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Shooting water from the poles is part of birth process for new star.
Astronomers have found a nascent star 750 light years from earth that shoots colossal jets of water -- a cosmic fire hose -- out its poles in bullet-like pulses.
In a process that almost defies adjectives and analogies, each jet of water is the equivalent of a hundred million times the water flowing through the Amazon River every second and the speed of the jet is the equivalent of 80 times the muzzle velocity of an AK-47 assault rifle.
The blast creates huge shockwaves around the star and the process may be responsible for sprinkling the universe with water.
And it could go on for a thousand years in each star. Astronomers think all baby stars go through this process as they form, and that our sun did it too once.
The protostar was found in the Perseus constellation in an object called L1448-MM, seen from the earth to the right of the Pleiades, also called the Seven Sisters cluster of stars, in the constellation of Taurus. It is called a low-mass protostar, meaning it is just beginning to grow into a star.
While jets like that have been seen in other baby stars, astronomers, using the European Space Agency’'s Herschel infrared orbiting telescope were able to measure the flow of the jets using water molecules as the tracer.
Lars E. Kristensen, a postdoctoral student at the Leiden University in the Netherlands, an author of the paper, said that all stars are formed by the accretion of dust and other particles in interstellar space and are eventually surrounded by a disk of material that falls into the star as it builds.
The disks are something like the rings of Saturn but far less well-defined, he said, "more puffy."
Material that is not used by the forming star is blasted back out into space from the poles, perpendicular to the angle of the disks.
"We don’'t know the launching point or the exact launching mechanism," Kristensen said. "There is no self-consistent theory that can explain what we are seeing."
The stream of gasses is about 180,000 degrees Fahrenheit, so the water is not liquid, but rather atoms of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, the building block of water. When it gets into space and the molecules interact with the dust surrounding the star, however, and the atoms probably combine to form water ice.
Kristensen and the European astronomers described the jets of being made up of "bullets" of water but that is a bit misleading. The water actually pulses, like a fire hose with an unsteady water supply.
Kristensen says the pulses fly out at 50 kilometers a second, or about 120,000 mph. As a pulse starts to slow, it is rammed from behind by pulses moving faster behind it, producing something like a bow shock wave. Those collisions are what the telescope sees and what he described as bullets.
Each pulse could last a year, which for an astronomer is shorter than a blink.
The bullets are going so fast they eventually fly beyond the accretion disk and the gas cloud around the protostar. The shock waves eventually dissipate.
Besides the hydrogen and oxygen atoms, the jet streams are known to include carbon dioxide and silicon oxide molecules. The Herschel is capable of spotting the light signatures of the atoms through the gas cloud that surrounds L1448-MM.
No one knows how long this process lasts. Eventually, the star reaches maturity and has acquired all the material it needs and the whole process of making a star shuts down, which could be anywhere from one to ten million years.
"We've known about these jets before," said astronomer Mark Krumholz of the University of California at Santa Cruz, who was not part of the research team, but the measurement "is far more precise." Krumholz agrees that all stars go through this birth process and said that the use of water as a tracer gives astronomers a handy tool to measure these jets.
Joel N. Shurkin, ISNS ContributorInside Science News Service | <urn:uuid:54e14a3d-7711-4698-ab77-8722f1fa0063> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.physicscentral.com/buzz/blog/index.cfm?postid=857272055284861102 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949855 | 853 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Jabez preached Temperance as early as sixteen years of age, and continued right up to his final years at the pulpit. Then his son Dawson Jabez Burns took up the Temperance ministry of his father. I have often wondered "why?" Was old Joseph, the basket and skip maker, the vendor of worm medicine, also an alcoholic? Or perhaps, Mary's family was marked by the "ole debil rum", or more likely good stout English ale? Or did they just witness the detrimental effects on the men who worked long hours in the mills and mines and to whom employers plied with ale just to get them through 12, 14, 16 hour work days. Church and parish documents, or even census reports, are not much help in these kinds of questions.
I can surmise that Jabez the minister, as well as his ardent Chartist brother William Gibson Burns, had an effect on young James Peter McPherson, a flax dresser in the Dundee mills. Now, McPherson may have been more smitten with the pretty black-haired Mary Burns than he was with the religion and politics of her father and uncle. On the other hand, he was known to be politically involved in the Chartist movement, and when arriving in New York City in 1842, he quickly joined The Sons of Temperance. The membership in Caledonia Division of The Sons may have been expedient and beneficial to the young Scots couple. On the other hand, James McPherson appeared to be a fervent member.
When I started transcribing his diarly, I expected to find some mention of church attendance --- but not one word. He did make a pulpit cushion for the new Presbyterian church that was attended by most of his Scots friends. However, on a Sunday, J. P. McPherson, was a home receiving guest, or visiting friends. In fact, I only found a couple of times that he attended a meeting of The Sons after moving to Springdale, Wisconsin. I found this strange, but was oddly comforted by his work with the Poor, as well a serving in positions of service within his community.
As I have followed his progeny through the years, religion in the family was generally dictated by the spouses. For instance, J.P.'s son Jabez's wife, Mary Housel was an ardent Primitive Methodist, one of Daniel's Band. The Burmeisters were catholics and some, such as my great grand parents and grandparents, just dinna seem to be too interested in religion. The family of Mary Burns McPherson, J. P.s wife, appeared to follow the Baptist teachings of her uncle Jabez Burns. The family of the second generation Jabez were high church Episcopalians. I don't know how this change came about; perhaps the wife Ella May Spedick Burns was Episcopalian; or perhaps as the family became more wealthy and influential, life as an Episcopalian suited their position; or perhaps there was a religious epiphany that took place. Whatever the reason, the Burns and McPhersons drifted away from the Baptist and Temperance teachings of the early 1800s. How I wish I knew more ......
Of course, if I have misspoken, misread, or misinterpreted, I hope that I shall be apprised of such.
~ ~ ~
© Joan Hill, Roots'n'Leaves Publications | <urn:uuid:84eced2e-1ca8-4147-8a8a-dfea4343a522> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rootsnleaves.blogspot.com/2012/07/2012-july-2nd-been-athinking-about.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988445 | 711 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev is threatening to target Russian missiles at U.S. and NATO military facilities unless his country’s demands as regard the deployment of American radars in Europe are heeded. The radars, part of the U.S. ballistic missile defence system, would provide prompt early warning if any missiles were launched from the Middle East. Russia, however, (wrongly) fears that such a system could threaten its nuclear strike forces. If talks related to the U.S. missile defence system break down, Russia says it would deploy ballistic missiles to areas where they could hit the Western bases.
Their concern, however misguided, makes some sense. Given the economic woes experienced by Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the rapid collapse of its conventional military strength, its Soviet-vintage nuclear force is the only thing keeping it in the superpower game (and only barely, even then). Anything that would threaten its strike forces leaves it weak and vulnerable, and as importantly, embarrassed. So even though the U.S. system is far too small to threaten the large nuclear strike force Russia possesses, it’s still an issue of political importance to Medvedev.
The Russian threat would see Iskander ballistic missiles deployed near Russia’s borders with western and central Europe. These missiles, believed to be non-nuclear, would give Russia the theoretical capability of smashing the early warning radar bases before launching a nuclear attack, thus protecting their arsenal from interception by U.S. or possible future European defences. It’s all rather silly so long after the Cold War ended, but no doubt domestic politics are the main concern — Russia has national elections coming up this winter, and even though Medvedev is stepping aside, his successor — former president and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin — could benefit from a little anti-American chest thumping.
Even so, while this is largely a symbolic, silly gesture, it’s not one NATO can realistically ignore. If Russia deploys short-range non-nuclear missiles near NATO countries, while that might not be particularly worrying to North Americans, we must not forget that many of those NATO countries that Russia borders were, not all that long ago, dominated by the Russian-led Soviet Union. There would be a natural discomfort at the thought that the Russians were back with their war machines. Those nations (Poland, for example) would be fully justified in requesting more NATO defences, or even offensive weapons, to deter and counter the Russian threat.
Europe and America have trouble enough these days, as do the Russians themselves. For the former two, obviously it’s their economic woes and debt problems, while for the latter, it’s the vulnerability Russia’s dependence on petroleum exports imposes on their economy. The last thing any of these guys need is a new arms race in their backyards, all so that the Russians could deploy a few missiles that, in the unlikely event of a war between Russia and the West, would amount to a rounding error once the big missiles flew.
Yes, perhaps griping about U.S. imperialism makes good domestic political fodder inside Russia. And sure, the more unreasonable the Russians sound at home, the more conciliatory the West’s negotiators are likely to be at the bargaining table. But enough is enough. In 1994, both the U.S. and Russia signed an agreement that saw all of their intercontinental ballistic missiles “detargeted” — they’re either aimed at nothing or pointed at empty ocean areas. If the Russians continue to threaten the U.S. with missile deployments, it’s time to call their bluff. Aim a few Minutemen missiles at Moscow, and we’ll see how fast the Russians decide they ought to be the ones playing nice at the bargaining table.
Do you have an opinion to share with other readers? Then send us a letter. | <urn:uuid:ba1af38a-0eb2-4808-ae66-4830a18a58e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/11/23/matt-gurney-russia-needs-to-put-down-the-missiles-and-relax/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957374 | 806 | 2.25 | 2 |
ABSTRACT: West Nile virus (family Flaviviridae, genus Flavivirus, WNV) invaded the Colorado Desert biome of southern California during summer 2003 and seemed to displace previously endemic St. Louis encephalitis virus (family Flaviviridae, genus Flavivirus, SLEV, an antigenically similar Flavivirus in the Japanese encephalitis virus serocomplex). Western equine encephalomyelitis virus (family Togaviridae, genus Alphavirus, WEEV), an antigenically distinct Alphavirus, was detected during 2005 and 2006, indicating that conditions were suitable for encephalitis virus introduction and detection. Cross-protective "avian herd immunity" due to WNV infection possibly may have prevented SLEV reintroduction and/or amplification to detectable levels. During 2003-2006, WNV was consistently active at wetlands and agricultural habitats surrounding the Salton Sea where Culex tarsalis Coquillett served as the primary enzootic maintenance and amplification vector. Based on published laboratory infection studies and the current seroprevalence estimates, house sparrows, house finches, and several Ardeidae may have been important avian amplifying hosts in this region. Transmission efficiency may have been dampened by high infection rates in incompetent avian hosts, including Gamble's quail, mourning doves, common ground doves, and domestic pigeons. Early season WNV amplification and dispersal from North Shore in the southeastern portion of the Coachella Valley resulted in sporadic WNV incursions into the urbanized Upper Valley near Palm Springs, where Culex pipiens quinquefasciatus Say was the primary enzootic and bridge vector. Although relatively few human cases were detected during the 2003-2006 period, all were concentrated in the Upper Valley and were associated with high human population density and WNV infection in peridomestic populations of Cx. p. quinquefasciatus. Intensive early mosquito control during 2006 seemed to interrupt and delay transmission, perhaps setting the stage for the future reintroduction of SLEV.
Journal of Medical Entomology 06/2008; 45(3):494-508. · 1.76 Impact Factor | <urn:uuid:eb687475-5e69-4a22-80b4-92d7abd44ff6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/31387495_Marc_Kennsington/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936951 | 457 | 2.328125 | 2 |
In a world that values fast, she is perpetually slow.
In a world that demands first, she gives new meaning to the word last.
More than two decades ago, Zoe Koplowitz completed her first Marathon. It started out as an attempt to salvage her life from the ravages of Multiple Sclerosis. To date, she has completed twenty two Marathons, all in last place and has set world records in New York City, Boston and London. She has presented motivational speeches from the shores of Oahu to the Grand Ole Opry in Tennessee and has been featured on numerous national TV and radio programs.
With clarity of voice, authenticity and humor, "The Winning Spirit - Life Lessons Learned In Last Place" recounts the true, inspiring and amazing adventures that Zoe has experienced in life along the Marathon course. It is a tapestry of funny, poignant and authentic stories about ordinary people learning some of the most extraordinary lessons that life has to offer. The power of a dream. Courage in the face of adversity. The beauty of unconditional love.
With the wisdom and humor of memorable stories, and characters that live on long after the final chapter, "The Winning Spirit" teaches the ultimate lesson. There are times in life when last can truly become first. | <urn:uuid:e5e92ad8-7ff4-4a1f-8508-5743f0f28be3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://zoekoplowitz.com/ | 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 | 0.945167 | 257 | 1.539063 | 2 |
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'Government's obesity proposals fine - but surgery still useful'
6:50pm Friday 14th October 2011 in News
A Taunton expert on obesity has welcomed Government proposals to make people lose weight – but warns that surgery must also be part of the solution.
The Government is calling for people to exercise more and eat more healthily as figures show over 60% of adults and a third of 10 and 11-year-olds are overweight or obese.
They are more likely to develop diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.
Richard Welbourn, clinical director of The Bariatric Group, said: “It’s excellent news that the Government is focusing on obesity and wants to solve what is a significant problem.
“Of course prevention is far better than cure - we all need to eat healthily, drink sensibly and take exercise, and encourage our children to do the same.
“But we also need to think about those who’ve missed the boat of prevention – they still need assistance.
“For some, diet and exercise won’t be enough.
“We all know people who have dieted for years and tried all forms of exercise but simply cannot keep the weight off.
“Weight loss surgery enables people to lose weight and crucially keep the weight off, and it also significantly reduces the chances of developing other serious health conditions.
“A study I carried out in Taunton showed that 72% of patients with diabetes who had weight loss surgery no longer needed their diabetes medication 12 months later.
“A report from the Office for Health Economics has shown that surgery is cost-effective, reducing the bill to the NHS of caring for people with long-term conditions.” | <urn:uuid:f0ecace6-4d55-404d-9020-e2d182e98504> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.somersetcountygazette.co.uk/news/9307007._Government_s_obesity_proposals_fine___but_surgery_still_useful_/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961209 | 387 | 2.09375 | 2 |
ROMs don't cost any money to use, because they are pirate copies of the games and therefore technically illegal. Here's a basic rundown.
You save a system player file on your computer, as well as a file of what game you want to play. You open them and can assign controls to your keyboard and play the game as it is on the system itself. Most handheld games, classic systems like SNES and Genesis, and even some DS games are playable. I'm not 100% sure, but I've heard of some multilayer capabilities, but it still hasn't been perfected, due to the fact that it isn't exactly easy to do. You have to have internet just to access them, but after that you won't since the files to use the game are saved directly onto your computer. They're very useful for playing classic games that either aren't easy to find, aren't available on things like Wii virtual console, or expensive to obtain. You can get tons of titles for free and it's a nice thing to have.
The downsides to them are that you risk loading a virus onto your computer. As long as you're smart about which links you go to, they can be fine to use. Just make sure the places you download stuff from is reliable. We aren't allowed to give links to such sites because of this, so I cannot do anything about that.
Not everyone considers this morally correct, but if Nintendo and other companies had this big an issue about it, they would have stopped such sites years ago. If you've got no issue with it, go ahead, as long as you're aware of the risks.
All things said, ROMs can be well worth it so long as you're smart about where to download them. If you choose to download ROMs, do so at your own risk, but they're still fun to use.
Here are my thoughts on the subject. I don't think we should completely ban the use of the terms emulator or rom etc, because they are out there, there's no point pretending they aren't...But the main thing is, I would like to avoid linking out to dodgy sites just to be on the safe side, legally and to protect users from viruses and stuff. | <urn:uuid:a8934518-6f23-4e98-95f9-da1837670047> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pokemondb.net/pokebase/38517/i-need-rom-info-please?show=38525 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981495 | 460 | 1.515625 | 2 |
David E. Fastovsky, University of Rhode Island
Mesozoic, terrestrial vertebrate-bearing paleoenvironments, vertebrate paleontology
1. What first got you interested or involved in your research field?
Roy Chapman Andrews: All About Dinosaurs (1953).
2. What is your favourite piece of research?
Overall, I loved working on fluxes of vertebrate extinctions at the K/T boundary; I also loved working on some very interesting vertebrate-bearing paleoenvironments in NE Mexico; the rocks were crazy; the fossils were weird; it just doesn’t get better than that!
3. What do you think is the most interesting or important discovery in your field in recent years?
Feathered non-avian dinosaurs; the extinctions at the K/T boundary.
4. What do you think is the biggest unanswered question in your field right now?
We’ve begun to move from individual specimens to ecosystems. That kind of work should continue; that’s how to really capture the great rhythms of life through time.
5. What advice would you give to students about research? | <urn:uuid:13ff0932-5b5c-40ff-9308-6c837409f471> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/academics-on-archosaurs-david-fastovsky/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941547 | 239 | 2.421875 | 2 |
This is the takeaway from what is being commented on this weekend by the Japan Times.
In short, there are mainly two pension systems in Japan. One system, the employee’s pension insurance (kousei nenkin), piggybacks on the other, which is the national pension insurance (kokumin nenkin).
A Japanese government guideline has it, that workers who put in less than 30 hours a week in a job are not required to be enrolled in the employee’s pension insurance. (Everyone resident in Japan is required to be in the national program, the kokumin nenkin, but the government has not, to date, chased people around about that.)
Where Americans working in Japan get confused is that, since the government does not chase people around for the pension premium, they conclude that the pension is “optional”.
When I saw that the ruling party was looking to make enrollment into the employee’s pension mandatory at 20 hours (starting around 2016), it struck me that Japan was taking concrete measures to clean up its old age pension mess. This should be a concern, actually, to every taxpaying American, because when Japanese come to America, we allow them to gain partial credit in our Social Security system, even if they don’t have the 40 quarters. This is the totalization treaty that I’ve written about—probably more than anyone on the internet, in fact.
Because Japan continues to play fast and loose with its own pension system, the American taxpayer bears TWO risks. First, we must pay the Japanese who we agreed to partly cover, if they don’t have the 40 quarters. (You see this now as “40 credits”, but it is $4700 or so in social security-taxed earnings in each of ten calendar years.) Then, secondly, we cover Americans who did not participate in the Japanese system, if they show up back in America! They may be eligible for SSI, and also, they receive a bumped up payout ratio if they pay into social security late. They avoid Windfall Elimination, because they never participated in the Japanese system. It is basically a convoluted tax dodge against us.
From the time Minshuto won the election in 2009, I expected the minimum accomplishment would be a reform of the Japanese public pension system by 2013. This was in the “Manifesto”, wasn’t it? They had commercials out there, in that “Seiken Koutai!” series, where they were saying that people shouldn’t have to worry about old age.
Now, the indications are, that the government bureaucrats are screwing around with this—even as the Noda Government rightly seeks a 3% hike in the consumption tax to fund the current level of pension obligations.
The 30-hour rule particularly burns Americans, because the people who like to screw around with foreigners’ rights—including other foreigners in Japan—always seem to find a way to create some elegant bullshit reason why the employee’s pension is not required. So, when I saw about the 20 hours, I thought the people with power were finally playing it straight. But no. | <urn:uuid:2f94535d-65e3-4a6f-99ba-0eb4cf944c17> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hoofin.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970102 | 662 | 1.632813 | 2 |
A recent online article in the Harvard Business Review discussed three misperceptions widely held by many brands and businesses when it comes to their social engagement strategy. The article Three Myths About What Customers Want underscores the importance of providing your particular audience with information that is high quality, not high quantity.
The HBR’s article speaks directly to the message I’ve been shouting from the rooftops for quite some time regarding how we understand and use the data from social channels. A number of popular published studies have used averages to draw insight from social data, which are then designated as optimal attributes for the entirety of a social network, flattening it into a simple, highly biased model. This one-size-fits-all model has been used to identify the “best” social media publishing times but it ignores completely the most important variable: humans.
Social is everyday conversation happening online between and among people. It is full of chatter and discussions that flow around myriad topics trickling and gushing as interest peaks and then fades. Human behavior online is not all that different from human behavior in the real world, which is to say it is inherently unpredictable. When entering into the conversational stream in social, marketing managers would do far better to remember that people are not the sum of the data. Each of us has the capability to be a different version of ourselves at any given moment. We might be a movie buff right now but in ten minutes when we start to think about dinner we may become a chef only to get sidetracked moments later by something that turns us into our work self. Human behavior will always surprise us (thank goodness!) and any look at the data gleaned from human conversations on social needs to keep this is mind.
The following visualizations are based on messages posted by the Guardian’s Twitter followers over the period of a day. The fluidity in the shape and movement of conversations is crystalized when we see the data as a visual. The first snapshot was taken at 8am UTC. Amongst the multitude of topics in flux, we can easily identify the “Easter” and the “Bahrain” cluster, topics that resonated with a segment of the Guardian’s audience that morning.
The next snapshot, taken at 2pm, looks completely different. While the morning’s events in Bahrain are still of interest, there’s a substantially denser cluster of conversations happening around the Thames Boatrace.
As you can see, some topics linger on for many hours, while others have a short attention span. Making sense of this ebb and flow of user attention gives us the ability to better predict levels of engagement as well as identify optimal times to be a part of the conversation that is already taking place.
So given this state, what is a better way to think about publishing times on social if there really isn’t a best time as determined by demographics and data? A better way to approach identifying key times to publish on social is to use data and predictive analytics without removing the underlying humanness. We must move away from the idea that there is an identifiable constant and instead use real-time data that embraces the unexpectedness of the human conversations flowing through social media channels. The goal shouldn’t be pushing messages out to as many people as possible at one optimal time. The key to success in today’s dynamic social channels is to use real-time data to identify and become a part of the conversation that puts you in front of as many interested people as possible.
Optimizing for social, in essence, means learning how to have a conversation with the right audience at the right time in this new forum. And just like face-to- face conversations, social conversations follow the same unwritten rules of etiquette. Most of us wouldn’t think of inserting ourselves in an ongoing conversation until we both understood what was being discussed and assessed whether what we had to say added anything to the conversation. Social follows these same basic rules. In order to be heard effectively by an interested audience, marketers need to be able to identify specific windows of “conversational” opportunity where what they have to say adds something to what is already being discussed. By effectively using real-time data, we can identify these windows. This helps marketers find and enter a conversation at a time when an audience is far more likely to listen and reduces the social “noise” that contributes to the attention deficient problem we hear so much about.
Learning how to “read” the data from social is crucial to social media success. One of the first steps marketers can take is to shake off conventional data analysis measurements and the common myths they spawn and look at the information the way it is generated – in real time, by real people. | <urn:uuid:e04f2c01-d1a2-4e16-b482-059d873ee3f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.socialflow.com/post/7120245371/social-data-as-seen-with-a-human-eye | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948782 | 980 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Heavily laden dump trucks continue to rumble over the 90-year-old Andrewsville bridge, at the eastern end of Lansford, even though the state Department of Transportation in October reduced the weight limit for vehicles crossing the bridge to 30 tons and plans to detour trucks to keep them off the span.
The continuing truck traffic has some people puzzled, but PennDOT spokesman Ron Young explained that his agency has issued special permits that allow some heavy trucks to use the bridge.
"There are two hauling companies that submitted applications and have been approved to exceed the posted weight limit due to their individual vehicle configuration," he said. "Savage Hauling and K.A. Ash, Ltd. have permits to exceed the posted bridge limit."
Young said the permits "need to be carried in the truck, so if they are stopped by police they are required to show this permit to the police. These permits do have vehicle identification numbers and license plate numbers on them, so they are for each individual vehicle."
The permits limit the trucks' speed to a maximum of 20 mph while crossing the bridge; the permitted trucks may only cross the bridge when no other vehicles are on it, and the permittee is liable for any damage to the bridge, as well as any injury to persons or property that result from the permitted use. The permits would be null and void upon any change in posting of the bridge.
The concrete T-beam bridge, built in 1921, is 31 feet long and carries an average of 5,587 vehicles each day, according to PennDOT.
After a routine inspection revealed deterioration of the main concrete box beams, the agency in October restricted vehicles' weight to 30 tons, with a 40-ton restriction for combination trucks.
In May, PennDOT notified lansford and Summit Hill that it plans to re-route truck traffic through the towns in order to keep it off the bridge.
Young has said two PennDOT engineers met on May 12 with Lansford officials to talk about the plan.
Traffic signaling lines and crosswalks at the intersection of Route 209 (E. Patterson Street) and Route 902 (Springgarden Street) will need to be painted to allow more room to trucks to turn, he said.
The rerouting will take at least a couple of months to put in place.
Meanwhile, some Lansford council members said they are concerned that routing trucks up Springgarden Street to Summit Hill may endanger children walking to or waiting at a school bus stop on Springgarden Street.
State Rep. Doyle Heffley recently visited the bridge with some Lansford council members.
Heffley, a freshman legislator on the House Transportation Committee, has made the state's infrastructure a high priority.
He said he's looking forward to learning more about the committee's ideas for "different scenarios for transportation funding. We have over 6,000 structurally deficient bridges in the Commonwealth."
He said he would discuss adding the Andrewsville bridge to that list.
"It's an obsolete bridge in design," he said. One option to make the bridge safer would be to fill in the old railroad crossing the bridge spans, he said.
"This was something borough leaders thought might work," Heffley said.
Efforts to reach council president Adam Webber were unsuccessful.
Heffley supports House Bill 546, or the Rebuild Pennsylvania Infrastructure Assistance Act. Under the proposed legislation, the state would borrow, with voter approval, $400,000,000 for the "acquisition, repair, construction, reconstruction, rehabilitation, extension, expansion and improvement of Pennsylvania infrastructure, including roads, bridges, railroads, dams, water supply and sewage treatment systems, energy, communications, flood control measures and any other such infrastructure the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority deems relevant; and providing for the powers and duties of the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority."
However, he said he's "skeptical when there is talk about borrowing. We need to look at options in paying for things.
The possible sale of state stores could help offset costs of bridge and road construction," he said.
Heffley said $70 million has been set aside for bridge improvements in our area, including the Thomas J. McCall Bridge on Route 209 in Lehighton and Jim Thorpe bridge. | <urn:uuid:4d0ea4fa-ee06-441a-bb2f-59ad6c521efc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tnonline.com/2011/jul/25/heavy-trucks-still-rumbling | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959644 | 885 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Cooking the family meal can be a dangerous business for poor people in developing countries. According to a study by the World Health Organization, indoor air pollution from “primitive household cooking fires” is the leading environmental cause of death in the world. In most rural homes, which lack electricity, a stove can be an open fire and the fuel as basic as wood, dried animal dung or agricultural residue, together known as “biomass” fuels. The result is nearly 2 million deaths a year, worldwide, almost as many as are caused by malaria and tuberculosis combined. What’s worse, cooking with biomass releases carbon dioxide and “black carbon” into the atmosphere and consequently is a significant contributor to climate change.
Could technology be the savior?
That seems to be the official view of the world’s development establishment. In September 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the creation of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. This is a public-private partnership led by the United Nations Foundation, with support from the governments of many developed countries, including the United States, and multinational enterprises such as the investment bank Morgan Stanley and the oil producer Shell. And their ambitious goal, “100 by 20,” is to get 100 million homes to adopt clean stoves by the year 2020. They’ve even secured the actress Julia Roberts as a global ambassador.
The Global Alliance isn’t modest about its goal, nor is it about the claims it makes on behalf of clean stoves. According to its web site, a clean stove reduces child pneumonia by 50 percent; saves the equivalent of one to two tons of carbon dioxide per year; and leads to savings in fuel costs that allows a stove to pay for itself. However, until recently, evidence to support these claims has been scant, and based on laboratory tests or highly controlled conditions in which stoves were frequently monitored and maintained by the researchers. That leaves open how robust the conclusions are.
Finally, the findings of an important new study, which tested the efficacy of clean stoves in real world, rather than laboratory conditions, have been released and the news isn’t good for the advocates.
In a working paper released this month, Rema Hanna, a professor of public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and Esther Duflo and Michael Greenstone, economics professors at M.I.T., report the results of a randomized controlled trial on the adoption of clean stoves in India. Ms. Duflo, together with Abhijit Banerjee, also an economics professor at M.I.T., has championed the use of randomized experiments, like those used in testing new drugs, to measure the effectiveness of interventions like these.
Ms. Hanna and her colleagues worked with Gram Vikas, an award-winning nongovernmental organization, to provide 2,600 “improved” stoves to rural households in the eastern state of Orissa. Based on a public lottery, a third of the homes received a new stove at the beginning of the project, the second third got one about two years later and the final third were equipped at the end of the study period. Households were followed for four years after the initial adoption.
The study found that acceptance and, crucially, usage, of a new stove wasn’t universal even initially, and usage declined rapidly over time, as stoves broke down and households failed to make the necessary repairs or investment in maintenance.
Some households who’d voluntarily entered the lottery refused the new stove, even though it was heavily subsidized. Other households that accepted the improved stove continued to use their old stove alongside the new one – even when it was working well – before giving up on the new one altogether when it broke down.
Not surprisingly, the presumed health benefits didn’t show up either. While the study showed some health improvements for the primary cook in the household during the first year after installation, the effect vanished over time as proper use and maintenance of the new stove declined.
The researchers found, in the aggregate, no statistically valid evidence that the stoves had any measurable impact over a wide range of health outcomes, including lung function, infant birth weight, infant mortality, or even the chance of getting sick.
Lastly, and most disturbingly, the researchers found that those who adopted the new stoves actually saw a decline in their living standards compared with their neighbors who hadn’t. They spent more time maintaining their new stoves (even though, as we saw, this wasn’t enough to keep the stoves usable in many cases), which took them away from income-earning opportunities, and there was no significant reduction in fuel costs or time spent cooking.
Ms. Hanna gave me, via email, her interpretation of the results:
This isn’t to say that indoor air pollution is not a problem, or that an improved cooking stove cannot be part of the solution. But rather, we just don’t have enough evidence that the stoves systematically improve health, particularly under real world conditions where people do not regularly use the stoves, and if they do, the use often does not perfectly follow the manufacturer’s instructions. More research needs to be done….In the meantime, it may be wise to shift limited development resources to health programs (deworming, bed nets, conditional cash transfers) where there is strong evidence that they will improve lives.
This is a laudably measured conclusion in light of the damning findings of the study. But some in the news media haven’t been as circumspect and have gone instead for the jugular.
A sharply worded news article in The Washington Post was stinging enough to provoke a response from the Global Alliance. An opinion piece in the Boston Globe by Edward Glaeser, an economics professor at Harvard, was scarcely more muted, concluding bluntly: “Dumping stoves into the developing world isn’t going to alter the long-standing advantages of traditional methods.”
Mr. Glaeser is right. Evangelists for technological solutions, in their proselytizing zeal, often forget that these need to be implemented by human beings, not robots. To be effective, technology must be linked to economic or other behavioral incentives. Now, there’s a thought that should be allowed to simmer on the stove.
Vivek Dehejia is an economics professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and a writer and commentator on India. You can follow him on Twitter @vdehejia. | <urn:uuid:bf423fee-3bdd-4e06-8d68-f091e9f1a00d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/the-cookstove-conundrum/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963099 | 1,359 | 3.078125 | 3 |
ACRU Senior Fellow Ken Blackwell wrote this column appearing on the Townhall.com website on May 24, 2010.
Dr. Rand Paul was hoping for a "honeymoon" after his thumping victory in the Republican U.S. Senate primary in Kentucky. No such luck. Dr. Paul is a conservative Christian and if he wants another honeymoon, he needs to talk to his wife.
Instead, what Rand Paul got was a grilling from one end of the chattering class to the other about his supposed opposition to the great Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is a fact that he stumbled in some of his answers to questions about individual titles of that act. Dr. Paul was not alive when the act was debated in front of the whole country in 1964. He needs to bone up on his history.
But the high tech lynching that is taking place now is of a piece with what the liberal media put Clarence Thomas through in 1991. Because Judge Thomas is an original construction jurist, he was seen as a threat by liberal activists. Because Justice Thomas is black, he is vilified by leftists who believe that all minorities must support their left wing causes.
Dr. Paul is an ophthalmologist. He is expert on astigmatism. What we can clearly see is the moral astigmatism of the left. For example: As a state senator in Illinois, Barack Obama voted not once but repeatedly against giving civil rights protection to newborns who survived abortion attempts. Many of these newborns were black. We know that the abortion license has produced a shockingly disparate impact in the black community. The rate of abortion is 3:1, black-to-white.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is one of the three post-Civil War amendments (along with the Thirteenth and Fifteenth) that deserve to be regarded as a Magna Carta for black Americans. The Fourteenth Amendment says that all persons "born in the United States" are citizens of the United States and of the states in which they reside.
This clear intent of the framers did not matter to state senator Obama. He voted against his state's version of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Was Obama hauled before media tribunals to explain his radical position? Not in the least. The liberal media—which views Obama as "a sort of God" (in the words of Newsweek's Evan Thomas)—not only did not grill him on this shockingly radical position, they actively covered up his voting record.
You can see the moral astigmatism in the premises of all these liberal interrogators of Rand Paul. They believe their own propaganda. Conservatives in their view are racists. Conservatives are the ones who traffic in "wedge" issues.
We maintain that conservative principles view every human being as being created by God, endowed with inalienable rights. It is not conservatives who push racial quotas, preferences, and set asides. Nor is it conservative to engage in race baiting—as in attacks on Arizona for attempting to do what federal law is supposed to do. The right to life and the defense of marriage are not wedge issues at all, but bridge issues—helping conservatives reach out to minority communities.
It's true that Rand Paul needs to learn history to avoid "gotcha" journalists like Rachel Maddow. But he won't do that by reading most U.S. history textbooks, unfortunately. The grim and oppressive view they take of the American past is surely no way to celebrate American exceptionalism.
Rand Paul is right to say that slavery and segregation were stains on America's past. But the blood and treasure sacrificed by our people to overcome these stains should be honored, should be celebrated. We did overcome. And we overcame because conservative Republicans joined with liberal Democrats to pass the great Civil Rights Act of 1964.
President Lyndon Johnson was the first one to recognize the crucial role played by that proud Lincoln Republican, Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois. He gave a signing pen to the powerful Senate Minority Leader who provided the critical votes to break a filibuster engaged in by Democrats.
The liberal media is trying to sandblast Ev Dirksen's name from the Senate Office Building named for him. We can't let them do it. And helping Rand Paul is one way to stop the left from re-writing history. | <urn:uuid:7c11d499-bd44-4eab-9ab8-ac00e5bff25d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theacru.org/acru/ken_blackwll_rand_paul_another_high_tech_lynching/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972041 | 890 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Cadillac photos by Kris Kandler
Simplicity. Functionality. Durability. This trio of words, for the most part, has disappeared from the promotional blitz of modern toy cars. In our Swiss-army-knife-is-so-yesterday-unless-it-comes-with-built-in-GPS-and-carbon-dating-capabilities rush to capitalize on advancing technology, even among childrens’ toys, the plastic play cars from the late 1940s through the early ’60s reminds us of these three very important characteristics.
With a minimum of moving parts, getting mud, sand grit on one of these early plastic cars could be remedied easily with a dunk in a nearby rain puddle. Little or no downtime for maintenance meant more fun time actually playing with the car. And no need to be worried if little brother got ahold of your car and ran it down the basement stairs or your dog clamped it in his teeth. The plastic car bodies were tough and survived little brother “I didn’t do it” accidents and dog slobber just fine.
Also, just as Mom and Dad had a variety of makes, models and body styles to choose from for their daily transportation, kids of the post-World War II era had an equal depth of choice for their plastic toy car selection. Ford station wagon? Check. Studebaker coupe? Certainly. Packard taxi? Yes. And for the more worldly child, Jaguar XK-150 convertible or Mercedes-Benz 300SL gullwing coupe? Why, of course.
Within this range of plastic toy car offerings, it was inevitable there would be some duplication. One of the more copied makes available was Cadillac, the focus of the examples pictured. Possibly in a strategy of one-upsmanship to overcome this duplication, one of the subject Cadillacs is based on a body style not offered to the motoring public.
According to Angelo Van Bogart, Old Cars Weekly editor and author of Cadillac: 100 Years of Innovation, in 1949, for a customer in the Middle East, the Derham Body Co. of Rosemont, Pa., constructed a one-off convertible sedan based on a Cadillac Series 86 commercial chassis. In its stretched form, it had a wheelbase of 163 inches. Not long after, Lapin Products Inc., of Newark, N.J., offered a 1:32nd-scale Cadillac convertible sedan that resembled the desert-bound droptop.
Other toy makers after World War II that offered plastic Cadillac play toys — based on conventional road cars — included Hubley, Ideal (Fix-It series), Keystone Toys, Marx, Processed Plastics, Renwal and Wyandotte.
Injection mold origins
While the post-World War II years saw a huge increase in the production of plastic toy cars, their origin can be traced back to prewar times.
According to Bill Hanlon in his book titled Dimestore Dreams, the first plastic — specifically termed “injection molded” — toy car was produced by the Kilgore Manufacturing Co. of Westerville, Ohio, in 1937.
Hanlon writes, “The evolution of the plastic toy car closely followed the acceptance of plastics by the auto industry. In 1932, the Tennessee Eastman Co. introduced Tenite, the first commercial-grade cellulose acetate that could be both compression and injection molded in unlimited colors.
“The first injection-molded toy car was made out of cellulose acetate and was part of a new toy line introduced by the Kilgore Manufacturing Co. at the March 1937 International Toy Fair held in New York City. … Kilgore’s new line of plastic vehicles was called ‘Jewels for Playthings’ and included a sedan, coupe, taxi, express truck and airplane. The line got its name from the ‘jewel-like’ luster of the plastic. With a suggested retail price of only five cents each they were one of the big toy hits of 1937.”
Give or take an inch
Another important aspect of the postwar boom in plastic Cadillac toy cars is their varied lengths or scales. While most people think of road-going Cadillacs as large cars, this was reinforced through Ideal’s “Fix-It” series Cadillac convertible. It measured 13 inches in length. Both Lapin’s 1949 Cadillac convertible sedan and four-door sedan were offered in lengths of both 6 inches and 8-3/4 inches. For many of the “smaller” plastic Cadillac offerings, the more common scales fall between 1:30th and 1:43rd, particularly among the cars offered by Processed Plastics.
In addition to the aforementioned book Dimestore Dreams, which is a reference to plastic toy cars all makes, there is a Cadillac-specific reference titled Greenberg’s Guide To Cadillac Models and Toys by Jeffrey C. Gurski. Out of print, but available on the secondary literature market, this book covers the range of miniature Cadillac offerings, including plastic, rubber, ceramic, tin, die-cast, promotional and model kit examples. It also lists both domestic and foreign Cadillac toy and model makers, and is generously illustrated.
Another broad resource is Andrew Ralston’s The Collector’s Guide to Plastic Toy Cars of the 1950s & 1960s. It, too, is heavily illustrated and comprehensive in both domestic and foreign offerings.
One of the other benefits of both the Gurski and Ralston books is that they both include values for each of the plastic Cadillac toy cars mentioned. For the majority of the Cadillac examples, regardless of length or scale, even mint condition cars can be purchased for between $15-$25 each. Many of the smallest-scale examples are $10 or less. ?
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MORE RESOURCES FOR ANTIQUE COLLECTORS and DEALERS | <urn:uuid:d2d5357e-c50d-4fb5-9b67-8508b852e781> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.antiquetrader.com/features/plastic_cadillacs_upscale_sandbox_toys | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945866 | 1,284 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Khirbet Qeiyafa Excavations Find Evidence Of Solomon's Temple, Archaeologists Say
By Michele Chabin
Religion News Service
JERUSALEM (RNS) Archaeologists have unearthed a trove of artifacts dating back to the time of the biblical King David that they say closely correspond to the description of Solomon's Temple found in the Book of Kings.
Hebrew University archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel said the find "is extraordinary" first because it marks the first time that shrines from the time of the early Israelite kings were found. In addition, two small, well-preserved models discovered in the excavations closely resemble elements described in the Bible.
The multiyear excavations took place at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified city about 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem, adjacent to the Valley of Ella where, the Bible says, the ancient people of Israel were encamped when David slew Goliath.
Excavations yielded a large assortment of pottery, stone and metal tools as well as art and cult objects.
Garfinkel said the people who lived at the site appeared to shun both graven images and pigs -- both prohibited by the Hebrew Bible.
"Over the years, thousands of animal bones were found, including sheep, goats and cattle, but no pigs," he said. "Now we uncovered three cultic rooms with various cultic paraphernalia, but not even one human or animal figurine was found."
According to Garfinkel, this suggests that the inhabitants observed the biblical bans on pork and graven images -- "and thus practiced a different cult than that of the Canaanite or the Philistines" of the time.
Not all archaeologists agree with Garfinkel's assessment, however.
"These are beautiful finds, but they are not special in that similar ones have been found in various places, and they should therefore not be connected in any way to the ark" or other biblical references, Tel Aviv University archaeologist Nadav Na'aman told the newspaper Haaretz.
Na'aman doubted, too, whether the lack of pig bones suggests that the inhabitants of the settlement were part of King David's kingdom.
"The Canaanites also did not eat pork," Na'aman said.www.huffingtonpost.com | <urn:uuid:6ac435af-cbb9-4938-b7c1-f0296365ee64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=425820.0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963102 | 475 | 2.765625 | 3 |
December 21, 2011
Polish journalist Leopold Unger dies
The Polish journalist and commentator Leopold Unger has died at the age of 89.
Polish media said Unger, a Holocaust survivor who was born in Lvov in 1922, died Tuesday in Brussels, where he had lived for many years.
Unger was forced to leave Poland along with thousands of other Jews following the Communist regime’s anti-Semitic campaign in 1968.
An authority on Soviet and eastern European affairs, he wrote for publications including the International Herald Tribune, Radio Free Europe, the BBC and Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza, and also wrote books. He received the Polish PEN Club’s award in 2009. | <urn:uuid:18596407-f9f1-463a-adf5-c0f14948634a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jewishjournal.com/articles/print/polish_journalist_leopold_unger_dies_20111221 | 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 | 0.983222 | 152 | 2.03125 | 2 |
“Some good men, and even of respectable information, consider the learned sciences as useless acquirements,” the man wrote. “Some think that they do not better the condition of man; and others that education, like private and individual concerns, should be left to private individual effort.”
The writer? Thomas Jefferson, writing in the August heat during the summer of 1818, in his “Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia.”
These sentences from almost two centuries ago start Jefferson’s rebuttal of this shortsighted perspective. These good men failed to understand that the necessary expenditures “are far beyond the reach of individual means, and must either derive existence from public patronage, or not exist at all.”
Among Jefferson’s many beliefs about education, one is most important: he understood, as some of his peers did and many citizens today still do, that mass public education is a linchpin of democracy. Freedom and liberty rely on the existence of an educated citizenry, one difficult to manipulate, while economic growth relies on the continued advancement of human knowledge.
This particular Founding Father took the long view. Establish strong systems of elementary, secondary, and university education, he argued, and “it cannot be but that each generation succeeding to the knowledge acquired by all those who preceded it, adding to it their own acquisitions and discoveries, and handing the mass down for successive and constant accumulation, must advance the knowledge and well-being of mankind, not infinitely, as some have said, but indefinitely, and to a term which no one can fix and foresee.”
There are, of course, ways to attack Jefferson’s argument. One reader might point to the possibility that he fathered six children with Sally Hemings, one of his slaves, as a personal failure of behavior, and use it to attack his credibility as a guide to how we should spend our revenue. But mixing personal apples with civic oranges is a formal logical fallacy.
Another reader might point to the poor performance of our secondary system or wasteful spending within our entire educational system as a reason why we should cut spending on education or never raise it again. Yet Jefferson would say that this reader actually is unhappy about a failure of public governance and managerial accountability. Why destroy the roots of a public good when the tree could be saved with attentive care and careful pruning?
Dwarfing all these objections is the simple reality that our public education system was a vital component in the creation of the wealthiest, most powerful, and strongest democracy in world history.
Imagine Jefferson’s deep satisfaction if he still were alive to read philosopher Carlin Romano’s recent essay “Is America Philosophical?”
“America in the early 21st century towers as the most philosophical culture in the history of the world, an unprecedented marketplace of truth and argument that far surpasses ancient Greece, Cartesian France, 19th-century Germany, or any other place one can name over the past three millennia,” Romano claimed. “The openness of its dialogue, the quantity of its arguments, the diversity of its viewpoints, the cockiness with which its citizens express their opinions, the vastness of its First Amendment freedoms, the intensity of its hunt for evidence and information, the widespread rejection of truths imposed by authority or tradition alone, the resistance to false claims of justification and legitimacy, the embrace of Net communication with an alacrity that intimidates the world: All corroborate that fact.”
We are a free citizenry. This society, a gift to us from previous generations of citizens, men and women, already possesses an interesting and complex story, and this story gets longer and more interesting every year that the society endures. We take what is good from our history and the ideas of our Founders for application in contemporary life, and we exercise our freedom to discard the rest.
Public education and the public funding of education are major reasons why this society broke the shackles of, and remains free of, the aristocratic privilege, rigid class hierarchies, state-imposed religions, and totalitarianism that crippled many other societies.
Nowadays, many citizens apparently fear that the U.S. might one day turn into Europe but also support eviscerating public spending on education. I am afraid that Thomas Jefferson would see those citizens potentially as creators of the beast they fear.
Nick Capo, associate dean and associate professor of English at Illinois College, writes as a public scholar and private citizen.
Posted: Wednesday, 30 May 2012 | <urn:uuid:9766bca4-1686-49ee-9ae2-e17722f78f55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.laprogressive.com/educated-citizenry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955775 | 936 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Rain boots are boots suited to protect feet from inclement weather. Rain boots are waterproof and made from either rubber or other equivalents. Gore-tex, one of the latest materials used for rain boots, is completely waterproof. Rain boots are usually knee-high, but are also available low cut, just above the ankle, or high cut, all the way up to the thigh. Rain boots can also be used for snow, mud, and chemical waste because they provide protection, dryness, and warmth. Many rain boots are made with inner liners of flannel or other warm materials for use in cold weather. | <urn:uuid:e8b493ca-c917-4a65-9c54-e9327c2d756f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.outletbuy.com/discount-black-high-heel-womens-rain-boots.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935952 | 123 | 1.703125 | 2 |
A person seeking benefits of a welfare scheme will soon have to give an undertaking that he or she will not abet a child marriage and that government benefits could be withdrawn if they renege on their promise.
This is one of the steps initiated by various departments in the run-up to the year-long campaign against child marriage commencing from the ensuing Children's Day, with the Department of Women and Child Development being the nodal agency.
The circular on this was recently issued by the Additional Chief Secretary to all departmental secretaries. Following this, new application forms for schemes being printed now — such as the application for the Bhagyalakshmi scheme for girl children — come with this clause. They will also carry a slogan stating that child marriage is prohibited under the law.
This was one of the many recommendations of the four-member Core Committee on Prevention of child marriage headed by former Justice of Supreme Court Shivaraj V. Patil. The committee, which submitted its report in July said that this condition should be made mandatory in government schemes by November 2012. It expressed concern over prevalence of child marriages, particularly in the nine north Karnataka districts, including Bagalkot, where nearly half the women marry before they turn 18.
As per the committee's recommendation, the Revenue Department has also issued an elaborate set of guidelines on mass marriages, as many child marriages take place in such events.
The department's guidelines include those on registration of organisation conducting the marriage, thorough verification of age proof documents and mandatory presence of Child Development Project Officer in the events and so on.
On Children's Day, the Department of Women and Child Development will also be issuing identity cards to child marriage prohibition officers, so that they can exercise their enforcement authority. The Revenue Department has also sent out circulars making it mandatory for all marriage halls, temples and other places where weddings take place to display a board stating that marriage of girls below 18 years and boys below 21 is a punishable offence. | <urn:uuid:20e1ab62-f2a8-470d-a6d0-585d39ed5a1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/those-abetting-child-marriage-to-lose-benefits/article2608521.ece | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967585 | 401 | 2.125 | 2 |
By Leah Lemieux
by Veronica Mather
For several weeks I watched out of the kitchen window as a magpie, now known as Maggie rested in our backyard. From a distance I could see that he had an injured leg, but whenever I attempted to get a closer look he would fly away. read more »
By Belinda Elbourn read more »
By Belinda Elbourn
When Darren and I lived just west of Ceduna in South Australia we were very lucky to have shared our lives with 2 very special crows.
The first one to arrive on our door step was Camry, at first Camry was very shy little bird.
But after a day or two soon became a very demanding, cheeky loud little bird.
He spent the first couple of months in our enclosed back veranda.
As we had a huge enclosed fruit tree cadge (Darren and Camry are standing in it in the top photo) we thought it would be best for him to live out there, plenty of room to fly and hide.
Camry soon became very close to Darren, if was to go out to the cadge to feed him he would hide in the orange tree and would not come out.
Earlier I told you about one of the "phrases" magpies have taught us - the "J phrase", which your friendly magpie will use if (s)he wants you to follow him or her. Vicky Magpie used it to take us to her babies.
But what if your friend wants to point you in a certain direction, but does not want you to actually go there? That's what the "b phrase" is for. Your friend flies towards you, and then flies in a slow circle around and above you, like a letter "b":
One year old Pingu magpie loves her human friend Victoria.
Juvi magpies - Shelly (left) with sister Nelly at our back door.
Will a wild bird (never handled or hand fed) walk into a cage just because you ask her to?
Juvi magpie Shelly injured herself on the day of the terrible storms resulting in the inland tsunami in Toowoomba and the Lockyer valley. She didn't come down with her family for two days. Due to the heavy rains we couldn't go out into the neighbouring paddocks looking for her either. We thought she may have met a tragic end in the storms, but when the rains stopped briefly on the third day Ron went scouting and found her sitting still in a paddock. Relieved to find her alive, Ron and I would go out to the fields to feed her when we could. A few days later she started to walk but after 3 weeks she still could not fly. She could only climb up tree trunks by hopping along along fallen branches that were still leaning against them as in the picture below.
read more »
One of the things that has amazed me, and amazed me over and over again, is the intelligence of Australian Magpies. They know how to talk to us, but do we know how to understand what they are saying? I have learned a few "phrases" in magpie language since meeting our Maggie Magpie, and I want to tell you one today that I learned from Maggie's wife Vicky.
I call this the J-phrase. Vicky has used it at least twice with Gitie and me. She might have used it even more than that, but we perhaps didn't notice and Vicky would probably have thought how dense these humans can be at times.
Here it is: Your magpie friend flies towards you, then flies at a very slow speed in a half-circle around you, about three metres away; then she stops: read more »
Novelsit Resa Nelson continues her story about how the finches in her garden trained her.
The finches have been nesting on my balcony for years, and it's common to get two nests (at different times) in the same flower basket each spring. I'm always fascinated by the behavior of each family because they're so different.
It took the parents a while to train me when to go out and buy a basket (they let me know when they're ready to build a nest), as well as how I've communicated with a mother that I only want to water the plant and not harm the nest or eggs.
She was at first upset until I showed her exactly what I was doing, and then it was like watching a light bulb go off over her head and all I had to do from that point on was show the water bottle to her and she would fly off to let me water and stay calm instead of getting upset. | <urn:uuid:8f8bae16-cc1b-4ec5-a5ea-0fcdd006f60b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wingedhearts.org/taxonomy/term/8 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987691 | 975 | 1.859375 | 2 |
“National” there was selling at $50 per foot and assayed $2,496 per ton at the mint in San Francisco. And the “Alda Nueva,” “Peru,” “Delirio,” “Congress,” “Independent,” and others were immensely rich leads. And moreover, having winning ways with us, we could get “feet” enough to make us all rich one of these days.
“I confess with shame,” says the author of ‘Roughing It’, “that I expected to find masses of silver lying all about the ground.” And he adds that he slipped away from the cabin to find a claim on his own account, and tells how he came staggering back under a load of golden specimens; also how his specimens proved to be only worthless mica; and how he learned that in mining nothing that glitters is gold. His account in ‘Roughing It’ of the Humboldt mining experience is sufficiently good history to make detail here unnecessary. Tillou instructed them in prospecting, and in time they located a fairly promising claim. They went to work on it with pick and shovel, then with drill and blasting-powder. Then they gave it up.
“One week of this satisfied me. I resigned.”
They tried to tunnel, but soon resigned again. It was pleasanter to prospect and locate and trade claims and acquire feet in every new ledge than it was to dig-and about as profitable. The golden reports of Humboldt had been based on assays of selected rich specimens, and were mainly delirium and insanity. The Clemens-Clagget-Oliver-Tillou combination never touched their claims again with pick and shovel, though their faith, or at least their hope, in them did not immediately die. Billy Clagget put out his shingle as notary public, and Gus Oliver put out his as probate judge. Sam Clemens and Tillou, with a fat-witted, arrogant Prussian named Pfersdoff (Ollendorf) set out for Carson City. It is not certain what became of the wagon and team, or of the two dogs.
The Carson travelers were water-bound at a tavern on the Carson River (the scene of the “Arkansas” sketch), with a fighting, drinking lot. Pfersdoff got them nearly drowned getting away, and finally succeeded in getting them absolutely lost in the snow. The author of ‘Roughing It’ tells us how they gave themselves up to die, and how each swore off whatever he had in the way of an evil habit, how they cast their tempters-tobacco, cards, and whisky-into the snow. He further tells us how next morning, when they woke to find themselves alive, within a few rods of a hostelry, they surreptitiously dug up those things again and, deep in shame and luxury, resumed their fallen ways: It was the 29th of January when they reached Carson City. They had been gone not quite two months, one of which had been spent in travel. It was a brief period, but it contained an episode, and it seemed like years. | <urn:uuid:84ff8f7d-745f-45a8-b107-ae2e734e104b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/2988/109.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985474 | 692 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Prepared for Presentation
at the Annual Meeting of the
Association of Research Libraries
October 16, 1997
by Robert L. Oakley
Director of the Law Library and Professor of Law at the
Georgetown University Law Center
Good afternoon. Prue has asked me to spend a few minutes with you this afternoon to alert you to a relatively new set of issues that has come to the fore in the last several months. Unfortunately, as I begin here today, this topic is going to sound like a lot of arcane lawyer-talk, since it deals with the obviously unintelligible subject of Article 2B of the Uniform Commercial Code. But I think you will see by the end that since the real topic is the state law governing licenses, it will be of critical importance to us as librarians as we rely more and more on licenses as a mechanism for the acquisition of information.
In order to make all of this make sense, I need to first give you a little background -- about the Uniform Commercial Code in general and about the way in which Uniform state laws are created and adopted. Then, I will talk a little about Article 2B and where we are now in the debate to create this new body of state law. Finally, I will review with you five issues that concern me about Article 2B as it stands today.
OK. First, some background. What are uniform laws anyway? And how are they created? And anyway, what IS the UCC?
The need for state laws that are essentially the same across all 50 states is a by-product of our federal system of government. As you know, the U.S. Constitution enumerates certain powers for the federal government and leaves everything else to the states. Some examples of things that are left to the states include family law -- marriage, divorce, adoption, child custody, and so on -- most criminal law, the laws pertaining to wills, trusts, and estates, and most commercial law.
In the early years of the nation, these areas and others developed largely through the common law method of individual cases resolving individual disputes and, in some cases, by statutes adopted separately by the different states. With 50 different court systems and 50 different state legislatures each taking a different approach to these different topics, it eventually became very difficult understand the law, or transact business, or settle an estate, or deal with custody issues where more than one state was involved. In any single state, the law could seem settled and rational, but when a business transaction crossed state lines or a child custody dispute involved two states, the differences in the laws made everything difficult.
As a result of these concerns, it was decided that where possible it would be a good idea to unify the laws of the 50 states in certain key areas. Since commerce between and among the 50 states was so important to the future of the nation, among the most important areas needing attention were the laws affecting the way business is conducted. These laws included the laws related to contracts, the laws related to banks and banking, and the the debtor-creditor laws of secured transactions. To make a very long story very short indeed, we eventually wound up with the Uniform Commercial Code governing all of these different types of business transactions and some others. Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code deals specifically with contracts for the sales of goods. Remember that: Article 2 governs contracts for the sales of goods; I'll come back to that in a minute.
Okay. If that's what the Uniform Law is, how do we get one? The draft laws are major efforts to harmonize the existing laws of the 50 states. They are written as a joint effort by two different groups: The American Law Institute, which is a prestigious body, primarily of scholars and legal academics, and the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (sometimes known as NCCUSL), which is equally prestigious and has representatives from each of the 50 states. They go through an iterative process that usually takes years to arrive at a proposed law that can be accepted by as many states as possible. The drafting is done by a committee whose work is reviewed by each of the two parent groups in turn. When everyone is in relative harmony over the draft it is finally adopted by the Commissioners as a proposed Uniform Law and sent to the states for adoption.
As you might imagine, because of the length and complexity of the process, because of the care with which it is approached, and because of the inherent prestige of the parent organizations, most state legislatures approach such proposals with a good deal of deference. As a result, many of the proposals have, in fact, been widely adopted. The Uniform Commercial Code has been adopted in all 50 states.
That, then, is the general background about the Code and how it came to be. How does Article 2B fit into all of this and where does it stand right now?
As I said a minute ago, the existing Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code governs contracts for the sales of goods. During the centuries over which contract law developed, most contractual transactions were just that: a sale of crops from a farmer to a store owner, a sale of raw materials to a manufacturer, a sale of a car or a house to a consumer. And in that type of economy -- based on the sale of tangible objects -- common law contract and eventually the Uniform Commercial Code worked just fine. But a number of years ago it began to be recognized that our economy was no longer based simply on the sales of goods; the economy was rapidly evolving into one that was hightly dependent on contracts for intangibles -- the creation, production, or access to information. Issues of contract formation, performance, and warranties that worked for the sale of tangible products didn't work the same way when networks were involved or when the issue related to intangibles such as the development of software or the licensing of information.
As a result, it began to be felt that a new commercial law governing such transactions was needed if the information economy was going to flourish. A drafting committee was appointed with Professor Ray Nimmer as the Reporter. The Committee began its work four or five years ago, meeting several times a year to develop the proposal for a uniform state law on the licensing of information. Since article 2 dealt with contracts for the sales of goods, it was decided insert contracts for the licensing of information right afterward -- hence the designation Article 2B.
The Information Industry has been represented at the drafting meetings throughout the process, both through their trade association, the IIA, and through the presence of a number of individual member companies. Until the last few months, however, there has been little or no representation from consumer groups or the library community.
Having worked on this legislation for several years, the drafters now believe the process is nearing a conclusion. The draft was presented to the annual meeting of the American Law Institute last spring. At that meeting, one of the members raised the question about the interface between this proposal and copyright -- in other words, can copyright owners use a contract mechanism to change the balance of rights they have under the Copyright Act? After some debate, the group passed a motion to the effect that in mass market licenses (more on that concept in a minute), a contract term that is inconsistent with the applicable copyright law is void. Such a provision would make it harder for libraries or individuals to contract away their fair use rights or other rights granted under the copyright act, and I supported the motion.
When that same matter was presented to the NCCUSL meeting in July, after some sustained lobbying by the industry, the Conference respectfully asked the ALI to reconsider its decision, based on a freedom of contract notion, and asked the drafters to remain neutral on the issue of whether or not the Copyright Act should pre-empt such contracts.
Formally, that's where matters stand at the moment. There was another drafting committee meeting in Minneapolis at the end of the last month where some of these issues were discussed at length. On the pre-emption issue, the drafters remained neutral by simply inserting a section that said, in effect, "any section of this Act that is pre-empted by any applicable federal law, is pre-empted." That doesn't get us very far, frankly, and it leaves all the other issues unresolved.
Let me then highlight for you some of the issues that I have found in the draft as it stands now. Some of these have been debated and discussed; some of them haven't.
Before I go through the issues, there is one little bit more that you need to know about what the legislation covers. We haven't talked about that yet. Really the law, like its Article 2 counterpart, does two things. First it talks about the formation of a contract -- what does it take to constitute a valid agreement betwwen the parties? Second, it supplies some default terms in case the contract is silent or omits some key elements. Such default terms might include terms about warranties, what constitutes performance of the contract, and remedies in case one of the parties defaults. I have uncovered problems in the formation section, some of the default terms, and perhaps rather significantly, the overall scope of the law. Let me walk through those concerns with you now.
The heart of the controvery around these proposals is in the section on formation. This proposed state legislation endorses the creation of what the drafters call mass market licenses. You may be familiar with shrink-wrap licenses and the discussion and controversy that has surrounded those for the last several years. Shrink-wrap licenses are the licenses that typically accompany a piece of software and state that if you open the shink-wrap or break the seal on the software envelope you are bound by the terms of the license whether or not you had a chance to read the whole agreement. Most of the courts that have reviewed such contracts have concluded that they are not valid because they do not reflect a true meeting of the minds between the parties since the license couldn't be reviewed and agreed to before the software was purchased. One court -- the seventh circuit -- has endorsed such licenses, essentially because once the box was opened the purchasor could have rejected the terms of the license and taken the software back for a refund.
The 2B drafting committee has endorsed shrink-wrap licenses. Further, they have broadened the concept in recognition of the need for clickable licenses for parties to be able to create valid contracts over the internet. Calling them by the more general term mass-market licenses, they have stated that a valid manifestation of assent to a license may be found with the click of a mouse on a button that says "I agree," or other words to that effect, so long as the party had an opportunity to review the terms and whether or not they actually ever had the terms on their screen.
Such validation of shrink-wrap and other mass-market licenses is obviously fairly controversial. But the larger issue for libraries comes up in the context of whether or not there are any limits to what may be agreed to. Most of the industry believes that so long as the terms are not unconscionable -- that's a pretty high standard -- they should be valid. But this is where the McMannis motion and the library community come in. We have been worried that individuals and libraries might inadvertently be signing away fair use rights, interlibrary lending rights, preservation rights, or other rights granted to them under the copyright act, without even knowing it.
In general, we have tended to think that although we weren't particularly comfortable with shrink-wrap licenses, we could understand the need for clickable licenses on the internet. On the other hand, we have thought that if such licenses are necessary for electronic commerce, then people ought not to be bound to terms that remove rights they have under copyright unless they at least know that's what they are doing and agree to it. As a result, we have tried to argue that if mass market licenses are going to be validated, when a licensee gives up rights granted to them under the Copyright Act at the very least it should be called to their attention that that is what they are doing, and they should have to separately indicate their agreement to such a term. You might think of this idea as similar to the car rental contracts where you have to specifically indicate your intention to waive certain insurance coverage. On the other side, the industry is worried that such a requirement would make the creation of such a contract unduly cumbersome. We think that's a minimal requirement if someone is giving up rights they have come to expect under copyright.
Okay, that is the first issue -- mass market licenses. It is of concern to us both because it will affect the rights of our users and also because the way "mass-market" is defined in the statute, it will also apply to some library transactions. We have felt that libraries should not lose their rights through this kind of mass market license unless they are clearly on notice that that is what they are doing.
The second issue is related. Another section of the statute covers "standard form contracts." This is the more typical way in which libraries obtain licenses today -- although the clickable license is clearly the way for the future. A standard form contract is what happens now when a vendor presents you with a form and says "that's it". Sign. Suppose you do and you later learn that the fine print precludes your users from making fair use copies of the information in the database. Or suppose, it says that under no circumstances may any part of the information contained in this database be shared with another library. You may well be willing to agree to such a term, but we have argued that such terms must be clearly brought to the attention of the licensee so that you are not later surprised by such limitations.
Those two issues are related to the creation of the contract in the first place. The next issue is the use of the statute to validate a potentially controversial contract term. Strictly speaking, it shouldn't be necessary to have such a provision in the law since an agreement between the parties is presumptively valid unless something is unconscionable. Presumably, then, the drafters have felt that someone might argue that such a term is unconscionable, and they want to remove that possibility by validating it legislatively ahead of time.
This issue is related to first sale, on which libraries are so dependent. As you know, under the Copyright Act, the First Sale doctrine allows libraries or other owners of a copy of a work to transfer ownership or possession of the copy. It permits libraries to lend copies of things they purchase, and it permits individuals to lend or give away or even sell copies of what they have purchased.
Section 503 of the draft is very difficult to parse, but it seems to say that a contract term that precludes a transfer is valid and enforcible. Moreover, such a term could be part of a mass market license and never have come to the attention of the purchasor. As a result, an individual user might download something, pay the price, test the program and decide they can't really use it. But they can't give it away either. If it were a book, they could pass it on to a friend. Under the terms of a license, however, they may be precluded from doing so. Similarly, a library might buy an item -- say a CD-ROM directory -- and replace it a year later with a newer edition. If it were a book, they could sell the old one in the library booksale. A license term authorized by Section 503 would preclude the library from doing that -- or even from lending the item as part of the collection.
The next issue deals with one of the default terms that are supplied by the Act. Remember now, these are terms that you will be bound by under the terms of the Act, if the contract is simply silent on the issue. You might not even be aware of it unless you were familiar with the statute. A contrary contractual provision will override the statute, as always, but you need to be aware of what is in the Act in order to know that you might want a contrary provision.
Section 614 of the draft deals specifically with "Access Contracts." These are types of contracts that will be of great interest to libraries, since they are defined as being "a contract for electronic access to a resource containing information, a resource for processing information, a data system, or other similar facility ..." (See sec. 2B-102 (1).) That is our bread and butter. Those are the kinds of contracts we deal with now on a very regular basis.
Section 614 says first that except as otherwise provided by the contract, information obtained is free of any use restrictions except restrictions already covered by the intellectual property rights of the licensor. It goes on to say, however, "The licensee may make a transitory copy for purposes of viewing or other agreed use only but may make a permanent copy of the information accessed only if authorized by the agreement. I read that and I wonder whatever happened to fair use. I wonder about library preservation. This provision makes it clear that you can't take basic copyright rights for granted. If this legislation passes and you want the ability to allow your users to make copies, or you might want to make an archival copy for preservation, you need to be sure that you look for and put such rights in your contract.
Finally, the last issue that I have been concerned about concerns the overall scope of the legislation. It is very broad indeed, maybe broader than we are comfortable with. Section 103 says that the Article covers "licenses of information and software contracts." "Information" is defined to mean "data, text, images, sounds, and works of authorship, including computer programs, databases, literary, musical or audiovisual works, motion pictures, mask works, or the like, and any intellectual property or other rights in information.
That definition is broad enough to include everything that is now covered by copyright, including books and other more traditional tangible forms of information. Under this legislation we can easily envision the licensing and shrink-wrapping of books. In the market place, that is not a very likely scenario. But it is possible. More important, perhaps, is the inclusion in this definition of the word "databases." It is clear that this bill is yet another way for the industry to find a means to protect databases. By now, it is well known that databases enjoy only limited protection under copyright, and some may not be protected at all. It may yet be that some form of database protection bill will still pass Congress, but that is by no means certain. In the meantime, the industry is clearly looking to contract law to provide them with the protection they want.
Speaking very personally, now, I am not yet sure how I feel about that. We all opposed the database protection bill last year because it was over-inclusive and did not carve out any reasonable exceptions for libraries or education. On the other hand, I do understand that the industry is investing millions of dollars in the creation of databases that are valuable to us. I have some sympathy with the notion that even while I want to assure our users of the right to access and make fair use of the information in those databases, I can understand that the creator of such a database wouldn't want to see it ripped off and distributed over the internet without further compensation to the person whose work created the database in the first place. On this issue, I can see that database owners do have a point worth considering.
I hope that gives you some familiarity with the 2B issue. I've talked a bit about uniform laws in general, article 2B in particular and highlighted five issues for your consideration: mass market licenses, standard form contracts, the impact on first sale, the impact on fair use, and the overall scope of the proposal. I'd be happy to try to answer any questions.
© Copyright 1997 by Robert L. Oakley | <urn:uuid:af365e52-5d3f-4514-a5bf-f78d7216e174> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aallnet.org/Archived/Government-Relations/Washington-Brief/1997/tm101697.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96999 | 4,084 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Tree Clearing Along the Saw Mill River
For those of you who drive the SMR Parkway going North, just about a ½ mile from the exit at Elmsford, you’ve probably noticed lots of trees coming down that don’t seem related to any storm damage. It’s true. Years ago, a 24” pressurized gas line was placed alongside the parkway and river—it was an easy place to put it—and, who knows, maybe no one thought it was a bad idea at the time. Every 15 years or so, the company that owns the pipeline does maintenance—clearing large trees whose roots might damage the pipeline leading to corrosion and failure. And, in this day of issues of security, the pipeline company is also clearing it to maintain its ability to do constant aerial surveillance.
In discussing the matter with the regional manager in charge of this area, he said the places where trees have been cut will be seeded, mulched and stabilized to prevent erosion. An employee of the pipeline company is always on-site with the contractor working on the project. | <urn:uuid:11af9216-c413-44c7-a669-61dc867cff95> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sawmillrivercoalition.org/2007/01/18/tree-clearing-along-the-saw-mill-river/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963181 | 224 | 1.945313 | 2 |
I recently found a great old infographic from xkcd.com visualizing the Electromagnetic Spectrum. Check out the detail in the larger version on the xkcd site.
Entries in humor (53)
Another great new infographic comic from xkcd.com. A mix of real science and humor, this one plays on the words “gravity well” by visualizing the strength of each planets gravity as the depth of a crater scaled to Earth’s surface gravity.
The chart shows the “depth” of various solar system gravity wells.
Each well is scaled such that rising out of a physical well of that depth - in constant Earth surface gravity - would take the same energy as escaping that planet’s gravity in reality.
Click on the image to go to the xkcd.com site to see the high-resolution version.
Thanks for sending in the link Ruben!
Check out this fun Holiday Cliché Find-It graphic from Xplane.com! It's available as a 11x17" sized PDF so you can view or print it out.
“Get your ducks in a row” so that you aren't “caught with your pants down” this holiday season! After all, it can be like “herding cats” out there this time of year, and you definitely don't want to get stuck “in the weeds.” So, go ahead and take a minute to “shop this around,” “see if it sticks” and celebrate from a “10,000-foot view.” It's all “blue sky” from here on out, nothing but a “win-win situation!”
Think you know your business clichés? Find where they're hiding in this holiday XPLANATiON™ created by your friends at XPLANE! Just click the image above to download the tabloid-sized 11x17" PDF.Thanks to Parker at Xplane.com
The Simpsons celebrate their 20th anniversary this week on Thursday, and CNN Entertainment published this chart "The Simpsons Comedy Tree" on Monday. A combination Nightingale Rose Graph (also called a polar area diagram), family tree and timeline, this simple chart connects the influences that impacted Matt Groening and the creators of the Simpsons as well as the shows that came after.
"The Simpsons" stands on the comedic shoulders of many that came before -- and has influenced countless works that have arrived since. Here are just a few of the roots of the "Simpsons" comedy tree and the branches of those it gave life to. (The following, illustrated by the doughnut at the top of the story, is by no means complete, and each member has its own, sometimes overlapping influences.)
Thanks to Tony Hendra's "Going Too Far" for inspiration and cartoonist Art Spiegelman for having his fingerprints all over the place.The article also includes descriptions of the actual influence for each of these shows.
Thanks for the link Matt!
For those Simpsons fans of you, here is also the poster created exclusively for Entertainment Weekly celebrating the release of the 20th season DVD set on Jan 12. Dude, make sure to go look at the large, scrollable version.
Great post by the XKCD online comic series! They occasionally post a infographic-style piece, and this one doesn't disappoint.
Created by Randall Munroe at XKCD, the Movie Narrative Charts plot the interactions between key characters on a timeline, grouping the character lines together when they are interacting in the movies. He obviously spent some time working on these, and be sure to check out the detail in the full size version.
The last two are jokes, but the ones for Lord of the Rings, the original Star Wars Trilogy and Jurassic Park are real and very well done. I love the Primer chart poke at trying to follow the movie! Not as mainstream as the other movies, but it's definitely appropriate. I'd love to see how Randall would chart Memento!
So, what's a Gruzzle? With extensive use of Venn Diagrams, GL Hoffman often posts these visual blog posts on his blog, What Would Dad Say, and Fast Company has also started pubishing them as well.
So back to the original question, What's a Gruzzle? Here's a really good answer, by one of his readers:
But here's the official answer:
You can also follow @GLHoffman on Twitter
Practicing good nutrition keeps your mind sharp, your body fit, and your life long. The same could be said for consuming media. (Seriously, knowledge is power.) When you add it all up, the average American spends roughly nine hours a day glued to some kind of screen, and like your diet, quality is as important as quantity. Here areWired's suggested servings for optimal media health.
From the Texas Department of Agriculture at GoTexanWine.org, the Wine Personality Wheel comes from the Texas in a Bottle guide to Texas Wine (download as a pdf). I love the sense of humor.
Ever listen to somebody describe a wine? They talk about it having "character" and "personality." To hear them tell it, wines are a lot like people. We've talked it over and came to a conclusion - they have it backwards. People are a lot like wines.
Here at the Viticultural Personality Institute, we've compiled a fun list of personality types based on wine preferences.
If your favorite wine listed here does not accurately reflect your particular personality, please choose another favorite wine (or change your personality - otherwise, you'll make our researchers look bad).
Looking around the GoTexanWine.org site, I also found a good, animated timeline (link) of the history of wine in Texas.
Eight federally approved Viticultural Areas currently exist in Texas. Eighty-five percent of wine from a Viticultural Area must be made from grapes grown within the area's boundaries. If the wine is a varietal, 75 percent of that wine must be made from the designated grape variety. | <urn:uuid:e4ac154e-d18a-4c11-9a06-2c582fd709ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/tag/humor?currentPage=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953822 | 1,269 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be meeting with Thomas Boni Yayi, the head of the African Union and president of Benin, in Ottawa on Tuesday.
Boni Yayi's meeting with Harper could bring a request for Canadian troops to be involved in an international mission in Mali, according to The Canadian Press.
But in an interview airing Saturday on CBC Radio's The House, International Cooperation Minister Julian Fantino told host Evan Solomon that while "Canada remains very concerned about the situation in Mali, we do not anticipate going there."
When asked if Canada was considering more foreign aid to Mali, Fantino said "if we can translate our aid to the people ... we will continue to do all we can."
Speaking in Halifax last Sunday, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said that Canada could be willing to send troops to help train African forces.
"What I can tell you is that we are contemplating what contribution Canada could make," MacKay said at an announcement related to rental housing rates on military bases.
The United Nations Security Council backed a proposal in December to send an African-led force of 3,300 soldiers into the country but the resolution also called for broader international assistance.
A military coup last year created a power vacuum in Mali that's led to the rise of armed groups linked to al-Qaida in the country's northern region.
As the president of the African Union, Boni Yayi was instrumental in convincing the United Nations that international intervention was needed.
And the African Union, along with a coalition of West African states, is now responsible for putting the resolution into action.
Mali, a landlocked country bordering on Algeria and Niger, has been one of the biggest recipients of Canada's foreign aid.
Canadian special forces were active in the west African country for several training missions prior to the coup and before Islamic Maghreb – known as AQIM – overran much of the northern portion of the impoverished nation.
"Benin is a democratic African partner that continues to make impressive progress in the areas of economic and institutional reform while promoting regional stability," said Harper in a statement Sunday.
"I look forward to meeting with (President Boni Yayi) to explore ways of expanding commercial relations and contributing further to Benin's development."With files from CBC News | <urn:uuid:b2689977-8474-4901-8cb5-f3d3e2199817> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cbc.ca/m/rich/politics/story/2013/01/06/pol-cp-african-union-head-to-visit-ottawa-mulling-support-for-mali.html | 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 | 0.959821 | 468 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Perfecting Their Pitches
MDC's workshops helped students succinctly describe a business, product or service to potential clients or investors in the span of an elevator ride – about 90 seconds.
Dozens of students and local business owners attended the recent “Perfect Your Pitch” workshop at MDC’s Kendall Campus to learn how to quickly and effectively present their business ideas.
The event helped prepare attendants for the 2011 Launch Pad Elevator Pitch Contest held in partnership with the University of Miami during Global Entrepreneurship Week. Winners of the contest compete for more than $100,000 in prizes to help launch or grow their businesses as well as the media attention that the contest draws.
The two-hour workshop helped students succinctly describe a business, product or service to potential clients or investors in the span of an elevator ride – about 90 seconds.
“Business entrepreneurs have to be ready when the opportunity comes because they may not have the same chance twice,” said Thania Ríos, director of Kendall Campus’ School of Business.
Free and open to the public, the workshop marked the first time Miami Dade College’s School of Business partnered with UM’s Launch Pad; a similar workshop was also held at North Campus in October.
“We’re going to continuing offering more opportunities for student interaction,” Rios said. “We want to give MDC students the skills they need to start their own businesses.”
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- MDC Produces Revolutionary Tech Advances | <urn:uuid:98f4c2e9-7d25-4f75-9aa6-4f9af5ad4289> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mdc.edu/main/collegeforum/archive/vol15-05/academics/l0700_pitch.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931195 | 445 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Stop Police Privatisation
Unison’s Narmada Thiranagama shares her views on why privatising aspects of the police service is unwelcomed and how the upcoming Police and Crime Commissioner elections, can help to halt this process.
On 15 November, the elections for Police and Crime Commissioners will be held for the first time in England and Wales. It might be the best chance we have to halt the government’s damaging programme of police privatisation. This dangerous sell off of services vital to local communities has happened by stealth, without any proper consultation with the public, the people who have most to lose. If police privatisation goes ahead unchallenged the face of UK policing will change forever - and young Black people might have the most to lose.
Hit with 20% budget cuts, police forces across the country are shedding thousands of jobs, and are being pushed to compromise their accountability by selling off vital operational functions of policing to private companies. UNISON is warning police authorities against falling into the trap of thinking that the private sector is the answer to the coalition’s budget cuts. Private companies are answerable to their shareholders - who want them to make profits - not to the public.
Since no force has released information on how contracts have performed, there is no evidence that privatisation will offer good value for money or decent services. The only evidence out there shows that privatisation doesn’t work. In 2007, Avon and Somerset police formed a partnership with IBM, Taunton Dean Borough Council and Somerset District Council called ‘South West One’. It is now being described by Somerset Council as a ‘costly failure’ having made ‘staggering losses’ with few of the promised savings having materialised.
After the failure of the G4S Olympic contract, it is clear that even if a service is privatised, the public sector still carries all of the risk. If anything goes wrong, the public sector – and ultimately the taxpayer – will have to step in as local police services are too important to be allowed to fail.
The public will also lose their right to take a complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). Unlike the services directly provided by the police, a private company is not answerable to the IPCC. Given the concerns many young BME people have about their treatment at the hands of the police, this is deeply worrying.
To make matters worse, some of the leading companies bidding to win the contracts for police services have a troubled record in dealing humanely with certain groups – including BME indiviudals. This is deeply worrying when you consider that the services up for grabs are core aspects of policing. If privatisation comes to your local area, you could be dealing with a private company when you ring 999, walk into a police station and talk to the front desk, have a crime investigated, are visited by a police forensic team, use victim support services, and are taken into custody. In fact, you could access these services without at any point coming into contact with a public service.
If you are feeling scared about police privatisation then you are not alone. A poll by UNISON in June found that 62% of the public reject police privatisation and that 50% said they would trust the police less if a private company ran their local services, with more than 50% saying they would feel less safe.
In these unsettled times, the public – especially people in BME communities – need to have trust and confidence in their local police. We know that privatisation will damage that trust, jeopardising years of work spent in building a more positive, if still fragile, relationship between local communities and the police.
In our campaign, UNISON is reaching out to build support and make sure Police and Crime Commissioner candidates know that the public do not want their local police services to be privatised. We need as many people as possible to add their voices to the campaign. Talk to your friends, family, to colleagues and neighbours. The campaign will hot up around the Police Commissioner elections on 15 November 2012.
To find out more, visit www.unison.org.uk/stoppoliceprivatisation.
Narmada Thiranagama,National Officer, Policy Unit, UNISON
Picture: Neville Lawrence, pictured with Unison members, who backs the campaign. | <urn:uuid:988b7c2e-720e-44d7-973e-bc16bad00254> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.obv.org.uk/news-blogs/stop-police-privatisation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962756 | 898 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Quake rocks northern New Zealand
on 17/10/2012 08:32:39
The epicentre was relatively deep at 68 miles. That lessens the surface impact, though such quakes tend to be felt over a broader area.
The US Geological Survey said the quake struck about 38 miles south of Rotorua.
A sharp jolt was felt as far away as Wellington, about 186 miles south. Politicians noted it on Twitter while some workers took shelter under their desks.
New Zealand sits on the Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin. A February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch killed 185 people and destroyed much of the city centre. | <urn:uuid:5c4a2c0c-dedf-4acc-b188-1769ea7d8b4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.eircom.net/international/20794238/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968556 | 142 | 3.046875 | 3 |
By LIBBY CLUETT
STRAWN – Strawn ISD students raised funds for the United Way of Palo Pinto County, inching the countywide non-profit organization closer to its 2012 goal of raising $110,000.
The school of 192 students had a week-long fundraiser, collecting $664.63 through the participation of students in all grades, pre-kindergarten through 12th.
The fundraiser took place during the school’s recognition of Red Ribbon Week – a national drug prevention campaign – for which a committee of teachers planned and organized activities for students.
“This is our second year in what I hope will be an annual fund-raising event to coincide with Red Ribbon Week,” said Tamara Alison, a third-grade teacher at Strawn who organized the fundraising effort.
The proceeds came through purchasing paper chain links in Strawn colors – red, white and black. The links cost 25 cents for one or five for a dollar, and the classes competed to build the longest paper chain, she explained.
Each morning, students put their donations in a “United Way” cup, placed in each classroom. The cups were turned in and the money counted daily, which enabled class teams to add to their paper chain.
“The red, white, and black paper chains hung from the ceiling in the cafeteria and were added to each night to reflect the day’s giving,” said Alison. “It was exciting each morning to see how long the chains had grown and which class was in the lead.”
At halftime during the Oct. 26 home football game against Rising Star, Strawn students stretched out their respective paper chains along the field to see which one was the longest.
Winning the competition by inches was the sixth grade team, according to Alison. The seventh-eighth grade team took second in what she called “a very tight race” and the fifth grade chain was the third longest.
All totaled, the Strawn School chains equalled 783 feet, or 261 yards, Alison said, “More than enough to score two touchdowns on our six-man football field.”
Several students weighed in on the competitive fundraiser.
“That was incredible,” noted sophomore Jessica Braun. “I didn’t think we’d get as much as we did.”
To fourth grader Briaunna Garza, the fundraiser “was kind of challenging and exciting, but we still knew we were helping others, too.”
“It’s not about winning, it’s about helping someone else,” said third grader Bella Gallozzi. “So, if we all do the best we can and it helps someone else, then we’re all winners.”
“It feels good (to give) and I’m thankful I can do it,” first grader Hayden Nowak shared.
“That’s a lot of money, especially for kids and we just had one week to do it,” sixth grader Tanner Hodgkins said of the $664.63 students raised.
At the home game against Rising Star, Alison presented the cash and coins to United Way Executive Director Karen Bullock.
“The United Way has been a vital organization in so many of the communities where I have lived and worked through the years and I wanted to add the experience of giving to others to the focus of our Red Ribbon Week festivities,” said Alison. “It is such an important thing for kids to feel empowered and to know that there is always something they can do to make a difference, even the smallest things add up and can mean so much to someone in need.”
By LIBBY CLUETT
- Local News
Strawn: Still plugged, dealing with water issues
STRAWN – Strawn Mayor Carl Frazier said residents of the city were still being required to boil water Thursday before ingesting or cooking with it.
Give MD the boot
The Mineral Wells Fire Department will take to the streets Friday and Saturday for their annual Fill the Boot campaign supporting the Muscular Distrophy Association.
County’s new disaster relief team seeks water donations to aid Strawn
The Palo Pinto County Disaster Relief Team is asking for help in responding to water shortages in the county.
Abandoned house destroyed by fire
Local firefighters responded multiple times to a structure fire in the 2600 block of N.E. 2nd Street.
Dealing with the physical, financial aspects of storms
As weather conditions across the middle of the nation continue to set the stage for major storms, victims are left picking up the pieces.
Local relief team offers centralized disaster response
Following a week defined locally by a major fire and devastating storm, disaster relief has been a frequent concern lately.
Harvey to join MWHS Hall of Honor in Wednesday ceremony
With a 2002 Mineral Wells High School Sports Hall of Fame induction already under his belt, Coach Jackie Harvey will add to his accolades, on Wednesday, the 2013 Honorary Alumni inductee into the Ram Elite Society.
‘84 Ram Peak to address Hall of Honor
Dr. Kayla Peak will be the guest speaker at the 20th Annual Hall of Honor Induction Ceremony to be held Wednesday, at the Mineral Wells High School auditorium.
Local man arrested near Baker for burglary
Police say a local man was arrested on suspicion of breaking into an outbuilding in the 200 block of East Hubbard Street last week.
Fort Wolters entrance, victim of recent hail
Just months after the second helicopter was erected, balancing the entrance gate to Fort Wolters, Wednesday’s devastating hailstorm ravaged both aircraft.
- More Local News Headlines
- Strawn: Still plugged, dealing with water issues | <urn:uuid:a64ef04c-6f32-426e-b2a1-536b86721b13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mineralwellsindex.com/local/x1095522485/Strawn-scores-twice-for-United-Way-with-its-chain-of-giving | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961406 | 1,218 | 1.53125 | 2 |
What makes MIT economist James Poterba’s research so valuable is that his work focuses as much on public policy as on the private-sector financial behavior that is the more typical field of observation of retirement researchers.
So it is unsurprising that a jury of his distinguished peers has honored Poterba, who is also president of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), with the Retirement Income Industry Association’s (RIIA) award for applied retirement research.
That award, sponsored by AdvisorOne and Research Magazine, will be presented at a ceremony in Boston at RIIA’s annual conference in October. But following the announcement of the award last week, Poterba has shared some of his award-winning perspective with AdvisorOne readers.
The practical, advisor-useful research for which Poterba has been recognized is fully displayed in the most recent study the MIT economist has conducted, together with Steven Venti of Dartmouth and David Wise of Harvard.
In a landmark study NBER published in February, Poterba and his fellow researchers showed that nearly half of all Americans die with financial assets of less than $10,000. The study further found that many of the families observed had no housing or private pension assets either, thus relying exclusively on Social Security.
The researchers eschewed the retirement readiness index and other measures that merely try to figure out where people stand at the beginning of retirement.
“That’s like asking: ‘Am I leaving enough time to get to the airport?’” Poterba says. Maybe not on a day when authorities have closed off a key road, he answers.
So Poterba and his colleagues examined the issue from the opposite perspective. Instead of looking at the beginning of retirement, Poterba says “you can look at a different time clock: the date of death and looking back from there”—using a regularly updated data set based on two decades of biannual surveys of the asset and health dynamics of elderly Americans.
Looked at this way, Poterba says one can see that many “households reached retirement with a reasonably substantial level of financial assets, but by the time we see them at the end of life, their assets have dropped.” And of course there are households that both begin and end retirement with a low level of assets.
The study thus replaces a static image of investing whereby a household saves for retirement, and then dis-saves on a precise income distribution schedule, with a more dynamic understanding of retirement realities.
What does tend to get drawn down in a regular and predictable way are Social Security and defined-benefit pension assets, which leads to questions regarding the value of annuities.
While many a retirement researcher has struggled with the so-called annuity puzzle—the question as to why more people for whom annuities would seem to be sensible investments don’t purchase them—Poterba, who has conducted voluminous research on the topic over several decades, is notably unpuzzled.
“There are two elements to an annuity decision,” he said. “One is asking what it would cost to purchase an annuity. The other is thinking about the benefit calculations associated with annuities.”
Poterba says many households simply lack the financial wherewithal to purchase annuities; their financial assets may not be sufficient to meet minimum purchase requirements, for example. At the other end of the spectrum, he says, there are households with asset levels where they are not likely to draw down assets in their lifetimes.
“There’s a middle group where Social Security won’t protect all their living standard going forward, and they may have sufficient financial assets to make the cost-benefit analysis,” Poterba continues. But for this middle group, whether to purchase the annuity depends on that cost-benefit analysis of “household specific circumstances” and the market price of annuities. “There is a large degree of heterogeneity” among middle-market households, he says.
One more of the innumerable key issues upon which Poterba’s research has cast light is the feared “asset market meltdown” about which some demographic analyses have warned. In an important paper published in 2001, Poterba—prompted by widespread fears at the time that the aging of the baby boomers was a demographic time bomb for stocks—investigated the relationship between the age structure of the population and stock market returns.
Poterba projected that demand for equities in the years 2020 to 2050 would not decline sharply, arguing that age-wealth profiles would decelerate only gradually—in contrast to the robust surge in asset values on the way up, as the age and wealth of the baby boomers swelled in the 1980s and ’90s.
Market developments since the publication of his research has not altered in any way Poterba’s conclusions.
“I think it is very important not to take a narrow national perspective on this. We live in a global capital market. If there’s an aging population in Japan, they may be able to invest in assets supplied in other countries,” Poterba says.
He adds that income growth in places like China, India and Brazil will supply the buyers for assets of aging populations in the U.S. “As their populations grow, their demand for U.S. financial assets will presumably rise,” he says.
While this is true for assets like stocks that can be easily traded across borders, Poterba warns the case may be different for “fixed assets that are difficult to trade to foreign investors—owner-occupied housing, for example.”
On balance, Poterba expects only “relatively modest” headwinds facing stock markets in the developed world as a result of demographic shifts. | <urn:uuid:4eedcee2-9a36-4d16-a355-c3b315f3e445> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.advisorone.com/2012/08/13/why-so-many-americans-die-poor-and-other-big-retir?t=careerstthe-retireetthe-retiree | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961533 | 1,227 | 1.984375 | 2 |
Definition of Loan participation
1. Noun. A loan that is shared by a group of banks that join to make a loan too big for any one of them alone.
Loan Participation Pictures
Click the following link to bring up a new window with an automated collection of images related to the term: Loan Participation Images
Lexicographical Neighbors of Loan Participation
Literary usage of Loan participation
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. Drought and Famine Relationships in Sudan: Policy Implications by Tesfaye Teklu, Joachim Von Braun (1991)
"The weak performance of ABS in terms of its record of low profitability and an apparent decline in loan participation has raised serious doubts about its ..."
2. Industrial Loan Corporations: Recent Asset Growth and Commercial Interest by Richard J. Hillman (2006)
"... companies into a chain creates a concentration of banking resources that can be susceptible to common risks including poor loan participation practices, ..."
3. The OECD Small and Medium Enterprise Outlookby Marian Murphy by Marian Murphy (2002)
"At least two new full-time jobs must be created within one year of provision of the loan. Participation in this programme cannot be combined with ..."
4. Railway Problems in China by Mongton Chih Hsu (1915)
"Now, the Chinese share holdings exceed the British loan participation in the capital of the road, and the Government has endeavored from time to time to ..."
5. Foreign Banks: Initial Assessment of Certain BCCI Activities in the U. S (1993)
"A loan participation is the sharing of a loan by a group of banks that join together to make a loan, often one that is too large for any one bank to handle. ..."
Other Resources Relating to: Loan participation | <urn:uuid:427bd85c-a737-48ac-ae16-e91d5b6df46b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/loan_participation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93703 | 378 | 2.65625 | 3 |
exquisite drone-based harmony on English bagpipes
Zephyrus - the English Bagpipe Orchestra - offer the glorious harmony and sinuous counterpoint of six sweetly toned bagpipes underpinned by driving percussion. Formed by Jon Swayne in 1998 to perform his piece The Halfe Hannikin Variations, Zephyrus brings together some of the best players of modern English bagpipes. The polyphonic style of writing developed by Jon is quite unique and exploits to the full the amazingly rich sonority offered by six pipes. The group have released two CDs of their music, Halfe Hannikin and English Suite.
You can hear some of their music and get a taste of their performances on the video page.
The Halfe Hannikin Variations is a suite of music inspired by the tune of the same name in John Playford's 1651 edition of The English Dancing Master. It comprises Prelude - Theme, Slowish Waltz, Polka, Slow Five, Bourrée, Dark Seven, Wodgy and Finale. The piece is far from a static presentation, the musicians having worked out carefully choreographed moves so as to enhance both the visual and the musical impact.
Zephyrus have since added a new and exciting piece by Jon Swayne to their repertoire. Named 'The English Suite' this work consists of Jig, Song I, Rant, Dirge, Song II and Hornpipe. English dance and song forms are used as the basis for new and beautiful themes.
Zephyrus also have in their repertoire two striking pieces specially written for them by their percussionist, composer Terry Mann, and if required can add variety to an extended programme by including trios, duos and solos from the group members. The members of the band also have considerable experience of teaching pipes and can offer a variety of workshops.
Zephyrus has performed at festivals, arts centres & concerts, in venues ranging from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama and Sheffield's Crucible Theatre to churches, cathedrals and even a castle.
In 2000 Zephyrus undertook a series of concerts, mostly in churches and one in Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, for which they were successful in obtaining funding support from the Arts Council of England.
The six pipers all use Jon Swayne's Border style bagpipes; a rich-toned instrument developed over the last 20 years. Outwardly following the style of pipes from Northumberland and Southern Scotland, these instruments have three drones and are chromatic over one and a half octaves, allowing supremely expressive drone-based music spanning a wide range of keys and modes. Combining six of them together makes for an unrivalled ensemble sound, perfectly blended, and driven along by the solid and sympathetic percussion lines of Terry Mann.
Maintained by Chris Walshaw () | <urn:uuid:d1869042-87f7-4cfa-b92d-5d6158e09844> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://zephyrusmusic.co.uk/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955386 | 586 | 1.773438 | 2 |
2:1 Industrial Design proposes laying tracks on existing roadways and creating a novel electric vehicle to help deal with congestion in towns and cities throughout Brazil
Like many other regions of the world, Brazil has a transport congestion problem. Once seen as a city issue, traffic jams have spread to smaller and smaller towns. The designers of the OU concept propose a possible solution where existing roadways have rails installed and drivers of specially kitted-out vehicles can join road trains to flow through otherwise congested areas at a constant pace. The electric OU vehicle's wheels would operate in either an open configuration – for normal driving – or closed, for rail travel. | <urn:uuid:934a16a8-a907-4fdc-9aa9-9782e24662d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gizmag.com/ou-concept-vehicle-on-track-to-ease-congestion/18038/picture/131168/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948384 | 129 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Recent and pending congressional efforts to reform the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will fail to solve the underlying structural problems of air traffic control (ATC). Procurement and personnel reforms, while useful, are not likely to change the FAA's bureaucratic corporate culture. And they do not address the inherent problems of the ATC system being part of the federal budget process, subject to external micromanagement, and subject to a conflict of interest between safety regulation and ATC operations.
Canada has now joined 15 other countries in fundamentally restructuring its ATC system, by 1) divesting it to a newly created corporation, 2) funding it entirely by user fees, and 3) subjecting it to arms-length safety regulation. Data from other restructured ATC systems reveal major gains in efficiency, reduced flight delays, reductions in operating costs, and significant progress in technological upgrades.
Canada is selling its ATC system to a not-for-profit corporation (Nav Canada) set up and controlled by the major aviation stakeholders: airlines, business aircraft owners, pilots, air traffic controllers, and the government (which is also a user of the system). This was a consensus approach developed by the aviation community itself, as the best way to resolve the same set of structural problems that beset the U.S. ATC system. Their guiding principle has been “user pay means user say.”
A U.S. adaptation of the Nav Canada model offers several advantages over current House and Senate FAA reform proposals, as well as moving beyond the Clinton Administration's failed government-corporation proposal. As an independent nonprofit corporation, it would give meaningful control of the system to its users, all of whom would be represented on its board of directors. Independent of government, it would develop a commercial corporate culture, like those of overseas ATC corporations. ATC funding would keep pace with the growth of aviation, no longer held hostage to the federal budget process. User fees would be reasonable, tempering cost-allocation with ability-to-pay. For example, a typical Learjet in business use would pay only a bit more or a bit less in annual user fees than it used to pay in fuel taxes, which would be abolished. Air safety would be improved, thanks to both arms-length regulation by the FAA and the rapid modernization made possible by a revenue-bond funded modernization program. This approach would permit the abolition of the passenger ticket tax, with the remaining FAA functions funded by general federal revenues.
The United States should follow the example of Britain, Germany, Switzerland—and now Canada—in fundamentally restructuring air traffic control. A not-for-profit user-controlled, user-funded corporation is the best way to address the ATC system's fundamental problems. | <urn:uuid:9b83ecbb-1d34-449c-8012-31819c3f3944> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reason.org/news/printer/reinventing-air-traffic-contro | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954028 | 561 | 2 | 2 |
Surely many of you know (and also have used) the application “Read it later“. As its name implies, this app allows you to save content while browsing the web to read it later when you have free time.
Recently “Read It Later” has decided to completely change their design, add new functions and start from scratch with a new name: Pocket.
Read it later
Every day we see some interesting links on Twitter, Facebook or blogs you really want to read but you don’t have enough time. Bookmarks used to be a way to solve it, but they were created with the intention to make our sites “favorites” and not to store new content every day. Thus, we have hundreds of bookmarks and yet we continue to ignore the article I kept it to “read later”.
Pocket, in addition to its cross-platform system (Android, iPhone OS, web app) it’s Social Network friendly, as all web apps must be today. Besides sharing posts, articles and news on different social networks you can also flag as interesting (and save them for your later reading) several posts on Facebook, Twitter, RSS, Youtube, etc.
Pocket makes life much easier: it collects all these content you want to read later by place them together in one page (like a personal blog) so you can access that in few clicks those articles that you have flagged as interesting.
Pocket has a very nice visual user interface, it’s clear it wants to be part of your daily life as a place to store “all sorts of things” and not just blog entries.
Actions you can do with Pocket
When reading an article with Pocket you can: Tweet it, share it on Facebook, mark your favorites or delete them from the list.
Pocket supports the following options:
- E-mail View Article
- Open in browser
- View Report Article
- Google Reader
We could talk in detail about each of the features and benefits that Pocket has over other similar applications, but it’s better for you to check it yourselfand download it to your Android, iPhone, iPad or even for Mozilla’s web browser, Firefox
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- Itunes 11: How to bring back the previous layout – with Sidebar | <urn:uuid:e9b637fd-d100-4e28-bd9b-05aa4a9bec2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.toggle.com/best-sites-2012-pocket-avoid-read-it-later/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933871 | 530 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Click here to download an Archery Trade Association (ATA) pdf brochure on archery safety.
The National Safety Council rates archery more accident free than every popular ball sport, including tennis and golf. When one puts a ball in the air and kids get running, jumping and spinning around almost anything can happen. You expect injuries whether its turned ankles, twisted knees or torn ligaments. Archery allows students to be taught a safe, lifetime skill they can practice almost anywhere. More than 500,000 students have participated in NASP
To address safety concerns, while the students are shooting the teachers stand at the shooting line. Everything is done with whistle commands, as students are instructed to pick up the bow, walk to the firing line and pick up one arrow. Always pointing it downrange in a safe direction, they fire three or more shots upon command, rack the bow and return to the waiting line. Then the whistle allows them to go downrange and withdraw the arrows out of the target in a safe manner. When they carry the arrows back, they carry them covering the tips so there's no possibility of someone getting hurt. It is almost unheard of for a person to injure himself/herself or another person while shooting bow and arrow.
Students have the opportunity to shoot at bulls-eye targets placed before an arrow-resistant net in their gymnasium. This allows the course to be conducted any time of the year, regardless of the weather. It can also be adapted to outdoor ranges. When setting up the range, safety of the shooters, observers and bystanders is of the utmost importance.
Teacher training includes, "How to set-up a safe indoor shooting range":
INDOOR ARCHERY RANGE LAYOUT
Archery is safe because, as a shooting sport, the field of play – or range – is designed with safety in mind. | <urn:uuid:f3721c68-0c70-407f-a654-496ac44f78d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://guntersville.campground@dcnr.alabama.gov/education/archery/safety.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940318 | 381 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Apr. 2, 2007 Using a microscope and some extreme "snapshot" photography with shutter speeds only a few nanoseconds long, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Cornell University have uncovered the traces of ephemeral "nanobubbles" formed in boiling water on a microheater.
Their observations* suggest an added complexity to the everyday phenomenon of boiling, and may affect technologies as diverse as inkjet printers and some proposed cancer therapies.
You might think that the science of boiling had been worked out some time ago, but it still has some mysteries, particularly at the nanometer scale. As water and other fluids change from their liquid state to a vapor, bubbles of the vapor form. The bubbles usually form at "nucleation sites," which can be small surface irregularities on the container or tiny suspended particles in the fluid. The exact onset of boiling depends on the presence and nature of these sites.
To observe the process, the NIST/Cornell team used a unique ultrafast laser strobe microscopy technique with an effective shutter speed of eight nanoseconds to photograph bubbles growing on a microheater surface about 15 micrometers wide. At this scale, a voltage pulse of only five microseconds superheats the water to nearly 300 °C, creating a microbubble tens of microns in diameter. When the pulse ends, the microbubble collapses as the water cools. What the team found was that if a second voltage pulse follows closely enough, the second microbubble forms earlier during the pulse and at a lower temperature apparently, as conjectured by the team, because nanobubbles formed by the collapse of the first bubble become new nucleation sites for the growth of later bubbles. The nanobubbles themselves are too small to observe, but by changing the timing between voltage pulses and observing how long it takes the second microbubble to form, the researchers were able to estimate the lifetime of the nanobubbles--roughly 100 microseconds.
These experiments are believed to be the first evidence that nanoscale bubbles can form on hydrophilic surfaces (previous evidence of nanobubbles was found only for hydrophobic surfaces like oilcloth) and the method for measuring nanobubble lifetimes may improve models for optimal heat transfer design in nanostructures. The work has immediate implications for inkjet printing, in which a metal film is heated with a voltage pulse to create a bubble that is used to eject a droplet of ink through a nozzle. If inkjet printing is pushed to higher speeds (repetition rates above about 10 kilohertz), the work suggests, nanobubbles on the heater surface between pulses will make it difficult or impossible to control bubble formation properly.
The findings also may impact proposed thermal cancer therapies in which nanoscale objects are designed to accumulate in tumors and are subsequently heated remotely by infrared radiation or alternating magnetic fields. Each particle acts as a nanoscale heater, with nanobubbles being created if the applied radiation is sufficient. The bubbles may have a therapeutic effect through additional heat delivered and mechanical stresses they may impart to the surrounding tissue.
* R. E. Cavicchi and C.T. Avedisian. Bubble nucleation and growth anomaly for a hydrophilic microheater attributed to metastable nanobubbles. Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 124501 (2007).
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
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:f6defcf0-064b-442e-b246-96a5a860773b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070330184936.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928648 | 775 | 3.90625 | 4 |
Extension Educator, Horticulture
Problem child–everybody has one, knows one or is one. Problems predictably follow them along with the headaches. Perhaps problem children just haven't found their niche where they can flourish. Some trees seem like problem children with their dropping twigs, diseases and bug problems. Actually the trees are not bad trees, we just haven't placed them in a situation where they can flourish.
First of all, select the right tree for the right spot. Give power lines plenty of clearance from large trees. You do the math. A tree with a mature height of 80 feet will soon engulf a 30 feet tall power line.
Secondly, when planting trees do some homework to determine the common problems associated with a tree selection. Just wanting fast shade is not a good reason to plant a problem child unless you are planning to remove the tree once a more desirable tree gets larger. With proper care such as watering during drought periods, mulching and regular fertilization, durable trees can be planted and will provide fairly quick shade.
Many trees should not be planted as shade trees in lawns, but are usable trees around ponds and in less manicured areas. They can also provide wildlife habitat and food in natural areas.
Don't plant problem children without careful thought. If you have inherited a problem tree, get to know a certified arborist who can evaluate the tree. A few problem children include:
|Silver Maple||Probably one of the best trees for areas with very poor soil and poor growing conditions where few other trees would survive. However, they can cause sidewalks to buckle and can clog drain tiles. Silver maples are very fast growing which means weak wood and limbs all over the yard from wind, ice and snow damage.|
|Sycamore||Like most kids, they are always dropping something. They have leaves like shoe leather (from a very large shoe). The tree continually sheds its outside bark in summer. They can reach 100 feet tall with an equal spread - much too large for a street tree and for most lawns. The regular infection of the fungal leaf disease, anthracnose, keeps sycamores bare of leaves until mid to late June and causes twigs to continually fall. Sycamores are magnificent trees situated along rivers and in flood plains, which is where they should stay.|
|Siberian Elm||Numerous diseases, brittle wood, elm leaf beetle and just plain messiness with no ornamental attributes. I'm having a hard time determining the redeeming value of Siberian elms. Firewood, perhaps?|
|Green Ash||Narrow branch angles, prone to storm damage, ash borer, ash decline disease.|
|European White Birch and paper birch||Prone to bronze birch borer insect, prone to storm damage, needs high soil moisture. Consider superior cultivars such 'Hertiage' and 'Whitespire.'|
|Birch, River||Leaf yellowing due to iron deficiency, tends to drop twigs, susceptible to storm damage.|
|Black Locust||Borers, root suckers, weedy seedlings.|
|Bradford Pear||Poor branch structure, too many branches arising from common site on trunk, narrow branch angles, tends to split apart as it ages, needs regular pruning to develop structure.|
|European Mountainash||Borer insects, fire blight disease.|
|Pin Oak||Iron deficiency in alkaline soils.|
|Scotch Pine||Pine wilt disease.|
|Lombardy Poplar||Canker disease.|
|White Poplar||Root suckers.|
|Princess Tree||Brittle wood, drops leaves, twigs, flowers and seeds. Flower buds often get killed by frost in central Illinois.|
|Russian-olive||Canker and verticillium fungus wilt disease.|
Biological Pest Control Workshop
Thursday March 16, 9 am-4pm. Discover the wonderful world of beneficial insects that can help us control garden pests. Cost is $35 per person or $45 for couples. Cost includes many publications. Call 333-7672 for information. | <urn:uuid:5fa66af3-fac7-4a7d-9489-d1d76f191922> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://web.extension.illinois.edu/cfiv/homeowners/000311.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937113 | 864 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Last week the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention replaced the bylaw that required all SBTC employees and elected officials to abstain from drunkenness (a biblical command) to a demand that all SBTC employees and elected officals abstain from “the use of alcohol as a beverage.” The only reason for such a bylaw change is the belief held by SBTC leadership that drinking an alcoholic beverage is a sin - for everybody. A year ago, when I first heard about the SBTC bylaw proposal, I spent a few minutes and wrote a post declaring my deeply held belief that drinking tea was a sin - for everybody. Having served in leadership of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma for the past twenty years, I am inclined to offer my own bylaw amendment next year at the BGCO, demanding that all BGCO employees and elected officials abstain from tea drinking. If you find the following post absurd, then you best ask yourself what you are going to do to ensure that Southern Baptists, either at the state level or the national level, stop codifying sin for others by exceeding the clear standards of the sufficient Word of God.
Reasons Why Tea Totalers Should Be Excluded from Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma Leadership by a Bylaw Change That Calls for Everyone to Abstain from Drinking Tea
(1). Drinking tea leads a person to addiction to caffeine.
There might be some who allege that drinking just one or two glasses of tea does not lead to caffeine addiction. This is technically true, but unfortunately, not all Christians who partake in moderate tea drinking can stop with just a couple of glasses. It is not uncommon for Christian men and women to progress from tea, to coffee, to 64 ounce Colas or Mountain Dews. Where does it stop? How does one know when the line of addiction has been crossed? If caffeine is addictive, then why play with fire? We must conclude that Drinking tea is a sin (Counsels on Diet and Drink: Part II, Tea and Coffee, page 434).
(2). Tea and coffee are destructive to the Christian's body, which is the temple of God.
As pointed out above, caffeine is highly addictive. Quitting coffee can cause withdrawal symptoms such as headaches, sleepiness and irritability. The acidic nature of coffee can lead to stomach ulcers. When the excess acid enters the bloodstream, it also increases calcium loss in urine. Both coffee and tea have no nutritional value. Tannin, the substance that makes tea cups brown and coats tea pots, is used for tanning leather. Imagine the stomach after twenty years of tea drinking.
Caffeine is able to penetrate deep into vital tissue. Evidence shows that it may be linked to male infertility and also birth defects by passing through the placenta. Drinking coffee during breast feeding will cause caffeine to be present in mothers' milk.
Caffeine has a powerful effect on coronary arteries and the pulmonary and systemic vessels, causing a greater flow of blood to the heart muscle, but decreasing the flow of blood to the brain by constricting cerebral blood vessels. Caffeine can cause abnormally fast, abnormally slow and irregular heart beats. It also wreaks havoc on blood pressure, commonly producing hypertension. Coffee has been linked to heart disease, pancreas and bladder cancer, and hypoglycemia.
Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant, providing that familiar kick on which we have come to depend. But as with all stimulants, there is a price to be paid. If you run the body on overdrive for an extended period of time by artificially stimulating the adrenals, expect breakdown to occur.
(3). Though the Bible does not expressly forbid the drinking of tea, there is an overwhelming preponderence of Biblical evidence that tea drinking is a sin.
"Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to those who send him" (Proverbs 10:36). The same acidic quality of vinegar, tea and coffee is as damaging to the Christian as smoke is to the eyes.
“Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand” (Phil. 4:5), “…every man that strives for the mastery is temperate in all things” (I Cor. 9:25).
Though some might argue that these verses do not explicitly 'forid' the drinking of tea, it is clear that the Christian who desires to be holy in all things will not even begin to cross the line of introducing tea or coffee into his system.
(4). Though some have the gall to say Jesus drank tea on the cross, it was clearly not the same kind of tea or substance that tea drinkers consume today.
Some try to be cute in their arguments for moderate tea drinking by pointing out that Jesus drank 'vinegar' on the cross, which contains the same acidic and caffeneited quality as today's tea.
The Bible states, "And one ran and filled a sponge full of vinegar and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink...." (Mk. 15:36).
Biblical scholars have long pointed out that the acidic and caffeinated content of the vinegar drink offered to Jesus was less than 5% of the acid and caffeine found in today's most popular teas. To compare the actions of Jesus at Calvary with today's tea drinking should be considered a sin in and of itself.
To justify your own desire to drink tea by pointing to the conduct of Jesus is shameful.
(5). The argument that drinking tea is not illegal in the United States, and therefore, lawful for the Christian, is an argument straight from hell.
Homosexuality is not illegal in the states. Adultery is not illegal in America. Dressing inappropriately with boxers showing, and breasts peeking out of tight tops is not illegal in my hometown, but does that make it right?
Just to say drinking tea is not illegal is in reality no argument at all. "In everything we do, whether we eat or drink, we do for the glory of God" (I Corinthians 10:31).
(6). Some cultures drink tea as a normal part of daily life, but that is no excuse for Christians to drink it, since we are to be 'a cut above' the world.
Some missionaries might argue that drinking tea in China is a cultural event, and to identify with the Chinese one must drink tea. As it is said, "When in Rome do as the Romans."
Hogwash. We are not to let culture affect us, we are to be a shining example to culture of how Christ can transform people. The person who drinks tea on a regular basis simply has no idea what Christ can do for his life, and if you drink tea with him, while introducing him to Christ, then you may give him the impression he can continue drinking tea as a Christian.
When in Rome do as Christ would do. Christ would not sit and drink tea with the Chinese. How could He defile His holy body in such a manner?
(7). When a Christian purchases tea he is supporting an entire industry that has made a fortune by leading people to the mind altering, destructive, and nearly impossible to break addiction to caffeine.
This industry must not be supported by Christians. Every dollar you spend on green tea is like purchasing a death warrant for the person who will later die from an acidic stomach from the tea produced by the company to whom you gave profits.
It is time for Christians to shut down the entire, godless industry of tea making and associated tea products.
(8). It has been scandalously reported that some young, Southern Baptist pastors are actually having Bible studies in the local Starbucks in an effort to lead people to Christ.
The pastors who have begun this new outreach program seem to have no understanding of what it means to be 'in the world, but not of the world.'
No matter how many people have come to Christ through these creative efforts, it is unconscionable for SBC pastors to actually meet in a location where people are introducing into their bodies an agent that alters the mind, changes the disposition, and eventually destroys the body.
No matter how slick the environment, there is no excuse for the compromise of the gospel.
(9). A great concern for the loosening of the standard of total abstinence from tea drinking is the belief that those Southern Baptist moderates and liberals who drink tea will eventually cause the Southern Baptist Convention to turn back from a firm belief in the inerrancy of the Bible.
It is being reported that there are actually some pastors who are either not using the Bible in their ministries, or trusting in very loose translations of the holy and inerrant KJV.
For example, one loose knit association of SBC pastors have actually quoted Psalm 23 as:
The Lord is my barista; I shall not want.
He maketh me to recline on green sofas: he leadeth me beside the clean tables.
He repoureth my latte: he maketh me a ristretto of righteousness for goodness sake.
Yea, though I walk through the aisles of instant coffee, I will fear no nescafe: for thou art with me; thy cafe and it's staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest an espresso for me in the presence of mine tea drinking colleagues: thou anointest my ears with friendly banter; my latte hath art on it.
Surely warmth and bonhomie shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the cafe of the Lord for ever
(10). Drinking caffeinated tea for recreational purposes physiologically acts as a 'mind altering drug, "
Once a Christian says it is all right to alter his mind by introducing outside agents to change his perspective, where will he stop? Why not marijuana? Why not cocaine? The libertinism of the modern Southern Baptist Convention must be checked. The line in the sand must be drawn with tea and coffee.
There will be a recommendation for a bylaw change introduced at the 20008 Baptist General Convetion of Oklahoma in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, November 15, 2008, which will forbid any BGCO employee or elected offical from participating in the recreational use of tea or coffee.
May God keep our the Baptist General Covention of Oklahoma pure.
May God bless the Southern Baptist Convention. | <urn:uuid:ecd3edf2-6b53-4123-b004-3d0fcc3fcc8a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wadeburleson.org/2007/11/personal-holiness-by-abstaining-from.html?showComment=1195880760000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948038 | 2,156 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Anyone planning to build a geodesic dome will want to look at the image below. It identifies how many struts used for different frequencies. The higher the frequency, the more struts are used, and the stronger the geodesic dome will be.
Note: odd frequency domes can be more or less than 1/2 of a sphere. This affects the number of struts used. Shown above are a 3v 5/9 and a 5v 8/15. For a more detailed chart click here.
The obvious question
So why not always build domes with the same frequency? Three factors: strength, simplicity and cost.
The most popular frequency is the 3v because it uses less struts than a 4v which makes it easier, faster, and less expensive to build, but if you want a geodesic dome larger than 30 feet (9m) in diameter, traditional materials will not be strong enough. You then have 2 options:
- Use better and stronger materials
- Increase the frequency of your geodesic dome
And this is how many people come to consider a different frequency.
Odd and Even frequencies
Even frequencies such as 2v, 4v, 6v and so forth can “split”(truncate) a sphere at the center (making it a hemisphere) and create a dome which is flat at its base. This is the frequency most often used in the domes you see.
Odd frequencies such as 1v, 3v,5v do not naturally truncate at the center of a sphere, and they are not flat at their base.
But there is an exception to odd frequencies. The Kruschke method or geometry is different than the traditional method 1 geometry (what most use). With it you can calculate a geodesic dome which will be flat at its base for odd frequencies. Domerama has 3v Kruschke calculators in the Calculators section. | <urn:uuid:6e8f67f6-52fa-4312-8ce7-9a8851df3ae3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.domerama.com/geodesic-dome-size-and-frequency/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928311 | 405 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Part of the family
By RANDY GONZALES
OSBORNE -- In their family, Mitch and Vickie Vandament have one grown son and a daughter-in-law -- and 57 alpacas.
The alpaca herd the Vandaments keep in two barns just north of town seems like part of the family. They live on 40 acres, hence the name North 40 Alpacas for their business. Each alpaca has a name and its own personality. When Vickie shows up at the barn, they come right up to her -- for a reason.
"She's the treat lady," Mitch said.
Sure enough, on a recent afternoon, a white alpaca named Faye ate treats from Vickie's hand.
"They definitely know my smell," Vickie said. "They love me."
The Vandaments started thinking about raising alpacas -- which first came to the United States in 1983 -- to supplement their income in the 1990s. Mitch still farms and ranches, while Vickie is a district manager for a rehabilitation company for speech and occupational therapy.
In 2004, the Vandaments started with three alpacas. They started selling the fleece for income. Now, they still sell the fleece, but they also are breeders. Of their 57 alpacas, 40 are males.
The fleece is sheared once a year, in early June, with each grown alpaca producing approximately 8 pounds of fleece. The Vandaments get approximately $2 an ounce when they sell it.
There are three categories of fleece. The No. 1 category, which comes from the backs and belly, is the best and is sold to Shepherd's Mill, a fiber processing mill in Phillipsburg. There, it is turned into items such as caps, gloves and scarves.
The No. 2 category comes from the shoulders and neck and mainly is used for rugs. No. 3 category, which comes from the tail and legs, can be used for insulation.
What makes alpaca fleece so desirable, Mitch said, is it has just 2 percent lanolin in it. That prevents it from being itchy.
"With 2 percent lanolin, that's the key ingredient," he said.
Alpaca fleece comes in 22 natural colors, but the white fleece is valued the most because it can be dyed different colors. Still, the Vandaments have alpacas of all colors in their herd.
"I love the variety," Vickie said.
The Vandaments and the neighbor kids who help keep the herd take turns naming the alpacas, just as if they were their own children.
"Very cute and huggable," Vickie said of the alpacas. "Unconditional love right here."
After a long, hard day at work, Vickie knows how to let the stress leave her body.
"I love to come out to the barn, enjoy my evening, talk to the animals," she said. "I've always been an animal person."
The Vandaments experienced some stressful times in the business a few years ago. The alpaca industry suffered along with the rest of the economy in 2008. Now, it slowly is making its way back. Mitch thinks it's still a good investment.
"For the long-term, yes," he said. "For the long-term, put out a high-quality product out there ... that's enjoyment."
The alpaca business was booming in the United States years ago. Then the recession hit.
"There's quite a few people (who) got in for the wrong reasons, thought they were going to make a quick buck," Mitch said.
The Vandaments, however, are in it for the long haul.
"It's our 401(k)," Vickie said with a laugh. | <urn:uuid:f54bdf1f-823d-43fb-a824-4fb69afbc79f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hdnews.net/Story/norwester100712 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971554 | 805 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Christians may not get any closer to heaven by folding the palm reeds given out in the churches of some denominations this weekend, but many will create for themselves a symbol they can display to remind them of God.
Members of Greek Orthodox churches enjoy the Palm Sunday practice, as do some Roman Catholics and Episcopalians.
The crosses are made by folding two reeds in ways that essentially work like knots. No glue, tacks or other clamping or adhesives are used—just folding and, at the end, tucking extra ends into the middle, or cutting them off with scissors. Like a good knot, a tightly folded cross can be quite sturdy and hold up well over time.
Pastor Robert Lamborn of St. Luke's Church in Katonah said the making of palm crosses isn't any kind of requirement or obligation for Christians.
"It's something people do to take the symbol of the beginning of the Palm Sunday service—when Jesus enters Jerusalem—to the end of the service, reminding us of when Jesus died on the cross," he said.
It's enjoyable to do and to think about, said Mother Yejide Peters of All Saints' Church in Briarcliff Manor. Turning a palm reed into a cross—a tactile form of prayer—is appropriate for Holy Week, the church season that starts with a triumphant procession and travels through the crucifixion to get to Easter. "Our moment of joy is a moment of sorrow."
People often keep them for a year, hanging them in their homes as a symbol and remembrance. Sometimes the dried palms are returned to the church and burned during a Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras celebration, to create the ashes that mark the start of the Lenten season, she said.
"It brings the palms full circle," Lamborn said.
Editor's note: This article was originally published just before Palm Sunday in 2011. Anthony Gurliacci, in the accompanying video, is the father of Darien Patch Editor David Gurliacci, who wrote this article and took the video. | <urn:uuid:10f51eaa-8992-4298-a0ab-d7abdc05e69c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ossining.patch.com/groups/around-town/p/how-to-make-crosses-from-palm-sunday-reeds-4c879f85 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959641 | 423 | 2.125 | 2 |
A look at five primarily undergraduate universities reveals the variety of post-secondary options across the country
University of Ontario Institute of Technology
The University of Ontario Institute of Technology is a relative newcomer to the post-secondary scene, but its mission was clear from the outset: to give its graduates a competitive edge. Putting an emphasis on the practical, UOIT’s focus includes business, information technology, engineering and science. Its faculty of energy systems and nuclear science offers Canada’s only honours degree in nuclear engineering. The university is also committed to innovative approaches to alternative energy sources, and offers courses in wind, solar, hydrogen, hydraulic, nuclear and geothermal energy. Currently under construction, the $28-million Automotive Centre of Excellence (ACE-Global) will be a cutting-edge research, design and training centre for the automobile industry. In fact, strength in research contributed to UOIT making a strong debut in the Maclean’s rankings this year, placing 12th out of 22 Primarily Undergraduate universities.
Located in Oshawa, UOIT is growing rapidly: undergrad enrolment was 6,285 this September, a 15 per cent increase from last year.
Wilfrid Laurier University
Wilfrid Laurier’s compact main campus is in Waterloo, Ont., part of Canada’s so-called Technology Triangle. Housing 21 research centres and 10 research chairs, innovation is the norm. In spite of growth that has seen its student population double over the past 10 years, Laurier retains a strong sense of community. It tied for fourth place in the Primarily Undergraduate category in this year’s rankings, with a strong showing on the reputational survey and the number of faculty winning awards and research grants.
The School of Business and Economics has an enrolment of more than 4,500; one of the biggest drawing cards is its co-op component. Meanwhile, a liberal-arts-focused campus in Brantford, Ont., offers an interdisciplinary program in contemporary studies and a concurrent education program in partnership with Nipissing University. A social work program, at the nearby Kitchener campus, allows students to work closely with service agencies in the area. And through the Centre for Community Service-Learning, more than 1,300 students earn academic credit by working with local non-profit organizations.
University of Lethbridge
The focus at Lethbridge, in southern Alberta, is on giving students a well-rounded liberal arts education. Undergraduates are encouraged to participate in research, and the university’s modest size allows close contact with faculty. When it comes to research, the university strives to stay relevant to the region. The recently completed Alberta Water and Environmental Science Building collects an interdisciplinary team of geologists, physicists and economists under one roof, all researching water. (A second-place finish on the number of faculty winning medical-science grants helped propel Lethbridge to a rank of sixth this year among Primarily Undergraduate universities.) The faculty of education, meanwhile, offers an array of Aboriginal-centred program options.
page 1 page 2 | <urn:uuid:f6c53250-256d-4fb8-92b9-a8b61cbe231f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2009/11/05/on-the-radar/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935499 | 636 | 1.71875 | 2 |
New Orleans, LA (NOL)
1001 Loyola Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70113
Note: Fiscal year is from
October through September.
City of New Orleans
City of New Orleans
City of New Orleans
City of New Orleans
The New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal (NOUPT) opened on January 8, 1954 to consolidate passenger rail operations from the city’s other railroad’s stations and reduce the number of dangerous grade crossings throughout the central city. When it was built between 1947 and 1954, NOUPT was an ultra-modern facility with a stone facing. It was originally built at a cost of $2,225,000 and replaced the city’s five scattered passenger depots. At the time, this 53,600 square-foot structure was the only air-conditioned station in the country and served 44 passenger trains and seven railroads (although a partner, Gulf, Mobile & Ohio terminated passenger service to New Orleans just prior to the opening of NOUPT). Although the terminal was owned by the city, it was built and paid for by the railroads themselves.
This stub-end terminal consists of a modern waiting hall and covered platforms; its freight and express houses are now the domain of the New Orleans Arena and main post office. The NOUPT waiting hall contains the famous 2,166 square-foot fresco murals painted by Conrad Albrizio, a renowned professor of art at Louisiana State University, assisted by James Fisher. The murals depict the history of Louisiana in four panels representing the ages of exploration, colonization, conflict and the modern age. These murals were recently restored by the New Orleans Building Corporation, a public benefit corporation charged with managing and developing city properties.
While rail has been in and around New Orleans since 1831 with the opening of the Pontchartrain Rail Company, it never quite became a rail center, because of the strength of the river trade. Through 1850, it had only a few short intra-urban passenger lines to carry racing fans to various tracks in the vicinity. There were failed attempts to build out to Nashville between 1830 and 1860, as well as to the rest of the South and Southwest. The Civil War interrupted New Orleans’ commercial empire and shattered what railroads had been built, so that it was not until the 1870s that rail construction could be completed.
By the 1880s, a number of passenger freight railroads were serving the city. The Louisville and Nashville had a passenger station at the foot of Canal Street, and provided service to New Orleans through Birmingham, Montgomery, and Mobile. The Southern Railway terminal was constructed at 1125 Canal Street in 1908. The Texas Pacific-Missouri Pacific stood on Annunciation Street, and was completed in 1916, serving that western railroad. Eventually, seven railroads had the Crescent City as a terminus, thanks to its strategic position as the gateway to the Gulf Coast; however, practically no through-car passenger service was operating until the first Union Station was built in 1892.
The New Orleans Union Station was designed by Louis H. Sullivan for the Illinois Central Railroad. Fronting on South Rampart Street, riverwards from the current New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, it opened on June 1, 1892. The station was used primarily by the Illinois Central Railroad as the terminus for its main line from Chicago but, over time it also served a number of other lines, including the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad. By the 1940s, a total of 13 passenger trains arrived and departed from the station daily.
New Orleans Union Station was the only train station architect Louis Sullivan designed. It was constructed in the architect's well-known 'Chicago School' style and decorated with his iconic ornament. Adler and Sullivan's head draftsman Frank Lloyd Wright was involved in the final work under Sullivan's supervision. Union Station was a three story hip-roofed structure with a cupola, including office and waiting areas, with a broad portico with central columns and arched entryways at each end of the entrance. Union Station and the other stations were demolished in 1954 and replaced by the current New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal.
NOUPT was built next to the old Union Station. Parts of the station property also are over what once was the turning basin for the New Basin Canal. The main lead track to the terminal follows the path of the old canal (which was filled in) and the Pontchartrain Expressway/I-10. In the late 1960s, tracks 7-12 were shortened to half tracks in order to accommodate Greyhound Lines in the terminal, sharing the terminal with the remaining passenger trains and later, Amtrak. This helped to create an intermodal facility.
New Orleans is a city so storied it is mythic, along with American cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. It began in 1718, founded by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, and named for Phillip II, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of France at the time (Orléans is a French city). The French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris of 1763, and remained under Spanish control until 1801, when it reverted to French control. Most of the surviving architecture of the Vieux Carré (French Quarter) dates from this Spanish period. Napoleon sold the territory to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
The Haitian Revolution of 1804 not only established the second republic in the New World, but also brought large number of immigrant refugees to New Orleans, including French Creoles, black slaves, and free persons of African descent. By then, 63 percent of the city’s inhabitants were then black as Americans classified them.
During the War of 1812, the British sent a force to take New Orleans, led by Sir Edward Pakenham, whom the Americans defeated in the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815.
As a principal port, in the nineteenth century, New Orleans saw a huge amount of trade in goods for export from the interior of the country and imported to be traded up the Mississippi, as well as slaves. Ironically, it also had the most prosperous community of free persons of color in the South, who were often educated and middle-class property owners.
New Orleans is home to music, the arts, and many celebrations including both: Mardi Gras, Southern Decadence, the French Quarter Festival, the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and the New Orleans Voodoo Music Experience, among others. The inimitable Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans, on August 4, 1901. Armstrong gained fame as a horn player, and then later became better known as a bandleader, vocalist, musical ambassador, and founding figure in much modern American music. Shortly before his death he stated, "I think I had a beautiful life. I didn't wish for anything that I couldn't get and I got pretty near everything I wanted because I worked for it."
The NOUPT escaped major damage following Hurricane Katrina. As one of the few intact and centrally accessible city buildings, the station served as both the temporary criminal justice center and the jail, as it is on relatively high ground and did not flood. An Amtrak locomotive was used to power the building.
The facility has been improved in the recent past and will continue to undergo major renovations during the next several years. Federal funds have been used to plan and upgrade the NOUPT, including a track reconfiguration that will support evacuation as part of the City Assisted Evacuation Plan, and increase intercity rail capacity. By early 2013, various projects had been completed to bring the station's public areas into ADA compliance, including the installation of new doors at the entrances and improvements to the public restrooms. The Amtrak ticket counter and other related support areas have also been refurbished.
In January 2013, NOUPT became the terminus for the new mile-long Loyola Avenue-Union Passenger Terminal Streetcar Line connecting Canal Street with the Central Business District and destinations such as the Superdome. The $52 million project was largely funded through a $45 million Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant awarded to the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The facility has a waiting room and is staffed by Amtrak employees.
New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal is served by four daily trains and one tri-weekly train.
Federal law requires compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by 2010. The following is a list of items typically required for transportation and public facilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Please check the regulations for guidance or contact us for more information.
|Train information display system|
|Visual paging system|
|ADA compliant elevator|
|Accessible ticket counter|
|Accessible Customer Service office|
|ADA compliant signage|
|Flashing/audible safety alarm system| | <urn:uuid:05ab6030-e5bd-4e4f-9b45-028f0dd66f5b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greatamericanstations.com/Stations/NOL | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969017 | 1,863 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Speaking at SIGGRAPH 2012, a yearly computer graphics convention featuring some of the most prominent names in the business, Khronos unveiled updates for several key OpenGL properties including the specs for Open GL ES 3.0. OpenGL ES is the primary graphics API for mobile device platforms, including Android and iOS. As you would expect, the updates are rather technical, but here's an overview of what we can expect in the future.
Much Better Texture Compression
Perhaps the biggest noticeable change in this iteration is that texture compression has been improved, and the spec now has required support for the ETC texture compression format. | <urn:uuid:cc1b4c6f-6024-41c3-9b69-6bdbd91213f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.androidpolice.com/tags/khronos/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942421 | 124 | 1.546875 | 2 |
“It was not worth it.” -Mary, Mother of Jesus
My relationship with the Virgin Mary has always been a little complicated.
I grew up in a religious household, so I was of course introduced to her at an early age. Every year, she was trotted out in Christmas pageants and nativity scenes, where they would tell her story––the angel, the donkey ride to Bethlehem, the virgin birth in a dirty barn––and then put her away with the rest of the Nativity set, not to be seen or heard from until next Christmas.
This was fine with me, because as Biblical figures go, aside from being my introduction to the term “virgin,” Mary never held much interest for me. We had nothing in common, I felt, and yet as I grew older she was constantly thrust in front of me as the ultimate role model for women. You can see the value a character like Mary would have as a tool for reinforcing traditional gender roles, given that her defining characteristics are virginity, motherhood, and submissiveness to God. But traditional gender roles didn’t appeal to me, so I just found her boring. She had no thoughts or opinions of her own, she was simply a means to an end, a side note in a larger story.
It’s fitting then, that in Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary it is her interpretation of the events surrounding her sons life that takes precedence. Though the narrative itself does not stray much from its source material, the Mary Tóibín imagines is completely her own, a full-fledged character worlds away from the shallow, one-dimensional figure we’ve come to revere from Renaissance paintings. This Mary does not believe her son was the Son of God. She can’t stand his followers, does not approve of their mission to evangelize the world on his behalf, and though she acknowledges the existence of his miracles, she finds their effect dubious at best.
This is perhaps best exemplified in the example of Lazarus. Lazarus, for those of you who did not go to Bible school, is a man that Jesus raised from the dead. After his death and resurrection, not much is said about Lazarus. Like Mary, he fades into the background after he has played his part in the narrative. As a child, I used to wonder what happened to Lazarus after he was raised from the dead, and the picture Tóibín paints is not pretty: having experienced death, Lazarus finds himself removed from the world. He does not speak, he can barely eat. And through his example, Mary begins to question the value of the work her son is doing.
This is what differentiates Tóibín’s Mary with the Mary most of us are used to. Unlike the serenely knowing, quietly submissive Mary we are so used to seeing, this Mary does not understand who her son is or what he’s trying to do. In fact, she tries actively to prevent him from doing it. Much of The Testament of Mary details her struggles to reconcile the son she loves with the Son that is headed willfully to his own death, and to do what she can to stop it. At the wedding in Cana (which Biblical scholars will recognize as both the site of the water into wine miracle and one of the only other times Mary is mentioned in the New Testament), she confronts him, attempting to get him to see the danger his life is in and agree to come home with her. He responds by saying (as he does in the Bible), “Woman, what have I to do with you?” At this moment, she knows that he is lost. And yet up until the end, she continues to ask whether there is something that can be done, whether his death can be prevented.
Colm Tóibín is a master of detail, and this is seen nowhere so much as the climax of the book, Jesus’ crucifixion. Unable to process the horror of what is happening, Mary finds herself focusing on details of the scene around her: the way the thorns embed into her son’s forehead, pushing themselves deeper as he tries to pry them out; the way the crosses keep tilting over when they are being put into the ground, the people nearby, playing dice, or in one memorable case, a man feeding rabbits to a live hawk in a cage (this image, incidentally, calls to mind a painting that Tóibín credits for giving him the inspiration for the book). After hours of bearing witness to her son’s suffering, afraid for her own safety, she flees before he’s even dead.
It is her decision to flee that most haunts her, in her old age. She constantly searches for gaps in her memory, places in the narrative where by acting differently she may have been able to save her son. Even as she finds none, even as she knows there are none to find, she continues to look for them, to the point where her memory becomes confused. First she dreams that she saw her son alive, then she dreams that she was with him when he died, and she starts to think that maybe she did stay, maybe she cried over his broken body and washed it in preparation for burial. These false memories have a dreamlike, Titian quality to them, a genius stroke of authorial subtlety, comparing the reality Tóibín imagines to the myth we’ve all accepted. In the end, reality wins out. At night, she still dreams of her son alive and well, of herself as a dutiful mother, but in the harsh light of day, she is forced to reckon with the truth: she had a son, and now her son is dead, she could not save him and no protestations about eternal life from his disciples will bring him back.
There’s a verse in Luke 2:19 about Mary, that takes place soon after Christ’s birth: “And Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” My mother always loved that verse for what it said about Mary’s character, but it made me want to scream. If she was meant to be a role model for all women, I thought, it stood to reason that she should have more to say about what happened to her, about what happened to her son. It never occurred to me that maybe Mary never wanted to be a role model. I think I would have liked her more if it had.
At the end of the novel, Jesus’ unnamed disciples, Mary’s protectors and bane of her fragile existence, attempt to make her understand the value of her son’s death. It was all part of the plan, they say, to redeem the world, to which she responds:
“I was there. I fled before it was over but if you want witnesses than I am one and I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it. It was not worth it.” | <urn:uuid:8131788a-9a7b-4f5d-b9d2-1ad6cc9af653> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cannonballread4.wordpress.com/tag/cbr4/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987613 | 1,474 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Clay artist Jason Holley spends what he says are “ridiculously long hours” in his studio, to the point where his wife has to bring him in meals.
He uses an extruder to squeeze out long coils of clay which he wraps around wooden dowels, and when they’re the right state of dry, he cuts them off, transfers them to bins, and heats them to further dry.
He then begins the painstaking process of linking them together — by the thousands — chainmail style, in specific patterns, before Raku firing them in a kiln, heating them to about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit in open fire.
When the pieces are finally complete, Holley promptly takes a hammer to them.
“Breaking gets me the reaction that I want. It satisfies something in me,” he explains.
Holley’s chainmail ceramic work has been getting national and international recognition, and one of his latest pieces, “Shelter,” is nominated for the Gardiner Museum’s RBC Emerging Artist People’s Choice Award.
Holley, who lives in Amherst Cove, started his artistic career in university, making macramé necklaces and selling them at festivals. From there, he began beading, making his own beads, and discovered chainmail as a way of making jewelry.
“It was relatively skill-based, but I didn’t need a lot of specialized equipment,” Holley says.
From there, he took classes in drawing, painting, sewing and finally clay.
“I stopped taking the other classes and threw all my money into ceramics, because I was in love,” he explains.
There’s something visceral and grounding about having your hands in clay, Holley says, and it’s a feeling unique to that medium. His first show was at the Newfoundland and Labrador Craft Council gallery six or seven years ago, and consisted of a variety of pieces. In one of them, one of the rings happened to have a crack.
Though stressed about the piece, Holley eventually decided to highlight the split in the ring by using a high-polish copper glaze on it so it stood out. Gallery goers, assuming it was a flaw, kept turning the ring so the split didn’t show.
“At that point, I realized I was on to something by revealing that piece,” Holley says. “My next show, I actually showed up at the gallery installation with a hammer and a pair of hedge clippers and went in and damaged the work.”
Holley’s concept is raw and personal, and has to do with the illusion of perfection. It’s about personas, people’s masks, and revealing what’s behind them. It’s satisfying for Holley to watch people’s reaction when they see the destroyed piece, and realize it’s made of ceramic, not metal.
“Shelter” consists of two parts: a cylindrical shape, broken open, in which bright red broken pieces are pouring out. Holley refers to this crimson pool as “the Puddle of Failure.”
“All those rings are actually failed sculptures,” he explains. “The bulk of them are from the piece that I dropped, getting ready for a show at The Rooms. I dropped it trying to load it into the kiln, deadlines looming. I just picked the rings up and piled them into a big box.
“Slowly but surely, all these boxes of clay that were full of failure were everywhere and I just couldn’t bring myself to reclaim them and reuse them. I couldn’t face them. I dumped a bunch of these boxed into the kiln and fired a bunch of these failed rungs, and then I sat down and sloppily painted them with a foam brush and the cheapest red paint that I could get. It took me three or four days of just sitting there, contemplating failure. Here I am, sitting there surrounded by these piles of rings, and I know damn well what they are. It’s a little corny, but this is therapy.”
“Shelter” was nominated for the Gardiner Museum award by Sandra Alfoldy, professor of craft history at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and associate curator of fine craft at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. The other finalists for the award are Sarah Lawless, Janet MacPherson, Julie Moon and Brendan Tang.
The national award is based on public votes, and the winner receives $10,000. There are no prizes for the runners-up.
If Holley wins, he plans to use the prize money to renovate his 75-year-old studio, which he says has a fair amount of rot and no real wiring or plumbing, and would love to have a wood kiln built, if he could stretch the money that far.
“It’s phenomenal for me to be one of these five,” Holley says of the finalists. “Some of these people, I’ve been following their work for a long time and I’ve always been impressed by them. It’s cool that I can be considered one of them. I’m certainly one of the more obscure of the five, so if I win, that’s a coup.”
Votes for the Gardiner Museum’s RBC Emerging Artist People’s Choice Award can be cast online at www.gardinermuseum.on.ca. Voting ends Sunday night. | <urn:uuid:f1fe1bff-0430-440a-8e87-4f88390f0480> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thetelegram.com/Living/2012-09-29/article-3086328/Births-1847 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968507 | 1,191 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Last Updated: Friday - 09/24/2010
Week of December 10, 2001
Purgatory is the pain of entering heaven
By FR. RON ROLHEISER, omi
Several weeks ago I wrote a column in which I mentioned purgatory (WCR, Nov. 12). Here's what I said: "Purgatory is not a geography, a place distinct from heaven, but is the pain that comes from being in heaven, without having fully let go of earth. Love, even as we know it in this life, already teaches us that."
Several newspapers received critical letters, suggesting that this is not in line with Catholic dogma. A couple of these asked me to do a column to try to clarify the issue. I'm grateful for this critique. So let me try to explain:
What is purgatory? This is a specifically Roman Catholic belief which holds that while heaven and hell, as Scripture attests, are the only two permanent states after death there is a third state or condition, called "purgatory," within which one is purified so as to be readied for heaven. Purgatory is understood to be a transition state, a state of intense sufferings, nearly as painful as hell itself, but, unlike hell, not permanent and the pains suffered are purifying and not embittering.
What is central to the doctrine is that purgatory, as the word itself suggests, is a place of purgation and purification, not of punitive pain. As the new Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, purgatory is "a purifying fire, . . . entirely different from the punishment of the damned." Finally purgatory is commonly assumed, though not dogmatically defined, to be a place apart from heaven, a place you go to in order to get ready for heaven.
That's the conception. What's to be said for it?
Purgatory does exist, not because you can prove it from Scripture, but because it is simply impossible to formulate a science of love and community without it. Likewise it is impossible to speak of the paschal mystery without some concept of purgatory. However these statements imply a certain understanding of what constitutes purgatory.
Purgatory is not a physical location, but a stage of loving. It's the initial pain of entering into community in a pure and selfless way. Mystics have classically defined it as the pain of letting go of a lesser love and life in order to accept a deeper love and life.
In the paradigm of Jesus' life and teaching, purgatory is the pain and purification of the paschal mystery. It is what Jesus, as a man, endured during his agony in Gethsemane and his struggle during his passion and death.
What's interesting in Jesus' case is that there was no personal sin from which he needed purification. Yet, he suffered purgative pain anyway. This helps clarify two things: Purgatory is not a place, a geography separate from heaven; nor is it necessarily even a purification from sin. It is the pain of entering heaven, of, as Jesus says, having the grain of wheat fall in the ground and die so as to come to a new fruitfulness.
Let me risk an example: Several years ago, I was counselling a young man who was experiencing an intense pain that was new to him. He had fallen in love with a wonderful young woman and was preparing to marry her. Prior to meeting her, he had lived rather irresponsibly, been sexually promiscuous, and had been comfortably smug and insensitive in that state.
The woman he had fallen in love with was aware of his past but was not throwing this into his face. The opposite. She was loving and forgiving him unconditionally. But there was the rub. Being in love with this wonderfully good, generous and moral person made him aware of himself in a fuller way.
Her love was a prism through which he began to see his own immaturity (which is what unconditional love always does). Her love was a light that gave him new eyesight and what he saw inside of himself caused him a lot of pain. To his credit, he sought help - confession, spiritual direction, psychological counselling.
Her loving him, purely and unconditionally, caused him the deepest pains he had ever endured. It was his first taste of purgatory. But note: it was love, embrace, warmth and unconditional forgiveness that triggered that pain and the subsequent purification.
Purgatory always works that way. When we die, unless we have so totally hardened our hearts so as to reject the embrace of unconditional love itself, God embraces us - fully, affectionately, passionately and unconditionally. To the extent that we are not yet fully saints or have not yet fully let go of those attachments that are now incompatible with us being in this new embrace, we will, like the young man whose story I just shared, experience intense, purgative pain.
Purgatory is the redemptive pain that follows falling in love, the pain of paschal purification. It is not a locale distinct from heaven, but the pain of entering heaven itself and, there, having to let go of all that prevents us from being there. In the ecstasy of embrace comes the agony of purification. | <urn:uuid:edd97833-c2e4-42a5-83c1-f427bc7bbe4f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wcr.ab.ca/old-site/columns/rolheiser/2001/rolheiser121001.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979743 | 1,101 | 2.234375 | 2 |
As much as Samsung is big on robots, it hasn't gone all-out on the idea until a just-published quartet of patent applications. The filings have a robot more directly mimicking a human walk and adjusting the scale to get the appropriate speed without the unnatural, perpetually bent gait of certain peers. To safely get from point A to point B, any path is chopped up into a series of walking motions, and the robot constantly checks against its center of gravity to stay upright as it walks uphill or down. All very clever, but we'd say Samsung is almost too fond of the uncanny valley: one patent has rotating joints coordinate to simulate the chest heaves of human breathing. We don't know if the company will ever put the patents to use; these could be just feverish dreams of one-upping Honda's ASIMO at its own game. But if it does, we could be looking at Samsung-made androids designed like humans rather than for them. | <urn:uuid:8690ef72-346c-4be0-830e-e87fe44e2701> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/22/samsung-files-patents-for-robot-that-mimics-human-walking/?a_dgi=aolshare_twitter | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954862 | 200 | 2.421875 | 2 |
NEW YORK — The ancient Chinese exercise of tai chi improved balance and lowered the risk of falls in a study of people with Parkinson's disease. Symptoms of the brain disorder include tremors and stiff, jerky movements that can affect walking and other activities.
Medications and surgery can help, and doctors often recommend exercise or physical therapy.
Tai chi (ty-CHEE'), with its slow, graceful movements, has been shown to improve strength and aid stability in older people, and has been studied for a number of ailments. In the latest study, led by Fuzhong Li of the Oregon Research Institute in Eugene, tai chi was tested in 195 people with mild-to-moderate Parkinson's.
The participants attended twice-weekly group classes of either tai chi or two other kinds of exercise — stretching and resistance training, which included steps and lunges with ankle weights and a weighted vest.
The tai chi routine was tailored for the Parkinson's patients, with a focus on "swing and sway" motions and weight-shifting, said Li, who practices tai chi and teaches instructors.
After six months of classes, the tai chi group did significantly better than the stretching group in tests of balance, control, walking and other measures. Compared with resistance training, the tai chi group did better in balance, control and stride, and about the same in other tests.
Tai chi training was better than stretching in reducing falls, and as effective as resistance training, the researchers reported. The improvements in the tai chi group continued during three months of follow-up.
Li said the study showed tai chi was safe. It's easy to learn, and there's no special equipment, he added.
"People are looking for alternative programs, and this could be one of them," he said.
Estimates vary, but at least 500,000 people in the United States have Parkinson's.
The findings are in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. The study was paid for by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Dr. Chenchen Wang, who is studying tai chi for arthritis and fibromyalgia, said the results of the Parkinson's research are "dramatic and impressive." She heads the Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.
One of the study's strengths: Researchers could measure the results directly instead of relying on the patients' own reports, she said. But a placebo effect can't be totally discounted, she said, because the participants knew which exercise program they were assigned and that could have influenced results.
By Stephanie Nano, Associated Press | <urn:uuid:9ed06aed-4b27-4d0c-9847-0981d0faf7c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nola.com/health/index.ssf/2012/02/tai_chi_helps_ease_symptoms_of.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966725 | 542 | 2.71875 | 3 |
[dateline] Passy, near Paris April 19. 1778
[salute] My dearest Friend
This Letter will be conveyed to you by Sir James Jay and Mr. Digges. Sir James is a Brother of the C[hief]
of N. York.1
Mr. Digges is of one of the southern states.2
I never felt myself under so much Embarrassment in Writing because there never was so much Danger of my Letters falling into British Hands.
I am pleasantly situated at Passi, a fine airy, salubrious Situation, in the same House with Dr. Franklin, with whom I make one Family. The Dr. is in fine Health and great Reputation.
Long before this Reaches you, the News will have arrived of the Treaty between this Kingdom and America, a great Event indeed in our History, which cannot fail to have the most important and decisive Effects.
The Trade between the two Countries will vastly increase and the Security of it, will make it more profitable.
My dear Johnny is well fixed in a school,3
and his Behaviour does Honour to his Mamma.
My Love to my dear Daughter, and my dear sons at home.
[salute] I am yours, ever, ever yours,
[signed] John Adams | <urn:uuid:1a28466a-3aa9-4ed4-bec1-39e6eb397958> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.masshist.org/publications/apde/portia.php?id=AFC03d012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963436 | 272 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Physical inactivity will probably increase overweight, which will negatively affect the patient’s joints. Rather, it makes sense to work out to strengthen the muscles and prevent joint deformities. Before you engage in fitness, you need to follow the rules, not to continue to injure joints.
First of all, get rid of the exercises, which require a large range of motion in the joint, and how one feels pain, you should stop the exercise. It is important to listen to experience pain and are therefore excluded all anesthetics and various ointments, because without pain, you can stretch and injure joints 31 Day Fat Loss Cure
Also worth paying attention stabilizers muscles, causing them to strain at low amplitudes and gradually incorporated into training exercises for flexibility. Another is to avoid compression exercise is especially important for strength and aerobic training. Less dangerous trauma training for arthritis are cycling and swimming.
But the best workout in the fitness room to start with a swim in the pool, this is the way the muscles are prepared arthritis patients for further physical development, with minimal stress on the joints. At the early stages of arthritis, start training necessary to determine the level of loading, which will be the most comfortable and painless, so to begin to engage with minimal impact to its gradual increase.
Valid 31 Day Fat Loss Cure Exercises with 12-15 repetitions with little effort also, when weight training is to choose exercises that do not involve the affected joints with arthritis. It is important to remember that it is better to prevent disease than to treat it as a sport and prevention of arthritis. | <urn:uuid:76a4a729-c77b-4265-866c-9a3954fe7cef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.ideafit.com/blogs/31dayfatlosscure/31-day-fat-loss-cure-physical-inactivity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949218 | 322 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Tips & Articles tagged as: bees
December 27, 2012
Winter is a good time to think about adding new features to your garden spaces. Consider bringing new life into the garden, in the form of chickens or bees. Both will help you have a more productive garden as they eat the bad bugs, manufacture soil enriching compost for your soil and pollinate your fruiting plants over the summer.
December 2, 2012
Brighten your dark of winter outlook by envisioning the addition of colorful, diverse and productive habitat plantings to your garden for next season. Including certain plants that will attract parasitoid wasps, ladybeetles, bees, songbirds and even bats can help you to manage pest problems in the growing season and make your fruiting plants more productive. [...] | <urn:uuid:f2bbf697-9d24-4910-b266-fd1e1b023de0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gardenhotline.org/tag/bees/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911864 | 159 | 2.25 | 2 |
The Hungarian Foie Gras Boycott: Struggles for Moral Sovereignty in Postsocialist Europe
In socialist Hungary, even as the state was saying, ‘go ahead consume’, the official discourse always emphasized that consumption comes with a certain moral obligation and responsibility. For example, car owners were instructed to keep their cars clean and to be polite when driving, couples were instructed to buy modern furniture with clean-lines instead of pretentious “bourgeois” furniture that’s overly decorated. The collapse of state socialism removed not only all formal barriers to consume Western goods, more importantly, it also cleansed consumption from morality. This however didn’t stop people from attaching their own moral meanings to consumption, meanings that of course varied along class lines. Initially, for example, a common source of discomfort was fancy and excessive packaging and other concerns about wasteful consumption—understandable given the pervasive material thriftiness and spontaneous reusing and recycling activities under state socialism. With entering the European Union, we once again see a new official moral discourse developing about right ways of consuming. These new concerns are distinctly Western and postmaterialist. Some of them concern animal rights and the humane treatment of animals raised for consumption. The EU’s prescriptions about how to feed and slaughter geese or pigs, for example, explicitly forbid traditional Hungarian practices, and, given the prominent place of meat in the Hungarian diet, had the effect of discrediting Hungarians for their complicity in animal torture. | <urn:uuid:d42b675a-ddca-44c0-b743-96d2cc4eb9c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bowdoin.edu/gender-women/symposia/redefining-the-common-good-after-communism/abstracts/zsuzsa-gille.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956245 | 305 | 2.40625 | 2 |
A new tooth-regenerating paste could reverse bacterial-induced tooth decay, sweeping dental drills into the dustbin of history. Hopefully.
As your hygienist probably told you, tooth decay happens when bacteria in plaque dissolve your enamel, creating cavities. Eventually the cavity gets big enough that your dentist has to take out the decay and drill a hole that can be filled with resin, gold or something else. But a new treatment developed at the University of Leeds in the UK reverses the decay, allowing your teeth to rebuild themselves. | <urn:uuid:f7405e24-810d-4238-9c23-a44ae710ff49> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.popsci.com/category/tags/dental-work | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94127 | 111 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Literature # TB319
The MagneSil® Genomic, Fixed Tissue System is designed to purify DNA from many formalin-fixed samples following an overnight Proteinase K digestion. Fragments up to 1.8kb in size have been successfully amplified from DNA purified with this system. One advantage this system has over other purification methods, such as phenol-chloroform extractions, is its ability to remove most amplification inhibitors, including very small fragments of DNA.
The MagneSil® Genomic, Fixed Tissue System was developed for use with small amounts of tissue such as those found in thin sections. To help eliminate inhibitors, a small amount of DNA-binding paramagnetic resin is used, and as a result the DNA-binding capacity of the system is limited to a few hundred nanograms. Use of a large amount of tissue will result in low recovery as well as poor-quality DNA when compared to other purification methods. Tissue that has been stored in formalin for extended periods of time may be too cross-linked or too degraded to perform as template for amplification.
Printed in USA. Revised 12/10. | <urn:uuid:817f2e0d-70e7-422b-b3ff-ee84bc671ce9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://at.promega.com/resources/protocols/technical-bulletins/101/magnesil-genomic-fixed-tissue-system-protocol/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963465 | 235 | 2.203125 | 2 |
An unusually severe presentation of dolphin poxvirus in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) within the Swan-Canning Estuary
Stephens, N., Holyoake, C.S., Finn, H. and Bejder, L. (2011) An unusually severe presentation of dolphin poxvirus in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) within the Swan-Canning Estuary. In: 48th Annual Conference of the Australian Marine Science Association, 3 - 7 July, Fremantle, Western Australia.
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In 2009 two adult female bottlenose dolphins were found dead within the Swan-Canning Estuary. Both dolphins had severe ulcerative skin lesions covering over 70% of their skin surface area. Histological analyses identified viral inclusion bodies characteristic of poxvirus within these skin lesions. The severity and extent of the lesions were deemed to have caused terminal debilitation in the two dolphins. Infection with dolphin poxvirus is usually characterised by one to several mild skin lesions in juveniles that regress with time. Poxvirus infection has never been documented as the cause of death in adult dolphins; furthermore the severe skin lesions observed in the two dolphins mark a novel presentation of dolphin poxvirus infection. The definitive mechanisms by which the characteristic poxvirus lesions may have progressed to the unusually severe lesions is currently unknown but possible factors may include: the presence of a poxvirus strain possessing greater virulence; and/or the potentially immunosuppressive effects associated with living in a heavily utilised and inherently stressful estuarine environment. Dolphins are recognised as biosentinels for coastal and estuarine ecosystems, and atypical disease presentations such as this may be indicative of the environmental conditions of systems like the Swan-Canning Estuary.
|Publication Type:||Conference Item|
|Murdoch Affiliation:||School of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology|
School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences
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The Bhagavad-gita – the song of God – an immortal wisdom text revered by 850 million people, explores the themes of harmony and purpose, work and attitude, love and reciprocation. The healthy, inquiring mind, pondering these and other profound life themes, quickly discovers a plethora of varying and often contradictory opinions. Are we meant to sift through these opinions, picking those that appeal to us? Or do we search until we find a source of knowledge that’s trustworthy? This search — our thoughtful search for truth — plays a major role in our spiritual journey. Any journey, even a spiritual one, is better undertaken with a guidebook. We at our-spiritual-journey have found consistent, logical, and deeply satisfying guidance in the poetic and universal verses of the Bhagavad-gita. Living by the words of this unique book has somehow made us happier. To help others feel the same, we’ve spent the past fifteen years making the Bhagavad-gita available to children, teens, and adults. We figure the Bhagavad-gita’s life-transforming beauty and riches are meant for everybody, everywhere.
I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence, which in another age and climate, had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions that exercise us.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher and poet
When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face and I see not one ray of hope on the horizon, I turn to Bhagavad-gita and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. Those who meditate on the Gita will derive fresh joy and new meanings from it every day.
— Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, Indian nationalist and spiritual leader
Bhagavad-gita is one of the most beautiful and profound texts of world literature.
— Octavio Paz, Nobel laureate
Bhagavad-gita’s relevant, straightforward and sublime wisdom, which impacts and improves lives, is available here for readers of all ages. Click on the book covers to find out more.
Bhagavad-gita: A Photographic Essay is a fascinating presentation of the key philosophical ideas of the Bhagavad-gita, As It Is by His Divine Grace A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada with the aid of powerful photographs (for ages 11 and up). * 2011 Independent Publisher Book Award Winner *
Harmony and the Bhagavad-gita is a contemplative memoir from the enchanting Sharanagati Valley, British Columbia. It demystifies the Gita, making its verses a clear source of enlightenment and personal development, and revealing why the reader needs the Gita’s wisdom. Harmony discusses contemporary concerns—ecology, stewardship, interpersonal conflict, peaceful living, priorities, and values—in a way that’s easy to understand and of immediate importance to readers.
Our Most Dear Friend presents the essence of the Gita through simple yet captivating painting, text, and photographic montages. Children of every race, nationality, and religion will deepen their understanding of themselves, God, and His creation through this delightful book (for ages 4 and up). | <urn:uuid:9df6961c-9430-4b83-be4f-acbb97e9a8fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://our-spiritual-journey.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91207 | 741 | 2.46875 | 2 |
(BPT) - It's the telephone call no woman wants to receive - you need to come back for additional tests after you've had your annual mammogram. It happens more often than you would think - one in 10 women will be asked to come back because the doctor spotted a potential area of concern. Before you panic, you should know that usually the area of concern does not turn out to be cancer. Here are some facts to help you get through the experience of a callback.
During a screening mammogram a standard set of X-rays is taken of the breasts. A radiologist then reviews the images and compares them to X-rays that were taken previously to see if any changes have occurred or if anything looks worrisome. The radiologist will be looking for areas that have the appearance of a mass, a tissue distortion or calcifications. Breast calcifications are small calcium deposits that develop in a woman's breast tissue. If the radiologist sees an area that looks suspicious, you will be asked to come back for additional images - a diagnostic mammogram. Usually - as much as 80 percent of the time - these additional images will show that the area of concern is either benign or not real - a false alarm.
When you have a diagnostic mammogram, your breast may be positioned differently, or a close-up or magnified image of the area of concern may be taken. Many times, perceived masses or tissue distortions will no longer be evident on the follow-up X-ray images and the worrisome area on the screening mammogram will turn out to be nothing.
If the area continues to look suspicious after a diagnostic mammogram, the radiologist will need to do additional tests. An ultrasound may be recommended for an area thought to be a mass or distortion. The ultrasound can help determine whether the area is a cyst, which is a benign, fluid filled sac, or whether it is a solid mass. If the ultrasound shows that the area is a simple cyst, no further testing is needed and you can go back to your annual screening program.
In some cases a biopsy may be needed to determine whether calcifications or a solid mass are early breast cancers. Although the thought of or a biopsy is alarming, it's important to understand that most breast biopsies result in negative findings. In approximately 80 percent of cases the suspicious area turns out to be benign, but only a breast biopsy can give the doctor a definitive answer.
Even knowing that most callbacks turn out to be false alarms, it can be very stressful to think that you may have breast cancer, and to wait for more tests to determine whether you do or don't. There is a new technology, 3-D mammography, which can help take some of the anxiety out of mammography by giving radiologists a more detailed look at complex breast tissues, helping them to make more accurate diagnoses and reduce the need for callbacks. In fact, a recent study from Yale-New Haven Hospital showed that 3-D mammography can reduce callbacks by as much as 40 percent.
Many of the callbacks that turn out to be false alarms are the result of overlapping tissues in the breast. That happens because the breast is a 3-dimensional object composed of different structures located at different heights within the breast. When viewed as a 2-dimensional image these structures can overlap and cause confusion. With 3-D mammography, doctors get a 3-dimensional view of the breast, allowing them to see breast tissue more clearly, without the confusion of overlapping tissue. Hologic, Inc., in Bedford, Mass., is currently the only manufacturer with a commercially available 3-D mammography system.
Waiting for the results of a follow-up exam can be difficult - time can seem to move slowly. When you're feeling stressed or worried, it's important to lean on friends and family and to talk openly about your feelings and concerns.
If you learn that you do have breast cancer, remember that when detected early, the chance for successful treatment of breast cancer is nearly 100 percent. A variety of resources and support groups are available locally and nationally. A few good places to find additional information and support are the American Cancer Society at www.cancer.org, CancerCare at www.cancercare.org and Breastcancer.org at www.breastcancer.org. | <urn:uuid:5f1d8e25-76e3-4121-a376-c1a9a32970ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.9wsyr.com/ara/healthwellness/story/One-in-10-women-will-be-called-back-after-a/fMxI445XEUCC2edAsgbBLg.cspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961264 | 884 | 2.140625 | 2 |
What Yian is saying is very true and very important. An illustrator is a communicator. The first job of people like us (you, I and all the others) is to get our ideas over to the viewer and sometimes we can mistake mystery for lack of good exposition.
If an object is recognisable then even if it is hidden or obscured, it is mysterious. But if it is simply an unexplained shape that could be any number of things then it's just bad exposition.
Treat it like you would any story. Suspense and mystery are created, not by witholding key information from the reader (or viewer), but by revealing almost all the information except that tiny bit that keeps them interested. "What is that thing about to do? Whose side is it on?" etc etc. At the moment, it isn't anything. It could be a rock, a piece of burning hulk, captain Nemo's submarine, anything!
It's not that this painting is bad. It's ace and well handled, it's the story telling ellement that needs to be worked up a bit. | <urn:uuid:168765e0-33b0-4386-90ee-13f94be2779f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://community.imaginefx.com/forums/thread/384278.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96714 | 227 | 1.632813 | 2 |
The Latest Spin
THE ROIL OVER ROIDS
Steroids, Newsweek, and the "Lacrosse Image"
By Michael Spinner
When I was a freshman in college, I took a sociology class entitled, "Sex Roles & Social Change." Surprisingly, the class was almost entirely concerning the effect of societal roles on women and how, over time, the media has been influential in how young women tend to perceive themselves and develop as young adults.
And while an overwhelming majority of what we learned was absolutely valid and beyond eye-opening, nearly a decade later I still find myself wondering why during more than four months of classes, there was not one mention of how young males are also affected by what they see in the media. Whether it's a hulking baseball player who was once lean enough to hit leadoff, but now hits dozens of home-runs at a time, an Abercrombie model who is built like a machine, or a film-actor or professional wrestler who looks like something out of a fiction novel, young males are being cultured by mass media today every bit as much as young women.
For young women, the culture that has been media produced is most often attributed to the extremely thin look that has been linked to awful disorders such as Bulimia and Anorexia. For young men, this culture has led to the notion that the ideal male image is extremely muscular - the more, the better. Combined with a drive for athletic excellence that has fueled young athletes to take whatever means necessary to "gain the edge," has led to an explosion of use of performance enhancing drugs by young athletes. Recently, the news has been aflutter with stories of steroid use in baseball with "greats" such as Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi being implicated.
However, this issue is not limited to the pros. Recently, Newsweek tackled the issue of steroid use among teenage athletes in an article entitled, "Toxic Strength." The article is simply shocking. It makes it clear that the use of steroids among teenagers is every bit as concerning as any other form of drug abuse among this group, with the results of steroid use being in many cases as dangerous as the use of narcotics most often associated with drug abuse.
In the article, Newsweek reporter Jerry Adler examined the issue thoroughly and with incredible proficiency. It is an excellent read … but without impuning anyone's integrity, skills or creativity, the accompanying pictures were the unintentional misleadings of the arrogantly ignorant.
On the cover of Newsweek, and the most prominent photo in the Adler article feature young Chris Wash - a 6 foot 2 inch guard on the Plano West High School basketball team in Plano, Texas. While Wash's abuse of performance enhancing steroids was attributed to basketball aspirations, in the photo, there was nary a basketball item to be found. In fact, featured most prominently was a Plano West Lacrosse T-shirt and a football in Wash's hands. While the article neither implied that steroid use was prominent among lacrosse players nor mentioned lacrosse at all, the fact is that by associating such a picture with an article concerning steroid use begs for a very wrong connotation to be assumed.
Wash aspired to play big-time college hoops - so much so that he began a regimen of steroid use that saw him grow from a lanky 180-pound frame to a bulky 230-pound giant in a span of 12 months. While he progressed physically during this stretch, he regressed mentally, and ultimately was kicked off of the team for fighting.
Chris Wash in Newsweek
Wash's bout with steroids ended when high school friend and baseball prospect, Taylor Hooton, killed himself - apparently after a bout of depression commonly associated with steroid use. However, by ending his steroid use abruptly, Wash experienced the same depression Hooton did, and one day ventured to a bridge across a Dallas freeway and looked down, contemplating the same fate as Hooton. Fortunately, Wash had the presence to seek help.
For the record, according to a representative from the Plano West Lacrosse Club Chris Wash played lacrosse for one season during the Spring of 2004 - after his reported steroid use had ceased. The coach told our editor that Wash had never played lacrosse before and was still just learning when he moved from the area. The Plano West team, which is not associated with the high school, is thriving amidst a local lacrosse boom and has a no tolerance policy on all drugs and no steroid issues at all.
Also for the record, conversations with dozens of prominent College Lacrosse Coaches, discussions among editors of several lacrosse publications, and a series of web searches revealed not a single solitary instance of a lacrosse player being disciplined for steroid use, or steroids being used by lacrosse players to enhance their performance. In fact, E-Lacrosse could not find anybody in the lacrosse world who ever heard of somebody who used steroids to enhance their game. Baseball now has several examples of athletes who used steroids at one point or another, and basketball's example was quite prominent in the Newsweek article. There are also dozens of ex football players who reportedly used steroids to enhance their game (e.g. Lyle Alzado). And let's not forget the doping scandals that seem to tarnish every Olympic Games.
But, based on our research, not one lacrosse player has even been rumored to use steroids. Of course, there is always the possibility of an isolated case here and there, but nothing so prominent that it is considered "public knowledge" within lacrosse circles. Yet still, anybody who saw the cover of Newsweek without reading the article could deduce that lacrosse has an issue with steroid abuse.
I have written either directly or indirectly dozens of times over the years concerning the "lacrosse image" that the non-participating public seems to hold. Anybody who has ever been around this great sport knows that what makes lacrosse unique and truly special is that it is an exciting, full-contact sport played by gentlemen. Combined with the fact that the elite lacrosse programs are generally fielded at some of the finest academic institutions in the land, and I would think that most sports would love to have an image that we all know holds true for lacrosse.
I would even submit that, unlike baseball and football participants, lacrosse players would benefit only minimally, if at all, from the use of performance enhancing drugs. Ever see a basketball or soccer player pick up a lacrosse stick for the first time? Not a pretty sight. But if you take a great lacrosse player and put him or her on a soccer field or basketball court for the first time and he or she probably holds their own.
Lacrosse athleticism, for lack of a better term, is a different form of athleticism - it's the combination of brains and brawn, and speed, and a craftiness that one does not necessarily need to succeed in other sports. Not to put down any other sport by any means, but when you think about it, being a "great athlete" is only one facet of being a great lacrosse player. Having the innate ability to see a cutter coming off of a pick and hitting him with a perfect feed right on his stick as a defender wails away at your gloves is a feat of athleticism … but it also requires something completely unique - something intangible that cannot be coached. And to accomplish this feat while sprinting is a truly amazing occurrence … and something we see game after game on the lacrosse field. And the most amazing thing about such a play is that all of the steroids in the world won't allow a lacrosse player to do it any better. Here are some excellent real world lacrosse examples:
- Mark Millon - UMass/Baltimore Bayhawks: Millon is pretty much the total package - speed, vision, amazing stick skills, and a great shot. And … he stands 5 foot 9. If you saw Mark Millon in street clothes, would you really think he is one of the best athletes in the world? Probably not - but because of the combination of athleticism and something innate that allows him to perform at an incredible level, he is among the best that ever played. Would steroids make him a better performer? Well, I've never heard anybody say, "That Millon could be among the best … if he'd bulk up a little more."
And if Mark Millon is not a great example for this argument, substitute Mikey Powell or Steve Dusseau or Tom Marachek. Amazing attackmen … but not because of size, strength, or blazing speed. All of them are unique because they have enough of each trait to be amazing, and then something else that allows them to be special.
- Pat McCabe - Syracuse/Long Island Lizards: In terms of longevity, Pat McCabe is one of the very best longsticks to ever play the game. 13 years after graduating from Syracuse, McCabe is still among the best defensemen in the world, but has never been an overwhelming physical presence. He stands 5 foot 9 (like Millon), and while he is quick enough to cover the best in the sport, his speed would not be considered "blazing." He is a technically superior defenseman who has incredible instincts and game-knowledge … none of which would get any better if McCabe were to have "juiced up" throughout his career.
And while there are countless defensemen who are larger than a Pat McCabe who play at a fairly similar level, the simple fact is that when it comes to defensemen, more bulk and strength does not actually mean a better defenseman. The best are at that level because of body position, technical skills, instincts, and athleticism. A sudden influx of steroids will not make a defenseman smarter or more technically sound … and could in fact slow him down if he gets too big, too fast.
- Greg Cattrano - Brown/Philadelphia Barrage: This All-Everything Goalie is one of the very best goalies to ever play the game. He's never been accused of brute athleticism. He's the best because of technical superiority, great instincts, and incredible preparation. While athleticism played a huge part in his success and a goalie such as Cattrano is as much of a threat outside the goal as he is between the pipes, he'll never out-squat the Pittsburgh Steelers' kicker.
Lacrosse is the oldest sport in North America. Hundreds of years after its founding is still played with a sense of honor, respect, and tradition that has been completely abandoned by most major sports. There is no lacrosse doping scandal. We don't brawl with fans. Our superstars are not on trial for criminal acts. There are no riots in the streets after a major lacrosse game. While not perfect, the lacrosse image is pristine compared to virtually any other sport out there. There's a great story to tell and that parents and kids outside of lacrosse would benefit from hearing, especially in light of the Newsweek story. That makes the suggestion of the opposite even more unfortunate.
In lacrosse the "best" compete at the highest level because of an intense work ethic combined with the abilities and creativity God gave them. To be our "best" they will have earned college degrees from some of the finest academic institutions in the land. We can say that our sport more than any other leads to success off of the field. We can say that our "greats" did it the right way and honored the tradition of our sport as a result. We can say that people of all athletic builds can and do succeed in lacrosse. We can say that lacrosse is actually a great alternative to teen steroid use and the culture that might encourage it.
I only wish Newsweek had said that.
December 27, 2004
The latest Spin on E-Lacrosse: Past Columns
Spinner on 360 and Joining E-Lacrosse
Title IX After 30 Years
Are Camps Out Of Control?
Go west, Young Fan.
Promoting the Pros: A Major League Circus
Grades and Sports: Powell's Not The Problem.
Thoughts on September 11, 2002
Women's Lacrosse: Farewell to the Stall
2002 Yale Fall Tournament
A Good Year For "Timmy Mac"
Is Petro Gambling With the 2003 Schedule
The Landon Cheating Scandal
Red Storm Rising
2002 Review & 2003 Punditries and Predictions
Is Football the New Enemy?
Fear and Loathing in Lacrosse Retail
Division II Comes of Age
California Dreamin': Whittier Has To Win The Title
college Lacrosse: What's The Big Story of 2003?
Bergey for Tewaaraton & final-Four Observations
The Goggles Are Coming!
What In The World Is Going On At Duke?
A New Conference?
Pro Lax at Lacrosse Roads.
The DIII Debacle.
Does The Punishment Fit The Crime?
Philly Gets The Nod.
National Development Program
2004 Punditry & Predictions
CCNY Drops Lacrosse
Lacrosse's Parity Party
Rob Randall's Nazareth
Why We Need Richie Meade
Don't Block That Shot?
Opportunity Knocking. NLL Answering?
The Measure of a Coach
Steroids in Lacrosse? | <urn:uuid:4b1e2d3d-4448-4526-8e97-8e3074f4ba34> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.e-lacrosse.com/2004/spin/36.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967915 | 2,742 | 1.789063 | 2 |
In order to determine that OSA has the correct topic coverage we need to define the landscape for security architecture. That way we can identify topics that have poor coverage, determine priorities for new patterns, and help the community co-ordinate their activities.
In the perfect world there would be a classification for security architecture that we could adopt, but we do not know an existing potent slicing and dicing (do you?), and while the standards such as NIST, ISO and ISF divide their materials into chapters these do not translate into a security architecture landscape very well.
Therefore the two authors of this article dare to propose a landscape here, that we hope with the help of the community (that is YOU :-) can be refined over time to give a useful reference for OSA as well as the wider world.
Security Architecture Landscape
The items in this landscape represent the major infrastructure and application architecture topics that keep IT departments busy.
V10: Updated landscape to include additional elements for greater coverage- Legal & Reg, Backup, Change Mgmt, Config and Asset Mgmt, extended Service Operations block, reorganised central security services | <urn:uuid:f1e254f7-b363-4e25-8f3f-018445a7a712> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.opensecurityarchitecture.org/cms/foundations/osa-landscape | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934485 | 229 | 1.625 | 2 |
NEW DELHI: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has registered Jaiprakash Power Venture Ltd (JPVL)'s 1,000-MW hydroelectric project in Himachal Pradesh for clean development mechanism (CDM) benefits.
The Karcham Wangtoo Hydro Electric Project is located on Sutlej river. It was built at Rs 6,900-crore investment and it is considered as the largest hydropower project to be commissioned during the 11th Five Year Plan.
Moreover, the project consists of an 88-metre high dam with an underground power house at Wangtoo. It consists of nearly 45 km of tunneling. The firm has stated that it will be offering 3.54 million of carbon dioxide reductions within one year.
At the present rates, JPVL is likely to receive carbon credits varying between Rs 80 crore-100 crore per annum. | <urn:uuid:6798dd59-e41c-4f3a-9992-c0cc0d3757b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.indiamart.com/story/unfccc-registration-jaiprakash-hydroelectric-project-163468.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959451 | 185 | 2.28125 | 2 |
- Related Stories
Confusion over Skype security threat clears upDecember 20, 2006
Security hole plugged in Skype for MacOctober 3, 2006
Skype offers free calling to phones in U.S., CanadaMay 15, 2006
Skype targets small businessesMarch 9, 2006
Skype could provide botnet controlsJanuary 25, 2006
Skype flaws open computers to attackOctober 25, 2005
eBay bets big on SkypeSeptember 13, 2005
(continued from previous page)
Some security experts have predicted that Skype could be used as a way for hackers to remotely control networks of compromised computers, botnets. Have you seen that happen?
Sauer: I haven't, but you can certainly use Skype for application-to-application messaging. I'm not going to say you can't do that, but we have not seen instances of that happening. We do think that the Skype client has sufficient controls to prevent things like auto spreading because of the current authorization model. For example, I can't send you a file unless you've authorized it.
Have you seen any proof-of-concepts of malicious software that targets Skype?
Sauer: We've had some security researchers share concepts of things in the past. They were just simple ideas that we agreed not to disclose.
Some folks see Skype itself as a security threat, especially in businesses with controlled environments. Skype can find its way outside of the corporate firewalls even if IT people try to hammer it shut. Is Skype a security threat?
Sauer: That's what the most recent copy of our network administrator guide and Skype 3.0 is all about. It's trying to provide controls that let IT administrators run their networks the way that they want to.
You touched upon encryption, which people and even certain countries are concerned about because they want to control what kind of communication goes on. How do you deal with that, have you ever caved and given anybody the encryption keys to Skype?
Sauer: Since we don't have the encryption keys, therefore we can't give them to somebody.
So even you can't listen on my Skype calls?
Sauer: The way that Skype works is that the people who are communicating communicate on a secure channel between themselves with keys that are generated by them and not generated by Skype.
So the answer to the question--if even you can't listen on somebody's Skype calls--is...?
Sauer: What we say to that is that we provide a safe communications experience. I'm not going to tell you that we can or can't listen in to that.
Sauer: We don't.
Skype is offering more paid services, such as SkypeOut for calls to regular phones. Recently I've heard complaints from Skype users who had their credit card payments declined, even though their card was good. Are you experiencing a fraud increase?
Sauer: Anybody who sells nontangible goods with value is a target for fraudsters. I've had friends of mine contact me about this very sort of thing. We don't publish how we do it, but it is our protection mechanism. I'm not going to tell you what our precise method of protecting credit cards is, but I will say that if you're going to use the same credit card on a bunch of accounts, it's probably not going to work.
Is there an increase in fraud? Is it a major concern for you?
Jackson: It's a concern because it's a pain in the ass. We have an antifraud algorithm to trap the people who are cheating us, but it traps a lot of good users as well. It is a very fine balance that does affect the business itself because we're declining a lot of good transactions and pissing regular users off.
Rounding out Skype and security, what is your major concern, what keeps you up at night?
Sauer: The thing that keeps me up at night is our future development activity. We have a lot of new initiatives. We talked about things like adding the ability to send money to Skype. These are new areas that bring with them new consumer risks, so we have to work closely within our engineering teams to make sure we have total buy-in on how we're going to do something so that we don't mis-engineer anything.
8 commentsJoin the conversation! Add your comment | <urn:uuid:e68ee314-6d72-4655-a4ec-9e3a4108ac49> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.cnet.com/What-threats-does-Skype-face---page-2/2008-7350_3-6146092-2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966808 | 892 | 2.234375 | 2 |
FindLaw KnowledgeBasePublished: 2012-02-28
As the baby boomer generation grows older, decisions related to selling the family home and moving, in order to provide aging family members with additional care, will become increasingly important for many American families. For some, this decision will focus on two alternative housing options in particular: assisted living facilities and nursing homes. There are advantages and disadvantages to both types of housing, though both are governed by sets of laws that protect residents and ensure their proper care.
Nursing homes have gained a bad reputation over the past few decades, but a reputable nursing home is sometimes the best option for an older person, especially if he or she requires advanced medical care. Nursing homes are more likely to employ qualified medical professionals and have facilities capable of providing care for residents with medical needs. Nursing home employees, unlike most staff members at assisted living facilities, are able to administer medication and provide health care to residents. However, one of the costs for such care is decreased resident privacy, since most residents of nursing homes share rooms with other residents.
Assisted living facilities, on the other hand, offer residents more privacy and greater independence. However, it is important that families do their homework when searching for the appropriate residence for their loved one, since the term “assisted living” encompasses both independent living where residents are expected to look after themselves and their private rooms and skilled care facilities that offer more care support. Assisted living facilities may or may not have facilities which can adequately care for residents with dementia or other mental impairments, and many do not employ staff with the medical certification necessary to administer medication, though employees can hand medications to residents.
Since there is such a wide range of facilities that define themselves as “assisted living,” it is important to understand what Florida law requires of such facilities and the rights of residents at assisted living homes.
By law, assisted living facilities in Florida are required to closely monitor the physical, mental, emotional and social health of their residents. More specifically, they are required to:
- Provide services to help facilitate resident well-being
- Provide healthy diets and monitor what residents eat
- Provide recreational, social and educational programs for residents and encourage their participation
- Monitor the comings and goings of residents and have a general awareness of where residents are
- Monitor and facilitate medical care by communicating with medical care providers and residents’ families and providing transportation to medical appointments
In addition to these standards of care, Florida law also states that assisted living facilities must prominently display elder abuse hotline information and make this information easily obtainable by residents. An assisted living facility cannot require a resident to work without pay unless lease provisions require residents to clean their own living areas. The state also prohibits assisted living facilities from using restraints on their residents; even half-bed rails designed to prevent falls must be used at the discretion of the resident.
Florida law which governs resident care at assisted living facilities is specific and extensive. Violations of the regulations carry serious penalties. The abuse or neglect of residents is a felony under state law. Abuse causing great bodily harm, disability or disfigurement is a felony of the first degree, and abuse that does not result in great bodily harm is a felony of the third degree. Failing to provide adequate care for a resident as outlined in state law is either a felony of the second or third degree, depending on the scale of the neglect and whether or not the neglect caused great harm or permanent disability or disfigurement. Neglect can occur in a single incident or repeatedly over a span of time.
Florida’s laws governing assisted living and other elder care facilities are designed to protect residents and ensure adequate care for all of the Sunshine State’s elderly. If you or a loved one has been abused or neglected at an assisted living or nursing home facility, please contact an experienced personal injury attorney, who can help you understand your legal options. | <urn:uuid:6d503b84-26a3-4111-89cf-18a1a25f86cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://knowledgebase.findlaw.com/kb/2011/Dec/477232.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95835 | 798 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Changes to public education in Christchurch may be a prelude to introducing charter schools, suggests an Auckland academic.
Opinion – Dr Peter O’Connor
In the first weeks after the February earthquake I had the privilege of working alongside teachers in the Eastern suburbs.Christchurch schools were the glue that held those communities together. And they still do. Teachers dealing with their own tragedies unselfishly day after day cared and helped other people’s children. This government has never acknowledged the contribution Christchurch teachers have made to the spiritual rebuild of their city.
The dismantling of public education in Christchurch announced yesterday demonstrates the limited vision by a government that only measures things in business terms.
It would be the gravest insult if this reshaping of education in the city was the prelude to the introduction of charter schools. The events of the past eighteen months have shown that Christchurch needs schools deeply committed to its communities, embedded and serving the needs of parents and children, not the financial motivations or otherwise of private sponsors.
The disaster of Hurricane Katrina was only compounded by the introduction of charter schools across the city which has destroyed public education in that city. Parents in Christchurch need to be reassured that community based schools will still serve the needs of their children.
Associate Professor Peter O’Connor was named a New Zealander of the Year By North and South Magazine for his UNESCO sponsored work in Christchurch schools following the February 2011 earthquake. He is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland. | <urn:uuid:e32e0202-f81c-4fc3-859d-3aab846f4aa2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://auckland.scoop.co.nz/2012/09/unsung-heroes-of-christchurch-kicked-in-the-guts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974432 | 310 | 1.929688 | 2 |
The term "Dynamic range" is used to describe 2 aspects of audio ...
This is the ratio between the signal/soundwave level and the level of the noise inherent in the system. All audio technologies (especially analogue) produce some measurable noise (hiss) even when a signal is not present. In electrical circuits this is partly caused by the "jiggling" of electrons, which are never at rest. It is therefore desirable that the electronics in the equipment can accommodate as loud a signal as possible so that this noise is kept quiet in comparison.
Because in a given type of system, such as mixer input channel, the noise is more or less comparable between designs, a system with a wider dynamic range will have a better signal to noise ratio. In other words, if the electronics are of a better specification, and can therefore accommodate much louder maximum signals, then the noise floor will be quieter in comparison.
The dynamic range of a musical performance can be as wide as 120dB.
Analogue tape (without noise reduction) has a dynamic range of about 60dB.
FM radio has a maximum range of around 50dB.
16-bit digital audio (eg CD) has a maximum dynamic range of 96dB.
24-bit digital audio has a theoretical maximum dynamic range of 144dB, but the limitations of electronic design restrict this to an achievable real world maximum of 124dB.
For every increase resolution of 1 bit, the dynamic range of a digital system increases by approx 6dB.
We can see that not only is equipment with wide dynamic range desirable, but that we should also seek to maximise the use of it by passing signals through it at as high an amplitude as possible. There is little point in having a good system if you pass signals through it at a low level.
The ideal amplitude will be just below the maximum. Beyond maximum clipping (distortion) will occur.
The worse case is when the soundwave is below the noise floor and therefore in-audible.
In a digital system clipping is unacceptable and produces unpleasant sound. Any signal exceeding the maximum (which is determined by the bit-depth) will be rounded to the largest possible digital value (eg 1111111111111111).
However, in an analogue system, as the signal exceeds the peak level the distortion may add desirable "colour" or "warmth" to the signal before becoming unpleasant. This is particularly true of valve (vacuum tube) electronics, particularly compressors, amplifiers and microphones, and analogue recording tape. With analogue tape, "warmth" becomes apparent around and just beyond the point where "saturation" takes place. Saturation is the point where the magnetic flux is at its maximum and beyond which there is no way to represent louder signals. As the signal exceeds saturation, there is a gradual onset of harmonic distortion. This is sometimes called "tape compression".
Most equipment manufactures quote the signal to noise ratio as the ratio between the noise (hiss) and the reference level (0dB) of the equipment. A user will achieve the best signal to noise ratio when the signal is as loud as possible without distorting.
For a source signal with predictable amplitude (such as a synthesiser or drum machine), this is simply a case of turning up the signal until clipping occurs and then turning it back down a bit.
For an unpredictable source, such as a singer, an automatic volume control (such as a compressor or limiter) may be needed to prevent clipping, or an engineer may monitor and manually "ride" the level with a fader. | <urn:uuid:10506c89-4392-4dc5-93b2-2f96fc961427> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.planetoftunes.com/record/dynamic_range.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931078 | 732 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Jesse Jackson Jr. Treated for Depression
After reports surfaced in June that Jesse Jackson Jr. was suffering from exhaustion, rumors swirled around other reasons why he might be under a physician's care. Now NBC News reports that Jackson has checked into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., which specializes in treating depression. The facility released a statement on their website.
Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. has arrived at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., for extensive inpatient evaluation for depression and gastrointestinal issues.
Further information will be released as Congressman Jackson's evaluation proceeds. Congressman Jackson and his family are grateful for the outpouring of support and prayers that have been received throughout his care.
Read more at NBC News. | <urn:uuid:3f13c6ab-0c31-4ecd-af8c-0a4d28072a9c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theroot.com/buzz/jesse-jackson-jr-treated-depression?wpisrc=nextbox | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975805 | 146 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Suu Kyi receives Nobel Peace Prize 21 years late
By Balazs Koranyi
OSLO (Reuters) - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi finally received her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Saturday after spending 15 years under house arrest, and said her country's full transformation to democracy was still far off.
"What the Nobel Peace Prize did was to draw me once again into the world of other human beings outside the isolated area in which I lived, to restore a sense of reality to me," Suu Kyi said as the packed crowd, led by Norway's King Harald and Queen Sonja, rose in a standing ovation at the ornate Oslo City Hall.
Suu Kyi, 66, the Oxford University-educated daughter of General Aung San, Myanmar's assassinated independence hero, said much remained to be resolved in her country.
"Hostilities have not ceased in the far north; to the west, communal violence resulting in arson and murder were taking place just several days before I started out the journey that has brought me here today," said Suu Kyi, on her first visit to Europe in nearly a quarter of a century.
"There still remain (political) prisoners in Burma. It is to be feared that because the best known detainees have been released, the remainder, the unknown ones, will be forgotten," she said, wearing a purple traditional Burmese dress and looking strong and healthy after falling ill on Thursday.
Still, Suu Kyi - elected to parliament in April - said she was confident President Thein Sein wanted to put the country on a new path.
"I don't think we should fear reversal," she told public broadcaster NRK. "(But) I don't think we should take it for granted there is no reversal."
Suspending rather than lifting sanctions was also the right move to keep pressure on the government, she said a day after arriving from Switzerland to a jubilant, dancing and chanting crowd, which showered her with flowers. Continued... | <urn:uuid:5450c2a9-5ef4-4de3-9260-88d5c7335b84> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ca.reuters.com/article/idCABRE85F06E20120616 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977591 | 419 | 1.945313 | 2 |
The Mental Health Consumer Web (The Web) is the only behavioral
health consumer-driven drop-in and engagement center in
Anchorage. The organizationís activities are completely free and
are funded by the Division of Behavioral Health and the Alaska
Mental Health Trust Authority.
The Web is recovery based and serves many people, including
those with mental health issues and/or drug and alcohol abuse
who are often homeless. The Web currently has 640 members and is
visited over 12,000 times annually for services such as computer
access, support for substance abuse recovery, peer mentoring,
support groups volunteer opportunities, community involvement,
recreation, education and more!
The Web has many partners and we thank each of them.
Mental Health Trust Authority
Department of Behavior Health
Womenís Recovery Project
Domiciliary Recovering Veterans
Mental Health Court
Mayorís Homeless Coalition
Womenís Support Group:
The Womenís Recovery Project hosts meetings every Wednesday at
11:00 a.m. This Group has been running for nearly two years and
provides an environment for women to focus on their specific
needs and support each otherís growth and recovery
Doing it by Choice AA:
Meets at 6:00 pm Saturdays in traditional Alcoholic Anonymous
12- step format. Once a month, a large dinner/speaker meeting is
held on Sunday.
Brown Bag Speaker Series:
The series features experts and peers that speak on a wide
variety of issues that concern the lives of those in recovery.
Better Quality of Life through Recreation:
The Web provides community integration outings such as trips to
the Alaska State Fair, movies, and fishing. The programís
12-person van allows more participation in the many activities
in our community.
These are a few of the Webís many activities.
Wellness Readiness Action Plan (WRAP):
The WRAP is a self-management and recovery system. WRAP is
and prevent intrusive or troubling feelings and behaviors
quality of life
people in achieving their own life goals and dreams.
Individual WRAP plans provide participants with a personally
developed road map of their goals, objectives and wellness
resources that may be used to further their recovery. A WRAP
also maps out potential actions and skills that can be used in
periods of symptom reoccurrence. The WRAP can help one to
reduce, modify or eliminate symptoms by using planned
responses. This form of self directed planning empowers
participants to take charge of and be responsible for their own
The WRAP is taught generally over a five day period, with each
day lasting about five-hours. The class is taught by Web staff
and is held approximately once per month. The class schedule
varies from month to month. Please call Hosanna at 222-2980 for
questions or to sign up for a class. The class is free. | <urn:uuid:cf509537-9226-4c2d-b04a-d1168b421918> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://akmhcweb.org/index.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919163 | 609 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Pronunciation: (fifth or, often, fith), [key]
1. next after the fourth; being the ordinal number for five.
2. being one of five equal parts.
3. Auto.of, pertaining to, or operating at the gear transmission ratio at which the drive shaft speed is greater than that of fourth gear for a given engine crankshaft speed: fifth gear.
in the fifth place; fifthly.
1. a fifth part, esp. of one (1/5).
2. the fifth member of a series.
3. a fifth part of a gallon of liquor or spirits; 4/5 of a quart (about 750 milliliters).
4. Auto.fifth gear.
a. a tone on the fifth degree from another tone (counted as the first).
b. the interval between such tones.
c. the harmonic combination of such tones.
6. take the Fifth, Informal.to decline on the basis of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to answer a question when testifying.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease. | <urn:uuid:91ee2569-b721-4382-b7a4-a33cf887ec8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dictionary.infoplease.com/fifth | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903736 | 250 | 3.0625 | 3 |
It’s a dirty little secret among supporters of the United Nations: The closer you get to seeing how the sausage is actually made in Turtle Bay, the more you wonder whether the UN-bashers have a point. The entire system is in such dire need of an overhaul—from its encrusted bloc politics and rigid personnel policies to its bureaucratic waste and pockets of cronyism—that even the most dedicated multilateralist may begin to channel his inner John Bolton. The big difference, of course, is that committed multilateralists are dedicated to reforming and strengthening, rather than crippling and weakening, the world body. Speaking last Friday at the Council on Foreign Relations, Ambassador Joseph Torsella, the Obama administration’s point man for UN management reform, explained what the United States is doing to shake up business as usual in New York. Its point of departure, as President Obama has stated, is that the United Nations is both “flawed” and “indispensable.”
Let’s start with the flawed part. As Torsella rightly noted, there are “at least two UNs,” and neither presents a pretty picture. One is the global institution itself. This “UN” is composed of departments, programs and agencies that deliver many essential services like peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance. But it is also plagued by outmoded management systems, too little transparency and accountability, and mind-boggling waste. The other “UN” is composed of 193 diverse and often fractious member states that too often treat the world body as a spoils system, cling to outdated blocs like the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) or the Group of 77, and play to the galleries with irresponsible behavior. And predictably, the two “UNs” tend to blame each other for their failures.
The United Nations is also trapped in the past, structured to address traditional dangers of inter-state war, rather than the transnational threats—like “proliferation, terrorism, degradation and disease”—that dominate today’s global security agenda.
The administration’s agenda for UN reform rests on “four pillars,” Torsella explained: thrift, accountability, integrity, and excellence.
Torsella himself admitted that achieving all of them is not realistic, so it’s important to prioritize among them. Restoring the UN’s “integrity” should be job one. Nothing weakens the United Nations more than self-inflicted wounds to its reputation, whether it is electing Cuba to the Human Rights Council, or permitting North Korea to assume the chair of the UN Disarmament Commission. The administration is working hard to prevent the UN from being its own worst enemy, Torsella explained, including by “working overtime to keep the worst offenders off UN bodies,” fighting for competitive elections (as opposed to regional rotations) for seats on UN bodies, and preventing countries under Security Council sanctions from assuming UN leadership roles. One of the administration’s most promising ideas is forging a new “credibility caucus” in New York to establish “membership criteria” and “promote truly competitive elections” to the Human Rights Council.
Promoting “accountability” registers as a close second. Transparency at the United Nations remains appalling. This facilitates mismanagement and contributes to public mistrust worldwide. Under heavy pressure, UN member states agreed to create an Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), but funding and staffing remain inadequate, and the office is subject to political interference. To shed more light across the UN system, the Obama administration is pressing for a stronger OIOS, urging greater involvement by civil society watchdogs, and asking “UN funds and programs to post audits on the web, as UNICEF and UNDP recently pledged to do.” As Torsella explains:
Websites like the U.S. government’s recovery.gov, the UK’s dfid.gov, and Kentucky’s opendoor.gov make unprecedented amounts of information—about salaries, contracts and budgets—easily available to the public. We’re going to ask the UN system to do the same.
Furthermore, some reasonably minor and feasible management reforms could drastically improve the UN’s ability to deliver—and even deliver “excellence.” Changing UN personnel rules would make it easier to hire qualified staff and eliminate under-performers. Second, consolidating the delivery of services by multiple UN agencies within target countries, under a strong UN resident coordinator system, would allow the UN to truly “deliver as one.” And a third step would be strengthening the evaluation of UN development programs—taking a page from the World Bank and other institutions—by focusing on outcomes and impact, not simply inputs.
In a period of fiscal austerity, finally, the UN cannot be immune. Here’s where “thrift” comes in. Over the last twenty years, the UN’s regular, two-year budget (not counting peacekeeping or other missions) rose an average of 5 percent a year, far faster than inflation. But thanks to pressure by the United States and like-minded governments, Torsella noted proudly, UN member states had just voted for only the second budget reduction in the last fifty years (and the first since 1998), a 5 percent decline from $5.41 to $5.15 billion.
As Torsella reminded his CFR audience, the United States has a fundamental stake in a credible, effective, and legitimate United Nations.
“Because—at its best—the UN can help prevent conflict, keep the peace, isolate terrorists and criminals, go where nobody else will care for the neediest of the world, smooth the channels of global commerce, and promote universal values that Americans hold dear. That’s why the United States led in creating the UN in 1945, and why we continue to lead in renewing the UN today.”
The reform agenda Torsella described reflects this constructive legacy in being sober, reasoned, and balanced.
That’s a far cry from what we’ve heard from the Republican presidential candidates. Like their counterparts in the House, the GOP contenders have adopted a slash and burn approach to the world body. Newt Gingrich, this weekend’s victor in South Carolina, last summer called for defunding the UN. (Prior to dropping out, Texas Governor Rick Perry advocated the same in a televised debate). Rick Santorum, who’s taking his fight to Florida, has made halving U.S. funding for the UN part of his official platform. Mitt Romney, meanwhile, called recent UN work an “extraordinary failure,” and endorses John Bolton’s proposal that the United States defund the Human Rights Council—despite recent U.S. progress in improving that body’s functioning. The libertarian Ron Paul gets even spookier, describing the United Nations as a threat to American liberty. (In 1998, he even warned that it “would confiscate our guns” if it got the chance).
Whoever is elected in November must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Many of the reforms UN critics identify are needed not only in Geneva and New York, but also in Washington, DC—underscoring the foolishness of trashing a flawed but indispensable organization. Kudos to Ambassador Torsella for putting forth such an ambitious framework and for illuminating a viable path for UN reform. | <urn:uuid:bf2ed126-efa1-4435-bf45-5ef523dbeeb7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.cfr.org/patrick/2012/01/23/at-the-united-nations-reform-for-all-seasons/?cid=oth_partner_site-atlantic | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933827 | 1,575 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Dylan Scott is a GOVERNING staff writer.E-mail: email@example.com
As the Jan. 1, 2013, deadline approaches for states to demonstrate to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that they can operate a health insurance exchange, the next year will be critical for states in developing these online marketplaces. Amid the uncertainty surrounding health care reform -- from the potential for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to a new White House administration that could scrap the law altogether -- some states are banking on one of those scenarios to halt its implementation.
Not Rhode Island.
While more than half of the states have received initial federal grants to establish exchanges, Rhode Island is the first and only state to receive a second grant, worth $58.5 million. Officials from the White House and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have lauded Rhode Island as a leader in implementing ACA provisions.
Because of Rhode Island’s fast implementation of the law, Governing has arranged with state officials to track the establishment of Rhode Island's Health Benefits Exchange over the next year. The goal is to provide insight into what has worked for them, exploring how one state has overcome the challenges inherent to such an immense task.
Governing spoke with state leaders and reviewed public records from the Rhode Island Healthcare Reform Commission, headed by Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts, to document Rhode Island’s progress thus far. Governing’s initial focus will center on the governance model; subsequent articles will look at the evolution of the exchange and new developments during 2012.
ESTABLISHING THE EXCHANGE
Rhode Island is the only state in the nation in which its exchange was not established via legislation, but rather by executive order. In 2011, both chambers considered legislation to make the exchange its own quasi-public agency managed by 11 members. That would make it easier for the exchange to hire staff, negotiate with contractors and respond to unexpected issues that arise, said Greg Pare, spokesman for President of the Senate M. Teresa Paiva-Weed, who introduced the legislation.
The Senate bill passed its chamber but not the House due to language added during Senate deliberations addressing federal funding of elective abortions – namely that the plans offered in the exchange will not pay for abortion. The House did not vote on its bill.
Despite the legislative speed bump, work on the exchange moved forward. The first health benefit exchange workgroup, a subgroup of the health-care reform commission, began meeting in May 2011 to discuss and plan the project. Under that workgroup, several smaller subgroups were organized to participate in the conversation.
An interagency workgroup, co-chaired by Rhode Island Health Insurance Commissioner Chris Koller and Medicaid director Elena Nicolella, convened to ensure effective communication across the various state agencies that would be involved in the exchange’s development. Private consulting firms, such as the Faulkner Consulting Group and Wakely Consulting, have offered input as members of the exchange advisory committee, presenting private-sector perspectives on the deliberations. A stakeholder workgroup consisting of consumer associations and health-care providers rounded out the line-up of advisers.
In September 2011, Chafee issued the executive order to set up the exchange as a part of the governor’s office with a 13-member governing board. The governor has authority to designate parts of his office to address public health issues, said executive counsel Claire Richards, which is why the exchange was housed there.
A lawsuit by Rhode Island Right to Life and 28 legislators (out of 113) is challenging the executive order regarding the constitutionality of an exchange that wasn’t established by the legislative branch. The lawsuit is sponsored by a bipartisan group of legislators (21 Democrats and seven Republicans).
Barth Bracey, president of Rhode Island Right to Life, said his group initially became involved because of the abortion issue, but said that the lawsuit is focused on maintaining a separation of powers between the executive branch and the legislative branch.
“We got bypassed,” said State Sen. Harold Metts, a Democrat and one of eight members of the upper house to sponsor the lawsuit. “The administration has their role, and the legislators have their role. I think [Chafee] stepped beyond his.”
State law gives the governor the power to administer funds to expand benefits for people who lack insurance coverage, Richards said, which is the focus of the administration’s legal defense of the order.
QUASI-PUBLIC AGENCY VS. EXECUTIVE BRANCH OFFICE
Paiva-Weed expects to reintroduce legislation during the current legislative session to establish the exchange as a quasi-public agency, Pare said. While the agency would likely continue and build on the work done by the exchange board and workgroup, Senate leadership believes that an independent agency would be better able to respond to the evolving needs of the exchange, he said.
“State bureaucracy can be limiting when it comes to the kind of flexibility that would be needed for an exchange,” Pare said.
The legislative establishment of an exchange would “potentially” eliminate the need for the lawsuit challenging the executive order, said state Sen. Lou DiPalma, a Democrat.
For his part, Chafee is supportive of such legislation as long as it removes the abortion language that stalled the Senate bill last year, Richards said. The work of the exchange board and workgroup could be “easily transitioned” from the governor’s office to a quasi-public agency. “We consider both models to be valid,” she said.
ESTABLISHING THE GOVERNING BOARD
Chafee stated the need for a variety of health-care backgrounds in the makeup of the exchange advisory board, which would include members of the governor's administration and appointees selected by Chafee. The Rhode Island governor said his intention was that "the board's composition reflects a range and diversity of relevant experience, skills, backgrounds, and geographic and stakeholder perspective."
Four members of the governing board (Richard Licht, the director of the Department of Administration; Koller, the health insurance commissioner; Steven Costantino, the secretary of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services; and Dr. Michael Fine, the director of the Department of Health) would fill seats as part of their official duties. The other nine would be selected by the governor: two from consumer organizations, two representing small businesses and five other various stakeholders, including insurance companies and health-care providers. The board is headed up by former U.S. Attorney Meg Curran, with Donald Nokes, top executive for IT company NetCenergy, as vice-chair.
The members rounding out the governing board include:
Since its appointment in September, the exchange board has overseen the marketplace’s development in conjunction with the commission workgroups. Final decisions would be made by Chafee after receiving their recommendations.
The process has been fairly smooth, state officials agreed. “We all know each other and like each other,” Medicaid director Nicolella said. But each agency does recognize has its own responsibility for “keeping our trains running,” she added. The Medicaid office faces an increase in enrollees under the ACA, and the exchange’s development is only one part of its preparation.
“We’ve worked together a lot,” Koller said. “There is a mutual respect and a recognition that people want to do the right thing.”
Next week: Governing will focus on the decision-making behind how the online exchange will work and how consumers will use it.
Do you have a question about Rhode Island's implementation of the Affordable Care Act? Submit your question as a comment below, in an e-mail to firstname.lastname@example.org, or in a tweet to @dylanlscott. Your question may be addressed in a future post.
This post has been updated to clarify that Gov. Chafee's office believes state law, not the constitution, gives the governor the authority to create the exchange.
Written and compiled by staff writers and editors, GOVERNING View is an on-the-ground, and sometimes behind-the-scenes, look at the topics we're covering in print and online. From notes on what's up in statehouses, county courthouses and city halls, to encounters with people, places and things, GOVERNING View is a window into the side of state and local government you don't always see. | <urn:uuid:07984416-23c6-4e81-87c2-093dca6d7fe7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.governing.com/blogs/view/rhode-Island-health-insurance-exchange-case-study.html?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963407 | 1,785 | 1.648438 | 2 |
NAGAHAMA, Shiga Pref. — An annual exhibit of dwarf “ume” (plum) trees at Keiunkan Hall here is giving visitors a glimpse of early spring. Of 300 bonsai trees prepared for the event, about 100 will be shown till March 10.
The event started in 1952, when Shichizou Takayama of Asai, Shiga Prefecture, who had been growing dwarf ume trees at his house, donated about 40 to the city of Nagahama. Since then, the city has held the annual exhibit at the guesthouse where Emperor Meiji stayed in an 1887 visit.
Since the Nagahama area is suited for fruit trees, not only farmers but also ordinary families grow ume trees for the plums.
At the exhibition being held here, some ume trees are about 400 years old and some trunks are up to 2 meters in diameter. After the exhibition, the trees will be kept and cared for at three places in the city for the next year. | <urn:uuid:5e993769-9103-4472-ba85-e073a1b52964> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2002/01/22/community/exhibit-of-dwarf-ume-gives-preview-of-spring/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967664 | 214 | 2.171875 | 2 |
IT infrastructure Engineers provide expertise in information technology, security, operations, networking, computer storage, telephony, structured network cabling, market data localization and multimedia functionality. They ensure all of these aspects work within an organization. This is often the person in charge of hardware, software and networking issues at any company.
They are in charge of the hardware components and often the software applications of business networks. This is the professional on whose shoulders lies the wellbeing, maintenance and continued success of the business server network. It is this engineer that ensures the network connectivity of every person working in an enterprise.
Basic Educational Needs
Most professionals entering the job market need a bachelor’s degree in a computer or information science field. But unlike prior IT professionals, this expert is not siloed. Although he may have specialized in a certain IT area, he knows a little about every aspect of the network. In other words, he isn’t the person that only knows how to work on the server, or the network, or the storage. He isn’t the Windows expert. The basic education for this professional is more generalized, yet also centered on making the entire network function properly.
Because the skill set of infrastructure engineers is complex, a bachelor’s degree is usually not enough. Once working in the professional field, most professionals holding this position will also need special certifications. The certification required will generally depend on the hiring company, but usually are those offered by Microsoft, Red Hat and Cisco. Common certifications for this profession might be MCITP, VCP or CCNP amongst others.
IT Infrastructure Knowledge
This is the person that just makes it all work. These IT pros have a multi-discipline knowledge that gives them the knowledge to make the entire IT server and network structure work. They must have both administration and configuration knowledge of end-user applications, Linux, Windows Server, Cisco Networking gear, server systems, VMware, Windows Server and Storage applications.
Traditionally this role was called the ‘Senior Analyst’ but because of the need nowadays to have even more globalized IT knowledge, with experience in Cloud IT, server, network and hardware, the current given title is ‘Infrastructure Engineer’.
As with all professionals who hold IT management positions, this professional must have competent analytical skills. They must be able to structure and analyze data to evaluate network performance, system performance, and how changes to the environment will affect the overall organizational IT infrastructure.
Unlike other IT experts, the infrastructure engineer must be able to communicate well with management teams from other areas. They need to make processes easy-to-understand, and clear for every type of professional. They must also be able to explain an issue, workaround solution, using language that everyone involved can understand.
An infrastructure engineer needs to be a great problem solver, and be able to manage both in-house and cloud infrastructure. They need to resolve problems in the different frameworks within the shortest time possible. Essentially, this is the ‘superhero’ of all IT professionals. Of course, they may need a team of highly specialized IT professionals, each with their own specialized skills, but this is the person that gets the network to work –whatever the cost involved is. | <urn:uuid:b1d5efbb-b8f4-47b5-be07-785d56463b1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vps.net/blog/?app=forums&module=extras§ion=rating&t=2892&rating=4&secure_key=880ea6a14ea49e853634fbdc5015a024 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936217 | 665 | 2.609375 | 3 |
What could be a more rewarding harvest than a full crop of beer making plants. Use this garden and terrarium kit to plant the three key ingredients in beer. Grow the integral ingredient of barley; hops, the flavoring and stability agent of beer; and wheat, used in fermentation. Each plant sprouts quickly and grows easily. Includes seeds, terrarium, gravel, planting mixture and instructions. | <urn:uuid:09ef0090-3b2d-4d78-8469-d40921d9fe49> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scientificsonline.com/review/product/list/id/5142/?laser_color=83µscope_type=92 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917069 | 79 | 1.585938 | 2 |
There are many supposed real estate experts in the industry, but do they always make the best decisions? After all, these are the same people who presided over the crash. With the right information, you are the one who is best equipped to make decisions concerning your purchase of real estate. The following article provides you with advice that can get you started on the road to making informed choices.
Try to contact your former clients around the holidays and during anniversaries of their purchases. When you keep in touch with them, they will remember their experience with you and how you made their experience an enjoyable one. When a friend, neighbor or family member needs a real estate agent, your name will be fresh in their minds and they will suggest using you.
If you made an offer to purchase a home but the seller rejected it, do not be discouraged. The seller may still find some way to complete the deal. They may be willing to cover the price of the closing costs or make some repairs to the home before you move in.
When considering relocation, look no further than the Internet to find all the pertinent information about the town. You will be able to find a lot of information, even about small towns. Before buying a home, research the unemployment, population and salary margins.
Keep an open mind in regard to what elements are the most critical in your real estate hunt. You might not have the ability to afford the optimal property in the right location. Sometimes the perfect home is not in the perfect neighborhood, or vice versa, being flexible will allow you more choices.
Educate yourself on mortgage loan terms before you look into purchasing real estate. When you understand how your mortgage term affects your monthly payments, and how it will impact the total cost of your loan, you will minimize any future confusion.
As part of an offer on a prospective property, you can always request that the seller pay a portion of your closing costs or make another type of financial concession. A seller is commonly asked to make a temporary buy-down on the interest rate. However, if you add financial incentives to the offer, a seller will be less likely to negotiate the selling price.
If you make an offer and the seller doesn’t accept it, there’s always room for negotiation. Sellers will often cover repairs or closing costs, in order to help a buyer afford the property.
As you read in the intro, don’t rely on the advice of these “experts.” While they may know a lot about the market, they also know how to deceive you into believing what they want. Stay away from the people who think they know everything and instead, use these up-to-date tips on how to purchase property. So use what you’ve learned here to stay a step ahead of the marketplace and to always find the best deals on property.
For more helpful tips regarding your real estate needs or to read about remodeling your next home, please visit: homes for sale Louisville Highlands Purchasing a home can be very difficult and complex, and it is very easy to make a costly mistake. Use these suggestions to find out what you need to do to find the best deals in housing markets. All that’s left for you to do is capitalize! | <urn:uuid:2e4156b9-1359-4cfc-bda8-bdc16b5d2245> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://southsidesolidarity.com/studentdebt/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958687 | 667 | 1.710938 | 2 |
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday the government would appeal a New York court ruling declaring unconstitutional its power to issue secret subpoenas to Internet and telephone companies, as a GOP senator charged the judgment was being deliberately misrepresented for political ends.
Speaking to reporters in the Netherlands, where he is meeting with European officials, Ashcroft said the power to issue national-security letters -- as the secret subpoenas are known -- was "completely consistent with the United States Constitution."
Also Thursday, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, accused the American Civil Liberties Union and the media of misrepresenting the ruling as a blow to the USA Patriot Act.
"The power to issue these (subpoenas) goes back to 1986," he told United Press International. "It has nothing to do with the Patriot Act.
"This is another attempt by the ACLU and those who seek partisan gain from civil-liberties issues to scare the American people."
U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero ruled Wednesday that the power to issue the letters, which require Internet service providers to hand over their customer records and bar them from ever disclosing the search took place, violated the First and Fourth Amendments.
The letters can be used to find the senders of anonymous e-mail messages or the hosts of chat rooms, for example, and are issued without judicial oversight.
The bar on disclosing these secret subpoenas is so broad that it could even apply to discussions with a lawyer, effectively barring the recipient from seeking legal advice or from having any recourse to challenge the subpoena.
The power to issue national-security letters dates back to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, authored by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. Under that law, the letters could be used only against those suspected of being agents of a foreign power.
In 2001 the package of anti-terrorism laws called the Patriot Act amended the 1986 act, expanding the power to issue such letters so that it could be used to obtain any information deemed relevant to counter-intelligence or terrorism investigations.
Since the power was expanded, federal authorities have issued national-security letters to an unknown number of Internet service providers. The companies were required to provide customers' names, addresses, credit-card numbers and details about their Internet use.
But the expansion of the potential targets of the letters in the Patriot Act "has nothing to do with the procedural issues on which the court ruled," said Cornyn spokesman Don Stewart.
Cornyn himself -- saying, "Anyone can make a mistake" -- noted the way media organizations had picked up on the ACLU press release claiming the ruling struck down a Patriot Act provision.
"It's amazing to me," he told UPI, "how newspapers like the New York Times can just uncritically report these kind of scare tactics."
A brief survey of Wednesday's coverage of the case showed that almost every news organization -- including UPI -- erroneously described the power that was struck down as a provision of the Patriot Act.
"The ACLU use this kind of coverage in their fundraising appeals," said Cornyn.
The ACLU attorney who litigated their case on behalf of an Internet service provider acknowledged that the two issues on which the court ruled -- the ban on disclosure and the absence of judicial oversight -- predated the Patriot Act.
"The provisions that we challenged and that the court objected to were in the statute before the Patriot Act was passed," ACLU counsel Jameel Jaffer told UPI. "We could have raised the same objections before the power was expanded."
But he added that it was accurate to say that a provision of the Patriot Act had been struck down, because the ruling that the underlying power was unconstitutional voided the original law.
"There's nothing left to be amended," he said.
He said it was unclear how the court might have ruled if the law had not been expanded but said the much broader use of the powers had influenced the court's reasoning.
"It's clearly in the back of the court's mind that this now can be used against everyone," he said, "The judge does mention the (2001) amendments on a couple of occasions" in the ruling.
"Clearly this was an attempt to politicize this issue," said Stewart of the ACLU's press release, "and embarrass what the ACLU calls 'the Ashcroft Justice Department' rather than trying to have a reasonable debate about the constitutionality of this law."
"I don't quite get their point," Jaffer said of Cornyn and Stewart's comments. "In effect they're saying, 'We didn't pass an unconstitutional law, we just passed a law that made an unconstitutional law even worse.'"
Cornyn noted that the erroneous coverage was apparently first spotted by a George Washington University law professor named Orin Kerr, who wrote about it on a web site call "The Volokh Conspiracy."
"It's another victory for the bloggers," said Cornyn.
(Please send comments to firstname.lastname@example.org.)
|Additional Security Industry Stories|
OSLO, Norway, May 24 (UPI) --Norwegian oil and gas company DNO International said tests from a field in the Kurdish region of Iraq yielded an average flow rate of more than 100,000 bpd. | <urn:uuid:4c9f0c8f-323f-49ec-aa81-9e812ad1e1d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2004/09/30/Ashcroft-US-will-appeal-terror-law-ruling/UPI-66781096585901/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970018 | 1,085 | 1.726563 | 2 |
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Tue March 12, 2013
In Secular Syria, Top Muslim Cleric Picks Sides In Civil War
Originally published on Tue March 12, 2013 3:28 pm
This story was written by a Syrian citizen in Damascus who is not being further identified out of safety concerns.
In a surprising religious decree, Syria's government-appointed grand mufti has issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to fight on the side of President Bashar Assad's regime against the rebels who have been waging an uprising for two years.
In a televised statement Sunday, Syria's Grand Mufti Ahmad Hassoun said: "I urge the sons of Syria to join the army and fight for the unity of this great country."
He called on parents to push their children "toward this duty, and do not worry, for they will not be killed, only rewarded by God."
He said this was a duty for all Muslims.
The move was met with outrage by some clergymen in the Arab world, and by a barrage of sardonic humor on social media. One mufti, based in Saudi Arabia, condemned Hassoun for inciting violence and called him a "mufti of wickedness."
Such a fatwa is considered highly unusual, though not unprecedented. There have been times over the years when Syria's grand mufti has sanctioned jihad, or holy war, in places like Iraq and elsewhere.
Hassoun, who has served as grand mufti since 2005, has always been seen as a strong supporter of Assad. However, Hassoun has not spoken out previously in such a strong partisan manner.
Hassoun is a member of the Sunni Muslim majority in Syria, though there are a number of religious minorities and he has a reputation for encouraging interfaith dialogue. Assad belongs to the Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Catching Syrians By Surprise
Hassoun's decree struck many Syrians as very strange because Assad's government has long dismissed the uprising as the work of jihadis. The regime has often claimed that extremists from abroad have been inciting violence within Syria.
In addition, the Assad regime has long championed itself as secular. The Baath Party, to which Assad belongs, has ruled Syria for over 40 years, sometimes acting in ways that were hostile to religiosity.
In the 1980s, men who had long beards to show their piety were often detained and sometimes disappeared, while Muslim schoolgirls were not permitted to wear a headscarf, or a hijab, in the classroom.
On Syrian state TV, anchorwomen appear in secular dress and show their hair. Only rarely are women shown wearing a hijab. State-sponsored Syrian television dramas, which have become very popular in the Arab world in recent years, follow the same approach: Actresses wearing the hijab are scarce.
Given the staunchly secular nature of the state, many Syrians were puzzled when the anchorman who introduced Hassoun first read the fatwa from the teleprompter, complete with verses from the Quran.
Fatwas are religious edicts issued by senior clerics. For that reason, it sounded extremely awkward for an anchor on secular state TV to be reading it.
One elderly Damascene watching the newscast while eating dinner stopped in midbite.
"What? Is he reciting the Quran?" she said, her face visibly confused.
"It's like the Soviet Union suddenly invoked Jesus."
The Social Media Response
On social media, one user referred to Hassoun as "Shaytoun," a diminutive play on words to mean the devil.
Another user circulated a picture of an uber-muscular man, a sort of stereotype of a pro-regime thug — but with a beard and a turban that had been Photoshopped.
Pro-regime militiamen, known as the shabiha, have a reputation for cruelty. Multiple videos have surfaced showing them abusing captured rebels, especially bearded and religious ones. In some instances, the shabiha tell the rebels, "Only Bashar is your God."
As one social media user commented: "LOOOOLLL. Bashar goes on jihad."
"OMG. Bashar declares jihad on jihadis. How stupid is this regime?" said another.
The larger Arab media also went into overdrive in reaction to Hassoun's fatwa. One report, aired on the Dubai-based Al Arabiya, showed a compilation of clips of Hassoun saying contradictory things in the past.
One clip was taken at the start of the Egyptian revolution in early 2011, but just before the start of the Syrian uprising in March of that year. Hassoun says it is unethical for clergymen to take sides in these popular movements.
"It's not our role to incite violence between people, but rather to promote harmony in society," he said.
"For us to go on TV to tell people 'kill your leader,' or tell the leader to 'kill your people,' that is not our right," he added. "We only say to the leader: 'God help you. Be just with your people.' " | <urn:uuid:c782fee8-260d-4bca-838b-8e22cb2c196c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wamc.org/post/secular-syria-top-muslim-cleric-picks-sides-civil-war | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966882 | 1,127 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Sleeps is restorative and is needed to align circadian rhythms. Sleep deprivation erodes well being. Speaking at the SCAN Sports Nutrition Conference (Baltimore, April ,2012), Allison Weiss BS reported that Americans are sleeping less than they used to sleep:
--Nearly 30% of adults report sleeping less than 6 hours per day.
--80% of teens report getting less than the recommended nine hours of sleep.
This lack of sleep is having detrimental effects on our health.
Obesity and sleep deprivation are concurrent issues; sleep seems to be a risk factor for obesity. One in four post-menopausal women has problems sleeping; is this linked to mid-life weight gain? When people are tired, grehlin—the hormone that makes us feel hungry—becomes active and we become hungrier and can easily overeat.
Sleep deprivation is also associated with development of Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. People younger than 60 years who sleep less than five hours a night have a higher risk for developing cardiovascular disease.
Athletes who travel through time zones are at high risk for sleep deprivation. This can impact performance by disrupting the circadian rhythms and causing undue fatigue and reduced motivation. Because mental alertness enhances athletic performance, low motivation can be detrimental to performance. On the other hand, extending sleep can enhance performance. A study with basketball players indicates they shot more baskets and completed more free throws when they were well rested (as opposed to sleep deprived).
The Boston Marathon is over and we hope that you are proud of your efforts! You have spent many months preparing for this race both physically and mentally; it’s common to come to the end of the race and wonder what’s next. Many runners worry about how to adjust their eating plan. Here is a short guide on adjusting your eating after training.
Assess your weight and define your goals
Before adjusting your eating plan, assess your current weight. Did you lose, gain, or maintain your weight during training? Then, determine if you need to adjust or maintain your post-race weight.
Listen to your body
Your body is very good at adjusting your food intake for training. That is, as you increase your training, you are hungrier and as you decrease your training you feel less hungry. Therefore, within the week after the big race, your appetite should decrease. This is your body telling you to eat less.
Writing down what you eat for 3-5 days can be helpful to see when, where, and how much you are eating. Even better, record how hungry you were before and after you ate. This can help you understand if you are eating enough to prevent hunger, or perhaps you’re just eating out of habit. Food logs will show you where the best places are to cut back, or perhaps identify meals in which you aren’t eating enough.
Eat throughout the day
The best way to manage hunger and maintain energy throughout the day is to fuel your body on a regular schedule. People generally get hungry about every 4 hours, so try to plan meals or snacks at least every four hours.For example, breakfast at 7am, lunch at 11am, 2nd lunch (or snack) at 3p, and dinner at 7p. For some it may work better to break this up into more, smaller meals in 3 hours blocks, so find what works for you.
Not eating enough at breakfast, lunch, or second lunch can lead to overeating at dinner. However, since you’re exercising less than you were during training, your body may be satisfied with smaller portion sizes at each meal. But, don’t skip meals! For example, instead of eating a large bagel with peanut butter, a banana, and a large glass of orange juice at breakfast, morning runners maybe only need 2 pieces of toast with peanut butter, half a banana, and a small glass of orange juice (or just water). Pay attention to when you feel full – your appetite is a good gauge for how much you need to eat.
If your goal is to lose weight, fuel your body throughout the day and chip off 100-200 calories each evening. You can achieve this by eating a smaller dinner, choosing fruit for dessert instead of ice cream, or choosing to drink water instead of wine or beer. Eat a mix of carbohydrates, lean protein, and healthy fats at each meal. Choose fiber rich carbohydrates such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains to keep you feeling fuller, longer. Protein and fat also help slow digestion, adding to a feeling of satiety.
Make an appointment with a registered dietitian
For a more personalized plan, make an appointment with a registered dietitian (RD). An RD can help assess your current weight and diet and provide you with the best eating plan to move forward. Visit the Sports,Cardiovascular and Wellness Nutrition (SCAN) website to find an RD that specializes in sports nutrition.
How do you plan to adjust your eating plan post-race?
The Boston Marathon is one week away! The week leading up to the race can be exciting, yet nerve-wrecking. Tapering, an essential part of training, can be difficult for some runners. Figuring out what and how much to eat adds another challenge.
In the week leading up to the race, you need to build up your glycogen stores so you have as much available energy during the race as possible. This will help you avoid “hitting the wall” and will improve your race performance (and marathon enjoyment).
Building maximum glycogen stores is usually accomplished by training less (AKA the taper), and consuming a foundation of carbohydrate-rich foods at each meal. Aim for 60-65% of your calories to come from carbohydrates. This should include fruits, vegetables, grains (whole grains are preferred), and legumes. The best way to do this is to include carbohydrates at every meal and snack, rather than loading up only at dinner.
Here is a sample carbohydrate-rich menu (Notice it still includes a little protein at each meal.):
Breakfast: 2 pieces whole-wheat toast with 2 tbsp peanut butter & 1 medium banana
Morning snack: Medium apple & 1 serving pretzels (or crackers)
Lunch:Turkey & Swiss cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread with 1-cup minestronesoup
Afternoon snack: 1-cup plain yogurt with 1-cup strawberries and ½ cup low-fat granola
Dinner: 11/2 cups whole-wheat spaghetti with marinara sauce and 2 turkey meatballs, aside salad & small whole-wheat dinner roll.
Evening snack: 1 Orange & 1 oatmeal raisin cookie
Note: Thisis an estimate based on a 2,500-2,600 calorie per day diet. Depending on your gender, body size, and training load, you may need more or less calories throughout the day.
The original “Ahlborg” method of carbo-loading included a depletion phase, in which the marathoner would increase training intensityabout 7 days from the race, while decreasing carbohydrate consumption, thereby depleting glycogen stores. Then, 3 days pre-race, the runner would increase carbohydrate consumption and decrease training to re-fuel. However, research has now shown that this period of depletion is not necessary.
In the week pre-marathon, you want to eat similarly to how you’ve been eating throughout your training. This is not a time to try new foods or new eating patterns. You also don’t need to eat more than you’ve been consuming throughout training because you will be exercising less. Your body will simply store more of the carbohydrates in your muscles (muscle glycogen) instead of burn them off.
It’s common to feel slightly bloated, and even to gain up to 3-4 pounds during the week before the marathon. Don’t worry! Carbohydrates are naturally stored with water. Therefore, as you store carbohydrates, you will add water weight and volume to your muscles.
Lastly, and most importantly, on the night before the marathon, eat what you’ve eaten the night before your long runs. This is not the time to try a new food; you don’t know how your stomach will react the next day.
Best of luck to all of you running the Boston Marathon!
What’s your favorite meal to eat the night before a big race?
Eat well, run hard, have fun. Welcome to Boston!!!
Nancy Clark & Sarah Gold, guest blogger
For more information, enjoy this "how to" easy reader: | <urn:uuid:ad12e626-4fb2-4d4d-8709-4bb745ed0687> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://community.active.com/blogs/NancyClarkRD/2012/04 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951406 | 1,782 | 3.0625 | 3 |
I think it took us all by surprise to learn that Tilden Park contains several fossil localities and has a rich history with the UCMP. Don Savage, a former professor of paleontology and past chair of the Department of Paleontology at Cal, found a gomphothere jaw by Inspiration Point off Nimitz Way in 1961 and John C. Merriam collected the type specimen of Eucastor lecontei from deposits near Vomer Peak.
Underlying the beautiful rolling hills of the park are terrestrial deposits of the Miocene. The oldest of these deposits are the Claremont Formation containing chert and siliceous shale layers deposited 14 to 16 million years ago in a deep marine basin. Overlying this formation are the alluvial-fluvial mudstone, sandstone and conglomerate deposits of the Orinda Formation that originated from a higher, mountainous region west of the East Bay. You can see clear views of the Orinda Formation just east of the Caldecott Tunnel on Highway 24. The Moraga Formation overlies the Orinda Formation. This basaltic flow erupted from a volcano at Round Top in the Robert Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, just south of the Caldecott Tunnel, about 9-10 million years ago.
There are a number of lava flows visible from Highway 24, east of the Caldecott Tunnel, that are several feet thick. Many of them have a red zone or baked contact at their base where the hot lava contacted with the wet and cool alluvial deposits of the Orinda Formation, oxidizing the sediments. These volcanic deposits are resistant and now form the ridges of the Berkeley Hills and San Pablo Ridge. Some of the lava flows dammed rivers causing the formation of lakes. Deposits from these lakes formed the Siesta Formation composed of fine-grained light gray sediments. These soft rocks are easily eroded and have resulted in several landslides. Capping these deposits is another lava flow called the Bald Peak Basalt (9 million years old), visible at Vomer Peak in Tilden Park. All of these rock layers were folded due to tectonic activity. This created a large north to south plunging syncline that encompasses Tilden Park.
Photos courtesy of Nick Matzke, Tony Huynh, and Lucy Chang.
Please note that a collecting permit and official permission is required to collect, or even pick up, any vertebrate fossil or fossil fragment in any of California's State and National Parks. Other public lands, including city parks and open spaces, may have similar regulations. Best to check in with the appropriate land use office wherever your adventures take you to inquire where the best spots are to see fossils in the field and what is and is not permitted while hiking and exploring our fossil heritage in these natural preserves. | <urn:uuid:7ef1f45b-29a0-47b6-b38d-01714ec0aed3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/blog/archives/date/2012/01 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933559 | 580 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Teen Voices Central to the Above the Influence Campaign
BRONX, New York, June 7 /PRNewswire/ — The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) today launches a new, nationwide campaign encouraging teens to engage in a conversation about the positive and negative pressures that influence their decisions. The Influence Project is part of a new emphasis on teens who are central to the anti-drug teen brand, Above the Influence. This emphasis includes hearing directly from teens about what they do to resist drug use and stay “above” negative influences.
The Above the Influence brand has been refreshed to include broadened messaging to focus on substances most abused by teens, and delivers both broad prevention messaging at the national level and more targeted efforts at the local community level. The Influence Project kicks off in the Bronx and travels to two other pilot markets in June – Portland, OR and Milwaukee, WI – with 20 other markets slated for later in 2010. As part of this effort, teens will engage in a series of activities that allow them to express themselves – from designing the next ATI advertising, to registering their input around influences on a map of the country, www.AbovetheInfluence.com/HeatMap, so they can see what teens around the country are experiencing. The three communities with the highest number of entries on the “Influence Map” will receive a special promotional event from the Above the Influence team in their hometown.
In youth activities already underway in three pilot markets (Bronx, Portland, and Milwaukee) teens revealed that influences in media and their immediate social and physical environment – ranging from crime to others’ use of drugs and alcohol – can negatively impact their ability to make healthy decisions about resisting pressure to use drugs. “Teens have always been exposed to negative influences through media or friends, but now they are getting those messages in a multitude of ways, including online with social networking sites,” said Gil Kerlikowske, ONDCP Director. “Hearing from teens directly about what influences they need to resist and how helps us better focus on prevention efforts and work with local communities to keep our youth drug-free.”
Among teens in the U.S., recent studies indicate that overall illicit drug use rates are flat following steady declines between 2002 and 2008. But what’s troubling about these studies is that more teens are saying they see less risk in using drugs, including marijuana, heroin, and LSD once or twice a week. Further, the abuse of prescription drugs is an increasing problem, across age groups and in every demographic. Data from the latest Monitoring the Future Survey, indicates that 7 of the top 10 drugs abused by 12th graders are prescription drugs.
For the past five years, since its creation, teens have proudly identified themselves as Above the Influence. They have embraced the brand, recreating commercials and using the logo in local artwork and on popular social networking sites. New TV ads are running on the ABC Family Network, MTV, VHI, and others across the country, as well as in teen-focused magazines such as Seventeen, Transworld, Rise, and others, in cinemas and online on Hulu, ChaCha, Pandora, and others. Other advertising will run in the three pilot markets. The new direction aims to balance broad prevention messaging at the national level with more targeted efforts at the local community level. The new advertising was created in collaboration with the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, with pro bono advertising provided by three advertising agencies: Draftfcb (Ordinary Day), Vigilante (Diner), and McGarry Bowen (Stage Hands).
Since its inception in 1998, the ONDCP’s National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign has conducted outreach to millions of parents, teens, and communities to prevent and reduce teen drug use. Counting on an unprecedented blend of public and private partnerships, non-profit community service organizations, volunteerism, and youth-to-youth communications, the Campaign is designed to reach Americans of diverse backgrounds with effective anti-drug messages.
SOURCE White House Office of National Drug Control Policy | <urn:uuid:f027f8e1-0326-4613-b3b0-f9b50b511845> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1875949/teen_voices_central_to_the_above_the_influence_campaign/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943768 | 840 | 2.046875 | 2 |
ELIZA was the first chatterbot to make a splash in popular culture, originally written and conceived by Dr. Joseph Weizenbaum of MIT in 1966 to mockingly ape the style of a person-centered ("Rogerian") psychotherapist or counselor, largely by prompting the user to elaborate on topics sampled from previous user input. A typical session would take the form of a typed dialogue (sometimes with simulated typing errors to further the suspension of disbelief), with the computer asking the user a series of questions and being fed responses from which to generate further questions.
ELIZA stimulated early consideration of computer artificial intelligence (or the appearance thereof), not infrequently passing the Turing test and fooling users into believing (for a little while, at least) that they were interacting with a real human being on the other end... blazing a trail subsequently followed down by Perry the Paranoid and Racter. Additionally, the nods its conversational interface made toward natural language processing (or, again, the appearance thereof) are considered to have been influential on the early mainframe development of the interface for text adventure games such as Adventure and Zork.
Considered as a game, ELIZA is nearly the polar opposite to Emily Short's Galatea -- instead of the player probing the computer with questions, the computer probes the player with them. Many different stories will still be revealed, but in this case, that's because it'll be people tricked by the program into telling them.
A cool personal psychiatrist program shipped with Sound Blaster and Sound Blaster Pro, Dr. Sbaitso was designed to showcase digitized voices Sound Blaster card was able to produce. Tell your problems or ask questions using standard parser (e.g. "Why does everyone hate me?") and the digital Dr. Sbaitso will intone various random bits of wisdom (e.g. "Tell me why") in broken mechanical voice. It's a neat little program that's good for a few laughs :)
People who downloaded Dr. Sbaitso have also downloaded:
Dungeon Master's Assistant Volume I, Cornerstone, Stereolusions, MAC in DOS, Bannermania, Star Trek: The Screensaver, SimSafari, Nickelodeon Directors Lab
©2013 San Pedro Software Inc. Contact: , done in 0.001 seconds. | <urn:uuid:b83e0407-dcb3-4638-95e9-6529d9ff1c83> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.old-games.com/download/5729/dr-sbaitso | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950062 | 475 | 1.835938 | 2 |
February 15, 2011 (ENS) - Rising demand for powdered rhino horn in Vietnam and China has driven the price as high as US$50,000 per kilogram, roughly equal to the street price for cocaine in the UK, says a international wildlife conservation organization headquartered in the hamlet of Kingsfold, West Sussex.
Mark Jones, programs director at Care for the Wild International, says increased demand and high prices have led to a renewed surge in rhino poaching.
"Reports of rhinos being killed, their horns sawn off, and calves left to starve, come in almost daily," Jones said. "Poachers and park rangers are often involved in shoot-outs, with deaths on both sides. It's a war."
Rhino horn is used in traditional medicine to treat anything from headaches to fevers, rheumatism and gout. Recent claims by a Vietnamese official that he used rhino horn to cure his cancer have escalated demand, says Jones.
British authorities found two smuggled rhino horns wrapped in cling film, concealed in a false sculpture, September 2010. (Photo by UK Home Office)
"Rhino horn is made of keratin, the same stuff that makes up human hair and nails," said Jones. "It has no medicinal value - you might as well bite your fingernails!"
South Africa alone, which is inhabited by 70 percent of the world's remaining rhinos, lost more than 330 animals to poachers during 2010, almost three times the previous year's losses, and 30 times poaching levels in the 1990s. Another 21 rhinos were killed there in January this year, says Jones.
On January 31, the South African Press Agency reported that two Vietnamese hunters with permits to hunt rhino near Musina were caught allegedly trying to smuggle four rhino horns out of Limpopo. While the hunting was legal, the removal and transportation of the horns constituted an illegal act.
Populations of rhinos in other African countries also are being affected, with poachers using sophisticated equipment such as helicopters, modern veterinary drugs, night-vision goggles, and high caliber weapons.
Poachers are using aircraft to hunt rhinoceros, Zimbabwe's wildlife chief said February 1. Seven endangered rhinos were killed in southern Zimbabwe in December and January, said Parks and Wildlife Director General Vitalis Chidenga.
Reports from India suggest that beleaguered populations of one-horned rhinos in Assam are also being targeted, with horns being smuggled across the poorly protected border with Myanmar, also called Burma.
"Asia's rhinos, and black rhinos in Africa, are severely threatened by poaching," said Jones. "The last northern white rhinos disappeared a few years ago. The relatively more numerous southern white rhino populations are now being threatened. Even rhinos that have been moved from South Africa to Tanzania as part of a reintroduction program have been targeted."
White rhino and young in South Africa's Madwike Game Reserve (Photo by ari-san)
The authoritative IUCN Red List of Threatened Species classifies the white rhinoceros, Ceratotherium simum, as Near Threatened with extinction.
The black rhinoceros, Diceros bicornis, is listed as Critically Endangered. Throughout most of the 20th century, the black rhino was the most numerous of the world's rhino species. Relentless hunting of the species and clearances of land for settlement and agriculture resulted in the population being reduced from a probable several hundred thousand at the start of the century, to less than 2,500 by the early 1990s.
The greater one-horned rhino, Rhinocerus unicornus, is considered to be Vulnerable. The IUCN's African Rhino Specialist Group has a policy of not releasing detailed information on the whereabouts of all rhino populations for security reasons.
The populations of all three species now are increasing slowly, according to the IUCN.
By 1977, all international commercial trade in rhinos and their products was prohibited under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. However, following a continued increase in numbers, in 1994 the South African population of southern white rhino was downlisted to allow for trade in live animals to "approved and acceptable destinations" and for the continued export of hunting trophies. In 2004, Swaziland's southern white rhinos were similarly downlisted.
Horns of black rhinos confiscated in Zimbabwe, April 2009 (Photo by International Rhino Foundation)
In September 2010, the British government placed restrictions on the export of antique rhino horn objects and trophies, concerned that these items were being auctioned off at high prices and exported for grinding down and sale as powdered horn in the Far East, fueling the rhino horn trade.
Minister for the Natural Environment and Fisheries Richard Benyon said, "I am extremely concerned about the increase in the number of rhinoceros horn products being sold through UK auction houses. We believe this is providing a financial incentive for poachers and encouraging the use of rhinoceros horns in Asian medicine."
"The government is committed to protecting endangered species, and in order to do this it has become necessary to take steps to refuse future applications for the export of rhinoceros horn," said Benyon.
Jones said, "We were pleased to see the UK take these steps, and urge other nations to do the same."
Care for the Wild International today called for immediate action to save rhino populations from extinction at the hands of poachers.
"We need better protection for the remaining rhino populations. More and better trained and equipped park staff are urgently required. Border security needs to be tightened up. Loopholes in national and international regulations need to be closed to prevent poachers posing as trophy hunters and exporting "trophy" horns for sale," Jones advised.
"Exports of live rhinos from South African ranches need to be stopped," he said. "Horn stockpiles that are currently in private hands need to be managed by governments in a transparent way, and preferably destroyed."
"Every effort needs to be made to reduce demand for rhino horn in China, Vietnam, and elsewhere in Asia," said Jones, "through engagement of the Traditional Medicine Community, and through education, awareness-raising and rigorous law enforcement."
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2011. All rights reserved.
|International Hydropower Association accused of excluding indigenous peoples and supporting Taib’s corruption USCC Releases Model Rule for Composting Operations ADA Carbon Solutions Announces New Hire of Vice President of Sales and Key Executive Promotions| | <urn:uuid:d94e2512-65ee-4d06-858f-d53512b70e05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2011/2011-02-15-02.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960048 | 1,367 | 2.125 | 2 |
Saudi Arabia will observe tomorrow the international day for combating desertification. Speaking on the occasion, Minister of Agriculture and Water Dr. Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Bin Mu'amar said that the intention is to focus on the negative impact of desertification on agricultural production, and consequently on the resources of human foodstuffs, affecting health as well as lifestyle. Dr. Mu'amar stated that Saudi Arabia carries out annual evaluations of its natural resources, pointing out the expansion of green areas in the Kingdom, and referring to the successful project of checking the movements of sand dunes.
Observance of this day reaffirms the Kingdom's solidarity with the international community in the face of environmental problems, which have been of concern to Saudi Arabia ever since its founding by King Abdul Aziz. Located in the western hemisphere's desert belt, Saudi Arabia is one of the driest countries in the world. It has therefore implemented a great many projects and special programs to preserve its natural resources. The Saudi government took part in the first conference on desertification in Nairobi in 1977, and has been actively involved at all levels to combat this problem, as part of its ongoing contribution to eliminating hunger and poverty in the world and to ensuring a better future for humanity. | <urn:uuid:ddb1b106-2a0a-4b06-ae29-7a6813d9dba3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://saudiembassy.net/archive/1999/news/page258.aspx | 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 | 0.952125 | 250 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Reader's view: Medical amnesty would help underage drinkersI am writing regarding the issue of medical attention for underage drinkers. Currently in the Minnesota Legislature two bills have been introduced that would implement medical amnesty across the state.
I am writing regarding the issue of medical attention for underage drinkers. Currently in the Minnesota Legislature two bills have been introduced that would implement medical amnesty across the state. In order for these bills to pass both the House and the Senate, legislators need to be reminded of the importance of breaking down barriers when it comes to the medical attention some underage drinkers may need.
Currently in Minnesota, more than 37 percent of 20-year-olds participate in high-risk drinking, according to a 2010 study by Boynton Health Services. With medical amnesty across the state, a person could call the authorities for medical attention for himself or for a friend without fear of arrest for underage drinking.
Many other states, cities, and universities across the country have instituted similar policies, including Cornell University. Cornell has expansive medical amnesty protections for its students and also has conducted conclusive studies concerning underage alcohol consumption. In a 2006 study, it found the implementation of medical amnesty policies increased the number of emergency calls received with no increase in the amount of high-risk drinking.
A 2011 study conducted by Boynton Health Services at the University of Minnesota found that over 14 percent of Minnesota college students would not call 9-1-1 if someone was unable to be woken up due to alcohol or drug use.
Medical amnesty would provide a responsible avenue for underage drinkers to seek medical attention if they or a friend were to need it. Please contact legislators and tell them medical amnesty is a common-sense solution to a very preventable problem. Tell them to pass medical amnesty for Minnesota. | <urn:uuid:b7ee4c95-df41-4929-b58b-2b59e8030097> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/260453/publisher_ID/36/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963568 | 353 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Information from CDC
Introduction: Lyme disease was named in 1977 when arthritis was observed in a cluster of children in and around Lyme, Connecticut. Other clinical symptoms and environmental conditions suggested that this was an infectious disease probably transmitted by an arthropod. Further investigation revealed that Lyme disease is caused by the bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi. These bacteria are transmitted to humans by the bite of infected deer ticks and cause more than 16,000 infections in the United States each year.
Vector: Black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) are responsible for transmitting Lyme disease bacteria to humans in the northeastern and north-central United States. On the Pacific Coast, the bacteria are transmitted to humans by the western black-legged tick (Ixodes pacificus). Ixodes ticks are much smaller than common dog and cattle ticks. In their larval and nymphal stages, they are no bigger than a pinhead. Ticks feed by inserting their mouths into the skin of a host and slowly take in blood. Ixodes ticks are most likely to transmit infection after feeding for two or more days.
Risk: In the United States, Lyme disease is mostly localized to states in the northeastern, mid-Atlantic, and upper north-central regions, and to several counties in northwestern California. In 1999, 16,273 cases of Lyme disease were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Ninety-two percent of these were from the states of Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin.
Individuals who live or work in residential areas surrounded by tick-infested woods or overgrown brush are at risk of getting Lyme disease. Persons who work or play in their yard, participate in recreational activities away from home such as hiking, camping, fishing and hunting, or engage in outdoor occupations, such as landscaping, brush clearing, forestry, and wildlife and parks management in endemic areas may also be at risk of getting Lyme disease.
Prevention and Treatment: It is important to remember that prevention measures can be effective in reducing your exposure to infected ticks, and most patients can be successfully treated with antibiotic therapy when diagnosed in the early stages of Lyme disease. Visit the links below for more information on the following topics:
Prevention and Control
Avoid tick habitats: Whenever possible, avoid entering areas that are likely to be infested with ticks, particularly in spring and summer when nymphal ticks feed. Ticks favor a moist, shaded environment, especially areas with leaf litter and low-lying vegetation in wooded, brushy or overgrown grassy habitat. Both deer and rodent hosts must be abundant to maintain the enzootic cycle of B. burgdorferi. Sources for information on the distribution of ticks in an area include state and local health departments, park personnel, and agricultural extension services.
Perform a tick check and remove attached ticks: The transmission of B. burgdorferi (the bacteria that causes Lyme disease) from an infected tick is unlikely to occur before 36 hours of tick attachment. For this reason, daily checks for ticks and promptly removing any attached tick that you find will help prevent infection. Embedded ticks should be removed using fine-tipped tweezers. DO NOT use petroleum jelly, a hot match, nail polish, or other products. Grasp the tick firmly and as closely to the skin as possible. With a steady motion, pull the tick's body away from the skin. The tick's mouthparts may remain in the skin, but do not be alarmed. The bacteria that cause Lyme disease are contained in the tick's midgut or salivary glands. Cleanse the area with an antiseptic.
Taking preventive antibiotics after a tick bite: The relative cost-effectiveness of post-exposure treatment of tick bites to avoid Lyme disease in endemic areas (areas where the disease is known to occur regularly) is dependent on the probability of B. burgdorferi infection after a tick bite. In most circumstances, treating persons who only have a tick bite is not recommended. Individuals who are bitten by a deer tick should remove the tick promptly, and may wish to consult with their health care provider. Persons should promptly seek medical attention if they develop any signs and symptoms of early Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis, or babesiosis.
Strategies to reduce tick abundance: The number of ticks in endemic residential areas may be reduced by removing leaf litter, brush- and wood-piles around houses and at the edges of yards, and by clearing trees and brush to admit more sunlight and reduce the amount of suitable habitat for deer, rodents, and ticks. Tick populations have also been effectively suppressed through the application of pesticides to residential properties. Community-based interventions to reduce deer populations or to kill ticks on deer and rodents have not been extensively implemented, but may be effective in reducing the community-wide risk of Lyme disease. New approaches such as deer feeding stations equipped with pesticide applicators to kill ticks on deer, and baited devices to kill ticks on rodents, are currently under evaluation.
Early diagnosis and treatment: The early diagnosis and proper antibiotic treatment of Lyme disease are important strategies to avoid the costs and complications of infection and late-stage illness.
Lyme disease vaccine: As of February 25, 2002 the manufacturer announced that the LYMErix™ Lyme disease vaccine will no longer be commercially available.
Clinical Description: Lyme disease most often presents with a characteristic "bull's-eye" rash, erythema migrans, accompanied by nonspecific symptoms such as fever, malaise, fatigue, headache, muscle aches (myalgia), and joint aches (arthralgia). The incubation period from infection to onset of erythema migrans is typically 7 to 14 days but may be as short as 3 days and as long as 30 days. Some infected individuals have no recognized illness (asymptomatic infection determined by serological testing), or manifest only non-specific symptoms such as fever, headache, fatigue, and myalgia. Lyme disease spirochetes disseminate from the site of the tick bite by cutaneous, lymphatic and blood borne routes. The signs of early disseminated infection usually occur days to weeks after the appearance of a solitary erythema migrans lesion. In addition to multiple (secondary) erythema migrans lesions, early disseminated infection may be manifest as disease of the nervous system, the musculoskeletal system, or the heart. Early neurologic manifestations include lymphocytic meningitis, cranial neuropathy (especially facial nerve palsy), and radiculoneuritis. Musculoskeletal manifestations may include migratory joint and muscle pains with or without objective signs of joint swelling. Cardiac manifestations are rare but may include myocarditis and transient atrioventricular blocks of varying degree. B. burgdorferi infection in the untreated or inadequately treated patient may progress to late disseminated disease weeks to months after infection. The most common objective manifestation of late disseminated Lyme disease is intermittent swelling and pain of one or a few joints, usually large, weight-bearing joints such as the knee. Some patients develop chronic axonal polyneuropathy, or encephalopathy, the latter usually manifested by cognitive disorders, sleep disturbance, fatigue, and personality changes. Infrequently, Lyme disease morbidity may be severe, chronic, and disabling. An ill-defined post-Lyme disease syndrome occurs in some persons following treatment for Lyme disease. Lyme disease is rarely, if ever, fatal.
Diagnosis: The diagnosis of Lyme disease is based primarily on clinical findings, and it is often appropriate to treat patients with early disease solely on the basis of objective signs and a known exposure. Serologic testing may, however, provide valuable supportive diagnostic information in patients with endemic exposure and objective clinical findings that suggest later stage disseminated Lyme disease. When serologic testing is indicated, CDC recommends testing initially with a sensitive first test, either an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) or an indirect fluorescent antibody (IFA) test, followed by testing with the more specific Western immunoblot (WB) test to corroborate equivocal or positive results obtained with the first test. Although antibiotic treatment in early localized disease may blunt or abrogate the antibody response, patients with early disseminated or late-stage disease usually have strong serological reactivity and demonstrate expanded WB immunoglobulin G (IgG) banding patterns to diagnostic B. burgdorferi antigens. Antibodies often persist for months or years following successfully treated or untreated infection. Thus, seroreactivity alone cannot be used as a marker of active disease. Neither positive serologic test results nor a history of previous Lyme disease assures that an individual has protective immunity. Repeated infection with B. burgdorferi has been documented. B. burgdorferi can be cultured from 80% or more of biopsy specimens taken from early erythema migrans lesions. However, the diagnostic usefulness of this procedure is limited because of the need for a special bacteriologic medium (modified Barbour-Stoenner-Kelly medium) and protracted observation of cultures. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has been used to amplify genomic DNA of B. burgdorferi in skin, blood, cerobro-spinal fluid, and synovial fluid, but PCR has not been standardized for routine diagnosis of Lyme disease.
Other Tick-Borne Diseases: Information about other tick transmitted illnesses like Southern tick-associated rash illness (STARI), Babesia infection, and ehrlichiosis can be found at CDC Health Topics A-Z.
More on the History of Lyme Disease: Early in the 20th century, European physicians observed patients with a red, slowly expanding rash (called erythema migrans or EM), associated this rash with the bite of ticks, and postulated that it was caused by a tick-borne bacterium. Then in the 1940s, similar tick-borne illness was described that often began with EM and developed into multi-system illness. Later that decade, spirochete-like structures were observed in skin specimens leading to the use of penicillin for treatment.
Aware of these findings, a physician in Wisconsin diagnosed a patient with EM and successfully treated it with penicillin in 1969. In the mid-1970s, physicians observed clusters of children with arthritis in and around Lyme, Connecticut. Other clinical symptoms and environmental conditions suggested that this was a distinct illness probably transmitted by an arthropod. Researchers linked the presence of EM rash lesions to preceding tick bites and determined that early treatment with penicillin not only shortened the duration of EM but also reduced the risk of subsequent arthritis.
In 1982, spirochetes were identified in the midgut of the adult deer tick, Ixodes dammini (referred herein by its original name, the black-legged tick, Ixodes scapularis) and given the name Borrelia burgdorferi. Finally, conclusive evidence that B. burgdorferi caused Lyme disease came in 1984 when spirochetes were cultured from the blood of patients with EM, from the rash lesion itself, and from the cerebrospinal fluid of a patient with meningoencephalitis and history of prior EM. CDC began surveillance for Lyme disease in 1982 and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) designated Lyme disease as a nationally notifiable disease in January 1991.
Questions and Answers About Lyme Disease
Q. How do people
get Lyme disease?
Q. What is the
basic transmission cycle?
Q. Could you get
Lyme disease from another person?
Q. What are the
signs and symptoms of Lyme disease?
Q. What is the
incubation period for Lyme disease?
Q. What is the
mortality rate of Lyme disease?
Q. Can a person
be reinfected with Lyme disease?
Q. How many
cases of Lyme disease occur in the U.S.?
Q. How is
Lyme disease treated?
Q. Is the
disease seasonal in its occurrence?
Q. Where is Lyme
disease most common?
Q. Is there a
vaccine against Lyme disease? | <urn:uuid:c2d95032-de74-4cdc-a41d-93aea79e091d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tjclark.com/bacterial_diseases/lyme_disease.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940097 | 2,552 | 4.03125 | 4 |
The Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument
More Mount St. Helens
The Johnston Ridge Observatory sits on a bluff just 5-1/2 miles from the crater at an elevation of 4,314'/1,327m and offers grand views of Mount St. Helens and much of the 1980 blast zone. This visitor center is the closest you can get to the mountain by car when driving in from the west and is located 53 miles east of the town of Castle Rock at the end of State Route 504.
Here you can enjoy spectacular views of the lava dome, crater, pumice plain and the landslide deposit.
A wide-screen theater presentation and interpretive displays depict the sequence of geologic events that changed the landscape. The video is a "must see". Be sure to stay for the curtain finale!
Discover the art and science of monitoring an active volcano and predicting eruptions through various displays and also read eye witness accounts from eruption survivors.
The visitor center is open daily from 10 AM to 6 PM May through October. Closed in winter. A Monument Pass is required and can be obtained at the center.
Ample parking also can accommodate large motor homes.
A number of hiking trails let you explore, enjoy and expand your experience of the area.
Pets are not allowed at viewpoints or on trails.
A Monument Pass is required, and you can pick one up in the visitor center.
The Johnston Ridge Observatory is operated by the USDA Forest Service. For more information you can call 360-274-2140.
Johnston Ridge Observatory. 21500 Spirit Lake Highway, Toutle, WA 98649. Phone: 360-274-2143.
Best selection of books on the Northwest.
A Falcon Guide to Mount St. Helens: A Guide to Exploring the Great Outdoors by Fred Barstad. Exploring Mount St. Helens is a comprehensive guide to this world-renowned attraction, offering a close-up look at the destruction and remarkable recovery of the area. The guide includes detailed information on the natural and cultural history of the area; recreational opportunities, including 23 hiking trails; and historical, geological, and natural exhibits. Order now...
In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens by Charles Goodrich, Kathleen Dean Moore and Frederick Swanson. This book presents a cross-pollination of literary and scientific perspectives on the mountain's history of cataclysm and renewal. These writings will startle readers with new recognition of the matchless gift Mount St. Helens makes to our region and the world: the gifts of beauty, of scientific illumination, of hope. Order now...
Portrait of Mount St. Helens: A Changing Landscape by Chuck Williams (Author) and Stuart Warren (Contributor). View the grandeur and the intimate detail of this beloved mountain as seen by 19th-century painters and pioneers as well as contemporary photographers. Order now...
Day Hiking, South Cascades by Dan Nelson. Introducing next-generation trail guides for the Northwest. More day hikes, with options for extending the trip; hike selection conveniently arranged by highway and travel corridors; more hikes close to urban centers; more year-round hikes at low elevation; clear driving directions; a portable size; and more use of color. Order now...
Selected Climbs in the Cascades Volume II by Jim Nelson and Peter Potterfield. Features 100 routes, including top favorite sport and crag climbing areas. Illustrated throughout with black and white photographs, several with route overlays. Highlights fun, quality climbs for all skill levels. Order now...
Washington Off the Beaten Path, 9th Edition (Off the Beaten Path Series) by Chloe Ernst. This book features the unique things to see and do from quirky cultural tidbits to hidden attractions and unique finds to local dining. Travel off the beaten path for a one of a king experience. Order now...
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Copyright © 1997-2013 Go Northwest, LLC. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:84a50cac-650e-4b57-9b19-7d9b61dd4303> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gonorthwest.com/washington/cascades/mt_st_helens/johnstonridge.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912701 | 886 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Newport, Oregon’s oceanic temperate climate does not generally have “very intense” temperature shifts throughout the year. The temperatures and climate are dominated by the ocean in the entire year. Hence, there is an occasional exception to the said fact specifically east winds coming in and temporarily bringing hot weather experienced for a few days yearly. This often takes place in the months of May and September. During summer, it does not get extremely hot in the city. It is also in this season when stimulating and invigorating daily breezes are experienced in the beaches. From the first quarter of July to the last quarter of September, there is limited rainfall.
Fall in Newport, Oregon is characterized either by grey, damp weather or warm, dry weather- or a combination of the two. Tourists will love the constant pleasant temperatures daily until mid- October. After that, rainfall starts to come along. However, a number of years mostly remain dry until early November. By mid- November, winter signs start to appear and rains are experienced. Yearly, Newport experiences around 70’’ of rain and much of it is between the first quarter of November and last quarter of April. Warm feel is hardly experienced for so long because sunlight is fleeting till the spring comes. Moreover, snowfall occurs every year in this season. Newport winter is also characterized by freezing nights, hail, regular storms and wild winds.
In spring, Newport Oregon weather is pleasant and comfortable. Rain continually falls and the wetness is inconsistent. Temperatures start to rise in the early part of March. Summer arrives by the mid- and late parts of June. The occurrence of fog is observed any time of the year. Summer and winter fogs also occur in Newport. There are many different websites that feature current weather conditions and forecasts of Newport. Day-by-day weather warnings can also be found in such websites. All of this information is very important most especially to those vacationers who plan to come and visit this wonderful place. | <urn:uuid:efd22b3b-b7aa-4a44-a6cd-74c412acd0c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newportoregonweather.net/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965255 | 408 | 2.625 | 3 |
Here at Yelp, we enjoy a good brew. We also love our jobs as engineers! So for our recent Hackathon, it made perfect sense to build something that made drinking beer more...interactive. We call it KegMate.
Being that you've found yourself on our Engineering blog, I bet you're interested in how it works, eh?
Theory of Operation (An Overview)
Sensors attached to the keg feed data into an Arduino microcontroller, which in turn communicates directly with the iPad via a serial connection. The iPad processes that data and displays it in a snazzy manner along with a description of the current brew. An RFID reader attached to the system allows users to 'swipe in' to KegMate and keep track of how much beer they've had, as well as assign a star rating for the beer currently in the keg (this is Yelp, after all).
Let's start from the bottom, closest to the beer. At the lowest level, we have a LM335A analog temperature sensor, ID-12 RFID reader, and a SwissFlow SF800 flow sensor attached to an Arduino microcontroller. The temperature sensor is an analog sensor, though we'll probably go with a digital one-wire sensor in the future (hey, we only had a couple days to build this thing!). We mounted the temperature sensor on the side of the keg towards the bottom; ideally we would know the temperature of the beer in the keg, but since it's not practical to get a temperature sensor inside the keg, this was the next best thing. The flow sensor sends the Arduino an electrical pulse every time ~.164mL passes through it. By counting the pulses we can calculate the volume and flow rate of the beer passing through the tube. The RFID reader sends distinct codes to the Arduino every time a card comes within range. While many kegbots attach the RFID reader directly to the host computer, we had to attach the RFID reader to the Arduino since we only had a single serial connection going to the iPad (more on that later). We used Mikal Hart's NewSoftSerial library to instantiate an interrupt-driven serial port using another GPIO pin that receives data from the RFID reader. The Arduino is running a modified version of KegBot.org's Kegboard firmware that handles the packetization of all the sensor data. We had to add support for the ID-12 RFID reader as well as the analog temperature sensor, but other than that, the Kegboard code is unmodified.
Establishing Communication with the iPad
To use the iPad's dock connector for serial communication one must either be a part of Apple's MFI (Made for iPhone/iPod/iPad) program or jailbreak the iPad. We opted to jailbreak the iPad. Note that while jailbreaking the iPad can usually be reversed by restoring the device from iTunes, Apple's official stance is that it "can violate the warranty and can cause the [device] to become unstable and not work reliably". So proceed at your own risk. After the iPad is jailbroken, the serial port in the iPad's 30 pin dock connector can be opened just like any POSIX serial port:
int fileDescriptor = open(/dev/tty.iap, O_RDWR | O_NOCTTY | O_NONBLOCK);
There is one caveat here: any program that will access the serial port must be in /Applications on the iPad's file system. It took us a while to figure this one out. This means you cannot install your application from XCode and expect them to immediately work. You must first move it to /Applications using ssh. We opted to send new builds directly to the iPad using scp. This turned out to be a great setup, because we could program the iPad without disconnecting it from the Arduino.
scp -r KegPad/build/Debug-iphoneos/KegPad.app root@[IP ADDRESS OF IPAD]:/Applications
Be especially careful when making connections to the iPad; make sure to check the pinout of the connector that you are using several times. We used a PodBreakout v1.4 board which had a different pinout than other versions of the same PodBreakout board.
The iPad software is the center of KegMate. Under the hood, we built a parser that interprets the input from the Arduino, processes that stream, and gives the important data to the view controllers handling the UI. Currently we use CoreData to store information about the beer and users, though in the future we'd like to move this data to an independent backend so we can support multiple KegBots in different locations.
When assembled, you get a neat project that makes drinking beer even more fun! (Did you know that was possible?)
This is definitely a work in progress; we've started working on an independent backend with an API to store all the beer and user data. This will allow us to install KegMates on all our kegerators and have them share data in real time. We're also awaiting delivery of our shiny new RFID reader that will allow us to use our work security badges to swipe into KegMate. Don't worry... we plan on keeping the github project up to date with these new improvements.
Also, a quick disclaimer: mixing beer and electronics with your iPad could easily go very poorly if you're not careful. Build your own KegMate only if you have a good idea of what you're doing. Proceed at your own risk!
Have fun! Let us know how your KegMate turns out.
- Yelp's KegMate on GitHub (The code and schematic)
- KegBot.org (We're building on what they started)
- Sparkfun Electronics (Every part you need except the flow sensor)
- Schematic PDF
Edit: rebranded this project to KegMate at the request of KegBot.org | <urn:uuid:c1994934-81c7-4871-94d3-fc797e0168dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://engineeringblog.yelp.com/2010/08/yelp-makes-beer-more-fun.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931971 | 1,251 | 2.21875 | 2 |
COMING HOME - There is a magic in that little world, home; it is a mystic circle that surrounds comforts and virtues never known beyond its hallowed limits. ~ Robert Southey
It was lunchtime. Mom, at the kitchen counter, stirred lemonade into iced tea, my two older brothers stood beside her making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and I sat at the table, coloring, my crayons scattered across the enamel. A man walked onto the back porch and spoke through the screen door. I thought he asked, "Do you want a Collie?" I looked up from my coloring book and said, "We already have one. His name is Teddy." I scraped back my chair. "Want to see him?" Then the sad man said he had run over our dog with his car. Teddy was dead. We walked to the highway and looked at Teddy as he lay on the pavement, eyes closed, as if he were asleep. I patted his tummy and cried and tried to wake him up, but he didn't move. No more Teddy. No more Teddy chasing sticks and lapping water over the edge of his bowl. No more Teddy snuggling his nose under my arm as we sat on the porch steps. No more silky amber coat and firm presence. No more best friend. My heart ached. The story ended with how Teddy had given me an irreplaceable security and comfort, a special belonging to the world. That he had taught me the importance of unconditional love and shaped the buds of my spirit.
I wrote that story with my 12-year-old heart, giving little thought to structure or form or convention. Mr. Feltman must have understood the vulnerable ego of a young writer because he didn't mark the paper, didn't comment about paragraphing or organization, and didn't tell me to rewrite it. He accepted my story as it was - raw, coarse, unpolished - a heartfelt memorial to my best friend. It was probably over-the-top maudlin, but it was pure and honest.
When I became a seventh grade English teacher, I used Mr. Feltman's wisdom to guide me in directing the writing efforts of transescents - tweens teetering on the bar between silliness and sophistication. I understood their writing brains and the need to have their thoughts and feelings acknowledged - that passion held merit. Whatever is put on paper, as long as it's sincere and offered with integrity, carries value. Accuracy, organization, and structure will come - in time - by reading and through instruction. Research, study, and lots of practice of technique and style can transform a budding writer's work from rough emotion to a solid piece, but original ideas don't rise from the texts of authorities. Ideas come from the font of existence - the harvest of life- the breadth and depth of being - the stuff that lives in the soul. Only authentic, slice of life experiences inform the writer. No one can teach what grows in the heart.
My real writing life began after I stopped teaching and had time to focus on the one passion I had only dabbled in when I was too busy keeping a working schedule. After I quit my job, I had the house to myself - my daughter off in California, married, with children of her own, and a husband at work. I had the luxury to spend time writing whole stories uninterrupted. I became part of a writers group and built a literary blog of personal narratives - slice of life stories about rich experiences living and working in several cities across the US and Canada. And I joined the ranks of other writers who go to prominent writing workshops.
I started with two classes at the 2009 Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City. Both classes, led by authors of bestsellers, maintained a perfect blend of stimulating instruction with support and affirmation. Both teachers appreciated the personal writing styles of their students and acknowledged the voices that spoke from the center of student writings. Both teachers demonstrated ways to enhance writing and move toward mastery, advancing our skills through thoughtful critiques and helpful lessons in technique, style, structure, and word choice. Both leaders smoothed the rough edges of my style and elevated my level of expertise. I left Iowa nourished and confident. It was an experience I wanted to repeat, so I registered for a week of classes at the 2010 Iowa Summer Writing Festival.
Because I wanted to test the waters at a new venue, I sought entrance into a another writing workshop that only accepted applicants based upon the quality of their work. In February, I applied for a class in non-fiction, which would be taught by a well-known author, and I submitted a 20-page piece of writing for review. In March, I received a congratulations-you've-been-accepted letter. I could barely contain the excitement at having received official accolades for my writing. It was like getting an A+ on a paper. Like having my art displayed on a museum wall. I bragged to my friends.
In July, I travelled across the country to the first of my two summer writing workshops - the one that had accepted me based upon the merit of my work. I knew what to expect. After all, hadn't I been to Iowa? Hadn't I fit in well with seasoned writers? Hadn't I been appreciated for my writing? Admired for my flair? Respected for my style and voice? Valued for my ability to analyze, with finesse and expertise, other student papers? I hit the mark at Iowa. How different could writing workshops be?
Yes, I knew what to expect. I'd have a week of stimulating classes led by an author of bestsellers. I'd participate in critiques of my writing and those of my eleven fellow classmates. I'd kick-start my enthusiasm and flesh out new writing strategies. I'd hone my already sharp skills. I'd find fresh approaches to writing my slice of life stories. They'd play new melodies and sing songs with crisp lyrics instead of humming along to the old tunes. I'd be immersed in exciting ways to spiff up my golden oldies.
At the beginning of class, we circled the room, introducing ourselves and telling a bit about our writing - current projects, writing style, preferred genre, publications. This was a very accomplished group of women. A couple of them had published articles in periodicals and online journals. One woman had just sold her novel to a well-known press. Another woman wrote stories and read them on National Public Radio. When it was my turn, I mentioned, with pride, that I wrote slice of life stories, that my genre was mostly memoir and personal narrative. I added that I had a collection of stories in mind about people in my hometown and that I was considering a larger project centering on the experiences of my family after we left the States for Canada during the Vietnam War Era.
When it got back around to the teacher, she said, "Well, first of all, slice of life stories don't sell. They're not popular. Agents barely look at them. Unless there is an on-going story holding them together, I wouldn’t recommend trying to pitch stories like that to an agent."
Womp! This I didn't expect. Excuse me? Slice of life stories don't sell? Hel-lo-o. What about NPR's Ira Glass and "This American Life?" What about CBC's Stuart McLean and "The Vinyl Cafe"? What about Alice Munro? Don't they write short stories? Aren't they slices of life? And aren't they published? At the sounding of this death knell, my writing confidence, still bursting at the seams from my welcoming experiences at Iowa, lay at my feet, looking up at me with doleful eyes, asking, "What just happened?"
All the usual questions students ask during the first hour of class popped into my head. Am I in the right room? Should I check the number on the door? And if I am in the right room, do I belong here? Did I sign up for the wrong course? Should I stay? The old fears of student-hood came hurling down at me and lodged in my notebook. My ego took a nose-dive. I went into a writer tailspin. This wasn't the stimulating, fostering environment I'd expected. My slice of life stories? The mainstay of my repertoire? No longer viable? Had I spent over 1000 dollars and travelled 2000 miles to be stuck in a writing workshop cul-de-sac?
It became clear that this writing environment wouldn't be about the excitement of the process - passion for writing was a given. This workshop would be about following recipes for publication. About what's good and what isn't, according to the market. About what agents want and what they don't. About what will sell and what won't. I certainly wanted to be published. What author doesn't? But I wasn't burning to pound my chest at the summit. I still loved the climb.
However, and here is the clincher, this class would teach me what I needed to know - the difference between professional authorship and amateur verbiage. The difference between really good writing and really bad. This class would show me the ropes - the nitty-gritty - which, according to the teacher, each of us in the class, as demonstrated by our papers, needed to learn.
This class wouldn't be about appreciating the heartfelt thoughts dredged up from the bottom of a writer's soul - it would be about how to get those thoughts on paper so they don't sound like they were written by a seventh grader - or even by a somewhat inspired adult. Mr. Feltman had left the premises. I wasn't in Iowa anymore.
"After all," our author/instructor said, "you didn't pay all that money to have me pat you on the back with a 'job well done,' then send you on your way. I believe," she continued, "that you came here to discover how to apply excellence to your writing. How to prepare your novels for publication." She told us we'd study the experts, have lessons in authorship, and critique the papers we had submitted, pointing out what works, but focusing on what doesn't. "Don't expect to be comfortable."
My paper would be critiqued on Thursday. That gave me four lessons in the art and excellence of writing and six critiques of student work before it was my turn. By the time my paper came up for review, it was clear that the good stuff received a quick wave of the arm and a, "That's ok, but it'll work better if you tweak it." And the bad stuff got hollered at. By Thursday, I pretty much knew what was bad about my paper. I still thought some of it held promise, but I didn't expect much praise, considering that lambasting literary lousiness was the primary objective.
First of all, and I already knew this, we were advised to use the active, not passive, voice. On one student's paper, the teacher had circled the word was 23 times - all on the same page - and told everybody. Wanting to be prepared for the censure, I counted the was's and were's in my paper before my critique. But use of the passive voice never became an issue. In fact, the instructor gave me credit for using funny, active verbs - albeit too many of them, she said, in the first paragraph.
My downfall turned out to be quite different than that of the other students. My big no-no centered on demonizing characters, which is a really, really Bad Thing to Do. Now, I knew that. Don't demonize your characters. But I did it anyway - I couldn't think of anything good to say about him without lying. And I got hammered for it, pretty much by the entire class - as I should have been. I wrote about a despicable, self-righteous, horrible little orthodontist for whom I worked when we lived in Syracuse many years ago - and I let him have it with both ink cartridges. I demonized him something awful. Eleven pages of harangue.
Had I leaned back from my keyboard and analyzed this diatribe with a discerning writer's eye, I might have noticed that I presented my boss as a one-dimensional lout in a lab coat, not a well-rounded human being with a couple of good qualities mixed in with the bad - good qualities, mind you, that all people possess regardless of how low a person gets. Even criminals feed cats. I thought about Tony Soprano and how well drawn and engaging - how human - his multi-faceted role as son, husband, father, friend, mob boss, thief, and cold-blooded killer. Tony grilled steaks on a back yard barbeque for birthday parties. He took Prozac to diffuse the panic attacks he suffered after his sweet family of ducks flew away.
Perhaps I should have written that my dentist boss brought me homegrown tomatoes in September or that he gave discounts to kids who didn't break their wires. That would have illustrated a nice side of the orthodontist, but no, I didn't do that. I didn't give him even an ounce of nice, piling instead, a heap of nasty on his poor, probably dead-by-now soul. That was bad writing. Big-time bad. I've since rewritten the piece and posted it on my blog. It's now for the audience to decide if my character has been humanized - if he's palatable enough for a reader's stomach.
Throughout that week, my writing ego tied itself to my ankles and clanked along, dragging itself through the dirt, kicking up dust and grime. Slice of Life trailed behind, whimpering for attention, before it gave up and went home. And even though the string almost broke, my writing ego stayed attached regardless of the scrapes and bruises it encountered along the way. I managed to suffer through the trauma of discovering the blunders in my writing and how good it could be if I'd only do this or that or the other thing. I left that workshop worn out - exhausted - and humbled, knowing I had many paths to travel before reaching that milestone of excellence in writing, never mind an agent's eye.
Three days after returning to Chicago, I drove to Iowa to start my second writing workshop - a class called "Word Yoga: Exercises to Allow Your Prose to Stretch, Focus, Breathe." I sat in the room and waited for the introductions, wondering what, if anything, I'd say about my now almost defunct idea of writing slice of life stories.
At the beginning of class, B. K. Loren, the class instructor, wrote on the chalkboard, "Everything is OK!" Then she announced, "We leave our egos at the door in this class. We're here to experience the joy of writing. This isn't about publishing - it's about being in the experience. And no matter what level of writer you are, you'll be better by the end of the week."
With B.K.'s guidance, and the encouragement that swirled through the class that first day, my ego climbed back into the saddle, waved at me, and sauntered off to play in the sun while I embarked on a series of writing exercises that would rekindle my writing spirit and inject energy back into my stories. Yes, there would be lessons in the difference between good and bad writing - between professional authorship and amateur verbiage. But the focus would be on the process - the passion - the climb.
By the end of that first class, I had wandered back into my imagination and found Teddy, Mr. Feltman, and all the loyal characters of my slice of life stories waiting for me - to pick up where I had left off.
I had come home.
"Inspiration does not come from obsessing about some end product. It comes from loving every step of the process." ~ BK Loren | <urn:uuid:41b8e4ea-49db-4c6a-8ddd-bf52e8da92fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.elliesearlstories.com/2010_07_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978915 | 3,328 | 1.5625 | 2 |
A new report, One-third of schools built in air pollution danger zones, released this month found that one third of public schools are built within 400 meters of a major highway. Great- you might think – easy access right?
Well yes, easy access but not so great for your children’s health. Research studies have shown that environmental pollution, like exhaust particles, can leave school age children more susceptible to respiratory illnesses.
“This is a major concern that should be given serious consideration in future urban development, transportation planning and environmental policies,” says Sergey Grinshpun, PhD, principal investigator of the and professor of environmental health at UC. To protect the health of young children with developing lungs, he says new schools should be built further from major highways.
This research examined 8000 schools serving 6 million school age children across the country, in Atlanta, Boston, Cincinnati, Denver, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Memphis, Minneapolis and San Antonio and indicates that the problem is far more widespread than was previously thought. Asthma is at epidemic levels in this country and part of the reason, especially for children is homes and schools built in increasing proximity to highways.
Close to 6.3 million children in the U.S. under 18 currently have asthma!
Those of us based in the Los Angeles area have been hearing about this for awhile and seeing the impact in our children. Children in the port areas of Los Angeles/Long Beach with schools built close to freeways heavily traveled by trucks carrying containers of toys, clothes and household goods from China and other Asian countries have some of the highest asthma rates in the country.
According to recent studies by scientists at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, children living close to freeways have a two-fold increase in risk for asthma. Teens growing up in southern California communities with high rates of pollution from traffic have a five-fold risk of reduced lung function.
How many children in this area have asthma. Try 15- 20%! That’s one in every five children! And I see it every day. Inhalers are a way of life in my area.
What can you do to protect your child?
“Health risk can be mitigated through proper urban planning, but that doesn’t erase the immediate risk to school-age children attending schools that are too close to highways right now,” Grinshpun said. “Existing schools should be retrofitted with air filtration systems that will reduce students’ exposure to traffic pollutants.”
Work with your school and your public building council. Write to your City Council.
Protect our children.
Photo Credit: spcummings at Flickr Under creative Commons License | <urn:uuid:efaa8600-c339-44c6-b4da-a99ea3f13562> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/09/05/danger-one-in-three-public-schools-hazardous-to-childrens-health-is-yours-one-of-them/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95102 | 562 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Apopka city officials have really changed their tune when it comes to converting a landfill in the city from construction debris to the final resting place for the foulest of garbage -- everything from spoiled food and dirty diapers to sewage.
Two months ago, the City Commission gave preliminary approval to a financial deal that paved the way for Waste Management Inc. of Florida to convert its landfill. In today's column I write about how that move incensed residents in south Apopka.
Then last night the commission asked city attorney Frank Kruppenbacher to draft a policy that would ban new dumps or conversions of the existing one inside the city or within a mile outside its borders.
So, the commission went from using the conversion as a money-maker to saying it wanted nothing to do with it at all.
What changed? I'd say officials severely miscalculated the blowback from residents who opposed the idea.
Kruppenbacher says that's not so. He said the commission was never interested in the conversion in the first place and simply used it as a bargaining chip to get Orange County to lower the fees at its dump.
"The secret's out," he said. "We never wanted it. We just used the tactic to get the county to the table."
If that's true, then that's a pretty horrendous way to treat the residents of south Apopka. City officials let them think for months that it was willing to support the conversion, which would have been devastating to their neighborhoods.
That's a lot of stress to inflict on a lot of people simply to get the upper hand at the negotiating table. We're talking people's financial futures (property values) and peace of mind here.
Either way -- if the city really intended to potentially allow the conversion or not -- Apopka comes out smelling on this one. | <urn:uuid:6e6a8366-3945-4903-bda2-28e23b211359> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kwch.com/news/aviationwatch/os-beth-kassab-apopka-lawyer-now-trying-to-craft-way-to-ban-worst-kind-of-landfills-20111222,0,970814.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957918 | 378 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Reviewed by Lauren B. (age 7)
This book is about a little iguana. Iguana is my favorite character. Did you know that animals can have parties, too? I like the page that shows Iguana giving out the invitations. She gives one to a toad looking out from under a rock. Iguana is not mad yet because she doesn't know that Culebra, Tortuga, and Conejo are not going to help her at all. Their excuses are funny. Culebra says, "Manana, Iguana." My favorite part of the story is when they try to find a way to help Iguana when she's asleep. The illustrations are colorful and funny, like when Tortuga and Conejo are playing tic-tac-toe in the sand. There is a glossary with the days of the week and the characters' names in Spanish and English. Conejo means rabbit.
There is a lesson to be learned, which is to always help your friends. You can go to your school library and get this book, Manana, Iguana! | <urn:uuid:7efd6091-d207-491e-b4d4-c4af63c0983e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://spaghettibookclub.org/review.php?review_id=7966 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970305 | 226 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Special Commission on Lawyer Regulation
The Special Commission on Lawyer Regulation is charged to study the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar, as adopted by the Supreme Court of Florida, and to evaluate the efficacy of the current system of lawyer regulation as those rules are implemented by The Florida Bar. After appropriate study and investigation, the commission is requested to report its findings to the board and recommend all changes that will increase the efficiency of lawyer regulation while balancing the expectations of the public and the rights and needs of Florida’s lawyers as individuals and as a profession.
The goals of the commission are to increase the speed with which matters are evaluated and conclusions reached; preserve the fairness of the system of lawyer regulation where existing levels are appropriate and enhance the level of fairness where possible; and reduce the expense associated with lawyer regulation.
Special Commission on Lawyer Regulation Report and Recommendations
*Henry Matson Coxe, III, Chair | <urn:uuid:0336e985-9b13-486b-92be-740773694147> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.floridabar.org/tfb/TFBComm.nsf/6b07501281c8e567852570000072a0b9/4e0e98ad164db87385256eb600744b16!OpenDocument | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963466 | 185 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Contrary to reports yesterday, OPEC will not consider an oil production boost this weekend, and won't even discuss it, according to the Los Angeles Times, quoting Saudi Arabia's oil minister. Everyone seemed to think a supply increase was in order in September, when OPEC agreed only to a "token" boost; since then, the world economy has been on edge, as oil prices break record after record.
As we've said before, all the peak oil analysts' eyes are on the Saudis, because they have the largest known reserves, and what signs sneak out of the secretive regime can be read to indicate they're exhausting those supplies. In other words, anytime they don't boost supply, it leads more to believe they can't, because they're tapped out.
As if to stave off that kind of peak oil speculation, the head of Exxon-Mobil yesterday pinned the price run-up on everything but a shortage underground, according to the Toronto Star. The cause, in his view: primarily nations that want to be paid well when international companies pump their oil. He calls it "resource nationalism." (Maybe he should come up with a more demonizing name, because that doesn't sound all that unfair. Remember that pity is in order for Exxon, the world's largest oil company, because its 2007 profits are down from record 2006 levels; it made only $9.4 billion in the last quarter.)
What does it mean for consumers? You guessed it. Higher prices.
The cost of gasoline is already up about 30 cents in the past few weeks, and it may go up another 20 cents to account for the higher price of crude, according to USA Today. And, as the cost of oil and gas go, so goes much else, from food to holiday gifts. And, if they cost too much, the American economy starts to slide ever closer to recession.
Which is why determining the true cause of the oil spike matters.
Enter your city or zip code to get your local temperature and air quality and find local green food and recycling resources near you. | <urn:uuid:5bf304b0-8bae-4546-aa3f-8023be80c8b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/saudi-oil-47111303 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969277 | 420 | 1.851563 | 2 |
1999 Projects: ROV improvements
Precision-control technologies for underwater vehicles
The goal of this effort is to explore high-risk technologies that could potentially enable a wide range of autonomy in controlling autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). At one end of the spectrum of autonomous activities are pilot aids for ROV operation, such as automatic stationkeeping, point-and-click manipulator control, and automatic generation of mosaic (small seafloor maps). At the other end of the spectrum is the capability for fully autonomous AUV missions and for ROV tasks that do not require the full creativity of a human pilot.
The immediate focus of this project will be in two technology areas. The first is the development and demonstration of automatic, vision-based feedback control, where the computer utilizes the camera to perform a control task involving the vehicle or the manipulator. This frees the pilot to do other tasks. The second area of endeavor is the development of techniques for high-performance, task-level control (e.g. point-and-click) of manipulators that operate either from a fixed basesuch as an ROV on the seaflooror from a small, free-floating AUV.
An additional goal of this program is to provide a path through which scientists, engineers, and pilots at MBARI can influence doctoral-level research at Stanford University, such that new technologies can be explored that are of interest to MBARI but considered too high-risk for near-term development. This arrangement will also allow interested scientists, engineers, and pilots at MBARI to implement, test, and evaluate new concepts developed at Stanford.
Next: Mapping project
Last updated: 07 October 2004 | <urn:uuid:ef7ad32f-01f3-44f7-adbc-b19d87b867c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mbari.org/rd/projects/1999/control_technologies.html | 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 | 0.921664 | 353 | 2.84375 | 3 |
News from our blog
Earlier this month, we discovered hundreds of illegal listings for products made with parts of endangered animals on the trend-setting online marketplace Etsy.com. After several attempts to be heard by Etsy HQ, we launched a petition asking Etsy headquarters to adopt a policy that would prohibit such items from the site – and you’ve stepped up in a big way: Thanks to your support in spreading the word, more than 31,000 people have signed the petition already – and we’re hoping many more will add their voices!
In the last week, Etsy HQ has taken some encouraging first steps to address this disturbing and illegal trade in parts of endangered species. Etsy’s CEO, Chad Dickerson, has reached out to the Snow Leopard Trust to inform us that they are aware of the issue and have contacted the US Fish & Wildlife Services to gain a better understanding of the situation.
We’re happy to see that Etsy HQ has taken this first step, which will hopefully lead to them adopting wildlife-friendly policies that will keep endangered animal products off this thriving marketplace – for the benefit of wildlife and the Etsy community.
For now, however, there remain hundreds of illegal listings for pre-ban leopard fur, rhino horn and other endangered animal parts on Etsy.com – and so we’re eagerly awaiting more concrete steps from Etsy HQ to address this disappointing situation.
We will remain in contact with Etsy HQ and the US Fish & Wildlife Services and have offered to help with the development of policies if it would be helpful. We will also continue to monitor the endangered species products listed on Etsy.com to see if there is any short-term progress – feel free to help!
Citizen scientists wanted!
Every year, our research cameras take thousands of photos of snow leopards and other species that share their habitat. Get involved in snow leopard conservation by helping our scientists look through the photos from our cameras in India.
Photos by our supporters
Click on a thumbnail to see a larger image
Do you have snow leopard photos to share? Join our Flickr photo pool. | <urn:uuid:a4c95a61-b255-4727-944f-a39a1389a490> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.snowleopard.org/interact | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939369 | 431 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Manos the Greek on funny side of economic crisis
The Parthenon on the Acropolis as restoration takes place on February 20, 2012 in Athens, Greece.
Jeff Horwich: Greece's lenders had planned a visit to the country today, but wouldn't you know it: the brand new finance minister's been fainting and sick to his stomach. One day on the job -- that's all it took to send this man's body into revolt. If Greece weren't so sad, it would be funny. Maybe it's still funny -- at least one guy thinks so.
Manos Kanellos is a stand-up comic in London who goes by "Manos the Greek." Manos, welcome to Marketplace.
Manos Kanellos: Good to speak to you Jeff.
Horwich: So Greece is in the news almost every single day. How does it feel to be a Greek these days?
Kanellos: On the one hand I feel sometimes embarrassed about the actions of my compatriots. On the other hand, I also do enjoy the publicity we are having. I mean, last week we were, for example, the top news on Al Jazeera.
Kanellos: The last time that Greece was on Al Jazeera was in 490 B.C. after the Battle of Marathon.
Horwich: Better late than never.
Kanellos: With the headline, "Greece saves Europe from the Persians, Europe will always owe a huge debt to Greece."
Horwich: You're concerned about your home country, of course -- are there any solutions, as you think about what's going on in Greece, any solutions that you've come up with?
Kanellos: If I was in charge, I think I would open up the economy, because we have -- still -- a closed economy. I would tax heavily the high-income people, the church and the ship owners -- and when I say ship, I mean the boats, not the four-legged animals.
I would explain that the last 30 years has not been normal life, it was a party. The Germans are not happy to pay the bill; they do not understand what a party is. So we need to work hard and pay our taxes.
Horwich: Do the Germans even know how to party like the Greeks?
Kanellos: Exactly, they can't. I don't blame them -- they don't have the weather for it. Why not make holidays compulsory for all Europeans? That is one solution. But I think the more realistic solution for a way out of this crisis -- a good word, by the way, it's Greek -- a good way to finish this drama -- another Greek word -- and avoid catastrophe -- another good word -- is to actually put a copyright on Greek words. If, Mr. American, you want to call your spacecraft to the moon "Apollo," a nice Greek word, please give us some money.
Horwich: Manos Kanellos -- on stage, he goes by Manos the Greek -- great to talk with you, thanks very much.
Kanellos: Thank you, thanks for having me. | <urn:uuid:eac00c5e-ba6e-4d9b-939e-cc7e0e1f2bce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/punchline/manos-greek-funny-side-economic-crisis | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9648 | 656 | 1.710938 | 2 |
A First Period Worcester Porcelain Blue-Scale Kidney-Shaped Dish, Circa 1770. The kidney-shaped dish has a blue scale ground with four large shaped white panels and four smaller vase-shaped panels on the rim, all finely painted with flowers. ;The vase-form panels have a single flower, while the larger panels are painted with an assortment of flowers, each has a distinctive long stemed flower to each side. ;In the central well is another panel of kidney-shape similarly painted with flowers. ;Each panel is bordered with fine gilding of rococo form. Length: 10 inches x width: 7 1/2 inches Mark: Underglaze blue fret mark Reference: Worcester Porcelain, 1751-1790, The Zorensky Collection, Simon Spero & John Sandon, page 262, #310, for a kidney-shaped dish.
Antique Porcelain & Pottery
Antique Platters & Trays | <urn:uuid:995bf02d-12f7-41e5-b5f3-c05863d08ef3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.antiques.com/classified/Antique-Porcelain---Pottery/Antique-Platters---Trays/A-First-Period-Worcester-Porcelain-Blue-Scale-Kidney-Shaped-Dish-Circa-1770-Earle-D-Vandekar | 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 | 0.908669 | 205 | 2.171875 | 2 |