® Interactive Whiteboard
Orienting your SMART Board interactive whiteboard helps it to track your touches and presses accurately. If you’ve moved or jostled your board, or you find that the cursor on the screen doesn’t line up with your touch correctly, it’s time to orient.
Follow these steps:
Press the Orientation button on the Pen Tray (800 series) or the Right-Click and Keyboard buttons at the same time (600 series).
The Orientation screen appears.
Pick up a pen from the Pen Tray, and beginning at the upper-left corner of the screen, touch the center of the target firmly with the tip of the pen.
When you remove the pen, the target moves to the next orientation point.
Repeat Step 2 until you complete the orientation process.The Orientation screen
Using Gestures with Your SMART Board® Interactive Whiteboard
On most of the newer models and software versions on computers with more recent operating systems, you can interact with objects on your SMART Board interactive whiteboard and in SMART Notebook software using the following gestures:
GroupZoom in.Zoom out.Flick left.Flick right.Rotate around a center point. | <urn:uuid:1a1064ca-6953-430e-a22f-93d098c029c5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/smart-board-interactive-whiteboard-for-dummies-che.navId-323198.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902626 | 585 | 2.3125 | 2 |
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October 26th, 2009 by Channel 4 News
The UK’s Green Fiscal Commission has issued a report “Doing What it Takes to Redue Carbon Emissions: The Case for Green Fiscal Reform” on using fiscal policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The tax policy would be revenue neutral by taxing fossil fuel energy usage and using the revenue to subsidise energy efficiency measures and reward environmentally conscious consumers. Income taxes and National Insurance contributions would be reduced to compensate for the increase in energy and carbon taxes.
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This website relies on our community for news that champions local people and businesses that are making an effort to be more sustainable. | <urn:uuid:51acc46b-6e75-485f-9d5f-1ef098c8398b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sustainableguernsey.info/blog/2009/10/channel-4-news-reports-on-the-green-fiscal-commission-paper-on-proposals-to-tackle-climate-change/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9372 | 146 | 2.15625 | 2 |
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We Have Met the
Enemy ... and He Is Us!
Tim McVeigh and America's Soul
By Bill Douglas, Founder of World Tai Chi &
10100 Roe Avenue
Overland Park, KS 66207
Timothy McVeigh went to his death Monday June 11, 2001, with the same flinty look he showed the world when he was first arrested for killing 168 people in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. He blew up the building by detonating a truck loaded with 7000-lb of explosives. At Terre Haute prison, Indiana, USA, McVeigh received a chemical injection from the government he despised, and was pronounced dead at 8:14 a.m. EDT, becoming the first federal prisoner executed in 38 years. He died silently, with his eyes open. A federal jury condemned Timothy J. McVeigh to death for the April 19, 1995. He shattered a complacent nation's belief that the face of random political terror could never be American.
Timothy McVeigh is treated like an aberration - something outside us. Timothy McVeigh is only one symptom of a national disease we all have. That disease is that we have collectively forgotten that we are "sacred," that life is "sacred."
How ironic that at a time when our government wants to spend more and more money on so-called "defense" and a star-wars system that will suck our precious resources away from protecting our environment and educating our children - we have just executed a man who has inflicted more terror on us than anyone else - and he is an American, trained by our own military machine. We do not need to pour our money and consciousness into fearing distant enemies abroad, because the greatest enemy is right here - often within our own minds and hearts.
The greatest damage done to American society again and again is "self inflicted." 70% of illness is caused by unmanaged stress - or in other words, our body and mind attacking itself with worry and FEAR, as average people struggle to survive in an economy of exploding wealth. The 6 leading causes of death are stress related. Our rivers are poisoned by the drugs we pump in our own bodies to hide from our stress or treat the illness that stress causes, and the toxins we pump into our foods to raise crop yields so we can gorge on unhealthy amounts of food, and our children are poisoned with the violence, and cruel comedy that uses hurt and put-downs for laughs, pumped into their minds day after day through our un-imaginative entertainment media, that often advertises foods and drinks that further destroy their health.
The great chief Seattle (Seathl) of the Suwamish Indian Tribe wrote a letter to the United States President in 1854, saying that they would give up their precious land, because if they didn't the US soldiers would come with guns and take it anyway. But, Chief Seathl cautioned - "love the land as we have loved it. Care for it as we've cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it was when you take it. . . . Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste."
Our culture is poisoned from our lack of nurturing ourselves, our environment, or our children, while we pour our precious resources into building weapons to protect our land from foreign invasion, while our children are undereducated and suffer a lack of hope and vision as the US imprisons more of its young than any nation on earth except one (we spend $500 billion annually on crime). And now our government seeks to destroy more of our precious natural resources so that we can suck more of the earth's bounty from her heart, at a time when the endless consumption of that bounty is strangling earth's ability to create oxygen and cool itself.
Our lives are out of balance, but rather than facing this, we aim our fear outward, to external enemies in other countries or we hang all of our dis-function on the shoulders of a Tim McVeigh, thereby avoiding the dis-comfort of looking in our own hearts. Our enemy is in our hearts, it is forgetting that we and our children are sacred. Timothy McVeigh felt that the pre-school children in the building he destroyed were expendable collateral damage. BUT WE are not so different when as a society we believe that the poison we eat and drink, the children who lose hope, and the prisons (monster factories) we fill and overfill, and the precious earth we consume (the US consumes 25% of the earth's resources with only 5% of the earth's population) - is acceptable collateral damage so that we can continue to pour obscene billions into more and more weapons of mass destruction.
Our lives are out of balance, as we over-eat so much meat that our bodies bloat and our hearts thicken with the strain. Our enormous appetites require an obscene mistreatment of animals in what's called "factory farming." Chickens raised their entire miserable lives without ever feeling the warmth of sunlight or ever having room to stretch their wings, being tortured with lighting systems and arsenic to stimulate them to lay more eggs, because they lay more eggs when continually stressed. Chimpanzees, because they are most like us in the animal kingdom, are infected and tortured in horrid living conditions, crying their lives away in sadness and depression. All of our technology offers so much hope for creating a good and loving world - but we squander it.
We would do well to remember what Chief Seathl told our president in 1854. "Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every Shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, and every humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people."
Our culture has made fun of Indian culture in its movies and books and television. We have completely dishonored perhaps one of the most civilized cultures in the history of the world. It is time to listen, to reawaken, to find balance and harmony within our own lives and own minds. The enemy is not "out there," it is within each of us, and we can make peace right now by becoming sacred - reawakening to the sacredness of life. Let Tim McVeigh's death, and the sad and unnecessary death of the Oklahoma bombing victims have more meaning than some visceral shallow satisfaction in seeing another sick puppy like McVeigh bite the dust. Let's let this sad national journey lead us to some real meaning in our lives. Let's see through this sadness to remember that we are sacred. Our country, our land, our children, all sacred. And from this realization a healing can spread across our land, and through the world. America can inspire the world toward more than endless armament. We have the power to shine a precious light that can lift the world to new meaning, "if we can find that new meaning in ourselves."
"The devils of the world are in our own hearts - and that is where our battles must be fought." Mahatma Gandhi. | <urn:uuid:52d43e97-d733-433a-9d91-01e955159a5e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.luisprada.com/Protected/We_Have_Met_the_Enemy.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964285 | 1,473 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Expand the Music in Your Brain
The human hearing system is exquisitely sensitive to directional cues that let us instantly determine where a sound is coming from. This was critical for our survival in prehistory when the snap of a twig or a low growl might be the only harbinger of impending doom in the jaws of a hungry predator.
These days, we don't have to worry about becoming something's dinner, but the ability to discern the direction from which sounds reach us remains. This is one reason why 2-channel audio reproduction is ultimately unsatisfyingeven with a system that exhibits excellent imaging, all sounds appear to originate in a relatively narrow window directly in front of us or, in the case of headphones, inside our heads.
Many have tried to simulate a 3-dimensional soundfield using 2-channel and even multichannel audio systems. But unless there are many speakers arrayed all around and above the listenera prohibitively expensive approachthere's always something missing.
This problem intrigued Jerry Mahabub as a teenage prodigy working on brain-imaging technology while attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the late 1980s and early '90s. He recognized that previous attempts to simulate a true 3D sound space were based on head-related transfer functions (HRTFs), mathematical descriptions of how sound diffracts around human heads and enters the ears. However, Mahabub realized that this is only part of the solutionto achieve a more convincing simulation of a 3D sound space, a system must also model how the brain processes audio information, a field of study called psychoacoustics.
After 17 years of research and development, Mahabub's system, dubbed AstoundSound, is now being introduced. In 2003, he formed a company called GenAudio to commercialize various AstoundSound-based products for professional and consumer applications.
In the pro realm, AstoundSound can be applied to monaural, two-channel, and surround recordings during production, and the result can be heard on any playback system with no decoding required. Engineers can place up to 100 individual sound sources anywhere in 3D space and automate their movement over time, and the system is compatible with any audio format, including PCM, DSD, MP3, etc. (In the screen shot above, different sound sources are represented by colored dots placed within a virtual environment. The arrow indicates the direction in which the listener is facing, and the dot within the arrow is the listener's position.)
For pre-existing recordings, AstoundSound can be applied after the fact. A consumer-oriented Windows Media Player 11 plug-in called AstoundStereo Expander processes audio files using more than 90 DSP parameters to create a much broader, deeper soundstage. This software is also available for Macintosh computers running OS X 10.5.1 and can process audio from any application, such as iTunes, QuickTime, DVD Player, and others.
Unlike most current soundstage-expansion and surround-simulation technologies, which are primarily based on phase manipulation, AstoundSound does not introduce phase anomalies, as indicated by a phase monitor during a demo I recently attended. The system manipulates frequency response, interaural time delay, and interaural level differences among other physical properties, and very sophisticated EQ techniques are used to maintain tonal balance.
The demo I heard was, well, astounding. First, I listened to a clip on headphones and found myself turning around to see if someone had closed a door behind me while helicopters flew convincingly overhead. Next, I listened to Beyonce's "If I Were a Boy" on two speakers, switching between conventional and processed 2-channel versions. The difference was strikingwith AstoundSound, the soundstage widened significantly and even increased in height, enhancing the clarity of each instrument while the vocal remained rooted in the center.
Among the first commercial releases to use AstoundSound are Hellboy II: The Golden Army on DVD and Blu-ray, Robin Thicke's Something Else CD, and Deprived, GenAudio's video game. You can check out some examples and get AstoundStereo Expander here. I'm very impressed with this technology, and I look forward to hearing it grow. | <urn:uuid:b1ffa4f0-20e8-488d-a483-b0695873d85a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hometheater.com/content/expand-music-your-brain | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938363 | 872 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Garden in the Sea
Award-winning filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer brings us Garden in the Sea, a visually stunning documentary about art, landscape and environmental conservation. For four years, the director follows internationally renowned Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias as she begins to create a commissioned underwater work for Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. As she explores both land and sea seeking direction and inspiration for her installation, her experiences are captured in the flawless cinematography that leaves poetic and lasting images of a sea that is still abundant and a land that is still plentiful. Expanding the form of a classic portrait, this film captures the creative process and human passion to make the stunning yet fragile beauty of our world tangible. Heather Haynes
Screening with Platform Moon.
Co-Presented with Co-presented with [Design Exchange (DX)](http://www.dx.org/).
- Torontoist review | <urn:uuid:5c6a868c-f9b8-447f-8154-3373f15c3a0c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hotdocs.ca/film/title/garden_in_the_sea | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919536 | 187 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Today on The Dr. Oz Show unsuspecting viewers receive surprise “health ambushes” from the Doc. Dr. Oz surprises people all over the country and assesses them by screening them with products from Life Line Screening. Life Line Screening has developed a fantastic screening test called “6 For Life.” This test may be able to save lives of the guests on the show and the lives of the viewers at home.
Throughout the show Dr. Oz discusses some of the biggest health issues many Americans face. He even refers to some as “silent killers,” as they have no strong warning signs.
Life Line Screening has a company mission to make people aware of unrecognized health problems and encourage personal physician follow-up care. To screen individuals, advanced ultrasound equipment is used by trained healthcare professionals. The results are reviewed by board-certified physicians to guarantee high standards. Life Line Screening has been active since 1993. In that time they have screened over 6 million people and have helped saved thousands of lives.
The “6 For Life” assessment uses a scientific tool and quantitative data to calculate a person’s risk of particular diseases and conditions. The data includes factors like age, weight, cholesterol, glucose levels, and family history of disease.
The “6 for Life” Risk Assessment includes a comprehensive risk analysis for:
If the test yields warning signs, Life Line Screening can assist in teaching what can be done to control or modify risk factors and improve overall health.
As Dr. Oz meets a viewer and runs the screening test. He’s able to immediately assess that she’s at a critical level and needs immediate care. The Life Line Screening test may literally save a viewer’s life on today’s Dr. Oz Show.
March 26th, 2012 | <urn:uuid:e5d97411-f9be-493f-9f2b-d1cf5d629499> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dietsinreview.com/diet_column/03/dr-oz-promotes-life-line-screenings-6-for-life-disease-risk-assessment/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953393 | 379 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Architectural illustration is the art of communicating an architect or designer's ideas to his/her client in the form of a color picture or clay model
which is much easier to understand than Line drawings. It also helps the designer to see any mistakes made and change his/her mind with a great deal less expense than to change ones mind once the building has been built.
The old 2d drawn Architectural illustrations and clay modeling have become obsolete in the last few years.
Photorealistic 3D renderings have now replaced them almost completely.
Some of the benefits of going 3D are:
- Having a set of images that look almost exactly like what the scene will look like finished, enabeling your client to better understand your drawings.
- It is much easier to change a detail in the images in 3d than it was with a drawing or clay model.
- 3D Illustration is generally cheaper than clay models.
- It looks very impressive to the client and can help win the bid for a big deal.
First we would like to chat with you about the sort of project.
Once We have a good understanding of what you are looking for and the extent of detail involved, we will give you a quote.
Pricing is done per visual.
Visuals are usually in sets of four or five per room, including a floor plan view.
If you want more visuals or less that is also fine.
A ballpark figure might be around $250.00 per view | <urn:uuid:c9f94562-7cd3-4220-9abc-a912f9864f44> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.roguestardesign.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=54 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964386 | 309 | 2.5 | 2 |
This amazing pin was designed by Elliot Handler for the company Elzac. Elliot was issued the patent [135,101] for this pin and similar ones in 1943. This exact pin can be seen in the book A Tribute to America, Costume Jewelry 1935 - 1950by Carla and Roberto Brunialti on page 199. An advertisement in Womans Wear Daily in 1945 dubbed this pin of Bonnet Head. I have seen several variations of this piece. The one here is of clear Lucite and copper. Another on this site has red Lucite and I have seen a blue tipped Lucite version as well. Most Elzac pieces were not signed.
Condition: Excellent vintage. Normal and expected wear noted. Copper has been left unpolished. Measurements: 2 1/2" wide and 3" long. | <urn:uuid:0d107dae-7619-456a-bdec-9a27246703cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stylehive.com/browse/amazingadornments.com/egyptian/retro | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968041 | 167 | 1.53125 | 2 |
|This article, F/A-352B Longsword, was written by Athena32. Please do not edit this fiction without the writer's permission.|
The F/A-352B Longsword was a three-seat, twin-engine, atmosphere and exoatmospheric-capable, ground and carrier-based strike starfighter, used by the United Nations Space Command Navy during the Galactic War and Swarm War. The successor to the earlier , The F/A-352B was a smaller and more advanced derivative of the ubiquitous -era fighter. The Longsword could be outfitted with a range of electronic equipment, weaponry and other hardware, allowing it to fulfill a range of combat and non-combat functions. The standard configuration included two internal 50 millimetre railguns, as well as a range of air-to-air missiles and air-to-surface weapons. As the UNSC Navy's strike fighter, the Longsword's responsibilities comprised primarily performing an air-to surface attack role, while retaining the capacity to attack air targets and warships. This flexibility was crucial to the Navy, fitting its defensive and expeditionary, and atmospheric and exo-atmospheric operating environments.
Designed and initially produced by Misriah Armouries, the first Longswords to fly in 2580 were in fact F/A-352As heavily modified into prototype 352Bs. Full production began in 2587, after several years of technical troubles stalled development. Production commenced only after Misriah sold the the contract for the problematic aircraft to Chevron Aerospace, which itself exceeded the development budget in bringing the impressive but temperamental design to production. The Longsword entered service with the UNSC Navy in 2589, replacing the upgraded F/A-352A on a one-for-one basis.
As a multirole strike starfighter, the Longsword was designed from the outset with a 'dual role' function in mind; primarily operating in the air-to ground attack role, while also having sufficient dedicated fighter capabilities to attack target aircraft. In addition to this, it was capable of engaging enemy capital ships with dedicated weaponry, which was seen as a 'merging' of its dual functions. The F/A-352B Longsword's primary role was ground attack missions, acting in support of allied ground units to defeat armoured threats. The Longsword was also tasked with engaging and defeating Covenant single ships such asand , its powerful and variable loadout, coupled with its compromise between speed and armour plating, enabling it to be used against a more diverse group of targets. As a result of this, it could also directly attack enemy warships and aerial targets with reasonable success, with a variable weapons loadout being deployed against Covenant naval ships using high yield conventional or nuclear munitions. This was particularly useful in downing a hostile vessel's shields, ahead of follow-up attacks by more capable UNSC forces. The Longsword was also regularly deployed as protective escort, alongside more dedicated fighter craft, to either warships heading into a battlezone, or smaller craft assaulting a planetary body or hostile capital ship.
When participating in defensive actions around a UNSC planet, the Longsword was launched from both existing ground-based facilities and present UNSC warships. Due to the craft possessing no internal slipspace drive of its own, the Longsword was deployed into offensive action far from UNSC territory solely from UNSC warships, many of which carried large numbers of Longswords in their onboard single ship complements. Due to the Longsword's large size, it could not be deployed from smaller UNSC vessels such as frigates, destroyers and patrol craft. Instead, larger vessels such as cruisers, carriers and larger types had the facilities to hold Longswords, while smaller UNSC ships instead utilised the F-419C Sabre interceptor craft, or the similar F-371 Halberd spatial superiority starfighter.
Layout and FlightThe F/A-352B, like its predecessor, featured a highly unconventional airframe dominated by its arrowhead shape. Protruding from its highly backswept leading edge was its cockpit section, where the three crew were positioned, the pilot and weapons systems operator side by side at the front and the combat systems operator (responsible for electronic warfare, sensory equipment and navigation) behind and to the right. From the rear of the craft protruded two oversized engines, on either side of a large tail. With a large surface area, the Longsword featured dozens of control surfaces which, in conjunction with RCS points (reaction control systems) and intuitive fly-by-wire systems, maintained the large craft as an agile one too. While the exterior of the Longsword was virtually identical to the F/A-352A, its interior was entirely different. The 120mm ventral cannons and their ammunition stores were completely removed, and replaced with two internal, retractable hardpoint bays. The formerly expansive interior corridors, cryo tubes and weapons lockers were all removed, the space instead used for improved fusion reactors, internal shield generator, Theran-derived inertial compensators and additional space consumed by the internal weapons bays.
The Longsword's highly unconventional airframe lent it a 'relaxed stability' in flight, meaning it was less stable than more traditional designs. The Longsword was unstable to a point where computerised 'fly-by-wire' or FBW systems were necessary to keep it in flight. The FBW system artificially created stability in the Longsword's flight using precision adjustments, allowing it to remain stable despite its inherent instability. The advantages of this instability were extreme agility in both high speed (hypersonic) and low subsonic speeds. The FBW system was quadruple-redundant, preventing catastrophic incidents stemming from FBW failure, and was highly intuitive in simultaneously following the pilot's inputs and maintaining a controlled manoeuvre. As a result of this system, the F/A-352B was notably more agile than its Covenant counterparts both in and out of atmosphere. The effectiveness of the craft was markedly increased when an Artificial Intelligence was present, as it functioned as a sort of interface between the pilot and fighter (more efficiently than the FBW interface did).
The F/A-352B was designed relatively shortly after the Human-Covenant War, and not long after the Sangheili agreed to share technology with the UNSC. As a result it was one of the first mass-produced Human-designed vessels to feature Covenant technology, featuring protective shielding and inertial compensation systems. Although cost initially prevented the Longsword from receiving shield generators, a later update provided this among other upgrades. The Longsword was equipped with the Mark XVII AURORA Projected Energy Barrier, the first production model of any shield generator produced by the UNSC (previous generators had either been directly taken from Covenant vehicles or were not produced in significant numbers). While not comparable in strength to the shielding employed by larger warships, its strength was on a par with that of the Covenant's Seraph, protecting it from a fair volume of fire before actually exposing the Longsword to harm. The shield envelope conformed tightly to the ship's hull, minimising surface area and therefore maximising strength.
In terms of armour, the Longsword was comparatively well armed for a starfighter, featuring multiple layers of strong, resistant yet lightweight materials that lent it increased resilience to both directed energy and conventional weapons. This armour made use of ACE technology pioneered by The Royal Allegiance and the Ve'nek Dominion, technology that was later shared with the UNSC. The Longsword's armour, like many of its integral systems, was modular, allowing for damaged armour to be removed and replaced, appliqué armour to be added or base armour removed to reduce weight.
The outer layers of the Longsword's armour were focused more on withstanding plasma attacks, with lower layers offering anti-plasma and anti-ballistic protection. The outer layer of the armour was an energy-ablative superconductive layer composed of variable property energy-reactive regenerative nanomaterials. This nanomaterial absorbed most of the energy from plasma assaults and used it to increase its own strength, its properties changing according to the amount of energy it received. This technology was an evolved form of the plasma-refractive coating used on MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armour, though benefiting from advanced metameterials to turn incoming energy attacks into a defensive ability. As a result the Longsword was able to survive a direct hits from comparatively heavy plasma weapons and remain operational.
Underneath this somewhat unconventional armour was more traditional alloy/composite armour, which provided excellent protection against ballistic and plasma weaponry. This protection used both modular and fixed armour to provide light weight of transport, while still offering full protection from battlefield threats. Though designed as primarily to counter kinetic energy threats, it had excellent chemical energy protection qualities that were further augmented by the implementation of fifth generation captive ERA. It was also considerably more resistant to plasma attacks than previous composite armours.
The outer layer of the composite modular armour assisted in holding the outer armour together, and allowed some slight flexibility yet superior density to engage various threats. Resin impregnated Aramid fabric was wrapped around the composite armour to allow the best protection and structural strength. Below the outer layer was the primary KE and plasma defence, a single piece poured Ceramic DCP plate.
The Ceramic Plate was sandwiched between two plates of CVT (Chromium Vanadium Tungsten) and Austenic Steel alloy. The whole assembly then underwent a hybrid DCP/Triaxial-prestressing method in which the preformed, porous ceramic material was soaked in a bath of molten metal, resulting in super-dense material. As the metal cooled the composite of three plates (one of ceramic, and two of alloy) compressed, increasesing both the density and compressibility of the composite dramatically. This process worked at relatively low temperatures and therefore was more economical than previous production methods. The resulting compound could be molded into complex shapes and offered improved protection at significantly lower weight. This by itself was rather effective but was supplemented by several other materials.
Below the outer plate were several overlapping ceramic 'chevrons'. These chevrons forced any round that was able to penetrate the outer plate to then penetrate the chevrons at a much higher oblique angle than the outer plate. This increased the armour's effectiveness not only by changing the penetrator's vector, but by increasing the thickness plasma had to penetrate. These chevrons were suspended in an plasma-resistant elasticised rubber-like polymer that reduced the shock to the overall plate and transferred much of the impact energy outwards, reducing the stresses on the impact plates. it was also capable of reflecting or absorbing much of the damage caused by directed energy weapons. This material also helped break up penetrating HEAT jets and KE penetrators by causing the chevrons to move around under the force of impact and degrading its overall performance.
Backing the composite matrix was a second composite Alloy/Ceramic plate forcing the plasma or penetrator to again punch its way through at a different vector, forcing the round to fold or break up before it can defeat the final plate. The whole composite was then sealed in a wrap of plasma resistant treated aramid fibres to absorb any remaining spall or plasma splash and attached to the base armour of the Longsword's hull in sections for easy replacement.
The 'Monolithic Armor Plate' (MAP) for the F/A-352B was produced using a process in which sets of inexpensive, thermodynamically compatible ceramic powders (Boron Carbide (B4C) and Titanium-Carbide (TiC)) were blended with thermoplastic polymer binders and then co-extruded to form a fibre. This fibre composite was first braided then woven into the shape of the desired component. The fabricated component was then stacked and pyrolysed to remove the polymer binder and hot-pressed to obtain the base preformed ceramic material for final processing.
The preformed ceramic matrix was still rather porous, and though extremely hard and ductile, was still rather fragile compared to a composite plate. The DCP process avoided extensive shrinkage in the processing of dense ceramic parts, worked at lower temperatures than conventional methods, did not require the use of high pressures and eliminated the need for post-process ceramic machining. The preform was then soaked in a liquid metal alloy bath. The preform absorbed the liquid metal like a sponge; the liquid metal then reacted with the ceramic powder to form a new ceramic compound that filled in pore spaces. The result was a part with a larger internal solid volume, but the exact same external shape and dimensions as the original preform. The DCP method required reaction temperatures of only 1,300C, compared to the 2,000C required for traditional methods, to form very high melting point, covalently-bonded ceramics. Because the final part maintained the shape of the original porous ceramic, post-process reshaping was eliminated. This translated to cost savings for manufacturers, allowing for more armour to be produced.
The finished Composite was extremely dense, lightweight and ductile enough to resist severe impact stress, while providing excellent anti thermal, kinetic and plasma properties and being easy to manufacture and replace when installed in a modular system.
Engines and Powerplant
The main engines of the F/A-352B were two linked Mark XXVIII TEMPEST Fusion Reactors. Here, atomic nuclei fused to form a denser nucleus, accompanied by a net gain of energy. These reactors jointly provided energy for the ship's systems; additionally the fueled the engines by expelling confined plasma at super-high velocities, producing thrust. These engines had exceptional thrust and acceleration, though the craft's top speed of 318,960 kph (Mach 267) was rarely reached in combat. Its speed and agility, though more the former, were substantially affected in atmosphere, although it still maintained its effectiveness. The engines were capable of vectored thrust through numerous control surfaces manipulating the exhaust flow, making up an aspect of the craft's FBW systems and contributing to its agility at both low and ultrahigh speeds.
The Longsword made use of dozens of control surfaces on its exterior to manoeuvre in atmosphere, though they were useless in spatial environments. These, coupled with dozens of RCS points that made the F/A-352B capable of both taxing manoeuvres and microajustments, helped the Longsword maintain staggering maneuverability for a craft of its size.
The F/A-352B also operated Theran-derived inertial compensators, which negated the effects of extreme g-force on crew and enabled them to perform acceleration and manoeuvres previously unheard of. It also effectively reduced the craft's weight somewhat, improving acceleration and other performance characteristics.
Sensors and Electronics
Stealth and Countermeasures
Although not specifically a stealth fighter, the Longsword did make use of several advanced detection reduction methods that rendered it almost invisible on even the Covenant's sophisticated RADAR-based sensors. The hull's outer coat was a matte rubberised polymer spray coating to decrease its UV reflections and to distort LADAR and laser rangefinders. This radar absorbent material (RAM) both heavily reduced its RADAR cross-section, preventing it from being detected, and affecting the enemy's accuracy if it was discovered. It also was shown to decrease the power of direct laser sources for the purposes of target illumination, increasing the craft's survivability. Variable thermostatic circuits maintained the vessel's exterior temperature in accordance with that of its surroundings, rendering it undetectable on thermal imaging. In addition, systems such as the Longsword's covered air intake and engine exhausts were heavily shrouded from detection through use of extensive ablative baffles, which meant that the Longsword was invisible to sensors if its engines ran at 60% or less. The Longsword's hull was also extensively angular, with many flat surfaces and sharp edges, reducing the likelihood of radar bounce-back towards the emitter and heavily reducing its RADAR cross-section (RCS). The F/A-352B made extensive use of heat sinks, exhaust baffles and other passive stealth measures to further reduce its detectability. The result was a craft that, when was indistinguishable from its surroundings on Covenant sensors, and when mobile could be mistaken for a spatial anomaly or sensor malfunction. Combined, these stealth measures served to give the Longsword operating at peak stealth efficiency a RADAR cross-section of under a metre squared, an impressive feat for a craft with a wingspan of over seventy metres. The Longsword's communications, electronics and sensor systems were all optimised for low probability of intercept (LPI) meaning the chance of its detection through these methods was minimal. | <urn:uuid:52b35351-63eb-4178-9448-6211d24d026f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://halofanon.wikia.com/wiki/F/A-352B_Longsword | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960989 | 3,451 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Timelines Do they really work??
Afghanistan needs to be over too.
If only we had listened to Obama earlier, the Iraq War could have been over years ago. The press is now reporting the Iraqis want us to leave and Obama wants us to leave. Violence is low. All this occurred because of the proposed time line by Obama looks like it might be implemented. Finally, Bush is going to get something right.
As we all know the timelines played an important roles in changing the Iraqi Landscape. When the Sunni Sheiks were thinking of turning against Al-Qaeda, It was the time line that convinced them to act. They thought, “Hey in a couple of months the Americans will be leaving so we better act now.” We can always make up with Al-Qaeda after the Americans leave.
Iranian backed Militias got workd from Tehran to stop fighting in Iraqi. The Allotahys saw the Americans were going to leave and decided to save a few Iraqi dinars. After all they were figthting the occupiers not trying to control their Iraqi neighbors–that would be so 1980′s.
Who knew that the Iraqi Civil War was over who got to fight the Americans? Once all sides realized the Americans were leaving, the sectarian strife started to fade. This has allowed the Iraqi’s to reconcile.
After watching the stunning success in Iraqi, Obama would be right to use timelines in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has a civil war, Al-Qaeda problem and borders Iran. Sound fimilar??
An Afghan Timeline would force the Taliban and Afghani government to come to a setlement. We already seen that the locals will reject Al-Qaeda if they know the Americans are leaving. Iran isn’t a country trying to influence the region. It is a country trying to make it American-Free zone. The USA could always chase Bin Laden from over the Horizon.
That’s why Obama will use time lines in Afghanistan.
What do you mean Obama proposed a surge with no time lines for Afghanistan? I’m confused didn’t Obama watch the news?? | <urn:uuid:975be0b3-d0fb-4ca0-b451-0b0723e36da2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.redstate.com/RonsBoy/2008/07/21/timelines-do-they-really-work-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970793 | 436 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Farewell, Richard Posner
[A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression • By Richard Posner • Harvard University Press (2009) • 368 pages]
With his latest book, A Failure of Capitalism, Richard Posner has lived up to his oft-maligned reputation as a provocateur. Coming from a man who is the founder of the law-and-economics movement and an elected member of the Mont Pelerin Society, the sensational declaration that capitalism has failed will surely raise eyebrows. But Posner's musings, besides being premature, too often reek of false starts and gross prevarications.
We libertarians should commend Posner, one of the most original thinkers of our time, for his longstanding rejection of groupthink and for his refusal to conform to hackneyed ideologies. Nevertheless, we must also bid him farewell. This latest book, a career about-face, will do little to help those affected by the crisis. It will even hurt them further.
Posner suggests that, rather than euphemize, we call a spade a spade: the financial downturn is a depression, not merely a crisis. He insists on the unpalatable term "depression" because the current troubles far exceed any modest slump of recent decades and have precipitated government intervention unrivaled since the Great Depression. Posner is probably right on this score.
He's often right in his critique of the housing bubble as well, even if he fails to fully account for government's role in subprime mortgage loans: hyping home ownership, slashing interest rates, channeling artificial demand into the housing industry, and so on. Posner's thesis — that the depression represents a market failure brought on by deregulation — pivots on the myth that regulators actually regulate rather than serve the interests of leviathan beneficiaries (i.e., their cronies and themselves).
As for this latter point, Posner does acknowledge, among other things, that the SEC was bound up with agents of the private-securities industry despite its obligation to enforce federal security laws. All the same, he does not adequately deal with this problem or even the related problems involving government-sponsored enterprises (e.g., Fannie, Freddie, and the like) that privilege the interests of the elite few at the expense of the many. Simply put, Posner ignores corporatism. I have neither the time nor space to undertake this issue here. For further reading, I recommend Thomas E. Woods's Meltdown, a short, well-reasoned book that is accessible to the layperson (like me).
Posner's proposal that "we need a more active and intelligent government to keep our model of a capitalist economy from running off the rails" seems quixotic at best. For an intelligent government (were there such a thing) would minimize rather than increase state impositions on the economy and would allow resources to flow from declining to expanding industries according to natural market forces.
Fraught with references to, and implicit endorsements of, Keynesian economics — the power of which, Posner claims, lies in its "simple, commonsense logic" — this book is a statist tour de force. Mario J. Rizzo has written at length about Posner's Keynesian conversion. Suffice it to say that Posner argues on the one hand that government can prevent depressions, and on the other hand that government failed to curb the recent economic downturn. This disjuncture begs the question: would more government bureaucracy and regulation have brought about a timelier and more coherent response? Is it not risky to put so much stock in something with such a volatile track record?
Posner submits that "conservatives," a strikingly vague term that he leaves undefined, argue that government triggered the crisis with "legislative pressures on banks to facilitate home-ownership by easing mortgage requirements and conditions." True, many self-described conservatives take this position. But Posner, apparently trying to cast these "conservatives" as hypocritical, indicts former President Bush for pushing homeownership as part of a compassionate-conservative agenda.
That Posner casts President Bush as the face of "conservative economics" (an oddly misleading category in itself) is not only telling but also, quite frankly, preposterous. For Bush — who championed massive government bailouts long before Obama — was hardly conservative in any small-government sense. He ran up budget deficits far greater than his predecessors, led us into two costly wars, and doubled the national debt. In light of these big-government flops, it seems outrageous for Posner to claim that "the way was open for a doctrinaire free-market, pro-business, anti-regulatory ideology to dominate the Bush Administration's economic thinking."
Posner achieves his goal of a "concise, constructive, jargon- and acronym-free, non-technical, unsensational, light-on-anecdote, analytical examination," but his hurried analysis is fatally flawed. Small wonder that his book has received little attention. Most likely dashed off on a tight deadline, it reads like several blog posts carelessly cobbled together (Posner admits in the preface that he's incorporated several blog posts).
Although we cannot fault him for the time sensitivity of his project, we can and should point out where the rush has taken its toll. At one point, for instance, Posner claims that the Democrats scored with the American public by bailing out the auto industry; shortly thereafter, he claims that the American public opposed the auto-industry bailout. In moments like this, Posner, having his cake and eating it too, disappoints over and over again.
Apparently flirting with supporters of both major political parties, he equivocates ad nauseam by spelling out a putatively conservative argument, a putatively liberal argument, and then his own argument, a convenient cherry-picking of the two. As another gesture toward mass audiences, he eschews footnotes and criticizes the economics profession — which he dubs an elite group of academics and finance theorists — for its apparent laxity and ineptitude. Posner's newfound populism, though, is unconvincing.
Even sympathetic readers will quickly tire of Posner's cocky rhetoric. Posner is — to the best of my knowledge — a magnanimous person with a genuine concern for the lives of millions of Americans, but his book, if heeded, will only exacerbate current conditions.
The Mont Pelerin Society declares that its members "see danger in the expansion of government." If Posner still shares this view, he has a funny way of showing it. | <urn:uuid:22b8725a-08e1-4e9f-9ac7-11845697073d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mises.org/daily/3929/Farewell-Richard-Posner | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954457 | 1,366 | 1.609375 | 2 |
||Add To My Personal Library
August 13, 2010
Vol.32 Issue 17|
Page(s) 7 in print issue
Dark Data Centers
Just An Eco-Friendly Dream?
The idea of dark data centers is not new. A 1989 IDG Communications technology roundtable in Germany referred, somewhat wistfully, to the dark data center as “a distant dream,” lamenting the inability of then-current technology to permit the creation of such centers.
Twenty-one years later, the dark data center is an increasingly viable strategy for technology infrastructure. Iron Mountain, which provides document management, archiving, and technology consulting services from offices around the world, serves as one example: The company touts “Room 48,” its dark data center, infrequently staffed and equipped with motion-activated lighting. Iron Mountain’s main data facilities are located underground in what was once a limestone mine in western Pennsylvania: cool, energy-efficient, and—quite literally—dark.
Of course, if you can’t go dark, going “dim” may be almost as good—and perhaps more realistic.
The dim data center, one in which power and cooling is moved out of the server room while remote access mechanisms are used as much as possible to control and monitor systems, may be as close as most of us can (or need to) get to a truly dark data center.
Virtualization can also play a part in reducing the data center’s energy footprint. A virtualized approach creates a consolidated—and therefore more efficient—data center environment: What once required multiple servers—each consuming energy, generating heat, and requiring maintenance—can often be accomplished with just one physical box, thus mitigating the equipment’s impact and reducing its overall setup and maintenance requirements.
Impossibly High Expectations?
But there’s another question to consider: What if the whole idea of dark data centers has been overhyped? In our zeal to create efficient and eco-friendly business processes, have we come to expect too much from the idea?
Gartner analyst and research director Bill Malik thinks so. He notes that the promise of the dark data center isn’t always realized and feels that the idea is only now poised to exit the third phase of what Gartner refers to as the hype cycle, “the Trough of Disillusionment.” After that, it will enter the more realistic “Slope of Enlightenment” phase, during which practical experimentation begins to take place, leading eventually to the point at which a technology finally begins to be productive.
In the ’90s, Malik says, people spoke of dark data centers as being a panacea: “I go to zero headcount, and I have all of these amazing productivity numbers.” Now, many people have begun to look more realistically at the technology. The discussion now, Malik says, “is not about a dark data center but about having a data center that has ‘smart hands’ —that is, one that makes use of a colocation or hosting vendor.”
Malik points out that colocation is a type of (often cloud-based) outsourcing that is effective and cost-efficient because it consolidates data center activities offsite and thus eliminates some of the need for a dark data center in the first place. It requires manpower, but “that individual is covering many, many people’s server farms, and that’s all that that individual does, so labor cost is much smaller” than if each organization required a dedicated person.
Whichever approach turns out to be most realistic, the idea of dark, dim, or colocated data centers seems to lend credence to the notion that people, far from being superfluous, are as important as ever—but that their roles should largely be to envision, design, and test systems and processes, not to hang around in data centers ensuring that those processes are working. If your data center is constantly full of IT staff scurrying to resolve problems or avoid catastrophe, then that may be indicative of an entirely different—and perhaps more systemic—issue.
by Rod Scher | <urn:uuid:6490ab71-c344-4c05-8add-3b788c268d40> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/P3217/13p17/13p17.asp&guid | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950449 | 867 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Festival of Lights
Diwali is perhaps the most well-known of the Hindu festivals.
The word Diwali means 'rows of lighted lamps'. Diwali is known as the 'festival of lights' because houses, shops and public places are decorated with small earthenware oil lamps called diyas
For many Indians this five day festival honours Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth.
People start the new business year at Diwali, and some Hindus will say prayers to the goddess for a successful year.
Lamps are lit to help Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, find her way into people's homes.
They also celebrate one of the Diwali legends, which tells of the return of Rama and Sita to Rama's kingdom after fourteen years of exile.
In Britain, as in India, the festival is a time for:
- spring-cleaning the home,
- wearing new clothes
- exchanging gifts (often sweets and dried fruits) and preparing festive meals
- decorating buildings with fancy lights.
- huge firework displays often celebrate Divali.
In India Hindus will leave the windows and doors of their houses open so that Lakshmi can come in. Rangoli are drawn on the floors - rangoli are patterns and the most popular subject is the lotus flower.
The meaning of Diwali
The festival celebrates the victory of good over evil, light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance, although the actual legends that go with the festival are different in different parts of India:
- In northern India and elsewhere, Diwali celebrates Rama's return from fourteen years of exile to Ayodhya after the defeat of Ravana and his subsequent coronation as king;
- In Gujarat, the festival honours Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth;
- In Nepal Diwali commemorates the victory of Lord Krishna over the demon king Narakaasura;
- In Bengal, it is associated with the goddess Kali. | <urn:uuid:48e2fa77-f851-4d15-9311-e5e8f8db2173> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/religion/hinduism/diwali.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939792 | 415 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Academic Regulations and Graduation Requirements
Knowledge of the academic regulations is essential for both advisors and advisees. Students bear primary responsibility for knowing and observing the regulations, but advisors and instructors who give erroneous information or sign off on courses of study that put students in conflict with the regulations are failing in their duty to provide reliable guidance and alert students to potential problems. The complete text of the regulations can be found at http://www.wesleyan.edu/registrar/academic_regulations/index.html.
- Credits for Graduation
Students must earn a minimum of 32.00 credits (without oversubscription) for graduation. Sixteen of these credits must be earned at Wesleyan. A maximum of 2.00 Advanced Placement or other pre-matriculant credits may be counted toward the total. Most courses at Wesleyan are worth 1.00 credit, although a few are worth 1.50 or 2.00 credits and others are worth partial credit of .25 or .50 credit.
- Residency Requirement
Students who begin their post-secondary studies at Wesleyan must spend at least six semesters in residence. Participation in study abroad does not count as being in residence. Students entering as sophomore transfers are required to spend at least five semesters in residence. For students entering as mid-year sophomores or junior transfers, at least four semesters in residence are required.
- Completion of a Major
Students must complete all the requirements of at least one major.
- Grade Point Average (GPA)
Students must achieve a 74.00 GPA to graduate. Percentage equivalents of letter grades are included in the “Grades and Grading Modes” section of this document and in the Academic Regulations.
The oversubscription rule was designed to prevent a student from building a program of study that is too narrow. Any credit above the department or category limit will not count toward the 32.00 credits required for graduation, although the credits will be recorded on the transcript and grades will be factored into GPA calculations. All credits will appear on the credit analysis report, a tool that tracks oversubscription and other graduation requirements, and is available in each student’s portfolio. Students majoring in music are at particular risk of oversubscription because their performance credits add up quickly.
More specifically, the oversubscription rule stipulates:
- Of the total 32.00 credits required for graduation, no more than 16.00 credits in any one department can be counted toward the degree requirements (except for double majors in Art History and Studio Art or Mathematics and Computer Science, for whom the limit is 20.00 credits).
- If a course is crosslisted, it counts towards oversubscription in every department in which it is listed, regardless of the crosslisting that the student chose during course registration. The oversubscription rule applies to all credits that are part of a student’s academic history, including pre-matriculant credit, Advanced Placement or other test credit, and transfer credit.
The following interdisciplinary programs are exempt from oversubscription: African American Studies, Archaeological Studies, East Asian Studies, Environmental Studies, Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Latin American Studies, Mathematical-Economics, Medieval Studies, Russian and East European Studies, and Science in Society.
The oversubscription rule also limits the number of credits that can count toward the 32.00 required for graduation in the following categories:
- Physical Education and Student Forum:
- no more than 1.00 credit in physical education
- no more than 2.00 Student Forum (419, 420) credits
- no more than 2.00 credits in Physical Education and Student Forums combined
- Teaching Apprenticeships (491, 492):
- no more than 2.00 credits
- Individual (401, 402, 403, 404, 421, 422) and Group Tutorials (411, 412):
- Undergraduate Research limits (421 and 422) do not apply to the classes of 2013 and 2014
- no more than 4.00 credits combined
- some LANG courses are considered individual tutorials
- honors thesis tutorials (409, 410) do not count as individual or group tutorials
- Independent Study (467, 468, 470) and Education-in-the-Field (465, 466, 469):
no more than 4.00 credits combined
- Summer Credits:
- no more than 2.00 credits during any given summer
- Pre-matriculant credits (including AP and IB test credit):
- no more than 2.00 credits
Oversubscription will not jeopardize graduation as long as the student has enough usable credits to meet the 32.00 credits required for graduation, that is, has as many credits over 32.00 as he or she is oversubscribed by. Students or advisors with any questions about oversubscription should contact the class dean. | <urn:uuid:5a4d4e93-18c2-4da0-b5e9-51865ececa06> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wesleyan.edu/studentaffairs/facguide/regulations.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927487 | 1,021 | 1.546875 | 2 |
ISLAMABAD, Feb 10: Since 2009 military personnel have been increasingly appealing to the high courts against their conviction by the military court despite legal barriers.
Under clause 3 of Article 199 of the Constitution, high courts cannot proceed with a case filed by any armyman against the military authorities.
According to an official of the Judge Advocate General (the legal branch of the army), since 2009 about 90 petitions filed by army personnel against court martial proceedings, dismissal from service or other grievances have been dismissed by high courts of the country.
Article 3 of the constitution says that courts cannot pass an order “on application made by or in relation to a person who is a member of the armed forces, or who is for the time being subject to any law related to any of those forces in respect of his terms and conditions of service; or in respect of any action taken in relation to him as a member of the armed forces,” said Shamsuddin Qazi, a 95-year-old retired brigadier, while talking to Dawn.
He pointed out that this clause was introduced by military dictator Ayub Khan in the constitution of 1962 (clause 3 of article 98).
“Khan did not want the courts to interfere in matters related to the service of army personnel,” Brig Qazi argued, adding that the military dictator feared that courts would challenge his authority or pass an order against him.
It is noteworthy that the Indian constitution of 1950 has no such clause that barred courts from taking up matters related to the armed forces.
In the 1973 constitution, this clause was maintained as 199 (3). In fact, chapter I of the constitution, which is about the ‘fundamental rights’, includes a clause in article 8: “The provision of this article shall not apply to any law related to the members of the armed forces, or of the police or of such other forces who are charged with the maintenance of public order, for ensuring the proper discharge of their duties.”
In the recent past, some of the petitions which were dismissed because of the 199 (3) clause related to the extension in the service of Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani, the appeals of convicts in the GHQ and Musharraf attack cases and army officers convicted for having relations with the banned Hizbut Tahrir.
However, the courts have also accepted some cases by interpreting the article differently.
For example, Lahore High Court issued a contempt notice to the JAG of Pakistan Air Force (PAF) for not providing documents related to the proceedings of the Air Force Tribunal to a convict, Ajmad Farooq. But the same court used the ouster clause to reject the petition of Ziaul Haq who was dismissed from service for recording a false statement in the military court. He had requested the court to ask the military authorities to provide the details and the documents of his trial proceeding under the military law.
But interestingly, in a few cases, the superior courts, have ignored this clause and heard the petitions of aggrieved army officials.
For example, a military court had convicted 18 army personnel for disciplinary reasons and sentenced them to two years’ imprisonment. But once they approached the LHC, Judge Mazhar Iqbal Sidhu in December 2012 reduced their sentence under section 382 of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).
LHC Justice Chaudhry Tariq and Justice Asad Munir also gave relief to aggrieved army persons. Both the judges heard two identical matters of convicted armymen and ordered the jail authorities to reckon their imprisonment from the date when they had been taken into custody by the military authorities and to release them accordingly.
According to Col (retired) Inamur Rahim, a former JAG of the army, the high courts can set aside the decisions of military courts or army authorities if it is proved that these have been taken “without jurisdiction, or are coram non-judice.” This means that a decision has been taken without any lawful authority or with a mala fide intention.
“The fate of an aggrieved person depends upon the interpretation by a judge,” he said.
But, he argued, courts dismissed the petitions of aggrieved army people early on, because the military authorities refused to provide the record of any proceedings due to security reasons.
This in his opinion does not allow the courts to see if the decision had been taken legally.
Hence, Mr Rahim feels that the ouster bar is against the fundamental rights of the personnel of armed forces and it should be changed.
S. M. Zafar, a senior constitutional expert, however, was not as critical as Mr Rahim. In his view, the clause was needed to maintain discipline and to protect the army against frivolous litigation.
Col (retired) Sardar Aziz Chandio, another legal expert with experiences in the military, said matters of armed forces personnel should be handled internally by the military. He, however, agreed that army personnel should have the right to appeal in the superior courts against decisions of the military courts. | <urn:uuid:c4808cd3-8cbf-4158-9716-b354b33969d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://beta.dawn.com/news/785197/despite-legal-barriers-military-men-turn-to-high-courts-2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970775 | 1,054 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Heard an unusual story from a Children's Librarian today. She said that storytelling had actually saved her from death... I was instantly intrigued as among storytellers there is always much talk about "The Power of Story" This sounded like the real thing!
As we stood amidst the stacks of books she told me this tale...
"I was walking around a reservoir. It was a cloudy day and no one was around. Suddenly a huge man - six foot tall jumped out and cornered me. He had a terrible expression on his face and a long knife that he used to hold me hostage. As I was confronted by this life threatening situation I remembered a story my Polish grandmother had told me about being in a dangerous situation herself. She was out on a country road when someone approached her and tried to grab her so she clubbed her attacker with a great Kielbasa Sausage and so was able to escape. 'What do I have with me, I thought.... I'm not carrying any Kielbasa even though my Polish grandmother did advise me to. What do I have?' Then I remembered I had a golden key with me that I was going to use as a prop in a storytime for my library children the next day. I pulled out my golden key and began telling the story. I just kept telling the story no matter how frightened I was because I had read recently in Ladies Home Journal that in situations with an attacker it is important to keep talking. It does not matter what you talk about but it is important to talk. I told the story of the Golden Key. The story has a refrain which is 'I have a golden key and it has magical powers' Over and over I told the story and showed the magical golden key. I don't know whether he repented or whether he really believed this key had magical powers but he let me go. He said to me, "Walk away from me but if you look back or run I'll kill you." "That was the hardest thing I ever did,turn away from this madman holding a knife."
That - I said to this brave little children's librarian - is truly an example of the Power of Story. | <urn:uuid:3b9f6d3c-5c22-48a1-b6ff-f80d01d53120> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dedgecomb.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990258 | 447 | 1.984375 | 2 |
The Justice Department has reached two settlements resolving claims that health care providers refused to serve people with HIV in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
The first complaint was filed by a man with HIV who went to the Mercy Medical Group Midtown Clinic in Sacramento and was incorrectly told by the podiatrist seeing him that surgery was not an option because of the risk of the surgeon contracting HIV from him.
The second complaint was filed by a man with HIV who went to the Knoxville Chiropractic Clinic North for chiropractic treatment following an automobile accident, where a doctor determined that he needed 24 appointments to treat his injuries. However, he was informed on his third visit that the clinic could not treat people "like him." The Justice Department determined that the Knoxville Chiropractic Centers had a blanket policy of refusing treatment to people with HIV in violation of the ADA.
"It is critical that people with disabilities, including HIV, not be denied equal access to goods and services, especially to health care services. The Civil Rights Division takes discrimination based on unfounded fears and stereotypes about HIV very seriously," said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.
The settlement agreements require the entities to develop and implement a non-discrimination policy and to train staff on the requirements of the ADA. In addition, Mercy Medical Group and CHW Medical Foundation are required to pay $60,000 to the complainant and $25,000 as a civil penalty, and Knoxville Chiropractic Centers is required to pay $10,000 as a civil penalty.
Announcement of the settlements was made in May. | <urn:uuid:914fd99f-3445-4ce4-827a-d7d26d30c608> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thebody.com/content/67762/justice-dept-settles-hiv-bias-lawsuits.html?ts=pf | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980414 | 333 | 1.601563 | 2 |
What is REACH?
Created by the European Union, REACH is the Regulation for Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals. It entered into force on 1st June 2007 to streamline and improve the former legislative framework on chemicals of EU. The aim of REACH is to improve the protection of human health and the environment through the better and earlier identification of the intrinsic properties of chemical substances.
REACH places greater responsibility on industry to manage the risks that chemicals may pose to the health and the environment. Manufacturers and importers will be required to identify and manage risks linked to the substances they manufacture and market. For substances produced or imported in quantities of 1 ton or more per year per natural or legal person, manufacturers and importers, respectively, need to demonstrate that they have appropriately done so by means of a registration dossier, which shall be submitted to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) in Helsinki.
The Regulation also calls for the progressive substitution of the most dangerous chemicals when suitable alternatives have been identified.
Communication to our customers
Additional information on REACH can be found at the following websites:
The European Chemical Agency
If you have any question regarding Steelex products and REACH, you can contact:
Telephone: +41 91 986 5816 | <urn:uuid:2f50fd7a-82c5-45a5-8675-4b24d33dac42> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dssint.ch/reach-.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907088 | 265 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Bulletin editorial: Charter change is unnecessaryResidents who are generally satisfied with city government ought to think strongly before backing a charter-city effort.
By: Staff, South Washington County Bulletin
The city of Cottage Grove this week begins construction on a long-planned and well-vetted city hall and public safety building.
In a related development, some Cottage Grove residents are working to dismantle the city’s governing structure and replace it with an alternative system of governance. The group wants Cottage Grove to be a home-rule charter city – guided by a municipal constitution of sorts – instead of continuing to be among the large majority of cities whose governance is derived from state law.
That change would be far more than merely technical. It could involve work by a district court judge; efforts from community leaders to draft a city charter; a citywide election on whether to adopt a charter; the creation of a new volunteer commission; and a cost to taxpayers that, while perhaps not exorbitant, is hard to quantify this early in the process.
Switching to a charter city also is entirely unnecessary.
A group of residents has been collecting signatures on a petition that could trigger the formation of a citizen commission to draft a proposed city charter. Proponents argue that it would give local voters more sway over city operations.
The charter-city effort appears to be fueled largely by frustration over the decision by four of five City Council members to build the $15.7 million government center. Those pushing for the change have been vocal in their opposition to the project over the past year. However, their ranks do not appear to have swelled, at least publicly, even after numerous public meetings on the project, so it does not seem accurate to conclude that a large bloc of Cottage Grove residents joins them in strong opposition to the project or to current city leadership in general.
Still, the petition effort should not be dismissed. Organizers need only roughly 1,300 signatures to trigger the charter process. That’s an attainable threshold.
Among priorities for charter proponents is a limit on how much the city can spend before an expense must go before voters. A $1 million cap was suggested. That could prompt City Council members to need approval for a public works project, for example, from the very people who for decades – generations even – have elected them to make those decisions.
A charter also could be written to split up the city and its elections into wards. It’s hard to argue that would serve Cottage Grove better than the current at-large elections. The ability to recall elected officials also could be made available through a home-rule charter.
Charter cities, while not rare, are not the norm. Minnesota has 107 charter cities, but more than 700 other cities share Cottage Grove’s statutory status. A home-rule charter may work well for some communities, but it is difficult to believe that Cottage Grove’s form of government is in such a flawed state and is so unresponsive to its residents that it should be entirely revamped.
Residents who are generally satisfied with city government ought to think strongly before backing a charter-city effort. And for those who are unhappy with the decision by City Council members on one, albeit major, municipal project, there is a more appropriate solution: cast your ballot for someone else in the next election. | <urn:uuid:fc596e74-a612-49ed-850b-20e82d8e45c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.swcbulletin.com/event/article/id/19136/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963697 | 688 | 1.828125 | 2 |
The networked computer rather complicates the choice of learning media, primarily because the Internet accommodates both synchronous and asynchronous communication. If, as a learner, you want to collaborate with your peers in real-time, you can do so with all sorts of tools from simple text chat, to online telephony using tools like Skype, through to sophisticated web conferencing systems which provide a virtual classroom experience.
On the other hand, if, as a learner, you demand the flexibility to learn as and when you wish, you can enjoy all the advantages of offline media with the added ability to connect with others at your own pace through forums, social networks, blogs and wikis. Already the Internet combines many of the benefits of face-to-face and offline media. Maybe one day it will surpass them both.
The Internet will transform learning above all because of its scalability. Sites such as the Khan Academy, providing video tuition in maths and science, have already reached more than 100 million learners. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are making it possible to deliver higher education to tens of thousands of students at a time, at a tiny fraction of the cost of an on-campus education.
Online learning will soon become the default option, at least for adults, but that does not mean it can or should be universal. We have already discussed the special benefits that can be attributed to learning face-to-face. And, until ultra-fast broadband is universally available on all devices, we will still need to carry some of our learning materials around with us.
A little pragmatism
Systematic approaches are rarely followed to the letter in the real world – after all, let’s face it, life’s just too short. What’s important is that when we cut corners, we do so consciously, applying the main principles with common sense and a great deal of pragmatism. My Blended Learning Cookbook is laden with examples of typical learning problems and uncomplicated blended solutions. If you find it hard (or simply too boring) to apply the systematic approach, you’re welcome to copy any of the recipes that you find relevant to your experience. The end result should be the same – more effective, efficient learning interventions.
That brings this series to an end. All of the posts in the series will be included in the third edition of the Blended Learning Cookbook, due to be published later on in 2013. This will include more detailed analyses of the various decision options and a revised set of recipes. We also hope to produce a video summarising our approach to blended learning.
Until then it’s over to you. Please share your blended learning experiences, whether or not you are applying our suggested approach. | <urn:uuid:fd6a5b17-606a-480e-aa2f-8c531e2013d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://onlignment.com/2013/02/4923/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939994 | 568 | 2.484375 | 2 |
The CenSSIS Education Program integrates advances from the research thrusts and exposes students to the unifying concepts of the CenSSIS vision. Students then take the insights they learn in class and apply them to their thesis problems. In this way the advances from one area of subsurface imaging are spread to other areas, and the "diverse problems - similar solutions" CenSSIS mantra becomes a reality. Beginning at the freshman level with the High-Tech Tools and Toys Laboratory and CenSSIS Scholars program, undergraduates are brought into CenSSIS through research experiences and coursework. At the graduate level courses on SSI topics are offered at all four CenSSIS universities, and students from each university have access to selected courses offered at other CenSSIS institutions through distance education technology. | <urn:uuid:005844d0-728c-4130-b633-bf259438f454> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://iris.lib.neu.edu/censsis_education/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946057 | 166 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Robert W Taylor
Funded by the Angelo King Foundation and done in collaboration with the Department of Biology De La Salle University, Manila Philippines and results recently published in the OIDA Journal of Sustainable Development. Food security will be a challenge for global cities in emerging economies. Traffic congestion, rising fuel prices, and poor road and logistical infrastructure has produced a problem in transporting agriculture from rural areas to urban markets where people reside and where the food is consumed. Urban roof agriculture is being explored in various global cities as a method to increase food security, enhance environmental awareness and as a key strategy for urban sustainability. This research project addresses the capacity of cities to reduce both their ecological and carbon footprints through utilizing under-used roof space in larger global cities in tropical global cities in the Tropics.The methods developed demonstrate the capacity to minimize the ecological and carbon footprints of growing lettuce and micro greens by saving transportation and logistical costs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, conserving water, and saving energy costs by using solar panels as a power source for pumps and aerators.
Strategies and Technologies for Climate Change Adaptation in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2013)
Funded by the Vietnam Educational Foundation - The development of a series of pilot projects to address climate change adaptation in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in collaboration with Ho Chi Minh City University of Natural Resources and Environment. | <urn:uuid:82b6a215-a934-43c7-ac9a-9081fa9be908> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.montclair.edu/profilepages/view_profile.php?username=taylorr | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924458 | 276 | 2.5625 | 3 |
TEHRAN (FNA)- El Azizia, Libya, is often called "the world's hottest place," but satellite temperature data shows the honor should go elsewhere, US researchers said.
El Azizia took what was assumed to be the record for highest temperature ever recorded when on Sept. 13, 1922, a thermometer on a weather station hit a blistering 136 degrees Fahrenheit.
But new research by a University of Montana team using data from the US Geological Survey's Landsat satellites says El Azizia, hot as it may get, isn't the hottest place on Earth, OurAmazingPlanet reported Monday.
"Most of the places that call themselves the hottest on Earth are not even serious contenders," researcher Steven Running, who with colleagues examined seven years of satellite infrared data indicating surface Earth temperatures, said.
The Lut Desert in Iran, which in 2005 measured a mind-boggling 159.3 degrees Fahrenheit.
So why hadn't it made the list of hottest places previously?
"The Earth's hot deserts - such as the Sahara, the Gobi, the Sonoran and the Lut - are climatically harsh and so remote that access for routine measurements and maintenance of a weather station is impractical," researcher David Mildrexler said.
"The majority of Earth's hottest spots are simply not being directly measured by ground-based instruments."
Satellites can get a reading on these hard-to-reach, harsh locations because they can scan every piece of the Earth's surface, researches said.
The Lut has all the conditions for extreme temperatures, they said; dry, rocky and dark-colored lands, which are good at absorbing heat, as opposed to lighter sands, which tend to reflect more sunlight. | <urn:uuid:fe55c5d3-9d77-45b9-9944-7cda4ad84cfa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://english.farsnews.com/printable.php?nn=9101142195 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943379 | 357 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Mix and Match
One time-tested ingredient of success is the colleague who can teach you almost everything you need to know—a mentor. Mentoring usually involves a seasoned employee or manager working
one-on-one with a junior employee. But this style of dispensing guidance in the workplace may not be the most effective. Another method—group mentoring—is becoming increasingly popular.
More mentoring programs fail than succeed, says Mindy Zasloff, mentoring practice leader and senior consultant for Strategic Partners Inc. “One-on-one mentoring, particularly hierarchical mentoring, where an older sage person mentors a junior person, is very difficult to make work,” she says, adding that most people don’t learn effectively in that kind of setting. It’s not necessarily productive to focus on what worked for the mentor in the past. New employees and organizations should be forward-looking.
One-on-one arrangements often fail to take into account a mentor’s many roles. Mentors can be educators, career advisers, networking facilitators, sponsors or promoters of their protégés’ talent, and sometimes just really good listeners. In government, where mentors and protégés often are nominated through formal programs, the assumption is one mentor should play all these roles. But, Zasloff says, it is more realistic to recognize that each mentor has different strengths and each of those mentored different needs.
Group mentoring takes a different approach. It could involve five to seven people with one or two mentors leading a discussion about the organization and their roles. Sometimes a facilitator takes the lead so mentors can focus on listening and guiding rather than just lecturing about what they have done and how. Zasloff has seen tremendous success with such programs at federal agencies. “The beauty of group mentoring is you get people together with similar learning goals and they learn from each other,” she says.
Pulling together a group mentoring program takes preparation and follow-through. Maintaining a mentoring calendar can help the group schedule a new activity every month. The first session should focus on getting to know each other and briefly talking about goals and aspirations, Zasloff says, followed by writing goals and developing an action plan.
Especially in government, where managers are resistant to trying new models of mentoring, she says it is necessary to have someone guide the process from idea to implementation and beyond. “In the government, a lot of people hoard knowledge, thinking that gives them power,” Zasloff says. “But what’s required is that everyone help each other.”
Even senior leaders who are willing to help junior employees must realize the process is not a just a data dump, she notes. They must be aware of their protégés’ goals and figure out how to assist. On the flip side, before entering any kind of mentoring program, junior employees must outline their goals and keep a laser focus on them.
Despite the seeming complexity of setting up group mentoring, she says it is significantly easier than establishing a formal one-on-one program, in which people must be nominated and matched based on their organizations and roles.
But given how often mentoring programs fizzle out, Zasloff warns managers to keep a strategic eye on their effectiveness and how they can be improved. The success of up-and-coming employees, and the organization as a whole, could depend on it.
Elizabeth Newell covered management, human resources and contracting at
Government Executive for three years. | <urn:uuid:c2296a8e-df52-485a-a4b0-8728089095b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.govexec.com/advice-and-comment/management-matters-advice-and-comment/2012/07/mix-and-match/56561/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95416 | 743 | 2.125 | 2 |
MEETING PUNANS, THE SHY JUNGLE PEOPLE - DOWN THE RIVER AGAIN - MY ENTHUSIASTIC BOATMEN-MALAYS VERSUS DAYAKS
At my request the raja, with a few companions, went out in search of some of the shy jungle people called Punans. Seven days afterward he actually returned with twelve men, who were followed by seven more the next day. All the women had been left one day's journey from here. These Punans had been encountered at some distance from kampong Bruen, higher up the river, and, according to reports, made up the entire nomadic population of the lower Kayan River. Most of them were rather tall, well-made men, but, as a result of spending all their lives in the darkness of the jungle, [*] their skin colour, a pale yellowish brown, was strikingly lighter, especially the face, than that of the Kayans.
[Footnote *: In von Luschan's table, Punan 15, Kayan 22.]
They actually seemed to hate the sun, and next day when it broke through the mist for a little while they all sought shelter in the shade of trees. As a result of their avoidance of direct rays from the sun they have a washed-out, almost sickly pale appearance, contrasting strangely with the warm tone of light brown which at times may be observed among the Dayaks. This is probably the reason why they are not very strong, though apparently muscular, and are not able to carry heavy burdens. They began at once to put up a shed similar to those of the Dayaks, but usually their shelters for the night are of the rudest fashion, and as they have only the scantiest of clothing they then cover themselves with mats made from the leaves of the fan-palm.
On the Upper Mahakam I later made acquaintance with some of the Punans who roam the mountainous regions surrounding the headwaters of that river. Those are known under the name Punan Kohi, from a river of that name in the mountains toward Sarawak. The members of the same tribe further east in the mountains of the Bulungan district are called Punan Lun, from the River Lun, to whom the present individuals probably belonged. According to the raja, there are two kinds of Punans here, and his statement seems to be borne out by the variations in their physical appearance.
These nineteen nomads had black hair, straight in some cases, wavy in others. Most of them had a semblance of mustache and some hair on the chin. Their bodies looked perfectly smooth, as they remove what little hair there may be. Some of them had high-arched noses. The thigh was large, but the calf of the leg usually was not well-developed, though a few had very fine ones; and they walked with feet turned outward, as all the Dayaks and Malays I have met invariably do. The only garment worn was a girdle of plaited rattan strings, to which at front and back was attached a piece of fibre cloth. Although dirty in appearance, only one man was afflicted with scaly skin disease. Visits to the hill-tops are avoided by them on account of the cold, which they felt much in our camp. Their dark-brown eyes had a kindly expression; in fact they are harmless and timid-looking beings, though in some parts of Borneo they engage in head-hunting, a practice probably learned from the Dayaks. Those I talked with said the custom was entirely discontinued, although formerly heads of other Punans, Malays, or Dayaks had been taken.
These natives, following no doubt an observance prevalent among the Dayaks, had some of their teeth filed off in the upper jaw, the four incisors, two cuspids, and two bicuspids. Our Kayans from Kaburau had no less than ten teeth filed off, the four incisors and three more on either side. The operation is performed when a boy or girl becomes full-grown. For the boys it is not a painful experience, but the girls have theirs filed much shorter, which causes pain and loss of blood.
The Punans make fire by iron and flint which are carried in a small bamboo box. They are expert regarding the manufacture of the sumpitan (blow-pipe), and are renowned for their skill in using this weapon and can make the poisonous darts as well as the bamboo caskets in which these are carried. Subsisting chiefly upon meat, their favourite food is wild pig.
At the birth of a child all the men leave the premises, including the husband. The dead are buried in the ground a metre deep, head toward the rising sun. The Punans climb trees in the same manner as the Kayans and other Dayaks I have seen, i.e., by tying their feet together and moving up one side of the tree in jumps. The Kayans in climbing do not always tie the feet.
These shy nomads remained in camp two days and allowed themselves to be photographed. One morning seven of them went out to look for game, armed with their long sumpitans and carrying on the right side, attached to the girdle, the bamboo casket that contained the darts. They formed a thrilling sight in the misty morning as in single file they swung with long, elastic steps up the hill. Though the Punans are famous as hunters and trappers, they returned in a few hours without any result. Next morning when I ventured to begin taking their measurements they became uneasy and one after another slipped away, even leaving behind part of their promised rewards, rice and clothing for the women, and taking with them only tobacco and a large tin of salt, which I rather regretted, as they had well earned it all.
We made a trip of a few days' duration to the next elevation, Gunong Rega, in a northerly direction, most of the time following a long, winding ridge on a well-defined Punan trail. The hill-top is nearly 800 metres above sea-level (2,622 feet), by boiling thermometer, and the many tree-ferns and small palm-trees add greatly to its charm and beauty. | <urn:uuid:88e333db-a903-455f-ab18-561bbbc26f78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://explorion.net/through-central-borneo/chapter-v?quicktabs_3=1&quicktabs_2=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981298 | 1,299 | 2.5625 | 3 |
An entrepreneur’s work is never done.
This is especially true when you first launch your business and you are the chief cook and bottle washer, and pretty much everything else in between. So taking some time out to read a business book or two may seem like a totally unwarranted indulgence of dubious longterm value.
But bear with me. As this latest entry in the continuing series, “3 Business Books that Changed My Life” shows, taking some time to learn from the wisdom of entrepreneurs who have gone before you can make a real difference to how you approach the running of your business, and its eventual success or otherwise.
Rebekah Campbell, who I recently profiled on my weekly Fairfax blog, Enterprise, is a testament to the power of drawing inspiration from others. She credits reading the life stories of Richard Branson, David Geffen and Steve Jobs with inspiring her to dream big in business.
She is the founder of posse.com, a “social search” site that allows people to create a virtual street on which they can place five of their favourite places to shop, eat or hangout. The idea is that businesses can then engage with customers via this portal and reward them with special deals for their loyalty.
But it’s not the first entrepreneurial venture for Rebekah who started out running her school newspaper in her native New Zealand at a profit and graduated to managing and promoting bands in Australia. She has managed everyone from Evermore to Matt Corby and Amy Meredith, and has also been behind major fund-raising events such as Levi’s Life Festival which was staged to raise awareness of youth suicide.
Here are the three business books that changed her life:
Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson
I read this book when I was 18 after getting it for Christmas from my mum. I had always thought about being an entrepreneur and I identified with his ambition to do lots of interesting things.
It fuelled my ambition to get out there and do something big. It gave me a global focus – I grew up in New Zealand – and it made me think that I could do [what Richard did] too.
It’s a really well-told story and it sounds like [he's led] the most awesome life, and it inspired me to be an entrepreneur and be really ambitious in my thinking. Everything he ever did, like start an airline or a massive retail chain, were always really, really big ideas and made me think big.
The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood by Tom King
I read this when I had just moved to Australia and was working in the music industry. I was involved in the day to day of running a business, and trying to think about the next record release or the next band and it wasn’t small thinking.
When I read David Geffen’s story, it lifted my ambition again to another level and made me think about getting into America and what he’d learnt about the music industry and management and moving from management into owning content. It inspired me to think bigger again.
I was in the early stages of my entrepreneurial career and I had made a bunch of mistakes by this point. Reading about David Geffen’s flaws [which led to him] getting involved with some of the wrong people and falling out with people, it made me feel better about just going for it and not worrying about what other people think and not worrying about making mistakes.
iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon
It’s a Steve Job’s biography that is much better than the one which came out recently (Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson).
This book goes into detail about what happened when he got fired from Apple, and what kind of character he was, and what he doing at the time.
Then he went and set up his own software company and got offered an IBM contract for his operating software but he couldn’t be bothered reading the contract. So he told them to come back later and he lost the deal which went to Microsoft. He would’ve been Bill Gates if he hadn’t been [done that].
Steve Jobs had his own vision for what his companies were going to do, and he [missed] small things that didn’t fit that vision. For instance it took Pixar winning an Oscar for him to notice what they were doing.
If you’re interested in the way Steve Jobs did business, then it’s the perfect book for that. He didn’t authorise this book and he was much less involved than he was in the official one and so it doesn’t paint him in nearly as glowing a light as the official one. But you can learn a lot more about his mistakes and not to make the same ones yourself because of that.
If you’d like to learn how to write your own business book, our course How To Write a Business Book is the perfect place to start.Posted on 5 September 2012 | <urn:uuid:07112297-55f3-40cc-a73c-5a43fbdaba8e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://valeriekhoo.com/2012/09/3-business-books-that-changed-my-life-rebekah-campbell-founder-and-ceo-at-posse-com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981047 | 1,076 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Newman in Birmingham
In the autumn of 1845 John Henry Newman decided to become a Catholic. He later wrote in Apologia of his ‘desire for a firmer ground of religious certainty, and a clearer view of revealed truth.’ He was received into the Catholic church at Littlemore near Oxford, ‘it was like coming into port after a rough sea.’
Birmingham – Oscott and the Oratory
From February 1846 Newman stayed at Oscott just to the north of Birmingham. Oscott had long been a place of Catholic study and at times a refuge. From 1838 there was a new college presided over by Bishop Wiseman nearby at New Oscott. In September 1846 Newman went to Rome, where he studied the teachings of St. Philip Neri. St. Philip had founded a group of secular priests, who lived together ‘with no bond but that of love’, in the sixteenth century. He had a vision of the Virgin Mary; one of his sayings was: ‘Let us think of Mary… she conceived and brought forth Him whom the width of the heavens cannot contain within itself.’ Pope Pius XI gave Newman the authority to set up Oratories according to St. Philip’s rule in England. When Newman and friends stayed at Old Oscott again in 1848 they renamed it Maryvale.
The Oratory in Birmingham
Early in 1849 Newman set up the first house of the Oratory in England, in Alcester Street in central Birmingham. It was a poor district, the original church was in a disused distillery. St. Anne’s, the present church there, was opened in 1884. Newman worked among the poor; many had come to Birmingham from Ireland, driven by the Famine. He gave lectures on Catholicism in the centre of Birmingham. The artist Edward Burne-Jones, then a pupil at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, wrote: ‘… in an age of materialism he taught me to venture all on the unseen…’
In 1852 Newman moved the community of the Oratory to Edgbaston, a pleasant suburb to the west of the centre of Birmingham. The Pope had told him that he should work with educated people, as well as with the very poor. Here on the Hagley Road the Oratory house and a simple church were built. During the 1850s Newman was involved in a libel case; Catholics from across the world raised money for his defence. With the surplus money he purchased land near Rednal, partly as a retreat, partly as a burial ground. It is now known as the Oratory Retreat. In 1859 he founded the Oratory school in Edgbaston so that boys could have a good Catholic education. Hilaire Belloc was a pupil there in the 1880s.
During all his life Newman wrote about the beliefs of Catholicism, and Christianuty. He also wrote poetry, for example The Dream of Gerontius. This is the story of the spiritual journey Gerontius makes after death. The poem was dear to General Gordon who died at Khartoum in 1884, an annotated copy was found amongst his belongings. This copy was given to Edward Elgar at his wedding in 1889 and he then set the poem to music. The first performance was at the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival in 1900. The original score is held at the Oratory. There is also a newscutting about General Gordon in Africa in 1884 which Cardinal Newman had pinned to a bookcase in his room.
In 1879 Newman was anointed a Cardinal. He died in August 1890, his grave was at the Retreat near Rednal. From 1903 to 1906 the Oratory Church was rebuilt as a beautiful memorial to him, it was consecrated in 1909. In 2010 September Pope Benedict XVI visited Birmingham for the beatification of John Henry Newman. The Beatification Mass was held in Cofton Park, near the Oratory Retreat at Rednal. The Pope also visited the Oratory in Edgbaston, and Oscott College.
Lines from ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ 1865:
Praise to the Holiest in the height, and in the depths be praise
In all his works most wonderful; most sure in all his ways. | <urn:uuid:28d9adf6-3153-4d2a-b303-0ac8b7df6c38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite?c=Page&childpagename=Lib-Central-Archives-and-Heritage%2FPageLayout&cid=1223336295519&pagename=BCC%2FCommon%2FWrapper%2FInlineWrapper&rendermode=l | 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 | 0.987484 | 892 | 3.265625 | 3 |
From The Guardian 27th September 2009
It is a book about Christmas but there’s not a manger, virgin birth or angel in sight.
Buoyed by the success of their campaign which proclaimed There’s Probably No God, Now Stop Worrying on the side of London buses, some of Britain’s most prominent atheists have come together to publish a book for the festive season.
The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas features contributions on the theme of Christmas and God by scientists Richard Dawkins, Simon Singh and Adam Rutherford, agony aunt Claire Rayner, pop star Simon Le Bon, illusionist Derren Brown and Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker.
Due for publication this Friday, the book is already ranked at number 40 in the chart compiled by online retailer Amazon and could be a surprise bestseller.
Brooker asks whether a notional God would have a sense of humour, while there also chapters on the Hadron Collider and A Guide to Turning Your Home Into A Festive Something That Is So Bright It Can Be Seen From Space.
Writer Ariane Sherine, who masterminded and launched the atheist bus campaign on a Guardian Comment is Free post, said she was daunted by the idea of writing a book by herself, so enlisted the help of friends and supporters. “Virtually all the comedians I know are atheists and Richard Dawkins was very involved with the bus campaign,” she said.
Half of the profit will be donated to the Terrence Higgins Trust, the charity that deals with HIV issues. “Given some of the comments the Pope made earlier this year about condoms and Aids, we thought it was appropriate,” Sherine said.
She denies the book is anti-Christmas: “I wanted to make it clear that it’s a friendly, quite a happy book. I’ve sent it to some of my religious friends. The book is not just about being atheist – there’s a chapter on how to get on with relatives and ideas for party games.”
The Right to Offend
by Henry Porter
From The Guardian 23rd September 2009
“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” says the Human Rights Act. This freedom includes “the right to manifest his (or her) religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”
That’s a fine aspiration but of course the Human Rights Act (HRA) isn’t all it’s cracked up to be by its supporters. Take the recent case of a 54-year-old nurse facing disciplinary action for wearing her confirmation cross, she was forced to accept an offer of redeployment to a non-nursing role at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.
Although she had worn the cross throughout her 30 year service and no problems had been recorded, it was deemed to be a breach of uniform policy and – absurdly – a risk to health and safety, which of course trumps anything as elementary as the right to express your religious belief.
The trust made use of the second part of section nine of the HRA.
“Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
Shirley Chaplin had an impeccable record of service as a nurse. It is astonishing that the Devon and Exeter Trust would think of using their power in this way. But it seems the Human Rights Act is incapable of protecting the Shirley Chaplin’s of the world from the martinets and busybodies that infest public services and local authorities.
In Camden, London, a Christian group has been banned from displaying a notice in libraries and community centres advertising a talk on climate change because it mentioned Christianity and God. One poster said “Climate Change is a Christian Issue” . The ban puzzled the people at Roman Catholic Our Lady of Help of Christians parish church because they were told that they could display climate change posters that did not refer to God.
Naturally, the church is unlikely to take this to the law in order to test a policy that forbids the promotion of religious ideas, it almost certainly has neither the money nor the time for such frivolity. And so the injustice stands. But if Britain had a bill of rights that entrenched religious freedom and expression and made their suppression illegal then things would be rather different.
One of the problems with the law as it stands is that it is not applied equally. And there seems also to be some kind of agenda at work, laws are used to enforce a sterile secularity in ordinary behaviour and expression. One of the most disturbing cases I have heard of is the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to bring a prosecution against a Christian couple that own hotel in Aintree, Liverpool.
Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang were arrested after a Muslim woman staying at their hotel complained to police about comments they made during a religious argument over breakfast. They have been charged under public order laws with using “threatening, abusive or insulting words… that were religiously aggravated”. Reports suggest that the couple said that prophet Muhammad , the founder of Islam, was a warlord and that the traditional Muslim dress for women was form of bondage.
You may, or may not agree, with these sentiments but surely they don’t merit a prosecution in a society where a good deal of latitude shown to the racism and homophobia preached by some imams. I can’t comment on the exact details of what the couple may have said, or their manner, or the offence taken by the customer but I can say that free speech – even about religion – is the freedom to be offended, and that the decision to prosecute is about as daft as it gets.
I hope that every organisation now happily ensconced in London’s spanking new Free Word centre understands that this case is critical to the freedom of all expression and that they send representatives en masse to support the couple when they appear in court in December.
Newsnight reported this week on a disturbing trend in the Israeli Army, of the inclusion of Rabbis and believers, leading to the claimed motivation for war coming from God.
Not all members of the army are happy with the situation. One of the Generals, Nehemia Dagan, raised concerns that once a war becomes a Holy war it becomes a war with no limits! | <urn:uuid:e9069a60-ad14-4535-b28b-508cd6e210ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.atheismuk.com/2009/09/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964253 | 1,359 | 1.640625 | 2 |
“Our garden has gotten people so fired up,” says Kate Weaver, a lead volunteer in a team of Gaiam employees who’s bringing a new organic garden to life at our Boulder, Colo., headquarters. “I’ve never seen so much heart go into anything.”
On Earth Day this year, more than 20 of us gathered around the plot of land behind our main building and broke ground on our first-ever Gaiam garden. What once was a field of weeds has been transformed into a tranquil circular plot of gorgeous food crops. At lunchtime these days, garden volunteers are often spotted beelining it from the Gaiam cafe out to the garden to pick some veggies for dinner, pull a few weeds, or apply a little TLC.
What makes our garden green?
We use organic gardening methods.
- We grow most of our plants from biodynamic and organic seeds.
- We use compost and manure to fertililize the soil.
- Instead of synthetic chemical pesticides, we use marigolds and other flowers as natural pesticides.
“So far we haven’t had much trouble at all with bugs,” says garden volunteer Everett Sizemore.
In the photo at top you can see how the circular shape and arcs of our logo influenced the design of our garden. (We’re leaning on the best photographer on our staff to go up on the roof and take an aerial shot … ) Our Gaiam logo is based on the Flower of Life, an ancient symbol of the connection between the Earth and all forms of life. We all believe in the message behind this concept, and the shape creates an inviting sense of balance in the garden.
We’re already eating our veggies!
We harvested lettuce and radishes in late June. “The radishes have all been very sweet and not too spicy — just the way I like them,” says Everett.
“I just had the lettuce with some Annie’s Sesame/Shitake dressing,” adds Kate. “Nothing else was needed!”
We’re waiting anxiously to pluck ripe treasures from all of our six groups of plants:
Herbs: basil, parsley, lavender, cilantro, chives, dill, thyme and sage
Leaves: lettuce, rhubarb and chard
Roots: carrots, beets and radishes
The Three Sisters: peas, corn and beans
Nightshades and crucifers: tomatoes, peppers, broccoli and cauliflower
Others including raspberries, squash, cucumbers, pumpkins and ornamental flowers
Right now we’re still picking the buds and flowers from the tomato and pepper plants, so they can concentrate their energy on growing.
Also growing in our garden: community
Garden volunteer Janay Hughes says the garden has helped people connect from all different departments at Gaiam and gives us a feeling of accomplishment. “It’s a great way to get people involved in more than just their day-to-day work,” she points out.
“Some of us are experienced gardeners, and others are completely new to it,” adds Travis Stevens, one of our garden project managers. “But we’ve all contributed ideas and different ways to garden.”
Four or five volunteers focus on each plant group, working together to keep each section healthy and productive. For those of us at Gaiam who don’t have our own gardens at home, the Gaiam community garden also gives us the opportunity to experiment with planting and collaborate with other gardeners.
Upcoming garden projects include securing our garden benches to the ground, expanding the drip irrigation system, setting up cages for tomato plants, and creating more structured paths into the garden. Watch for updates in the Gaiam blog!
Photos by Jackson Carson, Ben Bowes and Janay Hughes. | <urn:uuid:e343e611-2045-4f26-b1b5-f1a9ae6c8e6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.gaiam.com/gaiam-employees-plant-an-organic-kitchen-garden-at-our-colorado-hq/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924954 | 819 | 2.015625 | 2 |
This project started in 2001 to help establish descendants of Francis McCown of Augusta Co., Virginia. Of course the more we know the more we want to know. Now, we want to learn about all the other McCowns. This is the report I wrote up in 2007.
In the summer of 1957, I discovered genealogical research while trying to complete a family tree in a Bible that my Grandmother McCown had given me for Christmas. It soon became my goal to establish the immigrant ancestor and get our line back to the “old country.” Most of the genealogical evidence pointed toward Francis McCown of Augusta Co., Virginia who died in 1761. I cooperated with several other McCown researchers in an attempt to document my line and theirs to Francis and Margaret McCown of Augusta Co., Virginia. Some were successful in documenting their line to Francis, I was not. Computers came along so I started two McCown databases. One was called McCown which was my documented line, the other was Virginia McCowns and was the descendants of Francis McCown of Augusta Co., Virginia.
When the Lena Swann Cuscé article, “For One Family, DNA Provides an Answer,” appeared in the January-February 2001 issue of the National Genealogical Society Newsmagazine it gave me a spark of hope. Perhaps there was a way to see if my line was definitely linked to Francis!
In February 2001, I communicated with Dr. Marcia Eisenberg and contracted with Laboratory Corporation of America in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina to test Y chromosome DNA collected from nine different McCown men, all direct line descendants of various branches of the McCown family.
The Y chromosome is inherited from father to son, and remain almost unaltered from generation to generation.
The beginning study began with nine participants elected from my databases from lines either known to be descended from Francis or thought to be from the research done previously.
Most of these were thought to be from the line of Francis McCown of Augusta Co., Virginia, but one was from George McCown of Pennsylvania. More men had been asked to participate in the testing; however, some chose not to participate because of the fear of privacy violations. Testing was limited because of the cost, and I was personally financing the project. However, some members of the group have paid their own way and other McCown researchers have contributed toward the cost.
Three more McCown men were asked to join the project later. Two of these were from Francis McCown (son of James). The third was from John McCown of Rockbridge Co., Virginia. Because of his close relationships with Francis McCown in Augusta, a kinship was suspected. This made a total of twelve participants. The nine who matched are marked with an * after their names.
I received the official results report (F01-3131) of the first nine participants from the lab on 14 June 2001. A supplemental report for the additional three participants was received 14 August 2001. By October 2007 others have now joined the testing and some have extended their marker results, which made a revision of this report necessary.
The initial participants were removed from Francis by six to nine generations. The study showed that three of the twelve participants did not share the same paternal lineage. Either their known end-line ancestor did not share a common male ancestor with Francis, or the direct paternal line was broken between the participant and his end-line ancestor. The three who did not match the group did not match each other.
In the original study, the male descendant of George of Pennsylvania did not match those of Francis of Augusta did not share the same paternal lineage. Other descendants have come forward and they were a perfect match on 37 markers.
This DNA study confirms:
1 – The line from George McCown of Augusta through John Edington McCown* and Michael DeWitt McCown*, and John Charles McCown, Sr. definitely descends from Francis McCown of Augusta.
2 – The lines of John McCown (Fred Vernon McCown*), Malcom McCown (Walter Wade McCown*) and Isaac McCown (Jerry Glen McCown* and Ronald Ray McCowan) descend from Francis of Augusta through his son James McCown.
3 – The line of Malcom McCown of West Virginia through Brian Scott McCown* and Thomas Edward McCown descents from Francis of Augusta.
4 – The line of Francis McCown of Lincoln Co., Kentucky though James Kimbol McCown* and Hollis Edward McCown*, and William Robert McCown descend of Francis McCown of Augusta. This Francis is thought to be son of James McCown and grandson of Francis McCown of Augusta.
5 – The male descendants of John McCown of Rockbridge Co., Virginia through the line of James Samuel McCown* share the same paternal lineage as Francis McCown, so these men were related and had a common ancestor.
The allele numbers for the Y chromosome STR’s were not reported. I specifically asked Dr. Marcia Eisenberg from the Laboratory about this. She replied, “For the Y chromosome STRs, the statistics are not based on match probabilities as are other STRs because all of the markers are on the same chromosome. There isn’t a statistical analysis possible like there is with STRs. Each lab decides on what their reporting criteria are. Most forensic laboratories do not actually report the alleles just a match, non-match. At this time we are reporting only a match, non-match format for the Y STRs.” However, in January 2002, and April 2002, I received the allele numbers from Dr. George Maha from LabCorp, Identity Testing Division (revised):
The table below contains the results for the Y Chromosome loci evaluated by this laboratory. Since your test was initially performed, an additional system was added to the test battery. This resulted in a mismatch at the DYS19 locus for Brian. This however does not necessarily indicate that Brian does not have a common male ancestor, as mutations (natural change in the DNA) will occur through the generations. I would interpret these results to indicate a common male ancestor for Brian, Walter, Fred, Jerry, John and Michael
Y Chromosome Loci
Name DYS392 DYS19 DYS388 DYS391 DYS390 DYS393
Brian Scott McCown 14 15 12 11 24 13
Walter Wade McCown 14 14 12 11 24 13
Fred Vernon McCown 14 14 12 11 24 13
Jerry Glen McCown 14 14 12 11 24 13
John Edington McCown 14 14 12 11 24 13
Michael Dewitt McCown 14 14 12 11 24 13
Hollis Edward McCown 14 14 12 11 24 13
James Kimbol McCown 14 14 12 11 24 13
James Samuel McCown 14 14 12 11 24 13
The enclosed charts will illustrate the test group. Solid lines are ones supported by documentation and DNA. The dotted lines indicate probable line of descent. The lines not proven by DNA are also indicated.
The original plan was to protect privacy of the individuals who participated. However after there were six who matched, it seemed to the advantage of other McCown researchers to know which lines were definitely proven to link to Francis. I wrote and asked the proven participants if their line could be shown. All agreed.Future Study.
Anyone may join this project to see if their Y-DNA matches this McCown study. Testing has now been transferred to another department at LabCorp. Family Tree DNA did retesting on two of the participants.
Family Tree DNA
1919 North Loop West, Suite 110
Houston, Texas 77008
Dr. George Maha
Identity Testing Division
Laboratory Corporation of America
1440 York Court Extension
Burlington, North Carolina 27215
I found a descendant of George McCown of Tippah Co., Mississippi, but failed to get them to help us with the study. I would still like to confirm that he is the son of James McCown and a grandson of Francis of Augusta.
I am deeply indebted to the participants of this group for their help with this study.
Again, I thank those that participated in this group study, as researchers and cousins that have helped me study the McCown Family in the Americas.
Leonard J. McCown | <urn:uuid:851bcbcb-6c35-4ccd-b1d5-6ca44c34550e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.familytreedna.com/public/McCown/default.aspx?section=results | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961723 | 1,714 | 2.03125 | 2 |
A collaboration between Lockheed Martin Corp., the Albany-based College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, and a central New York economic development agency is expected to grow into a $250 million investment in the next year and a half, and perhaps to as much as $1 billion over time.
That’s according to Alain Kaloyeros, senior vice president and CEO of CNSE, part of the state University at Albany. Centerpiece of the new endeavour is an vacant former General Electric Co. laboratory in the Syracuse suburb of Salina.
On Wednesday, State Assemblyman Al Stirpe, D-North Syracuse, announced that the Assembly was providing $28 million toward the project, including $16 million to renovate the laboratory and $12 million to pay for specialized equipment.
The new laboratory will turn innovations developed at Albany Nanotech, as the CNSE complex is also called, into products for the commercial and military markets. The venture is expected to create 250 jobs in Syracuse.
Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin will move at least some of those jobs from other locations to Syracuse. In addition, it will become a tenant at Albany Nanotech, and Kaloyeros said he expects it to have 25 to 35 researchers there. More than 2,500 people are employed at the Albany research complex.
The project was first reported Wednesday by the Syracuse Post-Standard, which said the laboratory once focused on research into television tubes, pacemakers and intercontinental ballistic missiles. The 100,000-square-foot building has been closed for 14 years.
It’s part of the Electronics Park campus once occupied by GE, where Lockheed Martin now has 2,400 employees. GE sold its aerospace business, including the campus, to Martin Marietta in 1992 for $3.01 billion. A merger with Lockheed created Lockheed Martin in 1995.
Research and development of so-called “systems on a chip” for radar and sonar applications will take place in Albany, Kaloyeros said, and then be developed into products in Syracuse.
He likened the arrangement with Lockheed Martin to existing ones with IBM Corp. and GlobalFoundries, where the research occurs locally and manufacturing takes place in Fishkill and Malta.
And while investment over the next year is expected to total $250 million, “we expect it will be the first phase of an expanded Lockheed Martin partnership that eventually could reach $1 billion,” Kaloyeros said.
One Capital Region economic development official said that he wasn’t at all upset that the project went to Syracuse instead of Albany.
“If we only did business with those who existed in our region, we would never be able to grow and expand,” said F. Michael Tucker, president and CEO of the Center for Economic Growth, a private nonprofit economic development agency with its offices in Albany. He described the growing upstate nanotechnology cluster, with facilities in the Mohawk Valley and central New York, as a positive development for the Albany Nanotech complex.
“If you look at the clustering effect that is the model for the new innovation economy, we are the hub of that cluster,” Tucker said.
Work on the project is expected to begin by the end of the year and take 18 months. | <urn:uuid:12b46c09-8cfb-4343-a7f5-f6a23e0483b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.timesunion.com/business/new-28m-syracuse-lab-to-develop-albany-nanotech-innovations/21061/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958265 | 673 | 2.03125 | 2 |
This three-day course provides a multidisciplinary review of standard of care management practices and state-of-the-art advances in care of the patient with cutaneous melanoma. The first day focuses on epidemiology, prevention, pathology, genetic syndromes, advances in genomics, imaging and medical and surgical treatment in association with melanoma.
The last two days are an in-depth immersion into dermoscopy for imaging of melanocytic and non-melanocytic skin lesions, including three breakout sessions. Participants develop practical skills that enable them to be more comfortable approaching patients with atypical skin lesions. This dermoscopy section is primarily targeted to clinicians, but it's also valuable to educators and residents as a springboard to develop dermoscopy training programs. | <urn:uuid:bed68283-f3bd-4367-bd07-a79e0de7c40e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mayo.edu/cme/dermatology-2012s651/sectionID/EC5EB490-28FE-11E2-89750050569C0CB4/subsectionID/C1909D50-290D-11E2-89750050569C0CB4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923177 | 159 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Illustrations of heads showing surprise and aversion. Holograph manuscript by Louis Charles d'Ourches Bigarures. Credit: Wellcome Library, London
Following the launch of Codebreakers: the makers of modern genetics online resource, we will be posting a series of blogs about the 20 digitised archive collections at its core. To get started, Dr. Chris Hilton, senior archivist at the Library introduces the Gerard Wyatt collection, which is located at the Wellcome Library.
Crick and Watson’s description of the structure of DNA is one of the “Eureka” moments known well beyond the boundaries of science; for example, in 2005 when the last major batch of Crick’s papers was delivered to the Wellcome Trust, the removal men manhandling the crates off the lorry to the loading bay were familiar with Crick and his key achievement, and excited to be playing a part in bringing his papers back to Britain. The 1953 Watson and Crick paper in Nature is known to the lay public as one of those points at which, intellectually, everything changed, and the double helix is its instantly recognisable visual signature. However, there is an argument that the helix, brilliant logo though it makes, is a less important aspect of the molecule. The key, rather, lies in its double nature: the fact that each of the four bases that make up one strand can only link to one other type. Adenine can only link to Thymine, Guanine to Cytosine, and vice versa; a particular sequence of bases on one strand thus predicts absolutely exactly the sequence on the other strand, AGCT on the one being married to TCGA on the other. In perhaps the most famous understatement in the history of science, Crick ensured that the paper announcing the structure of DNA contained the words “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a copying mechanism”.
The paper, of course, has to back its assertions, and it does so, inter alia, by referring to experimental data indicating that when DNA is broken down the amount of Adenine found will always match that of Thymine; similarly for Guanine and Cytosine. Footnotes point us to the source of this data. First comes work by Erwin Chargaff, another of the key figures in the DNA story. However, there is also a reference to “Wyatt, G.R., Jour. Gen. Phys. 36. 201, (1952).” Behind this footnote lie a series of laboratory note books also held at the Wellcome Library under the reference PP/GRW: the papers of Gerard Wyatt (b.1925). Browse one of Wyatt’s digitised note books in the player:
Wyatt, an American by birth who had moved to Canada, spent the years 1947-1950 as a research student in Cambridge, working at the Molteno Institute on DNA. The quantative analysis of the molecule that he undertook in these years was the basis of his Ph.D.; it also formed the basis of several scientific papers, including the one from the Journal of General Physiology that Watson and Crick cite in Nature. In the Wellcome Library notebooks, which Professor Wyatt presented to us in 2003, we see the ratios of the four different bases performing their elegant dance, A forever bound to T and C to G, providing the Watson and Crick proposal with hard factual underpinning. The significance of this work is that it provided a clearer picture of the ratios than Chargaff’s figures. Crick, interviewed years later by Horace Judson, made this point: “The data of Chargaff’s, you know, wasn’t all that convincing unless you wanted to believe it [...] until Wyatt came along and boosted it up” (Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation, 1979, p. 179).
Professor Wyatt’s subsequent career has been spent working on the biochemistry of insects rather than specifically on DNA (although DNA of course occurs in his work: a recent paper that he co-authored, for example, related to “A DNA-binding protein, tfp1, involved in juvenile hormone-regulated gene expression in Locusta migratoria”: Shutang Zhou, Max L Tejada, Gerard R Wyatt and Virginia K Walker, in Insect biochemistry and molecular biology 2006;36(9):726-34). All the while that he was pursuing his post-doctoral work, however, his data on the ratio of DNA bases was underpinning the work Crick, Watson and many others did to follow up the insights of the 1953 Nature paper. This is not, perhaps, a good time to quote a journalist as a guide to one’s conduct, but the principle set out by C.P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian in the early 20th century, that “Comment is free, but facts are sacred” is apposite here: theory can come and go, but without experimental underpinning it is nowhere. The neat columns of figures in Wyatt’s lab notes are one of the foundations of modern genetics.
Subscribe with RSS | <urn:uuid:efb2e8cd-3907-4747-bdb9-9b9292c45316> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2013/03/the-dance-of-a-c-g-and-t-the-wyatt-notebooks/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955986 | 1,074 | 3.1875 | 3 |
“Quantum weirdness,” a phrase related to the power and the un-intuitive nature of quantum reality, is expected to facilitate speeded-up computation---quantum computing---for performing certain specialized tasks, such as factoring numbers. One drawback is that quantum computing depends exquisitely on the parts of a quantum system remaining coherent long enough---even in the face of environmental noise---for the computation to be performed. A proposed scheme should be helpful in sustaining coherence by carefully making mid-calculation corrections.
The new method is offered by Sankar Das Sarma and his colleagues at the Joint Quantum Institute (*) and the University of Maryland, and is published in the journal Nature Communications (**).
One of the greatest contrasts between classical and quantum computing, namely the nature of stored information, can be depicted in geometrical form using a “Bloch sphere,” named for physicist Felix Bloch. In a classical digital computer a unit of information, a bit, can have a value of either 1 or 0, corresponding to the north and south poles on the sphere. Meanwhile, a quantum unit of information, or qubit, can be a 1 or a 0 at the same time; to be more precise it is said to be in a superposition of the pure 1 state and 0 state. The status of the qubit can consequently be represented as points all over the sphere’s surface.
Manipulating a bit in a conventional computer, by turning a 1 into a 0, is easily accomplished millions of times per second in laptops and smartphones using established technology in microchips. Manipulating qubits will be much trickier and (at least for now) subject to many hazards. One hazard is that the qubit itself will fly apart; that is, that parts of the quantum system constituting the qubit will no longer cohere. Another hazard is that in steering a qubit around the surface of a Bloch sphere it won’t end up quite where you want it to be.
The JQI/Maryland research addresses the second of these hazards, and it does so for qubits maintained in quantum dots, tiny semiconductor domains which house one or two electrons. Quantum dots are one of the leading candidates for “hosting” qubits because scientists believe that the dots can be mass produced cheaply using mature nanotech assembly techniques.
In quantum dots a qubit typically consists of two electrons, whose magnetic properties (in the form of a fixed value of “spin”) can be correlated. The electrons and their spins are under the control of forces exerted by nearby electrodes and micro-magnets.
Just as one wants to be sure of a bit’s value when information is stored in a conventional memory unit, in quantum computers you want to be sure of a qubit’s value when storing and processing quantum information. In a quantum dot, qubits can be steered around the z axis of the Bloch sphere (in an east-west direction---the equivalent of longitude) when the interaction of the two electrons is modified by tweaking the voltages on the electrodes used to hold the electrons in place. Qubits can be steered around the x axis (in a north-south way, the equivalent of latitude) by changing the magnetic field gradient of (for example) a nearby micro-magnet.
It’s important to know where the qubit is on the Bloch sphere; much effort is being applied to this problem since reliable quantum processing of information depends on this. This is analogous to the effort made, centuries ago, to locate longitude at sea reliably since shipping and exploration depended critically on knowing where you were.
Problems can arise when you lose precise control over the qubit’s whereabouts. Stray magnetic fields, for example, can cause a qubit’s orientation to be improperly swayed. An imperfection in atoms in the crystal might be the problem, or the spins of the nuclei of the atoms making up the semiconducting sample (gallium and arsenide atoms) can fluctuate slightly. Fluctuations of as little as 5% in the strength of the local magnetic field can throw off quantum calculations involving the qubits.
Xin Wang, one of the authors of the paper, compares the manipulation of qubits across a Bloch sphere to an airplane journey from Hawaii to New York. A 5% error in navigation can result in a 230-mile mistake: the plane arrives in Boston or Washington.
“Our idea for correcting this is simple,” says Xin Wang. “We let the error correct itself. The good thing in our system is that the direction of the drift is opposite between 'east' and 'west' hemispheres. So that when some drift happened in one hemisphere, we can ask the qubit to rotate all the way around the other hemisphere so that there would be drift in the other direction, leaving room to correct errors. There is no law saying one must take the shortest flight on a Bloch sphere: one may travel around the sphere several times before it ends up with the desired position. It is this fact that one may travel around the sphere several times, and that drift happens in opposite direction on different hemispheres, that makes error correction possible.”
In other words, the proposed new error-correction scheme uses a series of electrical pulses applied to those electrodes to get the qubit to fly all the way around the (Bloch sphere) world, if necessary, to arrive at its proper destination. Xin Wang again: “Suppose we want to fly from Honolulu to New York City. When we think we could arrive at New York City, we realize that we are just flying over the White House. Then what do we do? We continue flying. On the other side of the earth we should fly slower so that there would be more drift on our route. Then when we come back to Hawaii we do not fly over Honolulu, but around 230 miles to the north of that. Then we change our speed back to that in our original segment, we would actually land at New York City.”
The JQI scientists have made two short videos, one that shows what happens to a drifting qubit without any correction, and one with the correction process (see below). They expect that their correction scheme can be tried out quickly in quantum-dot experiments.
The movement of a qubit across the globe (Bloch sphere) is subject to a large error.
Now the qubit is moved but with a error-correcting process built in.
(*) The Joint Quantum Institute is operated jointly by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD and the University of Maryland in College Park.
(**) Wang et al, “Composite pulses for robust universal control of singlet-triplet qubits”, Nature Communications 3, 997 (2012); doi:10.1038/ncomms2003 | <urn:uuid:3ad6daf9-93cb-4b06-bc4a-c869b95fb2b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jqi.umd.edu/news/quantum-longitude?fontstyle=f-larger | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917338 | 1,442 | 3.28125 | 3 |
With the Screen Actors Guild Awards less than a month away, let's look back at the history of our favorite SAG Category, "Outstanding Performance by a Cast" i.e. Best Ensemble. Though the Guild had long been in the business of lifetime achievement awards, they didn't hold their first full fledged awards ceremony until 1995 for the 1994 film year. That first SAG year did not include an Ensemble movie prize which is strange since they handed out TV ensemble prizes from the start so it's not like they hadn't dreamt up that honor! The next year Apollo 13, which was something of a frontrunner for Oscar's Best Picture prize (it eventually lost), won the inaugural ensemble prize. It beat a field that included only one other Oscar Best Picture nominee (Sense & Sensibility)... a percentage ratio you rarely see today.
At the third annual ceremony the award went to the (thankfully) dated gay marriage comedy The Birdcage (1996), based on the 1978 French classic and three-time Oscar nominee La Cage Aux Folles. The films farcical comedy emerges when a gay couple (Robin Williams & Nathan Lane) try to fool a conservative couple (Gene Hackman & Dianne Wiest) into thinking of them as a "reputable" traditional family so that the son can marry the other couple's daughter (Dan Futterman and Calista Flockhart). Everything goes wrong over dinner as the gay couple has a terrible time keeping up the facade.
This is so Guatemala. They put hardboiled things in everything down there. Because, you know, chicken is so important to them. it's their only real currency. A woman is said to be worth her weight in hens and a man's wealth is measured by the size of his cock."
Will you excuse me?"
The Birdcage beat eventual Best Picture nominees The English Patient and Shine to the prize (as well as Marvin's Room and Sling Blade). Award watchers note, usually with sadness, that this could never happen today. The Birdcage is the first and last film non-Best Picture contender honored by SAG for it ensemble. The Guild's communal prize, after an interesting start that seemed very focused on large casts in popular pictures (whether or not they had a shot in the future Best Pic roster) merely became another way of predicting Oscar's biggest prize.
SAG History (Oscar nominees in red, SAG winners in bold)
- 1995 Apollo 13, Get Shorty, How To Make an American Quilt, Nixon, Sense & Sensibility
- 1996 The Birdcage, The English Patient, Marvin's Room, Shine, Sling Blade
- 1997 Boogie Nights, The Full Monty, Good Will Hunting, L.A. Confidential, Titanic
- 1998 Life is Beautiful, Little Voice, Saving Private Ryan, Shakespeare in Love, Waking Ned Devine
- 1999 American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, The Cider House Rules, The Green Mile, Magnolia
- 2000 Almost Famous, Billy Elliott, Chocolat, Gladiator, Traffic
- 2001 A Beautiful Mind, Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, LotR: The Fellowship of the Ring, Moulin Rouge!
- 2002 Adaptation, Chicago, The Hours, LotR: The Two Towers, My Big Fat Greek Wedding
- 2003 In America, LotR: The Return of the King, Mystic River, Seabiscuit, The Station Agent
- 2004 The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Hotel Rwanda, Million Dollar Baby, Ray, Sideways
- 2005 Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night and Good Luck., Hustle & Flow
- 2006 Babel, Bobby, The Departed, Dreamgirls, Little Miss Sunshine
- 2007 3:10 To Yuma, American Gangster, Hairspray, Into the Wild, No Country For Old Men
- 2008 Benjamin Button, Doubt, Frost/Nixon, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire
- 2009 An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Nine, Precious
- 2010 Black Swan, The Fighter, The Kids Are All Right, The King's Speech, The Social Network
- 2011 (Oscar Nominees TBD) The Artist, Bridesmaids, The Descendants, The Help, Midnight in Paris
2007 is their most atypical year if you ask me. Do you see any patterns that you have to talk about?
The Birdcage is a perfect example of their shift in focus since it was too light and too gay (without mandatory tragedy!) for Oscar heat but it's extremely ensemble focused. Mike Nichols uses a ton of medium shots to make sure you're seeing multiple cast members at once. They're actually acting together! This shouldn't be such a retro rarity but it has become so with today's incessant leaning on closeups of individual performers even in scenes that are entirely about group dynamics.
I feel like I'm insane."
Though the annual tradition of the Ensemble prize has leaned like a thirsty plant towards Oscar sun, two things have remained somewhat consistent, one delightful and one ugly. The category has always been kind to comedy (relatively speaking) which is delightful since good comedy is hard to pull off and SAG has never dealt with its indelicacy problem of who gets nominated for "ensemble" and who does not (as this year's Corey Stoll snub reminds us) which is ugly. This was always true: Calista Flockhart was the only member of the principle Birdcage cast left out of the nominations since she wasn't famous enough yet to get her own title card. Weep not for Calista though. She went on to win the ensemble statue for television a few years later for leading the cast of Ally McBeal.
Here's how they make that actor statue, an infotainment segment hosted by the cast of Dexter. Just because! | <urn:uuid:2e9e4605-84e4-4bed-9453-f1b4743f1eab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2012/1/2/sag-ensemble-flashback-the-birdcage-oscar-trivia.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944807 | 1,228 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Producing large-scale images needn't involve wasting your life waiting for renders. Radim Malinic shows how bigger can be better.
If you ever spend time pondering the best way to create scalable files without being driven to smashing your Mac CPU to bits while waiting forever for renders, this tutorial is for you.
One option could be to go fully vector and fire up Adobe Illustrator, although most of us want to work with photographs and use the arsenal of Photoshop magic without having to run down to the nearest computer store for extra RAM and hard disk space. Over the next few pages, I will help you to prepare for any large-scale graphics commission so that you can ride the project out with ease.
By the end of this tutorial, you'll know how to produce a giant mural with crisp graphics, even on a 13-inch MacBook. | <urn:uuid:9ba885a3-7c43-450b-a119-58836bf49260> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/make-mural-sized-images-fast | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907835 | 174 | 1.71875 | 2 |
December 1, World AIDS Day, will again mark that sad anniversary that, while a time to tout advances such as an entirely new class of HIV/AIDS medications, primarily reminds Washingtonians that HIV/AIDS is the millstone around our collective neck as we drown in an epidemic. Data released by the Mayor Adrian Fenty's Department of Health on Monday, Nov. 26, doesn't offer much succor.
According to the new HIV/AIDS report, HIV-positive children continue to be born in the District -- nearly a tenth of the country's pediatric AIDS cases in 2005 -- while some states have successfully used medication to eradicate mother-to-child transmission. Nearly 40 percent of new HIV infections are transmitted through heterosexual sex, though sex between men still accounts for 27 percent of new infections. Pointedly, black women, who are 58 percent of the District's female population, account for 90 percent of new female HIV infections in D.C. Possibly the most important point -- and the one everyone was likely expecting -- is that the nation's capital leads the country with its rate of AIDS cases: 128.4 per 100,000 people, versus the national average of 14 cases per 100,000 people.
As Mayor Fenty writes in the report's introduction, ''We must take advantage of this information with the sense of urgency that this epidemic deserves.''
Khadijah Tribble is doing her part. Her early activism was as personal as coming out as a lesbian in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and as universal as the National AIDS Quilt.
''It had to be maybe 19 or 20 years ago,'' recalls Tribble. ''I got an opportunity to read names. I had heard about this disease, but it never really hit me. But to be holding pieces of the quilt, to be reading the names, those individuals became very real to me. I viewed this as the issue of my time.''
Roughly two decades after her encounter with the Quilt, Tribble is serving as interim executive director of the local Pediatric AIDS/HIV Care Inc. (PAHC), an organization marking its 20th anniversary in 2007, 20 years of helping D.C. kids from 5 to 18 cope with HIV infection -- either their own, or a loved one's.
Remarkably, it's work that does not leave her feeling depressed, Tribble insists. It could be that she finds comfort in her life with her wife, Robin, and four sons. Or that after the politics of vying to be Fenty's liaison to the GLBT community, hitting the campaign trail for Kweisi Mfume's Senate bid in 2006, or what she saw while helping impoverished/homeless youth at Covenant House Washington, she may see more at PAHC about which she feels hopeful.
''I tell people that 20 years ago the organization was started by a cadre of volunteers providing a safe, nurturing environment to help ease the pain of individuals, babies and parents -- predominantly mothers -- who were dying of HIV-AIDS. We still serve them, but now we serve them in a way that addresses their lives, living with HIV/AIDS as opposed to dying. Folks are living longer and having solid lives living with HIV/AIDS.''
Even with the bad news, Tribble knows the HIV-affected youth of D.C. don't need any gloom from her. So Tribble fights the epidemic her way: for the kids, with a smile.
METRO WEEKLY: What, exactly, does Pediatric AIDS/HIV Care Inc. (PAHC) do?
KHADIJAH TRIBBLE: We provide mental-health therapy in an art-infused, youth-development framework. I'll break that down: We provide mental-health therapy to our young kids.
Obviously, there's trauma associated with being HIV-positive, or having a parent or loved one who has died of HIV/AIDS. Sometimes when a young person is experiencing a terminal illness, it brings about trauma. So we provide therapy. We also use art therapy as a way for young people to express themselves when they can't vocalize or put words around what it is as it relates to their illness.
The third thing is the youth development. We believe that our young people have excellent opportunities and excellent talents and skills and we want to enhance those and bring about opportunities for them to use those skills and make the community a much better place.
MW: This year, PAHC entered its 20th year. How are you marking the anniversary?
TRIBBLE: We kicked it off Oct. 25 with a birthday party. It was our way to kind of signal that we're 20 years, that we're growing up, and that it's time we become more vocal about HIV/AIDS here in the District.
We're going to be doing an event in February in honor of HIV/AIDS awareness in the African-American community. We're also excited about hosting the first-ever HIV/AIDS summit for and by young kids who are HIV-positive. That will be in May or June.
MW: What's the mood like at Pediatric AIDS? How do you keep it upbeat for the kids, while dealing with all the serious issues surrounding HIV/AIDS?
TRIBBLE: I have to be honest with you: There are times when we struggle as an organization with the realities of why these young people are coming to Pediatric Care. But most days, if you stop by and see our office, it's just as chaotic as any youth-development center, because young people come not just for the safe space, but for the camaraderie. It's a family-like environment.
So the mood depends on what's going on. Take this week: There's been a strange kind of mood, one that's been celebratory because we've been around as an organization for 20 years. We're happy to say that because of the interventions and medical advancements, many of our young kids now are not positive, meaning that because of anti-retroviral therapy, parents aren't passing the disease onto their kids as much.
Now many of our kids are affected by HIV/AIDS, meaning they've lost a parent to the disease. So the mood is that 20 years later, we have less and less young people infected with HIV/AIDS, and many of our [HIV-positive] kids who started out with us 15 to 20 years ago are now growing up. They're graduating from high school. We're very excited that with intervention, medicines, our kids are still alive and are doing well and are thriving. On the other hand, we're mourning the loss of parents -- we have anniversaries every month. Kids have the opportunity to express whatever they're feeling around that loss. We do what we can.
MW: You've mentioned that PAHC has struggled at times. Have there been funding or staffing issues?
TRIBBLE: That's such a timely question. We've been around for 20 years and I've felt that folks really don't know who we are. Folks are like, ''Oh, wow, a new organization?'' No, we've been around for 20 years, quietly delivering services to the HIV/AIDS community.
The struggle for the organization has been that what we do isn't necessarily seen in the eyes of folks as HIV/AIDS treatment. We're not advocacy. We're not out pushing, doing media and all that good stuff. We're educating folks about HIV/AIDS and bringing up awareness. A lot of money has been spent in the District of Columbia on those things. They are important.
But what we are mainly is anti-stigma work. We're really about the business of changing the trajectory of the epidemic. Our client base is predominantly African-American. When you look at the numbers of HIV/AIDS infection rates, the African-American woman in particular is greatly affected by that. We believe that can be directly attributed to the silence, stigma and shame that is still associated with HIV/AIDS. It affects one's ability to feel comfortable going to get testing. Once they get tested positive, it affects their ability to get treatment, to stay in treatment.
Our organization exists outside of the ward where many of our clients live, and that's done on purpose. What we've found is that if we provide the services where the bulk of our clients are, they won't come because they're afraid to be associated with an HIV/AIDS organization. They don't want their kids to be ridiculed. They don't want to be isolated from their families.
At the heart of what we're trying to do with our young people is empowering them and creating a safe space and giving them the tools to be more vocal about their status and their family's status in an effort to get at this silence, stigma and shame.
The struggle has been this whole issue about silence, stigma and shame and the need to obviously covet and protect the confidentiality of our clients. At the same time, how do we begin to push the envelope and address these issues of stigma, silence and shame?
MW: We've been fighting HIV/AIDS for more than two decades. Why does any stigma still exist?
TRIBBLE: You know, I wish I had the answer. I honestly don't know. But I know that it's real when I hear stories of a mother telling me that she is positive, one of her kids is positive, and the other siblings don't know. The other family members don't know, but here is a young teen grappling with all those things that adolescents grapple with in a normal day. Then also dealing with the fact that he has an illness but more importantly, he can't share it. He can't talk about the fact that his numbers are good right now. He can't talk about what's wracking his body when he's having a bad day. He has to tell folks that, as his mom puts it, ''He has asthma.'' I don't know why it still exists, but I know that it is alive and well in the communities that we serve.
I'm talking to positive moms or family members who are so afraid of the isolation, so afraid that people are going to treat their kids differently, that they can't openly speak about it. They can't even share their stories. Only they know. That's an incredible burden.
As an out lesbian, every time that I come out to somebody I get to change their idea about what it means to be a lesbian or what it means to be gay. That helps people start thinking differently about whatever the issue is. For us, it's HIV/AIDS. Until we can eliminate the silence, stigma and shame, and empower folks, I don't think we're going to be able to make a dent in [the epidemic]. The thing that changes is when someone shares their story.
One of the things that we're launching this year is called ''Circles of Care.'' We're reaching out to the business community, the religious community, to what we call an affinity group of African-American powerful women. It can't just be our organization actually touting the message. We have to get everyone talking about HIV/AIDS. Everybody says, ''You're crazy about buzz words.'' But we have to start talking about it. That's why I have this [''Got AIDS?''] shirt on. Everywhere we go we have to talk about it. The more we talk about it, you create opportunities for folks to let their guard down, get some information, create the compassion that's necessary. So we're reaching out to these different communities to provide the ''Circles of Care'' and our goal is to give them information to go out and talk to their clients, to their other sister girlfriends when they're having conversations. HIV/AIDS becomes part of the normal conversation and not taboo to talk about it.
Because of the confidentiality of our client base, we are identifying two or three different opportunities. We're going to partner with [Metropolitan Community Church] for an event Nov. 29. We are also going to canvas the area where we're located. Our young people who are ready are going to wear T-shirts similar to mine. Some are going to wear our organization T-shirt, which is a big deal. Seven or eight weeks ago, some of our young people couldn't even say ''HIV/AIDS.'' So to be able to get to the point in a couple of months to wear a T-shirt -- and feel comfortable wearing it -- is testament to the fact that if you do your work it is possible to have some progression.
Van Cleef & Arpels is so graciously agreeing to do a fundraiser that benefits Pediatric Care on Nov. 29 in honor of World AIDS Day. I'll be speaking to a group of folks who are their client base, which is supposedly a very deep-pocket group. I'll have the opportunity to talk to them and share with them where PAHC is and where we're hoping to be and how folks can support us.
MW: What do you think makes the HIV/AIDS rates so high in the District, specifically?
TRIBBLE: My understanding is that the disease has changed as far as who the disease is attacking now in the community. The face of HIV, quite frankly, used to be one of white, gay and male. That has changed significantly to straight African-American women here in the District of Columbia. I think the messages somehow haven't translated to that particular community. The messages that are perhaps used in one venue are not necessarily going to work with this population. When you add on all of the dynamics that are sometimes associated with the disease, how the disease is transmitted, the African-American community isn't necessarily first in line to talk about sexuality issues, not necessarily first in line to talk about drug abuse and use. That compounds the issue in my mind and is why, perhaps, the numbers are so large here in the District.
MW: What do you see that makes you hopeful?
TRIBBLE: I ask myself, ''Why do you keep going back to these organizations where sometimes it's very hard work?''
It's some of the most gratifying work, though. I find my hope in a young person -- and I hope I don't cry -- a young person who literally is positive and has lived with this disease her entire life who said to me two months ago, ''Ms. Khadijah, I don't want to talk about what you talk about. I just don't want to talk about it.''
For that young person to show up at our 20th anniversary celebration and be willing to be associated with PAHC publicly, that's where I find hope. When people begin to share their stories and know that they are not going to be turned away or rejected because they're positive or because their family status is positive, that is where I find hope.
MW: Switching gears completely, let's talk about Mayor Adrian Fenty's LGBT liaison. Your name had been mentioned as a possibility during that search, which eventually led to Christopher Dyer taking the job.
TRIBBLE: As one who threw her hat in the ring to try to field that position, it was tense. To this day, I'm not sure why it was so tense. I do know that there are factions in the LGBT D.C. metro area who believe people should get positions based on X, Y and Z.
I threw my hat in the ring because I could do a good job in that position and that was it. I maintained throughout that the mayor was going to choose someone who best fit his cabinet. If that's me, great; if not, then move on. I don't harbor any ill feelings. The whole idea that it became a race issue, I didn't support. It was about who was going to be the best person to fit into that position based on what was going on in the District.
MW: You seem pleased, optimistic, to be right where you are at PAHC, rather than in the mayor's cabinet.
TRIBBLE: I'm hopeful. I couldn't stay in this work if I didn't think that there was a way to make change.
I told my young people at our anniversary celebration that I'm not going to do all the gloom and doom because that in itself can be depressing, so defeating. The reality is that we have issues, but we also have a huge opportunity to change things. We can take a look at models that have worked in other parts of the world.
I'm really excited about [recently appointed D.C. Department of Health HIV/AIDS Administration senior deputy director] Dr. Shannon Hader because she gets it. My conversation with her was so -- how excited can you be about HIV/AIDS? But it's not so much excited about HIV-AIDS, it's just excited about the opportunity to really make change and make a dent. We can, as a community, dig deep and change the dialogue.
MW: What about the young people to whom you're closest, your four sons? What do they think of the work you do?
TRIBBLE: They think that Ms. KT is going to save the world, because that's how I'm known in the community of young people I work with. I think at times it has been stressful. I can definitely say that during the time I threw my hat in dthe ring for the liaison position, it was a rough time.
One reporter even called our house in Maryland, asking our son questions about where I lived, and the whole issue of whether I was a District resident. It was very tense for them.
Robin and I decided that we were going to be less vocal in the media. We didn't return any phone calls and kind of began to cushion our family. One of my sons had spoken at a number of different events here in D.C. and in Annapolis -- speaking on why his moms should have the right to get married -- and we decided that the family could not do that anymore.
MW: Is there anything you want to talk about that we haven't touched upon?
TRIBBLE: I just want to reiterate that the issue of HIV/AIDS impacts all of us and we can all be a part of making it better. Everyone can do their part in making it better -- just find the opportunity.
We're going to be putting some things up on our Web site about ways individuals can engage with our organization. More importantly, whether you're interested in PAHC, Metro Teen AIDS, the Burgess Clinic at the Children's [National Medical Center], whatever it is, do something. Don't let history go by and you didn't help.
For more information about PAHC, visit the group online at http://www.pediatricaidshivcare.org. The complete 2007 HIV/AIDS epidemiology report for D.C. is available online by following the HIV/AIDS link on the D.C. Department of Health's homepage, http://doh.dc.gov. | <urn:uuid:a8956b78-6b58-4a31-8541-5ae647af3724> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://metroweekly.com/feature/?ak=3089 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982081 | 3,926 | 2.015625 | 2 |
One of Australia's most popular picture-book illustrators shows you how you can draw anything you want to. Kim's stories, jokes and examples make his approach to drawing intriguing, effective and fun. Ideal for children aged 8 - 12 years.
If you look, really look, and see the lines and shapes that things are made of, you can draw anything. If you can write numbers and the letters A-Z, you can draw anything.
With lots of examples, step-by-step guidance, helpful tips, jokes, stories and flip pictures, Kim Gamble shows:
How to draw animals, faces, bodies, people in action, buildings, machines ... anything!
How to give your pictures depth, using perspective.
How to give them form, using light and shade.
How to look, see, draw, explore and have fun!
Kim Gamble is one of Australia's favourite illustrators for children. He has created wonderful artwork for many picture books, including The Magnificent Nose and Other Marvels, The Hottest Boy Who Ever Lived, Joseph, Horrendo's Curse and the Minton books, with Anna Fienberg, as well as the Tashi series, by Anna and Barbara Fienberg, and First Day by Margaret Wild. | <urn:uuid:74e270ca-e684-4d13-a581-e01cca7ebee7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=94&book=9781742377988 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951345 | 260 | 2.234375 | 2 |
We demonstrate how easily someone can take advantage of a youngster's helpful and trusting nature.
Child safety expert Ken Wooden explains why this lure is so effective.
"You short circuit your basic instincts, only for a moment," said Wooden.
The solution for kids is simple, as Wooden demonstrates with these elementary school
Wooden said practically anyone, at any age, could be a victim.
Ken Wooden said, "They guy doing the luring, the guy doing the pulling, has an adrenaline, sexual rush that he will get you through the car window. And the car becomes a cage and he becomes the animal he really is."
Tell your children that as a general rule, adults should ask other adults, not children, for help.
Give your youngsters permission to ignore requests for assistance or offers of uninvited help, especially if they feel uneasy about the situation.
If approached by someone in a vehicle, children should stay three giant steps back - and be ready to run in the opposite direction, | <urn:uuid:b676ef36-23b3-4126-887f-bec07464a948> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bigcountryhomepage.com/fulltext?nxd_id=547142&nxd_237113_start=3460 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953746 | 205 | 1.90625 | 2 |
The efficacy of religion lies precisely in what is not rational, philosophic or eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion according as it demands more faith,that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind. The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery on the other hand is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship, the power of proselytism. When the cross became the foolishness of the cross, it took possession of the masses. | <urn:uuid:ff5fae97-c94e-4ce5-aa0b-f29be5c645ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bartleby.com/100/766.8.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966986 | 121 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Disruptions to our circadian rhythm, the 24-hour clock that drives sleeping and wakefulness, affect our bodies in more ways than previously believed.
New research shows that each of our organs contains cells with their own circadian-clock genes that help bodily processes, such as digestion, operate with maximum efficiency at certain times of day.
When a person's circadian clock is thrown off—by jet lag or shift work or eating at the wrong time—it can, over time, contribute to weight gain and depression. It may even increase the likelihood of heart and liver problems.
"If you disturb that 24-hour organization, you're going to have a disruption of function within the tissue," says Fred Turek, a biology sciences professor and director of Northwestern University's Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology, in Evanston, Ill.
10%: of the genes in our body tissue operate on a 24-hour rhythm, according to scientists.
The brain used to be thought of as the body's master clock, sending signals telling organs when to operate. But over the past decade or so, as scientists discovered clock genes in cells in different organs in the body, the brain has come to be seen as the conductor of an orchestra. Each organ operates on its own internal clock, producing enzymes and molecules at different levels depending on the time of day; the brain works to make sure all the clocks are synchronized. Dyssynchrony between the brain and the rest of the organs, or between individual organs, can lead to problems. For example, if the pancreas is out of sync with the liver, insulin production may be too low or too high, Dr. Turek says.
The ubiquity of clock genes in the body has led to a burgeoning field of research focused on how disruptions in circadian rhythm may contribute to disease, and whether normalizing circadian rhythm within cells could help prevent or treat conditions including colitis, diabetes and obesity. Some researchers are conducting trials to see whether there is an optimal time of day to eat in order to gain less weight.
The clock genes appear to have a particularly strong influence on metabolism and how the body handles fat and sugar. For much of the past decade, Dr. Turek and his colleagues have been studying the way these genes interact with fat and how they contribute to obesity, diabetes and digestive conditions like colitis.
In 2005, they demonstrated that mice with a mutation to a clock gene in the brain's "suprachiasmatic nucleus"—the region thought responsible for synchronizing circadian rhythm across the body—had a disrupted feeding pattern.
The mice ate more at all hours of the day, rather than primarily in the evening, when they are typically awake. These mutant mice were obese and had a number of metabolic problems, including high cholesterol and high blood sugar. The findings were published in the journal Science.
Then the researchers found something startling: It wasn't just that the mice's clock-gene mutation changed their behavior, but also that their behavior influenced the clock genes.
Eating a high-fat diet appeared to change the circadian-clock genes in a part of the brain, the liver and in fat tissue. In a later study, the group showed that nocturnal mice fed a high-fat diet only during the daytime, when they are supposed to be sleeping, gained more weight than mice fed during the dark phase, even when they ingested the same number of calories.
It isn't clear exactly how disruptions in circadian rhythm could influence body weight. One theory is that at certain times of day, intestinal bacteria may be more or less active at breaking down food into molecules to be absorbed by the intestine. Eating fat at a time when the bacteria are less active could lead to poorer food breakdown and more fat stored, Dr. Turek says.
Dr. Turek's team is also studying the intestinal condition known as colitis. Symptoms, including bouts of intense diarrhea, come and go in cycles—an observation that led Dr. Turek and his colleague, Ali Keshavarzian of Rush University Medical Center, to ask if circadian rhythm might play a role.
In a study published in 2008, they gradually shifted the sleep-wake cycle of healthy mice every five days for three months and showed that the animals had no changes in weight or intestinal distress. But when given a solution that induced colitis symptoms, mice whose sleep cycle had been shifted fared far worse, losing 25% of their body weight; mice on a normal circadian routine lost only about 10% of body weight.
In a separate study published in 2009 in Sleep Medicine, Dr. Turek's team found that mice whose sleep was deprived had worse inflammation and slower recovery compared to mice in a control group.
"If you have your circadian clock disrupted, it may not be a problem," Dr. Turek says. "But it may be a problem if you're pregnant, or if you're eating much more at the wrong time of day, or if you're getting the flu."
Other researchers have looked at the effect of clock genes on the liver. Steve Kay, dean of the biological-sciences division at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues showed that a particular clock gene shuts down excess glucose production in the liver.
A team from the University of Pennsylvania, led by medicine and genetics professor Mitch Lazar, recently found a clock-gene mechanism that reduces the production of fat in the liver at certain times of the day. Such findings suggest manipulating these clock genes could have implications for diabetes or fatty liver disease.
Other researchers, like Martin Young at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, are studying clock genes in the heart and have found evidence that circadian rhythm appears related to lipid production, like triglycerides, which could stress the heart and contribute to cardiac disease.
The easiest of the body's circadian clocks to reset is that of the brain, Northwestern's Dr. Turek says. Getting enough sleep—seven to eight hours—and ideally sleeping and waking at about the same time each day, even on weekends, is important to keep the sleep-wake cycle in tune.
It doesn't appear that the seven to eight hours need be continuous at night, but consistently more sleep is better than less, says Dr. Turek. Eating and exercising regularly, but not close to bedtime, also are important to the sleep-wake cycle, he says.
In a case where the rhythm of a particular organ is out of sync with other organs, realignment is more difficult. It may not possible for an individual to control by changing their behaviors, but opens up the possibility of novel ways of treating disease.
"Now, perhaps in some patients, the reason they're developing disease and other disorders is a biological clock that's not functioning," says UC San Diego's Dr. Kay. "Now we have a number of new avenues for developing treatments."
Write to Shirley S. Wang at firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:6aafbb20-3784-431e-a248-af4334ee2172> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471904576228532850374342.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960499 | 1,430 | 3.703125 | 4 |
No of Post: 01 How To Apply: Candidates already in-service are required to send applications through their employer only. Direct application will not be entertained. However, candidates are advised to submit an advance copy of the application form well before the last date. The application routed through proper channel must be received in the University [...]
Govt Job for Electrician after ITI or diploma holders in 2013
Government jobs are always the most preferred jobs among the middle class. Opening for electricians in government jobs are available in plenty these days and sacking in one for your own is not a troublesome affair either. There are certain procedures and formalities that you have to do. The qualifications and eligibility criteria are all mostly basic requirements.
To be eligible for the post of electrician you need to be 10th standard or matriculation or equivalent qualified. Apart from this having National Trade Certificate (NTC) & National Apprenticeship Certificate (NAC) in the respective trades are also desirable. The preferred age limit is between 18 to 30 years. There can be certain relaxations on the upper age limit on the basis of certain reservation categories. The application fee comes around Rs. 125 for GEN & OBC category candidates.
The applications for the post of electricians are called for both by online applications and postal applications.
The candidates are then evaluated on the basis of their performance and a rank list is duly prepared. Considering the number of vacancies available they are then called for a short personal interview wherein their professional skills are assessed. And once the candidates are done with this final stage of selection procedure, the selected candidates would then be notified and appointment letters will the given to the same. | <urn:uuid:20956209-7de6-435d-ad4d-d277e39f1f25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sarkari-naukri.in/jobs-by-post/electrician/ | 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 | 0.945542 | 339 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Shop our selection of books, gifts and stationery
Illustrated by Tad Carpenter
7 x 9 in; 96 pp; Journal
August 2012 ISBN 9781452115955
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This brightly colored personalized journal with your child's name on the front cover is the perfect back-to school present! 96 lined pages have the correct spacing to guide children mastering their handwriting skills. You can even choose from graph or blank pages for an even more customized experience. With this very special journal, your child will never forget to bring home his or her homework!
Tad Carpenter has illustrated and designed several children's books, spot illustrations, and national campaigns. His designs and illustrations have been featured in Communication Arts, Print, How, Graphis, Grain Edit, Drawn!, Grain Edit, Illustration Mundo and among other. Tad also teaches graphic design and illustration at the University of Kansas.
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If you leave now without finalizing your purchase, your work will be lost. | <urn:uuid:f24ec804-2d2b-435f-89cf-8070f030ea0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chroniclebooks.com/catalog/product/view/id/8415/category/253/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901589 | 306 | 1.703125 | 2 |
The Reality Behind Job Outsourcing
The Reality Behind Job Outsourcing
As unemployment remains high and once-stable jobs mysteriously vanish, Americans are becoming desperate for answers: How are workers supposed to deal with unprecedented economic insecurity, where are these jobs going, and who is to blame?
Interest groups and politicians have decried outsourcing as the American worker’s nemesis, fueling public anxiety about the dangers of globalization and a new protectionist mindset that reacts against the free trade doctrine of the corporate America. Kerry, backed by the AFL-CIO, has blamed Bush for the loss of jobs to cheap overseas labor markets. New statistics revealing the export of 3.3 million white-collar jobs by 2015 are stoking fears that the global economy is slowly draining the incomes of the middle class.
In response, the usual establishment cogs—Bush’s advisers and various corporate spokespeople—tout outsourcing as a positive new status quo for corporations. There are also academics and economists who dismiss the doomsayers, arguing that outsourcing is at best a productive economic trend—keeping prices low and industries efficient—and at worst, a natural phenomenon over-hyped by party politics.
The reality, as always, is more complex than either side will admit, and oversimplifying the issue threatens to do more harm than outsourcing itself.
There’s a stark logic to outsourcing: jobs will go wherever they cost employers less. Geographic movement tends to follow the bottom line. Just as yuppies move to Brooklyn when they can no longer afford converted East Village tenements, so companies like IBM are spurred by the Pavlovian capitalist impulse to set up shop in Mumbai for cost-efficient computer work.
Political scientist Daniel Drezner wrote in Foreign Affairs that Americans should avoid “outsourcing hysteria†because the offshoring statistics reflect “gross, not net losses.†This basically means that as long as the number of new jobs created compensates for the number of jobs lost to foreign subcontractors, American workers should be okay. Drezner notes, “about 22 million new jobs are expected to be added between now and 2010.â€
But outsourcing hysterics—most of whom are not economists or corporate strategists and therefore at much greater risk of actually experiencing outsourcing first-hand—might find it difficult to mellow out after checking the arithmetic of outsourcing advocates. Since Bush took office, the economy has seen a net loss of 1.6 million private sector jobs. An exponential reversal of this trend in six years through private sector growth seems a miraculous feat of economic contortion. Analysts cite the law of comparative advantage, which dictates that if we have elementary school drop-outs in Thailand stitch our sneakers, we Americans can then engage in business more befitting a developed nation: upgrading our technology and services industries, establishing new sectors and providing new employment opportunities for displaced domestic workers.
Sounds like a plan. Except we’re not following it. Our so-called recovery phase passed its second birthday without much fanfare; jobs that theoretically should be available are simply not there. Stephen Roach, an analyst at Morgan Stanley (a company not known for its anti-globalization stance) told the Times, “Something new is going on. America is short of jobs like never before.†Simply put, this ain’t your Momma’s unemployment cycle.
Nonetheless, outsourcing is more a symptom than a disease, and attacking it alone is like uprooting your garden to get rid of hay fever.
Outsourcing is the predictable scapegoat for the 2.7 million manufacturing jobs lost during Bush’s term. Manufacturing has been globalization’s biggest casualty as factories move overseas to capitalize on abundant low-wage labor. Factory workers, who have seen the number of jobs in their sector dwindle by 11 percent in the past decade and unemployment jump 36 percent since 2000, are understandably shaken.
But the zero-sum theory of protectionism shortsightedly equates each American job lost to one gained overseas. In fact, the main culprit is not the Dickensian industrial parks of Guangdong but the Brave New World of automated factories. Though the going-rate for a Sri Lankan garment worker is only about 2 percent that of her American counterpart, a robot will happily log more hours than even the most desperate factory drone. Since the 1970s, the general trend—not just in the US but in all industrialized nations—has been the replacement of workers with cutting-edge production technology. One US company recently got press when it increased productivity five-fold by upgrading their automation systems to operate around the clock with only two staffers.
The demand for skilled workers to operate such systems has eclipsed the demand for unskilled wage workers. In the 1980s, job opportunities in manufacturing began shifting dramatically from low- to high-skill labor. This has led to jobless millions choking on the dust of booming productivity, and transformed the composition of a given industry’s workforce. American workers are being ousted not by foreign ones, but rather by the same tide of modernization causing massive unemployment even in “insourcing†countries. In China, sleek new industries are similarly rendering state factory workers obsolete. The current pattern of white-collar jobs being lost to the information revolution is an outgrowth of a long-standing, worldwide trend.
But if outsourcing isn’t the enemy, is it our friend? Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers have proclaimed, “Free trade is win-win. … Free trade encourages countries to specialize in what they do best.†Apparently, what poor countries do best is funnel peasants into mega-factories to produce Walmart Tupperware, while America specializes in increasing simultaneously the nation’s overall wealth and the number of poor people at home and abroad. If these are the benchmarks of what the CEA deems “economic well-being around the worldâ€â€”well, everybody’s a winner.
The “win-win†school is also guilty of using zero-sum reasoning to prove that newly created domestic jobs will “replace†eliminated ones. Job loss trends hardly correlate to the “robust†growth analysts envision. The economy is restructuring to create new opportunities, but wealth is also shifting into fewer hands. A study of worker displacement from 2001 to 2003 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that about 60 percent of displaced workers had found new jobs, but over half were earning less, one third taking a pay cut of at least 20 percent. Moreover, underemployment has grown alongside unemployment as more Americans turn to part-time work to get by.
Expectations for the high-skill labor market seem similarly detached from reality. The BLS recently reported that unemployment over the past year remained constant at all educational levels, except for high school graduates, whose unemployment increased. And yet professional sectors requiring a college diploma are expected to lead the anticipated wave of job growth. Even if they do, former auto plant workers are not likely to find reemployment as high school teachers or software engineers—two of the most promising sectors, according to the BLS. Bush’s 2005 budget seeks to cut job training and supportive services for the unemployed, which, along with severe under-funding of public schools, ensures that low skills will remain low.
Outsourcing’s cheerleaders think multinational corporations will reinvest profits domestically and therefore expand employment. But while outsourcing companies feed off a slew of incentive and assistance programs, “reinvestment†often expands profits more than it expands job opportunities. The number of domestic jobs at US multinationals grew at only half the pace of offshore jobs between 1982 and 2001, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. With white-collar outsourcing gaining momentum, this divide between domestic and offshore growth will only intensify. And the prospects for displaced low-skill workers getting rehired for skilled positions, by the same bosses who downsized them, look dim.
Outsourcing reflects the cold protocol of the corporation: maximize output, minimize input. But protectionism is not a responsible solution to a “race to the bottom†affecting all of humanity; it smacks of Reagan-era xenophobia and undermines opportunities within the context of globalization to improve living and working conditions for workers everywhere.
Policymakers and activists cannot react to outsourcing without tackling broader issues implicated by it. Lower labor costs in the developing world stem from appalling working conditions, which international institutions fail to address. Income loss due to globalization and recession reveals the need for tax reform that favors working families over CEOs. Schools should prepare students to rise to the challenge of a volatile international economy. The federal Trade Adjustment Assistance program should encompass a broader range of workers and communities left behind by “recovery.†While America’s workers seek to assign blame, fingers should point not to factories in Asia but to a government that squanders resources on the military and economic domination of weaker nations, to boost an economy that actually undermines domestic living standards.
Without systemic reforms, shipping jobs overseas is not a winning formula for anyone except big business. Yet by making workers of all backgrounds realize they face a common struggle, it might be a catalyst for a true structural adjustment: one that reverses the hording of power by the engines of capitalism and restores dignity to labor on every shore. | <urn:uuid:fe38c9fc-42a9-4a1d-a05e-9a1e9dc2444f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zcommunications.org/the-reality-behind-job-outsourcing-by-michelle-chen | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938855 | 2,007 | 2.03125 | 2 |
TopFruits.com is currently gathering a lot of media attention because of their iPhone 5 mock-up. The company used its products to create a giant iPhone 4, using cantaloupes, grapes, limes, raspberries, kiwis, aubergines, watermelons and other fruits.
The video is currently nearing 175,000 views on YouTube.
This, however, is not the company’s first video. They currently have dozens of videos on their YouTube site. Their videos, usually feature recipes, tips and advice, and other information about fruits and vegetables, are all expertly made and shot.
TopFruit.com Uses QR Codes
The European distributor uses QR codes to disseminate these videos. They put up QR codes on their packaging that would take the buyer to a relevant video. For instance, those who buy their mangoes can scan the QR codes included in the packaging and be taken to a video instructing them how to ripen mangoes or use them in recipes. QR codes on apples take users to a video on how to help kids eat more fruits and vegetables.
QR Codes Can Help Your Marketing
QR codes have been used by the world’s top brands and biggest companies such as Calvin Klen, Macy’s, Best Buy, JetBlue, Starbucks, HBO and Coke. If these top companies see the potential of QR codes for ease in marketing, then so can you.
QR codes help you give your customers a more interactive experience with your products. Not only that, it could also help you sell more. As in the case of TopFruit.com, having recipes could provide the opportunity to sell other fruits, as well, and give the customer more reasons to buy mangoes.
QR codes could also help your campaigns gain more traction. You can use QR codes to promote videos and blog posts and even social media sites easily and conveniently. What’s more, with QR codes you can take advantage of the rising use of smartphones and mobile Internet.
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By now, most people in developing and developed countries are using a smartphone. Considering the fact that the cost of smartphone these days have dropped to an all-time affordable level, there is really very few reasons NOT to own a smartphone. Anyway, how has this affected the world when it comes to QR Code usage? [...]Read more
QR codes are making the check-in process at Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport a little bit easier. For passengers who do not have to check in any baggage can check in by going to the Chinese language http://www.xmairport.com.cn/, the airport’s Web site. On the site, they will be required to submit their personal information. After that, [...]Read more
It has been a long time coming but we heard from the grapevine that Xiamen airport is now allowing its passengers to check into the airport by scanning QR Code. For those who are unfamiliar with QR Codes, they are an evolved version of your basic 2D barcode…the same ones that the cashier at the [...]Read more
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Google Android news and discussion.
Deliver latest top technology stories and breaking IT news
Near Field Communication (NFC) news, ideas, projects and technologies.
QR Code, Datamatrix and other two dimensional barcode news and analysis.
Tips, advices, how-to's and DIYs for the latest technologies. | <urn:uuid:66ebbc6f-d82f-482f-adb6-f6fc8e845ba7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://beqrious.com/topfruit-com-uses-qr-codes-for-its-marketing-and-product-packaging/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924405 | 837 | 1.609375 | 2 |
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The public good or welfare.
- n. Archaic A commonwealth or republic.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The public good; the common welfare of the nation or community.
- n. A commonwealth; the body politic; a community.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Commonwealth.
- n. the good of a community
“When you understand Illinois politics, Obama’s emphasis on “bipartisanship” takes on a sinister air, since in Illinois the central faultline undermining the commonweal is not Republican vs. Democrat but Politician vs. Public.”
“Together, communities are greater when the commonweal is the central concern.”
“Indeed, this rejection of the idea of socially and economically significant State intervention in the affairs of the commonweal is the very essence of the ideology of the Whigs, whether neo-Catholic or non-Catholic.”
“Public money should only be spent in support of our mutual intersts - or what used to be known as the commonweal - in either good or bad economic times.”
“The power of average people is their freedom to act on their own judgement, to set and pursue their own goals, to earn and keep their own property without being looted by the "commonweal", to take responsibility for their own actions.”
“This, my friend, is why right-wing policies inevitably fail by scandal or repression: the basic conservative position is that there is no such thing as a "commonweal," it's everyone for himself.”
“It is of interest that the term commonwealth is derived from the medieval English word "commonweal" which means common well-being.”
“Certainly no more solid than the duty of Congress to attend to the "commonweal" of the people.”
“Congress was created as a place where the 'commonweal' was the business of the day and that wealth was supposed to include all people in the civil body politic.”
These user-created lists contain the word ‘commonweal’.
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
Words taken from The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford.
mei- root words, a changing mixture
Words that I don't want to forget, but that require caution in their use.
Looking for tweets for commonweal. | <urn:uuid:b0a33837-c57f-40f4-9529-92554c882eb3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wordnik.com/words/commonweal | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944133 | 540 | 3.0625 | 3 |
In 1926, RR Donnelley launched its famous Four American Books promotional campaign. Materials about the campaign in the RR Donnelley Archive are important not just for what they reveal about the company's goals, but also for what they contribute to an understanding of the commercial book trade of the time.
RR Donnelley wanted to use the campaign to demonstrate that illustrated books could be printed on modern commercial machinery to a standard that was as good if not better than that of high-quality presses in Europe. The company also hoped the Four American Books would support it in the rapidly expanding mass-market book industry and establish the company as a printer of fine trade editions.
The Four American Books campaign was orchestrated by C. G. Littell, vice president and treasurer, and William A. Kittredge, head of the department of design and typography. Between 1926 and 1930, Littell and Kittredge developed a list of possible books to include, identified authoritative texts, hired the finest illustrators, manufactured the books, and managed an extensive marketing and distribution plan.
One important consideration in compiling the list of books was to find titles that had not been previously illustrated. Four well-known book designers were then asked to select from the list and commissioned to design and illustrate a new edition. Rockwell Kent selected Herman Melville's Moby Dick; W. A. Dwiggins, Edgar Allen Poe's Tales; Edward A. Wilson, Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast; and Rudolph Ruzicka, Henry Thoreau's Walden. Every detail-the choice of paper, typeface, ink, binding materials, and in one case even the design of the wrapping paper and mailing label-was managed by the designer.
The campaign was so successful that in the following years, RR Donnelley received orders for trade books from Random House, the Literary Guild, Harcourt Brace, and others. RR Donnelley's three-volume edition of Moby Dick is still regarded as the definitive illustrated edition of Melville's great work.
|7. Herman Melville (1819-1891). Moby Dick, or The Whale / illustrated by Rockwell Kent. Chicago: The Lakeside Press, 1930. 1,000 copies printed. R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company Archive.| | <urn:uuid:74a7e30a-455c-4bdf-b792-8ea5f33e4c42> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/webexhibits/PrintingForTheModernAge/PromotingTheCraftAmericanBooks.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95144 | 474 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Nunavut is the newest Canadian territory, as it was created from a part of Northwest Territories in April 1999. Its population, mostly Inuit, is sparsed over a territory as large as Western Europe. Although most native's first language is one of the various dialects of Inuktitut, most people have a good command of the English language. The capital city, Iqaluit, is located on the Baffin Island close to the Arctic Circle.
There are officially 26 communities in Nunavut, though there are other former settlements, weather stations and mining sites. There are approximately 850 km of road over the territory, the main one being a temporary ice road (568 km) lasting a few weeks each year. There is no real road link between actual communities, the network being limited to the various settlements, only accessible through air and, seasonly, sea.
Nunavut is a remote territory and hardly accessible for hitchhikers unless they hitch a boat or a plane. Airfares are expensive: typically, Montreal-Iqaluit is 1,5 to twice the price of a Montreal-Paris flight. The passenger airlines reaching Iqaluit from communities linked to Canada's main road network are Canadian North, First Air and AirCanada. They depart mostly from Montreal, Ottawa and Yellowknife, with indirect routes from Winnipeg and Edmonton. But as airliners are usually not good to hitchhike on, one could have more chances with cargo flights, some of which also leave from Val d'Or in Quebec. It varies with the time of the year and weather conditions.
Private plane owners could be found by networking with Nunavut's only flying club : Polar Pilots
Therefore, hitch-hiking in Nunavut might only reveal being a local experience or only possible through air traffic or snow traffic (sledge and snowmobile car). | <urn:uuid:c53a4d13-c1b1-4280-8bf6-b21380cd3391> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hitchwiki.org/en/Nunavut | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961702 | 386 | 2.78125 | 3 |
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SOURCE DNAinfo.com New York
New York City's leading neighborhood news source details schools by location and acceptance rate
NEW YORK, March 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Parents of 4-year-olds seeking one of NYC's coveted free pre-K seats have a new resource from DNAinfo.com New York. With an infographic summarizing acceptance rates for every public pre-K program in the city, parents can quickly identify which neighborhood programs to apply to this year.
"Some of the city's most popular pre-K programs turned away more than 95 percent of applicants in 2012," said Julie Shapiro, DNAinfo.com New York's NYC Kids Editor. "We want to inform parents about all of their neighborhood choices so their kids have the best chance possible of getting a seat this year."
Pre-K applications for this fall are due April 5, and allow families of children who turn four this year to rank up to 12 choices. Parents can apply to any pre-K program in the city but have the best chance of being admitted to their zoned school and schools in their district, or any school where they already have a child enrolled.
"No matter where you live in New York City, there aren't enough pre-K spots to go around," said Michael P. Ventura, managing editor of DNAinfo.com New York. "Our reporters spoke with parents and educators in every borough to uncover news ranging from expanded choices in Staten Island, overflow options in Brooklyn Heights and dual-language programs in Jackson Heights."
The Department of Education added 4,000 full-day seats in high-need neighborhoods this year. In all, the city plans to offer about 20,000 full-day pre-K spots and 23,000 half-day spots this fall.
DNAinfo.com New York's interactive tool detailing the city's pre-K programs by location and acceptance rate can be found here: http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130304/new-york-city/pre-k-guide-see-chance-of-getting-your-child-seat.
DNAinfo.com New York's full NYC Public Schools Guide, the most comprehensive resource about the city's primary schools, is available here: DNAinfo.com/NYCSchoolsGuide.
About DNAinfo.com New York
DNAinfo.com New York (www.DNAinfo.com/New-York) is the city's leading neighborhood news source. We deliver up-to-the-minute reports on entertainment, education, politics, crime, sports, and dining. Our award-winning journalists find the stories – big or small – that matter most to New Yorkers. The inspiration, funding, and strategic vision for DNAinfo.com come from entrepreneur and Ameritrade (AMTD) founder Joe Ricketts.
©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:c7543ef6-a47f-49bc-9ac9-077858a73344> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kndu.com/story/21530412/dnainfocom-new-york-launches-interactive-guide-to-nycs-public-pre-k-programs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942695 | 647 | 1.59375 | 2 |
A GOLDEN RULE FOR GARDENING: DO NO HARM
By ROBERT KOURIK
1998 N.Y. Times News Service
What could be more natural than gardening? Most people who grow flowers
or their own food think they're ""healing the Earth'' in some small way.
Gardeners may be having fun, getting exercise and harvesting tasty
vegetables and fruits, but the best thing, as far as nature is
concerned, is probably no gardening at all. In fact, gardening can be
downright harmful: tillage releases carbon dioxide, contributing to
global warming; cultivation and compaction destroy beneficial soil
fungi, and excessive nitrogen fertilizers, even manure, can contaminate
While most gardeners assume that a plow, shovel or rototiller is
required for a good crop, the only comparable natural model is a
landslide. So why have most cultures used cultivation? Mostly to create
a zone where domesticated crops have little competition from native
The earth's soil contributes 10 times more carbon dioxide to the
atmosphere than all human activity, according to Dr. Tyler Volk, a
professor of biology at New York University and an expert on the carbon
cycle. It comes from the myriad life forms that inhabit the soil _
microbes, pill bugs, worms and fungi _ as they breathe, process food and
Whereas in the past the increase in carbon dioxide gas produced by
small-scale tillage was absorbed by plants through photosynthesis, Dr.
Volk said, tillage has now become a large contributor to the surplus of
carbon dioxide. When soil is stripped of its living cover to grow crops,
up to one-fourth of its stored carbon, which contributes to fertility,
is lost as carbon dioxide.
Volk estimates that the rise of the average global temperature of one
degree Fahrenheit in this century has expelled an extra billion tons of
carbon into the atmosphere from the soil. Currently, he says, the global
carbon cycle may be able to absorb it, but carbon dioxide generated by
cultivation _ even in gardens _ may contribute to a warmer climate.
Gardeners can compensate for a loss of carbon, Volk says, by adding
compost and manure. And they can minimize the loss of carbon dioxide
from their plots by experimenting with ""no till'' gardening: growing
plants in deep mulch, up to a foot thick; sheet composting (thin layers
of a variety of compostable materials laid out over the soil like a
thick mulch), or by reserving portions of the garden for soil-improving
crops like fava beans or vetch.
In undisturbed soil under many trees, perennials and some vegetables
lurks a mostly unknown but beneficial fungus called vesicular-arbuscular
mycorrhizae _ VAM, for short _ which can sometimes be spotted because of
its above-ground fruiting bodies, including Boletus, Amanita, Lactarius
mushrooms and some types of puffballs.
VAM forms a remarkable symbiotic relationship with plants. Its
microscopic filaments either actually augment tree root hairs, or they
grow into the cells of the root hairs. The filaments provide nutrients
to the plant, mostly phosphorous, potash, zinc and copper, and they
receive carbohydrates for the fungus.
Many plants grow much more lushly with this association. For example,
according to studies at various universities, when VAM was present in
otherwise untreated or poor soils, oat plants were nearly twice as heavy
and strawberries five times as heavy than they would have been
otherwise. Citrus trees growing in soil inoculated with VAM were 16
times as heavy than trees in sterilized soil.
Most natural, undisturbed soils have plenty of VAM. But it can be
injured or destroyed by tillage, by removing the natural litter called
duff beneath trees, by stripping away topsoil for construction, by
compacting the soil (even by walking on it), by fumigation or by
There are several ways of preventing compaction: keeping permanent
pathways away from trees, using deep mulches for little-used paths,
using some cover crops in your yard and rotating crops with root systems
of different depths to help keep untilled soil friable. Keep annual
crops away from trees (at least one-half to three times the width of the
canopy) so as not to disturb the VAM.
Some garden centers and catalogs are touting new VAM inoculants for all
gardens. They may not be required except in two cases: at a new house on
a bulldozed site or in sterile potting soil. But if you've spotted the
telltale mushrooms in a forest, you can just shovel up some duff there
and sprinkle it on your soil or add it to a sterile potting mixture.
Then let nature do the work, free.
Most gardeners squander nitrogen, even manures. Because of its cost,
farmers tend not to waste fertilizer. To equal the amount a farmer
spreads on nitrogen-hungry crops like celery, cabbage and potatoes, a
home gardener need apply only a quarter to a third of an inch of compost
or steer or horse manure.
Kate Burroughs of Sebastopol, Calif., a certified crop adviser with the
American Society of Agronomy, a professional association, uses the same
guideline for home-grown sweet corn and lettuce. Broccoli and pear trees
need only a dusting. I often observe gardeners applying manure and
compost far heavier than this, wasting both money and nitrogen.
That excess nitrogen leaves the garden as a gas or leaches away with
rain or irrigation toward water supplies, and it can set back VAM
activity. Surplus nitrogen causes plants to grow more foliage, not
stems, tubers or other edible parts, and it stimulates weaker growth
more prone to pests and disease.
As it turns out, the ancient Greeks were right: all things in
-- "New Generation Cropping Systems": the cutting edge of sustainable agriculture http://www.cedarmeadowfarm.com Steve Groff Cedar Meadow Farm 679 Hilldale Rd Holtwood PA 17532 USA Ph. 717-284-5152
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Jack Hitt, "Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character"
May 17 2012 7:00 pm
Technological innovation has changed its address and moved out of research centers. It now resides in garages, sheds, and basements across America. These are the new workshops where inspiration and perspiration result in the next wave of neighborhood inventors, the small-town dreamers that will propel the country to new heights.
WHAT IS IT THAT DRIVES THE SUCCESS OF AMERICA AND THE IDENTITY OF ITS PEOPLE? ACCLAIMED WRITER AND CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TO THIS AMERICAN LIFE JACK HITT THINKS IT’S BECAUSE WE’RE ALL A BUNCH OF AMATEURS.
America’s self-invented tinkerers are back at it in their metaphorical garages—fiddling with everything from solar-powered cars to space elevators. In Bunch of Amateurs, Jack Hitt visits a number of different garages and has written a fascinating book that looks at America’s current batch of amateurs and their pursuits. From a tattooed young woman in the Bay Area trying to splice a fish’s glow-in-the-dark gene into common yogurt (all done in her kitchen using salad spinners)
to a space fanatic on the brink of developing the next generation of telescopes from his mobile home, Hitt not only tells the stories of people in the grip of a passion but argues that America’s history is bound up in a cycle of amateur surges.
Beginning with Ben Franklin’s kite and leading all the way to the current TV hit American Idol, Hitt argues that the nation’s
love of self-invented obsessives has always driven the country to rediscover the true heart of the American dream. Amateur pursuits are typically lamented as a world that just passed until a Sergey Brin or Mark Zuckerberg steps out of his garage (or dorm room) with the rare but crucial success story. In Bunch of Amateurs, Hitt argues that America is now poised to pioneer at another frontier that will lead, one more time, to the newest version of the American dream.
- 768 Boston Post Rd.
- Madison ,
- Postal Code:
- United States | <urn:uuid:71974c74-8d02-4b5b-a169-2faae8cb0e26> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rjjulia.com/event/jack-hitt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900368 | 500 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Cape Town penguin breeding site under rehabilitation
South African National Parks (SANParks) and the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) – two IUCN Members – have joined the City of Cape Town and other partners in the rehabilitation of the penguin breeding site at Burghers’ Walk in Simon’s Town, South Africa.
Last Thursday, IUCN Head of Office in South Africa, Hastings Chikoko and the Chief Executive Officer of SANCCOB, Venessa Strauss were among the people that participated in the tree planting activities at Burghers’ Walk that was hosted jointly by SANParks and City of Cape Town as part of the rehabilitation programme. The ceremony was officiated by Cape Town Mayoral Committee Member for Community Services, Councillor Tandeka Gqada.
Burghers’ Walk is known for its large African Penguin (Spheniscus demersus) colony, which has provided a great attraction and aesthetic appeal to both tourists and residents visiting the area on a daily basis
The area along Burghers’ Walk and the adjacent Boulders Beach is one of the only two land-based colonies of the African Penguins in South Africa. The past few years have seen an accelerated degradation of Burghers’ Walk due to the trampling of vegetation and soil erosion. To ensure uninterrupted rehabilitation, the city has therefore temporarily closed Burgers’ Walk with a plan to re-open after the rehabilitation.
The African Penguin is listed as ‘endangered’ according to the IUCN Red List. There were about 1.5 million adult African Penguins along the southern African coast in the 1930’s. However, human activities reduced this number by a staggering 90% in less than a century. This calls for increased conservation action to ensure that this species is protected and to prevent further declines. SANCCOB’s main goal in this regard is to help limit mortality of these birds by rehabilitating and releasing birds back into the wild.
SANParks has been a Member of IUCN since 1949 and SANCCOB joined IUCN in 2010.
For more information, please contact: Hastings Chikoko, Head of IUCN Office in South Africa on email@example.com | <urn:uuid:3b904dd6-ae8c-426e-b885-bf58f1832ea1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iucn.org/es/noticias/noticias_por_fecha/2011_news_sp/julio_news_2011/?7944/Cape-Town-Penguin-breeding-site-under-rehabilitation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953191 | 476 | 2.328125 | 2 |
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The suburbs.
- n. Suburbanites considered as a group.
- n. Suburbanites considered as a cultural class.
- n. suburbanites considered as a cultural class or subculture
- n. a residential district located on the outskirts of a city
- From suburb + -ia. (Wiktionary)
“Most people living in "suburbia" in the United States have not seen or ackownledged this trend.”
“It is entirely plausible (likely?) that those living in suburbia, on average, have more developed social skills.”
“As coyotes make themselves at home in suburbia, incidences of coyotes biting people increase.”
“Witch Way to the Mall, Esther's anthology about witches in suburbia, which just hit the shelves.”
“Here in suburbia grocery shopping is part necessity, part social outing.”
“The working poor living in suburbia spend a large portion of their incomes on cars.”
“She was "aren't there books, multiple books, where the kid is black and just has a life in suburbia and is happy and has pets and parents with jobs and geez, we have a black President, where are the books?”
“Andrew: I'm intrigued with this book of short stories, 'The Turning', because you're writing about people who are on the fringes or lost in suburbia, who are maintaining dignity in the face of desperation or disillusionment ... sometimes not maintaining it.”
A transcript of an interview with Tim Winton on Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Enough Rope hosted by Andrew Denton in which Tim discusses many aspects from his life including how he nearly drowned when he was nine and how he avoided the school bullies by telling taller and taller tales
“She lives in suburbia rather than in a city and is happy.”
“Kunstler predicts all out pandemonium and chaos, worst felt in the United States, of course, where suburbia is in full force.”
These user-created lists contain the word ‘suburbia’.
Countries, lands, cities that capture, or haunt, our dreams. Some of the places listed might be the names of actual localities, but here they are states of mind.
This is a collection of words I love, old ones that I love the sound of when I repeat them for years and new ones coined in news articles on up and coming trends and technologies - most of them I k...
Looking for tweets for suburbia. | <urn:uuid:4ae3ee85-76aa-4949-b377-01d2c3ff51da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wordnik.com/words/suburbia | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944858 | 560 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Christopher Coombs, executive chef of Dorchester's dbar, is going green from the top down. His rooftop garden, overlooking Dorchester Avenue on one end and the restaurant's patio on the other, is home to 23 different types of tomatoes growing on more than 65 plants. And Coombs swears that from Paris to Virginia, his homegrown tomatoes are the best he's had in his life.
"Flavor is what I grow up on that roof," Coombs said.
Tomatoes dominate the rooftop this month because they're in season, and Coombs said he will harvest more tomatoes than he can use in the coming weeks. So he has entered into an old-fashioned trade agreement with his meat purveyor, who will soon be selling Coombs's heirloom tomatoes at his shop in Newton.
Through trial and error, Coombs learns what thrives and what dies in the container gardens. Large fruits and vegetables like watermelon and squash are difficult to grow because of limited space, but peas and carrots do well on the rooftop, as do the extensive herb gardens which house everything from thyme to nasturtiums. From June to October, Coombs said he cooks solely with fresh herbs from the roof, saving the restaurant up to $400 a week.
Aside from saving dollars, dbar's rooftop garden saves energy and reduces the restaurant's carbon footprint. Last year, 23 percent of dbar's produce came from the rooftop and Coombs said he is shooting for 25 percent this year.
Coombs compares his harvest to raising a child and he encourages his staff to do the same. They don't burn and they don't waste, Coombs said. "That doesn't happen here ever because we have a deep appreciation for the vegetables and fruits and how much work we put into it."
"This is just the beginning," Coombs said of dbar's garden, noting that "no one else is doing this." Recently, he started working with Jim Hunt, Boston's chief of environmental and energy services, to learn ways to expand the restaurant's energy efficiency through its green roof.
"He and I want to work together so we can inspire more chefs and more restaurateurs to make this a common practice," Coombs said. "We could really save a lot of energy - think about the amount of rooftop space there is in the city."
As part of Mayor Thomas Menino's Grow Boston Greener campaign, the city is also looking to expand green roof coverage on municipal buildings. A $50,000 grant from the Department of Environmental Protection will fund a study to examine the benefits of green roofs and discern which already-existing city buildings are good candidates for green roof installations.
Hunt said dbar's "impromptu" green roof, born out of a chef's desire to grow local produce, has numerous environmental benefits. Green roofs serve to insulate buildings, reducing energy consumption and alleviating some of the "urban heat island effect" that makes inner-city neighborhoods more than 10 degrees hotter than other areas. The abundance of blacktop sidewalks, roads and rooftops in the city attract and trap heat, but rooftop vegetation cools as it absorbs the sunlight.
Lower temperatures also help alleviate public health threats such as heat stress, asthma and other respiratory problems, Hunt said. As natural drainage systems, green roofs lessen storm water pollution and locally grown produce cuts fuel consumption and costs.
In a country where the average piece of produce travels 2,000 miles before it reaches the table, Hunt said green restaurants like dbar have a lot to offer the neighborhood. Hunt expects that "we will continue to see an increase in our green restaurants," which means "more sustainable food, reduced costs and a healthy, locally grown product that's more sustainable."
Coombs admits that the green scene has become pretty "hip" this year, but it's something he personally enjoys as a chef and as a member of the community working toward sustainability.
"I do it because it's good for the environment, good for the restaurant, good for profitability, good for everything," he said. | <urn:uuid:a47211d6-01a9-4dab-a6f5-f78d96c17876> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dotnews.com/print/651 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970419 | 834 | 1.796875 | 2 |
A Reference Resource
A Life in Brief
It took an extremely contentious vote recount and a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, but in January 2001, the Bush family succeeded in accomplishing that rarest of American exactas: a father and son who both served as President of the United States.
George W. Bush took the oath of office as the 43rd President twelve years after his father had done so—and 176 years after John Quincy Adams became the 6th President. The senior Bush, with a nod to history, once referred lightheartedly to his eldest son as "my boy Quincy," but within the Bush clan the first President Bush was often referred to as "Forty-One," and the second as "Forty-Three." In a nation divided bitterly along partisan lines, however, millions of Americans had other shorthand ways of referring to this polarizing President elected without a majority—or even a plurality—of the popular vote.
Despite the slender nature of his mandate, George W. Bush did not project himself as a minority President, and did not govern defensively. With the advantage of extensive pre-transition planning his administration hit the ground running. In his first six months in office, Bush had accomplished most of his 2000 campaign trail agenda.
Candidate Bush's priorities centered on two main issues, both of them domestic: First, he insisted that, with the federal budget in surplus, Americans were entitled to a significant tax cut. Second, he vowed an increase in federal funding for education as part of a sweeping plan for accountability from the states and districts. The schools would have to improve reading and math proficiency, particularly among minority students.
Bush almost always stressed a third issue when he ran as well, although it was more of a theme than a policy change: He promised to usher in an era of improved civility and cooperation in Washington.
His fast start notwithstanding, events intruded on this vision. And four years later, as Election Day 2004 approached, it was clear that Bush's razor-thin margin of victory and the ensuing Florida recount, a bitter fight over the makeup of the Senate, his conservative domestic policies, and the devastating attacks of September 11 and resulting war in made his four years in office far from tranquil, leaving an already evenly divided nation even more polarized than before.
Road to the White House
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Bush moved as a toddler to West Texas and had what he has described as an idyllic upbringing in post-World War II Midland, the eldest son of Eastern establishment parents trying to carve out their own identities. This sense of serenity was broken by the death of his little sister Robin from childhood leukemia, a family tragedy that longtime friends believe had a hand in shaping Bush's personality. As he sought to console his parents, the boy became something of a ham—but he was a cut-up with a fatalistic streak. The episode also helped forge a lifelong closeness between Barbara Bush and her eldest son.
Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, Bush attended prep school, first in Houston, then in Andover. From there it was on to Yale, where he received a bachelor's degree in history in 1968, and Harvard Business School, where he received a master's degree in 1975. In between was a Vietnam War-era stint in the Texas Air National Guard where Bush flew F-102 fighters. This period of his life would later become controversial, but it wasn't at the time. Bush moved back to Texas in the mid-1970s and went into the oil business. After marrying and launching an unsuccessful run for Congress in 1978, he put together the partnership that acquired the Texas Rangers baseball team.
Bush was the public face of the Rangers front office until 1994, when he left that job to run for governor of Texas. He defeated popular incumbent Ann Richards that year and won re-election in 1998 with 68 percent of the vote. Already, the Republican establishment was lining up behind Bush for a possible presidential run in 2000. Bush raised so much money that he became the first major political candidate to eschew federal matching funds in the primaries. His only real competition for the GOP nomination was Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whom Bush outlasted, in part, because of his huge advantages over McCain in money, organization, activists, and fellow Republican officeholders. Positioning himself as a "compassionate conservative," Bush then squared off against Vice President Al Gore.
In a closely contested election that featured three presidential debates and a vice presidential debate, as well as two unified political conventions, no national consensus emerged; going into Election Day, polls showed Bush leading the race—but within the statistical margin of error. A fast-closing Gore caught Bush the weekend before November 7, in part because a story surfaced about an old drunk-driving arrest that Bush had never admitted previously. Gore ended up winning the popular tally by half-a-million votes, but it wasn't until the contentious Florida recount process was finally ended by the Supreme Court on December 12, 2000, that the election was decided.
Divided and United
In his first months in office, Bush got off to a solid start. He signed the broad-based tax cuts he had campaigned on and followed that success by shepherding through Congress a sweeping education bill that came to be called the No Child Left Behind Act. The legislation was pending in a House-Senate conference committee on September 11, 2001. In fact, Bush was in Florida drumming up support for it—the photo-op of the day was to feature him reading to a group of sixth graders—when the World Trade Center was hit by two hijacked passenger airliners.
If Bush's tenure in the White House until that date had been marked by unexpected legislative success, he had not been successful in improving the civility of the political discourse. There were several reasons for this: Partly, feelings among Democrats about the Florida recount were too raw; also Bush's vision on domestic policy was so different from the Democrats' in Congress that a true détente was probably not plausible. Complicating that dichotomy was Bush's insistence that he not govern as a minority President: Just as President Clinton had done eight years before, he rammed through his tax bill with hardly any support from the opposite side of the aisle. In the midst of these budget battles, longtime liberal Republican senator James Jeffords of Vermont quit his party and threw in his lot with the Democrats, giving them a one-vote majority in the Senate. The ramifications of Jeffords' switch were enormous. The change in the leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee meant that Bush could no longer count on getting his conservative judicial nominees confirmed; indeed, he ran into trouble even getting his cabinet confirmed. The upshot was that the new President's honeymoon, like his transition, was cut short.
All that was swept aside, at least for awhile, by the attacks of September 11, 2001. Reeling from the devastating blows to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—and mindful that a plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was headed toward the Capitol or the White House—the nation's political leaders banded together while Americans of all political stripes rallied behind the commander-in-chief.
Bush's job-approval ratings soared as he faced this new challenge, and stayed at near-historic levels for well over a year. And the man who had sought the Oval Office without articulating clearly defined foreign policy goals suddenly found himself a wartime President, fighting a shadowy army of Islamic extremists holed up in some 60 countries under the direction of Osama bin Laden, who headed a worldwide terrorist organization called Al Qaeda. Bush almost instantly refocused his priorities, telling his aides that fighting what he called an international "War on Terror" was now the primary mission of his administration and those who worked in it.
But if the terrorists were scattered around the globe, their headquarters was Afghanistan, then under control of the reactionary Taliban movement. The Bush administration almost immediately issued an ultimatum to the Taliban to surrender bin Laden—a demand that was rebuffed. On October 7, 2001, the United States began air sorties against Al Qaeda terrorist camps in Afghanistan.
"We are supported," Bush said in an Oval Office address, "by the collective will of the world.
A War Presidency
Support for a military invasion of Afghanistan was certainly not unanimous in every world capital, but in the days after 9/11, the expressions of solidarity with the United States was a worldwide phenomenon—even in much of the Muslim world. In Pristina, where American armed forces under President Clinton had prevented genocide, some 10,000 Muslim Kosovars marched on September 12, 2001, carrying American flags and signs of support. Ethnic Albanians on the other side of the border, also Muslim, held candlelight vigils. "We are all Americans now!" declared the headline in Le Monde.
Yet already plans were being drawn up in the war councils of the White House and Pentagon to ready America's military forces for another invasion, one that would prove costly in lives, materiel, and national prestige: the invasion of Iraq.
In a lopsided and bi-partisan congressional vote on October 11, 2002, Bush received authorization to invade Iraq if it did not turn over its presumed arsenal of biological and chemical weapons, as well as what was thought to be its reconstituted nuclear weapons research. Iraq insisted it had no such weapons, and United Nations inspectors could not find them. But the President, expressing certainty that Iraq was hiding evidence and convinced that replacing the repressive and violent Baathist regime with a democracy would have positive and far-reaching implications throughout the Middle East, took the nation to war.
On March 19, 2003, Bush informed the American people—and the world—that the invasion of Iraq was on. "We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace," he said in an Oval Office address. "We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others, and we will prevail."
In less than six weeks, American troops were in control of Baghdad, early concerns about massive civilian casualties were unrealized, and Iraqi troops had been killed, had surrendered, or had melted back into the general population. On May 1, 2003—at a time when only 137 American military personnel had been killed—Bush told the American people that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended."
The early euphoria, however, proved premature. Remnants of the old regime, joined by Islamic terrorists who infiltrated the country, kept up a steady insurgency throughout the summer of 2003 and into the autumn. A war described as one of liberation took on the feeling of a war of occupation. In April 2004, 139 Americans were killed in Iraq in a single month. By July, the number of soldiers and Marines who had died there stood at more than 1,000.
By then, world opinion had shifted strongly against the United States—Le Monde had long since retracted its pro-American headline—and, at home, a strong anti-war sentiment re-energized the Democratic Party. The initial beneficiary was little known former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who spoke of "regime change" not in Iraq but in Washington. Dean fizzled in the primaries, but the Democrats' energy didn't, and the party settled on Massachusetts senator John Kerry as its presidential nominee. Kerry didn't mind reminding people that his initials, J.F.K., were the same as John F. Kennedy's, but Democratic party regulars agreed privately that the animating force in their party was A.B.B.—"anybody but Bush." Meanwhile, public opinion surveys showed Bush with near-unanimous support among Republicans. He'd run for office vowing to be "a uniter, not a divider," and he achieved that goal after a fashion: he helped each party to unite behind itself. | <urn:uuid:0d1cf6da-f3f2-4f15-8113-cff8a3e39eb2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://millercenter.org/president/gwbush/essays/biography/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984602 | 2,431 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Working with any kind of government entity is bound to be a slow and methodical process. On its best day, the government is staffed with people who are motivated primarily by avoiding getting yelled at or fired. There ae no performance based incentives in the public sector, so speed and efficiency take a back seat to following every rule without any kind of regard to common sense or the underlying purpose the rule is supposed to serve. With that kind of a back drop, it is no surprise that Medicare makes a lot of people scared and frustrated on a regular basis. Of course, there is something inherently off about the fact that many people consider public health care to be something of an entitled guarantee in life. Since it really isn’t, it may be necessary to take a step back and look at how fortunate the elderly really are.
While the elderly should always have protection under the law equal to anyone else, there is a limit to how much additional protection they should expect. While they are guaranteed Medicare’s financial assistance if they find themselves in need of it, expecting any government entity to work with any sort of expediency is a little bit like expecting a three legged elephant to out sprint a cheetah. The term “snow ball’s chance in Death Valley” does not do justice to the silliness of such an expectation. In a situation which involves Medicare, allowing a month or more for any sort of response is not just being conservative; in many cases, it is being reasonable.
And when you expect Medicare to pay for anything, you need to give them even more time. In most cases, Medicare’s process is anything but smooth. They require all sorts of documentation, and a great deal of attention to detail on the forms they want filled out. While they will ultimately do right by you, the waiting time may end up being quite expansive. There is no sense trying to rush the process. Just as with medical treatments themselves, bureaucrats will take as long as they take. | <urn:uuid:2e08c7ab-a860-467a-981a-93ace5f98c3f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.keln.org/tag/death-valley | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969845 | 408 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The old stories speak of a pact between the hens and the people of the land [the Mapuche]. The hens would give the people blue eggs and the people of the land would care for them and honor them in ceremonies of thanks and prayer. The bodies of the colloncas and ketros [chicken varieties] remember the pact and pass on the message of the blue eggs when the pact is respected. Agélica Celis Salamero
Photo: Lanalhue Noticias
Blue-egg chickens, gallinas Mapuches, or “Araucanas” to poultry enthusiasts, first came to outside attention in 1921 when Spanish poultry specialist Professor Salvador Castelló, announced their existence at the first international poultry conference in The Hague.
Castelló explained that on 6 August 1914, he had landed at the Chilean port of Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan and had immediately noticed several hampers of blue-shelled eggs. His first thought was that they were ducks’ eggs. But the local people assured him that they were, indeed, hens’ eggs and that many hens in southern Chile laid eggs of the same color. This utterly astonished him, because as he said ‘neither in Europe not in North America had he seen eggs of this colour.’ Later in the company of Chilean poultry breeders, Castelló toured a region of Chile where blue-egg chickens were especially common. This was the rugged lake district of the south-central part of the country, the homeland of the warlike Araucanian or Mapuche Indians.
What was their origin? The chickens’ wild ancestor, the Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus gallus), was found from northeasterner India east to Indonesia, and seems to have been domesticated by 4,000 years ago. In the ensuing centuries it spread west to Europe and Africa and east to the Oceania. By 1492 domesticated chickens (G. g. domesticus) had been introduced from Iceland, the westernmost outpost of European society, to Easter Island, the eastern most landfall of the Polynesians.
And perhaps they were in South America too. In1532, when Spanish conquistador Pizarro reached Peru, “he found that chickens were already an integral part of Incan economy and culture, suggesting at least some history of chickens in the region.” In 1590 Jesuit Fr. José de Acosta, in The Natural & Moral History of the Indies, wrote:
….let us now speake of tame fowle; I wondered that hennes, seeing there were some in the Indes before the Spanish came there, the which is well approved for they have a proper name of the country, and they call a henne a Hualpa, and the egge Ronto….
Others disagreed. “El Inca,” Garcilaso de la Vega, son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca noblewoman, whose accounts of Inca history, culture and society are widely accepted, contradicted de Acosta’s arguments and concluded “I have clearly proved that there were no Cocks or Hens in Peru before the conquest…” And when authoritative German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt agreed in 1811that there were no pre-Colombian chickens in the Americas, that put an end to the debate for a hundred years or so.
But not forever. In 1888, a newly graduated English engineer, 19 year old Richard (Ricardo) Latcham arrived in Chile to build roads in the recently pacified Mapuche homeland near today’s city of Temuco. He lived there among the Mapuche for the next five years, making many friends, learning the language and developing a fascination and respect for Mapuche culture. Moving to Santiago, he began to read anthropology, develop his anthropological library and to publish technical articles on the Mapuche and on Chilean archaeology—while still working as an engineer and teacher of English.
In 1921, while finishing his Domesticated Animals of Pre-Columbian America he learned of Castelló’s report, which coincided with his view that there were chickens in South America before the conquest:
It is thought that in [pre-Colombian] America there were no true chickens, but this is only partially true. It may be that in North America there were none, but in South America there were several species, distinct from those of the old world. Not all these species have been classified, but in Chile, Bolivia and Peru [there are] no fewer than three indigenous varieties or species, domesticated by the native people…
Photo: Juan Osvaldo
In Chile these are called the trintri, with “curly feathers as thought they were put on in reverse,”
…the collonca, which are small and tailless;
…and the francolina [or ketro], which Lacham thought to be a variety of the collonanas, “that carry a tuft of feathers on their heads that fall on all sides to the level of their eyes. The country people call them ‘hens with ear rings.’ Like those above they lay blue eggs.”
Photo: Kollonca de Aretes
So if chickens were in Chile before the Spanish, where might they have come from?
If chickens were in western South America before the Spanish, a Pacific origin seems more likely than a European one. Prehistoric Polynesians spread chickens throughout the Pacific to Easter Island, the eastern most Polynesian outpost, by the 1300s. Since sweet potatoes – a South American plant domesticated in Peru by around 2,000 BC – were in the central Polynesia by 1000 to 1100 AD it is very likely that there was prehistoric contact between South Americans and Polynesians. And if sweet potatoes went west, chickens could have come east.
Archeological evidence shows domesticated chickens to have been in China before 5000 BC, in India by 2000 BC, and in Polynesia as early as 1000 BC. But of all the thousand’s of archaeological excavations that have taken place in Peru, not one has reported finding a pre-Columbian chicken bone.
But they found 83 in Chile…. maybe.
But of course their conclusions were not universally accepted. Jaime Gongora and his colleagues responded, arguing that the mtDNA sequence of the Chilean finds also matched chickens from Europe and “all over the world,” contradicting the view that they were of specifically pacific origins. They also questioned the dating, arguing that the site’s location near the coast suggested that the chickens’ diet might have included shells or fish scraps which would have introduced carbon from marine sources into their bones, yielding inaccurately old radiocarbon dates.
So, what to conclude? Storey and her colleagues make a good case for pre-Colombian dates on the El Arenal-1 chickens, but if there were chickens in South America before the Spanish, and especially if they were “an integral part of Incan economy and culture,” it is difficult to explain why chicken bones have not been found at any other Peruvian or Chilean sites.
But perhaps some were. Storey and her colleagues suggest that archaeologists working along the Pacific coast of South America re-examine the faunal collections from their sites. “Remains such as bones of chickens or pigs which may have been classified as intrusive previously may provide evidence of other points of contact between Polynesia and the Americas.”
And what of the Blue-egg Mapuche Chickens?
As part of their examination of the origins of chickens in South America Storey and her colleagues considered the possibility that the blue-egg chickens are descendants of the El Aremal-1 birds. They found a complicated story. Castelló originally described the chickens as being tailless, having ear tufts and laying blue eggs, and these became the defining characteristics of the poultry fanciers’ Araucanas. He later discovered that the birds he described had been bred recently from a cross between a blue-egg tailess hen and a rooster with ear tufts. Both the tailess trait and the trait for ear tufts are also found in European chickens, and that may be their origin.
Of the blue egg trait, which seems to be indigenously Chilean, they found no mention prior to about 1880. Darwin, who was in Chile in 1834-35 and who wrote extensively about chicken varieties in The Origin made no mention of blue eggs. As Storey says, “it seems unlikely that if blue eggs had been available in markets as they were in the early 1900s, that Darwin would have missed them.”
So Mapuche blue-egg chickens appear to be a relatively recent development, the result of a mutation sometime back in chicken prehistory before 1880. But that makes them no less Mapuche chickens, nor does it exclude the possibility that their ancestors included pre-Colombian Chilean chickens--if they existed.
Mapuche Blue-Egg Chickens today
Beginning in the first years of the 21st century, the Chilean Ministry of Agriculture and other agencies, governmental and non-governmental, began programs to encourage rural Chileans, Mapuche and mestizo, to raise blue-egg chickens under artisanal and sustainable conditions and to promote their sale in local and perhaps national markets. In the 20th century blue-eggs had become increasingly rare as breeding among many chicken varieties had resulted in a highly heterogeneous population of chickens in rural south central Chile, so the project was also designed to restore and improve the genetic characteristics of the earlier blue-egg lineages.
While the program’s success has not been completely evaluated there seems to have been progress with the sale of 15.6 million blue eggs in the first year of the project. Today you can often find vendors selling blue eggs along with garden produce on the streets of Pucón and Villarica and the market in Temuco.
But if that’s not convenient, here are some Contacts in the Valle del Itata, and Contacts in Villarrica. Or you can Google “huevos azules en Santiago” if you live in the capitol.
Mapuche egg recipes
Once you have your blue eggs, you’ll want to prepare them traditionally (unless you plan to incubate them), so here are a few recipes:
“Flour and egg soup for breakfast: This was used long ago to give the men energy before they went to work. Fry a little onion, garlic and vegtables add potatoes cut into pieces and boil. Add toasted flour and allow to boil again. At the end season and add one egg per person. The eggs should be opened at one end with a fork and then beaten through the opening, then added to the soup in a thin stream.” Marina Recabarren
“Here in Tucapel a Chicken cazuela with home made noodles is very typical. Take one egg per person and add sifted flour and water to make a soft dough and about 10 minutes before serving, drop the dough into the boiling cazuela by pushing through the tines of a fork. They come out like little noodles, short and very pretty.” Francisca Paredes.
“They are used a lot in deserts to sweeten the day, like Leche Asada [aka flan]. Boil a liter of milk with cinnamon, cloves, and vanilla. Beat 6 eggs with a cup of sugar, add the milk, beat again and strain through a colander. Bake until done, about 30 minutes in a wood fired oven. Marina Recabarren.
Langdon, Robert. 1989. When the Blue-Egg Chickens Come Home to Roost: New thoughts on the Prehistory of the Domestic Fowl in Asia, America and the Pacific Islands
The Journal of Pacific History Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 164-192.
Chicken, Wikipedia; Icelandic Chicken, Wikipedia.
Storey A. A., et al., "Radiocarbon and DNA evidence for a pre-Columbian introduction of Polynesian chickens to Chile", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Acosta, José de. 1880. The Natural & Moral History of the Indies. Reprinted from the English Translation of Edward Grimston, 1604. Vol 1. London: Haklupt Society. p. 276.
Garcilaso De La Vega, El Inca, 1688. The Royal Commentaries of Peru in Two Parts London: Miles Flesher. p. 386.
Langon, op cit.
From 1928 to his death in 1943 Latcham was Director of the Chilean National Museum of Natural History.
Latcham, Ricardo E. 1922 Los animales domésticos de la América precolombiana. Santiago. p. 177.
Ibid, p. 9.
Montenegro, A.,C. Avis and A.J. Weaver, Modeling the pre-historic arrival of the sweet potato in Polynesia, Journal of Archaeological Science,35, 355-367 on line at http://www.climate.uvic.ca/people/alvaro/SPotato.pdf
A. A. Storey et al., op. cit.
Gongora J, et al. Indo-European and Asian origins for Chilean and Pacific chickens revealed by mtDNA. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2008;105:10308–10313. On line at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2492461/
There is also a Chinese blue-egg chicken, the Dongxiang blueshelled, which has the same gene for shell color as the Araucana. I found no evidence concerning its relation to the Araucana, if any. See Zhao, R, et al. 2006. A Study on Eggshell Pigmentation: Biliverdin in Blue-Shelled Chickens. Poultry Science 85:546–549. On line at http://ps.fass.org/content/85/3/546.full.pdf
Storey, A.A., et al 2008. Pre-Columbian chickens, dates, isotopes and mtDNA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(48): E99., and Storey, A.A, et al 2011. Pre-Columbian chickens of the Americas: a critical review of the hypotheses and evidence for their origins. Rapa Nui Journal Vol. 25 (2) on line at http://une-au.academia.edu/AliceStorey/Papers
Fundación para la Innovación Agraria, Ministerio de Agricultura. 2009. Resultados y Lecciones en Selección y Manejo de la Gallina Mapuche Productora de Huevos Azules. Serie Experiencias De Innovación Para El Emprendimiento Agrario. On line at http://bibliotecadigital.innovacionagraria.cl/gsdl/collect/publicac/index/assoc/HASH8d8c.dir/68_Libro_Gallinamapuche.pdf?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=prettyphoto&iframe=true&width=90%&height=90%, and Moya Azcárate, Rita. 2004 Gallina De Huevos Azules: contribuciones a la elaboración de un protocolo. Línea Transversal Biodiversidad no cultivada y semidomesticada. América Latina Red CBDC. On line at http://www.cetsur.org/wp-content/uploads/gallina-de-huevos-azules-contribuciones-a-la-elaboracion-de-un-protocolo.pdf
Moya A., op cit, p. 20. | <urn:uuid:9f4c4197-04fe-4f33-b6b2-d06a36c2ba75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eatingchile.blogspot.com/2012/04/blue-egg-mapuche-chickens.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93762 | 3,389 | 3.1875 | 3 |
(CNN) -- A Nigerian immigrant's dream came true when President Barack Obama signed into law a rare private bill granting him permanent residency in the Unites States.
Victor Chukwueke, who lives in Michigan on an expired visa, came to the United States 11 years ago to undergo treatment for massive face tumors.
He graduated from a university in the state, and plans to attend an Ohio medical school that requires him to have permanent residency, also known as a green card.
In a rare act, the United States Congress passed a private bill this month granting him permanent residency. Obama signed the bill Friday.
Private bills -- which only apply to one person and mostly focus on immigration -- are rarely approved. His is the only one to pass in Congress in two years.
"I was overwhelmed with joy; it was nothing less than a miracle," the 26-year-old says. "Only in this country can so many miraculous and wonderful things happen to someone like me."
Before coming to the United States at age 15, Chukwueke lived in the southeastern Nigeria town of Ovim.
He suffers from neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that causes massive life-threatening tumors on his face.
Treated as an outcast because of his deformed face, he was depressed and humiliated, he says. His family abandoned him at an orphanage after taking him to the nation's best facilities for treatment.
"I went to a large teaching hospital in Nigeria and the doctor touched my face and said there was nothing they could do," he says. " I cried and begged him to do something. I was so tired of the humiliation."
Nuns from the Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy rescued him from the orphanage in 2001 and arranged for a Michigan doctor to perform surgery on him.
He considers himself lucky to have developed the tumors.
"Without them, I would not have met the nun, left Nigeria, arrived in the U.S. and had the miracle to attend medical school," he says.
He lives with the nuns in Oak Park, Michigan. They have cared for him since he came to the U.S., where he has undergone seven surgeries, including one that left him blind in the right eye.
Despite the obstacles, he remains committed to getting an education.
He finished his GED -- the equivalent of a high school education -- while undergoing treatment and enrolled at a community college.
A benefactor helped him attend Wayne State University, where he graduated last year with a bachelor's in biochemistry and chemical biology. He had a 3.82 GPA and gave the university's commencement speech.
"Should I call myself a victim, or should I press forward to my dreams?" he asked during the speech amid thunderous applause.
Soon after his graduation, the University of Toledo in Ohio admitted him to medical school. The only hurdle: The program requires him to have permanent residency status.
With Obama's signature, his wish has come true.
"My own personal struggles to receive treatment have motivated and encouraged me to pursue a medical career ... to alleviate the pain and suffering of others," he says. "A medical career will allow me many gratifying years of making a difference in the health and lives of others."
Chukwueke's journey to get legalized has seen many strangers rally to his help.
Inspired by his story, Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, sponsored the bill, S. 285. The measure passed the Senate in the summer and the House this week.
Attorney Thomas K. Ragland took his case pro bono.
"Victor's story is remarkable," says Ragland, who is based in Washington D.C. "Here is this kid who comes from Nigeria, he was taunted and teased for his diseases, and he comes to this country and excels, despite so many surgeries. It is a testament of not letting anything get in the way."
The number of illegal immigrants in the United States was estimated at 11.5 million last year.
Following the signature, the State Department will reduce by one the number of immigrant visas available to Nigerians. | <urn:uuid:220cda00-55b1-495a-a2a6-720896797db3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/29/world/africa/us-nigerian-obama-law/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984608 | 855 | 1.53125 | 2 |
1. Apple Inc. - Happy Birthday Steve Jobs: The Man Who Changed the Way We CommunicateNo one can deny the most valuable legacy Jobs has left behind is the Apple company itself. Jobs had co-found the company on April 1, 1976 in Cupertino, California. Within a few decades, the small company has become one of the most valuable, influential and admired companies in the world.
Happy Birthday Steve JobsSteve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, talks in a conference room at his new company NeXt, Inc., in Redwood City, Ca., in April, 1993.
Happy Birthday Steve JobsIn this Jan. 7, 1997, file photo, Steve Jobs, chief executive of Pixar, speaks at the MacWorld trade show in San Francisco. Apple Inc. said Jobs died Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011. He was 56.
Happy Birthday Steve JobsIn this Oct. 2, 1997, file photo, Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, speaks during the Seybold publishing conference in San Francisco, in front of a poster of artist Pablo Picasso from Apple's latest advertising campaign. Apple on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011 said Jobs has died. He was 56.
Happy Birthday Steve JobsThis 1993 file photo shows Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computers. Apple on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011 said Jobs has died. He was 56.
Happy Birthday Steve JobsPersonal computer pioneer Steve Jobs of NeXT Computer Inc., sitting, and David Norman, President of Businessland, pose beside a NeXT work station in San Francisco, Calif., on March 30, 1989.
Happy Birthday Steve JobsPersonal computer pioneer Steve Jobs of NeXT Computer Inc., speaks to the public during the UNIX expo at the Javitz Convention Center in New York City on Oct. 30, 1991.
Happy Birthday Steve JobsPersonal computer pioneer Steve Jobs of NeXT Computer Inc., delivers his keynote address during the UNIX expo at the Javitz Convention Center in New York City on Oct. 30, 1991.
9. iPhone - Happy Birthday Steve Jobs: The Man Who Changed the Way We CommunicateiPhone, released in January 2007, has changed the mobile industry. Without the iPhone, the world today would never be the same. The first iPhone hit the market on June 29, 2007 for $499 (4GB) and $599 (8GB) with an AT&T contract. Over the next few years, the iPhone has grown to become the singular most popular smartphone in the world. Without doubt, the iPhone has secured Apple's leading position in the competitive market and has cemented Job's place in the tech history.
10. iPad - Happy Birthday Steve Jobs: The Man Who Changed the Way We CommunicateWhen iPad was unveiled in January 27, 2010, many people dismissed it and predicted its failure. However, Jobs still regarded it as a "magical" device, and the huge success of the tablet has proved its critics wrong. As of now, no tablet can compare with the iPad. According to a new survey from Baird Research & Insights, some 93 percent of consumers who already own a tablet own an iPad and 94.5 percent of potential purchasers are considering buying the Apple tablet.
11. App Store - Happy Birthday Steve Jobs: The Man Who Changed the Way We CommunicateThe App Store is another revolutionary product of Apple. It was launched in July 2008. Currently, over half a million apps in the App Store are being offered "for work, play and everything in between," which gives the users "almost no limit to what your iPhone can do."
12. Design - Happy Birthday Steve Jobs: The Man Who Changed the Way We CommunicateJobs had perfectly combined the tech and design together, which is one of the major reasons behind the success of Apple products. The genius had even studied calligraphy instruction in Reed College after he quit from his university, according to his Commencement speech in Stanford in 2005. Later, Jobs used the knowledge to design the first Macintosh computer, combining aesthetic appearance and business together perfectly. just as he said " technology married with liberal arts ."
13. Marketing - Happy Birthday Steve Jobs: The Man Who Changed the Way We CommunicateApple is excellent at marketing. Before every new product launches, Apple has always been tight-lipped about any related information. And if the tech giant feels someone has stolen or leaked its intellectual properties, Apple never shows mercy and will take the fight to the court. However, no one can deny that Apple's marketing policies have helped it pique the curiosity of consumers. Even before any new product releases, Apple fans go crazy about it and automatically a hype builds up. No wonder John Sculley once told The Guardian newspaper in 1997, "People talk about technology, but Apple was a marketing company. It was the marketing company of the decade."
14. Apple Culture - Happy Birthday Steve Jobs: The Man Who Changed the Way We CommunicateJobs had established the famous Apple culture, which makes Apple, Apple. There might not be any company that boasts of so many loyal followers as Apple does.
15. Inspirational Quotes - Happy Birthday Steve Jobs: The Man Who Changed the Way We CommunicateJobs also left behind many inspirational quotes, which are as good as any Apple product keynote. The quotes are the fruits of his wisdom and experience, and have inspired many people around the world. The most famous one among them is no other than his Stanford Commencement Speech in 2005. Click here to find out more to enjoy.
Even though Steve Jobs has passed away, the influence of the creative visionary and genius has not grown weak. When Jobs' birthday (Feb. 24) came up, Apple fans worldwide wished the Apple co-founder, who passed away on Oct. 5, a very happy birthday.
Happy Birthday Steve Jobs was the top trend on Twitter on Friday. Among millions and thousands of the beautiful greetings, the most popular one is 3 Apples changed the world: Adam and Eve's forbidden apple, Newton's apple and finally Steve Jobs' Apple. Happy Birthday Steve Jobs,.
Steve Jobs deserves the praises because he overturned the way the world communicates and use their phones and tablets. Start the slideshow to find out the top 15 ways how Jobs changed the world. | <urn:uuid:a2911782-259d-4270-bcf4-ecbe2cf89436> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ibtimes.com/happy-birthday-steve-jobs-man-who-changed-way-we-communicate-photos-554401 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94839 | 1,285 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Hybrids and red-flowered types of flowering tobacco often have little or no scent, but old-fashioned, white-flowered types tend to be quite fragrant, especially at night.
Height: 18-36 inches
Spread: to 12 inches
Shape: Plant form lush rosettes of broad, oval to pointed, green leaves and many-branched stems; both the stems and leaves are sticky and hairy.
Color: White, pink, red, purple
Bloom time: Spring, summer
Light needs: Full sun to partial shade
Soil: Average to moist, well-drained soil with organic matter.
Buy nicotiana transplants
in the spring, or grow your own by starting seeds indoors 6-8 weeks before your last frost date. Don't cover the fine seed; just press it into the soil and enclose the pot in a plastic bag until seedlings appear. Set seedlings out 10-12 inches apart after the last frost date. Water during dry spells. Cut out spent stems to prolong the bloom season. Plants may self-sow.
Excellent as a filler or accent in beds and borders
. Grow some in the cutting garden for fresh flowers. Plant fragrant, white-flowered types around outdoor sitting areas for evening enjoyment. Try compact types in containers. | <urn:uuid:d0282034-db93-42e3-b708-d945fe1e48bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.organicgardening.com/print/14557 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915286 | 271 | 1.945313 | 2 |
May 6, 2008 Polar bears fighting for survival in the face of a rapid decline of polar ice have made the Arctic a poster child for the negative effects of climate change. But new research shows that species living in the tropics likely face the greatest peril in a warmer world.
A team led by University of Washington scientists has found that while temperature changes will be much more extreme at high latitudes, tropical species have a far greater risk of extinction with warming of just a degree or two. That is because they are used to living within a much smaller temperature range to begin with, and once temperatures get beyond that range many species might not be able to cope.
"There's a strong relationship between your physiology and the climate you live in," said Joshua Tewksbury, a UW assistant professor of biology. "In the tropics many species appear to be living at or near their thermal optimum, a temperature that lets them thrive. But once temperature gets above the thermal optimum, fitness levels most likely decline quickly and there may not be much they can do about it."
Arctic species, by contrast, might experience temperatures ranging from subzero to a comparatively balmy 60 degrees Fahrenheit. They typically live at temperatures well below their thermal limit, and most will continue to do so even with climate change.
"Many tropical species can only tolerate a narrow range of temperatures because the climate they experience is pretty constant throughout the year," said Curtis Deutsch, UCLA assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and co-author of the study.
Why should we be concerned with the fate of insects in the tropics?
"The biodiversity of the planet is concentrated in tropical climates, where there is a tremendous variety of species," Deutsch said. "This makes our finding that the impacts of global warming are going to be most detrimental to species in tropical climates all the more disturbing. In addition, what hurts the insects hurts the ecosystem. Insects carry out essential functions for humans and ecosystems -- such as pollinating our crops and breaking down organic matter back into its nutrients so other organisms can use them. Insects are essential to the ecosystem."
At least for the short term, the impact of global warming will have opposing effects. In the tropics, warming will reduce insects' ability to reproduce; in the high latitudes, the ability of organisms to reproduce will increase slightly, Deutsch said. If warming continues, the insects in the high latitudes would eventually be adversely affected as well.
"Unfortunately, the tropics also hold the large majority of species on the planet," he said.
Tewksbury and Deutsch are lead authors of a paper detailing the research, published in the May 6 print edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The work took place while Deutsch was a UW postdoctoral researcher in oceanography.
The scientists used daily and monthly global temperature records from 1950 through 2000, and added climate model projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for warming in the first years of the 21st century. They compared that information with data describing the relationship between temperatures and fitness for a variety of temperate and tropical insect species, as well as frogs, lizards and turtles. Fitness levels were measured by examining population growth rates in combination with physical performance.
"The direct effects of climate change on the organisms we studied appear to depend a lot more on the organisms' flexibility than on the amount of warming predicted for where they live," Tewksbury said. "The tropical species in our data were mostly thermal specialists, meaning that their current climate is nearly ideal and any temperature increases will spell trouble for them."
As temperatures fluctuate, organisms do what they can to adapt. Polar bears, for example, develop thick coats to protect them during harsh winters. Tropical species might protect themselves by staying out of direct sunlight in the heat of the day, or by burrowing into the soil.
However, since they already live so close to their critical high temperature, just a slight increase in air temperature can make staying out of the sun a futile exercise, and the warming might come too fast for creatures to adapt their physiologies to it, Tewksbury said.
Other authors of the paper are Raymond Huey, Kimberly Sheldon, David Haak and Paul Martin of the University of Washington and Cameron Ghalambor of Colorado State University. The research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the UW Program on Climate Change.
The work has indirect implications for agriculture in the tropics, where the bulk of the world's human population lives. The scientists plan further research to examine the effects of climate change, particularly hotter temperatures, on tropical crops and the people who depend on them.
"Our research focused only on the impact of changes in temperature, but warming also will alter rainfall patterns," Deutsch said. "These effects could be more important for many tropical organisms, such as plants, but they are harder to predict because hydrological cycle changes are not as well understood."
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Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead. | <urn:uuid:6aa4a968-d7b9-45f7-ac27-554f5d1af6c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080505211835.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948013 | 1,060 | 3.78125 | 4 |
Somewhere on this site there is an interesting essay on all the different ways coffee has been made over its history. The writer concludes that we have by no means reached the final end, let alone the “best way”. The Aeropress may be the next step in coffee making. In the box is everything you need and very clear instructions on how to use it. The only caution I would suggest is that the filters are very thin, so be sure you have only one. They are reusable, BTW: I don’t know how many times, but in my experience at least 3. Cleanup is very easy – the coffee is ejected in a neat puck and a quick rinse looks after everything else. The pieces are made of strong plastic and look very sturdy and, short of taking a sledgehammer to it, there doesn’t seem to be anything breakable. Maybe, after years, the rubber plunger might go but, in this sinful world, nothing lasts for ever. I find that the Aeropress makes very good coffee indeed – very strong and very rich. I generally dilute it, in fact. The maximum amount of coffee it will make is 4 espresso-strength cups which, if diluted, give 8 or 9 cups. Many of the readers of this site will never give up their big machines. For them, however, the Aeropress is worth considering for travelling: it is very portable. I’m sure most of the readers of this site loathe the standard North American motel/hotel/restaurant coffee and an Aeropress means that you can avoid it. You don’t even need boiling water – the instructions emphasise that the water should be 80ºC. So, the real coffee geeks can buy one of these and use it while travelling. Others will find this one of the cheapest and easiest means of making small amounts of really good coffee. Far superior to the French press, IMO, (which I have never really liked) and much easier to clean up and pack and carry. Thus far I have been using my standard espresso coffee -- Lavazza Rossa -- it it works just fine. The website (http://www.aerobie.com/Products/aeropress_story.htm) explains everything.
I heard about it in a blog, e-mailed the Canadian distributer; he told me where to get it; walked in; there it was. I was the first customer. Had a pleasant chat about it.
Three Month Followup
Still excellent -- use it every day for the first couple of cups of the day. IMO this is by far the cheapest way to make really good coffee. | <urn:uuid:84f9a330-ca6b-48ee-a96b-bca12351228a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://coffeegeek.com/reviews/vacpots/aeropress/OTTAWA | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958287 | 556 | 1.539063 | 2 |