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Elvis has left the building and is heading for Parkes
Elvis tribute artist Peter Triantis: 'I was doing the Elvis moves [those crazy karate chops and kicks] when I broke a woman's nose, knocked out her teeth.' Photo: Luis Enrique Ascui
WHAT began as a man is now a virus. Elvis. Just as some people are susceptible to bronchitis, others are vulnerable to the Presley pathogen, such that he takes them over, changes the way they do their hair and strut about.
Such was the fate of Peter Triantis, 42, the same age as Elvis when he choked on pills and bacon. But Peter - who performs a tribute show called Elvis to the T, and runs a community television program called EPTV - aims to keep looking like the Elvis of 1968, when he made his great comeback in leather and Brylcreem.
''We're the same height, the same build, my shirts are the same measurements,'' says Triantis.
Elvis Tribute Artists
Al Morgan, Andrew Portelli, Peter Triantis and Marcus Jackson, Elvis Tribute Artists. Photo: Luis Ascui
His hair too has the same rich lustre. ''Women are always wanting to touch my hair. During one show, I was doing the Elvis moves [those crazy karate chops and kicks] when I broke a woman's nose, knocked out her teeth. She'd come up behind to touch me.''
But this isn't the story of one man's obsession. There are dozens of people like Peter Triantis in Australia, and this week they will start gathering in the NSW town of Parkes for the annual Elvis Festival.
On Thursday, some 30 or so professional Elvises and lordy knows how many amateurs will arrive on a special train from Sydney. They will be greeted by many locals who go about their daily business wearing Elvis and Priscilla wigs.
Parkes is one of those towns you call hot because of the blistering sunshine - and as far as tourism goes, the biggest attraction for years was the radio telescope that famously (as related in the film The Dish) relayed communication from the first moon landing. All of which is fascinating if a little dull.
During the Elvis festival, which runs from this Wednesday to Sunday, the local population of about 10,000 triples to 30,000.
Through sheer force of will, 150 different Elvis-themed events are staged, including an Elvis gospel church service, the Carnival of Cups Elvis Harness Racing Meet, a street parade, an Elvis art exhibition (black velvet, anyone?) and the Back to the Altar With Elvis, Renewal of Wedding Vows where couples gather under the Love Me Tender arch in a local park to say, ''I do and will keep doing so'', under the guidance of an Elvis celebrant.
For Peter Triantis, and the other professionals, there is a great deal of rivalry as to who is the King of Kings. ''There are a lot of bad Elvises. They're short, they're fat, they don't have their own hair and they don't know how to sing.''
But if they're anything like Triantis, even the loser Elvises try hard and spend big on looking perfectly Presley. Triantis, who employed the services of Elvis' original tailor - until the man died a year ago - has spent $60,000 on capes, jumpsuits and golden belts.
He is, however, not a showboat.
''I only wear the Elvis costumes at night. During the day I dress as casual Elvis in puffy shirts with the collar turned up.''
Thank you, Mr Triantis. Thank you very much. | <urn:uuid:434cc149-910a-4590-b49c-0be8c2295c8a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.watoday.com.au/national/elvis-has-left-the-building-and-is-heading-for-parkes-20130105-2ca6i.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958241 | 763 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Getting Used to Life Without Food, Part 2
By William Engdahl
Editor’s Note: This editorial is continued from Getting Used to Life Without Food, Part 1: Wall Street, BP, Bio-Ethanol and the Death of Millions
The record rise in grain and food prices in recent years is not a mere Wall Street profit gimmick, although obscene profits are being made. Rather, it is apparently an integral part of a long-term strategy whose roots go back to the years just after World War Two when Nelson Rockefeller and his brothers tried to organize the global food chain along the same monopoly model they had used for world oil. Food would henceforth become just another commodity like oil or tin or silver whose scarcity and price could ultimately be controlled by a small group of powerful trading insiders.
At the same time the Rockefeller brothers were expanding their global business reach from oil to agriculture in the developing world through their technology-driven Green Revolution scheme after the war, they were also financing a little-noticed project at Harvard University. The project would form the infrastructure for their plan to globalize world food production under the central control of a handful of private corporations.
Its creators gave it the name ‘agribusiness,’ in order to differentiate it from traditional farmer-based agriculture — the cultivation of crops for human sustenance and nutrition. The push to place world national governments’ emergency grain reserves into private hands was merely a logical expansion of the original Rockefeller agribusiness strategy, as was their highly mis-represented “Green Revolution” which at day’s end merely promoted a huge sale of US agriculture products from John Deere tractors (using large volumes of Standard Oil Rockefeller products) to US chemical fertilizers made by other companies in the Rockefeller orbit—forcing a trend to large scale farming and forcing millions off the land into cities where they former a cheap labor pool for large multinationals. The highly-touted harvest yields turned out to be actual losses after several harvests. 1 | <urn:uuid:59e6aa5c-adef-4f75-9b75-988e50a9daef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://revolutionradio.org/?p=16604 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942944 | 410 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Home > Family
Paternity testing is used to identify the legal father of a child. Oftentimes, paternity testing is necessary to determine who will be held legally responsible for a child, especially with regard to matters including (but not limited to) custody, child support, and visitation. If paternity is in question during a divorce, the court will often require the husband or the alleged father to undergo paternity testing. If you are involved in a divorce or family law case that requires paternity testing, you may wish to consult with an experienced attorney who can help you understand your legal rights.
Different Types of Paternity Testing
With recent medical and scientific developments, paternity testing is now more accurate than ever. Some paternity testing can determine the identity of the father with 90 percent accuracy or greater. Moreover, paternity can also be ruled out, usually with 100 percent accuracy, through paternity testing.
There are a couple of different types of paternity testing:
Paternity testing is a relatively common procedure, which can be performed at a number of public and private medical facilities nationwide. Cost varies depending on the type of paternity testing (blood or DNA) and the location of the test (public or private facility). If paternity testing is court mandated, there may be specific requirements with regard to the type and location of the test.
Paternity Testing and the Law
Once paternity testing has positively established paternity, the father gains certain legal rights, including the right to seek custody or visitation. On the other hand, the father also has certain legal obligations, including the obligation to pay child support .
The results of paternity testing can be life altering. If you have questions or concerns about the paternity of a child, it is important to understand the legal ramifications of paternity testing. A qualified divorce and family law attorney can help you understand the law and your legal rights.
Contact us for a FREE consultation with one of our experienced lawyers.
More information on family: | <urn:uuid:a5d95fe9-fe6f-4d8b-9a5a-55218cbe2e3b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.divorce-lawyer-source.com/html/family/paternity-testing.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945675 | 390 | 2.015625 | 2 |
NEW YORK — Almost half of hospital doctors said they routinely see more patients than they can safely manage, leading in some cases to unneeded tests, medication errors and deaths, according to a survey by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.
Seven percent of 506 hospital-based physicians surveyed said their heavy workload likely led to a patient complication, and 5 percent reported it probably caused a death over the past year. The findings are published in a research letter released Monday by JAMA Internal Medicine.
Doctors are increasingly taking on more patients to compensate for cuts in payments from health insurers, the researchers said. That workload is projected to increase as the 2010 health law expands insurance coverage to 30 million more Americans. The researchers, based at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said there is a risk that rising patient volumes may increase costs by decreasing quality.
“Excessively increasing the workload may lead to suboptimal care and less direct patient care time, which may paradoxically increase, rather than decrease costs,” the study’s authors wrote.
Forty percent of doctors said they saw an unsafe number of patients at least once a month with 25 percent saying it prevented them from fully discussing treatment options or answering questions, according to the survey.
Researchers electronically surveyed doctors in November 2010 using a physician networking website. The average age of the physicians was 38 with an average salary of $180,000. Doctors said they could safely manage 15 people during a shift if they were able to devote 100 percent of their time to patient care.
Lawmakers have moved to prevent medical errors by putting restrictions on the number of hours doctors in training can work and set standards for nursing staffing levels. There are no similar limits on workloads for physicians who focus primarily on care of hospitalized patients. | <urn:uuid:da5ef9d3-5f6b-4acc-9960-7673460bf77c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bangordailynews.com/2013/01/29/health/doctors-say-excessive-workloads-put-hospital-patients-at-risk/?ref=latest | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964792 | 357 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Cleomenes or Kleomenes (pron.: //; Greek Κλεομένης; died c. 489 BC) was an Agiad King of Sparta in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BC. During his reign, which started around 520 BC, he pursued an adventurous and at times unscrupulous foreign policy aimed at crushing Argos and extending Sparta's influence both inside and outside the Peloponnese. He was a brilliant tactician. It was during his reign that the Peloponnesian League came formally into existence. During his reign, he intervened twice successfully in Athenian affairs but kept Sparta out of the Ionian Revolt. He died in prison in mysterious circumstances, with the Spartan authorities claiming his death was suicide due to insanity.
Early life
He was the son of Anaxandrides II (of the Agiad royal house) and his second wife (apparently a daughter of Prinetades), and was the half-brother of Dorieus, Leonidas I, and Cleombrotus. Although the three younger half-brothers were the sons of Anaxandrides' first wife and therefore had a better claim to the throne according to tradition, Cleomenes was apparently the eldest son and succeeded his father around 520 BC. He allowed his half-brother Dorieus to mount expeditions outside the Peloponnesse, perhaps as a way of expanding Spartan influence and territories, and perhaps to rid himself of a potential rival. His interest in the world outside the Peloponnesse may have accounted for some of his reputation for insanity among fellow Spartans who tended to be highly insular, conservative, and suspicious of all things foreign.
War against Athens
Around 510 BC the Alcmaeonidae family, who had been exiled from Athens, requested that Sparta help them overthrow Hippias, the son of Pisistratus and tyrant of Athens. The Alcmaeonidae, led by Cleisthenes, bribed the oracle at Delphi to tell the Spartans to assist them, and Cleomenes came to their aid. The first attack on Athens was a failure, but Cleomenes personally led the second attack and besieged Hippias and his supporters on the Acropolis. He was unable to force Hippias to surrender, but the Spartans captured some of Hippias' relatives and took them hostage until he agreed to give up the city.
Cleisthenes and the Athenian aristocrat Isagoras then fought each other for control of Athens. Cleomenes came with an armed force to support Isagoras, and they forced Cleisthenes and the Alcmaeonidae family to go into exile for a second time. Cleomenes also abolished the Boule, a council set up by Cleisthenes, and occupied the Acropolis. The citizens of Athens objected to this and forced him out of the city. The following year Cleomenes gathered an army, with the aim of setting up Isagoras as tyrant of Athens. This army invaded Attica. The Corinthians in his force refused to attack Athens once they learned of Cleomenes' plan, and the invasion failed.
Sparta then proposed to her allies to mount an expedition to restore Hippias as tyrant of Athens. Given that Sparta had been instrumental in the overthrow of Hippias this change in policy was justified because Sparta had discovered that they had been tricked by the Alcmaeonidae into overthrowing Hippias because the Delphic oracle had been bribed into asking them to do so. According to W G Forrest, it was Cleomenes who argued for this change of position with Sparta's allies. However, the allies, led by Corinth, rejected the proposal in the first act of the Peloponnesian League.
The Ionian Revolt and its Aftermath
In 499 BC, Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, came to Sparta to request help from King Cleomenes with the Ionian Revolt against Persia. Aristagoras nearly persuaded Cleomenes to help, promising an easy conquest of Persia and its riches, but Cleomenes sent him away when he learned about the long distance to the heart of Persia. According to Herodotus, Cleomenes's young daughter Gorgo warned Cleomenes not to trust a man who threatened to corrupt him.
Around 494 BC, Cleomenes invaded and defeated Argos at Sepeia killing a large number of Argives, Herodotus says 6000 (probably an exaggeration), by burning them to death in a sacred grove of Argus. Argos would remain a bitter enemy of Sparta for decades after this attack. It is not clear why the attack on Argos took place. It may have been the result of Sparta's concerns over Argos and the city’s pro-Persian tendencies, or due to proximity of Argos to the Spartans and thus being a growing threat to the security of the Spartan state.
When the Persians invaded Greece after putting down the Ionian revolt in 493 BC, many city-states quickly submitted to them fearing a loss of trade. Among these states was Aegina, so in 491 BC, Cleomenes attempted to arrest the major collaborators there. The citizens of Aegina would not cooperate with him and the Eurypontid Spartan king, Demaratus attempted to undermine his efforts. Cleomenes overthrew Demaratus, after first bribing the oracle at Delphi to announce that this was the divine will, and replaced him with Leotychides. The two kings successfully captured the Persian collaborators in Aegina.
Exile and death
Around 490 BC Cleomenes was forced to flee Sparta when his plot against his co-king Demaratus was discovered, but the Spartans allowed him to return when he began gathering an army in the surrounding territories. However, according to Herodotus he was by this time considered to be insane. The Spartans put him in prison. By the command of his half-brothers, Leonidas I and Cleombrotus, Cleomenes was placed in chains.
While in prison, Cleomenes was found dead with his death being ruled as suicide by self-mutilation. He was succeeded by the elder of his surviving half-brothers Leonidas I, who then married Cleomenes' daughter Gorgo.
The veracity of accounts of Cleomenes' insanity and suicide have been the subject of some speculation among modern historians.
- Herodotus; Histories, A. D. Godley (translator), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1920; ISBN 0-674-99133-8. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
- Cartledge, Paul, Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300-362 BC, Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (December 7, 2001), ISBN 978-0-415-26276-7.
Further reading
- Forrest, W.G. (1968). A History of Sparta 950-192 BC. New York: Norton.
- Huxley, George L. (1962). Early Sparta. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
|Agiad King of Sparta | <urn:uuid:27f6c062-c279-4f60-a254-190b440e3053> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleomenes_I | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965707 | 1,503 | 2.859375 | 3 |
The Great Debate UK
- Giselle Portenier is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who focuses on human rights abuses around the world and a member of the Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival committee. The opinions expressed are her own. Reuters will host a “follow-the-sun” live blog on Monday, March 8, 2010, International Women’s Day. Please tune in.-
Soon it will be that famous Ladies’ Day again, International Women’s Day, when the Western press packs their pages with stories—and it’s already started– either celebrating all we have achieved, or lamenting all that still eludes us—equal pay for work of equal value, glass ceilings, balancing work and family life, domestic violence, and so on.
And while these stories are worthwhile, as we head into the hundredth year celebrating International Women’s Day, the time has come to slow down this navel-gazing, change this narrow focus, and come to the aid of millions of women worldwide.
The time has come to break the silence, in a big, real, systematic and very public way, on all the human rights abuses endured by girls and women in the developing world in the name of culture and religion. | <urn:uuid:62795d87-7bcf-4266-b634-a6d910fe9b77> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate-uk/tag/giselle-portenier/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928885 | 260 | 2.0625 | 2 |
IRS Required Interest Rates Nearing All Time Low!
Aug 19, 2011
The IRS publishes each month the Applicable Federal Rates (AFR). They just published the rates for September in Revenue Ruling 2011-20. These rates are broken down into three different terms:
- Short-term (less than 3 years)
- Mid-term (more than 3 and less than 9 years)
- Long-term (more than 9 years)
These rates determine the minimum interest rate that must be charged on loans. If the interest rate charged is less than these amounts, then the tax laws require us to "impute" interest based upon difference between the required AFR and the actual interest rate charged in the note.
For example, assume the AFR for a five year loan is 5% and the loan charges no interest. If the balance on the loan for the current year if $100,000, then $5,000 of the payment would be considered interest and the remainder principal.
As most readers know, interest rates are nearing all time lows (at least for my lifetime) and the current AFR for short-term loans is .26%. That is correct 1/4 of one percent. On long-term loans, the required AFR is slightly more than 3.50%.
Therefore, any loans between family members should try to use these interest rates so you would not have to impute interest.
I expect to even see these rates go slightly lower next month and the month thereafter. | <urn:uuid:b3843828-f235-4c0e-b29d-67629c6a0cac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.agweb.com/mymachinery/blog/The_Farm_CPA_243/irs_required_interest_rates_nearing_all_time_low/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955108 | 310 | 2.125 | 2 |
Citrus aurantifolia is a shrubby tree, to 5 m (16 ft), with many thorns. Dwarf varieties are popular with home growers and can be grown indoors during winter months and in colder climates. The trunk rarely grows straight, with many branches that often originate quite far down on the trunk. The leaves are ovate 2.5–9 cm (1–3.5 in) long, resembling orange leaves. The flowers are 2.5 cm (1 in) in diameter, are yellowish white with a light purple tinge on the margins. Flowers and fruit appear throughout the year but are most abundant from May to September.
Citrus aurantifolia are used to flavour many foods. High in vitamin C, they were formerly used in the British navy to prevent scurvy—hence the nickname “limey” for British sailors. | <urn:uuid:73e21151-488c-4d31-b585-7b4fbb33572d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bitterrootrestoration.com/perennials-plants/citrus-aurantifolia.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938973 | 181 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Pilot Learned Lesson in Crash: Walked Away Bruised
Bob Carpenter knows now that he should have drained the fuel tank of his plane to make sure it really did hold 29 gallons.
Carpenter's 1970 Thorp T18 ran out of gas about seven miles short of his destination in Ohio on Jan. 10 and crashed into some trees.
He survived the crash, suffering only some bad bruising.
A partner at Big Sky Construction in Pinehurst, Carpenter said he expects to be back up in the air piloting a plane soon. He is a flight instructor and said he now has a real-life example to share with new pilots on how emergency procedures can save lives.
Carpenter said that he bought the airplane, which unlike most planes had only one tank, last year. He had been flying the single-engine plane around Moore County's skies, checking the fuel consumption.
Carpenter figured that the plane was burning about 7.8 gallons of fuel per hour. When he bought the plane, he was told it held 29 gallons, which would give him a little less than four hours of flight on a full tank.
On Jan. 10, he was going to fly the plane to the Portage County Airport in Ravenna, Ohio, to have some maintenance done. He wanted the air conditioning fixed. He planned to leave the plane there and fly back to North Carolina with a friend an hour after landing.
Carpenter had filed a flight plan to cruise at 5,000 feet, but eventually went up to 9,000 to avoid some bad weather. As he approached the airport, he descended to 2,800 feet.
As he leveled off, he went to increase the RPMs to maintain altitude. Nothing happened. Minutes later, he began to lose power.
Carpenter radioed the airport to say that he wasn't going to make it and was going to find a field to put down in. He found one to the east.
"It looked like I could make it," he said.
He turned toward the field, steadily losing altitude. If he could make it to the field, he said he could land safely. But his plane was dropping faster than he had expected. He realized he wasn't going to make it.
"If I had another 40 feet, I could have cleared the trees," Carpenter said.
Carpenter decided to try a stall maneuver. Just before he struck the trees, he pulled back on the stick, kicking the plane's nose into the air. It was all part of the emergency procedures, Carpenter said, which were all he could think about.
The move slowed the plane and stalled it. It dropped like a rock from about 35 to 40 feet above the ground. The side of the aircraft banged into a tree.
The force jostled Carpenter, causing him to bang his right shoulder and the back of his head on the right side of the cockpit.
The nose of the plane and the left wing were now angled down. The plane skidded down the side of the tree. It struck the ground nose first and Carpenter banged his head on the front of the canopy.
"I never lost consciousness," he said.
Carpenter said his first thought was to get out of the plane as quickly as possible. He looked around briefly for his cell phone but couldn't find it.
The crash had blown out the windshield, so Carpenter gathered his flight bag and climbed out over the nose. He checked the front and back of his head and found that he was bleeding in both places. He pulled on a knit cap to keep his head warm.
"My coat was actually hanging in the tree," he said. "It was good because it was windy, cold and snowy."
He went to a nearby home and knocked on the door. After he waited for several knocks, a man answered the door and told him to come in.
Carpenter said that the woman at the home, who was interviewed on local television about the crash, continued her phone conversation while he sat waiting. She eventually dialed 911 and handed him the phone.
He found out later that air traffic control had called for emergency responders before he had actually crashed.
Edinburg Township Fire and Rescue took Carpenter to Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna. Other than a bruise that goes from his shoulder to his elbow, Carpenter said that he is pretty much recovered.
"Other than soreness, I feel fine," he said. "I've really been pretty lucky."
Knowing what to do in an emergency helped him.
"You do a lot of training for emergency situations," he said. "It helped increase my chances of survival."
The plane crash hasn't dampened his enthusiasm for air travel.
The next day, he let his friend fly him back to North Carolina. He has a trip planned in early February and hopes to fly a friend's plane.
He said that the next time he is giving a course on engine-out procedures, he's going to draw from this experience.
"It comes down a little bit faster than you trained for," he said.
Matthew Moriarty can be reached at 693-2479 or by e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.org.
More like this story | <urn:uuid:efa836f7-9fc3-4487-b7c3-76a72e6464da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thepilot.com/news/2007/jan/23/pilot-learned-lesson-in-crash-walked-away-bruised/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989919 | 1,091 | 1.8125 | 2 |
George W. Bush & Sons Co. v. Malloy - 267 U.S. 317 (1925)
U.S. Supreme Court
George W. Bush & Sons Co. v. Malloy, 267 U.S. 317 (1925)
George W. Bush & Sons Company v. Malloy
Argued January 16, 1925
Decided March 2, 1925
267 U.S. 317
ERROR TO THE COURT OF APPEALS
OF THE STATE OF MARYLAND
1. A statute of Maryland, 1922, c. 401, prohibits common carriers of merchandise or freight by motor vehicle from using public highways over specified routes without a permit; requires a Commission to investigate the expediency of granting a permit when applied for, and authorizes it to refuse if it deems the granting of the permit prejudicial to the welfare and convenience of the public. Held unconstitutional as applied to one desirous of using the highways as a common carrier in exclusively interstate commerce. Buck v. Kuykendall, ante, p. 267 U. S. 307. P. 267 U. S. 323.
2. The facts that the highways here in question were not constructed or improved with federal aid, and that refusal of the permit is not mandatory under the statute, but in exercise of a broad discretion vested in the Commission, do not affect this conclusion. P. 267 U. S. 324.
143 Md. 570 reversed.
Error to a judgment of the court of appeals of Maryland which affirmed a judgment dismissing a bill for an injunction.
MR. JUSTICE BRANDEIS delivered the opinion of the Court.
A statute of Maryland prohibits common carriers of merchandise or freight by motor vehicle from using the public highways over specified routes without a permit. The Public Service Commission is charged with the duty to "investigate the expediency of granting said permit" when applied for, and it is authorized to refuse the same if it "deems the granting of such permit prejudicial to the welfare and convenience of the public." Laws Md.1922, c. 401, § 4.
George W. Bush & Sons Company applied for a permit to do an exclusively interstate business as a common carrier of freight over specified routes, alleging its willingness and intention to comply with all applicable regulations concerning the operation of motor vehicles. After due hearing, the permit was denied. This suit was brought in a court of the state to restrain the state officials from interfering
with such use of the company's trucks. The bill alleged, and it was admitted by demurrer, that the highways were not unduly congested; that they are so constructed that they can carry burdens heavier than that which would be imposed by plaintiff's trucks; that the operation of its trucks would impose no different burden upon the highways than the operation of the trucks of the same kind and character by private persons, which was freely permitted, and that, in refusing the permit, the Commission had considered merely "whether or not existing lines of transportation would be benefited or prejudiced and in this way the public interest affected." The plaintiff claimed that, regardless of permit, it was entitled to use the highways as a common carrier in exclusively interstate commerce. The trial court dismissed the bill. Its decree was affirmed by the highest court of the state. 143 Md. 570. The case is here on writ of error under § 237 of the Judicial Code.
This case presents two features which were not present in Buck v. Kuykendall, ante, p. 267 U. S. 307. The first is that the highways here in question were not constructed or improved with federal aid. This difference does not prevent the application of the rule declared in the Buck case. The federal aid legislation is of significance not because of the aid given by the United States for the construction of particular highways, but because those acts make clear the purpose of Congress that state highways shall be open to interstate commerce. The second feature is that here, the permit was refused by the Commission not in obedience to a mandatory provision of the state statute, but in the exercise, in a proper manner, of the broad discretion vested in it. This difference also is not of legal significance in this connection. The state action in the Buck case was held to be unconstitutional not because the statute prescribed an arbitrary test for the granting of permits, or because the director of
public works had exercised the power conferred arbitrarily or unreasonably, but because the statute, as construed and applied, invaded a field reserved by the commerce clause for federal regulation.
The separate opinion of MR. JUSTICE McREYNOLDS, delivered in this case and the one immediately preceding it, ante, p. 267 U. S. 307.
I am of opinion that the courts below reached correct conclusions in these causes.
The states have spent enormous sums in constructing roads, and must continue to maintain and protect them at great cost if they are to remain fit for travel.
The problems arising out of the sudden increase of motor vehicles present extraordinary difficulties. As yet, nobody definitely knows what should be done. Manifestly, the exigency cannot be met through uniform rules laid down by Congress.
Interstate commerce has been greatly aided -- amazingly facilitated, indeed -- through legislation and expenditures by the states. The challenged statutes do not discriminate against such commerce, do not seriously impede it, and indicate an honest purpose to promote the best interests of all by preventing unnecessary destruction and keeping the ways fit for maximum service.
The federal government has not and cannot undertake precise regulations. Control by the states must continue -- otherwise, chaotic conditions will quickly develop. The problems are essentially local, and should be left with the local authorities unless and until something is done which really tends to obstruct the free flow of commercial intercourse.
The situation is similar to the one growing out of the necessity for harbor regulations. State statutes concerning pilotage, for example, have been upheld although they amounted to regulation of interstate and foreign commerce.
"They fall within that class of powers which may be exercised by the States until Congress has seen fit to act upon the subject." | <urn:uuid:745eb9cf-9030-488b-a7f9-70bcb1d0b96c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/267/317/case.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951271 | 1,242 | 1.507813 | 2 |
National Alliance on Mental Illness
page printed from http://www.nami.org/
(800) 950-NAMI; firstname.lastname@example.org
The New Psychiatry: The Essential Guide to State-of-the-Art Therapy, Medication, and Emotional Healthby Jack M. Gorman, M.D.
The New Psychiatry: The Essential Guide to State-of-the-Art Therapy, Medication, and Emotional Health by Jack M. Gorman, M.D.
Reviewed by Paul V. Buday, Ph.D. J.D., William Zaccagnino, and Rupert B. Hurley, NAMI Literature Committee
The New Psychiatry: The Essential Guide to State-of-the-Art Therapy, Medication, and Emotional Health is an excellent book for educating a consumer and others. Books describing mental health care for the general public and psychiatric patients are increasingly common, but this one stands out. Dr. Gormanís objective is to get psychiatric knowledge to patients and family members and to help them get good medical care, procure well-defined goals of treatment, and determine whether these goals are being reasonably met. To paraphrase an old slogan, "An educated consumer is a psychiatristís best patient."
Gormanís basic thesis is what he calls the "New Psychiatry." His phrase captures the rich evolution of psychiatry over the last 50 years in medications, psychiatric theory and care, and in the greater precision of diagnosis. He maintains this new and needed image of psychiatry and its practitioners is predicated upon several concepts; among them: reasonable attempts should be made by psychiatrists to study all treatments scientifically and patients must be informed about the degree this has been done; patients have the obligation to insist upon a good basis for consuming prescribed medication; psychiatric care can help many people but not all; and psychiatrists must provide individualized care in an empathetic and respectful manner. This is refreshing to hear from a practicing member of the profession.
Gorman divides his text into four principal sections: Considering Treatments, The Treatments, The Illnesses, and Special Topics. Each section is subdivided into various issues, and all is presented in an informal style--as if the author were discussing the subject with a patient or one of his or her family.
Chapter 4, "Medication," is especially illuminating for the laity. Dr. Gorman briefly explains at the cellular/subcellular level the modus operandi of the various classes of psychiatric drugs--from antidepressants to the antipsychotic--and the basis for untoward effects which commonly supervene. Chapter 12, on schizophrenia, contains thorough information; its descriptions of positive and negative symptoms are carefully drawn.
While Dr. Gorman provides a wealth of information, there a few points that readers may differ with. Contrary to his comments on p. 323, stimulants like dextroamphetamines do not appreciably speed up all biological processes to thereby increase metabolism and cause weight loss. This specific drug and the amphetamines as a class act as weight-loss agents by a central elative action and by depression of the hypothalamic appetite center ("appestat"). Further, a physical withdrawal syndrome does occur when amphetamine-like stimulants are withdrawn from addicted patients. Still further (p. 324), the reader may be left with the impression that in treating attention deficit disorder (ADD), methylphenidate (Ritalinģ) acts as a cerebral stimulant; but it does not. A third point pertains to Dr. Gormanís comments on marijuana. While he specifically offers no endorsement of the drug, his comment that marijuana "is a minor problem compared to alcohol or cocaine" may allow a person prone to substance abuse to too easily rationalize the use of marijuana.
The quality of the information in Gormanís work far outweighs these few points. This well-written book is formulated by an expert, and its prose runs smoothly. The author completes the book with lists of mental health associations; suggestions for further reading; a list of the tables displayed; a list of psychiatric drugs by generic and trademark (brand) names; and a thorough index.
This is a refreshing, instructive book that brings a wealth of complex information together in one place in a most understandable manner. It is highly recommended to consumers, their loved ones, and the paramedical and social workers who labor daily in the brain-disorder trenches.
The New Psychiatry: The Essential Guide to State-of-the-Art Therapy, Medication, and Emotional Health, by Jack M. Gorman, M.D. St. Martinís Press, New York, 1996. 410 pages. | <urn:uuid:997f9fa9-5416-49e2-abb9-a19be38deee6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nami.org/PrinterTemplate.cfm?Section=Families&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=1901 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923472 | 957 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Embracing the Power of Fear
Let’s not be so hard on fear. It isn’t as evil as you might think. While most of us view it as an emotionally draining experience to be avoided at all costs, fear can, in fact, turn our lives around by forcing us to confront ourselves and make changes for the better.
I came to this realization a few years ago, shortly after turning 50, when fear almost paralyzed me. I knew that I hadn’t been doing all the right things for myself. I was always too busy working and taking care of others. I hadn’t been exercising, and the post-menopausal pounds were starting to pile on. The realization that it might be too late was starting to worm its way into my brain. All I could do was beat myself up for not having done this or that to get myself as healthy and fit as possible before I hit 50. And now that I was there, I believed I was doomed.
I found myself asking the “What if?” questions: What if I have a heart attack? What if I get Alzheimer’s? What if I get cancer? Do I already have cancer and don’t know it? I looked around and saw that people my age were having strokes, struggling with depression, gaining weight, developing diabetes. Sure, younger people also have some of these health concerns, but they seems all too common after we turn 50.
Baby boomers, especially those over 60, are already responsible for rapidly rising medical costs, and many of their illnesses are due to obesity, poor nutrition and lack of exercise. In fact, obesity is the fastest growing health issue in the U.S. I was sure I would end up adding to these statistics.
Obesity can contribute to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and certain cancers. Developing any of these illnesses can have debilitating results, including loss of employment, inability to cover medical costs and care, and disability. Savings can be wiped out, causing tremendous financial hardships — at a time when unemployment is at an all time high. Many Americans also are living without health insurance, a huge financial risk in and of itself. Jane Bryant Quinn, one of America’s foremost financial experts, told me that lack of health insurance is the leading financial risk for any American, but this is especially true of boomers.
Admittedly, getting older isn’t always easy. All kinds of changes — wanted and unwanted — go hand-in-hand with aging, which can often be so scary it stops us in our tracks, keeping us from moving forward.
But then I did some hardcore soul- searching, and realized there is another side of fear, one that could propel me to take action, to help me change my life. I spent some time digging deep within myself to get to the very core of my fear, and only then did I understand what was truly behind my angst:
I was terrified of becoming ill, disabled, dependent, and financially broke as I got older because of things I was — or wasn’t — doing now.
Seeing that drastic action was required, I began to seek the best information from leading experts on nutrition, fitness, health, and financial planning. I wanted to feel good and look good so that I could see that person in the mirror with a renewed sense of pride and confidence. I would turn my fear into action and do everything possible to age with confidence.
I started going for slow runs, with breaks for walking, every day and learned how to do push-ups and other exercises to prevent osteoporosis. I went for annual health checks. I changed the way I ate and dropped my bad habits. Where I had once spent my time dieting instead of eating, I began to pay attention to what I ate and to eat something healthy and small every couple of hours. I even accepted the fact that my hair, which I had spent decades straightening, was naturally wavy and looked its best that way. And I didn’t just lose the 15 pounds I had gained — I dropped an entire pant size.
Instead of giving up and giving in, I took responsibility for my own health, which was the best way I could think of to make fear work for me. I pulled myself out from under the proverbial blanket—where I had planned to stay for the long haul, believing, at first, that this is what aging was all about.
Now I know better.
Armed with this new knowledge, I’ve come up with my own personal mantra, which I’d like to share with you:
Don’t fight your age. Embrace it, whatever it is. Let go of your younger self and embrace and love your aging self. Treat yourself with kindness, respect, and take care of you — body, mind, and soul — as you would your children, family, and friends. This is your time. Yours. | <urn:uuid:99610969-3a0e-4530-9ff0-ba5dfe73a2b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.faboverfifty.com/barbaras-blog/embracing-the-power-of-fear/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983694 | 1,023 | 1.507813 | 2 |
As the media industry reinvents its business model to contend with the disruptive effects of the Web, I wanted to highlight a Socialtext customer, Meredith Publishing, that’s continuing to thrive by making sure its employees seize on new opportunities and react to change faster than competitors. One tool that aides Meredith employees in that effort is Socialtext Signals, our enterprise microblogging tool, which allows them to share information openly.
Today’s Harvard Business Review article highlights how Meredith employees use microblogging to track competition and move faster on ongoing projects.
At Meredith Corporation, the publisher of Ladies Home Journal and Better Homes & Gardens, microblogging tool Socialtext Signals is the platform of choice. Using Signals, the marketing function can post alerts to employees and partners on a wide range of marketing issues, such as researching competitors, brainstorming new ideas for a direct marketing campaign, or analyzing the outcomes of current campaigns.
Says Dave Ball, Vice President of Consumer Marketing for Meredith, “Signals allows us to break down the silos and easily share information with each other internally. We also use Signals to communicate with groups of external vendors, so we can brainstorm current campaigns with them, propose new ideas and share best practices. It is amazing how much we have cut down on email traffic while increasing our productivity.”
While the companies that benefit from Socialtext hail from a variety of industries, media companies have embraced enterprise social software more urgently than their counterparts in some other verticals. At the Web 2.0 Expo in New York, our co-founder and president Ross Mayfield held a panel with two clients, McGraw-Hill and The Washington Post, to highlight their use of enterprise social software to drive business value inside their companies. We also wrote a case study to highlight how St. Louis Public Radio utilizes Signals to improve collaboration across departments.
Meredith’s use of microblogging also highlights the strength of our Signals product in comparison to our competitors: It’s integrated with other critical tools employees use to get their work done. For example, Meredith also uses SocialCalc, our social spreadsheet, to track the progress of their direct mail and subscriber campaigns. With Signals, employees can Signal links to each other, which brings those numbers — and the people and context behind those numbers — into the flow of work. | <urn:uuid:3ff5c34e-2878-49a4-937d-a763f1d861f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.socialtext.com/blog/2010/04/in-challenging-media-landscape/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927738 | 483 | 1.507813 | 2 |
August 23, 2012
The new species, Moore's forget-me-not (Myosotis mooreana) is known from only a single location. Photo by: Lehnebach et al.
"New Zealand forget-me-nots are far different from their blue flower relatives commonly found in people’s gardens, and some native species have yellow, pink, or tube-like brown-bronze flower," the discoverer, Carlos A. Lehnebach, said in a press release. "New Zealand is also home to the smallest forget-me-not in the world!"
Lenebach dubbed the two new species Chaffey's forget-me-not (Myosotis chaffeyorum) and Moore's forget-me-not (Myosotis mooreana), the latter of which is only known from one location where six individuals were discovered. Five populations are known of Chaffey's forget-me-not, which is found only at the bases of limestone cliffs. Both species are classified as 'Nationally Critical' in New Zealand.
In all, 39 species of Mythosis are found in New Zealand. Their are numerous legends surrounding the name 'forget-me-nots,' which originated in France in the late Middle Ages.
CITATION: Lehnebach CA (2012) Two new species of forget-me-nots (Myosotis, Boraginaceae) from New Zealand. PhytoKeys 16: 53–64. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.16.3602.
96 percent of the world's species remain unevaluated by the Red List
(06/28/2012) Nearly 250 species have been added to the threatened categories—i.e. Vulnerable, Endangered, and Critically Endangered—in this year's update of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List. The 247 additions—including sixty bird species—pushes the number of threatened species globally perilously close to 20,000. However to date the Red List has only assessed 4 percent of the world's known species; for the other 96 percent, scientists simply don't know how they are faring.
Pitcher plants use rain to trap insects
(06/15/2012) Carnivorous pitcher plants get an assist from Mother Nature in capturing their insect prey, according to a study published in PLoS ONE.
Blue tarantula, walking cactus, and a worm from Hell: the top 10 new species of 2011
(05/23/2012) A sneezing monkey, a blue tarantula, and an extinct walking cactus are just three of the remarkable new species listed in the annual Top Ten New Species put together by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University. This year's list includes a wide-variety of life forms from fungi to flower and invertebrate to primate.
Amazon plant yields miracle cure for dental pain
(03/14/2012) The world may soon benefit from a plant long-used by indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon for toothaches, eliminating the need for local injections in some cases. Researchers have created a medicinal gel from a plant known commonly as spilanthes extract (Acmella Oleracea), which could become a fully natural alternative to current anesthetics and may even have a wide-range of applications beyond dental care.
Scientists discover over 19,000 new species in 2009
(01/19/2012) In 2009 researchers described and named 19,232 species new to science, pushing the number of known species on Earth to just under two million (1,941,939 species), according to the State of Observed Species (SOS). Discoveries included seven new birds, 41 mammals, 120 reptiles, 148 amphibians, 314 fish, 626 crustaceans, and 9,738 insects. | <urn:uuid:01156a5b-9cf5-44b7-8cbd-e24d07cea4a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0823-hance-forget-me-nots-nz.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9131 | 808 | 3.15625 | 3 |
|Birth name||Sarah Lois Vaughan|
|Also known as||"Sassy"
"The Divine One"
|Born||March 27, 1924|
|Died||April 3, 1990 (aged 66)|
|Genres||Vocal jazz, bebop, cool jazz, traditional pop|
|Labels||Columbia, Mercury, Roulette, Pablo|
Sarah Lois Vaughan (March 27, 1924 – April 3, 1990) was an American jazz singer. She was described by jazz writer Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century". She had a contralto (alto) vocal range.
Vaghan had the nicknames "Sassy" and "The Divine One", and she was a Grammy Award winner. The National Endowment for the Arts gave her its "highest honor in jazz," the NEA Jazz Masters Award, in 1989.
- Concord music group: Sarah Vaughan.
- Grammy Award Database
- Entry at NEA Jazz Masters website | <urn:uuid:406d9327-eb5c-44b0-a6bf-8c97c738848a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Vaughan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906802 | 213 | 1.6875 | 2 |
The recent hype around Rails has led to the Ruby language shooting into prominence. Satish Talim who has been working with Java for over a decade, has also been trying out Ruby.
Based on his experience, he has now
put down free study notes on the Ruby language, titled Come Learn Ruby with Satish Talim. Here’s an excerpt from the section about Ruby for Java developers.
Similarities between Java and Ruby
As with Java, in Ruby…
* memory is managed for you via a garbage collector.
* there’s public, private, and protected methods.
you’ve got embedded doc tools (Ruby’s is called RDoc). The docs
generated by rdoc look very similar to those generated by javadoc. RDoc
can produce fairly good content even if the source contains no comments.
Differences between Java and Ruby
Unlike Java, in Ruby…
* you don’t need to compile your code. You just run it directly.
* there’s different GUI toolkits. Ruby users can try WxRuby, FXRuby, or the bundled-in Ruby Tk for example.
* you use the end keyword after defining things like classes, instead of having to put braces around blocks of code.
* you have require instead of import.
* all member variables are private. From the outside, you access everything via methods.
* parentheses in method calls are usually optional and often omitted.
everything is an object, including numbers like 2 and 3.14159. Classes
are objects! For example, Array is a constant name that is bound to the
Array class object. To create a new object, we call new on the class
object as in a = Array.new
* there are no primitives or data types
* variable names are just labels (not objects). They don’t have a type associated with them.
no type declarations. You just assign to new variable names as-needed
and they just “spring up” (i.e. a = [1,2,3] rather than int a =
* it’s foo = Foo.new(“hi”) instead of foo = new Foo( “hi” ).
* the constructor is always named initialize instead of the name of the class.
* you have “mixin’s” instead of interfaces.
* YAML tends to be favoured over XML.
* it’s nil instead of null. Also, nil is a normal object; you can never get a null pointer error!
* there is no method overloading.
* it’s much more common to put many classes in the same file.
Do check out the entire guide to Ruby.
If you have used both Ruby and Java, please add your comments below. | <urn:uuid:3847b5d5-90a2-4e41-b2a0-837afd1da0eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.indicthreads.com/1739/ruby-and-java-similarities-and-differences/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916268 | 602 | 2.71875 | 3 |
More than two hundred students, drawn from universities in North America and Europe, participate in the simulation. All students are assigned roles, including heads of government, Members of the European Parliament and the press. Students prepare for the simulation at their own universities, with the help of faculty advisers and guidance that is provided through the EuroSim Web and course management site. Researching the simulation topic and the assigned roles constitutes an important part of all students' preparatory work. The simulations themselves are held over a period of four days, with the venue alternating between the U.S. and Europe annually.
Recent issues simulated include energy policy, asylum policy, food safety, enlargement, the Constitutional Convention, the Intergovernmental Conference and EU neighborhood policy.
The idea for a model European Union came in the fall of 1987 when students at SUNY (State University of New York) College at Brockport asked the political science department to sponsor a model United Nations. After thorough consideration by faculty, students at SUNY Brockport agreed to be involved in a project regarding what was formerly called the European Community.
The first simulation was held on the Brockport campus, April 8 - 10, 1988. Involving SUNY and private New York schools, the simulation held the title SUNYMEC (State University of New York Model European Community). It wasn’t until 1992 the simulation established the label EuroSim and became a trans-Atlantic exchange with its first overseas meeting in Luxemburg. The 2003 simulation event was the first time EuroSim was a trans-Atlantic endeavor - a sure sign of the simulation’s maturity. The term “trans-Atlantic” indicates the simulation is organized and planned by faculty and students from both Europe and the United States. In fact, EuroSim 2003 was the first time the simulation was planned by U.S. and European student directors equally.
The most recent simulation was held at Europaisch Akademie in Otzenhausen, Germany from the 3nd till 7th of January 2008. The topic of the simulation was the Kosovo and the situation in the Balkan.
EuroSim is funded and supported through sponsorship by the following organizations:
Dutch high technology in space: Dutch Space is the main Dutch player in the European space industry. (Dutch Space).
Oct 01, 2002; BY DUTCH SPACE Over the last thirty years the company has built up a comprehensive package of expertise, services and products... | <urn:uuid:9079090a-c918-4f48-91ce-c9a330a69491> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reference.com/browse/EuroSim | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96008 | 493 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Researchers at the University of Exeter have developed a new approach to studying potentially deadly disease-causing bacteria which could help speed up the process of finding vaccines.
Dr. Andrea Dowling, from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the university’s Cornwall Campus, has pioneered a simple screen which can help isolate the virulent parts of the gene structures of pathogenic bacteria.
The screen allows researchers to simultaneously run thousands of tests where genes from the pathogen are pitted against the human blood cells that normally attack them.
“By looking at the results from these tests it is possible to determine which parts of a pathogen’s genetic code allow it to override immune systems,” said Dr. Dowling.
“From there we can focus in on those key areas to find out how the pathogen works and how we can develop vaccines. The screen allows us to study and tackle the causes of disease and infection much quicker than other methods.”
The screen has been used by Dr. Dowling and other researchers at Exeter to look at genes in the important pathogen, Burkholderia pseudomallei, which causes the potentially deadly human disease, melioidosis. The research is published in the journal, PLoS ONE.
Burkholderia appears to be able to infect man directly from the environment via cuts and grazes. Normally any invading bacteria would be consumed by the body’s immune system, but Burkholderia bacteria seem to resist being eaten and can spread to other parts of the body in a very nasty infection.
Using the screen, the researchers were able to isolate the unique parts of Burkholderia’s genetic code which could be responsible for its resistance to the human immune system.
Dr. Dowling explained: “We used library-clones which each contain a genetic region of Burkholderia, and then studied each one’s ability to kill immune cells to find what are known as virulence factors — basically the parts which allow it to override the immune system. Using the screen, we established the potential locations of that virulence factor much quicker than using normal methods.
“We can then study the mechanism for these factors using microbiological, cellular and biochemical techniques to see whether disrupting the virulence factor reduces the abilities of this bacteria to overcome the immune system.”
Professor Richard Ffrench-Constant, a co-author of the research, said: “Knowledge gained from this research provides essential insights into how this poorly understood, but extremely serious human pathogen works to cause disease, and, crucially, it helps us identify candidates for the development of much needed vaccines.”
The techniques used for this research are not only important in looking at Burkholderia, but can also be used on many other pathogens.
Daniel Williams @ University of Exeter | <urn:uuid:0f8566dc-ff07-4887-a95c-2e567897d6ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lockergnome.com/news/2010/12/31/environmental-pathogen/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934386 | 584 | 3.71875 | 4 |
Giant turtle dined on crocodiles
Turtles the size of Smart cars once roamed the rivers in what is now Colombia, preying on creatures as large as crocodiles.
North Carolina State University paleontologists originally uncovered the fossilized remains of the 60-million-year-old creature in 2005.
Named Carbonemys cofrinii, the specimen's skull measures 24 centimeters, roughly the size of a regulation NFL football. The shell found nearby measures five feet seven inches, long.
"We had recovered smaller turtle specimens from the site. But after spending about four days working on uncovering the shell, I realized that this particular turtle was the biggest anyone had found in this area for this time period - and it gave us the first evidence of giantism in freshwater turtles," says doctoral student Edwin Cadena.
While smaller relatives of Carbonemys existed alongside dinosaurs, the giant version appeared five million years after they vanished. It co-existed with giant varieties of many different reptiles livingin this part of South America.
Researchers believe that a combination of changes in the ecosystem - including fewer predators, a larger habitat area, plentiful food supply and climate changes - worked together to allow these giant species to survive.
This particular turtle had massive, powerful jaws that would have enabled it to eat anything nearby - up to and including crocodiles.
The team hasn't found any other specimens yet, probably because a turtle of this size would need a large territory in order to get enough food to survive.
"It's like having one big snapping turtle living in the middle of a lake," says NC State paleontologist Dr Dan Ksepka.
"That turtle survives because it has eaten all of the major competitors for resources. We found many bite-marked shells at this site that show crocodilians preyed on side-necked turtles. None would have bothered an adult Carbonemys, though - in fact smaller crocs would have been easy prey for this behemoth." | <urn:uuid:92da94a1-c37a-420e-a01e-c314cadb4cc1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/63467-giant-turtle-dined-on-crocodiles | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962143 | 408 | 3.8125 | 4 |
In Evil and the Justice of God, N. T. Wright names three issues that characterize what he calls “The New Problem of Evil.”
1. We ignore evil except when it hits us in the face.
2. We are surprised by evil when it does.
3. As a result, we react in immature and dangerous ways.
How do you see these three things playing out in our culture? | <urn:uuid:73cd7cfd-aa37-4664-a2f4-65e09064fa05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wadehodges.com/wright-on-evil/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921026 | 87 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Friday, February 01, 2013
For those who want to understand the things of God and eternity only through the lenses attached to their own eyeballs, who can only believe what they can see, I would like to ask them how they can be so confident of the conclusions they might reach through this means. Science has recently determined that what we can see and measure is only a tiny fraction of the unseen materials and forces that shape the universe. As recently discussed here, mysterious dark matter and dark energy dominate the universe, comprising about 96% of the matter-energy out there. All our glorious instruments, eyes and hands included, are incapable of detecting most of what surrounds us in the cosmos.
Apart from that stunning and recent fact, we stand on one tiny speck of a vast galaxy within a cosmos on millions upon millions of galaxies. Even if your eyes are very sharp, what you see, even if you could see dark matter and dark energy, is a vanishingly small fraction of the scope of the universe. And even for our own domain, in your own town or apartment or wherever you are, what you see even with the sharpest of eyes is limited to photons having a wavelength between about 390 nanometers and 700 nanometers. You can’t see ultraviolet or infrared. You can’t see microwaves or radiowaves or gamma radiation or x-rays. The spectrum of electromagnetic radiation—light—that places a non-trivial role in the physical world extends far below and above the range of visible light by many orders of magnitude. What we can see represents a tiny sliver of the electromagnetic reality right in front of our noses. Are you so sure you’ve got the full picture, even if you’ve got 20/20 vision? (And I haven’t even mentioned optical illusions. Another fun topic.)
Here is a representation of the electromagnetic spectrum, courtesy of Wikipedia’s article on that topic:
There is vastly more to the universe and to life than meets the physical eye, and some of the most important information that we need will be missed if we don’t realize there is a spiritual dimension to life. Light and truth, spiritual information, can be conveyed through the Spirit to supplement the pittance of physical data we obtain with our senses.
Yes, the testimony thing Mormons talk about isn’t easy and can be confusing. But to trivialize the possibility of gaining information from the Spirit is far more serious than just ignoring 96% of reality or nearly all of the spectrum. When it comes to the things of God and His beautiful plans for us, this is one area where we don’t want to be blind. | <urn:uuid:cdd1127c-31f5-456c-a99d-07d6edf2c8b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mormanity.blogspot.com/2013/02/eye-hath-not-seen-understanding-lds.html?showComment=1360035248460 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926284 | 549 | 1.640625 | 2 |
"Meeting in Kazakhstan this week, foreign ministers of the 42 year-old Organization of the Islamic Conference endorsed a decision to change its name to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation ...
"Also being dropped is the OIC logo featuring a red crescent and the words 'Allahu Akhbar'(Allah is greater) in Arabic. In its place is a green crescent, a globe, and a representation of the Ka'aba ...
New logo, new name, but same old cr*p.
"'Islamophobia represents a contemporary manifestation of racism ..."
islam is not a race; it's a violent, intolerant para-military movement disguised as a relgiion. | <urn:uuid:749a7c22-0631-472c-8f84-f03977e06169> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.topix.net/forum/travel/kazakhstan/TTDVTS3Q6JVOEMU3R | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913249 | 140 | 1.695313 | 2 |
From the standpoint of socialism, the bureaucratic collectivist State is a reactionary social order; in relation to the capitalist world, it is on a historically more progressive plane.
... the alternatives facing mankind are not so much capitalism or socialism as they are: socialism or barbarism. Stalinism is that new barbarism.
The problem for the student of the early years of the Group is that there is no written account anywhere and memory is at best fallible and often partial. In this context, we can discount Ian Burchall’s small devotional work in IS Journal 75/76 old series and, while Martin Shaw’s 1978 Socialist Register article, The Making of a Party?, is very good, it restricts its coverage to the period 1965 to 1976.
Thus it is that speculation on the influences at work which were to produce the particular state capitalist analysis Cliff set out in his RCP Internal Bulletin, can be as far fetched as the imagination of whoever wishes to diminish that achievement. It is in this context, I am told, that Sean Matgamna, than whom no-one’s imagination ranges further or overreaches wider, takes the view that Cliff lifted his analysis from the “Shachtmanite” theory of bureaucratic collectivism. In fact, there is no good reason to believe that this was the case. Obviously, there are similarities in any two theories that are based in the conviction that Stalinist states are class divided societies, but it is not at all obvious that Cliff would have found these specifically in Bureaucratic Collectivist analysis more than anywhere else.
At the time, between late 1946 and 1948, when Cliff was making his sea-change from “workers’ state” to state capitalism, there was no fully set out coherent work on the bureaucratic collectivist case, merely a handful of articles by Shachtman and others in the New International. So far as I know, there is no such work published to this day. If, however, you know of such a work, please keep it to yourself. Of course, all the competing theories that purport to define the class nature of the Stalinist states leave an unsatisfied feel in the stomach, rather like a three course meal that is a starter, a pudding and no main course, but bureaucratic collectivism does not even get to the pudding.
A far greater influence on Cliff was Jock Haston and it is true that Jock was a very attractive personality whom Cliff often referred to as his father in the movement. For whatever reason, Cliff was unusually impressed by the arguments of Haston and Grant during the brief time these two were pursuing a state capitalist analysis. We know this to be the case because they changed his mind. This unprecedented achievement has yet to be repeated. What is quite clear is that Cliff is perfectly capable of putting together a workable, or an unworkable, theory: he has done both in his time.
There was, in any case, no good reason for Cliff to find his inspiration in the dubious verities of bureaucratic collectivism, when he was convinced in an argument, specifically about state capitalism, on which there was a long history of work, going back to before the October revolution. In his book, The Theory of the Imperialist State, published in 1916, NI Bukharin discussed the general trend to “... militaristic state capitalism ... a new Leviathan, in comparison with which the fantasy of Thomas Hobbes seems like child’s play”. He was to return to this theme several time in the 1920s. Also in the 1920s, the exiled Mensheviks produced a state capitalist analysis, as did Osinsky and Sapronov, of the Democratic Centralist faction of the Russian party.
Various members of the Trotskyist movement adopted state capitalism, Yvan Craipeau for one. Anton Ciliga, a Rumanian oppositionist, also defined Russia as an exploitative society where the bureaucracy controlled all the levers of power.
Bureaucratic collectivism probably has its origins in the work of an Italian, Bruno Rizzi who, in the 1930s, published his book The Bureaucratisation of the World. (Rizzi is usually known as Bruno R. He was a strange chap, an ex-member of the Left Opposition, reputed to be anti-Semitic and apparently able to move fairly freely in and out of fascist Italy.) The essence of the volume was that the world was being transformed into societies ruled by a new managerial class based in state institutions. Evidence for this was adduced not only from Russian Communism and German and Italian fascism, but also the American New Deal. The book did not make much a of a splash at the time, but it does seem to have come to the attention of Joe Carter (Joseph Friedman), who was a leading member of the Burnham/Abern/Shachtman faction in the [American] SWP. Carter convinced Burnham, but not Shachtman – who incidentally, always denied that the ISL theory had anything to do with Bruno Rizzi’s work, that he was correct and together they developed the theory. (Although it is quite unfair to Joe Carter, adherents of his theory have traditionally been referred to as “Shachtmanites” after the charismatic leader of the group. If only because it is a familiar usage, I will stick to this form of description.)
After the 1940 split in the SWP, Shachtman and his faction took nearly half the members and formed the Workers Party – it became the Independent Socialist League in the late 1940s. Burnham almost immediately deserted the new party, subsequently producing a non-marxist version of the theory in his book The Managerial Revolution.
In not very much time, Carter had convinced Shachtman and the WP majority that bureaucratic collectivism was the theory for them. At first Shachtman took the view that bureaucratic collectivist society was superior to capitalism, but later he decided that it was the ultimate barbarism. Eventually, he supported the US in Vietnam and at the Bay of Pigs. At the end of his life he was supporting Senator “Scoop” Jackson, a rabid cold warrior with a penchant for nuclear war. (One should add that although Shachtman was the best known exponent of bureaucratic collectivism, it is not the case that adherence to the theory leads inevitably to support for capitalism against Stalinism. Carter, Hal Draper and many others remained revolutionaries and supporters of the theory until they died.)
Perhaps of some significance for Cliff was the work of CLR James (JR Johnson) who led a state capitalist group in the Workers’ Party, the Johnson-Forrest Tendency, that included Grace Lee and Raya Dunayevskaya (Freddy Forrest). It was James, a man with a well developed sense of humour, who characterised bureaucratic collectivism as “Carter’s Little Liver Pill”. Both James and Dunayevskaya’s work appeared in New International and, according to Ray Challinor, Cliff met Dunayevskaya at an FI meeting in Paris in 1948.
What is certainly the case is that one of the theoretical underpinnings of the SRG at its formation was Cliff’s article against the theory of bureaucratic collectivism. It is, of course, true but unsurprising that some of the critical framework used to describe Stalinist society in bureaucratic collectivist writing is much the same as that used by the theoreticians of state capitalism. Indeed, much of the data also fits a critique made by a conscientious Marxist who saw Russia as a “worker’s’ state”. Analysis of the texts does not suggest that Cliff’s state capitalism was either lifted from, or a deviated species of, bureaucratic collectivism.
This is not to say, however, that the ISL did not have its effect on the British group. For example, the Shachtmanite journals New International and Labour Action were distributed in the UK by the SR Group; Stan Newens acted as the agent for some years. The slogan, “Neither Washington Nor Moscow But International Socialism”, was appropriated by Socialist Review from the ISL. In the 1960s, several of the younger ex-ISL comrades came to Britain and joined IS, but the only significant visitor from the ISL I can discover, was probably Felix Morrow. Bill Ainsworth recalls such a comrade arriving in Birmingham in the very early 1950s. Unfortunately, the comrade was suffering from a severe case of diarrhoea. Bill writes: “I think it may have been Felix Morrow. We tried to discuss with him over the lavatory wall, but without success – he was totally obsessed with the state of his bowels. Departed on the next train.”
As we have already noted, in the early days, the SRG was a standard Trotskyist group with heretical views on Russia and Eastern Europe. The ISL was a much more relaxed organisation, whose disputes and discussions were carried on in the open press. After 1948 (when they realised what a sorry pass the Fourth International had come to), the ISL became progressively less Trotskyist. In 1958 they dissolved the League and joined the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation, the pale corpse of the Norman Thomas socialists. The dissolution statement was embarrassing in its submission to social democracy and the disowning of any revolutionary past. In the meanwhile, however, they had passed on the outlines of the theory that was to become the Permanent Arms Economy.
Under the title The Permanent War Economy, six long articles appeared in the New International between January and December 1951 by TN Vance (one of the pseudonyms of Ed Sard). The first article begins with the bold announcement, “With the beginning of World War II, both American and world capitalism entered a new epoch – the era of the Permanent War Economy ...”. Here, Vance was asserting, was a new and decisive factor in world economy that would seriously amend economic theory, “both bourgeois and Marxist”. In his articles Vance quotes lavishly from government statistics but the main burden of proof rests on his ingenious projection of these figures into the future. Quotation from other sources is minimal, with just the odd reference to Marx and Keynes. Due, not to say fulsome, credit is afforded to Walter J Oakes, author of a seminal article in Politics in February 1944, entitled Towards a Permanent War Economy. Vance quotes Oakes approvingly as follows: “A war economy exists whenever the government’s expenditure for war (or `national defence’) becomes a legitimate and significant end purpose of economic activity.” Arms expenditure, he says, is responsible for a high level of economic activity and reduces unemployment to negligible levels. In addition, it provides for, “...the maintenance of stable and safe economic equilibrium for the bourgeoisie...” (NI, Vol.XVII No.1, p.41) For Vance, the critical level of arms expenditure is when, “... the ratio of war outlays to total output exceeds 10 per cent...” (Ibid., page 34). Vance also speaks of Keynes’ “Multiplier” where indirect outlays equal and thus double the economic effects of arms production. All of this he says is so much more effective than public works, as in Roosevelt’s WPA, because the high levels of taxation required to finance arms production for defence against communism are politically acceptable to the capitalists, whereas the WPA, an expensive and ineffective Keynsian style mechanism for reducing the unemployed figures was highly unpopular with the bourgeoisie.
Writing in 1951, Vance had in fact no contemporary statistics that supported his thesis. The latest he could muster were for 1948, were significantly lower than those for 1946 to 1947 and a statistically negligible amount higher for 1949. (See Table, Ibid., p.35) In his tables, the really impressive increases are for the years 1950 to 1953, which are all based on Vances’ own calculations.
One might feel more satisfied with all this if most of his conclusions had not been vitiated by time and experience, but also one feels a little suspicious when looking closely at his sources. The theory of 1951 rests heavily on the 1944 article by Walter J Oakes; a prophet well before his time maybe, but authoritative as all get out. A close examination, however, reveals that TN Vance is not Ed Sard’s only pseudonym. It appears that Ed’s other nom de plume is Walter J Oakes: perhaps he only used this one for writing authoritative, highly quotable articles in Politics.
This then is the theory appropriated by Cliff and rechristened the Permanent Arms Economy by Michael Kidron. In their hands, particularly Kidron’s, it became an altogether more convincing piece of work. Duncan Hallas has a reference to arms economy in an article in the Socialist Review of April 1952, but the full version did not see light until Cliff’s article, The Permanent War Economy; in the May 1957 issue of Socialist Review (Incidentally, Cliff’s table supporting this article is rubbish, even if it has a footnote “* approximate figures”. It suggests, for instance, that Britain could prosecute the war for the whole of 1943 for 9.5 million quid. For that money you could not run a decent war for a fortnight.) Until 1968, when Mike Kidron published his book, Western Capitalism Since the War, there was very little written about the theory, which is odd as it offered an answer to the problem of the long post-war boom, which was quite beyond the brains of orthodox Trotskyism. In preparing this book, I had occasion to speak to Mike Kidron, who told me in passing that the really serious work of validating the theory had at no time been undertaken. Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that Kidron, the man most associated with the PAE, should, in 1974, have dismissed it with the telling phrase, Two Insights Do Not Make A Theory. Oh well, PAE – RIP.
1. Letter to Jim Higgins from Bill Ainsworth, June 1996.
Last updated on 2.11.2003 | <urn:uuid:0ee557e8-df5b-4429-8d37-1422d47cd23c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marxists.org/archive/higgins/1997/locust/app01.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9746 | 2,931 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Recommendations for patient referral to a PH specialist
Issued by the Scientific Leadership Council
The information below is for general information only. These guidelines may not apply to your individual situation. You should rely on the information and instructions given specifically to you by your PH specialist and/or the nurses at your PH Center. This information is general in nature and may not apply to your specific situation. It is not intended as legal, medical or other professional advice, and should not be relied upon as a substitute for consultations with qualified professionals who are familiar with your individual needs.
Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a rare disease. Patients with suspected PAH should have their doctors perform diagnostic testing based on their suspicion for PAH. This will often include an echocardiogram to estimate how high their pulmonary artery pressure is. If the echocardiogram suggests PAH, or is confirmed by right heart catheterization, it is appropriate for the treating doctor to refer the patient to a doctor that regularly evaluates and treats PAH (PH specialist).
A PH specialist along with the entire PAH team has the most experience managing PAH and has expertise with PAH-specific drugs, such as calcium channel blockers (CCBs), prostacyclins, endothelin receptor antagonists and phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors. The PAH team may also be participating in clinical research trials that offer new, alternative investigational PAH therapies. Because all of these therapies require expertise in PAH, it is recommended that only PH specialty treatment centers initiate these treatments.
The follow-up care of patients receiving PAH-specific therapies should include both visits to the patient's primary care physician and periodic evaluations by the PH specialist. The frequency of visits should be individualized according to the patient's specific clinical condition. It is also advisable to involve a local cardiologist or pulmonologist in the patient's care. | <urn:uuid:910c5736-8517-4744-818b-157f2fd2faa1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phassociation.org/page.aspx?pid=1372&chid=113 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939725 | 387 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Ephesians 6: 13-15. “Therefore, put on every piece of God's armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm. Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God's righteousness. For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News so that you will be fully prepared.”
The Gospel of Peace is the Good News that Jesus has put a whipping on the forces of darkness, on the demons and Hell and on Satan himself. He has made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them at the cross.
What is the significance of this as we engage in battle? We have a readiness, a sure footedness and a preparedness that comes from knowing that the battle is already won. It is the confidence that we have in battle knowing the Gospel or Good News that our King Jesus has already defeated our enemy.
Why is peace important when we are in battle?
So, as we put on the shoes of peace we can stand on them wherever we are called to go to enforce the victory Christ has won for us.
Romans 10:15 says, “And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? That is why the Scriptures say, “How beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news.”
Without peace to stand on we have only worry and doubt and lose all our effectiveness in the battle. God will never be moved by doubt, because He is only moved by faith.
Hebrews 11:6 reads, “And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.”
When you know that you've already won – nothing else matters!
You will have His peace that transcends every situation and circumstance knowing that the End result is “Triumphant Victory!”
2 Corinthians 2:14 states, “But thank God! He has made us His captives and continues to lead us along in Christ's triumphal procession. Now he uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere, like a sweet perfume.”
So, how do we get the Good News of Peace in the midst of a War with many battles?
“You must put on the Good News of Peace by FAITH!”
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
If you died today, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? You can be right now. CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel. | <urn:uuid:3c15687b-e68f-47fd-aa7f-36c1bcc5a4d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.faithwriters.com/wc-article-level1-previous.php?id=40100 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966676 | 569 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Astronomers around the world are preparing for a record-breaking asteroid flyby February 15.
Measuring 45 meters in diameter and weighing an estimated 130,000 metric tons, Asteroid 2012 DA14 is considered small by scientists who track the solar system's rocky debris, but it will zip past our planet so closely that it will be even nearer to us than our orbiting weather and communications satellites.
It is the closest-ever-predicted approach for an object this size. Experts emphasize there is no reason for concern.
"There's no danger to the planet at all," Lindley Johnson of NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program in Washington told VOA. "We know the orbit quite well now."
Johnson said Asteroid 2012 DA14 will come as close as 27,700 kilometers - about one-tenth the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
"Close flybys of asteroids happen quite frequently," explained Johnson, who said more than 20 asteroids have come between the Earth and the Moon in the past year. "But they're usually very small-sized objects - maybe only a few meters in size."
The 45-meter asteroid will speed past us at about 7.8 kilometers per second, nearly 10 times faster than a speeding bullet.
Spotting the asteroid
It will be closest to Earth on February 15 at approximately 19:24 UTC. NASA says at that time, the asteroid will be visible in parts of Eastern Europe, North Africa, Asia and Australia. Skywatchers will need binoculars or a telescope to glimpse the faint, quickly moving point of light.
Astronomers in Spain first observed 2012 DA14 last February. Johnson said it is not surprising that the asteroid was not detected until recently.
"The orbit last year brought it close enough so that it would be within the detection limits of the observatories that we have doing this survey," Johnson explained.
NASA estimates that about 100,000 objects this size are in Earth's vicinity. On average, one gets close every 40 years and hits every 1,200 years.
In 1908, a slightly smaller asteroid exploded over Tunguska, Siberia, leveling trees over 2,000 square kilometers.
The flyby is a remarkable opportunity for scientists.
"It provides us the next best thing to doing a spacecraft flyby of an asteroid," said NASA's Johnson. "It's kind of nice that nature gives us these natural opportunities to examine these objects and learn all we can about them."
NASA has plans to launch a spacecraft in 2016 to study another asteroid and retrieve a sample for study here on Earth.
As for Asteroid 2012 DA14, NASA says that its next notable close approach to our planet will be in 2046. | <urn:uuid:aa28f800-ed4c-43f0-a815-c7fda7bc7974> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.voanews.com/content/nasa_says_asteroid_will_pass_very_near_earth/1600283.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934081 | 558 | 3.90625 | 4 |
Dwayne Johnson (born 02.05.1972)
Dwayne Johnson is a WWE wrestler (known in the ring as The Rock) and actor.
Dwayne Johnson: Childhood
Dwayne Johnson was born in Hayward, California. His parents are Ata Johnson and Rocky Johnson, also a professional wrestler.
He lived in Auckland, New Zealand for a while and attended Richmond Road Primary School before returning to the US where he attended President William McKinley High School in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The family then moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania where he attended Freedom High School and became a member of the football, track and field and wrestling teams. He later got a scholarship from the University of Miami to play football and graduated with a Bachelor of General Studies degree in criminology and physiology.
In 1991, he was on the Miami Hurricanes' national championship team and later joined the Calgary Stampeders in the Canadian Football League in 1995.
Dwayne Johnson: Wrestling career
Dwayne Johnson is from a family full of professional wrestlers. He first tried out for WWF (World Wrestling Federation) in 1996 defeating The Brooklyn Brawler under his real name. He soon signed a contract with them after co-winning the USWA World Tag Team Championship as Flex Kavana.
He became Rocky Maivia (a cross between his father and his grandfather's ring names) and was hailed as WWF's first third-generation wrestler.
He made his WWF debut at Survivor Series in an eight-man elimination tag match and was the last man standing. In 1997, he won the WWF Intercontinental Championship but he was often disliked by his audiences.
He then lost the Championship to Owen Hart and became The Rock and then formed a stable known as 'The Nation of Domination' alongside Faarooq, D'Lo Brown and Kama but in 1998 The Rock usurped Faarooq's title as the stable leader which sparked a feud.
The Rock has defended his Intercontinental title against Stone Cold Steve Austin, Faarooq and Triple H before becoming a contender for the WWF Championship title after defeating Ken Shamrock and Mankind in a cage fight. Another feud in The Nation soon ended the stable.
He soon gained popularity and dubbed himself 'The People's Champion'. He then feuded with promoter Vince McMahon and thus fought and defeated his associate Mankind. He then allied with Vince and became a part of their stable The Corporation.
The WWF Championship title was switched between him and Mankind for some time. The Rock then lost it to Steve Austin at WrestleMania XV. He and Mankind allied after challenging WWF Tag Team Champions The Undertaker and The Big Show and subsequently won that title.
As well as Mankind, The Rock has defended the Championship title against Kurt Angle, Triple H and Steve Austin.
In 2000, The Big Show and The Rock had a Royal Rumble match. The Rock was announced as the winner but The Big Show demanded a rematch (which he won) after revealing footage proving that The Rock didn't win.
In 2001, The Rock lost the Championship title to Austin at WrestleMania X-Seven and was later suspended after a match where Triple H intervened with a sledgehammer.
When he returned, The Rock won the WCW Championship but the title was juggled over the next months with Chris Jericho. At the end of the year, he took another break from wrestling.
On his second return, he won his record-breaking seventh WWF Championship title but lost it (and the record for the youngest WWE Champion) to Lesnar. He yet again took another hiatus.
The Rock returned in 2003 to criticize Hulk Hogan and admit that WWE was no longer a major priority with his acting career taking off.
He failed to win number one contendership for the World Heavyweight Championship before beating Steve Austin in a match that turned out to be Austin's last and their long-standing feud ended. The Rock took another hiatus after being defeated by Bill Goldberg but made various occasional returns.
In 2004, he announced that his contract with WWE was over but he would continue to use his wrestling name.
In 2008, he inducted his father Rocky Johnson and his grandfather Peter Maivia into the WWE Hall of Fame.
In 2011 he was revealed as the host of WrestleMania XXVII. During a promo, he called John Cena a 'big fat bowl of Fruity Pebbles'. The pair had feuded on Twitter and eventually had a live slanging match before Wrestlemania XXVII after which John Cena performed his Attitude Adjustment move on him.
At WrestleMania, The Rock took revenge by using Rock Bottom on Cena. Cena later challenged him to a match at WrestleMania XXVIII in 2012. However, the pair ended up becoming Tag Team partners against Awesome Truth - a match which ended with The Rock giving Cena a Rock Bottom.
At WrestleMania XXVIII, The Rock finally faced Cena. He won but praised Cena for his efforts and became determined to become WWE Champion again - a title which was then held by CM Punk.
In 2013, The Rock defeated CM Punk and won his eighth WWE Championship.
Dwayne Johnson: Acting career
Dwayne Johnson appeared in the video and featured his vocals in the 2000 Wyclef Jean single 'It Doesn't Matter'.
His first TV acting roles include appearances on 'Star Trek: Voyager' and on 'That '70s Show'. He has also appeared in Disney Channel shows 'Cory in the House' and 'Wizards of Waverly Place'.
His film debut came with his character as The Scorpian King in 'The Mummy Returns' - a role which he reprised as the title character in the movie's sequel.
His other movies include 'The Game Plan', 'Get Smart', 'Race To Witch Mountain', 'Planet 51' as well as taking the title role in 2010's 'Tooth Fairy'.
In 2011, he appeared in Fast and Furious movie 'Fast Five'; his biggest movie to date grossing $86 million in its first weekend.
In 2012, he appeared in 'Journey 2: The Mysterious Island' as well as 'Snitch' in 2013.
2013 sees him star in 'G.I. Joe: Retaliation', ' Fast Six' and 'Pain & Gain'. | <urn:uuid:0a5b5d82-e822-4ee7-a77c-2a5f8e8f6b43> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.contactmusic.com/info/dwayne_johnson | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981809 | 1,276 | 1.539063 | 2 |
A number of studies by the U. of I. professor support that conclusion, including investigations considering such variables as exercise intensity, dose of caffeine, anxiety sensitivity and gender.
Motl's latest published study on the effects of caffeine on pain during exercise appears in the April edition of the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism.
"This study looks at the effects of caffeine on muscle pain during high-intensity exercise as a function of habitual caffeine use," he said. "No one has examined that before.
"What we saw is something we didn't expect: caffeine-nave individuals and habitual users have the same amount of reduction in pain during exercise after caffeine (consumption)."
The study's 25 participants were fit, college-aged males divided into two distinct groups: subjects whose everyday caffeine consumption was extremely low to non-existent, and those with an average caffeine intake of about 400 milligrams a day, the equivalent of three to four cups of coffee.
After completing an initial exercise test in the lab on an ergometer, or stationary cycle, for determination of maximal oxygen consumption or aerobic power, subjects returned for two monitored high-intensity, 30-minute exercise sessions.
An hour prior to each session, cyclists who had been instructed not to consume caffeine during the prior 24-hour period were given a pill. On one occasion, it contained a dose of caffeine measuring 5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight (equivalent to two to three cups of coffee); the other time, they received a placebo.
During both exercise periods, subjects' perceptions of quadriceps muscle pain was recor
|Contact: Melissa Mitchell|
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | <urn:uuid:5dc69eee-f730-44e8-a003-ce85e2766602> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology-news-1/A-little-java-makes-it-easier-to-jive--researcher-says-7766-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951288 | 349 | 2.28125 | 2 |
By Brianna Snyder/Women@Work
Cloud computing has been getting a lot of noise these days as people look for the next tech-savvy solution to their personal and work lives.
The cloud, which is the term for a network or Internet service that allows you to access all kinds of stored data from anywhere, is fast becoming a preferred method of computing, replacing the older method of housing data on local, limited-space servers and the even older method of storing zillions of documents in rooms devoted to file cabinets.
Studies done by the technology research company Gartner, a worldwide information technology research and advisory firm, and Merrill Lynch, a leader in financial management, found that cloud computing will be a $150- to $160-billion industry by 2013. The thumb drive is going the way of watching TV — only on a TV. Continue reading | <urn:uuid:3c1271bc-2b9f-41c7-9268-c61dbada7035> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.timesunion.com/womenatwork/tag/sugarsync/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946998 | 174 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Tag: "kinetic military action"
What a difference the choice of wording makes! On September 14, at Ground Zero, President George W. Bush declared: “I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!” Simple words from [...]
Hey, Hey, LBJ. How Many Kids Did You Kill Today? The liberal anti-war movement of the Vietnam era intoned this chant countless times. They used it in mass rallies. They used it any time President Lyndon B. Johnson got up the courage to show his face in public. They used it as a means to [...] | <urn:uuid:256c053e-4201-4212-ad21-fa48fc93064a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.conservativedailynews.com/tag/kinetic-military-action/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950978 | 147 | 1.710938 | 2 |
'Mythbusters' Gets All 'MacGyver' On Us
What do you get when you take one of Discovery Channel’s most popular shows, and combine it with one of the kitschiest shows the late 1980’s and early 1990’s had to offer?
I dare say you get pretty darn good television. For their 100th episode, airing February 20, the crew over at Mythbusters are tackling some of the most famous impromptu inventions by mullet bearing TV star MacGyver.
In a preview clip screened by B&C, Adam and Jamie test to see whether pure sodium, immersed in water, can really cause an explosive chemical reaction big enough to bust down a wall. The small scale results looked promising.
The team will also see if it is possible to build a plane a plane out of bamboo, duct tape and a small engine (below). The episode will conclude with a MacGyver challenge, pitting co-hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman against one another in a timed competition to see who can match MacGyver’s creativity in picking locks, developing film with household liquids, building a compass and designing a homemade signaling device for attracting the attention of a rescue helicopter.
The build team makes a plane out of bamboo and duct tape (Discovery)
Mythbusters originally started out testing urban legends, such as whether a magnet could erase your credit card (no) or whether eating poppy seed muffins can cause you to fail a drug test (yes), but in recent seasons the show has really let loose on Hollywood myths and viewer recommendations. Mythbusters recently aired a pair of specials examining some movie myths from the James Bond flicks.
Mary Donahue, the production executive in charge of the show for Discovery Channel, told B&C that the show is expanding their reach and testing common sayings (the show recently tested to see just how easy it is to shoot fish in a barrel and whether a lead balloon could actually fly).
In addition, the show has big plans for future seasons, including working with NASA to debunk moon landing conspiracy theorists. Adam Savage has also said in interviews that one experiment that he would love to run would be a test of natural selection, though he acknowledged that there are obvious technical problems in running an experiment of that scale.
The fact that they test such a wide range of myths, both plausible and far fetched, is a big part of the show’s appeal. After all, how many shows would celebrate a 100th episode with a tribute to MacGyver? For most programs it would be ridiculous, for the Mythbusters it makes perfect sense. Now if only they could test the myth of whether Richard Dean Anderson knew how ridiculous his hair looked, I would all be set.
Jamie, in full bomb squad gear, sits with Buster as "MacGyver" (Discovery) | <urn:uuid:5aed04d4-2f24-42a7-bfae-39b410519894> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.broadcastingcable.com/blog/BC_Beat/8929-_Mythbusters_Gets_All_MacGyver_On_Us.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953111 | 590 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Pacific populations have dropped 80 percent in just the last 10 years
By Summit Voice
SUMMIT COUNTY — After suffering population declines of 80 percent in just the past 10 years, Pacific loggerhead sea turtles are poised on the brink of extinction, and even though they’re listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, the turtles do not yet have any protected critical habitat.
But that may soon change, as the Center for Biological Diversity and Turtle Island Restoration Network filed a formal notice of intent to sue the Obama administration to designate critical habitat for loggerheads along the U.S. West Coast and across the Pacific Ocean. North Pacific loggerheads nest in Japan and cross the Pacific to feed along the coasts of Southern California and Mexico.
The lawsuit also calls for habitat protections for loggerheads in Florida, where nesting populations have declined by 40 percent.
“Loggerheads on both coasts need robust protections from fisheries, oil spills and climate change to reverse their trajectory toward extinction,” said Teri Shore, program director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network. “While awaiting the protections that they deserve, loggerhead sea turtles continue to die, entangled in nets or hooked on longlines for swordfish and tuna.”
A recovery plan developed by NOAA’s marine fisheries service has helped protect the turtles from fishing impacts to some degree, but conservation advocates say more action is needed.
“As seas rise due to climate change, nesting turtles will have nowhere to go unless we protect their beach habitat now from unchecked coastal development,” said Catherine Kilduff, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “If we’re going to save these amazing turtles, we have to save the places they live.”
Critical habitat protections are an important step toward achieving improved protections for key nesting beaches and migratory and feeding habitat in the ocean. The designation would prohibit federal actions that would destroy or harm sea turtle critical habitat by ensuring that harmful projects are modified to ensure the conservation and recovery of imperiled sea turtles. Endangered species with protected critical habitat are twice as likely to be recovering than those without critical habitat.
On Sept. 22, 2011, North Pacific loggerhead sea turtle populations were uplisted from threatened to endangered status under the Endangered Species Act, but the Obama administration failed to protect the sea turtle’s habitat as required by law. It also failed to protect Atlantic waters for the threatened Northwest Atlantic loggerheads in Florida.
Click here for more information about loggerhead populations and to download the Center’s petitions. | <urn:uuid:9df1bcce-adf0-498e-b452-15b65b8aef50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://summitcountyvoice.com/2012/04/17/groups-seek-critical-habitat-for-loggerhead-sea-turtles/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923111 | 521 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Posted by: Beth Pariseau
data backup, Data center disaster recovery planning
Two storage-related announcements came out of CeBIT this week that have turned a few heads.
The first is the FlashBack Adapter from thumb-drive king SanDisk. The device fits into the ExpressCard slot of a user’s PC, and automatically and continuously backs up and encrypts data onto a flash memory card. This way, to quote SanDisk, when “you’re at a conference and someone spills coffee on your laptop PC, shorting out the system and cutting you off from your presentation and notes. Or your computer slips out of your hands and crashes to the floor,” you can extract the memory card from the smoking wreckage, find another PC and be on your way.
The second announcement comes from a UK company called Retrodata, which is reportedly getting ready to release a do-it-yourself drive recovery system. The beast, which has yet to be photographed, reportedly weighs 75 kg (165 lbs.) and will be priced at around $7000. But for all you Austin Powers fans out there, it does come equipped with…”lasers”.
According to techchee, a blog dedicated to high-tech products:
The device uses laser-guided positioning to help it accurately extract platters from any 3.5 inch hard drive with minimal user intervention. What’s unusual element is that such devices normally require highly skilled operators, whereas the System P. EX can be used by a relative novice at a data recovery company.
Maybe if Retrodata plays its cards right, it’ll get an order for…one million dollars. | <urn:uuid:d02cff6e-6683-4bd6-b365-0465495d926d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/storage-soup/new-data-protection-gadgetry-hits-the-streets/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930108 | 346 | 1.828125 | 2 |
The above photo was provided to me by Rosanne Mueller, a descendant of Josephine Wilcox Watkins Gum. The photo shows Josephine and her 2nd husband, James Harvey Gum, her daughter, Lilly May Watkins (married name Yowell) and James's two daughters, Daisy Gum (married name Smedley) and Flora Gum (married name Taylor) and Clarence A. Lambert, who Rosanne believes to be the nephew of James Harvey Gum.
Josephine was the daughter of James Wilcox and Margaret "Dollie" Hall. She was born in Missouri in 1857, and moved to Illinois at the age of ten. She died in 1925 and is buried in Oakland Cemetery in Petersburg, Menard County, IL, as is her first husband, Thomas Watkins and their two children, Lily May and Cassius. James Harvey Gum is buried in Rosehill Cemetery in Petersburg. | <urn:uuid:36f17486-21d2-4cb2-b9d5-d9ad4844690d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ilmaga/photoalbm/pa_gumfamily.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971346 | 180 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Facebook hit by 'sophisticated' attack
- From: AAP
- February 23, 2013
FACEBOOK says its computer system was "targeted in a sophisticated attack" last month, but that it's found no evidence any user data being compromised.
The company said in a blog post that malware came from an infected website of a mobile developer and that "we remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement, and began a significant investigation that continues to this day."
The attackers used a previously unseen exploit taking advantage of a flaw in Java software made by Oracle, which was alerted to the situation and released a patch the first of February, according to Facebook.
The hackers appeared to be targeting developers and technology firms based on the website they chose to booby-trap with malicious code.
"Facebook was not alone in this attack," the Northern California-based company said.
"It is clear that others were attacked and infiltrated recently as well."
The US intelligence community has concluded that America is the target of a massive cyber-espionage campaign that is threatening its competitiveness, The Washington Post reported just days ago.
Citing unnamed officials, the newspaper said the conclusion is contained in the National Intelligence Estimate, a classified report that represents the consensus view of the US intelligence community.
The document, according to the Post, identifies energy, finance, information technology, aerospace and automotive companies as the most frequent targets of hacking campaigns that appear state sponsored.
Early this month Twitter said it was hammered by a cyber attack similar to those that recently hit major Western news outlets, and that the passwords of about 250,000 users were stolen.
The attack coincided with the revelation of several high-profile security breaches. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal said that they had been hacked, and pointed to attackers from China.
Brazen cyberattacks on America's most high-profile media outlets revived concerns over Chinese hackers, who analysts say are likely linked to the secretive Beijing government. | <urn:uuid:6c549c03-1937-4010-a368-0369195e4ca1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.perthnow.com.au/technology/facebook-hit-by-sophisticated-attack/story-fn7bsj10-1226579350596?from=public_rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972245 | 404 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Most dieters agonise over what to eat for their dinner.
Now, research has suggested that those who want to lose weight should think instead about the plates on which they serve their meals.
A study has found that people take far more generous helpings when the food they eat is the same colour as the crockery on which it is placed.
Researchers found that when foods “blend in” with their background, people serve themselves 20 per cent more than if they were serving the same meal on a plate of contrasting colour.
In the study, party goers were given either a red or a white dinner plate and led to one of two buffet tables offering pasta; one in tomato sauce, the other in cream sauce.
Those given crockery which “matched” their food - red for tomato sauce, or white for cream sauce - gave themselves helpings between 17 and 22 per cent larger than those with plates of contrasting colour.
[Related feature: Identify your 'eating triggers' and watch the pounds drop off]
Researchers believe the phenomenon occurred because many people unthinkingly fill their plate, whatever size it is. A high contrast between colours may act as a “wake-up call” to examine the actual size of the portion.
Previous studies have already shown that buffet diners take bigger portions when given bigger plates, aided by an optical illusion which means a circle - or portion of food - appears bigger on a small plate than it does on a large one.
Further research has established that the average person eats around 92 per cent of a portion they serve themselves.
The latest study by researchers at Cornell University, in New York state, which was repeated several times on groups of 60 participants, found the actual colour of the food and plates made no difference; what mattered was the contrast between the two.
Research authors said the colour contrast appears to act as a “stop sign” reminding people to think about how much food they were serving.
Prof Brian Wansink, who runs Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab, which studies consumer behaviour, said: “People will generally serve themselves far more on a large dinner plate than they would on a smaller one, because the eye is tricked. It seems that colour contrast is one way to block this illusion.”
The research author said those trying to lose weight could help themselves by buying brightly coloured or dark plates, to provide contrast with common white foodstuffs such as pasta, rice and potatoes.
Alternatively, green plates could be used as a way to trick children into eating more vegetables, he said.
Prof Wansink, president of the US Society for Nutrition Education and Behaviour said: “The secret of weight loss is a couple of small changes. One small difference like this every day could add up to a lot of pounds over a year.”
Previous research by Prof Wansink has found that people eat 22 per cent less when they replace 12 inch dinner plates - now the average size used in the UK - with 10 inch plates, which were the most commonly used a decade ago.
Regardless of the size of their plate, people tend to fill around 70 to 80 per cent of it, he said, and to eat almost all of any portion they served themselves.
The lab's studies have also found that people pour far less into short wide glass than they do tall ones, and that children prefer meals with lots of different colours in them.
More the Telegraph. | <urn:uuid:939f4d8e-ad79-4449-acdb-a47a21c25ce3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/lose-weight-by-changing-the-colour-of-your-plate.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973925 | 716 | 2.71875 | 3 |
March 14, 2006 | Clinical Data has launched a Phase III clinical trial for the depression drug vilazodone and will concurrently develop a diagnostic test. The study could prove to be a landmark event in pharmacogenomic medicine.
“We believe the concept of the blockbuster drug is a failed one,” says Clinical Data president and CEO Israel Stein. In what he believes is an industry first, Stein says his firm, which is the parent company of pharmacogenomics biotech Genaissance, intends to explore “the simultaneous development of the biomarker and the drug.”
Depression is in many ways an attractive disease for biomarker development. There is widespread variation in patient response to antidepression drugs, with half of patients failing to achieve satisfactory results with first-line treatments. The total market is valued at $10 billion to $13 billion.
Clinical Data hopes to complete the Phase III trial of vilazodone by mid-2007. It must also conduct a long-term safety analysis, the terms of which have yet to reviewed with the FDA. If all goes well, the company hopes to file its NDA by the end of 2008.
Clinical Data obtained an exclusive worldwide license to vilazodone from Merck KgA in 2004. The German pharma had previously licensed the drug to GlaxoSmithKline, but the rights were returned following equivocal Phase II trial results.
“Vilazodone is a molecule that should be a very effective antidepressive agent,” says chief medical officer Carol Reed. “If you look at its behavior in receptor binding, in vivo and in vitro, animal models, and even in the Phase II trials, it does appear to be an effective agent. Genetics will help clearly demonstrate people for whom the drug will work.”
But Reed says the drug encountered a not uncommon problem in its Phase II studies — “the issue of increasing placebo response. Active competitors were included in some trials. The active [comparison drugs] also failed to beat placebo. It’s a statistical failure. Phase II studies aren’t designed to clearly demonstrate efficacy.” (Reed notes that the comparison drugs, all of which are approved, did beat placebos in earlier trials, or they would not have been included.)
Clinical Data plans to recruit 400 patients, all in the United States. The search for genetic biomarkers that can predict drug efficacy and response will be conducted as the trial progresses.
“Genaissance has developed its reputation in haplotype mapping and candidate gene study. We also have the ability to apply whole-genome scans and expression analysis. All of these options are available,” says Reed. “We will lean heavily on proprietary information on SNPs and haplotypes across diverse ethnic populations.”
A lot is already known about biomarkers for antidepressants. Vilazodone is known to bind to two proteins: the serotonin transporter, for which there is published data on promoter polymorphisms, and the 5HT1A receptor. “So any downstream pathway genes are obvious candidate genes,” says Reed. Among the genes of interest will be variations in cytochrome enzymes. | <urn:uuid:36f1dde3-ecab-42ff-b2b9-79e23e068f14> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bio-itworld.com/issues/2006/march/clinical-data/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957921 | 664 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Next: 25x39 -- May 26, 2013 (May/26/2013) [Special Airtime: 06:30 pm]
The team are in Yorkshire this week, where Matt learns about marsh management on the Humber estuary to ensure the wading birds have enough to eat. Julia pays a visit to the Leconfield MOD School for Transport, and Tom learns why more than 95 per cent of wild flowers have disappeared over the past 70 years.
The team are in the Thames Valley, where Matt attempts to discover what makes Henley-on-Thames such a good breeding ground for gold medal-winning rowers. Julia looks for Burnham Beeches' giant wood ants. John pays a visit to the Household Cavalry as they take part in an equine health survey. | <urn:uuid:bd96f1c4-b4a0-4547-a0b8-6c9abdefe4bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tvrage.com/Countryfile | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938296 | 163 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Backyard chicken coops pitched for Maple Ridge & Pitt Meadows
Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows should follow Vancouver’s example and allow back yard chicken farming in residential areas, says a local environmental advocate.
Christian Cowley is the executive director of the Community Education on Environment and Development (CEED) Centre, and he is urging local residents to write to their councillors to ask them to consider a bylaw similar to the one the City of Vancouver has adopted allowing residents to keep up to four chickens in their backyard.
“It’s becoming increasingly difficult for a person with low income to eat healthily,” Cowley said. Allowing residents to raise their own chickens will give them access to an inexpensive and healthy source of organic food.
Poor diet has societal costs, he notes, specifically increased health care costs.
“Good food is good preventative medicine,” Cowley said.
“This reacquaints people with where their food comes from, and it helps give them a greater connection with the environment.”
Cowley, who lives outside the urban boundary in east Maple Ridge, keeps 26 chickens for egg laying purposes, and another 100 for meat.
“Four chickens is enough to give you around a dozen eggs per week,” he said.
“That’s going to save you $4 to $5, and the eggs are of a higher quality than you get in the store.
“For some families, that’s significant.”
Back yard chicken raising was a common practice a hundred years ago, but the industrial model of food production replaced the need to produce one’s food, Cowley notes.
“But the industrial model of food production is not performing as well as it should,” he said.
“The food supply chain is changing because the cost of oil is making the cost of food go up.”
Some breeds, like the bantam, have been specifically bred to be small in size and suitable for backyard raising. The chickens generally don’t make much noise, and wouldn’t pose a nuisance to neighbours, according to Cowley.
However, backyard chickens could become prey to wild animals, including bears, raccoons, and feral cats, as well as eagles, or hawks.
Cowley said a secure enclosure is needed to protect the birds, and the City of Vancouver’s bylaw lays out specific requirements for such structures.
But if it can be done in Vancouver, it can be done here, Cowley said.
“You don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” he said.
“The bylaws are out there, we just need to make them work here.” | <urn:uuid:1b10a5b2-bbe7-48d3-ac3e-259f9f14c152> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mapleridgenews.com/news/127561943.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953054 | 575 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Matthew 7:17-20 says:
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
For the purposes of this first post this month, I want to draw a clear distinction I see between "works" and "fruits". While it is true that MANY verses in the New Testament state unequivocally that we will be judged by our works, I think FAR too many members don't stop and ponder exactly what that means - and I am convinced it doesn't mean just what those words ("judged according to their works") appear to convey when they are parsed in isolation.
An oft quoted verse in the Bible we use to show the need for "works" is James 2:17. It reads:
Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
That verse is criticial to blunt the incorrect doctrine of "easy grace" (merely confess His name and be saved), since even the devils Jesus drove from the swine confessed His name, but it is easy to forget that Paul preached adamantly against "dead works".
Two verses (one from the Bible and one from the Book of Mormon) are interesting in how they illustrate the uselessness of "dead works".
Hebrews 9:14 says:
How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Moroni 8:23, speaking of infant baptism, says:
But it is mockery before God, denying the mercies of Christ, and the power of
his Holy Spirit, and putting trust in dead works.
The point I want to make here is that there are "good works" and "dead works" - those that contribute to "life" and those that don't. Following that train of thought, it is important to distinguish between those things we do that are focused on "God's life" (eternal life) and "my life".
There are numerous passages that discuss the basic concept of living with an eye single to the glory of God - which is defined in Moses 1:39 as "the immortality and eternal life of man". I have come to beleive that the judgment will consist almost SOLELY of a measure of our willingness to let go of those activities ("works") that contribute only to "my life" ("my glory", as understood in mortal terms) and embrace those activities ("works") that contribute to "God's life" (His glory - lifting and raising and empowering and edifying others). I also have come to believe that the personal application of this concept is measured by how comprehensively we learn to listen to the Holy Spirit when it whispers to us - to follow our conscience - to do what we feel we should do when it is different than what we naturally want to do - to be dedicated to becoming more like Christ, no matter how difficult that might be at any given moment.
In conclusion, I would like to draw an analogy to a child in its mother's womb. It grows and develops and progresses when it is connected to its mother's nourishment. A mother, as a "vine", provides life and growth to her child - the "fruit" of her womb. She "produces" it - and to a large degree, she shapes her child's future by the substances she takes into her body and feeds to her child. Much of a child's life is a DIRECT result of the "vine" to which it is connected.
Those "works" that we do on our own are our own, and we "shall in no wise lose (our) reward" for them. However, the only "works" we can do that will have eternal impact and efficacy are those that are produced as a result of a connection to the Vine - that flow from the Spirit, are internalized into our very being and "produce" a more "perfect" (complete, whole and fully developed) soul. The challenge, in my opinion, is NOT to "do more". Rather, the challenge is to "do God's will" - to do what He wants us to do - to become what He wants us to become.
I also am convinced that this is a personal quest - that what he wants ME to do might be very different than what he wants YOU to do - and that I am forbidden to judge you if He produces peaches through me and grapes through you. That lack of judgmentalism (true charity) is one particular fruit of the vine - but my challenge this month is to be more able to understand and do what he wants ME to understand and do. In a nutshell, it is to be more in tune with personal revelation - and to follow it in my life to produce "good works" - the fruit he will share with and through me. | <urn:uuid:ad09436b-fe80-4244-9679-2fc6fb6df553> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2009/08/producing-fruits-not-just-works.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970369 | 1,049 | 1.765625 | 2 |
South African platinum miners hope to ramp up output from their operations in Zimbabwe as production at home falls to 11-years low, beset by illegal strikes, work stoppages and a growing burden of red tape, BDLive reports.
By contrast, Zimbabwean Finance Minister Tendai Biti said last week that the country's mining sector had become the "anchor driver" of Zimbabwe's economy, with the potential to generate up to R124bn a year.
Zimbabwe and South Africa hold 75% of the world's platinum reserves, but South Africa's industry has become bedevilled by labour unrest, high input costs, poor infrastructure and increased government intervention. Foreign investor sentiment has also taken a knock, especially with nationalisation still on the agenda.
According to BDLive
, Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), the world's biggest producer, says it is planning a new mine in Zimbabwe, while JSE-listed Impala Platinum (Implats) recorded a surge in first-quarter platinum production from its Zim based Mimosa joint venture project with Aquarius Platinum.
Read the full article | <urn:uuid:100b37c6-17a2-4742-a141-c0b4decf9e7f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/608/85611.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941468 | 224 | 1.6875 | 2 |
|Myth # 6 - T.R. and Wyatt|
by Guy Rocha, former Nevada State Archivist and Dennis Myers, Journalist
Contrary to what you'll read on back of picture postcards purchased in Goldfield, Theodore Roosevelt never spoke from the balcony of the Goldfield Hotel or anywhere else in the town. His only Nevada appearances were in Reno and Carson City (as President in 1903), Reno (1911, 1912), and Las Vegas (1915). The story makes little sense anyway, inasmuch as it was Roosevelt who in December 1907 sent federal troops into Goldfield, where they broke a miners' strike. Theodore Roosevelt going to Goldfield would be like Fidel Castro going to Miami.
The story apparently originated with a character who showed up at the 42-round Gans- Nelson lightweight world title fight in Goldfield on September, 3, 1906. According to historian Phillip Earl, Curator of History emeritus at the Nevada Historical Society, the fellow went around posing as the president at a variety of functions. The town's residents knew the truth; modern Nevadans are apparently a little more imaginative.
As for Wyatt Earp, there is no end to the list of things he didn't do in Goldfield. He didn't tend bar there, he didn't own a hotel or saloon there, and in fact he didn't do much of anything there except reportedly visit his brother Virgil in 1905. Virgil died there on October 19, however he is buried in Riverview Cemetery in Portland, Oregon. Somehow over the years Wyatt's actual activities in and around Tonopah in 1902-03, including owning the Northern Saloon, have become blurred with imaginary stories of Goldfield, perhaps because the two towns are only 25 miles apart and were part of the same mining boom.
On August 23, 2002 according to the Associated Press (AP), Goldfield residents enthusiastically welcomed to the mining town's 100th anniversary celebration a 60 year-old man who claimed he was Wyatt Earp's grandson. The man showed up in costume and said his gun, which he was willing to sell for $5,000, once belonged to his grandfather. He was commissioned an honorary Esmeralda County sheriff's deputy as politicians posed for photographs with him. "There was just one problem," wrote the AP, "historians say Wyatt Earp had no children and the man is an imposter."
Experts on Wyatt Earp attending the celebration confronted the fraud and asked for proof, none of which was forthcoming. "Absolutely, he's a con man," said Michael Curcio of Genoa who portrays Earp at special events and has studied the controversial lawman. "If you are going to do a fraud, you ought to get your history right." Before morning was up, the imposter had hightailed it out of town. Community leaders were embarrassed to discover they had been deceived by a flim-flam man.
The moral to this story is to be careful what you believe. Your ignorance is the duper's delight.
An excellent source on Wyatt Earp is The Earps' Last Frontier: Wyatt and Virgil Earp in the Nevada Mining Camps, 1902 - 1905 by Jeffrey Kintop and Guy Rocha.
Photo: Nevada Historical Society
(Original version in Sierra Sage, Carson City/Carson Valley, Nevada, June 1996 edition. Reprinted November, 2003) | <urn:uuid:c39ed936-218d-4e7a-93ed-56ee17484733> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nsla.nevadaculture.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=668&Itemid=418 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981773 | 702 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Holding your iPad up during use takes many forms. If you’re at your desk, a full sized stand can be used. But if you’re on the go, and working from random places with your phone, other materials, maybe eating or collaborating and want to have the device at a consistent angle without having to hold it, what do you do? The award-winning team at tools has come up with an elegant solution, being manufactured and sold by just|mobile: the Slide iPad stand.
At first glance, it’s just a strange slab of aluminum with a hook on one end and a loop on the other. At 3.5″ x 4.5″, it’s not an imposing device, either. But placed within that loop is a rubber cylinder that changes this simple piece into an infinitely adjustable holder for your iPad, iPhone, Kindle, or about any single-surfaced device. The secret is in the cylinder.
To use it, you place the cylinder on the slide, where it fits snugly against the hook part. Soft rubber pads on the bottom protect furniture from scratches. Roll the cylinder up slightly, and place your tablet between the lip and the rubber roller, and release both. The slight weight of the tablet will hold the roller against the slide, and keep everything as you left it.
Adjustments are easy: To lower your device, reach behind, roll the cylinder up, and lower the tablet to the place you want it to be. To raise it, simply tilt the tablet up to where you want it, and then release. The roller will roll down as you bring the tablet forward and hold it in place. It’s infinitely adjustable through it’s range, and there’s a slight lip at the top to prevent the roller from sliding off the back. Pretty neat.
It is quite stable, either at a low angle for typing on the virtual keyboard, or playing a game or whatever. In portrait orientation, tapping near the top of the device can cause it to roll backwards, possibly unhooking it from the front lip. That’s an extreme case, however, but if the iPad is in a cover, it is more likely to happen.
It will work with some cases and covers, but works best with a naked device. You’ll have to test them on a case-by-case basis. (See what I did there? Case by case – get it?)
At $40, it’s not cheap, but it is solidly made and works like a charm. It makes a very elegant statement. There is a logo on the front of the lip, but it’s almost invisible. There’s even a black velveteen drawstring bag (with another just|mobile logo) to carry it in, which will prevent it from coming apart or scratching anything in your bag. I give it four stars out of five. | <urn:uuid:0c0b687f-9c99-41c5-99c1-7fa719095046> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/05/29/slide-ipad-stand-from-justmobile-review/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94125 | 606 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Flip through our Glossary!
A water mixture that has been made acidic by combining lemon juice, lime juice, vinegar, or wine with water. An acidulated water solution is often used to prevent cut fruits (apples and pears) and some vegetables (artichokes) from becoming discolored and brown from exposure to air. The peeled or sliced fruit and vegetables are dipped or placed in the mixture for short periods of time, allowing the food to absorb the liquid to avoid turning brown.
Acidulated water can be made by adding 1-1/2 tablespoons of vinegar or 3 tablespoons of lemon juice (lime juice can be substituted), or 1/2 cup of white wine to a quart of water. Mix thoroughly and use to dip the food into the solution or place a small amount in the bottom of a shallow pan and allow the food to be dipped and sit in the solution.
Ratings, Reviews & Comments
There currently aren't any reviews or comments for this term. Be the first! | <urn:uuid:20d15ce8-d92b-439d-9078-79a289b0107a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.recipetips.com/glossary-term/t--35201/acidulated-water.asp?slide=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942121 | 207 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The field of light In late October 2008, Bruce Munro and a team of 5 installed the Field of Light
on the grassy roof of the visitor’s centre, called the Link Building, at the Eden Project in Cornwall.
They worked over three days to install this version of FoL, made of 6,000 acrylic stems
through which fibre optic cables run, each crowned with a clear glass sphere.
There are 11 external projectors and each one sends different colours down the fibre to it’s circle of stems.
The stems themselves hold no electric power at all. The installation covers an area of 60 x 20 meters, using 24, 000 meters
of fibre optic cable and is best viewed after dark. It will remain at the Eden Project until the end of March 09. | <urn:uuid:bb6f4d31-43d6-4fd9-819e-02b99d3380d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fieldoflight.co.uk/detail.php?startrow=24&gallery_id=8 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919851 | 163 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Taylor Roberts, a University of Colorado Boulder senior majoring in architectural engineering, is an example of the growing number of CU-Boulder students who are civically engaged.
You may have earned academic college course credit by scoring well on Advanced Placement (AP) and/or International Baccalaureate (IB) examinations. Once you have your AP and/or IB exam scores, visit the Office of Admissions website, review the AP or IB Equivalency Chart, and look for the exam you took to see if your score corresponds to a CU-Boulder Course Equivalent.
Don't know your AP or IB examination scores? For AP exams, you should receive an AP Score Report by mail that lists your cumulative AP Exam scores. You may also contact the College Board to obtain your scores by telephone beginning July 1. For IB exams, results are sent out in July for the May session and in January for the November session. Students may also obtain their results online.
For example, if you scored a 4 or 5 on the Calculus AB AP exam, you have earned 5 CU-Boulder credit hours for the MATH 1300 class taught in the Mathematics Department. Note that engineering students are required to enroll in Applied Mathematics (APPM) courses rather than those taught by Mathematics; however, MATH 1300 will substitute for APPM 1350 for students seeking to transfer in math credits (and MATH 2300 will substitute for APPM 1360). Ask your academic advisor for more information on transferring math credits.
In addition, sometimes first-year freshmen come to campus having earned college credit by taking college-level courses while enrolled in high school (see "College Course Work" at the CU-Boulder admissions website). You may have done that by taking community college courses, courses at one of the CU campuses, or perhaps by completing a "CU Succeed" course (which shows up as CU-Denver coursework on the CU transcript).
Did you know? The University of Colorado has a combined transcript. That means that courses taken at CU-Boulder, along with the CU-Denver and CU-Colorado Springs campuses, all show up on the CU transcript. So you may have established a CU transcript already if you took a CU Succeed class.
By now you should know if you have earned college credit for Calculus 1 and/or Calculus 2 (or beyond). Even if you have this earned college calculus credit, some students find it helpful to repeat the last math class for which they have received college credit to make their transition to CU-Boulder engineering smoother. If you do choose to repeat a course for which you already have college credit, your previously earned college credit will not be counted.
What if you have earned college credit for calculus, but your ALEKS score is below 75%? Even if you have the earned college credit for Calculus 1 (or beyond), if your ALEKS score is below 75% you will be pre-enrolled in GEEN 1235 (Pre-Calculus for Engineers). Why? Because the Applied Mathematics Department and the College of Engineering and Applied Science want you to be successful in your engineering studies at CU! We want you to have an excellent mathematical foundation, be well prepared for your other engineering and science courses, and perform well in our APPM courses. Doing so is important for all engineering majors.
What if you have earned college credit for calculus but your ALEKS score is between 75% and 100%? If you have earned college credit for Calculus 1 and/or Calculus 2 (or beyond), and your ALEKS score is 75% - 100%, here's what we suggest:
If you decide to enroll in either APPM 1350 (Calculus 1 for Engineers) or APPM 1360 (Calculus 2 for Engineers), consider concurrently enrolling in one of the accompanying "calculus work groups." GEEN 1350 (Calculus 1 Work Group) and GEEN 1360 (Calculus 2 Work Group) are each one-credit, pass/fail courses which emphasize collaborative learning techniques and are designed to parallel each calculus course. At each weekly class period of Work Group, you will work in groups of 3-4 students on problems prepared especially for the class. Before moving on to a new problem, all students in a group must understand, and be able to explain, the solution. The maximum enrollment is 32 students per section, so it’s a highly personalized learning environment. The APPM 1350 (Calculus 1) course grades for students who concurrently take GEEN 1350 (Calculus 1 Work Group) average approximately a half letter grade higher than those who do not.
If you have further questions about your choice of Applied Math class, you may contact Professor Anne Dougherty at 303-492-4011 or at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Keep up with the latest news about the college by reading the 2013 issue of CUEngineering magazine online. | <urn:uuid:b273f26d-8baa-4ae7-b736-ab499538aaff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.colorado.edu/engineering/node/809/node/node/937?qt-news_events_deadlines=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950076 | 1,015 | 1.804688 | 2 |
I take away a few key points:
The media distorts and simplifies things for easy reports, and that lends itself to a poor public perception of fire. I agree with that.
The answer is as varied as the forest type, and some forest may burn hot and intense. Lodgepole and spruce are examples of that, and no amount of thinning will prevent an inevitable high-intensity fire.
Thinning is a part of the "fix", but not a magic bullet as proposed and if we only do it one way, and we ignore the things we did that got us to this point in the first place, we aren't doing very much good.
and so on.
I agree with pretty much everything he said, but I question how much of a 500 year drought we are in. I think drought is the norm in the SW, not the aberration, and wet years led us to have a distorted view of this region. We have been dry this winter, but I read 2002 was drier still. It's been dry since the early 2000s, but we've had wet periods and last summer and winter were on the wet side. I'd like to know what he meant when he said 500 year drought, what was the time frame?
One thing he mentions is grazing. Cattle and sheep simply do not belong. We are going to have grazing again on the San Francisco Peaks, but we should barely have any grazing in Arizona. Our grasslands have nearly disappeared from the landscape, but we continue to extract from them. Fire is a part of our forests and we continue to put them out pretending that we can always do so. Even if we only had lightning fires, we should still have far more of them and they would be large. Aside from that, people have been burning forests for as long as they have been here. We really should be burning more often, and in much larger areas. The Coconino prescribed fire program is a joke. They burn in hundreds of acres and hardly touch most places. Ponderosa pine should have a fire return interval of less than 10 years, but the way we have fires and the way they burn, it's more like a 100 year return interval forest-wide.
I haven't seen most of the Wallow burn area on the ground, but from the satellite images, I can see a lot of parks and grasslands that will benefit from the fire, and there are also areas of recent fires that may re-burn. He is probably correct about the forest condition in that area, and the forest being "reset'. I think I actually referred to that in one of my posts or in a conversation with Liz. One thing that would be nice, would be if the Forest Managers would be supported by the politicians they answer to, and actually manage the forests as they say they do. I'm not talking logging, I'm talking burning. If this area is wilderness and is far from towns, they need to start having prescribed burns that aren't hundreds or thousands of acres, but tens of thousands. We need to start routine scheduled forest closures for management, particularly big block prescribed fires. We need to obliterate roads, and allow areas to burn and then burn again. A forest area that burned in 2005, even if a hot stand replacing fire, needs to burn again. How else do you think the fuel load will disappear? We can't put things back by pretending that once is good enough, when it use to happen at least once a decade, and we can't pretend that a forest should be protected and treated like a baby. But more to the point, we need to stop treating fire like an enemy and treat it like a friend.
The biggest problem IS the public. The public needs to have an understanding of forests, forest fires, and accept the practices of management, if they are going to have an important say in forest management. People need to accept that blackened tree trunks are better than blackened tree tops for thousands of acres (except where that is ecologically normal), that fire will burn through, and the public is going to have to learn to deal with large areas being scheduled for management and being closed to public entry. We need to live with more regular smoke on the landscape, and we should phase out grazing over most public lands. Historical cuteness does not equate to ecological compatibility or what should be practiced.
Taken in it's now post fire state, the Wallow Fire area could be completely re-designated, and management practices out there could be completely altered. We could close many of the roads, we could create 40 to 50,000 acre burn blocks with margins that can be lit-off in the event of a fire and the area could be allowed to burn naturally when a lightning fire occurs, or in a prescribed manner if that was to happen. We could bulldoze tanks, end the subsidized forest grazing, and reseed with native grasses in areas denuded of their grasslands. We could walk away from timber extraction, end the thinning protection of forest trees in that area and allow subsequent fires to burn as they please, within the burn units. We could do a lot of things, but we won't.
If the public was willing to see these things happen, then a lot could change. We have this ridiculous notion that a "wilderness" area is anything we call a wilderness. Most Arizona Wildernesses are a complete misrepresentation of the spirit of the designation and are far from anything resembling true wilderness. Aside from the roads, the centuries of high-grading logging, grazing and over grazing, and fire suppression that occurred in them and adjacent to them, they are often so small as to be little more than an area on a map, suited for an ignorant public to gobble up as a peaceful place to escape their cares and woes of modern urban Arizona life. The Gila is a decent sized wilderness, but it has problems. If nothing else, why was the FS suppressing the 987 acre lightning started "Horse Fire" last June? It started in the wilderness in Pine and should have been managed as a natural fire, but instead "hero" hot shots were airlifted to the site to put out the fire. And this was in a relatively "fire friendly" national forest.
I will now quote the wilderness act:
Historical relics and trails aside, fire suppression is far from an "untrammeled"landscape, and some areas are so dense they don't even come close to appearing as a wilderness. It would be one thing if we could set fires as much as we suppress them, but we do not.“A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
If Wilderness Act were to be applied as it should, we would not have many of the joke wildernesses that we do in this state, since the Kendrick Mountain, the Kachina Peaks, the Red Rocks-Secret Canyon and many others, are far from anything that comes close to the wilderness designation language. You can't manage a forest, however poorly or well, for a century and then simply step back and say, "you are now on your own, though we will continue to exclude fire. The inevitable consequence will be a Taylor, Pumpkin, Schultz, or other unnaturally hot fire, but that will be ignored by the public, and we will treat a natural fire as a disaster, despite the historical evidence". This is effectively what we have done. And in addition, in a true wilderness area, we would never dream of ever extinguishing a naturally started fire in a fire maintained ecosystem, as was done in the Gila last spring. Also, if we want to believe a 5,000 or 10,000 acre area can actually be a wilderness, then we should study the landscape and have man caused prescribed fires in the wilderness ares, because a fire that started 5 miles west of Kendrick Peak would have been all over Kendrick Mountain in a day or two, and the fire would not respect the political boundary of a wilderness designation. As such, when we put out the fire on Sitgreaves last June, we should have started a fire at the base of Kendrick to ensure that the mountain re-burned, as nature would have done to the mountain.
Until we really change, and do what fits reality, and stop pretending that a forest is a park with no natural phenomenon that occur as either destructive or creative agents, then we will continue to suffer the consequence to the full extent of our hubris. The period of the last 9 years had shown us that large destructive fires can and will occur, and this will become normal. Just this year alone we've probably had close to 1 million acres burn. That could have been a semi normal thing with positive results for the most part, be that is not how it will probably end up. | <urn:uuid:611fe2f4-79be-4764-8ca6-8189526c76cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hikearizona.com/dex2/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=6245&start=60 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974794 | 1,844 | 2.4375 | 2 |
- When it is not possible to find sufficient water for performing Wudhu or Ghusl
- If a person is unable to find water on account of old age or weakness or due to fear of a thief or a beast or because he does not possess means to draw water from a well, he should perform tayammum. The same order would apply in case the trouble to acquire water is usually considered to be unbearable.
- If a person fears that if he uses water his life will be in danger or he will suffer from some ailment or defect in his body or the ailment from which he is already suffering will become acute or some complications will arise in its treatment. However, if warm water is not injurious for him, he should perform Wudhu with it and also do Ghusl with it in cases in which Ghusl is obligatory.
- If a person fears that if he uses water to do Ghusl, or to perform Wudhu, he will be involved in hardship, he should perform Tayammum under the following 3 cases:
- In case he fears that if he uses the water for Ghusl or Wudhu, he will be involved in an acute thirst, which may result in his illness or death, or which it will be very hard for him to bear;
- In case he fears that in the event of his doing Ghusl or Wudhu, the people whose care is obligatory for him may become ill or die on account of thirst,
- and, In case he fears, on account of lack of water, for others ( whether human beings or animals ) besides himself, and their death, illness or restlessness is unpleasant for him.
In the absence of anyone or more of the three conditions mentioned above it is not permissible to perform Tayammum when water is available.
- If the body or dress of a person is impure and he possesses only so much water that it is likely to be exhausted if he takes a bath or washes his dress he should, on the basis of precaution, take a bath or wash his dress, and offer his prayer after performing Tayammum. However, if he does not possess anything with which to perform tayammum he should use the water for bathing or for Wudhu and offer his prayers with impure body or dress.
- If a person possess unlawful water or container, he should perform tayammum instead of Ghusl or Wudhu.
- When the time left for offering prayers is so short that if a person does the Ghusl or Wudhu he would be obliged to offer the entire prayers or a part thereof after the prescribed time, he should perform tayammum.
In case a person is doubtful whether or not any time will be left for prayers, in case he does the Ghusl or Wudhu, he should perform tayammum and then offer prayers.
Things on which Tayammum may be Performed
- Performance of tayammum on earth, sand, a lump of clay or a stone in order, but the recommended precaution is that if earth is available tayammum should not be performed on anything else. In case earth is not available it should be performed on sand or a lump of clay and failing that on a stone.
- It is in order to perform tayammum on gypsum or lime - stone. On the basis of obligatory precaution, however, tayammum should not be performed, without proper excuse, on baked gypsum or lime or baked bricks or mineral stones.
- If it is not possible for a person to procure earth, sand, lump of clay or stone, he should perform tayammum on the dust which may have settled on a carpet or dress. And in case even if dust is not available he should perform tayammum on wet earth. And if none of these things are available he should, on the basis of recommended precaution, offer prayers without performing tayammum, and it is obligatory that he should also offer his prayers again.
How to do Tayammum.
- Niyyat: I am doing tayammum in place of Wudhu or Ghusl, so that my prayer or fast may be correct, Wajib or Sunnat Qurbatan ilallah.
- Strike palms of both hands together upon things on which tayammum is correct. Just putting the hands upon earth etc. is not enough. (Fig 1.)
- Pull both palms together from the beginning of the forehead down to the point of the nose. Both sides of the forehead joining the ears should be included. (Fig 2a & 2b)
- Then pull the left palm upon the back of the right hand from the projecting small bone on the joint of palm and arm up to the fingertips.
- Then pull the right palm on the back of the left palm likewise.
- Strike the palms together upon earth etc. second time.
- Pull the left palm on the back of the right hand, as explained above
- Pull the right palm on the back of the left hand, as explained above.
|Fig 1.||Fig 2a.|
|Fig 2b||Fig 3.|
While performing tayammum one should remove the ring he or she is wearing and also remove any obstruction which may be present on his forehead or on the palms or back of his hands.
In case a person has a wound on his forehead or the back of his hands and it is bandaged with a cloth or something else which cannot be removed, he should wipe his hands on it. And in the case that he has a bandage on his hands which cannot be removed then he should strike his hands along with the bandage.
A person whose obligation is tayammum cannot perform it unless the time for prayers sets in, however if there is a probability that his excuse will cease to exist before the time for prayers is over it is better that he should not offer the prayers during the earlier part of the time.
If a person performs tayammum on account of non - availability of water or because of some other excuse his tayammum becomes void when that obstacle ceases to exist.
If some Ghusl's are to be performed by a person but he cannot do the Ghusl it is okay to perform one tayammum, but it is recommended to do that for everyone of those Ghusl's he should perform one tayammum.
If a person performs tayammum in lieu of Ghusl - e Janabat he can do his prayers, however if he performs tayammum in lieu of other Ghusl then he should do another tayammum in lieu of Wudhu. | <urn:uuid:3c1b8518-97a6-4c47-8739-06cce7cbcb2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.playandlearn.org/reader.asp?Type=Fiqh&fn=110 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960844 | 1,408 | 2.4375 | 2 |
High Efficiency Sediment Removal for Portable Water Treatment Systems
ProTech General Contracting Services Inc., a full service environmental compliance company, announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued Patent 6,899,808 B1 to the Company for its Sediment Removal System (SRS). The SRS is the basis of ProTech’s line of modular, flow-through water filtration technologies, designed to remove suspended sediment and contaminants from stormwater runoff, construction dewatering, and many other sources. The Patent is in effect beginning May 31st, 2005, and will remain in effect for a period of 20 years.
"ProTech developed the SRS to provide the best possible sediment removal efficiency in a portable water treatment system," says Chris Ott, ProTech’s Chief Technology Officer. "The SRS design includes several unique features that combine to minimize turbulence, improve settling efficiency, and optimize the flow path. This Patent is another demonstration of how ProTech is leading the stormwater treatment industry."
The ProTech SRS is compact, reliable, and quick and easy to set up. The standard SRS has a 4000-gallon retention capacity, with a flow rate of up to 250 gallons per minute, depending on water characteristics. The SRS can be installed as a mobile filtration system, or it can be installed in an underground vault configuration. It can operate as a stand-alone sediment removal system, or can be configured with a variety of optional components as required to remove virtually any contaminant. Oil/water separators, cartridge or membrane filters, polymer coagulants, and chemical treatment systems are readily added. The SRS can also be equipped with automated control systems, instrumentation, and remote sensors designed to page the operator and report operational parameters.
ProTech provides a wide range of mobile water filtration and treatment services for construction, dewatering, environmental, and many other applications. The Company’s water treatment systems and services offer significant cost savings while meeting water quality criteria and permit requirements. ProTech’s systems are recognized as Best Management Practices by CALTRANS and other regulatory agencies, and have been demonstrated to meet strict discharge requirements in numerous projects. The full spectrum of water filtration and treatment technologies is available, including polymer coagulation using the industry’s first streaming current detector-based control system. The Company also provides turn-key system installation and maintenance, monitoring and compliance documentation, and design and engineering services. | <urn:uuid:49d2745f-e68b-4bca-b118-ce034b6f6d47> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wwdmag.com/print/10192 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928676 | 512 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Electronics for Artists
Electronics is fun, useful, and fun. Electronics for Artists covers both the theory and primarily techniques of working with electronics. Students will be exposed to basic tools and components for building robust, practical circuitry into their art works. No attempt will be made to provide encyclopedic coverage of electronics due to the sprawling nature of the topic – rather students will be encouraged to become comfortable with experimentation and hands on hacking. | <urn:uuid:51271ccf-e591-4010-85ba-4f80f6221171> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://machineproject.com/archive/classwork/2007/06/01/electronics-for-artists-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948504 | 88 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Do You Mom the Vote?
Sitting in the back of my lecture hall, I am half-listening to my poli-sci 101 class. My professor poses the question: "Rationally, we know that our vote doesn't make a difference, so why do it?"
The kid in front of me, the kind of guy that no one takes seriously and who we all wonder how he got into this university, jumps out of his chair and yells, "You have to buy a ticket to win!"
I have voted in every election since I was 18. Even when I don't know who I am going to vote for I am compelled to go to the voting booth to mark the X (or draw the arrow or whatever it is). I watch, I listen and I participate. Some years, I am more partisan than others, but I have a sense of what is important to me and I know that government is important to me and to my family.
Not all people care about politics. But once you are a parent, doesn't it seem to matter a little bit more? The issues of health care, education, and the economy are important now and will be the basis of the country our kids will grow up in. I consider every election a teachable moment - I am able to show my kids that they can make a difference by voting, but also be talking and thinking and asking questions. I remember hanging off my mom as she went into the voting booth; and my kids will remember that too.
But this year, it feels like people aren't engaged which is strange considering that this was supposed to be the year that social media took the election to the next level. It also felt like bloggers who are moms (yes, mommy bloggers), weren't talking about the election at all.
So, a few of us decided to do something about it. A group of us started Mom the Vote to encourage mothers who have a social media platform to blog, discuss, tweet and engage in this election and try and lead a discussion on an important topic. And they have! The Facebook page has a lively discussion going on it at all times; the Twitter hashtag is moving at the speed of light.
I don't agree with all the posts and tweets and comments, but I read them and I learn new things. I have been blown away with the respect people have given each other and also the vitriol. Politics is not easy to discuss which is maybe why we shy away from it. The personal is political and the political can very, very personal.
Why Mom the Vote? Aren't moms just voters? Yes, we are voters and just because we are moms does not mean we have a different agenda than anyone else. But like it or not, the parties have openly said they are trying to reach the "mom" vote and as a "mommy blogger" I want to send a message that I am listening. I am doing more than listening; I am engaging, I am asking questions and I hope you are too. (One of the best parts is the example that I am setting for my kids who see their parent being part of the political process).
So if you want to know what a diverse, interested, cynical, open, caring, political group of voters moms are, check out the Mom the Vote Facebook page and if you are on Twitter (I am @emmawaverman) the #momthevote hashtag. And if all this social media talk doesn't mean anything to you, read the paper, listen to the radio, and talk to your friends. And then go buy a ticket to win. It's a small amount of power, but it is a start.
CBC's The National did a story on Mom the Vote with an interview with my brilliant pal Karen Green from the Kids Are Alright, and the Globe and Mail also did a story on Mom the Vote and the power of mom bloggers with a tiny quote by me. The Yummy Mummy Club has a Mom the Vote section, which anyone can contribute to.
Are you paying attention to this election? Do you look at election issues differently now that you are a parent? | <urn:uuid:4212fd8e-ecd0-4b83-aaeb-61a13b783dc7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.embracethechaos.ca/2011/04/mom-the-vote.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979473 | 850 | 1.734375 | 2 |
We have an idea and a project this week in class. The idea is empathic argument, the project is podcasting. My father returned to the idea of empathic argument in Monday’s lecture to try to make it a bit more concrete. And he certainly did that with his main example: the battle rap scene from 8 Mile. He argued to our students that Eminem made a masterful empathic argument in that scene. How did he do it? He started off his argument by clearly and fairly stating the case for his opposition in a way that even his opposition wouldn’t disagree with. He says, with much obscenity that I’ll leave out, “Yes I live in a trailer park. Yes I’m white. Yes he slept with my girlfriend. etc. etc. But I’m still standing her in front of you, still being a good rapper.” And then he goes on to make his argument for why his opponent is not good. By doing this, he leaves his opponent without anything to throw back at him. There is nothing his opponent can say that he hasn’t already said.
So how does this demonstrate empathic argument? The idea is that if you want to persuade someone of something, you first have to make them understand that you understand their point of view. And you can do that by stating the facts of the situation and the issues at stake in the dispute in a way that they can agree with. Once you’ve done that, you can argue against their point of view from a common ground of understanding of the dispute.
We went on, in Tuesday’s class, to put this idea into practice by having 4 very brave students volunteer to make their own empathic arguments about the projects that they’ve chosen to do for the class. They did this in 2 and half minute oral statements that we recorded and put up as podcasts. I won’t link to them now because we’ve given all the students a week to produce a 2 and a half minute podcast that empathically argues their positions and these 4 students, like the rest, may wish to put some finishing touches on their work from class today. If you are looking for some discussion of empathic argument or a really good tutorial on how to make a podcast yourself, check out the lecture.
Tonight in office hours in SL we did it again. This time we did it live by role playing various arguments where students, Gene and I wrestled with what empathic argument is and how to do it effectively. The transcript of tonights office hours is available here. | <urn:uuid:337a3cf3-7f28-4130-a461-f0ccc5471a3f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cyberone/2006/10/31/empathic-argument/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97866 | 537 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Develop HIX Now, MD Official Urges States
An early study by the University of Maryland indicated that implementing the ACA would help the state save $700 million in its budget and reduce the number of uninsured by 50%. A follow up report released last week confirms the savings and estimates that the ACA will generate more than $3 billion in economic activity for the state, an create 26,000 healthcare jobs by 2020.
Brown says Maryland has elected to create its own health insurance exchange because the state has no interest in being part of the default federal exchange. "We believe our exchange must be designed to address Maryland's specific healthcare needs."
He challenged states to take the lead on their own exchanges. "Each state is unique and this is an opportunity to tailor your exchange to meet the specific needs of your state residents."
- CMS Seeks to 'Rapidly Reduce' Medicare Spending with $1B in Grants
- Building a Better Healthcare Board
- Patient Harm Data to Remain on Medicare's Hospital Compare Site
- Case Study: Advance Care Conversations
- Quiet ORs Better for Patient Safety
- Hard-Nosed About Physician Teamwork
- CMS Releases Hospital Pricing Data
- Hospital Pricing Data Dump Won't Hurt You, Yet
- Tavenner Confirmed as CMS Administrator
- Evidence-Based Practice and Nursing Research: Avoiding Confusion | <urn:uuid:851915c1-20f3-4760-832f-706a504ef124> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/page-3/COM-282451/Develop-HIX-Now-MD-Official-Urges-States | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936476 | 277 | 1.554688 | 2 |
In my last post, I argued that the “liquidity” premium was one of the fundamental drivers of the recession. In exactly the same way that a small drop in the supply of cash can cause a massive spike in the nominal interest rate (quite possibly leading to a recession), small shifts in the supply and demand for liquidity can drive up the liquidity premium and push other interest rates to disastrously high levels—even when the Fed does its best with conventional monetary policy.
But why should the liquidity premium change so much, anyway? Brad DeLong is rightly skeptical:
Now we understand why demand for money–what I call liquidity–is so interest-inelastic. You need money to buy stuff. If you don’t have money, you can’t buy stuff–and so when you are short of money you cut back your spending because you must and so build your money balances back up.
But why is the demand for what Matt calls “liquidity” and I call “safety” so interest-inelastic in a financial crisis? It’s not that you have to cut back on your spending on currently-produced goods and services–you have plenty of cash money. But you are unwilling to part with some of your cash money because it is now–and here our terminological problem begins–part of your holdings of liquid cash money are now in the the delong-safe or the rognlie-liquid tranche of your portfolio that you feel you must retain at all costs.
But why must you retain it? Why not buy risky assets when there is blood in the streets? Why not become a stabilizing speculator and become a supplier of rather than a demander of delong-safe or rognlie-liquid assets?
First, to clear up my self-imposed terminological confusion, I’ve been using “liquidity” as a catch-all for many properties that distinguish base money: its complete lack of nominal risk, its short (indeed, zero) maturity, and its usefulness in transactions (which is what we’d often call “liquidity”). The key idea is that many assets resemble base money in all these respects, but aren’t quite the same—they can’t be carried around on green pieces of paper or used to satisfy the reserve requirements on checking accounts. I’ll call these assets cashlike.
What are cashlike assets? T-bills, commercial paper, and repo—plus the money market funds that invest in them. Traditional checking deposits, too—though perhaps only up to the cap on deposit insurance.
Why is the demand for cashlike assets so inelastic? To some extent, it’s for the same reasons that Brad argues the demand for cash money should be interest-inelastic: you need it to buy stuff, or more generally to conduct transactions. If the premium on cashlike assets rises, cutting back on the cashlike part of your portfolio might make it very difficult to go about business as usual—and that’s potentially much more costly than just coughing up the premium.
Now, this isn’t a fully satisfying answer. It’s not as if every dollar in a money market fund is absolutely necessary for some business to continue its operations. But the same is true for cash: when interest rates rise to 6%, paying all your bills with cash (or keeping a pile of $100s under the bed) should be much less attractive. You’d think there would be some demand response—a few holdouts finally deciding to pay with debit cards, or drug lords maneuvering their cash stockpiles into a bank account. And yet there’s virtually none: the naked eye cannot identify even dramatic shifts in monetary policy from the trajectory of currency over the last 40 years.
For some reason, portfolio substitution away from cash is incredibly, incredibly slow and weak. Why should we be surprised if the same is true for cashlike assets as well?
Inelastic demand, of course, isn’t sufficient to cause large swings in the premium on cashlike assets. We also need inelastic supply. And as Brad points out, it’s not clear why this should be true either:
We know why people don’t turn around and become suppliers of liquid cash money when the money stock contracts: they can’t, for nobody else’s liabilities are good as payment for transactions in currently-produced goods and services. But surely Berkshire Hathaway or Microsoft or Northrup-Grumman could have sold lots of bonds at attractive values. Why didn’t they?
According to the Federal Reserve Flow of Funds tables, at the end of 2008 there was $3.8 trillion in bonds issued by nonfinancial corporations, along with $132 billion in commercial paper. But only a small fraction of that $3.8 trillion was issued by corporations with credit sufficiently good that it could plausibly be transformed into a cashlike asset. (After all, the companies with really good credit ratings tend to be precisely the ones with low leverage.)
Even if every AAA corporation doubled its debt overnight, issuing all the new debt in the form of commercial paper, the supply of cashlike assets wouldn’t increase by anything close to $1 trillion—which is a lower bound on the decrease in supply associated with the financial crisis. (Flow of Funds table L.207 shows a nearly $1 trillion drop from 2007 to 2008 in repo + federal funds. Over the same period, table L.208 shows that there was a $200 billion decline in open market paper—which becomes a $900 billion decline if you compare the 2006 peak to the 2010 trough.)
But AAA corporations didn’t even do this; in fact, there was barely any response to the sudden availability of extremely cheap financing. Why? I’m not completely certain, but this isn’t much of a mystery next to all the other mysteries of corporate finance. If it’s hard to explain why Berkshire Hathaway didn’t immediately take advantage of, say, a 4% premium on cashlike debt, it’s infinitely harder to explain why a financially sound corporation doesn’t lever up when the tax advantages could add 15% to firm value in an instant.
Bottom line: corporations, at least in the short run, are unlikely to provide a very elastic supply response to a change in the premium on cashlike assets.
What other asset suppliers might step in? Again using Flow of Funds Table L.2, we can see the amount of various debt instruments owed by nonfinancial sectors in 2008:
- Mortgages: $14.4 trillion
- Treasuries: $6.3 trillion
- Corporate bonds: $3.8 trillion
- Municipal securities: $2.7 trillion
- Consumer credit: $2.6 trillion
- Bank loans not elsewhere classified: $1.8 trillion
- Other loans and advances: $1.8 trillion
- Commercial paper: $0.1 trillion
Aside from money created by the Fed, any additional supply of cashlike assets has to come from one of these categories—maybe it’ll be packaged by a financial intermediary, but ultimately it must rest on some claim on the nonfinancial sector. But which one? Treasuries, eventually—but in the meantime, what elastic source of supply is there?
Clearly the biggest category, mortgages, was useless in 2008: the whole point of the crisis was that previously riskless mortgage-backed securities suddenly became questionable. As the possibility of 10% unemployment loomed, consumer credit wasn’t looking good either. And it has never been very practical to turn other loans—loans to idiosyncratic borrowers, without standard collateral like a house or office building—into securitized assets that can be traded like cash. (That’s why we have traditional banks in the first place.)
Now, with enough time and energy, financial institutions could have stepped in and created new assets: you could take a diversified portfolio of Baa corporate bonds and mark off the top 50% as an AAA tranche. (Short of the Rapture, it’s hard to imagine the default losses on a large portfolio of Baa bonds being even 10%, much less 50%.) But this kind of financial alchemy isn’t instantaneous—it takes time and resources, both of which were in short supply during the crisis of 2008.
And there’s still the problem of maturity mismatch: even if banks manage to put together a new crop of nominally riskless long-maturity assets, transforming them into cashlike assets requires someone to borrow short and buy long. In the midst of the financial crisis, this was not easy to do; the banking system was largely incapacitated, with institutions either unwilling or unable to subject themselves to more rollover risk. Anyone using repo funding had to cough up the haircut, which was 6% even for long-term Treasuries in fall of 2008. (Not to mention 20% for A-/A3 or greater corporate bonds, 30% for many asset-backed securities, and 40% for “AAA” MBS, as documented by Table 4 in Arvind Krishnamurthy’s excellent piece.)
In short, there were very powerful forces keeping the supply of cashlike assets inelastic during the financial crisis.
Of course, this still feels unsatisfying. Shouldn’t someone have stepped in when the premium on cashlike assets was high enough to cause a deep recession—a recession that led to perhaps $20 trillion in financial losses? The magnitudes don’t match: why did a comparatively tiny shortfall in this one market lead to catastrophic outcomes in the broader economy?
As I pointed out in the last post, the answer is that there’s an externality, potentially a very large one. Once the federal funds rate hits the zero lower bound, the premium determined in the market for cashlike assets has a direct impact on the yield of every asset in the economy. It doesn’t matter how small the market for cashlike assets is compared to the economy as a whole: if the premium on T-bills increases by 2%, the cost of capital for everyone (at least everyone who can’t issue cashlike debt) will go up by 2%. In this setting, a bank deciding to issue more commercial paper internalizes only a tiny fraction of the social benefits from its decision: sure, it gets some cheap funding, but by bringing down the premium on cashlike assets it changes financing decisions across the board.
We typically think that banking crises are bad because banks play an important role in providing credit. No doubt this is true to an extent. But banks are also important because they are uniquely responsible for the creation of cashlike assets—assets that become fully substitutable for cash at the zero lower bound, and whose premium influences every interest rate in the economy. This is where the true power of a banking crisis kicks in: if the central bank doesn’t respond in the right way, all credit (even credit not provided by banks) becomes ruinously expensive.
That is what we faced in 2008—and what I hope we never face again. | <urn:uuid:cdffa927-6e41-4727-bed5-2dfc089e118e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mattrognlie.com/tag/finance/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950028 | 2,336 | 1.554688 | 2 |
In parks, hotels, and the mecca of all shopping experiences, Downtown Disney, the Disney marketing machine spares no angle or usable space to sell its wares. Without a strong sense of budget and a heavy dose of discipline, money and time will disappear quickly. This article presents strategies to avoid spending too much of the latter while shopping your way through Walt Disney World, particularly when traveling with children.
Most adults travel to Walt Disney World with some sense of how much disposable income is available for souvenirs and other miscellaneous expenses, but not necessarily an idea of the amount of time they can take to pursue these extras. Pre-trip planning and discussion can help establish shopping expectations. This is critical if accompanied by children, but also important for adult companions.
Much like running across a character signing autographs, the level of distraction for the 3 to 12-year-old set created by bright character displays and colorful kiosks can cause touring plans to grind to a halt. The first step prior to the trip is to set age-appropriate expectations on the souvenir budget and general shopping logistics by answering such questions as:
Older children should save and carry their own money. My kids (12, 11 and 9) usually bring $20 to $30 each from their chore money and I supplement that with about $20 before we leave for Orlando. If they don’t spend the extra money, they are allowed to keep it, and they are not allowed to plead for more during the trip. An unlimited budget can lead to unlimited shopping—or worse, unlimited whining—wasting precious time in the process. Children who understand they only have a certain amount of their own money to spend will usually demonstrate more disciplined shopping, and might even bring money home.
Shopping with my family during the first few days of vacation is usually in reconnaisance mode. We might spend 10 to 15 minutes browsing in a store that catches someone’s eye, but we rarely make purchases during those first couple of days; we’re just checking things out. There is little merchandise unavailable at other parks or Downtown Disney, either identical or similar. We save our park shopping for early afternoon when the weather is hot, or we make quick shopping excursions while waiting for a Fastpass return window or meeting a family member. I encourage patience if I sense an impulsive purchase, with the assurance of returning to buy the item at another time. I am careful not to promise we can go back to a store or park to purchase something unless I am absolutely certain, barring emergency, that we can make a return trip. Ultimately, since my kids spend their own money and carry what they buy, if they feel strongly about the purchase, I step out of the way.
If you are staying at a Disney resort with at least two days before checkout, You can have your park or Downtown Disney purchases delivered to your hotel free of charge. Otherwise, shop later in the day to avoid carrying purchases through the parks.
If you enjoy shopping, nothing beats Downtown Disney, home to the world’s largest Disney Store and more than a dozen other Disney-themed specialty stores. Downtown Disney also houses a large, centrally located amphitheater for the less-inclined shopper to avoid the retail hubbub, and if the timing is right, enjoy family-friendly entertainment. Unfortunately, the bus service to and from the resorts to Downtown Disney is usually very slow due to inconvenient stops and the multitude of traffic lights in the area. I either plan a short stop in Downtown Disney on the afternoon of my Animal Kingdom park day or on the morning of a rest day. I have also skipped a trip to Downtown Disney during a Walt Disney World vacation since there is more than enough merchandise to choose from at the parks and resorts.
There are several alternatives to the shop-‘til-you-drop Walt Disney World experience, including ordering online before or after the trip, shopping at Orlando area outlets, or shopping at one of the many Disney stores sprinkled throughout the country. Ordering online prior to a trip and giving items to younger children at intervals helps avoid the "gimmes" at the parks. While this strategy saves time—provided you are not also spending a lot of time shopping during your vacation—it’s not liable to save money.
You can purchase pins and other items on eBay or Craig’s List, which will save both time and money, and is a particularly good strategy to cheaply acquire pins to trade once on vacation. If you have a car, there are Disney outlets within easy driving distance, including the Character Warehouse in the Orlando Premium Outlets near Downtown Disney. This and other outlets typically carry overstocks or out-of-date Disney merchandise at significant savings.
The objective for a vacation in Walt Disney World should be about the memories, not the memorabilia. Make sure your shopping habits mirror your words. Spend time before the trip to consider the relative priority of picking up Disney trinkets, and also establish time and money limits with your family. Don’t plan the spontaneity out of your vacation, but don’t waste time arguing with a child about buying more stuff or waiting long periods for an adult companion bent on acquiring that perfect gift. The investment of time on the front end will help create the discipline needed to walk past all of those shiny Disney objects, giving you more time to create lasting memories of your magical vacation.
(Send an email to Margie Binder)
Margie Binder lives in Shoreview, Minnesota with her husband and three Disney-loving children. She has been a DVC member since 1995 and uses any excuse, including inviting herself along on relative's trips, to visit her Happy Place. She has been a helicopter pilot, special education teacher, stay-at-home mom, and corporate employee. Like many, she is either in Walt Disney World or planning her next trip. She still has her stuffed Pooh from her first visit in 1975. | <urn:uuid:e9d85565-492b-457e-83af-76bccdd25719> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mouseplanet.com/10088/Time_is_Money_Saving_Time_on_Shopping_in_the_World | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945509 | 1,221 | 1.53125 | 2 |
NOTE: This file contains only the text of the May 2001 article on the 27th Annual Official Education Construction Report. To view or download the entire article, including charts and tables, click here.
To view or download web-exclusive charts and tables from the construction report, click here.
[To view these reports, you need Adobe Acrobat Reader. Click here for free download.]
A revitalized interest in education facilities sparked a record $36 billion in spending on school and university construction in 2000. And over the next three years, spending on new facilities, additions and modernization of existing buildings will continue to reach new heights, according to American School & University's 27th annual Official Education Construction Report.
School districts took advantage of a more receptive economy and environment to put in place a record $21.5 billion in construction last year. Construction of totally new school buildings represented 53 percent of the spending — the first time in 20 years spending on new construction has made up more than 50 percent of total K-12 construction spending.
Colleges and universities also capitalized on an environment that was conducive to construction. They spent more than $14.7 billion on new facilities, additions and modernization of existing buildings. A concerted effort by higher-education institutions to address their physical infrastructure needs has resulted in a rapid rise in college construction spending over the past two years.
DISSECTING THE DATA
The all-time-high $36 billion in construction spending completed in 2000 by America's schools and universities represents a 21 percent increase over the previous record posted in 1999. Spending by elementary and secondary schools ballooned almost 35 percent over the previous year, topping $21.5 billion. Colleges and universities reported a more modest 5 percent increase in construction spending over the previous year, exceeding $14.7 billion in 2000.
Primary findings of the Official Education Construction Report can be found in Table 1 (p. 26). (• Get more data here: Total number of projects completed) Construction of totally new facilities accounted for 53 percent of the spending by all education institutions. New construction spending topped $19.1 billion in 2000, followed by $12.2 billion for major modernization and $4.9 billion for additions to existing buildings.
School districts continue to account for the majority of education-construction spending (almost 60 percent). More than $21.5 billion worth of construction was completed in 2000. Elementary and secondary schools ramped up the amount of new-building construction last year, completing more than $11.5 billion in projects (almost doubling the amount put in place in 1999).
Additions and modernization of existing schools made up less than 50 percent of K-12 spending. The nation's school districts spent $5.9 billion on modernization projects and $4.1 billion on additions to existing buildings in 2000. (• Get more data here: Spending breakouts)
Colleges and universities posted a healthy $14.7 billion worth of construction last year, with 52 percent of the spending on totally new facilities. The move to balance new-construction spending with additions and modernization is a welcome sign. Historically, higher-education institutions dedicate a much larger portion of available construction dollars to building new facilities as opposed to improving existing facilities.
With enrollment expected to continue growing through at least the end of this decade, colleges and universities are boosting construction spending to better address, among other things, their space needs. Higher-education institutions put in place $7.6 billion worth of new construction, $6.2 billion in modernization projects and $900 million in additions to existing buildings.
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS
With an optimistic eye to the future, education administrators at both school districts and higher-education institutions project that they will put in place more than $118 billion worth of construction over the next three years (2001-03).
The amount and type of construction projected to be put in place through 2003, as well as a breakout of data by type of institution and type of spending, is detailed in Table 2. Even with a depressed economy, administrators remain bullish on construction spending — most of the funding for projects planned over the next three years is already in place. (• Get more data here: Total number of projects planned)
School districts will account for roughly 71 percent of the anticipated construction spending through 2003, totaling slightly more than $84.3 billion. Approximately 49 percent of the dollars will be for new construction ($41.4 billion), while an impressive $33 billion will be spent on improving the condition of existing facilities. Additions will make up the remaining amount ($9.9 billion).
Colleges and universities, while still optimistic, project that the rapid spending increases of the past two years will slow somewhat. Over the next three years, higher-education institutions expect to put in place $34.3 billion worth of construction. Approximately 62 percent will be spent on new buildings ($21.2 billion), $11 billion of modernization and $2.1 billion on additions.
The amount and type of education construction completed by institution type over the past 10 years is examined in Table 3. (• Get more data here: 27 years of construction spending) The accelerated construction spending over the past five years is evidence that the dialogue on improving the nation's education infrastructure is gaining supporters.
BREAKING IT OUT BY REGION
Where is the construction happening? Table 4 details where construction is taking place across the nation and reports expenditures in each of the nation's 10 regions (see map on p. 28). Data are broken out by school districts, higher-education institutions and all education.
More than half (54 percent) of all education construction completed in 2000 took place in four regions of the country: Region 9 (South West), Region 6 (South Central), Region 2 (New Jersey and New York), and Region 4 (South East). (• Get more data here: New building comparisons)
Fifty-five percent of the K-12 construction in 2000 took place in four regions of the country. While Regions 6 and 4 also showed up on this list, Regions 8 (Mountain states) and 5 (Great Lakes states) posted significant numbers.
The college construction picture saw three regions account for more than 50 percent of the construction in 2000. The most active college-construction region was Region 9, which completed $3.6 billion worth of projects. Following Region 9 was Region 2 ($2.6 billion) and Region 1 ($1.6 billion). When Region 4's $1.5 billion in spending is added, almost two-thirds of all college construction took place in these four regions.
Table 5 (p. 30) documents the type of education construction completed in 2000. Spending is broken out by region, type of spending, and percentage of dollars allocated to new buildings and additions/modernization. Seven regions spent a larger percentage of their construction dollars on totally new buildings. Only three regions (2, 3 and 4) spent more than half of their dollars on additions and modernization projects. (• Get more data here: Regional comparisons)
How school district construction dollars were split in 2000 is outlined in Table 6 (p. 30). Spending is broken out by region, as well as by the percentage of dollars earmarked for new, addition and modernization projects. Six of the seven regions that spent more than half of their construction dollars on totally new facilities in Table 5 also did so at the school-district level. Region 9, which spent more than half of its dollars on new construction when school and university spending is combined, only allocated 43 percent to new facilities when just K-12 facilities are examined.
Table 7 (p. 30) details how the college and university construction dollars were spent in 2000. Broken out by region, the table shows the percentage of dollars allocated to new, addition and modernization projects. Much like school districts, seven regions spent a larger percentage of their construction dollars on new facilities. Regions 1, 2 and 3 put the bulk of their dollars toward adding to or modernizing existing facilities.
FUTURE HOT SPOTS OF ACTIVITY
Projected spending by region on construction through 2003 by school districts, colleges and universities, and all education is found in Table 8 (p. 32).
The nation's education administrators anticipate completing more than $118 billion worth of construction over the next three years. Almost 50 percent of all education construction will take place in just three regions of the country. Regions 5, 2 and 4 expect to put in place $57.6 billion in projects. Region 5 will be the most active construction region, projecting to spend $21 billion. The next most active region will be Region 2 ($19 billion) followed by Region 4 ($17.6 billion). (• Get more data here: Projected construction by type of spending)
Table 9 (p. 32) outlines how the school construction dollars through 2003 will be split. More than $84 billion in elementary and secondary school construction is anticipated over the next three years. The same three regions (5, 4 and 2) that will be doing the majority of all education construction also are expected to do more than half of all school construction (56 percent). The most active region (2), which is made up of only two states, will complete $17 billion in projects through 2003.
How the college and university construction dollars will be split over the next three years is detailed in Table 10 (p. 32). More than $34 billion in projects will be put in place over this time. Almost 50 percent of higher-education construction will take place in just three regions (3, 9 and 5). Region 3 (Mid-Atlantic states) will be the most active region, completing almost $6.3 billion in projects. Region 9 follows closely with $6.1 billion.
IT'S IN THE DETAILS
A variety of cost data and facility features for the median new elementary, middle and high school is found in Table 11 (p. 34). For example:
The median new public elementary school houses 504 pupils, provides 118 square feet per student, and costs $152.82 per square foot for a total price of $7.9 million. At an average size of 59,264 square feet, it contains 32 classrooms.
The median new public middle school is built for 629 students, provides 119 square feet per pupil, and costs $135.90 per square foot for a total cost of $10.7 million. With 31 classrooms, the average size of the typical middle school is 77,723 square feet.
The median new public high school accommodates 830 students, provides 114 square feet per pupil, and costs $158.68 per square foot for a total price of $15.1 million. At an average size of 90,790 square feet, it contains 36 classrooms.
A more detailed analysis of regional costs and features of new elementary, middle and high schools can be found on p. 38-39. (• Get more data here: Facilities featured in new schools)
The most expensive areas to build new schools are Region 1 (elementary), Region 2 (middle) and Region 9 (high). The least expensive areas to construct new K-12 facilities are Region 7 (elementary), Region 6 (middle) and Region 10 (high).
Areas of the country that build the largest schools (total square footage) are Region 5 (elementary), Region 1 (middle) and Region 6 (high). The smallest new school facilities are built in Region 9 (elementary), Region 6 (middle) and Region 10 (high).
Air conditioning continues to be a common feature in new school and university facilities; carpeting use continues to decline (see sidebar on p. 27). Roughly 84 percent of space in new elementary schools, 77 percent in new middle schools, and 84 percent in new high schools is air-conditioned. Colleges and universities air-condition 83 percent of their new space.
The percentage of new K-12 space being carpeted has been on the decline for the past four years. Approximately 46 percent of new elementary, 29 percent of new middle and 22 percent of new high school space is carpeted. Colleges and universities, however, have slightly increased the percentage of new space carpeted over the past two years — after three years of declines. On average, colleges carpeted 47 percent of their new space in 2000. (• Get more data here: Evolution of the school facility)
Data on the types of retrofits performed in 2000 by schools and universities, their related costs, average size of projects and type of cabling/wiring implemented is found in Table 12(p. 40).
Comparing data on retrofits can be extremely difficult and should be undertaken with caution. For example, while one school may consider repainting and carpet replacement as a retrofit, another may only consider a total building modernization as meeting the requirement. Your retrofit costs may vary greatly depending on the size, scope and type of project, as well as your region of the country.
The median high school modernization project retrofitted 86,894 square feet of space in 2000, while the typical middle school upgraded 54,070 square feet and the median elementary school 31,093. Costs ranged from $2 million per project (high school) to $3.7 million (middle school). For colleges and universities, the median project encompassed 41,731 square feet and cost $4.3 million.
Both schools and universities report electric, HVAC and lighting improvements as the most often performed retrofit projects.
SIDEBAR: Carpeting and comfort systems
In most instances, both air conditioning and carpeting were included in fewer new education construction projects than in years past, according to American School & University's 27th annual Official Education Construction Report. The incidence of air-conditioning and carpeting in educational facilities:
Elementary schools air condition 84 percent of their new space and carpet 46 percent of their floors.
Middle schools air-condition 77 percent of their new space and carpet 29 percent of their floors.
High schools air-condition 84 percent of their new space and carpet 22 percent of their floors.
Colleges and universities air-condition 83 percent of their new space and carpet 47 percent of their floors.
About this report
As the bellwether report documenting education construction activity for the past 27 years, the American School & University survey is regularly referenced by local, state and federal agencies, as well as the nation's leading news organizations. AS&U actually started compiling data on school and university construction in 1950 for the 1949 year. After a decade or so of yearly surveys, data began being compiled sporadically until industry demand prompted AS&U to resume collecting data annually. The annual reports resurfaced in 1975 with information on education construction completed in 1974, and data has been collected and published every year since. AS&U is the only authorized source of this information.
Editor's Note: Survey methodology
To arrive at results for the 27th annual Official Education Construction Report, a detailed questionnaire was mailed in December 2000 to chief business officers at the nation's school districts and colleges. Basically, two questions were asked:
Did you complete any construction during the past year?
Will you complete any construction in the next three years?
Administrators answering “yes” to either question were then asked to provide a variety of details on the amount being spent, the type of construction being done (new, addition or modernization), and the expected completion date. All respondents involved with new and retrofit construction were asked to provide additional information on each project. Further follow-up calls were made to clarify some data. Responses were separated by institution type, region of the country and institution size, and projected across the education universe.
Agron is editor-in-chief of AS&U; he can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org.
For information on obtaining the complete report, call (913)967-1960 or e-mail email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:e89a6e61-07a8-4edb-8355-3777f98f1ab0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://asumag.com/mag/university_building_boom_th | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947748 | 3,283 | 2.171875 | 2 |
U.S. pundit shows this year, a hot topic has been whether captured Taliban
fighters and alleged al-Qaeda operatives should be subjected to
"truth serums" or physical torture to make them talk.
Hundreds of captured Taliban and al-Qaeda belligerents
have been grilled, but apparently little useful has been gleaned.
Frustrated U.S. interrogators have complained that Afghan battlefield
prisoners employ aliases, deceit and other tactics to withstand
In debating how to extract more information, cable-TV
commentators and other pundits generally have treated "truth
serum" as a softer means of extracting information compared to more
traditional torture, with commentators weighing the pros and cons of the
two approaches. But beyond the question does "truth serum"
work? is a long history of practice that blurs the moral lines between
the use of interrogation drugs and more overt methods of torture.
Former CIA and FBI director William Webster put the
"truth serum" issue into prominent play in April when he urged
use of drugs to loosen the tongues of suspects, such as Osama bin Laden's
aide Abu Zubaida and captives held in cages at Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo
The debate soon spread to cable-TV talk shows. On Fox
News' "The O'Reilly Factor," for instance, retired Marine
Lt. Col. Bill Cowan said he doubted "truth serum" would work but
hoped Webster's suggestion would lead the Bush administration to try
torture. "Maybe it'll be an entrée to take us to the next
step," Cowan said. "I kid around with people about plugging them
up to a 110-volt outlet and flipping the switch if they don't want to
Guest host John Kasich demurred that many experts don't
see torture as an effective interrogation technique either, "and I'm
not talking about somebody who's worrying about being politically
correct," but even "people inside of some of our best
Cowan disputed the view that torture is ineffective.
"I'll be honest by saying that I served a lot of time in Vietnam, and
in some cases where I worked on prisoner operations, we did go a little
bit beyond what normal interrogation techniques would give you, and we got
phenomenal information," he said. [Fox News, April 26, 2002]
Yet, U.S. spymasters knowing that torture subjects
may simply tell an interrogator what he wants to hear have long
yearned for a drug that could pull reliable information out of an
A sure-fire truth drug has been high on the wish list
of U.S. intelligence agencies at least since 1942, when scientists working
for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIAs wartime
predecessor, were asked to develop a chemical substance that could break
down the psychological defenses of enemy spies and POWs, thereby making it
easier to obtain information from them.
After testing several compounds, the OSS scientists
selected a potent extract of marijuana as the best available "truth
serum." The cannabis concoction was given the code name TD, meaning
Truth Drug. When injected into food or tobacco cigarettes, TD helped
loosen the reserve of recalcitrant interrogation subjects.
The effects of the drug were described in a
once-classified OSS report: TD appears to relax all inhibitions and to
deaden the areas of the brain which govern an individuals discretion
and caution. . . . [G]enerally speaking, the reaction will be one of great
loquacity and hilarity.
In the end, marijuana didnt fit the bill as the
ultimate "truth serum," but it proved to be a gateway drug that
set U.S. military and espionage scientists on a path to creating more
powerful and dangerous chemicals. After World War II, American
intelligence stepped up efforts to find a more effective "truth
In 1947, the U.S. Navy launched Project Chatter, which
included experiments with mescaline, a hallucinogenic drug derived from
the peyote cactus (with effects similar to LSD). Mescaline was studied as
a possible speech-inducing agent after the Navy learned that Nazi doctors
at the Dachau concentration camp had used it in mind-control experiments.
The Nazis concluded that it was impossible to impose ones will on
another person, even when the strongest dose of mescaline had been
The CIA also embarked upon an extensive research
program geared toward developing unorthodox interrogation techniques. Two
methods showed promise in the late 1940s. The first involved narco-hypnosis.
A CIA psychologist attempted to induce a trance state after administering
a mild sedative.
A second technique relied on a combination of two
different drugs with contradictory effects, which were injected
intravenously into both arms of an interrogation subject. Flick the switch
and a heavy dose of barbiturates would knock a person out, and then a
stimulant, usually some type of amphetamine, was administered through the
other intravenous feed to wake a person up. As the subject started to
emerge from a somnambulant state, he or she would reach a groggy,
in-between condition prior to becoming fully alert.
Described in CIA documents as the twilight zone,
this semiconscious limbo was considered useful for special interrogations.
But keeping a person suspended in the twilight zone was not a precise
science, and the results were not always satisfactory.
The CIA was still searching for a viable "truth
serum" the Holy Grail of the cloak-and-dagger trade when it
initiated Operation Artichoke in the early 1950s and began utilizing LSD
during interrogation sessions. Odorless, colorless, and tasteless, LSD was
hailed as a "potential new agent for unconventional warfare,"
according to a classified CIA report dated Aug. 5, 1954. But even a
surreptitious dose of LSD, the most potent mind-bending drug known to
science, could not guarantee that an interrogation subject would spill the
Perhaps the concept of a "truth serum" was a
bit farfetched, for it presupposed that there was a way to chemically
bypass the minds censor and turn the psyche inside out, unleashing a
profusion of secrets. After much trial and error, the CIA realized that it
doesnt quite work that way.
Eventually, CIA experts figured out the most effective
way to employ LSD as an aid to interrogation. They used its terrifying
effects on some prisoners as a third-degree tactic. A skillful
interrogator could gain leverage over prisoners by threatening to keep
them in a crazed, tripped-out state forever unless they agreed to talk.
This method sometimes proved successful where others had failed. LSD has
been used for interrogations on an operational basis albeit sparingly
since the mid-1950s.
U.S. Army interrogators also employed EA-1729 (the code
for LSD) as an intelligence-extracting aid. Similar to the strategy of
their CIA counterparts, Army interrogators used the drug to scare the
daylights out of people who were zonked and terror-stricken on acid.
Documents pertaining to Operation Derby Hat record the
results of several EA-1729 interrogations conducted by the Army in the Far
East during the early 1960s. One subject vomited three times and stated
that he wanted to die after he had been slipped some LSD. His
reaction was described as moderate.
After another target absorbed triple the dose normally
used in such sessions, he kept collapsing and hitting his head on a table.
The subject voiced an anti-communist line, an Army report noted,
and begged to be spared the torture he was receiving. In this confused
state he even asked to be killed in order to alleviate his suffering.
In calling for use of "truth serums" on
Taliban and al-Qaeda captives, Webster said any information extracted from
the prisoners should be used only "for the protection of the
country." He said legal safeguards should be in place to prevent
prosecutors from turning admissions against the detainees.
The former CIA and FBI director also opposed use of
torture on the prisoners. That distinction, however, misses the point that
the application of drugs during interrogations often has become a form of
Amnesty International maintains that employing
"truth serums" for espionage purposes could violate
international treaties and the Convention Against Torture that the United
States had signed. But neither the CIA nor the military has renounced the
use of LSD as an interrogation weapon.
Its a slippery slope, admits Vincent
Cannistraro, a former CIA chief of counterterrorism. Once youve used
[truth drugs] for national security cases, then it becomes a standard.
Sodium pentothal is not that effective, and so you have to use something
stronger. Its a short skip and a hop to LSD, or something worse.
A. Lee is the author of Acid Dreams and The Beast Reawakens. | <urn:uuid:6ced56a3-1c03-45dc-a2f7-509f9a78148e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://consortiumnews.com/Print/060402a.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951697 | 1,915 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Of course, there was also plenty of pizza. I’m not talking about the thin chewy variety served at Ray’s Pizza in NYC (or is it “Famous Rays,” “Original Rays,” “Famous Original Ray’s,” or “Original Famous Ray’s” (I guess that’s another post for a trademark lawyer), but the deep dish variety for which Chicago is known. Given that I named Gino’s East as part of my desired last meal on earth, you know my preference—although I do admit that I like both types of pie.
As I ate my way through Lou Malnati’s and Gino’s East (along with an unsuccessful try at convincing the family to have a lunch at My π), I was struck by how many different folks had managed to successfully start deep dish pizza chains in Chicago. When you read through the histories of these restaurants, along with Pizzeria Uno, you’ll notice some entrepreneurial themes:
- Having a large public appetite (pun intended) for your product means there’s room for multiple successes, even in a seemingly crowded field.
- As with many great technology company disputes (e.g., Apple Computer v. Microsoft Corporation), it seems that there’s a lot of controversy about who actually invented deep dish pizza—was it Ike Sewell at Uno’s or his chef, Rudy Malnati, father of Lou.
- Many of these restaurateurs had difficulties as they tried to expand and/or franchise their concepts. As with many companies, maintaining culture and managing cash during a growth phase proved a daunting task. | <urn:uuid:135afd73-8d6a-4bc6-8d80-19787a5f6311> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.entreviewblog.com/2012/08/some-deep-thoughts-from-windy-city_16.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976455 | 357 | 1.617188 | 2 |
31 August 2007. Anyone with an ATM card knows how easy it is to drain a bank account when withdrawals outstrip deposits. The same applies to brain amyloid: even if production holds steady, boosting clearance can deplete toxic amyloid-β (Aβ). The discovery over the past several years of a host of proteases that degrade Aβ—the list includes neprilysin, insulin-degrading enzyme, endothelin-converting enzymes 1 and 2, plasmin, cathepsin B, and angiotensin-converting enzyme—led to the speculation that decreased activity of one or more Aβ proteases might cause some cases of Alzheimer disease. By extension, enhancing their activity would constitute a treatment for the disease.
Both ideas find support in a pair of papers looking at the effects of changing the activity of neprilysin, a major Aβ-degrading protease. In the first paper, out this week in PLoS Medicine, Dennis Selkoe at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Ole Isacson of McLean Hospital in Belmont, both in Massachusetts, take a gene therapy approach to delivering neprilysin to the brain in a mouse model of AD. The result is a dramatic clearance of amyloid plaques.
The second paper, in the July issue of the American Journal of Pathology, from Selkoe and Wesley Farris at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pennsylvania, demonstrates the converse: when neprilysin activity is even partially decreased by gene knockout in human APP-expressing mice, the investigators find enhanced Aβ deposition. Decreases in neprilysin activity have been reported during aging and in some people with late-onset AD (Hellstrom-Lindahl et al., 2006), and the new results add evidence to the idea that diminished proteolytic clearance could cause or contribute to amyloid buildup in AD.
Farris and colleagues crossed J9 transgenic mice, which express human APP with two AD mutations, with neprilysin knockout mice. Mice missing one or both neprilysin genes showed elevated levels of whole brain and plasma Aβ peptides, with an increase in dimers and hippocampal plaque size and number. In the heterozygous knockouts, a 50 percent reduction in activity was sufficient to increase amyloid load fivefold. In these mice, the half-life of soluble brain Aβ was prolonged, indicating that its degradation was slowed. Homozygous animals lacking all neprilysin developed amyloid angiopathy in addition to plaques. The findings demonstrate an important role for proteolysis in setting the levels of Aβ, and suggest that the lower levels seen in some people with AD could contribute to amyloid load.
If decreased neprilysin causes AD, then increasing the activity of the enzyme should set things right. That is the idea behind the PLoS paper. First author Matthew Hemming engineered mouse fibroblasts to produce a soluble, secreted form of neprilysin and then implanted them into aged J20 mice that had already developed advanced amyloid pathology. When the animals were examined 28 days later, their plaques proved to have been cleared at the site of injection, as well as in surrounding tissue. Apparently, neprilysin diffused out from the cells in the graft and dissolved surrounding amyloid deposits.
“The results support the use of Aβ-degrading proteases as a means to therapeutically lower Aβ levels and encourage further exploration of ex vivo gene delivery for the treatment of AD,” the authors conclude. The idea of using fibroblasts to deliver a therapeutic protein to the brain is not new: a similar approach is in early testing in humans to deliver nerve growth factor to support cholinergic neurons (see ARF related news story).
Neprilysin is but one of several proteases implicated in Aβ accumulation, and any one could be a reasonable target for therapeutics, according to Christopher Eckman of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. “Enhancing protease activity to lower Aβ is a viable approach,” Eckman says, “But it is not as much on people’s radar screens, because of the general belief that there will be side effects.” The reason for that belief is that none of the proteases are solely dedicated to Aβ. “Neprilysin, IDE, and ECE all degrade lots of proteins,” Eckman says, “so it is surprising that upregulation doesn’t have much effect on the animals. This gives us hope that this is a reasonable approach.”
The identification of multiple Aβ-degrading enzymes is good news, Eckman says. “This gives us a number of enzymes to play with. The proteases so far identified all have slightly different properties. The key to which one will succeed will not be its ability to degrade Aβ —they all do that. The question will be, do they have a minimal side effect profile?” he explained.
Historically, degradation has been the neglected side of the Aβ equation. Hundreds of labs have worked on the pathways that lead to Aβ production, including the β- and γ-secretases. Fewer have studied the proteases that degrade Aβ. That may be changing, as genetic evidence accumulates for the role of proteases in AD. A recent report showed decreased IDE activity in one AD family with linkage to the chromosomal region containing the IDE gene (Kim et al., 2007). Also, as the prospects for increasing protease activity with either gene therapy or allosteric small molecules improve, more companies are starting to get interested. The bottom line is that the proteases offer an alternative pathway to limit Aβ, and, as Eckman says, “The more things we have in our arsenal to decrease Aβ, the better.”—Pat McCaffrey.
Hemming ML, Patterson M, Reske-Nielsen C, Lin L, Isacson O, Selkoe DJ. Reducing amyloid plaque burden via ex vivo gene delivery of an Aβ-degrading protease: A novel therapeutic approach to Alzheimer disease. PLoS Medicine. 2007 Aug 28. Abstract
Farris W, Schutz SG, Cirrito JR, Shankar GM, Sun X, George A, Leissring MA, Walsh DM, Qiu WQ, Holtzman DM, Selkoe DJ. Loss of neprilysin function promotes amyloid plaque formation and causes cerebral amyloid angiopathy. Am J Pathol. 2007 Jul; 171(1):241-51. Epub ahead of print May 18. Abstract | <urn:uuid:8b40aa98-bdcd-4e7f-a651-e14dbc5d8287> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alzforum.org/new/detail.asp?id=1648 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935088 | 1,404 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Archive for the 'Tomima Unplugged' Category
April 12, 2013
I like to think I’m open-minded to new ideas. So, when I read yesterday about a French study claiming breasts would sag less if women went braless, I was intrigued. But, now I’ve had a chance to really study it. This has to be a hoax.
Let’s first start with a little reality check. We’ve all seen photos/video of existing cultures where women walk around topless. Were their breasts perky, firm and full? Of course not. So, right there, this study is contrary to what we know to be true.
If you’re a woman and you’ve ever experienced breast bounce then you know – it hurts! Yet this study is claiming that women who went braless experienced a lift in their breast apex, and reduced back pain. In my blog from a few years ago regarding breast bounce, Dr. Joanna Scurr found that our breasts move in a figure 8 while running, and that constant downward breast motion was found to be very painful for women.
Another important fact (that older women probably remember), is that sports bras are a rather new invention. Before they were created, women with large breasts could not comfortably compete in sports. Now, with the many sports bras available to women, more and more large-breasted women have become active and participate in sports. No longer is there concern about controlling breast tissue during active exercising. So right there is one great argument for wearing a bra.
Wearing the right bra style and size can actually make you look thinner and more youthful. So, like the right style of clothing, bras makes us look better.
Now, let’s get into the physiology of breasts. There are no muscles in your breasts. Thus, there is no exercise a woman can do to bring her breasts up once they start to sag. Our breasts are held in place by our Coopers Ligaments. Ligaments can stretch, but they can not constrict. So, it is just counter to reality for this study to conclude that women who went without their bras saw their breast apex lifted by 7 mm each year. (See diagram above.)
Bottom line: leave it to a man to tell us we don’t need to wear a bra.
For more reliable information regarding breast bounce, see Dr. Joanna Scurr’s research in the UK regarding this topic.
Posted by TE at 2:24pm
3 Comments »
November 14, 2012
David Beckham was “caught” in his underwear recently in L.A. by a bus of tourists. Why? He was in the middle of a photo shoot for his H&M underwear brand. Beckham and other hotties of late have been posing in their skivvies such as Justin Beiber and Thom Evans.
Actually it’s a nice change of pace to see men objectified while wearing underwear. And even nicer to learn that roughly 2/3rds of men’s underwear is selected and purchased by women.
That’s right. Moms, girl-friends, wives and maybe even sisters are making men’s underwear decisions for the men in their lives – according to UK’s Daily Mail online newspaper.
Even better, women are giving their men an underwear overhaul. Gone are those awful tightie-whities with the shield-like crotch cover that always bags and look half-open most the time. And, gone is white. In its place women are selecting trunk style underwear in a
variety of colors and with a great contrasting waistband. Also trending up in men’s underwear is the new fabric technology called “stayfresh” which prevents odor.
Ladies. IF you’re buying underwear for the guy in your life, know that you’re not alone. For the women not… maybe you should! And, with Christmas coming along with all our HisRoom sales at 25% off right now, it's the perfect time!
Posted by TE at 6:45am
October 29, 2012
Kudos to Stella Boonshoft for seemingly overcoming the pressure women face to look perfect by showing herself in a bikini to the world! I'm sure this took incredible bravery on her part, given the extreme standards women today save on auto repair are held to by the media. Recently,
Stella unveiled photos of herself in a two-piece bandeau suit on her blog, The Body Love Blog.
The New York college student has become the voice of women hoping to overcome their own body issues and her campaign has been a success. Stella has gone viral with her bikini pictures with millions views on Facebook and even an appearance on The Today Show.
I applaud Stella's efforts for going against the norm and trying to inspire
women to love their bodies no matter their shape.
Posted by TE at 5:58am
2 Comments » | <urn:uuid:2366e673-5527-4853-9b6f-ade2fd133535> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tomima.com/category/tomima-unplugged/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973885 | 1,040 | 1.773438 | 2 |
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Most Active Stories
- Budget deficit forcing school officials to close Albion High School
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Politics & Government
Wed November 7, 2012
Election results show Michigan cities more marijuana friendly
Voters in several Michigan cities passed proposals to ease legal restrictions on marijuana. On Tuesday people in Detroit, Flint and Grand Rapids voted overwhelmingly to make small amounts of marijuana okay to possess under city law. I’m not talking about the medical stuff here; this is just regular old pot.
"Prosecuting someone for peacefully using marijuana is about as ridiculous to me as prosecuting someone for sipping a vodka martini,” Tim Beck, chair of the Coalition for a Safer Detroit, said. Beck also worked to put Michigan’s medical marijuana laws in place.
Beck says the change won’t make a “radical” difference in Detroit.
“I think people can take some comfort that the possibility of them being arrested is now diminished,” Beck said.
But people could still face possible prosecution under state and federal laws prohibiting marijuana. And in Flint at least, City attorney Pete Bade says police will still arrest people.
“It really amounts to no difference. You know it was illegal yesterday and it’ll continue to be illegal today,” Bade said. “It wouldn’t be appropriate for officers to simply turn a blind eye to state and federal law.”
Bade says the vote was a “symbolic” one that does not affect policy decisions. In this case, he says the decision was made by Flint’s state-appointed emergency financial manager, mayor and police chief.
In Grand Rapids the mayor and much of city commission supported the proposal. But City Attorney Catherine Mish cautioned in a written statement that the Grand Rapids Police Department “is currently seeking further direction from the City Attorney about the legal issues surrounding this charter amendment”.
Beck and other organizers say they’re not surprised if there is some pushback from police and politicians on the new local laws.
DecriminalizeGR leader Michael Tuffelmire says changes are likely to be more intangible. “It’ll be so many young adults not being arrested for petty non-violent marijuana offenses who are able to utilize college loans and grants and employment. Over time that help our community when you have so many more people reaching their full economic potential,” Tuffelmire said.
Ann Arbor has had a similar law making marijuana possession a civil infraction with a $25 fine, like a parking ticket, for years. Kalamazoo passed it more recently.
Meanwhile in Ypsilanti, voters passed language that would make marijuana prosecution law enforcement’s lowest priority.
And Kalamazoo passed a proposal to allow dispensaries to distribute medical marijuana. That’s despite state court rulings outlawing dispensaries in Michigan. | <urn:uuid:f943db6d-06d2-4337-bb67-2bdf2ae6fd62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://michiganradio.org/post/election-results-show-michigan-cities-more-marijuana-friendly | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943474 | 656 | 1.664063 | 2 |
ISO/IEC 38500 is an international standard for Corporate governance of information technology published jointly by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). It provides a framework for effective governance of IT to assist those at the highest level of organizations to understand and fulfill their legal, regulatory, and ethical obligations in respect of their organizations’ use of IT.
ISO/IEC 38500 is applicable to organizations of all sizes, including public and private companies, government entities, and not-for-profit organizations. This standard provides guiding principles for directors of organizations on the effective, efficient, and acceptable use of Information Technology (IT) within their organizations. It is organized into three prime sections, specifically, Scope, Framework and Guidance
The framework comprises definitions, principles and a model. It sets out six principles for good corporate governance of IT:
- Human behaviour.
It also provides guidance to those advising, informing, or assisting directors. | <urn:uuid:1a12658c-db94-4075-9b50-2e94dcd57e4d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.mobile.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_38500 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91846 | 201 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Coldwell Banker® Helps you Learn More About Wooster, Ohio Real Estate
Wooster, Ohio is located in Wayne County. Wooster has a population of 26,368 and has shown 3.3% growth since 2000. Of the 10,743 households in Wooster, 57.0% are owned, 33.9% are rented and 9% are not currently occupied. The median age of homes in Wooster is 36 years and 35.0% of the homes have been occupied by the same residents for more than 5 years.
Learn more about Wooster, Ohio real estate at coldwellbanker.com. | <urn:uuid:7571738b-67ad-4eb4-bb29-1f81c3b8e6f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bestplaces.coldwellbanker.com/best-places-to-live/oh/Wooster-PL3986548.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970674 | 130 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Saint Francis Hospital presents its 2012 Clergy Institute
Tuesday, May 15, 2012 or Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Saint Francis Hospital Auditorium
Differentiating Psychological Disorders from Spiritual Crises and Problems in Living
As front-line practitioners, clergy interact daily with people facing life's struggles. It is critical to understand how and when to refer to mental-health professionals. Guidelines can be invaluable in negotiating the balance between providing spiritual support and securing appropriate behavioral health services.
After attending the Clergy Institute, participants will be able to:
- Identify common signs of mental illness and psychological disorders.
- Recognize how and when to make a referral to a mental health practitioner.
- Understand basic guidelines for responding to individuals with problematic personality functioning.
Carolyn Gralewski, Ph.D. is a Professor at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University - Schaumburg. Dr. Gralewski has extensive experience in teaching, including 20+ years of teaching at the graduate level. Dr. Gralewski also has had extensive experience working in the educational system and in special education. She has maintained a private practice as a licensed clinical psychologist, consultant and workshop presenter for over 25 years. Her approach has consistently emphasized a growth oriented, positive model of change and intervention. She has published in the areas of women's development and eating disorders. Particular areas of interest include stress and wellness, personality, and development throughout the lifespan.
Rev. Lynn James, LMHC has been a professional counselor for 22 years, working for the first seven years in a domestic violence center and then a rape crisis agency, both in the suburbs of Northwest Chicago. For the past 15 years, she has maintained a private practice with a specialization in trauma. Lynn is ordained in the United Church of Christ as well as American Baptist. For the past 3 years, she has served her local ELCA (Lutheran) Church when the pastor has been on sabbatical and vacations. Lynn practices the Buddhist loving kindness medication and mindfulness exercises in both her counseling work and as a personal spiritual discipline.
Registration is required for this free program. This program will be offered on both May 15 and May 16. Participants should select only one attendance date. Please call 847-316-2257 and provide your name, affiliation, address, and phone number before April 30, 2012.
|8:45 a.m.||Registration and Light Breakfast (South Conference Room)|
|9:15 a.m.||Introduction, Definitions and Learning Objectives|
|9:30 a.m.||Guidelines: Is It Mental Illness, Psychological Disorder, or Unhealthy Personality?|
|10:45 a.m.||Somebody Help Me Help Them: Making a Successful Referral/td>|
|Noon||Lunch Break (South Conference Room)|
|1:00 p.m.||Balancing Spiritual Support and Psychological Services: Group Processing of Case Examples| | <urn:uuid:eaaa729e-9024-4b92-94eb-85cb28cc0045> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://saintfrancishospital.reshealth.org/sub_sfh/programs/clergy_institute.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924715 | 610 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Isn’t the whole point of religion to teach us morals and to love and care for each other no matter what age, gender, sexual preference, religion or race we are?
The question was one among many comments posted on a recent YouTube video by Lady Gaga. In one segment of the video, titled “Gagavision No.41”, Lady Gaga sits in the back of her limo on the way to give a performance. She sees a Christian street preacher standing outside, protesting her show. He is carrying a large sign that reads, “Trust in Christ or End in Hell”. Rolling down her window, she cheerfully introduces herself, “Hi, I’m Lady Gaga”, to which the man promptly replies, “So?”
The man hands her a “Get Out of Hell Free” card, and says, “It’s gonna happen one day, darling”. She retorts, “Well, they better open up the gate”. In the further brief exchange, the man comes across as condescending and hostile. Gaga tells him that she and her fans believe in God and that she went to Catholic school for 13 years. He replies that growing up in that screwed-up religion is probably the source of her problems. Later in the video, Gaga reflects on her encounter with the man her video identifies as a “fundamentalist preacher”.
“What I’m trying to understand is, there’s 3000 people standing in my line and no one standing in your line. Who’s going to hell?”, Gaga says, laughing. “But I think what’s mostly confusing is why he printed up these things (referring to the man’s “Get Out of Hell Free” cards). If it was so easy to get out of hell, why don’t we just print up a bunch of these guys?” Becoming more serious, Gaga continues, “It just makes me sad that my fans have to see that. But I know that’s just part of what I’m supposed to do.” At that point in the video, words flash on the screen in black, ALL CAP letters against a red backdrop: IF YOU HAVE REVOLUTIONARY POTENTIAL, THAN YOU HAVE A MORAL IMPERATIVE TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE
As I began writing this blog article, Gaga’s video had already garnered more than 420,000 views and 5,000 comments. Since then, the video has racked up 950,000+ views and 7000 comments and counting. From such numbers, it would seem Lady Gaga is accurate in observing that her way of looking at life resonates with a lot of people. On the other hand, the Christian message has never claimed to be a popular one:
Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few (Matthew 7:13-14 ESV)
But I want to respond in this article to the question posed by the person who asked, “Isn’t the whole point of religion to teach us morals and to love and care for each other no matter what age, gender, sexual preference, religion or race we are?” I think the question reflects a quite common conception of what religion is supposed to accomplish. This view sees all religions, including Christianity, as basically a means of inculcating morals and helping people strive to be better, more loving persons. All paths to God are equally valid. This popular view is one held not only by non-religious people, but even by many who identify themselves as Christians. Before I discuss this further, I want to sidetrack for a moment.
In terms of “media time” it is already ages ago, but a firestorm erupted in the Christian blogosphere just 2 months back, when Justin Taylor posted an article titled, Rob Bell: Universalist? that strongly criticized Rob Bell’s theological message. The article focused, not on Bell’s soon to be released book, “Love Wins”, but rather, on the publisher’s description and video promo for the book .
The piece got thousands of views and elicited hundreds of comments (maybe not Gaga’s kind of numbers, but for a reformed blog, it was lots of attention). Many who commented complained that it was quite unfair to criticize Bell’s book and its ideas, since at that point, the book was not yet released. Others brought out the old, tiresome “we should never judge other Christians, it’s not loving” speech. But many recognized that Taylor’s article was on target and helpful in identifying, in advance of its release, the controversial ideas that Bell has been espousing for some time now.
In the wake of the March 17 release of Love Wins, well-known Reformed writers, Michael Horton and Kevin DeYoung, each wrote thoughtful, detailed critiques. Southern Seminary president Al Mohler posted excellent articles engaging the discussion on Bell, and recorded and posted a panel discussion held at the seminary. Pastor John MacArthur has now written a series of articles strongly critical of Bell and his work, boldly calling out Bell as a false teacher (for these resources and more, see the links below).
But some will ask, why all the hoopla? Is it really that important that Christians focus so much attention on a book one does not agree with theologically?
Well, in a word, YES.
Because Christians have got a revealed message to proclaim, not a story that may be altered to suit one’s own fancies, or re-fashioned to make it a better sell. Yes, the doctrine of hell is a turn-off. No one likes to think mankind is so sinful that all people deserve hell, and that apart from Christ, all of us are by nature “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). Such a thought pricks against human pride– we protest: we’re not that bad!
But the question we ought to be asking, especially if we claim to believe the Bible, and claim that we believe in the Jesus of the Bible, is not, “Why doesn’t God save everybody?, or “How can a loving God send people to hell?” Rather we should ask, is Jesus telling the truth when He states that unless we believe in Him, we already stand condemned and the wrath of God remains on us? Everybody loves John 3:16-17. But what about John 3:18 and John 3:36?
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God… Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him (John 3:16-18, 36 ESV)
Christians gladly partake of the blessing of receiving Christ as Savior by believing what He says about going to the cross for our sins is true. But then we must also listen to and receive what He says about hell, for He spoke of it often. As John Yenchko has written,
This is the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace, the Lamb of God. The One who held children tenderly in His arms spoke more about hell than anyone else in the Bible; and I, for one, am glad that it was He. If you will not hear Jesus on hell, then don’t pretend to hear Him on anything else. Let’s have integrity, shall we?
Jesus says in the parable of the weeds, Matthew 13, that all who do evil will be thrown into the fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. He quotes the above sentence in Mark 9:48 where He describes hell as “the place where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” He says of those who did not take in a stranger or provide for the needy: “They will go away to eternal punishment” (Matt. 25:46). In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus that Jesus told, the rich man is in hell and looks up to see Abraham far away in heaven, with Lazarus beside him. The rich man cries out, “Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue because I am in agony in this fire” (Luke 16:24). Abraham’s negative reply comes back, Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us” (Luke 16:26). So Jesus says in Matthew 10:28, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
In contrast to the Jesus of Scripture, whose continual theme is telling people to repent of their sins and escape the wrath of God in hell, there is the sentimental conception that Christian love is all about God unconditionally, uncritically loving all people, regardless of their beliefs or behaviors. In this view, true Christ-likeness is to be non-judgmental and “loving” towards all others, no matter what they do. Those who label certain behavior as morally wrong or sinful, have strayed from the original message of unconditional love that Christ meant us to emulate. Thus they become “haters”, “fundamentalists” and “judgmental” people who distort the “loving” message of Christ and give Christianity a bad name.
Now I understand that non-believers might believe this fluff– they usually don’t believe that the Bible is accurate, or they may question how faithfully it represents what Jesus really said. But those who claim to know Christ as revealed in Scripture must see that the same Bible that reveals Jesus as a gentle and meek in some ways, also shows Him issuing the sternest warnings about the hell that awaits those who reject Him. Jesus loved people enough to tell them the truth about hell.
Interestingly, Rob Bell’s book seems to paint a similar picture of God’s love as the view described above. Bell downplays the traditional understanding that God is angry towards sin and that the sinfulness of mankind is our biggest problem. Now Rob Bell has a huge, young evangelical audience, and is recognized as a gifted communicator, even by those who don’t agree with his theology. This is why many well-known reformed teachers have worked overtime to present strong rebuttals to his teaching. They see the spiritual peril in the ideas Bell is spreading, the deadly consequences for those who might be swayed to adopt his views.
Bell’s new work pointedly questions the traditional understanding of hell, and attempts to clarify what he thinks is the true nature of the gospel message. He argues that the primary message of Christianity, the prime characteristic of God Himself, is “God is love”. “Love Wins” says Bell, because in the end God wants everyone saved, and He is powerful enough to get what He wants. In Bell’s view, hell is not a literal place where unbelieving rebels will be eternally and justly punished by God. Instead those who reject God and don’t live in relationship to Him are already experiencing their “hell” in this life. If there is a hell in the next life, Bell surmises that it will not be eternal, because those who don’t accept and profess Christ consciously while on earth will no doubt get a second chance. Hell thus becomes a kind of purgatory.
Bell writes, [There will be] “endless opportunities in an endless amount of time for people to say yes to God. At the heart of this perspective is the belief that, given enough time, everybody will turn to God and find themselves in the joy and peace of God’s presence. The love of God will melt every hard heart, and even the most ‘depraved sinners’ will eventually give up their resistance and turn to God.”
Now what should be said in response to this? Is Bell’s version of the Christian story superior because it will appeal to and be embraced by those who’ve really wanted to be Christians, but just didn’t like all the stuff about hell and sin? Yes, Bell’s version of Christianity probably will be received happily by those who have a difficult time accepting the more traditional view. The problem, is what Bell gives them as a substitute is a lie and a mirage. Hell is real and literal. We don’t have the luxury of “endless opportunities in an endless amount of time” to either accept or reject Christ. There is no biblical warrant to believe that those who do not consciously choose Christ in this life will get another chance to do so in the afterlife. In my next article, I will examine in greater detail the biblical evidence for hell and what happens after we die.
It’s ironic, but sometimes we can get a true message even from a not-so-good messenger. The street preacher who spoke so condescendingly to Lady Gaga was not an accurate reflection of our Lord’s compassion towards lost sinners. Yet his “Trust in Christ or End in Hell” message is much more accurate than a message that teaches that God doesn’t punish evildoers in an eternal hell for their sins committed in this life, of which the greatest is to reject Christ.
From the beginning, there have always been competing versions of Christianity. Thus it remains always our responsibility as believers to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3).” False gospels and false Christs don’t save. The world has its many gospels, but Christianity has but one faith and one message to give: Jesus Christ shed His blood to save sinners.
Articles by John MacArthur: | <urn:uuid:d97a6829-99e3-456c-826d-9940ffdf71be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reformingchristianity.com/2011/05/03/lady-gaga-rob-bell-and-hell/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958914 | 3,071 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Alcatel-Lucent Takes Aim at Terabit Routing
Page 1 of 1
When it comes to getting more routing power out of a routing platform, the key according to networking vendor Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) is better silicon. Alcatel-Lucent is now out with a pair of networking platforms powered by a 100-gigabit-per-second silicon chipset called the FP2.
On a conference call with press and analysts, Basil Alwan, president of Alcatel-Lucent's IP business, explained that the FP2 allows users to have both services and speed on IP infrastructure. The FP2-powered Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router (SR) and 7450 Ethernet Service Switch (ESS) can scale all the way up to a terabit of performance.
"Silicon is the foundation of these platforms," Alwan said. "In the past many people were speculating that this kind of silicon design would only be done at silicon companies," he said. "However, high performance routing is not only very complex, but for a chip company it's relatively low volume. So we find that the specialized designs required for high-performance networking chips are often being done by networking vendors."
The FP2 has 112 array cores on it and offers a speed improvement of 10 times Alcatel-Lucent's previous generation of routing silicon.
Alwan's assessment that high-performance networking vendors are getting into the silicon game themselves is certainly a valid point. Earlier this year, networking giant Cisco System rolled out its QuantumFlow microprocessor, which Cisco claims cost $100 million to develop.
Cisco's QuantumFlow sits in its new aggregation services router (ASR) platform, which according to Alwan does not compete head-to-head against Alcatel-Lucent's new 7750 SR and 7450 ESS.
"The ASR is an interesting product, but it's a different class of product," Alwan contested. "It doesn't hit the edge routing capability that the 7,750 hits."
Alwan said the ASR is more of a "high-touch" platform that looks at application-level inspection of traffic. That said, Alwan remarked that the 7750 is still an edge-routing platform for services as opposed to be a core routing platform.
"T-1600 and CRS are core routing platforms, so they have high density," Alwan noted. "From a comparison point of view on density, we compare well with those platforms."
That said, Alwan argued that what Alcatel-Lucent is trying to do with the 7550 is somewhat different than just core routing. In his view the Juniper T-1600 and the Cisco CRS are targeted at what he referred to as the "low feature market," which requires moving a lot of bits.
"The edge services layer does the heavy lifting, and the core devices are there to do high speed," Alwan said. | <urn:uuid:61ba9156-c30e-4fa3-80c0-aef3dd41272c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3737106 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963523 | 610 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Students have a lot to deal with, besides being away from home there is the stress of adjusting to a new area and also trying to excel in your academic plus all these extra things such as doing your laundry, studying, and making new friends.
Both parents and students need to discuss the way forward and explore the following accommodation options that are available to them:
- Campus residents
Staying on campus means very little money spent on travelling to and from school, this will expose the student to student culture only experienced on campus, plus all the social, sporting and academic events will be just a walk away.
- Student villages
Area’s specifically designed to accommodate student very close to university campuses, here the student has the freedom to live on their and also be very close to the school.
Living with other people in a commune is also a good experience it exposes one to different culture and you get to learn how to share and live with other people.
Are normally in situated in the city centres, they teach one to live independently. Parents beware of all the calls in the middle of the month asking for money.
Finding property to rent in South Africa is the last thing any parent really has the time to do, leaving things to your child can leave you paying a lot more than you anticipated. | <urn:uuid:cb52bb49-86c4-43e3-ad2a-8ab470d5b658> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://property-south-africa.org.za/student-rentals/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966459 | 265 | 1.9375 | 2 |
I wonder whether both Minister Kate Wilkinson and the bill's critics couldn't both be right. If the current de jure rules aren't strenuously enforced against small traders, or only are so irregularly, then the de jure loosening of restrictions on small traders could be a de facto toughening if enforcement is tightened.
Radio New Zealand last week featured one small cheese producer on the costs of the prior regime and her worries about the new one. Minister Wilkinson's comments there really aren't reassuring. [HT: Gonzo] She emphasizes that even small-scale cheese-makers will come under the regulatory apparatus:
The cheese that's produced from three cows or three thousand cows is still expected to be safe. ... We want the Biddies [cheese-maker Biddy Fraser-Davies] of this world to keep producing fantastic cheeses, but we also want that cheese to be safe.But let's recall that the vast majority of costs of food-borne illness are the individually borne intangible costs of being sick. Those costs are very real and the Applied Economics study tabulating them seems pretty sound. But why oughtn't I get to choose to buy cheese from a small producer and take that individual risk without Wellington getting involved? The costs of head injuries from skiing may well be high, but if I'm the one bearing them, oughtn't I be the one who decides to wear a helmet? Wasn't this supposed to be the government of individual responsibility that defeated Helen Clark's Nanny State?
Wilkinson worries about ensuring that people can be confident in the local food system. If information asymmetry is the problem, all the government needs to do is give out stickers to producers wishing to produce under regulatory guidelines so that they can advertise as such; absence of that certification then says you have to be sure you can trust the producer. And, anybody who's paranoid about food poisoning can always choose to purchase from big producers at supermarkets instead of small guys selling home-made stuff at farmers' markets. And, frankly, I'll trust Biddy Fraser-Davies, the small cheese producer interviewed, over Wilkinson's bureaucrats.
I wrote for NZCPR:
Perhaps worse than my potential loss of choice as consumer is the loss of an easy pathway to small-scale entrepreneurship. Even if the monetary costs of registration as a food producer are low, Wellington often weighs too lightly the discrete hurdle thrown in front of a potential entrepreneur who has never otherwise had to worry about compliance regimes. The dread costs of figuring out which forms to fill out, and the fear of getting something wrong, can be very real barriers to would-be new small-scale entrepreneurs. When you’re really not sure if you’ll be able to make a go of a new venture, adding a hurdle of having to seek permission can provide a burden much larger than the nominal $50 registration fee.Muriel Newman at NZCPR (link currently here, but likely to suffer linkrot) also comments:
For a government that claims to be committed to encouraging wealth creation and reducing compliance costs on small business, the Food Bill could be a major step backwards. It appears to be being driven more by bureaucratic considerations rather than the need to encourage entrepreneurship in the food sector - within the bounds of stringent food safety imperatives. It is also not clear what the answer is to a fundamental question that should be asked of all new legislation: Is there a problem to be fixed and if so will this Bill fix it?At least raw milk doesn't seem likely to be killed under the new bill. | <urn:uuid:77c8dda3-5f79-4b7e-a92a-22299097ecbb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.co.nz/2012/01/food-bill-revisited.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96498 | 728 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Hillsborough can't remove Confederate flag listen06/04/08 Mitch E. Perry
WMNF Drive-Time News Wednesday | Listen to this entire show:
Tags: Confederate flag
Hillsborough County Commissioners today acknowledged that they can do nothing legally to remove a huge Confederate Flag that was hung yesterday at the junction of Interstate 75 and I -4, and is scheduled to be unveiled publicly next year.
However, Commissioner Jim Norman suggested that organizers think of hoisting a large American flag at the spot instead, and he urged the Sons of Confederate Veterans to work with members of the NAACP on such a compromise.
In 2005, a county land use hearing officer approved a request by Sons of Confederate Veterans member Marion Lambert's for a lighted park with monuments and a flagpole "to commemorate American veterans."
Commissioner Rose Ferlita raised the issue, acknowledging that it was legal for the group to hoist such a flag, but she said it would only fragment the community.
During the public hearing portion of the meeting, six people commented on the flag issue, five supported it. But Michelle Williams was vehemently against it, what she called a "monstrosity.” She carried with her pictures of Blacks hung and lynched that she displayed on boards. Williams said she wanted to see some officials needed to be courageous and stop the flag from being hung.
Bart Siegel said those who call the Confederate flag a symbol of hate should feel obligated to defend their position, and he called for a public debate on the issue.
Interstate drivers got a sneak preview of the 50-foot by 30-foot flag Tuesday as organizers marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederate States of America.
For years, Hillsborough County Commissioners had routinely presented proclamations to the Sons of Confederate Veterans. But last year, the board changed the policy after it was embarrassed when it honored Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on the same morning as a civil rights leader.
Chastened, the board then voted 4-3 against designating last April as Southern Heritage Month. Confederate member Marian Lambert has made regular visits to the County Commission over the past year, criticizing the board for that move.
Norman said he hoped that instead of the giant Confederate Flag, organizers could come together with perhaps members of the NAACP and propose instead putting up the American flag.
Commissioner Kevin White told Confederate members in the audience that they might be correct that there is an ignorance and lack of history amongst members of the public as to their criticism of the flag. But he said that perception is reality, and they needed to deal with that. | <urn:uuid:bd987717-4c36-4489-a06c-81588d814079> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wmnf.org/news_stories/5650 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964565 | 544 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Concealed Handguns: To Carry or Not to CarryMay 9th, 2008 by josh farley
Two horrific school shootings this past year at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University have galvanized both “concealed carry” gun owners and firearms opponents, in verbal battles that are taking place across the country.
A recent Seattle P-I blog adds the University of Washington to the list of campuses debating the issue.
From what I can tell, there are two central viewpoints here:
1) Those who believe that “concealed carry” laws on campuses will allow responsible owners to bring an aura of safety should a shooter begin a rampage;
2) Those who think banning the weapons on campus outright (and limiting them elsewhere) will prevent said shooter’s access to get deadly weapons in the first place.
Washington’s concealed pistol law allows 235,795 people to carry (as of May 7), according to Department of Licensing spokeswoman Christine Anthony. In fact, the state even has an “open carry” law, in which gun owners can wear their weapons outside their clothing that may surprise you.
For more local recent history, think back to Nov. 20, 2005: the day a shooter opened fire on a crowd at the Tacoma Mall.
Police interviewed several people there that day who were card carrying concealed pistol holders. Many of them pulled their weapons; not one of them fired back at the 20-year-old who is now serving a 1,961 month sentence.
Brendan McKown, the man most injured by the 20-year-old’s bullets, had a concealed license himself. Here’s what the P-I wrote about his experience — and why he got a license.
“It’s a stupid statement, but I have a concealed weapons permit in case some idiot shoots up a mall,” McKown told the P-I.
I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this issue, so please, don’t be shy. | <urn:uuid:d70f9875-150e-4ccf-895c-a91fd390ecca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pugetsoundblogs.com/kitsap-crime/2008/05/09/concealed-handguns-to-carry-or-not-to-carry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959192 | 423 | 1.71875 | 2 |
> Philosophies that motivate green building ethos
Philosophies that motivate green building ethos
There’s much talk in architectural circles about the nuts and bolts of "integrated project delivery." But in an Oct. 24 presentation, IDC Architects Director and Design Principal Jeff Murray took on this topic from a more philosophical standpoint.
The venue was the third annual EcoCommercial Building Network Executive Workshop in Pittsburgh, where building industry leaders including IBM and the Green Building Alliance shared concepts for promoting sustainable building design and construction materials.
Jeff’s presentation talked about such utilitarian tools as energy modeling, airflow modeling, 3D design and Lean practices. But it was discussion of the philosophy motivating an ethos of sustainability that got the audience most engaged.
“The built environment either empowers people or frustrates them,” Jeff observes:
Carnegie Mellon University now has a whole department on Human/Computer Interaction. This is a focus on how people interact with computers, rather than the technical aspects of how computers compute. This is why Apple is the most successful company on the planet today, not because they have better hard drives or processors, but because they have better design regarding Human/Computer Interaction.
“There’s a corollary here to the way we design buildings. Effective space utilization depends on us finding intelligent ways to understand and focus on the building’s spatial network as much as the building’s elements and systems; and on how the spaces enable human activity. Architecture can be thought of as Human/Environment Interaction.
“Budgets get tighter, clients demand more, building complexity has increased exponentially. Trust me, it was a lot easier coordinating stained glass and stone sculptures and flying buttresses with a one-century construction schedule for a Gothic cathedral than all that we have to deal with today. Nonetheless, the question in front of us is -- how can we as a design and construction industries do better?
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- Project Center - | <urn:uuid:005b7ddc-f277-4f8e-99e8-e7efeaea282e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://djcoregon.com/dailyblog/2012/11/07/philosophies-that-motivate-green-building-ethos/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925443 | 477 | 1.875 | 2 |
Romeo and Juliet (1968)
While the paring of Shakespeare and motion pictures is about as original as peanut butter and jam, Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet broke a lot of new ground, less concerned with translating stage adaptations to a film set, and instead taking up the challenge of cinematic realism. Cast as Romeo was 17-year-old Leonard Whiting, while 15-year-old Olivia Hussey was given the role of Juliet. The casting broke with tradition, as the roles normally had been played by adults on the stage and screen and not genuine adolescents (the exception to this, of course, was in Shakespeare's day, when Juliet was played by a teenager but that was always a teenage boy). The attractive leading duo, along with the location shooting in Italy, lavish costuming, and a brief bit of art-house nudity, made Romeo and Juliet an unqualified success in its day. Furthermore, for the sake of realism, the climactic duel between Tybalt (Michael York) and Mercutio (John McEnery), which forms the centerpiece of the play and film, is not done in a flamboyant, swashbuckling style, but instead is a great deal of loose fencing amidst a crowd of hooting young men, and Zeffirelli delicately transforms the scene over the course of several minutes from light banter to its inevitably disastrous results. More than 30 years later, the production still holds up, and it wouldn't be out of bounds to say that this one work formed the bridge between earlier Shakespearean films, such as Olivier's Richard III, to hyper-realistic fare like Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, along with his epic Hamlet. Good anamorphic transfer from a clean, colorful source-print (1.85:1), DD 2.0 (mono). Trailer, keep-case. | <urn:uuid:fe70e5d6-bcf1-4830-888b-520545dc9775> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dvdjournal.com/quickreviews/r/romeoandjuliet68.q.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969151 | 384 | 2.125 | 2 |
Volume I, No. 4, Summer 1974
At a distance the many quiet towns that are in the Ozarks seem to be dying, barren places. In the winter and early spring, they are towns without color. The buildings constructed of crumpled brick or weathered oak sit in cold desolation on the dusty streets against a stark gray sky. Summer provides some color with the green trees and grass framed by dark blue sky. But the barrenness of the town is still there if only a little camouflaged.
The desolate appearance of the row of old deserted buildings down the one main street obscures
the activity inside the one well-kept store where customers make their purchases and visit quietly.
All at once the stillness is shattered when the dust-raising locomotive thunders through with
dozens of cars loaded with the latest model automobiles and farm machinery. The nuisance causes
people in the store to talk louder to be heard. The noise lasts only a short while before everyone
settles back to a normal tone of voice and quietness.
The people and the town maintain this air of stillness until school lets out. With the arrival of the school buses, the place comes alive. The school children run in and out of the one brightly painted store in a sort of mini-rush hour. After getting refreshments, the kids play jump rope in the safest place available--the dusty streets. If it weren't for the modern buses and smartly dressed children, it would be easy to believe that the town was right out of the 1800's.
This impression soon disappears, however, when the visitor takes a closer look. He sees new
gasoline prices on the old gas pumps and an antique oil pump standing out against a modern soft
drink sign. One of the few young boys in town rides up on his bright red bicycle. "Hey, are you
guys waiting for a train? There won't be one along for another hour."
Charlie White's favorite topic of conversation in Long's General Store in Phillipsburg is the energy crisis and, of course, Watergate. The owner of the store, between waiting on customers, volunteers information about the town and the people.
Everyone greets our photographers with friendliness and a desire to help. While walking down the street, they meet a complete stranger in new blue overalls out for a walk on a crisp spring day. Quick to smile, he chats with them about everything from the state of the economy to the condition of the local buildings. When buying some stamps, they stay awhile to visit with the postmaster.
These country towns only look dead from a distance. With a closer look they are very much alive with people full of spirit and friendship living in the surroundings of the past.
All photographs taken in Phillipsburg, Missouri, except:
page 33, bottom left - Preston page 35, top left - Hodgson Mill page 35, bottom - Topaz Mill Store
Copyright © 1981 BITTERSWEET, INC.
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Local History Home | <urn:uuid:f7f75bec-5c87-45a1-8df7-bbffd1ca0f52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/bittersweet/su74j.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933281 | 625 | 1.804688 | 2 |
The following is from the Jan. 20, 2007, edition of The New York Times.
By JAMES F. HOLLIFIELD
When I was a graduate student at Duke in 1981, the university was faced with a difficult decision: Should it accept the papers of its law school alumnus, Richard M. Nixon, and build a library and museum named for one of the most controversial presidents in American history? Some within the university said that to accept the papers would be to embrace a failed president who resigned in disgrace to avoid impeachment. Others argued that the documents would be a treasure trove for future scholars seeking to understand what happened during the turbulent years of the Nixon presidency.
At the time I had the luxury of watching this drama unfold from the sidelines. Today I do not. As the director of a center for political studies at Southern Methodist University, I was invited to sit on an academic planning committee for the George W. Bush presidential library. By agreeing to serve on this committee, I took a stand in favor of Southern Methodist University’s bid for the library, in part because I think Duke made a mistake in not accepting the Nixon library.
George W. Bush — like Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter in their day — is a controversial president for difficult times. But we must put partisanship aside and strive for historical perspective. We must consider the importance of having presidential libraries to help generations of scholars understand the times in which we live, and to inform future policy debates.
Whether one supports or opposes the Bush policies, there is no question that they have been momentous for the country and the world. Precisely because of the controversial nature of this presidency, the question of how George W. Bush made his decisions begs for scholarly research and discourse. The library will be a gold mine for scholars, and its location on a university campus symbolizes the need for study.
At Duke more than 20 years ago and at Southern Methodist today, opponents of such libraries have said that by building a presidential library and creating schools or institutes, a university compromises its values and endorses the policies of the president whose papers it accepts. I do not think this is the case. It is legitimate for anyone to criticize the president and his policies, but it is presumptuous for us as scholars to say that we know in advance and with certainty what the legacy of a sitting president will be.
Campuses are good places to situate presidential libraries because universities are vital to the American marketplace of ideas, and they are bulwarks of our free society. They can serve as repositories of archives from which we will learn and grow as a nation. But the faculty is a university’s heart and soul, and faculty members are not disconnected from the politics of the moment.
As bad as the situation may seem today, back in 1971, when the University of Texas dedicated a library and school named for Lyndon Johnson, the country was in even greater turmoil. A storm of controversy raged over the Johnson papers. But I think the University of Texas made the right decision to accept the papers and build the library and school.
Southern Methodist University should do the same. Yes, former presidents are interested in polishing their legacies, and universities must be careful to remain nonpartisan and protect freedom of inquiry. But we must also take the long view, and that means building institutions that will serve generations to come, giving historians the chance to do their work.
James F. Hollifield, a professor of political science and the director of the Tower Center for Political Studies at Southern Methodist University, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Emerging Migration State.”
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Redefining Disaster Recovery: New Technologies Provide Disaster Planning Challenges and Solutions
As banks' disaster recovery and business continuity plans have had to expand to cover not only physical facilities such as data centers, branches and ATMs but also digital and virtual presences, including online and mobile banking, they have become increasingly comprehensive -- and complex. Meanwhile, the risks these plans must address also are growing increasingly complex, as banks must prepare for man-made threats, including terrorism and cybercrime, in addition to natural disasters. How have banks' strategies and requirements around disaster planning evolved? What has the industry learned from catastrophes of the past decade, such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina? And what are some of the newer technologies that are helping banks prepare?
3 Steps to Improving the Disaster Response
By Steve McCleskey, VP of Business Continuity and Incident Response, Regions Financial (Birmingham, Ala.)
Following every event — including Hurricanes Ivan, Charlie and Katrina — we do a formal lessons-learned exercise and review how we responded, what we did well and where there is room for improvement. Since those events led to changes in regulatory guidelines, we also keep an eye toward what's coming up in terms of regulatory changes and make sure we're ahead of the curve. Our primary focus is to minimize disruptions to our customers.
Following Katrina, we did an extensive lessons-learned exercise, and we came up with three changes to our disaster response. First, we upgraded our command center that we use for catastrophic events. We monitor multiple news and weather sources to get information so we can deploy our response team appropriately.
We also contracted with a weather service provider. There is a tremendous amount of information available on the Internet, but we needed weather information specific to our industry. The provider offers continuous weather monitoring and alerting to different weather conditions. This allows us to make better decisions about resources, as well as about closing or re-opening branches following a catastrophic event.
Finally, we now offer a portable branch facility and portable ATM. We deploy the portable facility if there is catastrophic damage to locations, allowing us to open much more quickly than before. We utilized the portable branch and ATM during Katrina as well as during the April 27, 2011, tornado that tore through Tuscaloosa. The portable branch facility is an RV specifically built-out as a small-scale bank branch, with a generator, teller, customer service functionality and a built-in ATM. The ATM has satellite connectivity into our network and doesn't have to rely on local telecommunications that are often down after an event. We can get the portable branch and ATM deployed within a day and a half of a catastrophic event. | <urn:uuid:e3fbd93e-dae3-4afc-aba4-6764641461ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.banktech.com/risk-management/redefining-disaster-recovery-new-technol/232601281 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959028 | 546 | 1.59375 | 2 |
More than 1,500 New Yorkers gathered today in Manhattan to mourn the death of a 32 year-old gay man, who was shot down on Friday just blocks away from the historic Stonewall Inn in an apparent act of anti-gay bias.
What Does Transgender Day of Remembrance Mean to You? -Stefanie Rivera
Transgender Day of Remembrance is a day where I can reflect on all the trans folks that have had to endure the hardships for expressing themselves.
To me it always feels like it’s Transgender Day of Remembrance as I am always remembering those who were so close and dear to me who were taken away from us so abruptly through prejudice and violence.
I moved to New York from Los Angeles over ten years ago because of the struggles I was facing during that period in my life.
Homelessness, among other things, was something that a lot of foster children were facing, foster children who were considered damaged goods and not worthy of a warm home and a loving family.
God forbid you were one of the ones who aged out of the system and you happened to be trans.
I always felt like no one understood me and when I ran away to Hollywood I found other [trans] kids who were like me and faced many of the issues and hardships that I was dealing with, A lot of us had to do sex work to put a roof over our heads and food in or bellies. In this cycle, I met a few people who later became good friends of mine.
So imagine how traumatic it was for me to hear one of my friends screaming for help as someone chased her down and brutally slashed her throat and killed her. Imagine how saddened I was to hear years later that another one of my girlfriends who was so kind and childlike was shot in the head and dumped on the side of the road like garbage.
I myself have wondered what has kept me on this earth longer than them. I surely thought I wouldn’t have made it past my 18th birthday, whether someone would take me out or whether I just simply would have given up - but here I am reminiscing on not just the depressing memories but on all the good qualities of those who were taken away by violence. Those were my friends.
I remember how we all looked out for one another and formed our own close-knit family; we'd all chip in for a dilapidated motel room to have a place to sleep, little things like that...we'd go to the movies or simply hangout on good old Santa Monica Blvd and wait for a date or for a cop to come and harass us.
These aren’t glamorous memories, but what I remember is we all had each other’s backs - it was us against the world and we were simply trying to survive. Some of us made it, some of us didn't, but I'm not bitter and jaded I know that's just the way life goes.
I remember my friends each and every day and will always remember them. They were taken away from us way too soon and I'm willing to bet if they were still alive you'd want them as a friend too.
Stefanie Gisselle Rivera currently works as an Interpreter for Sylvia Rivera Law Project and the Prisoners Rights Project. She and her older sister, Elizabeth Marie Rivera-Valentine, also a transwoman were featured on PBS In the Life: Beauty On the Black Market discussing the dangers of silicone pumping. Rivera has also appeared in the media and in ad campaigns advocating for the rights of the transgender community. | <urn:uuid:1a432f12-1e84-4b6e-9330-996ea81ab6ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.glaad.org/2009/11/17/what-does-transgender-day-of-remembrance-mean-to-you-stefanie-rivera | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987496 | 733 | 2.4375 | 2 |
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed. It is illegal to resell or attempt to resell a recalled consumer product.
Name of Product: Ryobi Model HP 1802M Cordless Power Drills
Units: About 455,000
Importer: Ryobi Technologies Inc., of Anderson, S.C.
Hazard: The switch on the cordless drill can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to consumers.
Incidents/Injuries: Ryobi has received 47 reports of the drills overheating, smoking, melting or catching fire, including 12 reports of property damage to homes or vehicles. Two of the incidents involved minor burns from touching an overheated switch.
Description: The Ryobi Model HP 1802M cordless drill is powered by an 18 volt rechargeable NiCad battery. The drills are blue and black in color with "Ryobi" appearing in red and white on the left side. The model number can be found on a white label on the right side of the drill.
Sold at: Home Depot from January 2001 to July 2003 for about $100.
Manufactured in: China
Remedy: Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled drill, remove the rechargeable battery and contact Ryobi to receive a free replacement drill.
Consumer Contact: For additional information, contact Ryobi Customer Service at 800-597-9624 between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. ET Monday through Friday or visit the firm's Web site at www.ryobitools.com
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from thousands of types of consumer products under the agency's jurisdiction. The CPSC is committed to protecting consumers and families from products that pose a fire, electrical, chemical, or mechanical hazard. The CPSC's work to ensure the safety of consumer products - such as toys, cribs, power tools, cigarette lighters, and household chemicals - contributed significantly to the decline in the rate of deaths and injuries associated with consumer products over the past 30 years.
To report a dangerous product or a product-related injury, call CPSC's Hotline at 800-638-2772 or CPSC's teletypewriter at 301-595-7054. To join a CPSC e-mail subscription list, go to https://www.cpsc.gov/cpsclist.aspx. Consumers can obtain recall and general safety information by logging on to CPSC's Web site at www.cpsc.gov. | <urn:uuid:bb741791-e95c-4918-a597-ab18828227db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reliableplant.com/Read/27161/Ryobi-recalls-cordless-drills | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916282 | 555 | 1.625 | 2 |
Anarchist Morality. How then should we live?
An Appeal to the Young.Let the old...lay the pamphlet down without tiring their eyes in reading what will tell them nothing.
Definition of Anarchism written for the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
The Paris Commune. Thoughts on the Commune in post-revolutionary Paris.
The State: Its Historic Role. Collection of lectures Kropotkin was to give before the French government decided otherwise.
The Wage System. Critique of one of the "institutions of capital."
War. Causes and solutions from a Communist Anarchist.
From Small Communal Experiments and Why they Fail:
Proposed Communist Settlement: A New Colony for Tyneside or Wearside. Advice to some would-be communal organizers.
Advice for Those About to Emigrate. Communal experiments are unwise to seek unsettled areas.
Communism and Anarchy. With Anarchy as an aim and as a means, Communism becomes possible. Without it, it necessarily becomes slavery and cannot exist. | <urn:uuid:fe1e6cfb-8f29-4306-880d-4cbae5da8b4f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/kropotkin/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910582 | 217 | 2.640625 | 3 |
The European Union's environmental policy has already achieved some beneficial results, but much more development is still needed in this field. Despite a series of common energy programmes, renewable energy sources are developing slowly because of higher costs, operating constraints and difficulties in getting beyond the trial stage. Other solutions include bio-combustibles, solar energy, forestry waste and wind-farms.
Tackling climate change in an effective manner will require a high level of international co-operation. The EU is committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. Member States and the EU face the challenge of convincing car users to leave their cars at home and choose other options. Public transport providers and local planners must provide attractive and environmentally friendly alternatives.
The fight against water pollution was one of the very first policies to be taken in hand by Europe. Air pollution and water contamination can all be tackled at source, while appropriate technical measures can address the various problems they create.
The European goal is to reduce domestic consumption of energy, water and transport by encouraging households to adopt habits that are more in line with the principle of sustainable development. Adopting international rules to limit waste shipments is vital if we want to prevent the most hazardous waste products from being systematically shipped to the regions with the most lax environmental regimes. Although recycling has undoubtedly been a success, the progress it has achieved has largely been cancelled out by the rapid growth in the volume of hazardous waste.
Sunset on the European coast. The earth is a fragile inheritance.
Wind turbines in Douglas, Central Scotland - harnessing wind energy. ...
Lorraine, France. In what condition will this pure, clear water reach ...
Factories in Great Britain.
City entrance, Northern Europe. The use of private cars in city ...
Drought has always been one of the biggest problems in agriculture.
Leaded petrol is condemned to disappear.
Antarctic : no region on our planet is exempt from waste. | <urn:uuid:8180a41f-7314-4d6b-97e2-5d7227923852> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/photo/photoByReportage.cfm?ref=006395&sitelang=en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946488 | 393 | 3.453125 | 3 |
On the banks of the Han River, CHAOZHOU (潮州, cháozhōu) is one of Guangdong’s most culturally significant towns, yet manages to be overlooked by tourist itineraries and government projects alike – principally through having had its limelight stolen during the nineteenth century by its noisy southern sister, Shantou (汕头, shàntóu), just 40km away. In response, Chaozhou has become staunchly traditional, proudly preserving the architecture, superstitions and local character which Shantou, a recent, foreign creation, never had, making it a far nicer place to spend some time.
The city was founded back in antiquity, and by the time of the Ming dynasty had reached its zenith as a place of culture and refinement; the origins of many of the town’s monuments date back to this time. A spate of tragedies followed, however. After an anti-Manchu uprising in 1656, only Chaozhou’s monks and their temples were spared the imperial wrath – it’s said that the ashes of the 100,000 slaughtered citizens formed several fair-sized hills. The town managed to recover somehow, but was brought down again in the nineteenth century by famine and the Opium Wars, which culminated in Shantou’s foundation. Half a million desperately impoverished locals fled Chaozhou and eastern Guangdong through the new port, many of them emigrating to European colonies all over Southeast Asia, where their descendants comprise a large proportion of Chinese communities in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. Humiliatingly, Shantou’s rising importance saw Chaozhou placed under its administration until becoming an independent municipality in 1983, and real rivalry remains between the two.
For the visitor, Chaozhou is a splendid place. In addition to some of the most active and manageable street life in southern China, there are some fine historic monuments to tour, excellent shopping for local handicrafts, and a nostalgically dated small-town ambience to soak up. Chinese-speakers will find that Chaozhou’s language is related to Fujian’s minnan dialect, different from either Mandarin or Cantonese, though both of these are widely understood. | <urn:uuid:70e388d9-cd31-4642-8c8e-60ab4edb0aee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.roughguides.com/destinations/asia/china/fujian-guangdong-hainan-island/guangdong/eastern-guangdong/chaozhou/?wpfpaction=add&postid=51333 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957852 | 466 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science | Tags: Carbon Tax, Climate Change, Hurricane Sandy
President Obama held his first post-election press conference today. His first press conference in eight months, the president doesn’t like press conferences much, even though the press arm of the Obama campaign never asks really hard questions. Even with a press corps that is warmly complimenting the president on his electoral win, and trembling with the wonder of simply being in his presence, they did manage to ask eight questions.
One of the questions was about “Climate Change,” which is not surprising now that Al Gore is back out blaming Hurricane Sandy on dirty CO2. Mark Landler, with the New York Times asked the following question:
Mr. President. In his endorsement of you a few weeks ago, Mayor Bloomberg said he was motivated by the belief that you would do more to confront the threat of climate change than your opponent. Tomorrow you’re going up to New York City, where you’re going to, I assume, see people who are still suffering the effects of Hurricane Sandy, which many people say is further evidence of how a warming globe is changing our weather. What specifically do you plan to do in a second term to tackle the issue of climate change? And do you think the political will exists in Washington to pass legislation that could include some kind of a tax on carbon?
The president was direct, saying “I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions.” Consider this as an announcement that he is considering a carbon tax, one of the dumber things some nations have done.
You know, as you know, Mark, we can’t attribute any particular weather event to climate change. What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago. We do know that the Arctic ice cap is melting faster than was predicted even five years ago. We do know that there have been extraordinarily — there have been an extraordinarily large number of severe weather events here in North America, but also around the globe.
And I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions. And as a consequence, I think we’ve got an obligation to future generations to do something about it.
Now, in my first term, we doubled fuel efficiency standards on cars and trucks. That will have an impact. That will take a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere. We doubled the production of clean energy, which promises to reduce the utilization of fossil fuels for power generation. And we continue to invest in potential breakthrough technologies that could further remove carbon from our atmosphere.
But we haven’t done as much as we need to. So what I’m going to be doing over the next several weeks, next several months, is having a conversation, a wide-ranging conversation with scientists, engineers and elected officials to find out what can — what more can we do to make short-term progress in reducing carbons, and then working through an education process that I think is necessary, a discussion, the conversation across the country about, you know, what realistically can we do long term to make sure that this is not something we’re passing on to future generations that’s going to be very expensive and very painful to deal with.
In the meantime, Britain’s Met Office quietly released a report pointing out that the world stopped getting warmer 16 years ago, and included the chart to prove it. From the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there has been no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures. It has been much warmer in the past than it is today, and much cooler as well. There have been much higher quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere, and much lower. We are at a fairly low point at present.
The whole idea that CO2 (what we exhale) is causing massive climate change and is something to be concerned about exists only in the computer programs that attempt to reconstruct climate, something we don’t know much about. We simply do not know enough about the natural variability of climate, the effect of clouds, long-term ocean temperature cycles and the changes in the output of the sun. The programs that are the source of global warming alarmism are based on guesses and estimates, and are increasingly found to be flawed.
Well, the president believes, and he does not change his mind. He wants more taxpayer money to invest in global warming stuff, like corn for your gas tank, impossible cafe standards that will accomplish nothing, and make cars less safe and more expensive. He will continue to plow taxpayer money and funds borrowed from China into solar arrays and electric batteries, electric cars that no one wants, and other businesses started by his friends and supporters, which will, in their turn, go bankrupt. But he believes, or at least he believes in the money from big environmental organizations, who had lots of money for the Obama campaign, so you never know whether he really believes in global warming, or if it’s just more crony capitalism.
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Leave a comment | <urn:uuid:ec0cee0e-123b-49b5-92df-e5fbc2a0e389> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://americanelephant.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/the-president-had-a-press-conference/?like=1&_wpnonce=84af3d0b4c | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969574 | 1,078 | 1.796875 | 2 |
There has been a dramatic increase in shale gas and oil extraction over the past several years that is presenting an interesting mix of technical, legal, policy, and environmental issues. These appear to be playing out differently in each state, and with additional twists in Canada relative to the oil sands in Alberta and shale gas in Quebec. Although the flow of gas and oil has increased dramatically during this time, there appear to be continuing questions about the impacts on groundwater, the relationship to earthquakes, the nature of the chemicals used in the water injected, how the residual water should be treated, and many more. The matter of the Keystone pipeline has generated significant controversy between the United States and Canada, and the role of non-government organizations in this process has drawn the attention and concern of the Government of Canada. If this practice is not managed and regulated effectively, we are likely asking for serious environmental consequences like those we have experienced in the past when we have not thought through carefully what could happen as a result of our actions.
With the many issues to address, one in particular is the focus of this discussion, and that is the appropriate roles of federal, state, local, provincial, tribal, and first nation governments in the process of approving the siting, construction, and operation of the wells, in addition to the handling of the residues and the product. It appears a bulk of the responsibility is in the hands of state and provincial governments, but that may not be the best allocation of jurisdiction. Local governments have the primary responsibility of providing safe drinking water to their populations, and may be adversely affected by the fracking operations. Also, local wastewater management facilities are being looked to for treatment of the residual water from the process, which includes unknown chemicals and contaminants from the product. In some instances, local governments are being excluded from the approval process. It does not appear that tribal and first nation governments have been consulted to any great extent. On the federal level, U.S. EPA is not regulating the activity, although it is doing an extensive study of the potential impacts of fracking and related activities. Environment Canada has been engaged in the oil sands matter primarily through the evaluation of the environmental monitoring program undertaken by Alberta and the companies involved.
The very successful model used in the U.S. for air, water, toxics, and hazardous waste since 1970 that has a strong Federal presence that establishes a legal framework and minimum protective standards across the county, with the option for states to receive delegation and implement programs with more stringent requirements if they wish, should be used for shale gas and oil extraction. In addition, there need to be specific opportunities for local and tribal governments to participate in the process in a way that protects their interests. Also, there must be ample opportunity for public participation. This is the best way to reduce the likelihood of another very costly disaster down the road.
Resource extraction has always presented significant challenges to finding the right economic, social, and environmental balance in managing an activity for the broader good of the country. In the context of the continuing concern about serving the energy needs of the United States, Canada, and the rest of the world, the question is what makes sense and is good public policy? Perhaps we are still early enough in the history of this issue to make changes to help prevent serious and expensive problems in the future. | <urn:uuid:37b1b11e-7b11-43b3-8551-12b00af4c859> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.acoel.org/post/2012/05/23/SHALE-GAS-FRACKING-PREVENTING-THE-NEXT-DEEPWATER-HORIZON.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964682 | 668 | 2.84375 | 3 |
|LATER LAYER - Installation by Johnston Marklee Architects and Artist Walead Beshty|
|Tuesday, 05 January 2010 07:24|
Presented by DevelopRE and the Depart Foundation at the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles
LATER LAYER, the title of the installation, refers to the serial aspect present in the strategies deployed by both architect and artist. The word ‘Later,’ which means ‘brick’ in Latin, alludes to Adolf Loos’ definition of an architect as ‘a bricklayer who had studied Latin;’ while also referring to the unit module and the serial repetition in Johnston Marklee’s and Walead Beshty’s work respectively.
Johnston Marklee’s contribution to the installation includes a series of elemental building blocks that form coherent groups of disparate masses designed to accommodate a variety of uses including art exhibition and production, creative businesses and residences.
Walead Beshty uses photography to as a tool to explore the social and political conditions of our material culture with a focus on the social and political dimension of transitional spaces. His work in the DEPART Foundation Collection includes abstract photograms which question the principals of photography and visual culture as well as geometric glass sculptures dimensioned to fit inside FedEx containers where the cracks and fissures accrued from their own transportation become intrinsic content of the work.
As an emerging arts organization predicated on the Discussion, Exhibition, and Production of Art; Depart Foundation is dedicated to fostering an exchange in contemporary artistic production between Italy and the rest of the world. As part of this global mission, the Foundation has commissioned Los Angeles based architects Johnston Marklee to design buildings in Grottaferrata, Italy, Tuscany and Los Angeles for the first phase of its artists-in-residence program.
|Last Updated on Tuesday, 05 January 2010 07:38| | <urn:uuid:d241d005-7afd-4b50-aff9-782b55ac203f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.archinnovations.com/events/exhibitions/later-layer-installation-by-johnston-marklee-architects-and-artist-walead-beshty/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94401 | 395 | 1.5 | 2 |
Speed Test Internet: Check how fast is your internet bandwidth speed. This speedometer shows your internet connection downloading and uploading speeds at just one single click.
Internet used at home or work or on the go can be measured using this Internet Speed Test meter easily. Check how fast or slow is your bandwidth speed being provided by the ISP (Internet Service Provider). This is an easy tool which gives out results instant and accurate without any hassle. Tests may vary on different times due to either TCP/IP distance or bandwidth being divided between applciations working in invisible mode like automatic update of operating system or various applications. By default this speed-o-meter picks up a server nearest to you which helps track the speed with most accurate results.
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- Delete unwanted files from hard disk: Delete temporary files, history, temporary internet files and clear logs which takes maximum space of your hard disk and also RAM. This makes your pc work slow and eats up lot of internet bandwidth. | <urn:uuid:f586a364-2856-4a50-b511-0b8597ed5876> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.speedtestbandwidth.net/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907999 | 358 | 2.046875 | 2 |
All about Nano & Me
Our aim with nano&me is to provide balanced information about nanotechnologies
and be the hub of debate for everyone to discuss the important issues which arise from its use.
Nanoandme.org is a website for anyone who wants to know more about nanotechnology. You might have heard something on the news you wanted to check out, or be a small business thinking about using a nanomaterial and want to know about regulation or safety issues. You could be a school child needing information for a project or just be curious to know what on earth it is.
We want this site to be the hub of debate about nano related issues - particularly the social and ethical concerns which arise from some of its uses.
To find out more about The Responsible Nano Forum who has produced this site and how we go about trying to achieve balanced information go to All about Nano&me.
What you'll find here
We have picked what we think are the most important issues about nano for the public, but also have information which might help others, such as small businesses or schools.
We are hoping in the full site to have a section
on ‘Nano News’, more about what Research is happening, information about individual products using nano and live debates and events about social and ethical issues.
Tell us what you want to see
This is a pilot of the site, so there’s a lot more to come. To make sure we include what is needed we are asking all sorts of people to take a look and tell us what they would find useful, what we’ve got wrong and what would be great to have on a full site. We really need your views to make it work – join the debate on every page or in the Nano Debate section. | <urn:uuid:2e8c0f05-f0fc-4615-92ca-6d6affb659a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nanoandme.org/home/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965013 | 370 | 2.125 | 2 |
Levy: Digital Distractions Bad for the Workplace - Newsweek Technology - MSNBC.com
Steven Levy on continuous partial attention and "The Attention Economy" at ORA's Emerging Technology Conference.
But there's a problem in the workplace when the interruptions intrude on tasks that require real concentration or quiet reflection. And there's an even bigger problem when our bubble of connectedness stretches to ensnare us no matter where we are. A live BlackBerry or even a switched-on mobile phone is an admission that your commitment to your current activity is as fickle as Renée Zellweger's wedding vows. Your world turns into a never-ending cocktail party where you're always looking over your virtual shoulder for a better conversation partner. The anxiety is contagious: anyone who winds up talking to a person infected with [continuous partial attention] feels like he or she is accepting an Oscar, and at any moment the music might stop the speech.
In her talk, Stone was careful to acknowledge the benefits of perpetual contact. But her message is that the balance has tilted way too far toward distraction, creating a sense of constant crisis. "We're not ever in a place where we can make a commitment to anything," she explained to me when I called her a few days later. "Constantly being accessible makes you inaccessible." All so true.
I have to concur on the ironic hilarity of an ETech ostensibly being devoted to the topic of "The Attention Economy." As someone who's been both on the dais and down in the pit, I don't think I've ever seen so many overstimulated people struggling to find even more stimulation. It's harrowing.
[ via the 43F Board ] | <urn:uuid:544b5a49-4327-48cf-a71e-8f0c27f514f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.43folders.com/2006/03/30/always-on | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954989 | 349 | 1.53125 | 2 |
You could have functional large cities where the white people have not been ethnically cleansed by NAMs.
You could have public transit safely usable by white people with children, or you can free blacks from the indignity of having to sit in the back of the bus.
You can have functional communities with shared values, or you can have a society 'Bowling Alone' where NAMs don't have to face the insult of restrictive covenants and Jim Crow official segregation (as opposed to de facto segregation mediated by money).
You can have a society where less than 10% of women are overweight, where official sizes are effectively 4-6 sizes smaller than today's sizes, or you can have one post-segregation, where over half of women are significantly overweight
You can have a society where the artistically inclined can safely take a chance at pursuing long-shot dreams, because they can easily afford to live in a 'safe neighborhood', or you can have a society where everyone who isn't a NAM has to walk on eggshells, with the heart of a Klansman but the tongue of Tim Wise.
You can have a society where gun purchases were cash and carry with no paperwork, even mail order, or you can have a society with over three times the aggravated assault rate, and a comparable homicide rate only because of massive improvements in trauma medicine.
You can have a society where even among NAMs, the legitimacy rate is over 75%, or you can have a society where having both of your biological parents still married to each other at your wedding is unusual.
Would Civil Rights have ever passed if if people recognized the likely outcomes?
Stephen King's new book 11/22/1963 paints a fairly good picture of the late 50s and early 60s. His picture is pretty congruent to my discussions with my grandparents, who were in their prime in those years, and with my backwards projection from the 70s and 80s, when I was growing up. I almost think King doth protest too much about the segregation and colored bathrooms---perhaps he is a crypto-reactionary.
Pretty much everything that makes life better today is the result of technology and engineering. Governance and social organization have worsened markedly. Looking back to Memorial day, it's pretty easy, through this prism, to see why the soldiers of previous wars were reasonably keen to fight for America.
But the horror of Jim Crow trumps everything...or does it? When diversity is made a god, it is a far worse devil than any Moloch or Baal ever was.
Raj Rajaratnam: #236 on the Forbes 400
2 hours ago | <urn:uuid:7a6fdad2-cf29-4f65-9037-fec9dce9fdea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chariotofreaction.blogspot.com/2012_05_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973411 | 544 | 1.648438 | 2 |
"It's almost impossible to break campaign finance laws you say?
-Headline of the Day-
"Johnson $10M Payday Could Raise Red Flags For IRS."
When Ron Johnson spent $9 million to win Russ Feingold's senate seat, people saw it as evidence that wealthy frootloops could just buy senate seats with self-funded campaigns. Thank God that's not true. It turns out that Johnson's plastics company, Pacur, bought the seat for him. And Ron came out $1 million ahead after all the smoke had cleared.
According to the report, Ron "received a $10 million payment in deferred compensation from his former plastics company, Pacur, weeks after his $9 million self-financed 2010 campaign for Senate came to an end." Not surprisingly, this is bad. Even with the Citizens United ruling, corporations still can't give corporate money directly to political candidates.
So Johnson found a way to break an election law in an era when there are virtually no election laws.
What an innovator. (Talking Points Memo)
-Cartoon Time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, you know how your parents don't like those violent video games? Now you can tell them to shut up and that the Supreme Court agrees with you! Yay!
Click for animation
Remember kids, boobs = bad and 7.62mm minigun = good! (MarkFiore.com)
"Outside FEC, Stephen Colbert Says His 'Super PAC' Is No Joke."
Still, check out the video of his announcement for the yuks anyway. (Talking Points Memo, with video) | <urn:uuid:6d0c3d7c-73ef-45c7-9ddf-ee82cbd9faac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tibu2.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963416 | 340 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Often used in fashion blogs. Used to describe an outfit that is too coordinated and consists of too many of the same types of colours, patterns, fabrics, accessories, designer pieces, thematic elements, etc. Can also be used in reference to interior design.
FabSugar on Kate Hudson's all grey outfit: "Before this, I didn't know there were degrees of being matchy matchy."
A: How do I look?
B: Too matchy matchy, try a different sweater. | <urn:uuid:0686e82c-ac92-4072-9abd-924f1a3975f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=matchy%20matchy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960217 | 104 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Heroin Still Grips 1 Million Inside Iran
For centuries, royalty and those less-than-royalty in Persia indulged in the traditional pastime of smoking opium.Skip to next paragraph
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The 1979 Islamic revolution forced such activity underground, but today its use - in the much harder, modern form of heroin - is making a comeback in Iran.
"Do you know what they are doing over there?" asks Rami, a former user, pointing his thumb at the crowd of 200 or so men dealing quietly among themselves in the shadow of Azadi monument, built to mark the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian Empire. "They're selling 'H.' "
Many of the men look poor, almost all are dressed in black and wearing beards, and there are some soldiers and police - even a woman or two, and a child - among them. Men playfully joust with each other; others are sprawled asleep on grass nearby. They are some of the 1 million addicts now estimated to be in Iran, despite vigorous efforts by the authorities to stamp out drugs.
"Everybody does it, from 15 years old to 50," says Rami, who has just finished a $100 rehabilitation course. But he is of two minds: He just bought another hit of heroin powder, but knows that if he uses it, progress could be undone, and he could be addicted once again.
Punishment is severe: Possession of 30 grams of heroin or 5 kilograms of opium is punishable by death.
Rami was first exposed to heroin years ago in northeast Iran, along the drug-smuggling border with Afghanistan. He was in the military and plied with illicit "gifts" of opium and heroin in exchange for favors.
Though the ruling clerics of the Islamic Republic have spent hundreds of millions combating the spread of drugs, making it one of their top priorities, security officers here appear not to intervene - even as pushers sell their illegal goods openly on a warm afternoon.
This leads Rami to his own conclusion: "I think the government wants this to happen," he asserts. "They don't want the youths to think." | <urn:uuid:0750dd51-dedf-4f7e-a684-fb91603cd58f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csmonitor.com/1998/0702/070298.intl.intl.6.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969398 | 445 | 1.75 | 2 |
Recently an e-mail arrived from a friend, and she provided a link to a CNBC.com piece about India testing an intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of more than 3,100 miles. The test was successful. This long range missile is capable of reaching deep into China and Europe.
My friend wrote, “This doesn’t thrill me. I think the international community should come down just as hard on India as on North Korea.” She was right, and the Hindustan Times reported, “North Korea violated international law by missile launch.”
So, why is North Korea’s failed missile launch different than India’s?
Nowhere in the CNBC piece was India criticized as North Korea was for its failed test of a long range ballistic missile.
This 10 minute video may “BLOW” your mind—pun intended!
Instead, CNBC reported, “India lost a brief Himalayan border war with its larger neighbor, China, in 1962 and has ever since strived to improve its defenses. In recent years the government has fretted over China’s enhanced military presence near the border.”
In addition, Srikanth Kondapalli, professor in Chinese studies at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University told Reuters, “India can now deter China, it can impose maximum possible punishment if China crosses the red line.”
It is obvious to me that there is a double standard in the world.
There is the Democracy Club and countries that feed the world’s democracies with oil and then there is everyone else. India is a member of the democracy club and seldom if ever is criticized in the Western media even though the maternal mortality rate is 46.07 deaths per 1,000 live births (ranked #1 globally), life expectancy is 67 years at birth, 43.5% of the children at age five are underweight (the highest in the world), about 5 million children die (50 million each decade) from malnutrition and starvation annually, the literacy rate is 61% of the population, and 25% (more than 300 million people) live below the poverty line. Source: The CIA Factbook
Comparing India’s democracy to a non-democracy, such as China, reveals the double standard I’m talking about.
Before 1949, life in China was equal to or worse than India is today (life expectancy was 35 and 87% of the people lived in severe poverty). However, according to the CIA Factbook, today, the most recently reported maternal mortality rate was 15.62 deaths for each 1,000 live births ( a third of India’s and ranked #111 globally), life expectancy was almost 75 years of age, and literacy was more than 92% while the population living below the poverty line was 13.4% (about half of India).
6,000 children starve to death in India EVERY DAY
Then there is the fact that India’s middle class is about 5% of the population (61 million), while it is estimated that China’s middle class is now more than 230 million people or 37% of the total urban population. With all of these facts for a comparison, there is no doubt that the quality of life in China’s authoritarian republic is far better than life is in India’s democracy where people are “free” to starve and be illiterate.
Moreover, nowhere in that CNBC piece does it mention that India also fought border wars with Pakistan and Nepal—India fought with Pakistan in 1947, 1965 and came close to war in 1990 all over disputed Kashmir.
In fact, soon after the conflict with China, India had a clash with Nepal over a paltry 75 square km in Kalapani. Indian forces occupied the area in 1962, and the dispute with Nepal intensified in 1997.
Nowhere in the CNBC piece does it mention that India has 90 nuclear weapons while China has about 240.
Is India really serious about punishing China for future alleged violations of a disputed border?
In addition, the American/Western media crucifies North Korea for having 10 nuclear warhead compared to America’s 8,500 and Russia’s 11,000. Source: Huffington Post
Now, don’t get me wrong, North Korea’s government has earned its infamy, and I’ll spend more time with what that means in Part 2. Oh, lest I forget, North Korea has tested two nuclear bombs—one in 2006 and one in 2009. How many nuclear bombs has America tested? Watch the first video to discover that answer.
Continued on April 24, 2012 in The Democracy Club and the rest of the world – Part 2
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen. | <urn:uuid:b5154770-0a23-4183-b5ec-2c2c9b204fbf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ilookchina.net/tag/poverty-in-india/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949959 | 1,076 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Someday soon, your local drugstore will spend the first part of September decking the aisles with dangling apostrophes and setting out display cases of semicolon-themed bric-a-brac. But until the day marketers sniff out the profit potential of another holiday, it’s up to word nerds like me to help spread the word about National Punctuation Day.
On Sept. 24, National Punctuation Day is the brainchild of Jeff Rubin, a professional wordsmith based in Pinole, Calif. With a strong emphasis on schools and kids, National Punctuation Day promotes games, activities, contests and lessons in classrooms nationwide and is now entering its eighth year.
But this holiday isn’t just for kids. A lot of grown-ups lack confidence in their punctuation skills, too. So why not celebrate by taking note of a few of the most common and egregious punctuation conundrums afflicting folks already out of school? | <urn:uuid:64bc4ec4-c013-4d35-b865-7af81022a49e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.glendalenewspress.com/2011-09-23/news/tn-gnp-0925-aword_1_national-punctuation-day-apostrophes-commas | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917897 | 203 | 2.1875 | 2 |
|More than Kin and Less than Kind
Author: ClandestineTroublemaker PM
The boy is the father of the man.Rated: Fiction T - English - Richard H. - Words: 856 - Published: 08-21-12 - Status: Complete - id: 8452235
|A+ A- Full 3/4 1/2 Expand Tighten|
It was a hot, humid day in the middle of August. Richard sat stock still on a hay bale. He was nine years old, a shy, quiet, solemn boy, the kind of boy who easily avoided others' attention when he wanted to. He had escaped his parents' notice and the corresponding threat of being made to do his chores by slipping into the barn to evade them.
There he sat, watching motes of dust dance and swirl in a sunbeam. Big Tom, the largest and meanest of the barn cats, the undisputed leader of the pride, passed by. Suddenly Richard sprang at him and seized him up under his two front legs. Richard had enjoyed annoying the barn cats of late, seeing if he could catch them off guard and lay hold of them. It had become a kind of sport to him.
The startled cat hissed, squirmed, and sunk his teeth into the flesh between Richard's thumb and index finger. Richard shrieked and dropped the cat, who shot away, a yowling streak of gray, to hide behind a stack of boxes.
"Damn! Damn! Damn!" cried Richard, using the worst cuss word he knew. Bad cat! Mean, awful cat! He looked down at his stinging hand. Drops of blood oozed from puncture wounds. The sight blurred as tears filled his eyes.
"Damned cat!" His anger was so fierce and strong that he felt as if his head would burst. His ears rang and his eyes smarted. He sat down and waited until, finally, his breath slowed and he gained control of himself once more.
He would show that damned cat.
Richard wiped his tears away and got to work. He went out into the yard and gathered up several round, egg-sized stones. Then he returned to the barn and took up his father's wooden mallet from its place on his work bench. Then he sat back down on the hay bale and waited. It took nearly an hour, but eventually Big Tom sauntered out from behind the boxes, confident as you please, as if nothing had happened.
Richard's first rock hit its mark dead on. The cat was stunned enough that Richard had a chance to run up to him and strike him on the head with the mallet. Big Tom fell over on his side. Richard raised the mallet up over his head and hit him again, as hard as he could. The cat's body convulsed frantically and a strange gurgling growl came from his throat as he writhed in his death throes.
It was then that Emma entered the barn. She had finished her chores and was looking for Richard. She stopped in her tracks, her jaw hanging open in shock as she saw her brother standing over the dying cat, a bloody mallet held tight in his hand.
Richard was equally shocked to see her. By then the adrenaline was wearing off and a feeling of profound shame crept over him at the sight of her.
As Emma came to comprehend what she was seeing, her large, dark eyes filled with tears.
"He bit me," Richard said plaintively, his lower lip beginning to tremble at the sight of his sister's reaction.
"They only bite when they're scared," she responded softly, her voice breaking.
The twins stood where they were, looking at each other, saying nothing. Neither of them knew what to say. For the first time in their lives, they felt uncomfortable in each other's presence, keenly aware of the disconnect that now existed between them.
Anger flared up in Emma. Fear and sadness turned to indignation. She walked up to Richard and stood nose to nose with him, just a few inches from his face, forcing him to look her in the eye. "Promise me you will NEVER, EVER do that again!" she declared.
"But he bit me," Richard said again, softer and in a trembling tone.
"I promise," he said, looking down, unable to meet her eyes any longer.
Emma sighed as she backed away from him. "Pa'll skin you alive," she said, gesturing to the carcass that lay bleeding in the hay.
"I know," was Richard's forlorn reply.
"The woods," said Emma. She went over to her father's work bench, picked up an empty grain sack and carried it over to Richard. She held it open and tried not to gag at the smell of blood as Richard picked Big Tom up by the back leg and lowered him into it.
The two of them marched somberly out of the barn and down the trail that led into the woods.
As they walked, Emma wrestled with her anger and a feeling of betrayal that her nine-year-old mind did not fully comprehend. Richard was her twin, her double, and she had always understood him. But now, with this brutal act, he had proven himself a stranger to her and she was frightened by what she had seen in him. She crossed her fingers and made a silent wish that he would keep his promise to her. | <urn:uuid:5ef27b34-7593-4348-8799-594f2ec1e6d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8452235/1/More-than-Kin-and-Less-than-Kind | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990953 | 1,132 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Picks and Pans Review: The Last Time I Wore a Dress
Even now, it's always the same question: Why don't you act more like a girl?" begins Daphne Scholinski in this memoir of her high school years, which she spent being treated in several Chicago mental institutions for "gender identity disorder"—or, in layman's terms, acting like a tomboy. After this provocative introduction, we learn in bits and pieces that Scholinski was initially institutionalized for behavior problems, that her sad young life also included random sexual abuse by neighbors and caretakers, membership in a street gang and "a touchy and violent" father who had been traumatized by his military experience in Vietnam.
It is easy to understand why Scholinski, now an artist who lives in San Francisco (and was invited to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing in 1995), focused on the diagnosis and treatment of gender identity disorder. We learn for example, shockingly, that her therapy included regular instruction in makeup and hair styling—and this was in the 1980s: "Three years in three mental hospitals for girly lessons," she writes dismissively—and at a price of $1 million.
But Scholinski shortchanges other aspects of her life; enough of her warmth, wry humor and guts show through to keep us turning pages, but her complex, brutal story deserves a better telling. (Riverhead, $23.95) | <urn:uuid:f7ddb534-56da-47e2-89a1-34216f47db01> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20123609,00.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970601 | 301 | 1.570313 | 2 |
The young woman appeared among the jacaranda trees of the garden café wearing tight jeans and a pink T-shirt. She smiled nervously, and I understood how the Green Beret had fallen for her. Aisha (not her real name) was 23 years old, petite, with a slender figure. She worked as a waitress. Her jet black skin was unblemished except for delicate ritual scars near her temples, which drew attention to her large, catlike eyes.
We met across from the Flame of Peace, a monument built from some 3,000 guns burned and encased in concrete. It commemorates the 1996 accord that ended the rebellion waged by Tuareg and Arabs against the government, the last time outright war visited Timbuktu.
Aisha pulled five tightly folded pieces of paper from her purse and laid them on the table next to a photograph of a Caucasian man with a toothy smile. He appeared to be in his 30s and was wearing a royal blue Arab-style robe and an indigo turban. “That is David,” she said, lightly brushing a bit of sand from the photo.
They had met in December 2006, when the U.S. had sent a Special Forces team to train Malian soldiers to fight AQIM. David had seen her walking down the street and remarked to his local interpreter how beautiful she was. The interpreter arranged an introduction, and soon the rugged American soldier and the Malian beauty were meeting for picnics on the sand dunes ringing the city and driving to the Niger River to watch the hippos gather in the shallows. Tears welled in Aisha’s eyes as she recounted these dates. She paused to wipe her face. “He only spoke a little French,” she said, laughing at the memory of their awkward communication.
Aisha’s parents also came from starkly different cultures. Her mother’s ancestors were Songhai, among the intellectuals who helped create Timbuktu’s scholarly tradition. Her father, a Fulani, descended from the fierce jihadis who seized power in the early 1800s and imposed sharia in Timbuktu. In Aisha’s mind, her relationship with David continued a long tradition of mingling cultures. Many people pass through Timbuktu, she said. “Who is to say who Allah brings together?”
Two weeks after the couple met, David asked her to come to the United States. He wanted her to bring her two-year-old son from a previous relationship and start a life together. When her family heard the news, her uncle told David that since Aisha was Muslim, he would have to convert if he wanted to marry her. To his surprise, David agreed.
Three nights before Christmas, David left the Special Forces compound after curfew and met one of Aisha’s brothers, who drove him through the dark, twisting streets to the home of an imam. Through an interpreter the imam instructed the American to kneel facing Mecca and recite the shahadah three times: “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.” He gave the soldier a Koran and instructed him to pray five times a day and to seek Allah’s path for his life.
When David returned to the compound, his superiors were waiting for him. They confined him to quarters for violating security rules. Over the next week, he was not allowed to mix with the other Green Berets nor permitted to see Aisha, but he was able to smuggle out three letters. One begins: “My dearest [Aisha], Peace be upon you. I love you. I am a Muslim. I am very happy that I have been shown the road to Allah, and I wouldn’t have done it without meeting you. I think Allah brought me here to you …” He continues: “I am not to leave the American house. But this does not matter. The Americans cannot keep me from Allah, nor stop my love for you. Allahu Akbar. I will return to the States on Friday.”
Aisha never saw him again. He sent two emails from the United States. In the last message she received from him, he told her that the Army was sending him to Iraq and that he was afraid of what might happen. She continued to email him, but after a month or so her notes began bouncing back.
As she spoke, Aisha noticed tears had fallen onto the letters. She smoothed them into the paper and then carefully folded up the documents. She said she would continue to wait for David to send for her. “He lives in North Carolina,” she said, and the way she pronounced North Carolina in French made me think she imagined it to be a distant and exotic land.
I tried to lighten her mood, teasing that she had better be careful or Abdel Kader Haidara would hear of her letters. After all, they are Timbuktu manuscripts, and he will want them for his library. She wiped her eyes once more. “If I can have David, he can have the letters.”
Uncertain EndingsA month after I left Timbuktu, Mali officials, under pressure from the French government, freed four AQIM suspects in exchange for the Frenchman. The Italian couple was released, as were the Spanish aid workers after their government reportedly paid a large ransom. Since then AQIM has kidnapped six other French citizens. One was executed. At press time five remained in captivity somewhere in the desert. The marabout and his family disappeared from their home. Rumor spread that he had been recruited by the One-Eye to be his personal marabout.
I emailed David, who was serving in Iraq and is no longer in the Special Forces. He wrote back a few days later. “That time was extremely difficult for me, and it still haunts me.” He added, “I haven’t forgotten the people I met there, quite the contrary, I think of them often.”
I called Aisha and told her that he was still alive. That was months ago. I haven’t heard any more from David, but Aisha still calls, asking if there is any news. Sometimes her voice is drowned out by the rumble of the salt trucks; sometimes I hear children playing or the call to prayer. At times Aisha cries on the phone, but I have no answers for the girl from Timbuktu.
Source: National Geographic Magazine Online | <urn:uuid:92562b09-6b28-401d-b2ef-f571a23d591f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://yilmazalimoglu.com/2011/06/26/i-have-no-answers-for-the-girl-from-timbuktu/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984907 | 1,363 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Cedar Grove Cemetery Inscriptions
By Gene (Genevieve) Stachowiak Szymarek
Gene and her late husband John F. Szymarek co-authored / compiled this work through the painstaking recording the names and associated relationships obtained by walking the cemetery grounds. In addition data received from families and other genealogical sources were verified and added as received.
With the permission of the surviving family and the knowledge and consent of the publisher, Heritage Books Inc. we have transcribed the second of three genealogical works developed by the sisters. Our purpose was not to copy every entry verbatim, but to provide the user with a tool to use the additional detail contained in the hardcopy book.
These books are available at our local St. Joseph County Libraries for independent study or personal copies may be obtained by contacting.
Heritage Books, Inc.
65 East Main Street
Westminster, MD 21157-5026
Phone: 800-876-6103 or 410-876-6101
The South Bend Genealogical Society under the direction of Chairperson Toni Cook has undertaken a detailed transcription of Cedar Grove burials, including the verification of here to fore missing burials due to marker damage, loss or vandalism. A portion of this transcription may be viewed on line at:
A completed work may be purchased from the Society in the near future
Fr. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., established Cedar Grove Cemetery in 1843, a year after he founded the University of Notre Dame. At that time, Cedar Grove was on the far outskirts of campus and run by the same Holy Cross priests and brothers charged with keeping a fledgling university afloat. The Holy Cross brothers established a mortuary in these early years, ran operations from the basement level of what is now a womens residence hall, and used a horse-drawn hearse to transport coffins from Sacred Heart Church in the center of campus out to the cemetery. The mortuary operation, one of the first in the state of Indiana, was sold in 1911 to a local owner still in business today.
Throughout the balance of the 19th century and for most of the 20th, Cedar Grove was a Catholic cemetery open to the public, thus its local and historic interest in Northern Indiana. Ownership and responsibility for the cemetery transferred from Holy Cross to the University in the 1970s. In 1977, it became a private cemetery open only to Notre Dame faculty, staff, and retirees with the requisite years of service.
After two significant expansions in 1977 and 1999, Cedar Grove Cemetery now encompasses 22 acres, with the newest areas located on land once used as a golf course. Even so, limited in-ground burial space remains.
All Souls Chapel, the original chapel at Cedar Grove Cemetery, was designed and constructed in the early 1850s by Brother Francis Xavier. Brother Francis was among the original band of faithful to accompany Fr. Sorin on his journey to America. A skilled carpenter and self-taught architect, Brother Francis contributed to the design of many of the 19th century buildings found on campus.
In addition to its pastoral purpose, All Souls Chapel has served as a mortuary, carpenter shop, and office. In 1926, the original roof and steeple were destroyed by fire but immediately rebuilt. Aside from painting and other minor repairs, the Chapel had never undergone a renovation until 2004.
Recognizing the Chapels historical significance to the University and local community, a University Chapel Renovation Committee was formed. Through a gift to the University, the Chapels sweeping overhangs and steep sloped roof were refurbished and a replica of the original onion-shaped steeple was installed. Entry doors and windows were replaced, new stained glass was installed in the transom above the front door, and exterior surfaces were cleaned and painted to return them to original condition.
The interior of the Chapel was renovated to create a sacristy at the back of the chapel and six simulated stained glass windows with backlighting were installed to provide soft lighting for the chapel interior. The Chapel floor was raised and carpeted and the walls and ceilings were repaired and painted. New furnishings were provided and seating was expanded to allow for up to 40 guests.
Addition informationand archival pictures are available at the Cemetery Web Site http://cemetery.nd.edu/about/
1st 01/15/2008 - (A - C)
2nd 01/27/2008 - (A - Q)
3rd 02/01/2008 - (A - Z)
Revised - 03/04/2008
Updated burials by Jim Piechorowski on 07/26/2009
Project started: Saturday, January 12, 2008
Project updated: Sunday, July 26, 2009 07:15:54 PM
Return To: Saint Joseph County, Indiana INGenWeb Site | <urn:uuid:42dc22ea-e079-493b-be02-a779a629cbef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~instjose/%20Szymarek-Ladewski%20Books/Cedar%20Grove/cedar_grove.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964532 | 999 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Initiative on the Status of Women on the UW-Green Bay Campus
The Committee was greatly challenged in attempting to assess the current status of women on the UW-Green Bay campus due to the lack of pertinent and current data. In many cases, gender specific data relating to students, staff, and faculty were non-existent. In other cases, data could be found in raw form.
What is the current status of UW-Green Bay students? The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay provides quality post-secondary education to a wide range of students. The UW System and UW-Green Bay are committed to offering educational opportunities that work to "improve the human condition." One element of the Core Mission is directed at serving the "needs of women, minorities, economically disadvantaged, disabled and non-traditional students."
Women are appropriately recruited in UW-Green Bay pre-college programs. The Regional Center for Math and Science and Upward Bound pre-college programs have been successful in attracting and serving high school females in math and science programs. The programs accommodate all students equally and faculty is diverse.
Women have consistently comprised more than half (60%) of the UW-Green
Bay student body, however, enrollment of non-traditional women students
has dropped a full 10% since 1990 (Figure 1. Fall
Enrollments). Once in the system, there is poor retention of students
interested in Education and Social Work, programs that attract high
numbers of women students.
UW-Green Bay offers limited options to acquire a degree by attending only evening and weekend classes or through Internet courses. The only major that is currently awarded through a combination of Saturday classes, audio tapes and Internet courses is the Interdisciplinary Studies major through the Extended Degree program.
Analysis of student grades revealed that in a number of general education courses male students perform significantly higher than female students. In at least six courses, male students received a full letter grade higher than female students.
The UW-Green Bay Education program has a history of turning away qualified students who meet all the requirements for enrollment in the program due to program enrollment caps. Historically, Education has attracted a high number of female applicants and accepted a proportionally high number of female Education majors. In recent years, admissions to the program have remained stable while denied applications have risen to a high of 43 in the fall 2000 semester. While there is no documentation of the number of students UW-Green Bay has lost due to this problem, anecdotal evidence has provided numerous examples of students who have been denied entrance into UW-Green Bay's Education program and have transferred to other colleges where they were accepted into the education program. The Committee notes particular concern for women students in math and science, fields traditionally dominated by men, who are unable to gain admission to the Education program.
The interdisciplinary Women's Studies minor offers courses from multiple disciplines, however there is only one full-time faculty member in the Women's Studies minor. Most of the Women's Studies courses are at the mercy of individual faculty members' home units. Women's Studies courses are lacking in consistent periodicity and are often cancelled so the home unit may offer required courses. Data indicates that other UW System schools offering a Women's Studies minor do not have the same problem.
Chairing the Women's Studies program carries a load reassignment, however, clerical services become the additional responsibility of the staff of the current chair's unit. A small budget is administered by the Women's Studies chair and is insufficient to the needs of the discipline. UW-Green Bay currently offers no classes in Gay and Lesbian Studies. The UW-Green Bay Women's Center was closed in 1995.
It appears that there are excellent opportunities for women in athletics at UW-Green Bay. The University offers additional support for both men and women athletes in the form of study tables, tutor arrangements, course selection advisement, and grade/attendance checks. Concerns have been raised regarding the facilities used for women's games on campus. The playing floor in the Phoenix Sports Center is marked for several sports, making it difficult to clearly and quickly identify boundaries, acoustics are poor, and dressing/locker rooms are inadequate.
All contents copyright ©2001 All rights reserved | <urn:uuid:6f9715d5-a819-4900-b95a-0ce1f134425a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uwgb.edu/sofas/actions/campus/Equality/system.htm | 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 | 0.960835 | 855 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Arthur C. Clarke said, 'When you've got interest, you have education'. But, if you have interest, can you educate yourself without the guidance of a teacher?
Sugata Mitra thinks that children are quite capable of educating themselves, given the right tools, without the aid of teachers, and he proves it by his hole-in-the-wall experiments. Watch him on this video talking about these experiments. Most interesting indeed. | <urn:uuid:4360f7c2-a9c3-4a7e-841e-562ec0a3ee9c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aclil2climb.blogspot.com/2010/09/are-teachers-obsolete.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964918 | 91 | 2.078125 | 2 |
APC member and partner ICT and environmental sustainability initiatives
- North America
- South and Central America
In discussions with Environmental Management Agency during the GISWatch research Ekowisa did on e-waste management, the manager showed willingness to engage with civil society organisations to do activities that will highlight e-waste issues at local level that could lead to policy changes. EKOWISA could bring gender equity and equality perspectives to enrich the process.
http://www.apeuk.org) implemented a project not specifically related on water but on global climate change. The goal of the initiative was to sensitize rural and urban communities in
Cameroon on climate change. The specific objective was to elaborate a resource kit (RK) that can be used by community radios in Cameroon for broadcasting on climate change and actions to be taken at individual and community levels to prevent it.
http://fantsuam.it46.se/S/case_study (doesn't contain many details on the above issues, though).)
Fantsuam Foundation is currently developing an Eco-Village as a model for hands-on training in permacultural practices in which ICTs are used to enhance water storage and recycling
Waste disposal is also closely linked to Water conservation in the rural communities of Nigeria. Streams are often used as places to dump domestic garbage, so regeneration of these water sources often requires community engagement and provision of more efficient and accessible waste disposal systems.
The recent flooding in several farming communities in Nigeria, due to heavy rains and weakened structures of the traditional mud houses provides an opportunity to link deforestation, garbage disposal and climate change using powerful images.
ArabDev was also a partner with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Global System of Sustainable Development (GSSD). ArabDev has conducted various research projects in Egypt and North Africa concerning environment, information technology and gender. It has high interest and commitment to a longer term programmatic approach, especially as the issue of climate change is of utmost importance for Egypt!
Arabdev and APC are currently exploring the possibility of a joint partnership re. a MENA governance programme initiative, that could be scaled to other areas later on. The objectives, in a nutshell, are to promote communication and media sharing in the region among media professionals, civil society and youth based on proper media legal issues. The programme will offer legal and media training to promote open, quality discourses based on cross cutting sectors like water, climate change, gender, and other issues of interest. It will offer media professionals, civil groups and private citizens the tools to responsibly advocate, initiate and participate in vital issues.
www.neerjaal.org. DEF is working with Barefoot College in Rajasthan. They have got grant from Department of Science and Technology, Gov of India Fund over, the DST is considering extending the project and giving next phase of funding
They are now also approaching Ministry of Rural Development for support.
The way the project works is that: they target the village level women and men in the following:
- identify sources of drinking
- collect water samples
- train them them how to do test the water using indigenously developed water testing tools to have qualitative and quantitative data
- train them in using the neerjaal system that has been developed and upload the community driven and community developed data
http://www.voicebd.org) One of the ideas to share, to build up and strengthen communities and movements, CSOs engaged in water/climate change movements through ICTs including using new forms of media. For example, using facebook communities, students engaged in using ICTs,.
Research part cane be: scoping ICTs and engagement of youth in water/climate change issues.
Although not directly related to water, that rising water levels IS an issue raised by groups and documented in the compile, that we use various "new media" / ICTs to stimulate public discussion and provide means for deeper public engagement in these issues, is a valid component within an overall strategy. http://engagemedia.org/climate-crisis/
FYI, a short video of EngageMedia's T4RA Climate Workshop in SEL 49, Jakarta. Participants included representatives from Javin, Greenpeace, Jatam, Air Putih, ProFauna and Forum Lenteng. http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/Novaruth/videos/t4ra-climate-workshop/view
APC.au directors have been involved in climate research since the late 1980's, having established the first database on climate change research in Australia (Greenhouse Action Australia). We have also assisted in the establishment of a national network of local government environment officers (CouncilNet) and a regional-wide network of environment groups and associations in Asia dealing with climate change and forestry issues (Pactok). All three projects, and many more besides, laid the foundation for networks and activities that are still active today.
Presently, apc.au is producing of a series of micro documentaries depicting the impacts on the forest communities of Sarawak, Malaysia, due to climate change and the government's proposed hydro-electric dam construction (http://wiki.apc.org.au/index.php?title=Sarawak_Gone )
Research projects apc.au has recently performed include
- Mapping of arts activity across the state of Victoria and a proposal for a multimedia documentation of models of arts practice that has an online capacity to connect to Disability Online (http://wiki.apc.org.au/index.php?title=AADProject_Mapping_Report)
- Advice on tools, design and implementation of arts and disabilities events and services database throughout Victoria (http://wiki.apc.org.au/index.php?title=AADProject_Mapping)
- Melbourne Outside the Square Web 2.0 / social networking advisory (http://wiki.apc.org.au/index.php?title=MOTS )
- Background research and onsite investigations for the African component of the Home Lands project (http://wiki.apc.org.au/index.php?title=Home_Lands_Pilot_Research )
APC.au is firmly committed to the use of ICTS to develop awareness of and facilitate action towards addressing climate and environmental issues. Our objectives include working to create a sustainable environment for society, corporations and individuals17.
http://www.alternatives.ca/rubrique163.html) During the WSF in Belem, Alternatives lunched a new Environmental Web platform called ECOmunidade (http://www.ecomunidades.net/fr) aiming at promoting new practices of social ecology contributing at developing sustainable societies in various sectors including social economy, eco-tourism, alternatives energies, urban agriculture, etc. Members of the project/network are Social org, unions, universities, etc.. based in Cuba, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela and Argentina.
The environmental situation in Mexico is still very serious. While there is legislation that regulates and establishes norms for certain environmental aspects in the country, this has been insufficient. The emissions project was initiated because of the need in Mexico for a registry of industrial pollution and management of dangerous substances—which is the objective of the PRTR. With such a registry, we could be informed of toxic emissions in the air, water and soil that affect communities. Despite the compiling of data for this registry began, the communities didn´t have access to this information. That was a very important reason to unite efforts among environmental and citizen groups and organizations to continue to work for the right to environmental information, something not frequently demanded in Mexico. We were committed to this task and we were "virtually" and concretely united.
Thus, other purpose of the "Emisiones: Espacio Virtual" project was to communicate and take actions in response to the problem of dangerous substances in Mexico. In order to fulfill this purpose, we were in constant communication with organizations and individuals involved in this type of work in order to join efforts in promoting and exercising the right to environmental information, and to take actions designed to have an impact on environmental policies in terms of the use of cleaner technologies in industrial processes and to work for environmental justice. We developed also relationships with Canada and the United States. At the end of the project, it had managed to collect important information on the experiences of organizations fighting against the use of toxic substances and clandestine storage areas and trash dumps. We had lists of toxic substances; an alternative list proposed by NGOs; information on health and toxicology, and on pesticides; news items and actions taken; and information on environmental legislation, on the right to information, and on cross-border transporting of toxic substances. Other organizations participate on an ongoing basis by sending information and coordinating joint efforts in organizing actions in favor of a healthy environment. Representatives of the project attended international environmental meetings and developed relationships with groups in the United States and Canada, especially with environmental organizations and those working with the right to information.
During two years LaNeta developed the portal "LaNeta en ambiente" (some like LaNeta in environmental issues). It was an online collection of information regarding the environmental Mexican movement from NGOs. It was a response in terms that much of the environmental information on the internet is fragmented. Unfortunately its financial support was the principal reason for not to continue. Both projects Emisiones: espacio virtual and Laneta en ambiente were developed under the direction of Olinca Marino
The general objective is to Strengthen sustainable economic development in the Central American region through the strategic incorporation of ICTs by organizations and actions taken in sustainable production and renewable energy that privilege improvement of life conditions for vulnerable populations living in poverty.
The four key areas identified were: 1.Empowering the organizations working in sustainable production and renewable energy, 2.Positioning the voices of the most vulnerable populations so that their experiences and visions are incorporated, 3.Developing markets for sustainable production and, 4.Positioning local initiatives for renewable energy.
Target Population This regional program covers 5 countries in the Central American region (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica). The final target population is marginalized and poor individuals from Central America. The target population will be reached through our partner organizations working in sustainable production and renewable energy.
Implementation HIVOS, Fundación Galileo and Cooperativa Sulá Batsú will implement the program jointly. Hivos will be in charge of the general coordination of the program, Sulá Batsú will take over the technical coordination and Fundación Galileo will oversee the technological aspects. More information (in spanish): http://www.red-des.com/
Colnodo has also been working with the National Network for Sustainable Development, an instrument for engaging Colombian stakeholders in the dissemination and implementation of Agenda 21 of the United Nations. (Please see http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/index.htm for more information about Agenda 21.) Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action for tackling climate change and environmental degradation at the local, national, and global level. Colnodo's involvement in the project is focused on developing an electronic communications network to facilitate implementation of the agenda, broadcasting the successes of the initiatives via various media, and ensuring civil society involvement in policymaking related to sustainable development.
Colnodo was selected in 1994 to be the host of the Sustainable Development Network for Colombia. Colnodo has have been involved in the usage of ICTs and sustainable development mainly through the Sustainable Development Network in Colombia (http://www.rds.org.co). The main projects developed through the SDN includes:
- Use, conservation and management of natural resources.
- Environmental management.
- Risk Reduction and Disaster Response
- Sustainability in the Production Contex
- Urban and Regional Development Environment
- Support of networks:
- Youth network.
- Environmental urban studies.
Colnodo participated to the Athens IGF in the panel Greening ICTs and The official national communication for Colombia about Climate Change.
We continue with the the refurbished telecentre project.
Last year we designed a basic computer training for CSOs in two districts of the city. The training program is called Rodantic, a name which comes from the fact that we have assembled a portable classroom (three cases) with a refurbished notebook (Pentium II) in a LTSP scheme (Linux Terminal Server Project). We have done two trainings last year and we organize another one this year. - Since June 2008, Nodo TAU designed and conducted a workshop on refurbishing and reconditioning of Computers in Santa Monica Special School (for school age children with disabilities) in the city of San Lorenzo, 27 km far from Rosario. See http://www.enredando.org.ar/noticias_desarrollo.shtml?x=52817.
In 2010, Nodo Tau will be making the first donations to some schools.
- During the year 2009, we prepared together with the Secretariat for Solidarity Economy of the Municipality of Rosario and the INTI (National Institute of Industrial Technology) a project of a WEEE recycling plant (Waste Electrical and Electronic devices) which will be managed by a cooperative.
Nodo Tau is responsible for staff training and it will provide the three persons required for technical supervision of the plant (Management Unit of the plant). The project is approved by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security. Some minor items need to be finalized and it will start running in the month of March or no later than April.
Cepes is also producing material in podcasting and video to be distributed to rural people.
CONDESAN has many years of experience working on water management issues. They have several initiatives in the Andean region looking at the issue of climate change and water, and some of them are closely linked with the intensive use of ICT. They have experience with remote sensors and hydrological monitoring in small catchment areas. They coordinate a GLORIA network (Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environment (http://www.gloria.ac.at/) initiative in the Andes (http://www.gloria.ac.at/?a=9&b=24&l=1&m=EC&n=ANT) and they have also been engaged in the development of policy support systems like AguaAndes (http://testing.policysupport.org/cgi-bin/aguaandes/start.cgi?). For the last 5 years CONDESAN has been leading the Challenge Program on Water and Food in the Andes which second phase has just started. CONDESAN is leading a research in Peru on "Building Community Resilience to the Social Dimensions of Climate Change and Improving the Equity of Adaptation through the Action Coalition Framework" with the support of the World Bank.
If you are interested to hear more about it, they will be happy to provide more information. Contact: Miguel Saravia, Executive Director, Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion, Calle Mayorazgo 217, San Borja, Lima 41, Peru firstname.lastname@example.org - http://www.condesan.org, http:// www.infoandina.org
Computer Aid is also helping metereological offices in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Uganda decentralise the analysis of climate information by providing hardware and software to rural weather stations, enabling them to conduct in-house analysis and issue forecasts and advice to local farmers and fisher-people. By decentralising analysis capacity, the accuracy of local climate data is improved and the weather stations are able to assume an enhanced social function by assisting in community preparedness against droughts, storms, and other adverse climatic events. (This work is being done in partnership with national meteorological offices in Africa as well as with the UK Metereological Office and Reading University. Please see http://www.computeraid.org for more information.)
http://rac-ro.ngo.ro/concurs) StrawberryNet also hosts the website of the Climate Action Network – Romania. (http://www.rac-ro.ngo.ro) | <urn:uuid:21eaf5fc-7bec-4d87-b03d-554646b8cb78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.apc.org/es/greenit_apc_initiatives | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922445 | 3,381 | 1.765625 | 2 |
FDA Warns Against Use of Diarrhea Drug From El Salvador
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Consumers should not use a drug product called Intestinomicina -- marketed as a treatment for infectious diarrhea and acute gastrointestinal infections -- because it contains an ingredient that can cause serious and potentially deadly problems, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns.
People who bought Intestinomicina should immediately stop taking it and consult with a health care provider, the FDA said in a safety alert issued Tuesday.
Intestinomicina, which is made in El Salvador, contains a prescription drug ingredient called chloramphenicol. Earlier this year, in July, oral forms of chloramphenicol were taken off the U.S. market due to the risk of serious health problems.
The most dangerous threat associated with oral chloramphenicol is bone marrow toxicity, which occurs when the body does not produce enough red blood cells, white blood cells and/or platelets, the FDA noted in a news release.
While some types of bone marrow toxicity are reversible, in certain rare cases it can lead to death. Those at greatest risk for serious injury or death are patients with anemia, low white or red blood cell count, or decreased blood platelets.
Intestinomicina's label also lists antibacterial ingredients including neomycin, which is an antibiotic often found in topical medications, and sulfonamides (sulfa drugs). Neomycin and sulfa drugs can cause a variety of reactions, ranging from rashes and hives to severe and life-threatening reactions, the FDA said.
In addition, Intestinomicina may interact with other medications people may be taking, the FDA pointed out in the news release.
Intestinomicina -- made by Laboratorios Lopez -- is sold in tablet and liquid form by international grocery stores in the United States that feature South and Central American specialty foods and products.
The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more about diarrhea and its treatment.
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