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I'm building a game with Unity3D. It's a Gravity Wars clone. Both player and AI turrets shoot missiles at each other (giving an Angle and a Power variables), trying not to crash missiles on planets. But here's my question: how do I make AI calculate power and angle before shooting his missile, considering a planet's gravity too?
A system like this, with multiple bodies, is going to be chaotic. I don't think that you would be able to solve an equation for it in real-time. The best you can hope is to find a solution using a genetic algorithm;
1: produce a number (e.g.100) of random solutions (angle, power pairs).
2: simulate these solutions.
3: if any of these, end up hitting the target (or coming sufficiently close), Done! otherwise continue.
4: pick best 10 solutions (ones that end up closest to the target)
5: from these 10 solution, create 10 children for each, by randomly adjusting their angle and power.
6: now you have 100 new solutions, got back to step 2
You will need to limit the number of iterations, in case there is no solution to be found, or it is taking too long to search.
Even this approach is not guaranteed to find good solution because; 1. solution might not exist 2. in a chaotic system, small changes to a solution can have a huge impact on the result
You should be able to simulate a shot, without drawing it.
Then you could say, simulate 10 shots, and then take the closest one of the 10.
Given that the trajectory of the missle is based on the inputs of
The basic (psuedo) AI steps are as follows:
You could of course just have the AI fire at random levels for both inputs, which could produce some interesting results...
How about making it realistic by not having them calculate, but starting with a guess and adjusting appropriately?
When I played Gravity Wars, this is what I did; start with a semi-random power, and adjust accordingly by an increment. Within a couple of shots, you get really close. | <urn:uuid:40d60122-7531-419a-9651-0480ecf8ee01> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/20205/calculating-missile-trajectory-around-orbits-before-shooting/20221 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951483 | 445 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Reviewed by Francesca Forrest
[This review originally appeared in Mythprint 48:2 (#343) in February 2011.]
Gott’im’s Monster is part of a cycle of stories by S. Dorman. The first triad of stories (Return to God’s House, Within Without, and In Winter) sets the scene, developing a place — the small town of Gottheim, Maine — and the people who live there. The second triad (Mystery Gottheim, Gott’im’s Monster, and Balder’s Wilderness) deepens the storytelling with the addition of mythological and metaphysical themes.
These books are self-published. I bought the first, Return to God’s House, directly from the author, and enjoyed it very much. (The author has since made the entire cycle available in one book, The God’s Cycle.) The sensitivity to character and the deft portrayal of the intense, understated drama of a rural New England town made me a loyal fan, so when the author decided to make Gott’im’s Monster available to a wider reading public, I offered to review it.
Gott’im’s Monster is a very different sort of book — rich, thought provoking, dramatic … and somewhat more difficult than Return to God’s House. There’s a hook of sorts: on one level the story is a retelling of Frankenstein, set in early nineteenth-century Maine instead of early nineteenth-century Europe and the Arctic wilderness. Certain plot details correspond: Victor Besiegt, like Victor Frankenstein, is found in the wilderness, where he has fled, half in pursuit of and half to escape his creation. As in Mary Shelley’s novel, the monster, jealous of those who enjoy his creator’s affections, commits murder. The plots are not identical, however, and the author does a remarkable job of maintaining suspense right up to the very end.
But the story is much more than a retelling. At its heart, it’s a meditation on human nature. Victor reflects on being driven to create — to plumb the mystery of life itself — and how he has failed:
“We are humans, and what humans make, that is what we need understanding of … We need understanding because we cannot even know ourselves, nor (as Descartes thought), truly, know of our existence … Oh yes, like God, man is the maker, but just about any old man can make. Perhaps fewer men can be true fathers.”
Abner Bartlett, the story’s narrator, a failed poet, is the one who finds Victor in the wilderness. Abner has several interactions with the monster, and his realizations about the monster’s nature could perhaps be applied upward to plenty of humans:
“Curiously the monster seemed possessed of a weird innocence. He was his own center and, if he had a conscience, it must certainly not be what we should call conscience … Whatever was right for him was right. Simply. If it was not right for him, it wasn’t right. His righteousness easily wore the face of innocence because he believed in his innocence. He could not do wrong. This is what he believed.”
The storytelling is enriched, but also complicated, by the fact that Abner Bartlett is telling us the tale from the vantage point of the afterlife, and the story sweeps several times into the 1980s, the present day of the other books in the overall story cycle. Asa Bartlett, Abner’s descendant, heads Gottheim’s historical association, and he shares the story of the monster with interested townspeople in the 1980s. 1980s Gottheim is oppressed by an environmental monster that is equivalent in some ways to Victor’s monster, but the significance of this fact isn’t made clear in this story. Various people from the 1980s are introduced, but readers who aren’t familiar with these characters from earlier books (likely most readers) may not be able to make much of these brief glimpses.
Not only is Abner speaking to us from the afterlife, but it is an explicitly Christian afterlife. This fact is woven into the story simply and with dignity; there’s no proselytizing here, it’s just a truth of the world of the story. It’s not particularly obtrusive (it really only comes up once or twice), but all the same, probably this book is not for those who are put off by expressions of religious conviction.
Victor and Abner’s discussions of human nature and human pride eventually lead to discussions of God’s nature. What kind of God can have created this world, wonders Victor, the tormented agnostic. “Why shouldn’t we believe God irrational also,” he demands of Abner, “if, as you believe, we are made in his image?”
That’s the sort of ruminative story this is. There are dramatic moments, but if you’re going to enjoy the book, it will be because you enjoy the evocation of the early nineteenth century (the language and storytelling feel very authentic) and reflection on philosophical and theological questions. It will be because you enjoy the direct addresses of Abner to you, the reader, sometimes in a very break-the-fourth-wall sort of way, as when he says, “But I would ask you, In what year are you holding this manuscript? In what year did it come into your hands?”
If the idea intrigues you, I heartily recommend giving it a try. You’re unlikely to find anything like it from mainstream publishers. | <urn:uuid:096cbd42-be0c-4755-899d-68c15482f02e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mythsoc.org/reviews/gottims-monster/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957144 | 1,204 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Trayvon Martin “hunted like an animal”
His mother believes that George Zimmerman was in pursuit of her son, stalking and killing him. It surely appears that way.
It also appears that the Sandord Florida police were deficient in handling the case. It appears that this is a tragedy promoted in a culture of vigilantism and racism.
This “culture” is prevalent in pockets of society throughout the nation and I think sociologists can pinpoint the circumstances, causes and effect.
“Police video of Trayvon Martin's killer the 'smoking gun,' lawyer says
Published March 28, 2012
SANFORD, Fla. – A lawyer for Trayvon Martin's parents said Wednesday new video showing the teen's killer George Zimmerman after their deadly clash, but without the head injuries he claims were inflicted upon him in the scuffle, was "the smoking gun" for those seeking to have him arrested.
The CCTV footage, released Wednesday, shows Zimmerman climbing handcuffed out of a police car and engaging with officers after he killed Martin, 17, on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla.
Not obviously visible are the broken, bloody nose and head wound that he claimed he sustained from being punched by Martin and having his head slammed into the sidewalk during their scuffle.
Zimmerman has said he shot Martin in self-defense after being attacked -- a claim backed by some witnesses, but contested by others.
Lawyer Benjamin Crump, appearing with Martin's mother Sybrina Fulton and father Tracy Martin on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" Wednesday, said the video showed "there was some kind of conspiracy to sweep Trayvon Martin's death under the rug."
Separately, he said in a statement, "This certainly doesn't look like a man who told police only an hour or so earlier he suffered a broken nose and had his head repeatedly smashed into the sidewalk.
"It only bolsters our claim that George Zimmerman was not beaten to the point that he feared for his life, as he had indicated. This armed vigilante needs to be arrested immediately for the murder of Trayvon Martin."
Reacting to comments made earlier by Zimmerman's friend Joe Oliver -- who said the 28-year-old would never be the same after the incident, was struggling to sleep, cried for days afterward and was now depressed -- Fulton said simply, "If I had killed an individual, I'd be crying too."
She added, "I believe George Zimmerman hunted my son like an animal." | <urn:uuid:89b7fb34-900a-41dc-abb6-c21654764d52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nowpublic.com/world/trayvon-martin-hunted-animal | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983373 | 508 | 1.828125 | 2 |
UN war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte has accused Croatia of failing to arrest a top war crimes suspect.
Gen Ante Gotovina is accused of war crimes against ethnic Serbs
Fugitive general Ante Gotovina is the Hague war crimes tribunal's third most wanted person.
The Croatian Foreign Ministry replied in a letter to the EU Presidency it will do its "utmost" to co-operate.
The EU has already said that if Croatia fails to hand over Gen Gotovina by 17 March, accession talks due to go ahead on that date will not take place.
Ms Del Ponte was adamant that not enough has been done by the Croatian government.
"We have information coming from a lot of directions that Gotovina is in Croatia," Ms del Ponte told a news conference in Warsaw on Thursday.
"I know, I'm sure that the Croatian government was trying to persuade Gotovina [to surrender] but they were not ready to arrest him for many reasons," she added.
"I am asking now the Croatian government to take further steps to do that."
Gen Gotovina is accused of ordering the killing of 150 ethnic Serbs and the expulsion of 150,000 in 1995.
But he is also regarded as a hero by many Croats, who would strongly oppose his arrest.
The war crimes he allegedly committed against Serbs took place during and after a Croatian army offensive against rebel Serbs in the Krajina region in 1995.
The Croatian government has vowed to do whatever it can "to pursue the resolution of Gotovina's case", the letter from the Foreign Ministry said.
It added that the arrest and handover of the former general "remains an unavoidable obligation". | <urn:uuid:8a3d1703-9b31-4e88-8aa7-5b9f0405109b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4274269.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980139 | 358 | 1.523438 | 2 |
richardoneill at earthlink.net
Sun Oct 3 11:15:31 CDT 2010
" I'm trying to gather information through web sources as to the dangers
of operating static machines ..."
Decades ago I knew a very old doctor who had, in his earlier days, used
a Wimshurst machine to power his newly invented device, an X-Ray tube.
When I met the doctor he was in his 80's or 90's. What man of medicine
from that time could resist an easy view of one's innards?
While an assistant cranked the discs the doctor positioned and held the
patent still for the exposure. (Slow film and who knows how much
radiation.) Unfortunately after many years of this the doctor lost most
of his fingers from radiation damage.
Eventually we learn - if we live long enough. Have fun with your new toy!
More information about the Tacos | <urn:uuid:3aa0bd66-f4a9-4841-9f10-a9014dafb1f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://amrad.org/pipermail/tacos/2010/008049.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954268 | 192 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Some kids vitamins accused of making false health claims, FTC issues refunds based on settlement. Photo via FTC.
Consumers of certain Disney or Marvel Hero themed children’s vitamins may be eligible for a refund if they bought kid’s vitamins that the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) found to be using deceptive marketing practices. The offer comes after a settlement was reached in 2010 with marketer NBTY Inc. and two of it’s subsidiaries. The FTC further inspected several children’s “gummies” vitamins with well known character marketing such as the Disney Princess, Winnie the Pooh, Finding Nemo, Spider Man, Cars etc., which claimed to promote “healthy brain and eye development” in children. The FTC tested the product and found that only trace amounts of DHA, the omgea-3 fatty acid in which the claims were based on, found in the vitamins. The amount of DHA was not significant enough to warrant any kind of health benefits determined the FTC.
According to an FTC press release, the marketers of the vitamins have agreed to pay out $2.1 million to the FTC as a settlement. The FTC is now disbursing those funds to consumers who believe they may have purchased these vitamins between May 1, 2008 and September 30, 2010. No proof of purchase is necessary to file a claim. The FTC is using the honor system in the settlement.
If you believe you have purchased these specific vitamins, under these false claims, you can file a claim online here or call the FTC complaint line at 1-877-FTC-HELP.
The views, opinions and information expressed in articles and blog posts published on imperfectparent.com and all subdomains are those of the authors alone. They do not represent the views or opinions of The Imperfect Parent or its staff, nor do they represent the views or opinions of any entity of, or affiliated with, Imperfect Parent. The Imperfect Parent
is designed for entertainment
purposes only and is not meant to be a substitute for medical, health,
legal, or financial advice from a professional.
of material from any of Imperfect Parent's pages without written
permission is strictly prohibited. | <urn:uuid:f3382f44-9bff-48c9-ab58-b611ff53c993> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.imperfectparent.com/topics/2012/08/16/ftc-refunds-consumers-of-certain-kinds-of-kids-vitamins/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943322 | 456 | 1.5 | 2 |
Home Secretary Theresa May announced on 23 November that the United Kingdom’s Tier 1 General Migrant visa route will close April 2011. The decision is one of many changes to immigration policy under the new coalition government. The justification is such that one-third of migrants accepted for a highly skilled visa actually end up in low-skilled work. In 2009, the UK approved my Tier 1 General Migrant visa application. It is a lengthy, difficult process aimed at drawing so-called highly skilled workers to emigrate to the UK. I have made a decent time of it so far; I am in the two-thirds percentage who have successfully found highly skilled work.
Immigration policy is an incredibly complex issue and I suspect living through an upheaval of the law will affect my own views concerning immigration in the United States. There are, of course, fundamental differences between migrants living in a country legally to those who have made a life illegally. However, the issue becomes clouded on both sides in calling for deportation or stricter rules whilst already trying to make a life for yourself in a country you aren’t a born citizen of.
It’s unsettling to see the door I walked through sealed off behind me. This isn’t the first change to the application. One month after my approval, the government set the visa skill requirements to a level I could never have applied to. I felt extraordinarily fortunate at the time — now, all the more. | <urn:uuid:0f296124-3d9c-4ccd-b7ff-7d64c2f4b7b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.withoutnations.com/tag/copy-twitter-paste-blog/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96385 | 294 | 1.632813 | 2 |
- Non-Fiction Releases
- Created on Thursday, 28 February 2013
- By Philip MacDougall
Philip MacDougall has a new book London and the Georgian Navy which is now available for pre-order in paperback. It will be released in the US on 11 June 2013 1 September 2013 and in the UK on 1 July 2013.
Georgian London was the hub of the world's largest industrial-military complex, underpinning and securing a global trading empire that was entirely dependent on the Royal Navy for its existence. Philip MacDougall explores the bureaucratic web that operated within the wider city area before giving attention to London's association with the practical aspects of supplying and manning the operational fleet and shipbuilding, repair and maintenance. His detailed geographical exploration of these areas includes a discussion of key personalities, buildings and work. The book examines significant locations as well as the importance of Londoners in the manning of ships and how the city memorialised the navy and its personnel during times of victory. A gazetteer and walking guide complete this fascinating study. | <urn:uuid:5c5c1c6c-96ac-49b6-ab89-934d25d70670> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.historicnavalfiction.com/latest-releases/non-fiction-releases/3109-london-and-the-georgian-navy-pb | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954162 | 216 | 1.742188 | 2 |
DNA dating study kills off 'Jurassic Park'
Gene half-life Reconstructing dinosaurs from ancient DNA has been dealt a blow with a new study finding genetic material can only last one million years.
An international team of researchers reached the finding after analysing DNA extracted from bones of the extinct New Zealand moa. They found that while short fragments of DNA could possibly survive up to one million years, sequences of 30 base pairs or more would only have a 'half-life' of around 158,000 years under certain conditions.
Lead author Dr Morten Allentoft from Murdoch University's Ancient DNA lab in Perth, says their results contradict earlier studies which claimed to have extracted DNA fragments several hundred base pairs long from dinosaur bones and preserved insects - claims which underpinned the storyline of the 1993 movie Jurassic Park.
"What we show here with the decay rate of DNA is that this is never going to be possible," says Allentoft.
"It may be that you can have extremely short fragments of DNA, only a few base pairs that persist for maybe a million years, maybe even longer."
Allentoff says the earlier findings may have been due to contamination with human DNA.
The latest study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, also establishes a DNA 'decay rate', which could help identify specimens likely to yield useful genetic material. It might also one day enable DNA to be used to date bones and teeth, or even be used for forensic investigation of human remains.
Allentoft says the idea was first hinted at in 1970s, but subsequent studies have failed to pin it down.
"One of the reasons is because there is so much environmental noise, different temperatures, different soil conditions in different places," he says.
The researchers overcame this hurdle by using "a lot of material from the same small area."
The moa bones were excavated from three adjacent sites within a 5 kilometre radius in North Canterbury, New Zealand.
According to Allentoft, the next step is to explore how environmental factors affect the rate of decay, which he hopes will lead to a more accurate and more comprehensive model of DNA decay. | <urn:uuid:5b132320-802d-404c-8d46-a2ea0ee89071> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/10/10/3607048.htm?topic=enviro | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954646 | 442 | 3.109375 | 3 |
A plantation is an area of trees (or sometimes other crops) planted by humans, typically grown as an even-aged monoculture for timber production, as opposed to a natural forest, where the trees are usually of diverse species and diverse ages. A plantation is not a natural ecosystem. Plantations are also sometimes known as "man-made forests" or "tree farms", though this latter term more typically refers to specialist tree nurseries which produce the seedling trees used to create plantations.
A plantation is usually made up of fast-growing trees planted either to replace already-logged forests or to substitute for their absence. Plantations differ from natural forests in several ways:
- Plantations are usually monocultures. That is, the same species of tree is planted in rows across a given area, whereas a conventional forest would contain far more diverse tree species.
- Plantations may include unconventional varieties of trees, including (in a few cases) hybrid trees and genetically modified trees. Since the primary interest in plantations is to produce wood or pulp, the types of trees found in plantations are those that are best-suited to industrial application. For example, pines, spruces and eucalyptus are popular because they grow extremely quickly and are good for furniture and timber.
- Plantations are always young forests. Typically, trees grown in plantations are harvested after 10 to 60 years, rarely up to 120 years. This means that the forests produced by plantations do not contain the type of growth, soil or wildlife typical of old-growth natural forest ecosystems. Most conspicuous is the absence of decaying dead wood, a very important part of natural forest ecosystems.
Plantations are planted by state forestry authorities (for example, the Forestry Commission in Britain) and/or the paper and wood industries and other private landowners. Christmas trees are often grown on plantations as well. In southeast Asia, rubber plantations and more recently teak plantations have replaced the forest.
Ecological impact of plantations
Critics charge that due to the vastly different nature of the ecosystem that develops around plantations, they are not a fitting substitute for old-growth forests, and the replacement of old-growth trees by plantations results in the loss of biodiversity. Plantations may also involve draining wetlands to replace mixed hardwoods that formerly predominated, with pine species.
In the Kyoto Protocol there are proposals encouraging the use of plantations to reduce carbon dioxide levels (though this idea is being challenged by some groups on the grounds that the sequestered CO2 is eventually released after harvest).
Tea plantation in Malaysia
Some farms of smaller crops other than trees may also be called plantations, particularly in historical usage. Tobacco, sugarcane, tea, cotton and coffee are examples. James Dole introduced the pineapple plantation to the island of Lanai. Before the rise of cotton in the American South, indigo and rice were plantation crops.
By convention, plantations of fruit-bearing trees are termed orchards, even if grown on scales that occupy a landscape to the horizon. Plantations of grapevines are termed vineyards.
A comparable economic structure in antiquity was the latifundia that produced commercial quantities of grain or olive oil or wine, for exportation. A hacienda ("land holding") is a self-sustaining social structure on grassland that typically raises cattle, not a plantation.
In historic times, the term "plantation" was also used of new colonies or settlements.
Plantations of people, colonisation
The word plantation may also refer to a colony, as in the history of Ireland— see Plantations of Ireland— or in the Mid-Atlantic and Southern American colonies, from Maryland southwards.
Slavery and plantations
Slave labour has manned the early plantations (such as cotton plantations) in the southern states of the USA, and in modern times low wages paid to plantation workers are an essential part of plantation profitability. Sugar plantations in the Caribbean and Brazil worked by slave labor are perhaps the best example of the plantation system at its height.
In the American South, the plantation was centered on a plantation house, the residence of the owner, where important business was conducted. The plantations engendered their own characteristic architecture: see Berkeley Plantation
In Brazil, a sugarcane plantation was termed an engenho ("engine") and a 17th-century English usage for organized colonial production was "factory". Such colonial social and economic structures are discussed at Plantation economy. | <urn:uuid:112469d0-4ec9-4c89-b3c0-dbaf207a422c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biologydaily.com/biology/Plantation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95453 | 914 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Believe it or not, there are some easy, inexpensive ways to fly faster
Another good idea is to store what weight you must carry as far aft as possible, consistent with CG limitations, of course. Any airplane will always fly faster with an aft CG because of the decrease in the download on the tail. The late Lyle Shelton, former owner of the Grumman F8F Bearcat Rare Bear, used to tell me that his airplane carried a lead weight in the tail cone to realize that last little bit of speed advantage around the pylons.
Rig is something most pilots who aren’t A&Ps can’t easily change, but it’s something you should have checked at every annual inspection. If an aileron, flap, elevator or a wing is out of rig, you can be losing several knots at cruise.
Similarly, prop balance is critical to optimum performance, and it’s not that expensive to correct. A prop that’s out of balance not only causes what seems like rough running, but inevitably hurts cruise performance. A balance job takes only a few minutes and rarely costs more than a few hundred dollars.
Still another factor that can cost you speed is open air vents. If you fly a four- to six-seat airplane with air vents in back but rarely carry more than two people, you may not know that the aft vents are open and causing minor drag. Closing the vents may not be an option on a hot day in summer, but some pilots fly oblivious to the added drag from air vents ejecting plumes of turbulent air into the relative airstream.
Metal airplanes, unlike most fabric-covered and fiberglass models, often are partially held together with screws, nuts and bolts. Many metal designs utilize wing, fuselage, landing gear and tail fairings that are held in place with standard, metal screws and/or nuts.
Again, anything that interferes with the smooth flow of air across the aircraft surface causes drag, especially at critical intersections where fairings are intended to smooth the flow. A fairing that’s loose may tend to suck outboard at speed, causing more drag than you might imagine. Accordingly, grab a creeper and roll under and around the airplane with a pair of screwdrivers and a set of open-end wrenches, tightening anything that appears loose. Landing-gear doors and the underside of the wing or belly are especially susceptible, because they’re probably inspected no more than once a year.
Finally, there’s wax. Some pilots are convinced that a good wax job can have a dramatic effect on an airplane’s cruise speed, often bragging of as much as a five-knot increase with a good wax and polish. The perception is that keeping the wetted area as slick as possible decreases drag and improves lift.
Page 2 of 3 | <urn:uuid:2298a3f8-65f2-48f4-81fc-302bb9545b84> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.planeandpilotmag.com/pilot-talk/x-country-log/artificial-speed.html?start=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950898 | 599 | 1.960938 | 2 |
Today is the 100th Day of School for my Kindergartner. A couple years ago, her brother made this cool 100th Day Shirt. My daughter decided she didn't want to wear her project, but wanted something she could carry and then hang up as a decoration. This cute butterfly collection is what we worked on together and what she took to school today.
Aren't all those butterflies pretty? Look at this closer view...
Want to know the technique we used to get all those pretty swirls of color?
Yes, with just some shaving cream and a little bit of acrylic paint, you can make this pretty marbleized paper. It's a fun and slightly messy process with really pretty results.
As you can see in the collage, you just spread some shaving cream on a tray, then add several drops of acrylic paint. Swirl the paint through the cream with a toothpick, then lay a piece of cardstock (or other heavier weight paper) face down on the swirled paint. Lift it up and the scrape off the shaving cream with a ruler. Let it dry and then you're ready to go.
You can see this post we did last year for the step-by-step details if you need them.
For our project, we used a butterfly paper punch to make our 100 pretty, swirled butterflies.
My daughter painted a piece of foamboard with blue sparkly paint, then added some swirls of a darker blue. She rejected my suggestion to paint the background a solid color blue so the butterflies would show up better because she wanted the sparkles and swirls. ("So it will look like the wind blowing!")
I helped her line up 10 different colored butterflies across the bottom and then she used glue dots to attach the rest of them in columns of 10 until all hundred butterflies were in place.
It was fun activity for us and turned out really cute. | <urn:uuid:e5a846d5-46d6-4391-8786-9b0c312bd52a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cometogetherkids.com/2012/02/100th-day-of-school-butterfly.html?showComment=1328779178305 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963991 | 389 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Delivered by our recently established Department of Chemistry, you will gain an advanced understanding of Physical, Organic and Inorganic Chemistry over the course of your degree. We offer you the opportunity to study Chemistry as a single subject or combined with elements of Evironmental Science, Biology, Natural Sciences or Engineering.You will learn in an excellent teaching environment with close links to business and industry and can also study abroad.
In your first year you will also develop Mathematics and other transferable skills. In your second year you will study modules including Spectroscopy and Bioactive Molecules. In the third year of your degree, you will complete a research project that matches your interests and choose options that place your knowledge in a real world context, selecting from other branches of Chemistry including biochemical and environmental topics.
Students on our four-year MChem programme can apply to spend their third year of study at one of our partner universities in North America. In your fourth and final year, you will carry out a major research project, working alongside our postgraduate students, while the modules on offer will enable you to explore the latest advances in Chemistry research and how these will contribute to solving some of society's biggest challenges.
Please note: the University will seek full accreditation and recognition by the Royal Society of Chemistry of our new BSc and MChem Chemistry degrees.
Detailed module information for this new undergraduate programme will follow shortly. However, if you have any questions please contact the department.
A level: AAA. To include A level or HL Chemistry (grade A) and one other science.
IB Diploma: 36 pts overall with 16 from best 3 HL subjects
Scottish Highers: AAABB
Irish Leaving Cert: Offers will be made on the basis of 5 or 6 Higher level subjects.Please contact the Undergraduate Admissions Office (01524 592028) for further information
Our Chemistry degrees open up diverse career opportunities in the public and private sectors and many graduates continue their studies by training as teachers or conducting academic or industrial research.
Graduates can also seek employment in a wide range of industries and organisations, as a chemistry degree provides you with many additional transferable skills, for example numeracy, data handling, computing and IT, evaluating written material and presenting both written and verbal reports. These skills are highly valued by employers and are required in many areas of managerial and administrative work, in business, commerce, finance, banking or the Civil Service, and many chemist move easily into occupations in these areas.
Lancaster University is dedicated to ensuring you not only gain a highly reputable degree, you also graduate with the relevant life and work based skills. We are unique in that every student is eligible to participate in The Lancaster Award which offers you the opportunity to complete key activities such as work experience, employability/career development, campus community and social development. Visit our Employability section for full details.
Teaching and Learning Methods
At Lancaster we offer a broad range of learning environments which include the traditional lecture-tutorial , interactive workshops, laboratory and practical activities, student-led seminars and web-based delivery.
The modules which make up a programme of study are assessed using a variety of different methods, enabling students to demonstrate their capabilities in a range of ways. Typical coursework assignments include laboratory reports, essays, literature reviews, short tests, poster sessions, group work assessment and oral presentations. Formal examinations include short answer questions, essays and data analysis. Students are supported in the production of final year project reports and dissertations. Details of the assessment methods for individual modules can be accessed via the university's online module catalogue.
In addition to these learning and teaching methods we encourage independent study, meaning you take responsibility for your own learning. For more information visit our Teaching Approach page.
We offer you a variety of stimulating and effective approaches to teaching, learning and assessment. This enables you and your tutors to explore the very latest thinking within your subject and develops your skills in problem solving, analysis and critical reflection, communication, application of knowledge and modern technologies.
As a University, we commit to providing all our undergraduates with a minimum number of contact hours per week, providing you with timely feedback on your work and a maximum number of 15 students per seminar group.
Lancaster University has committed £2.7m in scholarships and bursaries to help with your fees and living costs. Our financial support depends on your circumstances and how well you do in your A-levels (or equivalent academic qualifications) before starting study with us.
Lancaster University's priority is to support every student to make the most of their life and education. For students starting their study with us in 2014, over 600 each year will be entitled to bursaries and/or scholarships to help them with the cost of fees and/or living expenses. For UK students entering in 2014 we will have the following financial support available:
- An Academic Scholarship of £2,000 for the first year of study to any student from the UK entering with A*, A*, A or equivalent academic qualifications
- An Access Scholarship of £1,000 per year for all UK students from households with an income of less than £42,600 who achieve grades of A*, A, A or the equivalent academic qualifications
- A Lancaster Bursary of £1,000 per annum for all students from England with a household income of more than £25,000 but less than £42,600
- As part of the National Scholarship Programme, a £1,000 Bursary, a £1,000 Fee Waiver and a £1,000 Accommodation Discount in the first year of study, for students from England with a household income of less than £25,000. Plus a Lancaster Bursary of £1,000 in subsequent years.
*All of the financial awards above are subject to approval by the Office for Fair Access July 2013.
For full details of the University's financial support packages including eligibility criteria, please visit our fees and funding page | <urn:uuid:f4484920-eb84-4589-879b-5939b1680331> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lancs.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/chemistrynorth-america-mchem-hons-f1t7/?show=studying | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935313 | 1,229 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Farmland Values Increase 25% in Second Consecutive Year
May 22, 2012
Farmland values increased by over 20% for the second straight year in the Tenth District of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Easing drought conditions in the Tenth District and crop prices that increased in the fourth quarter of 2011 lead to increased farmer income which was in turn reinvested in farmland thus driving demand for farmland and prices higher.
Non-irrigated cropland increased by 8.0% in value throughout the first quarter of 2012 and irrigated cropland values increased 9.0% due to strong farmer demand driven by increased farmer income. Bankers in the Tenth District reported a decrease in loan volumes and interest rates while capital available to lend has been ample.
Farmland values posted the second consecutive 25% increase year-over-year in the Tenth District that includes Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wyoming, the northern half of New Mexico, and the western third of Missouri. The value of non-irrigated and irrigated cropland in the District climbed 8.0% and 9.0%, respectively, compared to fourth quarter gains of 2011. Year-over-year, non-irrigated cropland values have surged 24.7% and irrigated cropland values have increase 31.8%, the largest single year increase in the history of the 32-year old survey.
District ranchland values increased by over 7.0% in the first quarter of 2012 marking a year-over-year increase of 15.6%. One-third of bankers surveyed forecast farmland values to rise in the upcoming months while the balance of bankers feel that values will hold steady.
Nebraska lead all states in the increase of farmland values with non-irrigated farmland increasing by 38.6% compared to the first quarter of 2011. Irrigated farmland in Nebraska soared by 41.4% throughout the same time frame according to the survey. The drought of 2011 has continued to fuel irrigated farmland values as farmer demand for irrigated land continued to remain very strong.
Increased farmer income lead to strong farmer demand to purchase farmland in the first quarter of 2012. The easing drought conditions paired with rebounding crop prices at the end of 2011 generated elevated income for farmers. Often the next step farmers took was to expand operations through land acquisitions. An excellent winter wheat crop condition should continue to support elevated farmer income and farmland values.
Farm Loan Portfolio
The index of farm loan demand decreased to the lowest level since the late 1980s due to increased cash spending by farmers. In early 2011, bankers reported that of new real estate purchases, slightly over 50% were comprised of debt, but now it stands at 47%. 40% of bankers surveyed said that more funds are now available for lending compared to one year ago with the amount of collateral and interest rates both decreasing as well. The loan repayment index also increased to a new record high surpassing the previous high of 2008, a sign of strong farmer financial stability.
"Farmers are cash rich and very liquid. Demand for loans is down," noted one banker in South Central Nebraska. The 2012 first quarter interest rates averaged 6.2% for farm operating loans, and fell to 5.8% on farm real estate loans thus promoting lending opportunities.
For daily articles on farmland and agriculture, visit www.farmlandforecast.com | <urn:uuid:0f898a6c-3c3a-4cfb-8e91-d08d968e68e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.agweb.com/Farmland-Values-Increase-25-in-Second-Consecutive-Year/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95463 | 691 | 1.617188 | 2 |
The Liberty of Obedience
Elizabeth Elliot calls on us to examine more closely our own obedience to God, measuring it in terms of our experience of his freedom, grace, and love.
Paperback, 94 pages
Published April 1st 1987 by Vine Books
(first published 1968)
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These thoughts from Mrs. Elliot were born while living among the Aucas. She found things were not so simple as they seemed and she also found that she had been mistaken on many "categories" in life and living. Things were not as she thought... Elisabeth calls on us to examine more closely our obedience to God, measuring it in terms of our experience of His freedom, grace and love. Contains 4 sections: What is meant by the appearance of evil?, All things are Yours, The highest form of service, an...more
One of my favorite writers. Elliot's wisdom and grace are fully displayed in this short work that offers genuine encouragement and instruction on how to grow in obedience to the Lord. She addresses and easily avoids legalism, and focuses on the joy seeking and relational aspects of attaining to obedience and holiness.
Some thoughts on Christian conduct and service. Brief articles written while Elisabeth lived among the Aucas for a year. Titles are: What is Meant by the Appearance of Evil? All things are Yours, The Highest Form of Service, & Maturity: The Power to Discern. This year of observation and enforced silence stripped her of everything but the barest of essentials and the simplest of truths.
Good old, good old meaty stuff for a Christian wanting to walk faithfully and humbly before God. Four or five short chapters on obedience in different areas of life. Excellent chapter on service, humility, and greatness in the Kingdom.
From the Author's Web Site: My parents were missionaries in Belgium where I was born. When I was a few months old, we came to the U.S. and lived in Germantown, not far from Philadelphia, where my father became an editor of the Sunday School Times. Some of my contemporaries may remember the publication which was used by hundreds of churches for their weekly unified Sunday School teaching materials....moreMore about Elisabeth Elliot...
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“We may not say that we have the answers. Questions of how to conduct oneself as a Christian, or how to serve as a Christian, must be answered by life itself- the life of the individual in his direct responsible relationship to God. This is a dynamic, never a static thing. And how can we speak at all of the true meaning of conduct and service if we do not speak first and last of love? For it is love which sums up all other commands. The one who loves knows better than anyone else how to conduct himself, how to serve the one he loves. Love prescribes an answer in a given situation as no mere rule can do.”More quotes…
28 people liked it | <urn:uuid:51b16aaf-01b0-45a0-8ce7-4c45f7ec79ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/126175.The_Liberty_of_Obedience | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97162 | 630 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Archive/File: imt/nca/nca-06/nca-06-3505-ps Last-Modified: 1997/01/18 Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume 6 [Page 208] PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 3505-PS WALTER FUNK: A LIFE FOR THE ECONOMY [By Dr. P. Oestreich, Central Publishing House of the NSDAP, Franz Eher, succ. Munich 1941. [Pages 77-78] The either or that has arisen out of these articles was no longer binding for Funk for quite some time. It was a concession to the tradition of the Boersen Zeitung to keep itself above the parties that advocated the national idea in one form or another. It was the last concession he made in his association with the Boersen Zeitung. On 31 December 1930 he resigned and became a member of the party of Adolf Hitler. [Page 80] The Fuehrer had made up his mind already. Immediately after Funk's connection with the Boersen Zeitung on 31 December 1930 was severed, he appointed him a member of the Reich leadership of the party and chose him as his personal economic adviser. This was proof of his greatest confidence. [Page 81] It was for Funk not only a very honorable but also a very important duty to be advisor and special official to the Fuehrer and he served enthusiastically with all his power and knowledge. In 1931 he became a member of the Reichstag. The document of his activity at the time is: "Economic construction program of the NSDAP" which was formulated by him in the second half of the year 1932. It received the approval of Adolf Hitler and was declared binding for all Gau-leaders, speakers on the subject and Gau-advisers on the subject and others of the party. [Page 82] Funk at the time gave the party speakers the following fundamental sentences on their way. We have sufficient national capital in Germany. We can furthermore by working produce new capital. Therefore our people can live and develop. We can and must forego international capital and we have furthermore the duty to [Page 209] liberate the German economy from the bonds of international capital. The German agriculture and the whole German economy can only be developed through the National State. Only a Government which has the full confidence of the people can force through the necessary reconstruction of the German economy and can with ruthless consequence promote the national and socialistic principles which only the National Socialist movement of Adolf Hitler is calling its own. [Page 83] No less important than Funk's accomplishments in the programmatic field in the years 1931 and 1932, was his activity at that time as the Fuehrer's liaison man to the leading men of the German economy in industry, trade, commerce and finance. On the basis of his past work his personal relations to the German economic leaders were broad and extensive. He was now able to enlist them in the service of Adolf Hitler, and not only to answer their questions authoritatively, but to convince them and win their backing for the Party. At that time, that was terribly important work. Every success achieved meant a moral, political, and economic strengthening of the fighting force of the Party and contributed toward destroying the prejudice that National Socialism is merely a party of class hatred and class struggle. The public sees or knows very little or nothing about such activities. But the Fuehrer has made it quite evident that he was well satisfied with Walter Funk in these two years of the decisive battle before the ascendancy to power. In the most convincing form probably at the moment of victory. When he received on the historic 30th January 1933 in the evening the jubilant demonstration of the masses, standing at the window of the shortly before occupied Reich Chancellery he had in the brightly lighted windows beside him his most loyal disciples and one of them was Walter Funk who had greeted the Fuehrer together with the then Secretary of the Reich Chancellery later the Reich Minister Dr. Lammers, at the entrance to the Reich Chancellery after the historic journey from the Kaiserhof to the Reich Chancellery in the afternoon of 30th January 1933. In the late afternoon the first Cabinet Meeting took place under the Presidency of the Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler at which Funk already participated as Press Chief of the Reich Government. Since then there has not been any meeting of the Cabinet at which Walter Funk did not participate first as Press Chief and Secretary of State, later as Reich Minister. [Page 210] [Pages 90-91] The fact that Funk was appointed by the Fuehrer Press Chief of the Reich Government was not only in consideration that he was an experienced and shrewd journalist who knew the press and newspaper business extremely well. It is certain that the decision of the Fuehrer was influenced also by the consideration that he saw Funk as the man suited for the daily report to Reich President von Hindenburg. In fact, Funk has discharged this duty, especially in the first months of Adolf Hitler's government, very successfully and with merit. The veteran General Field Marshall had confidence in his East Prussian countryman from the beginning. [Page 91] Many times the Fuehrer entrusted Funk with a special task at the Reich President. [Page 92] On 13 March 1933 the press department of the Reich Government with a small personnel of approximately 30 persons was incorporated into the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, of which the propaganda leader of the party, Dr. Joseph Goebbels became Minister. Funk became his Under-Secretary. On this date there commenced a new and important part in the life of Walter Funk. His sphere of duties was multiplied even if the current importance of the position of Press Chief of the Reich Government may naturally diminish considerably behind the position of the new Minister for the press. [Page 93] For almost five years Walter Funk has been the Under- Secretary of this Ministry and naturally has decisively influenced its organization and work. In this task his singleness of purpose and his quiet considered judgment which were already proven when he built up the commerce section of the Berlin Boersen Zeitung was very useful to him. He knows how to organize without getting nervous and without making anybody nervous. But he had to accomplish besides quite a number of special duties which many times had a very strong economic colouring. In this way he became Vice President of the Reich Chamber for Culture, first member of the Senate for Culture, Chairman of the Board of the Reich Broadcasting Company, the Publicity Council of the German economy, the Film Bank, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and many other political, economic and social institutes. These [Page 211] were not only positions of honor but many times difficult and patient reconstruction work had to be done. [Page 94] a. Besides Funk had as a special duty from his Ministry received the task to take care of the cultural life. In this position he organized quietly a tremendous concern which represented an investment of many hundreds of millions. In close co-operation with the Reich Leader of the press, Max Amann, the economic fundamentals of the German press were reconstructed according to the political necessities. The same took place in the film industry and in other cultural fields. The very harmonious co-operation between the Minister Dr. Goebbels and his Under-Secretary which lasted almost five years, became visible before all the world in the success of the Ministry of which the influence and sphere of work grew from year to year. [Page 106] The change from the peace economy to war economy which Funk had to accomplish in his capacity as Plenipotentiary for the Economy took place almost without a hitch. The methods of directing the economy which have proven so successful already during the last years of peace now proved themselves also in the war economy. [Page 106] The third task which was put up to the Reichsbank President Funk was accomplished through the new law concerning the Reichsbank of 15 June 1939. [Page 110] Adolf Hitler has done away with this Dawes Constitution by degrees the same as with many other shameful regulations of the enemies. He made the final decision when he gave the order to Reichsbank President Funk to organize the Reichsbank in accordance with the National Socialist principles. He should continue the process that was commenced already by a law in 1937 of changing the status of the Reichsbank under the Dawes Plan as an institution which was partly excluded from the sovereignty of the German Reich to an institution which was completely and unconditionally under the sovereignty of the German Reich. The draft which Funk transmitted to the Fuehrer was made a law by him on 15 June 1939. [Page 212] [Page 111] As one can see the new Reichsbank law has fully reconstituted the German sovereignty over the Reichsbank. But it has done another very important thing. It has done away with gold and gilt edged foreign exchange in its governing position concerning the question of covering the currency circulation. Gold must not be any more the decisive part of the cover which automatically governs the amount of the lawful circulation of notes but it can be used by the bank as a means to cover and there should be kept a certain amount for the regulation of the currency exchange with foreign countries and for the consolidation of the currency. Gold, therefore, is according to the new German Reichsbank law formally what it already was for a long time in fact, that is, the international means of clearing. For the internal use of the countries over the whole world it is hardly employed to any worth while extent. Paper money has taken its place but in Germany the State determines the value of the money and not international powers.
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Home · Site Map · What's New? · Search Nizkor | <urn:uuid:c91614f5-3faa-4fb1-9d2e-a602b2942fdf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/imt/nca/nca-06/ftp.cgi?imt/nca/nca-06/nca-06-3505-ps | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978834 | 2,005 | 1.867188 | 2 |
256 Leucoptera spartifoliella
(Hübner, 1813)Wingspan 7-9 mm.
A tiny, whitish moth which is widespread and common throughout the whole of Britain, but local in Ireland.
The larvae feed under the bark of twigs of broom (Cytisus scoparius). The mines are very hard to detect, but in late spring, the small white pupal cocoons are easy to spot among the dark stems.
The adults fly during June and July. | <urn:uuid:14857eac-2efb-499f-bdf0-38e639a64e5d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ukmoths.org.uk/show.php?id=3433 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956627 | 110 | 2.6875 | 3 |
CNN Touts Slam of '80s 'Mythology' Promoting 'Militarism,' 'Greed'
Jay Kernis, senior producer of CNN's In the Arena program, promoted liberal writer David Sirota's thesis that "the mythology of the 1980s still defines our thinking on everything from militarism, to greed, to race relations." Sirota bashed 80s cultural touchstones such as The A Team and Ghostbusters for being "hideously militaristic" and the "ugliness of [their] anti-government message."
Kernis interviewed the Huffington Post contributor about his new book, "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now—Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything" in an item on his program's blog on CNN.com on Monday. The producer first asked about the writer's hypothesis that "the political and cultural references from the 1980s have not only become cool again, but may be a way to explain our present-day issues and conflicts, and even influencing our thinking today."
Sirota, who once attacked Glenn Beck as a "right wing political terrorist" and labeled opponents of President Obama "a bunch of psychopaths," cited an apparent connection with the current Tea Party movement:
Consider, for instance, the Tea Party – a revival of what the New York Times called "modern Boston Tea Party" revolts against taxes on the eve of the 1980s. Notably, today's iteration of this uprising regularly laces its rhetoric with revivalist paeans to the Eisenhower Era. Summarizing the sentiment, one Tea Partier said: "Things we had in the fifties were better."
This rhetoric has resonated because for many, it no longer stirs memories of the actual 1950s of Jim Crow laws, gender inequality and religious bigotry. Instead, it evokes the sanitized idea of "The Fifties" that was originally created in the 1980s through movies like Back to the Future, Stand By Me and Hoosiers, television shows like Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, and rockabilly greaser bands like the Stray Cats.
Same thing for the Tea Party's use of red-baiting language that suggests the individual is more important than the common good. Though the Cold War ended years ago and though Ayn Rand is long dead, the bromides elicit Red Dawn fears and Michael Jordan dreams from a generation that grew up being taught to see ourselves as both Soviet-oppressed Wolverines and the next superstars singularly soaring to MVP awards – as long as we will ourselves to just do it.
One glaring weakness in his cultural examples is the fact that Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley are not 80s programs. They began in the mid-1970s and were past their prime when they ended their runs in the early 80s (the famous phrase "jump the shark" comes from a later-season Happy Days episode). Also, Sirota would have us believe that Tea Partiers regularly harken back to 50s (which, of course, he cast in the worst light possible) based on an extrapolation from his one anecdote.
The Huffington Post writer then held up Michael J. Fox and his characters in Back to the Future and Family Ties as influences: "Those two characters perfectly represent exactly how the 1980s was revising and reimagining contemporary American history on ideological lines. Think about it: Marty McFly was a suburban teen fleeing the cartoonized dangers of modern life...into an idyllic Fifties of unity and safety. Alex P. Keaton, by contrast, spends his life lambasting his parents Sixties idealism." However, as the MRC's recent report "Rewriting Reagan" pointed out, Family Ties actually worked in anti-Reagan jokes into the dialogue.
In the process of singling out Fox, Sirota returned to his 50s talking point:
This "Back to the Future"-versus-"Family Ties" war between the 1980s version of "The Fifties" (supposedly 100% unified, universally happy, optimistic, safe, etc.) and the 1980s version of "The Sixties" (supposedly 100% violent, chaotic, overly idealistic, etc.) defines our politics today.
We are, for instance, supposed to forget that America in the actual 1950s was basically an apartheid state, and also had a 90% top tax bracket. Likewise, we are supposed to forget that the 1960s saw great progress on civil rights and that liberals in the 1960s ultimately helped end the Vietnam War.
The dominant political narrative today – whether through the Tea Party or through criticisms of President Obama as a supposed "socialist" – tells us that if we only go back to "The Fifties" (ie. the 1980s-revised memory of the 1950s) and shun "The Sixties" (ie. the 1980s-revised memories of the 1960s) then our problems will be solved. It's the replay of a bad 1980s movie – but it keeps playing.
When Kernis asked about the journalist's thesis about The A-Team's supposed influence on "how a generation views our government," the left-of-center narrative reached a new level:
It's one of the single-most anti-government parables of the modern age. From the beginning, we are told that the government wrongly accused and incarcerated these heroes; that the government is too inept to keep them incarcerated; that the A-Team is solving societal problems that the government refuses to solve; that the average person can find the A-Team but that the government can't; and that the government is actually trying to stop the A-Team from its good samaritan work.
Sounds familiar, right? Of course it does – this is the way government is framed in the 21st century. We're constantly told the government is either inept, evil, or both – and that the only way to solve problems is to either "go rogue" or hire a private contractor to fix the problem. That was the theme of not only the A-Team, but the entire "vigilante" genre of similar '80s productions like The Dukes of Hazzard, Ghostbusters, Die Hard and all the cheesy private detective shows. Their message was simple: You can’t rely on government, you must instead rely on the private corporation.
Sirota returned to these productions' apparent "anti-government" themes when the CNN producer asked what was the writer's "most embarassing 1980s guilty pleasure."
Probably that as much as I've realized the really pernicious messages of 1980s pop culture, I still nonetheless love a lot of it. For instance, I can see the ugliness of the anti-government message embedded in Ghost Busters [sic], but it remains one of my favorite movies – a film I watch over and over again and enjoy on Saturday nights whenever it reruns on cable.
Same thing for video games – as hideously militaristic as Atari's Combat and Missile Command were, I still love playing them on my old Atari, just like I now love playing Halo on my Xbox. In short, as much as I now see the problems of my propagandized youth, I still cling to that youth in a lot of ways. Maybe that's the definition – and power – of that ethereal thing we commonly call "nostalgia."
It's enough to make one cry out a catchphrase of one of the stars of The A Team: "I pity the fool."
Earlier in the interview, Kernis asked, "What is the main lesson Barack Obama should learn from what happened in the 1980s?" The Huffington Post contributor critiqued the President from the left as he revealed a central thesis from his book (played up by CNN in the title of their item):
The...lesson which I don't think he appreciates is the idea that in order for him to be the transformational president he says he wants to be, he's going to need to introduce genuinely new narratives and storylines, rather than simply trying to tweak the current ones that endure from the 1980s.
This is a key point of my book: The mythology of the 1980s still defines our thinking on everything from militarism, to greed, to race relations. If he is going to really change the country in a way he himself said he aspires to, he cannot simply accommodate or play within those fundamentally 1980s narratives. He has to offer up whole new storylines that say, for instance, unquestioned militarism is problematic, that greed is not good and that non-whites do not have to "transcend" their race/ethnicity in order to be valuable people in our society.
To date, Obama (like most politicians) has not done that – he has not offered up a fundamentally different analysis than the one that came out of the 1980s. | <urn:uuid:e92e24ec-253b-41af-952b-3629528fa617> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-balan/2011/03/14/cnn-touts-slam-80s-mythology-promoting-militarism-greed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966789 | 1,850 | 1.765625 | 2 |
One of the most indispensable organs in the body for blood circulation is the organ that is the carrier of oxygen, the lungs. Before a component of blood is pumped out of the heart to the body, it has to acquire oxygen from the lungs which is critical for every cell in the body to function. Blood from the head and arms enter the heart through the right auricle from the upper ( superior) vena cava . Blood from the trunk and legs enter the heart from the lower ( inferior) vena cava . The blood flow restricted by a valve is channeled to the right ventricle . It is then conveyed to the lungs via the pulmonary (pertaining to the lungs) artery (it is called an artery because it leads away from the heart) to obtain oxygen.
Having obtained oxygen in the lungs, blood is brought back to the left auricle through two pulmonary veins . (They are called veins because they lead to the heart).
After that it is pumped through the aorta to be dispersed to all segments of the body.
For Further information on the lungs go to the Respiratory System Page.
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The human body contains about 9.5 pints, 4.5 liters, 6 quarts of blood . This blood that circulates throughout the body is a sort of liquefied tissue of which about 80% is water. It is the medium through which the entire body is nourished and supported carrying nutrient molecules from digested foods, as well as carrying away harmful waste products such as carbon dioxide. It circulates the needed oxygen from the lungs. It also picks up hormones and uses custom distribution to deliver chemical messages to the organs it comes into contact with. As other organs interact with the blood it is in a constant flux of updating and extending its chemical composition. However, certain basic components can be identified in the blood despite its changing composition.
If blood is extracted from the body and it is left to sit for a period of time in a testube, it will divide into a transparent watery liquid with a yellowish hue on top and a dark red solid looking clump on the bottom.The watery liquid part is called plasma and makes up about 55 percent of the volume of blood. Plasma is over 90% water and enables our blood to navigate fast moving substances in solution and slow moving thicker substances in suspension. The majority of the contents of plasm except water is salt, proteins, and sugars or oxygen,wich has escaped red blood cells.
Platelets are very tiny vital blood components lacking nuclei and are one fourth of the size of red blood cells. As a matter of fact, platelets are not blood cells at all. Platelets travel with the blood and assist to prevent the organism from bleeding to death if it experiences even the smallest of wounds. They activates some of the first biochemical processes needed to clot blood. The change of blood from a fluid to a solid is called clotting .
Red blood Cells (erythrocytes) red corpuscles
These cells number in the trillions and are the greatest number of blood cells in the body. They carry oxygen, the most important substance needed by cells in the body, from the lungs. Red blood cells are produced in the in the red bone marrow ( tissues within the ends of the bone that replaces and produces the red blood cells and is the manufacturing site of white blood cells) of the interior of bones. As they mature, they lose their nuclei and become less like a cell and therefore their name changes to red corpuscles or erythrocytes . Because they have no nucleus, their life span is decreased to about 120 days (four months). As they die, the red marrow replaces them in enormous numbers at a rate of about a million a minute.The liver and spleen are also sites for red blood cell production.
Hemoglobin is a complex iron protein substance. It is the component of red blood cells which gives red blood cells their special oxygen carrying proficiency as well as their color. Although other substances in the body such as water and plasma can also carry oxygen, hemoglobin is unique in its oxygen carrying capacity because it increases by more than 50 times the quantity of oxygen it can carry.
White blood Cells (leukocytes) white corpuscles
White blood cells are diverse in shapes and sizes. Although they may be larger in size and rounder than the red blood cells, they are far less in number- a ratio of about 1:700. Unlike red corpuscles, white corpuscles or leukocytes have their nuclei. White blood cells are comprised of lymphocytes (white blood cells with round nuclei which are accountable for producing protective antibodies, agents responsible for immunity to an infectious disease), monocytes (white blood cells with ovoid or kidney shaped nuclei containing chromatin which carries DNA material), and granulocytes (white blood cells with band shaped nuclei containing granules).
All of the components of the white blood cells work to safeguard the body against sickness and combat infection as they increase in number when the body is under an infectious attack. Pus , a bevy of neutralized foreign bacteria and dead white cells, litter the area where the battle took place.The white blood cells can be compared to a computer virus program that identifies, seeks out, and increases in efficiency as it works to eliminate non-native culprits in your computer system that may slow down or destroy important files and documents. It carries its own utilities pack which allows for simple diagnosis and repairs. Defective cells are replaced without having to completely shut down or interrupt the system.This replacement of white blood cells can take place in a number of locations in the body: in the lymph nodes, in the intestinal tract , and in the spleen .
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Blood vessels are part of a closed extensive network of narrow elastic passageways whose main function is to circulate blood to all the far out places of the body. Without this wiring system of finger thick to microscopically slender cables and connectors of some 70,000 miles of blood vessels the blood would not be able to acquire and accumulate essentials for the nourishment and health of the entire body. There are two kinds of blood vessels: arterial arteries (carry blood away from the heart) and venous veins (carry blood toward the heart to be repumped).
Capillaries are minute blood vessels that allow oxygen and nutrients to traverse through their walls to all the body cells. The walls of the capillaries act as a semipermeable (authorizing passage only of certain molecules) membrane for the interchange of various substances between the blood and tissue fluid. They carry blood between the smallest arteries (arterioles ) and the smallest veins (venules ). Capillaries are so small
The tissue of arteries are tough on the outside, muscular in the middle, and smooth on the inside. Blood arrives at the heart muscles through two coronary (pertaining to the heart) arteries winding around the heart and that are about as wide as drinking straws. These arteries branch out from the aorta delivering freshly oxygenated blood to the right and left sides of the heart. The coronary arteries have been called the arteries of sudden death since a blood clot in their tubes can lead to a fatal heart attack.The aorta is the largest artery emerging from the left ventricle. It is the primary artery from which the arterial system wends. The aorta branches off into over 250 different named arteries dispersed throughout each part of the body- to name a few places, wrist, hand, testes, muscles of the neck, spinal cord, brain, stomach, scalp, and middle ear walls. Arteries are blood vessels in which blood flows away from the heart conveying oxygenated blood (blood with oxygen). The arteries experience continuing branching and decreasing of size, some with and some without channels connecting with other arteries. As they undergo this progressive branching and decrease in size they become know as arterioles (the microscopic arterial branch). When oxygenated blood reaches the arterioles, the capillaries begin their specialty.
Veins (Venae Cavae/Venules)
The two venae cavae are the largest veins in the body and are the veins which carry the deoxygenated blood to the right side of the heart.The tissues of the veins are thinner, less flexible, and less muscular than the arteries.They are the counterpart of the arteries. Like the arteries there are also over 250 different named veins dispersed throughout each part of the body - to name a few places, eyeball, lung, ankle, eyelid, foot, toe, and nose. Veins are blood vessels in which blood flows toward the heart conveying deoxygenated blood (blood that has given up most of its oxygen). At the transition site where arterial blood has flowed through the capillaries and has become venous blood, the returning deoxygenated blood moves through venules (the smallest vessels that collect blood from the capillary and join to form veins). As venules successively increase in size they become veins and move blood back to the heart where it will be begn its never ending pumping cycle.
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The heart is a core playing member of the circulatory network and can be described as a small 9 ounce or 30 gram cavernous fist sized intertwining muscle located behind the breastbone and centered perpendicular to the midline of the chest. Through its pumping action it helps to circulate blood through the body.The heart must be unceasingly supplied with rich fresh oxygen and used blood must be returned to the lungs for reoxygenation. It has a right and left side partitioned by a sinewy wall of muscle called a septum . Each side has two chambers. A healthy circulation depends to a large extent on the pipelines through which the blood and its components flow.Therefore to meet its need for fresh blood, the heart has its own circulation network, consisting of arteries and veins .
The upper chamber of the heart has two auricles , the right auricle and the left auricle. The auricles serve as a holding cache for blood that enters the heart. When the blood enters the right auricle, a valve closes after right auricle is full. Then, through a kind of trapdoor valve, blood is released from the right auricle into the right ventricle. When the right ventricle is full, and its outlet valve opens, the heart as a whole contracts-that is it pumps. When inundated with blood the left auricle propels its contents into the left ventricle. A valve closes between the left auricle and ventricle, and the heart pumps.
The lower chamber of the heart has two ventricles , the right ventricle and the left ventricle. The left ventricle has the responsibility of pumping blood to the entire body and therefore is somewhat bigger and more muscular than the right ventricle. It has an opening that blood flows through to the aorta (the central artery where blood circulation originates throughout the body).
Blood Pressure (Heartbeat)
On average, without strenuous exercise, the heart beats 72 times a minute for adults. Electrical waves pulsate through the heart causing the opening and closing of valves and muscular contractions of the ventricles. Each heartbeat has two main phases. Both auricles (atria) contract at the same time, forcing and squeezing out blood into the ventricles.This period of contraction is called systole.Then both ventricles contract (while the auricles relaxes and refill with blood) forcing and squeezing blood into the aorta.This period of relaxation is called diastole.
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|Welcome Page||Digestive System||Circulatory System|
|Immune System||Muscular System||Nervous System|
|Reproductive System||Respiratory System||Skeletal and Joints System| | <urn:uuid:e64530a9-2289-43e3-8afc-67cc03498a43> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://library.thinkquest.org/2935/Natures_Best/Nat_Best_High_Level/Circulatory_Net_Pages/Circulatory_page.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933826 | 2,461 | 3.796875 | 4 |
The United Nations Security Council on Friday voted unanimously to extend the mandate of a panel of experts on Sudan sanctions for another year.
The 15-member council determined the situation in Sudan continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security in the region.
The Sudanese government has been fighting rebels in the western Darfur region. The United Nations says more than 300,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
The Security Council resolution demands that all parties to the conflict exercise restraint and cease military action of all kind, including aerial bombardments. The resolution also expresses concern over what it terms obstacles that inhibit work of panel experts, which include delays in the issuance of visas and travel permits, restrictions to freedom of movement of panel experts and The United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force that has been deployed in Darfur since 2008.
Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman, reaffirmed what he called Sudan’s determination and intention to put an end to the conflict in Darfur. He called on the Security Council to pressure rebel groups that are refusing to negotiate.
Speaking via translator, he took exception to the resolution’s criticism of obstacles imposed on work by the panel of experts.
"This kind of wording copied from other resolutions undermines the council’s credibility and it undermines the action of the experts and the work of the commission," he said. "And I recall well that we did grant visas to experts in under 24 hours."
Regarding the council’s reference to aerial bombardments, Ali Osman described them as a thing of the past.
Last week, Amnesty International reported that weapons from Russia and China are being used by Sudan’s government to commit serious human rights violations against civilians.
According to the rights organization, China and Russia are selling arms to the Government of Sudan with full knowledge that many of them are likely to end up being used to commit human rights violations in Darfur. | <urn:uuid:227872eb-af9c-407c-aed8-c12b0af29484> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.voanews.com/content/united-nations-vote-to-extend-sudan-panel-139535418/152212.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955667 | 407 | 2.25 | 2 |
|What the Bible Really Says About Sex|
New scholarship on the Good Book’s naughty bits and how it deals with adultery, divorce, and same-sex love.
by Lisa MillerFebruary 06, 2011
The poem describes two young lovers aching with desire. The obsession is mutual, carnal, complete. The man lingers over his lover’s eyes and hair, on her teeth, lips, temples, neck, and breasts, until he arrives at “the mount of myrrh.” He rhapsodizes. “All of you is beautiful, my love,” he says. “There is no flaw in you.”
The girl returns his lust with lust. “My lover thrust his hand through the hole,” she says, “and my insides groaned because of him.”
This ode to sexual consummation can be found in—of all places—the Bible. It is the Song of Solomon, a poem whose origins likely reach back to the pagan love songs of Egypt more than 1,200 years before the birth of Jesus. Biblical interpreters have endeavored through the millennia to temper its heat by arguing that it means more than it appears to mean. It’s about God’s love for Israel, they have said; or, it’s about Jesus’ love for the church. But whatever other layers it may contain, the Song is on its face an ancient piece of erotica, a celebration of the fulfillment of sexual desire.
What does the Bible really say about sex? Two new books written by university scholars for a popular audience try to answer this question. Infuriated by the dominance in the public sphere of conservative Christians who insist that the Bible incontrovertibly supports sex within the constraints of “traditional marriage,” these authors attempt to prove otherwise. Jennifer Wright Knust and Michael Coogan mine the Bible for its earthiest and most inexplicable tales about sex—Jephthah, who sacrifices his virgin daughter to God; Naomi and Ruth, who vow to love one another until death—to show that the Bible’s teachings on sex are not as coherent as the religious right would have people believe. In Knust’s reading, the Song of Solomon is a paean to unmarried sex, outside the conventions of family and community. “I’m tired,” writes Knust in Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire, “of watching those who are supposed to care about the Bible reduce its stories and teachings to slogans.” Her book comes out this month. Coogan’s book God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says was released last fall.
Conservative critics say that coherence is precisely what the Bible offers on sex. Reading it in the context of the Christian tradition, and with an awareness that the text is “divinely inspired”—that is, given to people directly by God—a believer can come to only one conclusion on questions of sex and marriage. “Sexual intimacy outside of a public, lifelong commitment between a man and woman is not in accordance with God’s creating or redeeming purposes,” explains Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. Liberals may wish the Bible were more permissive on sex, conservative religious scholars say, but it’s not.
These battles over the “right” interpretation are, of course, as old as the Bible itself. In today’s culture wars, the Bible—specifically a “one man, one woman” argument from the Book of Genesis—is employed by the Christian right to oppose gay marriage. This fight, as well as those over the efficacy of abstinence-education schools and intra-denominational squabbles over the proper role of women in church-leadership roles, have led many Americans (two thirds of whom rarely read the Bible) to believe that the Good Book doesn’t speak for them. Knust, a religion professor at Boston University, is also an ordained minister in the American Baptist denomination. Coogan, director of publications at Harvard University’s Semitic Museum, once trained as a Jesuit priest. With their books, they hope to steal the conversation about sex and the Bible back from the religious right. “The Bible doesn’t have to be an invader, conquering bodies and wills with its pronouncements and demands,” Knust writes. “It can also be a partner in the complicated dance of figuring out what it means to live in bodies that are filled with longing.” Here, in summary, are the arguments:
The Bible is an ancient text, inapplicable in its particulars to the modern world.
In the Bible, “traditional marriage” doesn’t exist. Abraham fathers children with Sarah and his servant Hagar. Jacob marries Rachel and her sister Leah, as well as their servants Bilhah and Zilpah. Jesus was celibate, as was Paul.
Husbands, in essence, owned their wives, and fathers owned their daughters, too. A girl’s virginity was her father’s to protect—and to relinquish at any whim. Thus Lot offers his two virgin daughters to the angry mob that surrounds his house in Sodom. Deuteronomy proposes death for female adulterers, and Paul suggests “women should be silent in churches” (a rationale among some conservative denominations for barring women from the pulpit).
The Bible contains a “pervasive patriarchal bias,” Coogan writes. Better to elide the specifics and read the Bible for its teachings on love, compassion, and forgiveness. Taken as a whole, “the Bible can be understood as the record of the beginning of a continuous movement toward the goal of full freedom and equality for all persons.”
Sex in the Bible is sometimes hidden.
Those who follow the gay-marriage debate are likely familiar with certain bits of Scripture. Two verses, from Leviticus, describe sex between men as “an abomination” (in the King James translation). Another, from Romans, condemns men who are “inflamed with lust for one another.” But as Coogan quips, “there is sex in the Bible on every page, if you just know where to look.” A full understanding of biblical teachings on sex requires a trained eye.
When biblical authors wanted to talk about genitals, they sometimes talked about “hands,” as in the Song of Solomon, and sometimes about “feet.” Coogan cites one passage in which a baby is born “between a mother’s feet”; and another, in which the prophet Isaiah promises that a punitive God will shave the hair from the Israelites’ heads, chins, and “feet.” When, in the Old Testament, Ruth anoints herself and lies down after dark next to Boaz—the man she hopes to make her husband—she “uncovers his feet.” A startled Boaz awakes. “Who are you?” he asks. Ruth identifies herself and spends the night “at his feet.”
From this, Coogan makes a rather sensationalistic exegetical move. When he is teaching to college students, he writes, someone inevitably asks about the scene in Luke, in which a woman kisses and washes Jesus’ feet—and then dries them with her hair. Is that author speaking about “feet”? Or feet? “As both modern and ancient elaborations suggest,” Coogan writes, “sexual innuendo may be present.” Scholars agree that in this case, a foot was probably just a foot.
That which is forbidden is also allowed.
The Bible is stern and judgmental on sex. It forbids prostitution, adultery, premarital sex for women, and homosexuality. But exceptions exist in every case, Knust points out. Tamar, a widow without children, poses as a whore and solicits her own father-in-law—so that he could “come into” her. Her desire to ameliorate her childlessness trumps the prohibition against prostitution. Knust also argues—provocatively—that King David “enjoyed sexual satisfaction” with his soulmate, Jonathan. “Your love to me was wonderful,” laments David at Jonathan’s death, “passing the love of women.”
Divorce is permitted in the Old Testament—but it’s forbidden in the Gospels. Jesus didn’t like it: that much is clear. “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery,” he says in the Gospel of Mark. But in Matthew’s telling, Jesus softens his position slightly and leaves a loophole for the husbands of unfaithful wives. “When it comes to sex, the Bible is often divided against itself,” writes Knust.
Accepted interpretations are sometimes wrong.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is, as everyone knows, a story of God’s judgment against homosexuality, promiscuity, and other kinds of illicit sex. Except, Knust argues, it’s not. It’s a story about the danger of having sex with angels. In the biblical world, people believed in angels, and they feared them, for sex with angels led inevitably to death and destruction. In the Noah story, God sends the flood to exterminate the offspring of “the daughters of man” (human women) and “the sons of God” (angels, in some interpretations). Non-canonical Jewish texts tell of angels, called Watchers, who descend to earth and impregnate human women, who produce monstrous children—thus inciting God’s terrible vengeance. God razes Sodom not because its male inhabitants are having sex with each other, as so many contemporary ministers preach, Knust argues, but in part because the men of the town intended to rape angels of God who were sheltered in Lot’s house. And when the Apostle Paul tells women to keep their heads covered in church, he’s issuing a warning against inciting angelic lust: “The angels might be watching,” Knust writes.
Coogan and Knust are hardly the first scholars to offer alternative readings of the Bible’s teachings on sex. What sets them apart is their populism. With provocative titles and mainstream publishing houses, they obviously hope to sell books. But their greater cause is a fight against “official” interpretations. Knust, who was raised in a conservative Christian home, recalls with intensity reading the Bible on the couch with her mother, and—with a mixture of faith and skepticism—talking aloud about what it might mean. With her book, she encourages readers to do the same.
A person alone on her couch with Scripture can also come to some dangerous conclusions: the Bible has, at certain times in history, been read to support slavery, wife-beating, kidnapping, child abuse, racism, and polygamy. That’s why Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, that citadel of Christian conservatism, concludes that one’s Bible reading must be overseen by the proper authorities. Just because everyone should read the Bible “doesn’t mean that everyone’s equally qualified to read it, and it doesn’t mean that the text is just to be used as a mirror for ourselves,” he says. “All kinds of heresies come from people who read the Bible and recklessly believe that they’ve understood it correctly.” As the word of God, he adds, the Bible isn’t open to the same level of interpretation as The Odyssey or The Iliad.
Yet in a democracy, even those who speak “heresies” are allowed a voice. And whether readers accept Coogan’s and Knust’s interpretations, the authors are justified in their insistence that a population so divided over questions of sex and sexual morality cannot—should not—cede the field without exploring first what the Bible actually says. The eminent Bible historian Elaine Pagels agrees. To read the Bible and reflect on it “is to realize that we have not a series of answers, but a lot of questions.” | <urn:uuid:b88478de-0b77-49d1-962d-224d7606df75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsgs.aspx?subjectid=53915&msgnum=486&batchsize=10&batchtype=Previous | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957814 | 2,641 | 2.25 | 2 |
HENRY married CAMILLA MCNEE PAYNE SMS1, daughter of LEICESTER PAYNE S and ELIZABETH MAXWEL IRVINE PAYNE S, on 3 Jan 1894 in VRYHEID, NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA. CAMILLA was born on 13 Sep 1871 in TRADESTONE, GLASGOW, SCOTLAND, EUROPE. She died on 6 Jun 1938 in JOHANNESBURG, TRANSVAAL, SOUTH AFRICA and was buried in JOHANNESBURG, TRANSVAAL, SOUTH AFRICA.
HENRY and CAMILLA had the following children:
+ 2 F i MILLICENT MAXY MAGGIE BARKER was born on 3 Jan 1895 and died on 28 Aug 1971. + 3 F ii AMY EVERLYN GERTRUDE BARKER was born on 11 Oct 1896 and died on 21 Nov 1976. 4 M iii ROBERT HENRY LEICESTER BARKER was born on 21 Oct 1898 in PIETERMARITZBURG, NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA and was christened on 30 Apr 1899 in PIETERMARITZBURG, NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA. He died on 20 Jun 1900 in KLIPRIVER, NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA and was buried in LADYSMITH, NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA. + 5 F iv NATALIE MURIEL MARY BARKER was born on 26 Feb 1901 and died on 3 Mar 1975. + 6 F v DORIS EDNA MARY BARKER was born on 12 Jul 1903 and died on 3 Jun 1938. + 7 M vi ALBERT HORACE (SONNY) BARKER was born on 26 Feb 1905 and died on 30 Dec 1955. + 8 M vii GEORGE ARCHIBALD POMEROY BARKER was born on 15 Jul 1907 and died on 16 Apr 1978. + 9 M viii ERNEST LESLIE BARKER was born on 28 Dec 1909 and died on 3 Feb 1989.
Census Records | Vital Records | Family Trees & Communities | Immigration Records | Military Records Directories & Member Lists | Family & Local Histories | Newspapers & Periodicals | Court, Land & Probate | Finding Aids | <urn:uuid:a26d4573-50dd-4848-b0b9-79f53f7da53e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bark/pafg01.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968518 | 494 | 1.515625 | 2 |
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1For the leader. Do not destroy.* A miktam of David.
2Do you indeed pronounce justice, O gods;*
do you judge fairly you children of Adam?a
3No, you freely engage in crime;
your hands dispense violence to the earth.
4The wicked have been corrupt since birth;
liars from the womb, they have gone astray.
5*Their venom is like the venom of a snake,
like that of a serpent stopping its ears,b
6So as not to hear the voice of the charmer
or the enchanter with cunning spells.
7O God, smash the teeth in their mouths;
break the fangs of these lions, LORD!c
8Make them vanish like water flowing away;d
trodden down, let them wither like grass.e
9Let them dissolve like a snail that oozes away,*
like an untimely birth that never sees the sun.f
10Suddenly, like brambles or thistles,
have the whirlwind snatch them away.g
11Then the just shall rejoice to see the vengeance
and bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.h
12Then people will say:
“Truly there is a reward for the just;
there is a God who is judge on earth!”
* [Psalm 58] A lament expressing trust in God’s power to dethrone all powers obstructing divine rule of the world. First condemned are “the gods,” the powers that were popularly imagined to control human destinies (Ps 58:2–3), then “the wicked,” the human instruments of these forces (Ps 58:4–6). The psalmist prays God to prevent them from harming the just (Ps 58:7–10). The manifestation of justice will gladden the just; they will see that their God is with them (Ps 58:11). The Psalm is less concerned with personal vengeance than with public vindication of God’s justice now.
* [58:1] Do not destroy: probably the title of the melody to which the Psalm was to be sung.
* [58:2] Gods: the Bible sometimes understands pagan gods to be lesser divine beings who are assigned by Israel’s God to rule the foreign nations. Here they are accused of injustice, permitting the human judges under their patronage to abuse the righteous, cf. Ps 82.
* [58:9] A snail that oozes away: empty shells suggested to ancients that snails melted away as they left a slimy trail.
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Find in Children's Fiction unless otherwise noted.
|The Basket Counts
by Christopher, Matt
Illustrations and poetic text describe the movement and feel of the game of basketball.
|Whales on Stilts!
by M.T. Anderson
Racing against the clock, shy middle-school student Lily and her best friends must foil the plot of her father's conniving boss to conquer the world using an army of whales.
by Gordon Korman
After a mean collector named Swindle cons him out of his most valuable baseball card, Griffin Bing must put together a band of misfits to break into Swindle's compound and recapture the card. There are many things standing in their way -- a menacing guard dog, a high-tech security system, a very secret hiding place, and their general inability to drive -- but Griffin and his team are going to get back what's rightfully his . . . even if hijinks ensue.
by M.J. Auch
After losing his hand in an accident in 1946, 6th-grader Norman uses hard work and humor to learn to live with his disability and succeed at art, baseball and other activities. | <urn:uuid:1ea5b7ba-bd12-4753-9973-e161be69ea29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://beta.neenahlibrary.org/kids/booklists/boysgrade56 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951608 | 243 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Poujade: Hitler or Pierrot?
First Postwar Mass Movement on the Right
“Poujadolf” was invented by a British cartoonist, Vicky. It will probably dog Pierre Poujade to the end of his days. The whole French left has clasped the expression to its bosom. The extreme right, which tends to sympathize with Poujade, retorted with rather strained plays on the name of Mendés-France, none of which was funny. All they did was provide more evidence of the anti-Semitic inclinations of the far right. Poujade himself only made things worse by declaring that he was neither an anti-Semite nor a xenophobe, but merely against “government by vagabonds,” and that anyone with a voice in France’s public affairs ought to be at least a third-generation French citizen.
I remember Jean-Paul Sartre, eight years ago over the radio, finding almost every feature of Hitler’s face in General de Gaulle’s— “except the forelock.” Well, there were a few more differences than that, but “fascism” and “fascist” have become terms of everyday abuse in France which people instantly hurl at the first opponent in sight. (I believe the Communists started the fashion.) Certainly Poujade is guiltless of looking like Hitler. He has an essentially healthy, somewhat chubby, open face bespeaking average intelligence and belonging to a lively homo aurignacensis, a real southern Frenchman: “one of the boys” from head to foot. His appearance is not too unlike that of the young Maurice Thorez of pre-war days, who also looked like “one of the boys.” How appearances can deceive!
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Europe’s economic woes dominate G8 gathering
CAMP DAVID, Maryland, May 19 — US President Barack Obama pledged at a Group of Eight summit today to work with Europe on a package that balances growth with debt reduction as world leaders try to prevent the worsening euro zone crisis from destabilising the global economy.
At the wooded Camp David retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, Obama and leaders from other major economic powers are seeking ways to soothe financial markets after worries about Spain’s banking problems and the risk of a Greek exit from the euro zone sent world stocks to their lowest levels this year.
A shirt-sleeved Obama opened the morning session on the global economy at a rustic lodge, promising to seek ways to restore healthy growth and jobs and address concerns in Europe.
“All of us are absolutely committed to making sure that both growth and stability, and fiscal consolidation, are part of an overall package in order to achieve the kind of prosperity for our citizens we all are looking for,” Obama said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, after an early-morning meeting with Obama, said he detected a “growing sense of urgency that action needs to be taken” on the euro zone crisis.
“Contingency plans need to be put in place and the strengthening of banks, governance, firewalls — all of those things need to take place very fast,” he told reporters.
European Union leaders seemed keen yesterday to stress that they would stand firm in protecting their banks, after news of escalating bad loans raised the spectre that rescuing Spain’s banks would crash the euro zone’s fourth largest economy.
“We will do whatever is needed to guarantee the financial stability of the euro zone,” EU President Herman Van Rompuy said.
Earlier French President Francois Hollande suggested using European funds to inject capital into Spain’s banks, which would mark a significant acceleration of EU rescue efforts.
Balancing a growth agenda with efforts to lower government debt through fiscal belt tightening is a crucial part of the G8 discussions. Obama has aligned himself with Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti and the new French president in putting more emphasis on growth.
That places pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has pushed fiscal austerity as the prime means of bringing down huge debt levels that are burdening European economies.
Voters in euro zone countries have shown frustration with that approach, ejecting the Greek government, and in France the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy was defeated by Hollande, a socialist, in the May 6 elections.
A draft of the summit communiqué shown to Reuters will stress an “imperative to create growth and jobs”.
There are signs of softening in Germany’s austerity stance.
Its largest industrial union IG Metall struck its biggest pay deal in 20 years early today. The pay increase of 4.3 per cent, more than double Germany’s inflation rate, will boost worker buying power in the euro zone’s richest nation and lift consumption — something the United States long has urged as a means to bolster overall growth throughout the world’s second largest economic region.
Also on the summit agenda are concerns about oil and food prices as well as Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and North Korea.
Speculation has grown that Obama will use an energy session at the G8 to seek support to tap emergency oil reserves before a European Union embargo of Iranian crude takes effect in July.
But with oil prices already sliding, a move by Obama to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — alone or along with other countries — could expose him to criticism that the emergency supply should only be touched in a supply crisis.
The Camp David summit kicked off four days of intensive diplomacy that will test leaders’ ability to quell unease over the threat of another financial meltdown as well as plans to wind down the unpopular war in Afghanistan.
After the Camp David talks wrap up late this afternoon, Obama will fly to his home town of Chicago where he will host a two-day NATO meeting at which the Afghanistan war will be the central topic. — Reuters | <urn:uuid:c99a1209-62d5-4444-96c7-375c042cbe5b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/world/article/europes-economic-woes-dominate-g8-gathering/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946897 | 851 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The Jeb Stuart Magruder papers from the Committee for the Re-Election of the President Collection consists of correspondence
to and from Magruder and John Mitchell, along with materials relating to individual states, voting blocs, political strategies
and day to day operations of the committee.
In late 1970, members of the Nixon administration's White House staff began planning for President Nixon's re-election campaign.
Accordingly, in the spring of 1971, Attorney General John Mitchell, who had managed the 1968 Nixon campaign, was tapped to
serve as campaign director and the nucleus of the campaign staff opened offices at 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Originally
called the Citizens Committee to Re-Elect the President, the organization, then headed by acting director Jeb Magruder (who
became deputy campaign director when Mitchell resigned from the Justice Department to take up his political duties full-time
in 1972), began planning to run a national campaign independently of the Republican National Committee.
The White House and the Citizens Committee decided to keep the fundraising and financial operations of the re-election effort
separate from the rest of the campaign apparatus. Francis Dale was named campaign chairman with a committee of eight co-chairmen,
Maurice Stans became the finance chairman, and John Mitchell formally inhabited the campaign director position in April 1972.
Under Mitchell, the committee (renamed the Committee for the Re-Election of the President) was split into three divisions:
Administration, Citizens and Political.
The Administration division of the committee consisted of the advance/tour office, the attack division, the counsel for the
committee, polling and scheduling. It also incorporated an in-house advertising agency called the November Group (as opposed
to hiring an outside company as had been the practice of campaigns) and the convention planning office. The citizens groups
focused on voter blocs such as Labor, Ethnic, Business, Veterans, and Spanish. Each group had a division leader. The political
division was split into regions with each region assigned to one political leader.
On June 17, 1972, five men, including James McCord, the committee's head of security, were arrested while breaking into the
Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Office Complex in Washington, D.C. Upon hearing of the break-in,
members of the committee staff proceeded to destroy records relating to the burglars' activities from the committee offices.
As a result of the break-in and subsequent publicity, Mitchell resigned as campaign director on June 31, 1972. Former Congressman
Clark MacGregor replaced Mitchell. Jeb Magruder retained the rank of deputy campaign director but White House personnel chief
Fred Malek officially joined as a second deputy campaign director. Malek's ascension prompted a reorganization of the committee,
with Magruder remaining in charge of Administration and Malek assuming command of the Citizens and Political divisions.
The donor gave to the U.S. government the copyrights in this material and in any other material received by the U.S. government
and maintained in a depository administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. The copyright law of the
United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material.
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A screen shot from a YouTube video shows the transport along a Chinese highway of what analysts suggest is the J-21 stealth fighter. (YouTube)
TAIPEI — Rumors, guesstimates and doctored photos are all part of the labyrinth of Chinese military blogs. Western analysts often dismiss or ignore them — but not videos.
In late June, several videos appeared on the Internet showing a fighter fuselage, wrapped in a tarp, being transported along a highway from Shenyang Aircraft Corp. (SAC) to the Chinese Flight Test Establishment, an air force test center at Xian-Yanliang Airbase, Shaanxi Province.
The configuration matches descriptions of China’s second stealth fighter, the J-21 Snowy Owl, including that of a model displayed by university students connected to SAC at the International UAV Innovation Grand Prix held in Beijing in September 2011.
The model was a twin-engine stealthy fighter with internal carriage and configured for an active electronically scanned array radar, said Richard Fisher, author of the book “China’s Military Modernization” and a fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center in Alexandria, Va.
China unveiled its first stealth fighter, the twin-engine J-20 Black Eagle, built by the Chengdu Aircraft Co. (CAC), in January 2011. CAC and SAC were in competition for a requirement for a fifth-generation fighter for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and PLA Navy (PLAN).
With the unveiling of the J-20, it was assumed CAC had won the competition.
However, the sighting of the J-21 raises questions.
“It is possible that the J-21 is still in competition with the J-20 for the PLAAF’s fifth-generation fighter role ... or the PLAAF could even wind up buying both,” said Roger Cliff, senior fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, a non-partisan Asia studies group in Arlington, Va.
Fisher believes CAC won the competition for the original fifth-generation “heavy” fighter, but said there was also a competition for a new medium-weight fifth-generation fighter.
“There have been suggestions that Shen-yang’s new fighter may not be a PLA-supported program, but instead funded by the Aviation Industries Corp. in the hopes that the PLA will buy it later,” he said.
There is also the possibility that the J-21 is a carrier-based fighter.
SAC is already building the J-15 Flying Shark for China’s carrier program, and the PLAN will need a more advanced fighter capable of penetrating hostile air defense networks. The J-15, instead, is modeled on the less-than-stealthy Russian-built Sukhoi Su-33 carrier-based fighter, and some of its avionics and equipment comes from the J-11B multirole fighter program, which is based on Russia’s Su-27 fighter.
There are also unconfirmed rumors on Chinese military blogs that the J-21 will be offered for export as the F-60, a cheaper alternative to the export-restrictive Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Cliff believes it will not be a serious competitor to the F-35. Countries that are currently buying the F-35 are U.S. allies who would not buy a Chinese fighter, he said.
“India won’t buy it. Russia won’t buy it,” Cliff said. “That pretty much leaves countries like Pakistan, Brazil, some Middle East countries, none of whom [the U.S. is] likely to sell the F-35 to anytime this decade or next.”
Cliff said he sees no interest from countries like Saudi Arabia, which have procured Chinese equipment in the past.
“Saudi Arabia has bought stuff from China in the past, and we probably would sell them F-35s, but they have agreed to a huge F-15 package,” he said. “And if they look to buy something more advanced in the future, they will probably want F-35s, not some down-market Chinese plane.”
The answer to whether the J-21 is actually a real platform could be answered soon. According to Chinese military blogs, the first flight test of the fighter is scheduled for September.
Outfitting Ships With LACMs?
The PLAAF is outfitting a test ship with a naval version of the DH-10 land attack cruise missile (LACM). Photographs on the China Defense Blog reveal missile canisters identical to the DH-10 land-based variant.
“This sort of arrangement is reminiscent to the deployment of the BGM-109 Tomahawk on United States Navy surface combatants by way of the MK-143 Armored Box Launcher,” the blog said.
“Looks to be the standard 3 x LACM box launcher plunked on a ship,” said Gary Li, an intelligence analyst for U.K.-based Exclusive Analysis. “It’s in the testing phase, but people are saying it might be put on the Type 52C destroyer. If so, it would give the PLAN a hell of a punch.”
Chinese naval ships have carried anti-ship cruise missiles for more than two decades now, but this is the first time LACMs have been outfitted on a surface ship.
The 4,000-kilometer-range DH-10 has a reported 10-meter circular error probable targeting rate. It uses a combined integrated inertial navigation system, GPS guidance, terrain contour mapping system, and digital scene-matching terminal-homing system to locate and destroy its target.
“The introduction of extended-range land-attack cruise missiles into the inventory of the PLA Navy would represent a significant diversification of its mission,” said Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute and an expert on Chinese missiles. | <urn:uuid:0da5eafa-1c70-4017-b342-734904348112> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.defensenews.com/article/20120805/DEFREG03/308050001/-1/7daysarchives/Glimpse-China-8217-s-New-Fighter-Fuels-Rumors | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94577 | 1,258 | 1.976563 | 2 |
BATANGAS | Marcela Agoncillo House
Taal Heritage Town Photowalk
Like the other Heritage Houses we visited in Taal, The Marcela Agoncillo House is another Casa de Agoncillo. Could be said as the 2nd Agoncillo house because of the most prominent resident this house had ever had. The Marcela Agoncillo house was actually built by Marcela's grandfather Andres Marino. By any means, this is the ancestral house she grew up. Built in the late 1700's and known today to be one of the oldest house in the town of Taal. Heirs of the family had donated this property to the government and is now being maintained by The Department Of Tourism.
The house was turned to a museum and monument commemorating the making of the Philippine Flag, as was Dona Marcela Marino Agoncillo's legacy to our nation as the weaver of the first Philippine Flag, gaining her the title of The Mother Philippine National Flag as its principal seamstress, its the same flag that was hoisted from the window of Emilio Aguinaldo's House in Kawit, Cavite. Check this link to know more about the making of The First Philippine Flag from the National Historical Commission.
On the entrance, one had to walk through a walkway that looks like a parking lot in the ground floor. Before taking the staircase is the commemorative tableau of 3 women sewing the flag. The three women are Dona Marcela herself as the central figure, flanking at her sides the little girl is her eldest daughter Lorenza and other girl is Delfina Herbosa de Natividad, a niece of Jose Rizal. Before we were to mount the staircase to where the grand salon of the house is place like any Spanish inspired houses, we first went through the small library and museum just a couple of flat forms from the ground floor. We were briefed by a guide of the house with the brief history of the prominent historical figure that had called this home. On this library is the hired weaver showing us how weaving is done. Taal may have a lot of Heritage houses, but only a select number of Historical Landmark, this is what makes this house apart from a lot of Kastillan houses in Taal.
Its a grand house, reminiscent of the glory and richness that adorned its halls. Exquisitely sculpted wooden boxes (Bauls), Chinese and Edwardian furniture's, the all too familiar Capiz Shell windows, four poster beds, and the everlasting feel of old wood.
Impersonal and otherworldly, these are but some of the impressions I got from this house. Spacious and open aired, though the family was Illustrado in rank and the children's of Felipe and Marcela Agoncillo all grew up to be highly educated and religious, their old rosary beads left not an impression of themselves. Their old crumbling books fall in decay on the shelves. As was, I wandered in the house swimming in my own imagination, enraptured by the creepy rooms and the baby grand piano by the door, the full length mirrors so clear I can only assume that silver adorned the back of this heavy glass. It's hot, its forlorn and may even be a grave of rich memories, of ages long past whose legacy continues.
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Saturday, May 8, 2010
Gardening Gone Wild has invited us to a Gardener's Design Workshop, and this month's topic is Covering the Ground. When I heard the topic, I was ready to blog about low-growing annuals and succulents and, of course, mulch. And it's true, mulch such as bark or gravel helps tremendously in a dry climate because it keeps in the moisture. So, three cheers for mulch, which one should I get?
Well, not so fast. How about some groundUncover as well? There are 1600 species of native bees in California, and 70% of them need bare dirt to live in, and raise the baby bees. The Berkeley Bee Garden, a research garden that was open for the Bringing Back the Natives tour, is a great example for groundcover and groundUncover. Colorful annuals, perennials, and a few shrubs such as Ceanothus are interwoven with a few mulched paths and surrounded by quite a lot of bare dirt.
The photo below shows the beautiful gilia, poppies, and penstemon, most not higher than 2-3 feet, making an excellent groundcover, while groudUncover is close by, both a freshly plowed field and a vegetable garden.
And, when you plant it and add some groundUncover, they will come. The staff at the garden handed us a list of plants that provide nectar and pollen year round and attract and support different types of bees at different times. You can also find the list at their website. The Berkeley researchers emphasize natives and include a lot of annuals. They encourage a mix for the summer and fall, and it really works, everyone saw bees. Lots of them. Below a picture from Country Mouse, with a beautiful green bee.
I also asked whether bare dirt in sun or shade is more suitable, and was told sun is preferred. That's good news because my drought-tolerant chaparral plants can probably muddle through if remove some of the bark mulch as time goes by, while the redwood habitat plants really do need a good layer of mulch to keep the moisture in.
I'm seriously thinking about making some bare dirt paths around my ceanothus, which are attracting several different kinds of bees. And I'm wondering whether removing the bark mulch where the Phacelia is growing this year will bring me a small field of those plants next year. I saw such a field at the research garden, and it was quite stunning.
Let's face it, most annuals grow best if you sow them on bare dirt, not on mulch (poppies and clarkies are an exception). Of course I love my Penstemon heterophyllus (a perennial) as a groundcover.
But wouldn't it be fun to have a patch of Gilia right next to it, with a little groundUncover, and the bees happily enjoying the nectar and pollen?
And what about the other 30% of native bees? They live in holes in trees or other cavities, and might appreciate a bee house. The researcher said those houses can work out very well, or not so well, and they've only started experimenting with them. There's actually a lot of good information in German about bee houses, just google Wildbienen. Even if you can't read the text, the pictures tell the story.
P.S. For other most excellent posts about the bee garden, do look at this post by Rooted in California, and this post by How's Robb?, with a cool picture of many different native bees on pins. | <urn:uuid:81af8d0d-524b-498d-bb83-a59eb8e41435> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tmousecmouse.blogspot.com/2010/05/grounduncover.html?showComment=1273428374374 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956689 | 759 | 2.484375 | 2 |
The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor. By Bruce R. Smith. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. [xiv, 386 pp. ISBN 0-226-76377-3 $21. (paperback).]
Reviewed by Ross W. Duffin*
1.1 Strange book. Apologies for beginning with a fragmentary sentence, but it seems apt for a book that itself begins with Huh? The author, a professor of English at Georgetown University, attempts to analyze virtually everything to do with sound in early seventeenth-century England: phonating, hearing, listening, measuring, contextualizing, and internalizing. The overall effect is stimulating even though there are musical details that seem less than satisfactory. This is not primarily a book about music, however.
1.2 Smith begins with conceptions of anatomy and philosophies of communication before moving on to mapping the soundscapes of the time. These he divides into City, Country, and Court, following the three classifications provided by Thomas Ravenscroft in his Melismata of 1611. Ambient sounds, both natural and manufactured, are identified and quantified to a remarkable degree.
1.3 Not all of Smiths discussion is relevant
to this audience. Musicologists will not need the explanations of how
the various Cries works preserve and present the vendor jingles of
the city, as might specialists in other disciplines. But the sounds surrounding
or in the background of musical or theatrical events are revealed in a
thorough and thought-provoking manner. These are the seventeenth-century
equivalents of computer fans, air conditioners, ringing telephones, photocopiers,
passing cars, sirens, jack-hammers, helicopters, the rumble of distant
jets—things we have learned to filter out as much as possible in conducting
our own business, whether thinking, reading, conversing, teaching, or
music-making. Not surprisingly, the emphasis at the time in question was
on birdcalls, church bells, dogs barking, beating hoofs, jingling harness,
and cart squeaks and groans. Obviously, it is interesting and useful to
have this early soundscape portrayed for us since it is so different from
2.1 One odd omission from the soundscape, considering the comprehensive nature of the list—right down to the buzzing of bees—is the almost complete disregard of the Waits, the municipal watchmen who, well into the seventeenth century, were hired to play shawms and other musical instruments. This is surprising considering the late Anthony Baines's speculation that of all musical sounds that from day to day smote the ears of a sixteenth-century town resident, the deafening skirl of the shawm band in palace courtyard or market square must have been the most familiar . . . .1 Nor, for that matter, is much attention paid to domestic chamber music, whether for voices, viols, virginals, lute, cittern, etc. The unfortunate impression left is that these sounds were too negligible to be mentioned, or that instrumental music is not sufficiently human (i.e., vocal) to be considered.
2.2 The one musical genre thoroughly addressed in the book is the ballad. Physiological, psychological, sociological, political, not to mention acoustical aspects of ballads are explored, situating the ballad as a unique and vital phenomenon of early modern English life. It is certainly true, in contrast to chamber music, that the narrative element of ballads places them in a special entertainment category, one that is related to the plays looming in the background of Smiths discussion throughout the book.
2.3 One of the authors more eloquent moments occurs where he is discussing the typical citation of a ballad tune by title alone, such as Queen Dido as the tune for The Spanish Tragedy:
This is an important point, expressed in a poignant but slightly disingenuous manner. Smith undoubtedly knows from Claude Simpsons The British Broadside Ballad and its Music (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967), which he cites several times, that the Queen Dido tune actually does survive in an early seventeenth-century source, although not from the pen of Byrd. Ironically, there are other examples that would have served the same purpose and stood up to such scrutiny besides. Perhaps Smiths intent to further discuss The Spanish Tragedy dictated the use of a less than perfect musical example.
2.4 Another passage likely to make musicologists uncomfortable is:
Smith attributes this information to Philip Pickett of the New London
Consort and the new Globe Theater in London, but one wonders if the message
has somehow become garbled. Studies like that of Peter Seng2 have made it absolutely clear that the traditional tune for this song
can be dated no earlier than the eighteenth century. How this could lead
to Smiths statement about its range without further information—not provided
here—and how it relates to the acoustic world of the stage in early modern
England is bewildering.
3.1 One whole section of the book is devoted to the acoustical environment of the Globe and Blackfriars Theaters. Aspects of pitch, vowel quality, decibel levels, and reverberation patterns all find a place in the discussion, along with sound effects and background music. This is an odd combination of elements, but the results are often insightful and original.
3.2 There were times when I wondered where on earth Smith was heading. But almost always, the reason for the verbal meandering became clear, and eventually the point was brought full circle to the subject at hand. That in itself is an image that Smith would appreciate, since the idea of the circle, O, is one that permeates the book, and tethers otherwise disconnected topics to a central point. We are not sure why we are visiting some of these destinations, but the trip is curiously enjoyable, and we definitely feel that, if nothing else, we have learned to be better listeners by the end. This is no mean accomplishment. For musicologists, ultimately, the value of this book lies not in what it tells us about music, but in raising our awareness of the aural context for music, both historically and in our own time.
* Ross W. Duffin (email@example.com)
is perhaps best known in North America for his radio program, Micrologus:
Exploring the World of Early Music, on National Public Radio from 1981
to 1998. A Noah Greenberg Award winner (1980), his scholarly work has
focused on 15th-century Franco-Flemish music from Du Fay to Josquin and
on English music of the Jacobean period. He is Fynette H. Kulas Professor
of Music and director of the Early Music program at Case Western Reserve
University in Cleveland, Ohio. His recent publications include A Josquin
Anthology (1999) and A Performer's Guide to Medieval Music (2000).
1. Anthony Baines, Woodwind Instruments and Their
History (New York: W.W.Norton, 1957), 268.
2. The Vocal Songs in the Plays of Shakespeare
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 129.
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Capital and resource prices are too cheap, Zhu said, which has led to an unhealthy glut of investment and a “risky” situation in which only 60 percent of the country’s industrial capacity is being used. More money needs to be pushed to families in the form of jobs and wages to boost consumption. The country’s leaders need to speed the opening of the service sector and shift away from the manufacturing focus that has driven Chinese growth for 20 years.
“The key issue for China is not growth. . . . It is the quality of growth and reform,” Zhu said. “China should discourage investment. Currently loans are cheap and the factor price is so low — energy, transportation, water, power — those things all encourage the expansion of investment.”
So much of the country’s resources are pushed toward investment projects, he said, that it “squashed people’s income levels” and prevented a faster increase in local consumption.
His analysis echoes issues raised by U.S. government and business officials in their critiques of Chinese economic policy — particularly the reference to the way government policies have encouraged overinvestment at the expense of household consumption. Developed nations have long hoped that the pressure put on their manufacturing companies by Chinese goods would be offset when China’s 1.6 billion people start buying more and the economy there is opened to competition in more areas.
The Hopkins speech was one of Zhu’s most substantive U.S. appearances since he joined the IMF in May 2010 as a special adviser to then-Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Zhu’s hiring and eventual promotion to deputy managing director was seen as part of a broader effort by the IMF to acknowledge China’s expanding importance in world economic affairs. He had been a deputy governor at the People’s Bank of China, considered a center of reformist economic thinking within the Chinese government.
Zhu’s remarks Tuesday were focused on fund efforts to better understand the emerging shape of the world economy and the implications of the extensive connections that have arisen among countries. That “hyper-connectivity,” as Zhu called it, has boosted growth in many parts of the world but also has allowed problems to ripple quickly across borders.
If there was doubt about the changing nature of global income, Zhu said that, by some measures, 2013 is expected to be the year when economic output from developing nations exceeds that of the traditional industrialized countries.
His comments come as China is completing its transition to a new leadership and government. Incoming leaders have endorsed in broad strokes the need for China to open its financial sector and rely more on domestic consumption for economic growth.
Still unclear is how fast and dramatically they intend to move.
“The most important issue is moving the growth model from investment-driven growth to domestic consumption,” Zhu said. “Many people say that. The question is how.” | <urn:uuid:c2e5413f-125a-45d5-9dd3-a81bd7d570c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/on-think-tank-row-a-china-critic-from-china/2013/03/12/f804ff52-8b46-11e2-9f54-f3fdd70acad2_story.html?wprss=rss_national | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972426 | 611 | 1.65625 | 2 |
- A visual awareness of the world around them.
- An appreciation of their own creativity and the creativity of others.
- Skills and craftsmanship to master materials and techniques.
- Application of artistic techniques to express their ideas and feelings.
- A verbal and non-verbal vocabulary to express what they see and feel.
- Creative and analytical thinking skills.
Art enables students to understand and connect with the world around them through active and creative participation. Drawing and painting, as well as three-dimensional projects, promote risk-taking and problem solving in a fun and supportive environment. Art appreciation, class critiques, portfolios and student exhibitions serve as assessment practices that help students understand, reflect on, and take responsibility for their own learning.
In addition to the visual art program, fifth and sixth grade students are given the opportunity to participate in an after-school Art Club Program at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Download examples of the Visual Arts program by grade level:
- 4K [814K PDF]
- 5K [1MB PDF]
- First Grade [1.6MB PDF]
- Second Grade [1.4MB PDF]
- Third Grade [989K PDF]
- Fourth Grade [1.3MB PDF]
- Fifth Grade [1.1MB PDF]
- Sixth Grade [1.1MB PDF]
(l-r) Posing in the Great Stair Hall of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gallery Exploration at the Museum
The Art Club Program is a 20-week visual arts education program for fifth and sixth grade Russell Byers Charter School students held after school hours at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Delphi Project Foundation covers all costs of the Art Club, which includes art supplies, transportation to the museum, exhibitions and celebrations and healthy after-school snacks.
The goals of the program are to develop self-expression through art, to enhance critical thinking skills through artistic problem solving, introduce students to career opportunities in the visual arts through interaction with Museum staff, and to provide a safe, welcoming and supervised environment where students can spend after school hours in stimulating, creative activities with friends.
Students work with a variety of artistic media including painting, ceramics, sculpture and printmaking. The students are exposed to a multi-cultural curriculum, studying art from places such as China, India, Europe and Japan. A special emphasis is placed on African America and Latino contemporary artists.
After the 14th week of the program, The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds an exhibition of student work in its Education Gallery. To celebrate the exhibition and the students' accomplishments, the students and their families are treated to a special reception at the Museum and a performance in their honor. | <urn:uuid:c0bfc3b8-2e85-4614-a922-654ac97d046e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://byerschool.org/curriculum/cultural/visual.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941093 | 555 | 3.796875 | 4 |
We take postal services for granted but think about it for a moment and you realise that they are an amazing achievement for society. Take Royal Mail: They will deliver the mail to my door and I can post anything from a postcard to a large parcel to any address in the world at my local post office, which is within cycling distance. Put simply, I like Royal Mail.
Or rather, I like the idea of a national postal service. I hate what the government is doing to it, all in the name of preparing Royal Mail for a sell-off to a potential buyer, who will be expecting to make immoral profits.
The strategy of raising prices and cutting services is what they call making Royal Mail efficient and competitive, dragging its unique advantages to the level of the lowest common denominator. This is costly for the consumer and for businesses, especially small businesses that do not have the volume to bargain on price. Privatising Royal Mail means that its services will become very poor value for money, that services will be cut and that their staff will likely have to work even harder for even less money.
Then there are the self-inflicted problems: I send my Christmas cards around the middle of December every year. A few days ago one of my cards to a client came back as undeliverable – five months (!) after it was posted.
The answer to the problems is the same for every state run service: Put in the proper funding, appreciate employees and embrace the fact that these services are not there to make profits but to serve the country.
The premise that taxpayer-owned services cannot be run well is as much a fallacy as the current fashion of putting profits before service is hideously absurd. | <urn:uuid:9cb46255-4621-4993-ac9e-d40319da089f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wolfkettler.co.uk/blog/the-undeliverable-christmas-card/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974691 | 348 | 1.617188 | 2 |
"by Derek Walcott
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,"
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
“If there’s a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn’t exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or show it to other people who wouldn’t have imagined it because they perceive reality in a more narrow, predictable way. And that’s it. That’s all an artist does.”
Photograph: Janet Wippell, The Dark Hedges, Northern Ireland, n.d.l
We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss - we want more and more and then more of it.
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living …
- Marie Howe | <urn:uuid:11f8e0de-89e7-4a97-99e2-a8223ec735f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://poetinmyheart.tumblr.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921079 | 401 | 1.578125 | 2 |
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms, mines, or industry of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return, which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large or small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. Unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.
If we accept these "truths" as self-evident and "obvious," we need to invest NOW in America.
Oh! by the bye! these are not part of the Tea Party or Republican plan for America. Sadly, but truthfully, they remain "the party of no!" In fact, this posting is taken from a speech given by FDR January 11, 1944. It seems as though he got it right and so does Obama. Invest in America NOW! | <urn:uuid:dea5d22a-7548-4b03-9baa-f5413ddad4e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oakcreek.patch.com/blog_posts/economic-truths-of-2012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975062 | 277 | 1.804688 | 2 |
The number of jobs in New York’s film production sector grew significantly from 32,500 in 2004 to 46,100 last year as the state sweetened its production tax incentive program, according to a study commissioned by the MPAA.The findings, from HR&A Advisors Inc., come as tax credits have come under new scrutiny in some states, either from a series of scandals or doubts over how effective they have been at creating last jobs. The New York Times has been running a series, “The United States of Subsidies,” examining business incentives overall, and it was expected to focus on the film business today. The HR&A study, however, painted a rosy picture of the impact of the production incentives, estimating that the state’s production tax credit, which took effect on Nov. 1, 2004, supported 28,900 jobs last year, including 12,600 directly associated with productions and 16,300 through “multiplier effects.” The latter is an estimate of the jobs created in other industries, like retail, hospitality and professional services, boosted by the growth in production. The study also showed that, even as private employment declined by 1.6% statewide from 2008 and 2011, jobs in film production grew by nearly 25%. The credit, the study said, generated $6.9 billion in economic spending and $4.2 billion in personal income in 2011. The state collected an estimated $366 million in taxes from such activity, while New York City collected $382 million in taxes due to the credit last year, the study concluded. | <urn:uuid:af9c4660-cd67-4be9-bf19-c3897035e30c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://variety.com/2012/film/news/mpaa-study-links-incentives-to-job-growth-1118063047/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971843 | 323 | 1.671875 | 2 |
In 2003, the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) launched its first major study of college students and their use of information technology (IT). Conducted annually, the study asks undergraduates to respond to an extensive set of questions concerning their ownership of, use of, and perceived skill with various information technologies both inside and outside the classroom.
The 2008 Tufts Students Respond report represents a distillation of The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008 with a focus on how Tufts students compare to their peers at other ECAR four-year institutions in terms of their perceptions of and use of information technology. This year’s report includes key highlights and observations from the full ECAR data set, key findings and observations from the Tufts data set, and a comprehensive series of charts graphically representing the full set of ECAR Study findings. 2010 study is still underway.
Tufts University participates regularly in the ECAR Study by surveying freshmen and senior undergraduates on a self-selected basis. The ECAR survey has been conducted locally by UIT Academic Technology, in coordination with the Offices of the Dean of Student Services and the Dean of Undergraduate Education, and with support from Dawn Terkla, Associate Provost for Institutional Research. Tufts’ participation in the survey lends value to the overall research study, which, in 2008, included survey data from 27, 317 freshmen, senior, and community college students and interview data from students at 98 institutions of higher education. | <urn:uuid:0969b27d-0ea9-48a5-991e-11cd93ddab3c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sites.tufts.edu/ests/2010/06/23/tufts-students-respond-key-findings-from-the-ecar-study/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947167 | 309 | 1.929688 | 2 |
The Center maintains links to ongoing research studies on the biodiversity of Kentucky. Such projects include those addressing basic questions of demography, ecology, systematic status, as well as applied research relating to environmental vulnerability, assessment, and management of sensitive taxa.
If you are currently involved in a project you would like listed on this page, please contact the director at firstname.lastname@example.org. In the message, include a description of the project, web site URL, mailing address (including EMail) and phone number of at least one contact person.
WESTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY
Dr. Lawrence Alice
My research interests include the taxonomy and evolutionary biology of the economically important plant genera Rubus (blackberries and raspberries) and Mentha (including spearmint and peppermint), mainly using molecular techniques, notably PCR and DNA sequencing, to address these evolutionary questions. Data are used to infer evolutionary (phylogenetic) relationships, test hypotheses of hybridization, examine biogeographic patterns, and consider modes of speciation.
Dr. Richard Bowker
Herpetology - Physiological Ecology
Dr. Ken Crawford
Activity levels and ecophysiology of overwintering turtles
Dr. Blaine Ferrell
Impact of brown-headed cowbird parasitism on the reproductive success of neotropical migrants nesting in Mammoth Cave National Park
Dr. Scott Grubbs
The current research in my lab focuses on three themes: (1) spatial distribution and importance of environmental variables, ranging from watershed size and disturbance frequency to substratum type and stream depth, on stream macroinvertebrates and fish assemblages, (2) mechanisms regulating the processing of autumn-shed leaves in ponds and streams, and (3) biogeography and taxonomy of stoneflies.
Co-director: WKU Upper Green River Biopreserve
Dr. Steven Huskey
I currently study gross anatomy, skeletal articulations, and biomechanical measures to link form and function in vertebrate feeding mechanisms, using techniques such as electromyography, high-speed videography, and suction pressure generation to measure performance. A typical model involves the feeding mechanism of fishes, namely basses, sunfishes, and snook. Vertebrate locomotion and flight are also areas of specific interest.
Dr. Philip Lienesch
I currently have two contracts to study fish distributions at Mammoth Cave National Park. One study focuses on the fishes living in the free-flowing and impounded sections of the Green River as it passes through the park and the second is examining whether above surface water fishes enter into the cave system and if so, do they have any impact on cave organisms
Dr. Doug McElroy
I am an evolutionary biologist interested in the genetic control of phenotypic variation and its consequences for evolution and speciation. The majority of my research focuses on the cichlid fishes of Lake Malawi, Africa; currently, I am investigating the genetic basis of color variation, as well as differences in visual sensitivities among species and their possible associations with habitat, trophic ecology and phylogeny. I maintain a secondary interest in population genetics and wildlife molecular forensics.
Dr. Albert Meier
My best-known research focuses on the influence of disturbance on the structure and function of forest communities and ecosystems. I have also published on the ecology of Caribbean Island and landscape ecology. My current research also includes restoration of native flora including the American chestnut, and landscape influences on environmental conditions in streams.
Gap dynamics in the Ozarks
Co-director: WKU Upper Green River Biopreserve
Dr. Ouida Meier
Coral reef ecology and long-term coral reef dynamics
Drinking water and other water quality issues
Cycling among source water, drinking water, and wastewater
Co-director: WKU Upper Green River Biopreserve
Dr. Keith Philips
My research is in the field of insect systematics and diversity, with an emphasis on beetles. My research interests are in conducting evolutionary and biogeographic analyses, and behavioral and ecological studies, particularly those relevant to conservation. I have also used geographic information systems for studying insect distributions and have been involved in several surveys of oak savannas and tropical forests. Most recently I have been studying dung beetles, and my data has altered the current concept of the evolution of dung manipulation, nesting behavior, and relationships among the tribes. Currently I am studying the ecology of dung beetles of the Upper Guinean Forests of Ghana, West Africa, one of 25 biodiversity conservation hotspots in the world.
Dr. Charles H. Smith
Bibliography and bibliometrics
History of biogeography and the study of biodiversity
Life and work of Alfred Russel Wallace
I am currently finishing up an enhanced bibliography (with links to the full text of about 400 of the items) of selected 1951-1975 literature on biogeography, diversity, and related fields for mounting on the Internet, complementing my already operating "Early Classics in Biogeography, Diversity, and Distribution Studies: To 1950”.
Dr. Michael Smith
Neurophysiology of the fish inner ear
effects of anthropogenic sound on fishes
Dr. Michael Stokes
I am currently involved in two projects: (1) investigating the interactions between small mammal populations and native grasslands restoration/construction, and (2) developing support and curatorial services for long-term ecological monitoring an inventory programs with the National Park Service.
WESTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY
Dr. Gary Dillard
Taxonomy and ecology of freshwater algae, especially the Chlorophyceae and Chrysophyceae
Dr. Larry Elliott
Testing water samples for microbial pathogens
Dr. Robert Hoyt
Watershed analysis of the Mammoth Cave region
Impact of agricultural runoff on stream fish community structure
THE NATURE CONSERVANCY
Dr. Richard Kessler
Dr. Kessler is the director of The Nature Conservancy’s Green River Conservation Program. This landscape scale, community-based program works to promote the conservation of the state’s most diverse river system. The program focuses on the upper Green from the Green River Reservoir to the mouth of the Nolin River and all the watershed in-between. Dr. Kessler and others are working to identify and address the major threats to biodiversity. Their study includes examining the effects of flow and temperature modification and non-point source pollution. The program incorporates private landowners and the community as a whole in on-the-ground conservation work such as restoring riparian buffers and constructing cattle fences. State and federal agencies are also involved with the program to assist with finding solutions to identified threats. The program also funds various long-term ecological research on fish and invertebrates in support of potential restoration of more natural river flow and temperatures.
EASTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY
Dr. Robert Frederick (Department of Biological Sciences)
Dr. Frederick and his graduate students are currently involved in several biodiversity related research projects. One project concerns the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR) Technical Guidance Program Evaluation. This consists of determining if wildlife populations at the local level have responded to habitat improvement work implemented through KDFWR Technical Guidance Programs. This includes examining key species abundance and richness. A second project involves the ecology of wild hogs (Sus scrofa) in southeastern Kentucky. Hogs are radio-tracked in order to better learn and understand their ecology with a sample being used to document existing diseases. A third project involves the breeding biology, habitat use and survival rates of swamp rabbit (Sylvilagus aquaticus) populations. A fourth project involves initiating a study to determine if trace minerals can be used to establish the origin (breeding areas) of Kentucky’s wintering and fall-migrant ducks. Lastly, Dr. Frederick, Dr. Stephen Sumithran and students are involved with a project concerning GIS modeling of ecological factors associated with wood rat (Neotoma floridana) distribution.
Dr. William Staddon (Department of Biological Sciences)
Dr. Staddon is interested in biodiversity related issues targeting the microbial level. His current plans are to conduct a research program to examine microbial diversity in forest soils in Kentucky.
KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY
Dr. David Gordon (Division of Math & Sciences)
Dr Gordon is currently conducting research on the ecology, conservation and behavior of bees. His emphasis is on the roles native bees as pollinators play in wildlands, gardens and commercial crops. Dr. Gordon is examining how conservation of wildlife habitat can benefit farmers through the pollination services provided by native bees and other “alternative pollinators” and how conservation of native bees can benefit wildlife programs by providing the pollination services required to produce seed and fruits that wildlife depend on for food, and that native plants depend on for reproduction.
KENTUCKY WESLEYAN COLLEGE
Dr. Robert Kingsolver (Biology Department Chair)
During the spring of 2000, Dr. Kingsolver conducted a sabbatical project collecting data on the flora of the John James Audubon State Park. His work included site data, natural history observations and photographs of many of the spring and summer wildflowers. He is also involved in the monitoring of water quality in the North Panther Creek watershed in Daviess County. This work is funded by the EPA and involves chemical and physical analyses of the stream. Students working on the project are investigating macro invertebrates as bio-indicators every year.
MOREHEAD STATE UNIVERSITY
Dr. David Eisenhour (Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences)
Dr. Eisenhour’s research involves documenting the biodiversity of fish found in the Kentucky region. His current projects include a systematic study of minnows and madtom catfish and ichthyofaunal surveys and population estimates in the Daniel Boone National Forest. Graduate students of Dr. Eisenhour are working on the spatial and temporal variation of fish communities in Triplett Creek, Kentucky and conducting an analysis of habitat characteristics limiting Clinostomus elongatus distribution in Kentucky.
MURRAY STATE UNIVERSITY
Dr. Terry Derting (Department of Biological Sciences)
Dr. Derting is presently involved with the Vertebrate Distribution Mapping Component of the Kentucky Gap Analysis Project. The goals of this project are two fold: 1) to provide maps of unknown confidence that predict the distributions of terrestrial vertebrates in Kentucky on order to support analysis of the conservation status of vertebrate species and 2) to develop a database of locational records, geographic range, wildlife habitat associations and predicted distributions of each vertebrate species for the long-term utility of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife resources and its cooperators.
Dr. Howard Whiteman (Department of Biology)
Kentucky GAP Analysis Program
NORTHERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY
Dr. Gregory Dahlem (Department of Biological Sciences)
Dr. Dahlem is an insect systematist whose primary interest is in calyptrate Diptera, especially within the familes Sarcophagidae (flesh flies) and Calliphagidae (blow flies). He also works with the Tachinidae and is currently working on a revision of Ravinia (Diptera: Sarcophagidae), a common genus of mostly dung breeding flies. Dr. Dahlem has recently finished a revision of the flesh flies, which live as inquilines in the pitchers of North American pitcher plants. He is also the Adjunct Curator of the entomological collections at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History.
Dr. Barry Dalton (Department of Biological Sciences)
Dr. Dalton is involved with habitat restoration and management of wetlands, grasslands,and woodlands. He also conducts natural areas inventory of the northern Bluegrass region of Kentucky.
Dr. Larry Giesmann (Department of Biological Sciences)
Dr. Giesmann is involved in a project to established a repository for germplasm of rare and endangered plants (as listed by KSPNC) using cryopreservation of seeds and tissue cultures in liquid nitrogen. For further information on this project or to contribute material, please contact Dr. Giesmann.
Dr. James O. Luken (Department of Biological Sciences)
Dr. Luken studies species diversity and the effects of disturbance gradients on the shorelines of flood control reservoirs. He also examnines the ecological effects of invasive species.
Dr. Rob Naczi (Department of Biological Sciences)
Dr. Naczi is involved with plant systematics and the diversity of sedges. His current projects include examining the diversity of sedges in Kentucky and state nature preserves and the systematics of rare and endangered species.
Dr. James Wagner (Biology Program)
Currently, Dr. Wagner is working part-time on a biodiversity study concerning the spiders of Kentucky. Visit The Spiders of Kentucky website for information on spider anatomy, poisonous species, common species, basic spider identification and a species list.
UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
Dr. Randall Kolka (Department of Forestry)
Dr. Kolka is a watershed hydrologist currently involved in building and maintaining a long-term baseline hydrological and water quality data set for eastern Kentucky forested watersheds
Dr. David Maehr (Department of Forestry)
Dr. Maehr is presently involved in elk restoration research being conducted in eastern Kentucky. By visiting the Kentucky Elk Research Project website, you will learn about the reintroduction of elk into Kentucky as well as be able to view video footage of the first elks released in 2000. Current research includes studies on the activity and movement of the elk herd and their impacts on whitetail deer and coyote.
Dr. Lynne K. Rieske-Kinney (Department of Entomology)
Dr. Rieske-Kinney is involved with several projects dealing with artropods in Eastern Kentucky forests.
Dr. David Wise (Department of Entomology)
Dr. Wise’s research concerns the complexities of interactions in ecological communities. Specifically, he is examining the food web dynamics of forest-floor leaf litter, and the conservation and enhancement of native generalist predators for biological control of crop pests.
UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE
Dr. Charles Covell (Department of Biology)
Dr. Covell is a leading authority of the Lepidoptera of Kentucky and currently has records of over 2,400 known species. | <urn:uuid:c4a510dd-310c-4812-b7d3-b05f3a989a6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wkyufm@wku.edu/biodiversity/research.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901345 | 3,002 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Cibola National Forest Travel Management Planning, Sandia Ranger District
April 2006 � August 2007
Location: New Mexico
The Cibola National Forest and National Grasslands is located in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas and is part of the Southwestern Region of the U.S. Forest
Service. The Cibola NF is among many national forests beginning travel management planning to comply with the Travel Management Rule (2005) that requires
the forests to designate a system of roads, trails and areas open to motor vehicle use. The Cibola NF asked the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict
Resolution to assist in planning and convening a broad-based collaborative effort for this process. The Institute, working with contracted neutrals Kathleen
Bond and Susan Hayman, conducted an initial assessment; the facilitators used the assessment�s key findings and recommendations to design, facilitate and
document a series of public workshops and a work group to develop recommendations for motorized use on the Sandia Ranger District.
Results and Accomplishments
- Participants in the work group represented a broad diversity of interests. The work group reviewed use patterns and integrated feedback
from public meetings to help develop recommendations. All meetings were open to the public, and there were many opportunities for the public
to offer comments.
- After eight months of public workshops and work group meetings, the Forest Service presented a preliminary proposal and then held additional
meetings during the scoping and Environmental Assessment comment periods.
- Participants were cautiously optimistic that the inclusive process led to a more informed decision that determined motorized routes, trails and
- The Cibola National Forest used both a multi-stakeholder work group, which included Forest Service staff as participants, and public workshops
to encourage more active public engagement in developing travel management recommendations.
- Participants reported that the collaborative process on the Sandia District fostered important working relationships that are expected to endure
beyond this specific project.
- A variety of tools and activities were used throughout the process. Work group members found the use of interactive maps to be particularly helpful,
while participants in the public workshops appreciated the educational presentations, small and large group discussions, and the Q & A sessions.
- Overall, participants in this process reported an enhanced understanding of the Travel Management Rule, the Forest Service�s decision making process,
and how public input is used in the development of proposals.
Partners from National Roster of ECR Practitioners
Susan Hayman (North Country Associates) and Kathleen Bond (KTB Decision Resources)
U.S. Institute Project Manager
Get a PDF Version
Larry Fisher, Ph.D., Coordinator
Public Lands and Natural Resources Program
Phone: (520) 901-8544; FAX: (520) 670-5530
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org; Website: www.ecr.gov | <urn:uuid:d60efb7a-6ce6-49ec-94f6-f55f8ceebe4f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ecr.gov/Projects/CaseBrief.aspx?Project=1054 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90891 | 593 | 2.359375 | 2 |
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Synonyms of Ewing Sarcoma
- Ewing family of tumors
- Ewing's Sarcoma
- Ewing tumor
- tumor of the Ewing family (TEF)
- Askin's tumor
- Ewing sarcoma of bone
- extraosseous Ewing (EOE) sarcoma
- primitive neuroectodermal tumor (PNET)
Ewing sarcoma is a rare bone tumor that occurs most often in adolescents. It can also arise outside of the bone in soft tissue (extraosseous Ewing sarcoma). Ewing sarcoma is related to another type of tumor known as primitive neuroectodermal tumor (PNET). Researchers have learned that these tumors are associated with the same chromosomal abnormality (balanced reciprocal translocation) and share many physiological characteristics. Consequently, these tumors are sometimes collectively classified as the Ewing family of tumors (EFT). This general term encompasses Ewing sarcoma of bone, extraosseous Ewing sarcoma, primitive neuroectodermal tumor, and Askin’s tumor (a tumor of the chest wall). Ewing sarcoma of bone accounts for approximately 70 percent of the tumors in this family. Generally, the term Ewing sarcoma is preferred because, despite the different names, it is one tumor, molecularly. Ewing sarcoma of bone most often affects the long bone of the legs (femur) and flat bones such as those found in the pelvis and chest well. Ewing sarcoma is an aggressive cancer that may spread (metastasize) to the lungs, other bones, and bone marrow potentially causing life-threatening complications. The exact cause of these tumors is unknown.
Ewing sarcoma was first described in the medical literature in 1921 by Dr. James Ewing. Ewing sarcoma is the second most common primary bone tumor in children and accounts for approximately 2% of all childhood cancer diagnoses.
NORD’s report on Ewing sarcoma is a detailed summary of the main aspects of this rare disorder. The National Cancer Institute offers comprehensive, in-depth information on this disorder, which is available at,
For patients: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/ewings/Patient
For healthcare professionals: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/ewings/HealthProfessional
Organizations related to Ewing Sarcoma
The information in NORD’s Rare Disease Database is for educational purposes only. It should never be used for diagnostic or treatment purposes. If you have questions regarding a medical condition, always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health professional. NORD’s reports provide a brief overview of rare diseases. For more specific information, we encourage you to contact your personal physician or the agencies listed as “Resources” on this report.
The National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) web site, its databases, and the contents thereof are copyrighted by NORD. No part of the NORD web site, databases, or the contents may be copied in any way, including but not limited to the following: electronically downloading, storing in a retrieval system, or redistributing for any commercial purposes without the express written permission of NORD. Permission is hereby granted to print one hard copy of the information on an individual disease for your personal use, provided that such content is in no way modified, and the credit for the source (NORD) and NORD’s copyright notice are included on the printed copy. Any other electronic reproduction or other printed versions is strictly prohibited.
Copyright 1990, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2005, 2013
NORD's Rare Disease Information Database is copyrighted and may not be published without the written consent of NORD. | <urn:uuid:0f084c17-b230-4ae9-9e1c-5e70bf7da5ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rarediseases.org/rare-disease-information/rare-diseases/byID/765/viewAbstract | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901866 | 983 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Credit cards are back as preferred way to buy holiday gifts
Published: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 at 6:27 p.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 at 7:11 p.m.
Tiffany Cava has been shopping all over Sarasota and Manatee counties to check off the items on her holiday gift list.
STRONG HOLIDAY HIRING
Retailers hired a record number of seasonal workers this November, according to data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement firm.
Chain stores added 465,500 part-time workers last month, the busiest hiring month for the holiday season.
But the net gain in retail employment for November barely surpassed the previous record set in 2007, where holiday payrolls grew by 465,500 workers that November, data show.
Job gains last month were up by 21 percent from the 383,700 seasonal retail workers hired at the same time last year.
In December 2011, retail hiring was up by 147,600 jobs.
For 2012, total holiday hiring could reach 760,000, which would make this year the strongest holiday hiring season since 2000, Challenger Gray said.
— Justine Griffin
Although she budgeted for the holiday season, she is only using one card to pay for all purchases — a Discover credit card.
With one in every three consumers failing to save in advance for the holiday season — and more people feeling confident enough this year to buy big- ticket items like homes and new cars — more consumers are finding themselves strapped for cash.
To bridge the gap and still be able to fulfill holiday purchases, the largest numbers of consumers since before the Great Recession began are turning to credit cards, according to a survey by the credit bureau TransUnion.
“The use of credit cards is fairly common for holiday purchases, and a good percentage of shopping is still done that way, despite how the economy has improved from the lowest point of the financial crisis,” said Sean Snaith, a University of Central Florida economist.
In the wake of the recession, more and more people began using cash to pay for gifts, as credit limits edged up to all-time highs and 2009 regulations left more than 15 million Americans without plastic, according to The Nilson Report, a credit card industry publication.
But the use of available credit has slowly crept back into consumers’ vernacular, leaving some analysts to ponder whether recessionary lessons about overindulging in debt have faded.
On average, checking and savings balances in Florida have declined by 11 percent this year. At the same time, average balances on non-interest checking accounts has fallen by 10 percent, according to new data from Pitney Bowes Software.
Meanwhile, the average credit card debt per borrower in Florida has increased by 3 percent to $4,917 from the same measure last year, TransUnion data show.
Nationwide, the level of debt rose by nearly 5 percent, to an average of $4,996.
At least part of the higher debt levels stems from additional spending overall, as consumers throw off the vestiges of the downturn and make deferred purchases of autos and homes.
New-car sales, in particular, are up 12 percent this year in the Sarasota-Bradenton area, and 13 percent nationally.
To keep consumers receptive to pulling out the plastic, card companies and even merchants have devised a series of enticements, experts say.
“There are so many incentives to credit cardholders now, and that’s how they keep consumers coming back to credit,” said Michael O’Hara, chief executive of online retailer Yumani. “The discounts are often better than what you can get than by just paying cash.”
Nearly four in 10 reward cardholders said they would use reward points to save on holiday shopping, AAA reports.
While Visa, Mastercard and other major credit providers have added incentives in recent years to keep customers using credit cards, dozens of retailers have stepped up by offering “no-interest” credit lines.
Target RedCard holders, for instance, earn an extra 5 percent off every purchase made in the chain’s stores.
For Cava, a Parrish resident, and other shoppers like her, the rewards are enough to keep their cash firmly in their wallets this season.
“If I shop with my Discover card, I get cash back. If I shop at stores that partner with Discover, I get double the cash back,” said Cava, while perusing gifts for her children and other family members at the SuperTarget on University Parkway.
“I save more than if I was just using cash, so why not use the card?” she said.
To match the retailers, major banks are also beginning to offer cash back on purchases. Chase Freedom cardholders, for example, now get 5 percent back on every purchase they make.
Taking a slightly different tack, Visa and American Express members can earn points toward prizes such as gift cards and tablet computers.
But with many Americans still unemployed or underemployed, and foreclosures and mortgage delinquencies still an issue for many, many continue to pay for purchases — even big ticket items — with cash.
That has led to the resurgence of a different form of credit: In-store layaway programs.
Layaways, which allow shoppers to make incremental payments for seasonal purchases, are proof that not all have recovered, and that many still fear becoming enveloped in high-interest credit card debt, analysts say.
Layaways at Walmart and other stores have become an especially popular way for consumers to acquire big-ticket items like televisions and other electronics.
For many, layaways allow shoppers on tight budgets to buy items they may not have purchased otherwise.
“We’re in the fourth year of recovery, and while the economy has showed a little faster growth rate than expected, unemployment is still high, necessitating the use and popularity of layaway,” said Snaith, the UCF economist. “It shows, too, that many consumers are still credit constrained, and don’t have access to the home equity they once used to.”
Further evidence of the need came when Walmart announced the return of its popular layaway program on Sept. 14, a month earlier than it unveiled it last year.
Sears, Kmart and Toys R Us have also revamped their programs in response to consumer demand and to boost sales, while Burlington Coat Factory, TJ Maxx, Marshalls and Hallmark gift stores have maintained similar programs for years.
Some shoppers are avoiding financial liability altogether this holiday season.
“I don’t want to have any kind of debt, so I only use my debit card,” said Tara Simmons, a Bradenton resident out shopping recently with her mother. “The idea of having bad credit scares me.”
For others, plastic remains a matter of convenience, and a better record of purchases.
That was the case for Sarasota residents Krisi Perez and Daniel Steele, who were buying gifts at SuperTarget with debit cards in hand.
“I don’t want to pay interest,” said Steele. “I just pay with the money I know I have. It’s easier.”
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged. | <urn:uuid:e8219b17-13e6-4698-aa4f-4fb9340b1738> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20121219/ARTICLE/121219536/2094/BUSINESS | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951189 | 1,559 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Meet Rod and Todd, Rod and Todd are brothers in there mid 30’s. They have a mutual friend named Bart. Bart has talked them both into running a marathon 8 months from now (who needs friends like that). The brothers are both out of shape, neither has ever run any kind of race, let alone a marathon, and they don’t jog or exercise regularly. Rod and Todd would have liked to train together but their schedules won’t permit it.
Since these guys are pretty good at setting and achieving goals, they both realize they need a plan. Rod thinks about his goal of running a marathon, he wants to set a SMART goal and so he sets a goal to “Run and finish the 2010 Springfield Marathon”. While Rod is thinking about how he is going to train he remembers that in Junior High he once ran a mile in something like 6:20. He figures that was awhile ago so he better pad it a little – so he decides to train at a 7 minute mile pace (a fast pace, but still extremely slow compared to Olympic runners). He finds a great website for marathon training, plugs in the 7 minute mile pace and prints out a training schedule to follow. He looks at the schedule and decides that for him to able to achieve his goal he needs to develop a habit of running, so he decides on a habit of ”running 30 miles a week, at the 7 minute pace”.
His brother Todd also remembers the mile run in Junior High, but he also remembers that their regular gym coach was out sick and that they had a sub named Willie (he was a ground’s keeper or something).
He also remembered that Willie wasn’t too bright and instead of having them run 4 laps around the track for a mile, he only made them run 3. Todd sets the exact same goal to “Run and finish the 2010 Springfield Marathon”. But here is where Todd is a little smarter than Rod. Todd knows that he needs a specific goal, and he also knows that if he wants to achieve this goal, he must develop some habits. However, Todd knows that habits should be general and not too specific because they may need to evolve and change over time so that the goal can be achieved. Todd decides his habit will be to “run at least 5 days a week”. He doesn’t say how far he has to run, he doesn’t say how fast he has to run, he doesn’t even say which days he needs to run. He knows he just needs to get in the habit of running.
Now let’s jump ahead to the first day of training. Both Rod and Todd go out hard on the first day. In fact (like most people) they are excited about their new goal and they are a little over-enthusiastic. They both run around 3 miles at a very fast past. They both get home drenched in sweat, they are breathing like every breath might be their last, and they actually end up losing their lunch right before crashing on the couch for the rest of the day (a few of us have been there and done that).
Now Rod wakes up the next day, and for some reason every muscle in his body has decided that it’s on strike, any movement will result in excruciating pain. No running for Rod today, maybe tomorrow. The next day Rod feels a little better but not much. He looks at his habit of running 30 miles a week at a 7 minute mile pace. He barely ran 3 miles at that pace 2 days ago, and he missed yesterday. He tries to go running and can’t even run the first mile under 7 minutes because he is too sore. He walks home frustrated and dejected. He gets home and rips up his training schedule and decides he is done with the marathon. He didn’t even make it through a week and he has already quit. Sounds depressing huh? Except this is an all too common occurrence for many people.
Todd also can’t run the day after, and feels sore the day after that as well. He looks at his habit of running 5 times a week and just tells himself to at least just go out and run. He only runs for a little while, not even sure how far and comes home. He realizes that he will need to run a little slower in the future, but he his happy that he will be able to still get his 5 runs in this week. Long story short, Todd sticks to his habit, runs and finishes the marathon, and achieves his goal!
This is an extremely common scenario that we all encounter in life. Remember its ok to set big goals, in fact we need to set big goals! The problem is the small steps or habits that we do to achieve those goals:
- we make them too hard
- we make them too specific
- we get discouraged and quit
Don’t set yourself up for failure before you have even started your goal. Focus on creating general habits that can and will be accomplished.
What do you think? Agree or disagree, comment and let me know. | <urn:uuid:8cca4463-6d50-48f7-9435-b216a1a29e83> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.habitmix.com/blog/2009/10/27/why-you-need-specific-goals-and-general-habits/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984148 | 1,064 | 2.296875 | 2 |
My colleague Tracey recently approached me about an event that Red Hat was involved in this past week, where were asked to help introduce 2nd – 5th grade students (7-11 years old) to a topic in engineering and/or technology. We were invited to take part in this event by leading 10-minute sessions to 15 groups of ~20 students each, and we picked the topic of computer graphics. Eek! 10 minutes is not a whole lot of time! The topic needed to involve technology, but also graphics (since that’s my expertise), and needed to have activities for the students to do to engage them and let them have some fun. Oh, and the students would not have access to computers during the talk! Hmm, what to do?
We decided to talk to the students about the difference between bitmap and vector computer graphics, and have them work with the concepts using graph paper and colored pencils we would hand out:
To do just that effectively in 10 minutes I think is a pretty ambitious goal. To share some more information about free & open source software and how the students can do these exercises on a computer, we prepared a couple of things:
- I put together a guide to free & open source software to hand to their teachers. It discusses software such as Gimp and Inkscape as well as resources like OpenClipArt and K12 Open Source, hopefully such that some of the teachers would be inspired to try to use some of these in the classroom with their students.
- My colleagues Jackie and Jesus Rodriguez of Spacewalk fame put together 50 live USB sticks of the Fedora Design Suite spin that Sebastian Dziallas put together (with some modifications.) We’ll be handing a couple of these out to each group of students to share with their classmates, hopefully also enabling the students to try out what they learn in free & open source software. They’ll be accompanied by a card explaining how to use live media.
So the actual teaching material doesn’t focus on free & open source concepts at all – I’m hoping they’re covered pretty well in the supplementary material I just listed out. The material I put together really just focuses on what a bitmap is, what a vector is, and the differences between each with activities to demonstrate. For example, here’s a little snap of the bitmap activity:
To ‘create bitmaps’, we provided the students coordinates for various squares on a grid and have them fill them in different colors, which I think is conceptually a pretty good approximation of what a bitmap is. To ‘create vectors’, we provided the students coordinates for points on the grid and then tell them to connect various points with a line, or draw a circle around a given point. The shift from filling in squares to identifying points (e.g., the labels on the grid shift from labeling squares to labeling lines of the grid) was confusing for some of the students, but the majority were able to make the shift okay. Out of the two exercises, the students found the bitmap exercises much easier than the vector ones.
Anyway, here’s the 4-page activity sheet set (with really big page numbers – I’m hoping that’ll make it easier for the students to find the sheet I’m talking about when I tell them to pull it out.):
I hope these materials are generally useful for teachers outside of the context of this event that Red Hat is participating in. To that end, we’ve licensed them under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Please feel free to use these materials or remix them for your needs: the Inkscape source SVGs are available to this end.
We used these materials to teach 20 groups of students 15 times over in a single day during the event! Here’s the process Jackie and I followed:
- Set a student packet consisting of a clipboard, some sheets of graph paper, a ruler, a box of colored pencils, and the activity sheets at each student’s seat.
- Reset the computer to show a photo of a ladybug in Eye of GNOME. (Photo credit: Charles Barbin, GNU GPL license.)http://duffy.fedorapeople.org/edu/Photos/LadyBird_thumb.png.
- Invite the students into the classroom. Let them know they can sit anywhere they want, and yes, they get to keep all the materials we laid out for them (pretty much all of the students’ eyes lit up when they finally believed us – they couldn’t imagine getting everything, even the clipboard, just for them!)
- Ask the students, ‘Do you like artwork?’ (pretty much all hands went up, inevitably!) ‘How about computers?’ (All hands went up.) ‘We’re going to talk about two types of graphics, or artwork, on the computer today – bitmap and vector!
- Ask the students if they had ever taken a photo with a digital camera or downloaded a photo off the internet (all hands went up, of course.) Explain that digital photos are bitmap. Jackie, manning the laptop, would slowly zoom in on the ladybug photo until it was literally a screenful of squares.
- Ask the students if they know what the squares are (about half the groups had a student who knew they were called pixels.) Explain how with pixels, the computer stores information about the position and color of every pixel, and together it makes up an image like a patchwork quilt.
- Have the students do the first activity, the bitmap activity, on page 1B of the packet. Have them pick one of the faces, and try to follow the ‘code’ to make it appear in the grid.
- Next, Jackie brought up a picture of two monkeys side-by-side (Credit: Tango Project, Public Domain) and we asked the students if they could tell the difference. Just a couple of the groups could tell that the monkey on the left (the bitmap monkey) looked ‘blurrier.’ I told them, ‘One of these monkeys is bitmap, and one is vector, but they are the same monkey. How can you tell?’ and Jackie zoomed in so you could start seeing the bitmap monkey break down into pixels.
- I explained how with vector artwork, the computer isn’t limited to just little square pixels. Instead, the computer understands points, or nodes, and it draws lines between them so it’s not constrained by the squares.
- Next, with a flip chart and markers, I stepped the students through the example exercise on page 2B, the vector drawing of a house. I first drew all the nodes (asking the students a few times, ‘what are these called?’ until they replied ‘Nodes!’ ) and showed them how parts of the roof went right through the grid. Then I drew around the triangular roof, making a stairstep roof, explaining, ‘if this roof were a bitmap roof, it would look like this!’
- Next, the we asked the students to pick one of the vector graphics to draw, following the instructions, drawing first the nodes, then connecting them.
- Finally, we explained that Red Hat is a software engineering company, and we make software by sharing code, just like we shared the ‘code’ to make the different graphics with them. I gave different students as well as the teachers some of the USB keys and quick start cards for using them, and asked them to share with each other just like we shared with them. The students promised to share, and class was over!
To keep the sharing going, we’ve shared all of this with you.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
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We have been learning about who lives in and around a fresh water pond. We have charts with a list of facts about Pond animals and plants. In addition, we are listing any new vocabulary to our Pond Word Bank. Today I read two Nonfiction texts titled Life in Ponds and At The Pond. The students and I added new facts that we found in both books on the charts. Later, the students recorded what they have learned about the Pond in their booklet titled Pond Life. They will record their learning in this booklet throughout this unit of study.
Next week, the children are going to create a bulletin board displaying a pond with some of the animals and plants that live there.
The children will get an opportunity to see this habitat close-up very soon. On Monday, May 14th we will visit Brookside Wetlands. Lynn Vanderkamp who works for the City of Portland’s Environment Program will lead the tour. I will be sending the Permission Slips home on Thursday, May 3rd.
The children have been sharing and playing the Fairy Tale Games. They are thoroughly enjoying playing each other’s games. I can see the creative effort the students put forth in their games. Well Done Second Graders!
Art Night is on Thursday from 6-8pm. We will have our Art Docents telling you all about Vincent van Gogh and about the wonderful art that they created. See you there! | <urn:uuid:bbb92067-f02e-4188-8051-a884e63fada2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lewiselementary.org/notes/class-notes-from-ms-vasquez-43/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966189 | 291 | 2.90625 | 3 |
There are all kinds of content creation and video editing tools out there, from iMovie to the Adobe Suite. While several of these programs perform well and provide a multitude of options, users often fail to recognize that they can do much more with them than their basic functions. Over the coming weeks, we will focus on some ways to take the video programs you are already employing to the next level. This week we’ll take a look at Camtasia, a tool that helps users to customize and edit their videos.
Similar to other content authoring and editing programs, Camtasia allows users to create and enhance their videos. Features include screen captures with voice overs and deep video editing. However, for those of you who want more out of Camtasia, what are some ways to make a video more effective apart from adjusting the color filter or organizing your content? As a content creator you need to be able to offer your viewer both engaging content and a positive viewer experience.
Below I’ve outlined several innovative ways that you can use Camtasia to take your content to the next level, particularly in regards to management and distribution, with video platforms like KZO:
With Camtasia, content creators can produce stunning videos, increasing the engagement, as well as the interest, of the viewer. However, what if you want to keep that engagement and interest for more than one video? Enter video playlists, which allow users to take those stunning videos and separate the content into individual playlists. This is particularly helpful if you have multiple videos that are all part of one presentation, topic, or event. Another benefit is that if you ever have any new videos about the same topic you can just drop them into the playlist that you have already sent out. You can still post the playlist to your website or your Learning Management System (LMS), ensuring that the right audience sees your uploaded playlist.
Mix and match
The beauty of Camtasia is that it can add that spark of brilliance to any video, whether it’s through the tilt and restore function or using the green screen feature. However, what if you want to mix and match the content you add to your Camtasia video? That is, what if you want more than just video? With platforms like KZO, it’s possible, particularly if those additions are PowerPoint slides, desktop captures, closed caption capabilities, inserting PDF documents or even incorporating SWF files. The inclusion of these allows content creators to add more than just a Camtasia video to their presentations, giving them a little added expertise in whatever subject matter they’re presenting.
Ever make a Camtasia video and wish you could break it up so it’s easily viewable? Or perhaps you’ve wanted to search for a particular topic instead of scrolling through the piece? Well, after you upload your Camtasia video into KZO, you can break the content up into Chapters, or segmented parts of a video and add metadata tags to each chapter. Ultimately, this makes it easy for professionals to watch a certain segment or even search by keyword. Adding chapters creates a more effective viewing process and helps the user view the most relevant parts in a more timely fashion.
Insert collaborative and interactive elements
Camtasia videos are great since they can enhance the viewing experience for the audience through a variety of editing features. However, what about collaboration and interaction? Can Camtasia increase engagement through videos alone? Well, Camtasia definitely takes users a step in the right direction, but with Camtasia alone, users cannot add elements to their videos such as chat features or other social collaboration tools. These elements contribute to the video since audience members are participating, as well as interacting, with the content. They essentially become part of the experience and drive better engagement.
Undoubtedly, content creators can use Camtasia to do many innovative things, but as with any program, there are limits. However, combined with KZO in the distribution and delivery process, Camtasia videos are brought to another level.
Ultimately, a content creator would get the best of both worlds: the ability to create engaging video while at the same time giving the piece of content a platform where it can function at an optimal level. Essentially, a distribution and management video platform can pick up where Camtasia leaves off; allowing the video to engage a viewer while simultaneously giving the creator the advanced tools they need to fully put the video into action.
What do you think? What are some other things content creators can do with Camtasia?
To learn more about creating cost-effective professional video check out how to use KZO to create on-demand videos. | <urn:uuid:74e3042d-396b-4b78-95a9-7c12b9a9e319> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kzoinnovations.com/2012/07/03/how-do-more-content-creation-tools-camtasia/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935342 | 963 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Harry Houdini (March 24, 1874 - October 31, 1926), born Erik Weisz, later spelled Ehrich Weiss, was a noted debunker of spiritualists, mediums, and psychics. He is best known as an escape artist, particularly the "water torture" trick where he would escape from inside a locked tank of water while suspended upside down.
Houdini started a tradition which has been honored by many later stage magicians and illusionists, most notably James Randi and Derren Brown. His debunking activities, where he exposed what he called "humbug" were a direct inspiration for Penn and Teller when they devised Bullshit! - although he likely didn't inspire their excessive libertarianism. | <urn:uuid:3822a304-a22a-448c-83a3-aa441b880ced> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985789 | 150 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Once again, the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee has announced its intention to continue to artificially keeping interest rates “exceptionally low” for a “extended period.”
Missed in virtually all the commentaries is the key question: Should a central bank try to manipulate interest rates? Lost in all the debate over monetary policy is the fact that interest rates are market prices that are supposed to tell the truth: the truth about actual supply and demand conditions in financial markets.
I discuss the importance of interest rates — and prices in general — reflecting the reality of market supply and demand conditions in a new article of mine on, “Market Interest Rates Need to Tell the Truth, or Why Federal Reserve Policy Tells Lies.”
By preventing interest rates from telling the truth central bank policy inevitably sends out wrong signals about the real relationships between available savings and desired investment. The results are malinvestments, unsustainable bubbles and general economic harm.
Misguided monetary policy got us into the current business cycle, and the Federal Reserve is continuing the same mismanagement in the post-bubble era. Unfortunately, as long as we have central banks we will suffer from the ill affects of monetary central planning — distortions, imbalances, and inescapable “corrections” known as recessions.
As Ludwig von Mises once pointed out,
The essence of the market economy is that the economic actions of the individuals are not performed by order of the government but spontaneously by the individuals. This requires also that the money, the medium of exchange, be independent of political influence. if not, the coming years will be nothing but a series of failures of various government monetary and credit policies. To prevent this, it is necessary to make everybody realize that there are no Keynesian miracles possible, and that you cannot improve the situation of the people by credit expansion. | <urn:uuid:ecf5f23f-36da-4a9f-9bfe-a533cd7ec43a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archive.mises.org/11275/truthful-interest-rates-and-federal-reserve-monetary-policy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946293 | 380 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Ordroneaux was a short man and it was hard to believe that he could command and convince a weather-beaten, hardy and experienced crew to accept his authority. It is told that he once halted a retreat by his men in the face of a British boarding party by running to the powder magazine with a lighted match and threatening to blow up the ship if his crew retreated further.
Ordroneaux commanded an armed private ship named Prince de Neufchatel, which was fitted out with private funds. One of the most remarkable actions of the War of 1812 took place when the Prince de Neufchatel encountered the 40-gun British frigate, Endymion. A battle ensued between the two ships with many cannon shots being exchanged. The much more heavily armed British Endymion kept pounding Odroneaux's.
The commander of the ENDYMION became frustrated as he lost as many men as if he fought a man-of-war of equal force. He privately acknowledged the heroism displayed by the crew members of the privateer was a fierce and skillful defense. It is said that Commodore Ordroneaux himself fired some 80 rounds at the enemy.
The British tried many times to have their men board the Prince de Neufchatel, but they were repulsed with every attempt. The casualties were high for the British and after 20 minutes they cried out for quarter. The Americans ceased firing and captured the ship and its crew.
Commodore John Ordroneaux proved himself to a brave and adroit leader. He continued to roam the seas looking for the British ships until the war came to an end.
This is one of the 150 illustrated true stories of American heroism included in Jewish Heroes and Heroines of America, © 1996, written by Seymour "Sy" Brody of Delray Beach, Florida, illustrated by Art Seiden of Woodmere, New York, and published by Lifetime Books, Inc., Hollywood, FL.
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Last updated 12 May 2011 | <urn:uuid:5e2b16f1-2244-4236-8906-c43b1ef753d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fau.edu/library/brody9.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980279 | 424 | 2.53125 | 3 |
is the only true Divine religion.
Though the followers of
every religion say that their religion is the only true religion, but none
than Muslims can prove it rationally.
Lets give some
strong points in support of our belief that no one can disprove them on
Muslims never claim that Islam is a new religion, but
believe that it is the first and the oldest religion which was revealed to the
first man and the first Prophet, Adam (as ) who arrived on the planet earth by
the order of Allah Subhanahu taala.
Muslims believe in the basic
teachings of Prophet Ibrahim (as), Prophet Musa (as), Prophet Isa (as) and assert
that Prophet Muhammed was the last prophet of all prophets who testified and completed
the Divine message. i.e. all prophets from Hazrat Adam (as) to Hazrat Muhammad
(sws ) have the same basic beliefs.
The Holy Quran is the only
Divine book which is present in its original form and has never been slightly
changed or adulterated or corrupted in anyway. No other book claimed as Divine
book is available in its original form or in the same language in which it was
Islam covers each and every aspect of human life and
gives complete guidance in every field of human interest. It has complete code
of perfect life. No other religion has such complete course of social laws.
The basic beliefs and social laws of Islam never collide with each other. Also,
the basic beliefs and fundamental teachings of Islam and the established facts
of science show compatibility with each other. This is not true with any other
religion of the world.
Islam tells us very clearly, from where
we have come, why we are here, and where we will ultimately go. Islam clearly
defines the aim of our creation and the purpose of our life. All other religions
do not answer these basic questions so clearly.
Islam is the only
true monotheistic religion which teaches us to believe in the absolute oneness
Christians claim that they believe in one God but they also believe
in trinity, i.e. they say 1+1+1 =1 which is not correct. Similarly Hindus claim
that they also believe in one God but they worship many gods.
shall now prove that the original teachings of Judaism, Christianity and many
other religions testify the basic beliefs of Islam. These religions are now
different because they have been changed by the people to fulfill their selfish | <urn:uuid:dad2d148-4265-4ee9-901b-33d06ac9c49d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dartabligh.org/books/ebooks/basicbeliefs/page14.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94551 | 521 | 2.15625 | 2 |
|Title||Financing Workers’ Cooperatives: Issues and Strategies|
|Year of Publication||2005|
|Authors||Gunn, C, Myers, W|
Workers’ cooperatives are difficult to finance. The problems they face include the lack of capital in the hands of those who would be their members, caution in lending by conventional financial institutions, a paucity of appropriate equity instruments for their use, and weak or non-existent markets for those instruments. The debt and equity instruments and markets side of the problem has received little attention, and it is the subject of this paper.
We begin with an overview of the currently accepted “best practice” for the financial structure of a workers’ cooperative. It draws heavily on the early growth dynamics of the Mondragon group of cooperatives in Basque Spain, and on a U.S. adaptation of the Mondragon model. We then turn to an innovative way of lending to workers’ co-ops, problems in long-advocated use of preferred stock by them, and the role Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) can play in conversion of traditionally-owned firms to workers co-ops. The paper concludes by surveying roles for foundations and federal legislation in promoting development of workers’ cooperatives. | <urn:uuid:d19f207e-3e7b-42e8-be75-e52662696a51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://american.coop/content/financing-workers%E2%80%99-cooperatives-issues-and-strategies | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926617 | 267 | 1.515625 | 2 |
IMS Research has launched a new report predicting that within five years 90% of passport holders will be using e-passports with integrated smart card IC chips.
According to the report, “Electronic Government and Health Care ID Cards – World – 2011,” nearly half of all current passports issued today use smart chip technology, thanks to a rapid migration started in 2007.
“This trend is set to continue,” stated report author Alex Green. “There are still a few countries around the world that are not yet issuing e-passports. However, most have started and with the typical five to ten year replacement rates for passports, it is only a matter of time before all passports in circulation are e-passports.”
The report goes on to examine the use of biometrics in e-passports, which is still largely limited to a digital image of the holders face stored on the IC.
Green says this will change: “By 2014, the situation is forecast to have been reversed. By this time the majority of passports being issued will also include additional biometric data such a one or more finger print, iris scans, etc.”
According to IMS, the report covers the e-passport market for 40 countries, as well as national ID cards, health care cards, electronic driver’s licenses and a number of other government issued cards. | <urn:uuid:2d76e131-a2cc-47d5-b056-acbdd85ca844> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://secureidnews.com/news-item/report-90-of-passports-chip-enabled-by-2016/?tag=contactless&tag=Border_Control | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963352 | 289 | 2.046875 | 2 |
What is an informational interview, you ask?
Opposed to your typical employment interview, here the job seeker is the one asking all the questions!
The purpose is to allow the job seeker to obtain advice and information about careers and various industries.
Not sure how to go about finding someone to interview?
Simply ask a friend, family member, colleague, faculty member, among many others to refer you to someone who has experience in the particular area you are interested in working.
- Typically, informational interviews will take place with someone you do not know personally.
- Keep in mind, most people are glad to offer career advice to anyone!
Do you have an informational interview lined up?
Here are some questions you might consider asking. | <urn:uuid:d0c988cf-26a7-49d7-b286-966c5b11a6d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://duq.edu/life-at-duquesne/student-services/career-services/students/majors-and-careers/informational-interviews | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961307 | 151 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Religion is a key dynamic shaping the contemporary world. Religion is increasingly recognised as an important factor in understanding national and global politics, equalities and power relationships. Religion can be both constituted as an empowering as well as a restrictive entity, which intersects with other social divisions such as gender, ethnicity, class, age and sexuality. The module takes this juxtaposition of empowerment and restriction as its starting point, to critically examine the key sociological issues and debates that arise in relation to contemporary religion. It will examine not only the historical relationship between religion and sociology, but will also map contemporary sacred/secular divisions, and why religion is now firmly back on the sociological agenda. We will also be closely examining the sources of tension in relation to religion, such as issues of gender, sexuality, fundamentalism and atheism. A strong focus will be placed on empirical data to understand how individuals utilise religion in their everyday lives, recognising religion as a fluid process rather than a static entity. There will also be an opportunity for students to undertake a small-scale piece of research work, allowing students to be reflexive about what it means to be a researcher of religion.
Assessment method: The course will be assessed through a 3000-word portfolio of work that may include components such as a critical literature review, write up of small-scale data collection and a research reflection. Feedback will be given informally in seminars, as well as formal written feedback on the returned portfolio. | <urn:uuid:ac8e9b15-1708-44ef-9f4c-1c88b27da882> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www1.aston.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/school/languages-social-sciences/sociology-social-policy/sociology/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951466 | 296 | 2.875 | 3 |
A joint resolution
signed by Ulysses S. Grant
on Feb 9, 1870 authorized the Secretary of War
for taking meteorological observation
s at the military
stations in the interior
of the continent
and at other points in the States
...and for giving notice on the northern (Great) Lakes and on the seacoast by magnetic telegraph and marine signals, of the approach and force
of storms." This resolution is the start of what we know of today as the National Weather Service.
According the their mission statement, the National Weather Service provides weather, hydrologic, and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and ocean areas, for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy. The National Weather Service is the organization that monitors weather conditions and issues all warnings and watches in case of severe and life-threatening weather.
While the prediction of weather is not an exact science and many predictions turn out to be erroneous, the National Weather Service usually errs on the side of caution and is responsible for saving many lives from weather-related death and injuries. | <urn:uuid:03ead957-f009-4159-a340-ab21f93b0f3d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://everything2.com/user/psydereal/writeups/National+Weather+Service | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922033 | 231 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Overlooking the Hippodrome, the museum occupies the restored 16th-century palace of Ibrahim Paşa. A Greek convert to Islam, Ibrahim was the confidant of Süleyman I and in 1523 he was appointed Grand Vizier. When his palace was completed the following year, it was the grandest private residence in the Ottoman Empire, rivalling any building of the Topkapı Palace. When Süleyman fell under the influence of the scheming Roxelana, he was persuaded that Ibrahim had to go, and the vizier was strangled in his sleep.
The palace was seized by the state and has variously been used as a school, a dormitory, a court, a barracks and a prison, before being restored as a museum. The well-planned collections, all housed in cool rooms around a central courtyard, include carpets, manuscripts, miniatures, woodwork, metalwork and glasswork. Items range from the earliest period of Islam through to modern times, all presented chronologically and geographically, with full explanations provided.
On the ground floor, a gallery showcases modern Turkish and foreign artists. There's an interesting ethnographic section, including a recreation of a kara çadır or 'black tent', the residence of choice for many of the nomadic Anatolian tribes who developed the art of the kilim. Upstairs, the Great Hall contains what is reckoned to be one of the finest collections of carpets in the world.
There's also an excellent café in a shaded courtyard, with a covered terrace overlooking the Hippodrome next to it. | <urn:uuid:cc11944f-83eb-470a-b3aa-f4f43ed3217a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timeout.com/istanbul/museums/venue/1:16841/museum-of-turkish-islamic-art | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974583 | 333 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Back to School with Middle School Apps for iPad, iPhone, and iPod
August 17, 2012 in Education
[prMac.com] Longmont, Colorado - It's time to get ready for middle school with apps from Monkey in the Middle Apps. Go to the App Store now and get a jump on the school year with Middle School Math 7th Grade, Middle School Vocab 7th Grade, and Middle School Science 8th Grade.
New Math Quizzes and Languages:
A new version of the math app - Middle School Math Pro 7th Grade - has just been released. New quizzes have been added for Ratios, Proportions, and Probability. Translations have also been added for Spanish, German, French, and Chinese.
Designed for Classrooms:
While the apps are fun for individual students, the apps are designed to be used by an entire classroom. Teachers can track progress for an entire classroom using either score emails or web based reports. The topics have been carefully chosen to match common textbooks and core standards. Each quiz also includes review notes and links to online tutorials and videos.
Built using Teacher Feedback:
"We love hearing from teachers. The feedback we get from Facebook and email is what guides our development." explained Andrew Meier, co-founder and CTO. "We want to thank the teachers that suggested the new quiz topics and new reports."
Pricing and Availability:
The Middle School Math, Science, and Vocab apps work on all versions of iPad(R), iPhone(R), and iPod touch(R). They are free and available now from the App Store. Pro versions with additional quizzes are also available now from the App Store for 99 cents. A 50% educational discount is available through the Apple Volume Purchasing Program for Education.
Middle School Math Pro 7th Grade
Middle School Vocab Pro 7th Grade
Middle School Science Pro 8th Grade
Based in Colorado, Monkey in the Middle Apps builds educational games for middle school students. Founded in the fall of 2011, their Math, Vocab, and Science apps have been used in dozens of classrooms, have been downloaded more than 150 thousand times, and have received over 400 five star reviews in the App Store. Play. Learn. Repeat. (TM) Copyright (C) 2012 Monkey in the Middle Apps LLC. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. | <urn:uuid:e3795f0e-a72a-4f13-beec-cdd67831afcd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://prmac.com/release-id-46759.htm | 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 | 0.948561 | 513 | 2.25 | 2 |
|Materialism: Devouring our dignity||
“As long as one is shackled to materialism, one can never attain dignity in life,” stated Hojatul Islam Ibrahim Kazerooni during his Muharram lectures.
Materialism, the philosophy that nothing exists beyond material substances and that everything, including our thoughts, feelings and awareness, can be explained in terms of such matter, predates the Greek philosophers Epicurus and Democritus. Historically, materialism as a philosophy, denies the existence of God and the soul, putting it in direct conflict with the teachings of Islam and the other two Abrahamic faiths, Christianity and Judaism. However, in its more common modern usage, materialism refers to the cultural view held in high esteem by the Western world that material success and progress are the highest human values.
That modern materialism, fostered by the unhindered greed of corporations and the consumers’ desire for instant gratification, is derived from the earlier philosophy of materialism is easily seen. One scholar, Majid Fakhry, believes the cornerstone of modern Western materialism was laid in the Middle East by Arab Philosophers such as al-Razi and Ibn Sina: Fakhry writes:
“In due course the Arab philosophers’ preoccupation with the study of nature, as well as their rejection of creation ex nihilo conditioned European thought and laid the foundation for the rise of materialism in the West”.
That materialism is engrained in American culture is beyond doubt, as are its dehumanizing negative consequences. America leads the Western world in murders, violent crimes, incarceration, divorce, abortion, single-parent homes, obesity, teen suicide, drug consumption, cocaine use, and pornography. American materialism allows one man, Bill Gates, to possess a net worth equal to the total net worth of the bottom 50 percent of American families while 20 percent of those families live in poverty. Such a materialistic society is clearly shackling an ever-increasing number its citizens in poverty and in so doing, is devouring their dignity.
The dignity of persons is purported to be of paramount value in European and American cultures. In Europe, dignity is embedded in the constitutions of many nations, and in the United States, it is often considered an inherent constitutional right by many jurists. However, the cutthroat capitalistic economic system in effect in these lands, with its emphasis on materialism born of greed and nurtured by competition, is diametrically opposed to values of human rights and dignity, for a materialistically shackled person, writes Ayatollah Dastghaib Shirazi, “is prepared to be humiliated for worldly wealth. That is, he even becomes a slave of money. He betrays trusts and does not fulfill the rights of others”.
While the United States may have been founded on lofty ideals of a free society with equality and social justice for all citizens, its history of genocide against Native Peoples, enslavement of Blacks, and Eurocentric immigration policies stands in sharp contrast with values of human dignity. This historic dignity expropriation has continued into the present era by discrimination against minorities in employment, housing and lending, and by racial profiling and oppression, all of which have materialistic underpinnings.
Moreover, Americans love to flaunt their wealth. American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen referred to this in his 1899 book “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, in which he coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption”. Referring to the phenomenon, Veblen wrote, “Unproductive consumption of goods is honorable, primarily as a mark of prowess and a perquisite of human dignity; secondarily it becomes substantially honorable in itself, especially the consumption of the more desirable things.”
In short, rich Americans like to buy costly things to boost their egos and show them off in front of those who are less fortunate, thereby damaging the dignity of the latter. Such shopping is routinely done by wealthy Americans who rely on investments as their primary source of income, unlike most of the world’s citizens who must work long and hard to provide for their families the barest of necessities. Even during the financial “disaster of 2008” when 10 percent of Americans were out of work, only one quarter of this group of luxury item shoppers cut back on their purchases of upscale goods and services. Presently, one-third of the affluent Americans who belong to this exclusive clique of high-end consumers have joined its ranks since the credit meltdown.
Perhaps the most repugnant display of materialism in the West occurs during the Christmas shopping season, which extends from the American holiday of Thanksgiving in late November to Christmas on December 25. While gift giving at this time of year was an old English tradition imported by the early American colonizers, corporate capitalism has turned the custom upside down. Originally involving the giving of gifts by the wealthy to the poor and servants, the tradition has transformed into manipulative materialistic exchanges between persons trying to impress and gain favor, each by outspending the other on presents that neither really needs. As far as the poor and destitute who are unable to provide for themselves much less buy gifts for others, they are simply left out in the cold, devoid of dignity.
Concerning the intention of materialistic gift-giving, Veblen explained, “Since the consumption of these more excellent goods is an evidence of wealth, it becomes honorific; and conversely, the failure to consume in due quantity and quality becomes a mark of inferiority and demerit.” Further on, Veblen clarified the capitalistic motivation, “The aid of friends and competitors is therefore brought in by resorting to the giving of valuable presents and expensive feasts and entertainments.”
So much for the West and its materialism, which is devouring the dignity of its own people, but what about Islam? In Islam, human dignity is intrinsic, since human beings are considered to be Allah’s vicegerents on earth. As the Holy Quran says:
“We have bestowed dignity on the children of Adam…and conferred upon them special favours above the greater part of Our creation”. (Surat Al-Isra. 17:70)
As Muslims, our main goal should be success in the Hereafter and not amassing wealth in this world. Indeed, the Holy Quran warns us about the excessive accumulation of riches:
“Those who hoard gold and silver, and do not spend it in the way of Allah, inform them of a painful punishment.” (Surah Al-Tawbah 9:34)
Elsewhere, the Quran warns us:
“Abundance diverts you, until you come to the graves.” (Surah Al-Takathur, 102:1-2)
To emphasize the dangers of materialism, the Quran brings the story of the rich Israelite Qarun (Korah), who oppressed the poor just like the moneyed materialists in the West. Korah possessed so much wealth that even strong men had difficulty merely carrying the keys to his treasures!
“Indeed, Korah was of the people of Moses, but he oppressed them; and We had given him so much treasure that its keys would have been a burden to a group of strong men.” (Surah Al-Qasas 28:76)
He was even warned by the elders of his own people not to behave this way, rather he was advised to do good deeds with his money and to plan for the Hereafter.
“Then, his people said to him, ‘Do not rejoice (in your riches), for Allah does not like those who rejoice. And seek by means of what Allah has given you, the future abode, and do not neglect your portion of this world, and do good [to others] as Allah has done good to you.” (Surah Al-Qasas 28:76-77)
Like affluent Americans, Korah loved to flaunt his wealth, and those people of his time who were shackled to materialism envied him and wanted to be like him.
“So he went forth to his people in his finery. Those who desire this world’s life said, ‘O would that we had the like of what Korah is given;” (Surah Al-Qasas 28:79)
As a result of his arrogant behavior and misuse of wealth, Korah, his riches and his possessions were swallowed up by the ground in an earthquake.
“So We caused the earth to swallow him up and his house,” (Surah Al-Qasas 28:81)
So as Muslims, how can we break the shackles of materialism and achieve the intended dignity in life? By using our wealth to elevate the oppressed -- those whose dignity is being devoured by materialism -- for Allah wants to show them favor as the Quran states:
“We desire to show favor to those who are oppressed in the land, and to make them leaders and to make them inheritors.” (Surah Al-Qasas, 28:5)
And spending money to help the oppressed even results in material gain for the giver, for Imam Sadiq (AS) relates that the Prophet (S) said, “Give charity since it will cause an increase in your wealth”.
So by using our wealth in the way of Allah; paying our Zakat (alms-tax) and Khums (one-fifth levy), giving Sadaqa (charity) and by engaging in Jihad (striving) to eliminate unjust differences between rich and poor, we can break the shackles of materialism.
Subscribe to our RSS feed to stay in touch and receive all of TT updates right in your feed reader | <urn:uuid:1c30fd17-dc82-4364-8caa-2da4d7e96af2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tehrantimes.com/opinion/103982-materialism-devouring-our-dignity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967303 | 2,053 | 2.625 | 3 |
Never before has the environment been under so much pressure (driven by rising populations) and never before has it been subject to so much change (driven by climate) as it is today. The natural environment is not a luxury for society – it critically underpins and delivers a wide range of goods and services, from food and water, to flood defence and carbon storage. Significant changes are happening now to these services, and more are on the way.
There are three elements to making the right choices for the future of the natural environment;
The natural environment is essential for the well being of people, so decisions made today must safeguard our natural resources.
Our report No charge? Valuing the natural environment sets out the contribution that nature makes to our economy (such as clean water, carbon storage) to ensure that its value is recognised.
Read Helen Phillips' speech from the launch on 14 October 2009. (Helen Phillips was Natural England Chief Executive of at the time of the launch)
Whilst we cannot predict what the future holds, we can look at long term trends and consider what these might mean for us and the environment we live in, in 2060. Within Natural England we have:
Undertaken a rigorous analysis of data on future trends to identify key factors that will impact on the natural environment. [NECR030 - Global drivers of change to 2060]
Developed four scenarios of how the world might look in 2060 and carried out an initial assessment of the long term risks and opportunities that could influence the natural environment by 2060. [NERR031 - England’s natural environment in 2060 - issues, implications and scenarios with associated research note RIN031.]
The report explores how our behaviours and factors such as technological progress may play out and what that might mean for the natural environment.
Looked at other related scenarios and compared these with ours. [NECR031 - Scenarios compendium]
We have used these scenarios to inform the uplands vision, see below.
The study, to demonstrate multi-functional use of land, was developed through discussions between Defra, Natural England, Foresight, Department of Communities and Local Government. A series of seven case studies were selected from over 50 land use initiatives and used to produce an evidence base. This evidence base was then used to inform the Foresight Land Use Futures project due to be launched in February 2010.
Two outputs from the study are the Final Report and Executive Summary, funded by Defra Land Use Team.
We are also keen to have some tangible idea of what a healthy environment should look like, something to aim for and inspire action – by people, government at national, regional and local level, public bodies and the private sector. Natural England is working, with others, towards developing a pathway to how the natural environment of England should look in 50 years time and how it will contribute to the needs of society. We want this to be more than a Natural England view, we want others to contribute and with us build this future. We will do this by working with others to develop the pathway and a plan (strategy) to achieve it. Our ambition is that it will inspire and motivate decision-makers across society to take decisions in ways which will secure a healthy future for the natural environment.
The initial element in developing our vision for the natural environment to 2060, from mountain top to sea bed, began with the launch of Vital Uplands: Natural England’s vision for the upland environment in 2060 (subsequently withdrawn) on 12 November 2009.
This built on the multiple benefits that the natural environment provides, advocated in our 'No charge?' report above.
The specific contribution of the uplands is detailed in:
Mapping Values: the vital nature of our uplands – atlas linking environment and people which describes, through maps, many of the benefits people derive from the upland environment and how we might secure these for the future.
Economic Valuation of Upland Ecosystem Services - report explaining a method for exploring the economic implications of land use change in the uplands at a variety of scales. Contains 6 upland case studies.
Upland Ecosystem Services - report assessing the links between environment, land management and service delivery which explain our understanding of the evidence behind 4 key upland ecosystem services.
Delivering nature’s services is a report on a pioneering demonstration project which will show how the upland vision could work in practice in 3 different upland areas.
If you have any comments please email the pathways project. | <urn:uuid:6aa917f9-3170-437f-bb7d-f1d3b3bc1035> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.naturalengland.net/ourwork/securefuture/default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943083 | 937 | 2.96875 | 3 |
SAFER (Station Action For Emergency Readiness) is an NPR-NFCB initiative to help pubmedia stations prepare for emergencies. It’s offering a session on emergency readiness plans at the Community Radio Conference in June. Here’s the full announcement from SAFER’s Ginny Berson. (Read more about the SAFER project here.)
SAFER — Your Station in an Emergency
9:00AM – 2:00PM, Saturday, June 12th, 2010
35th Annual Community Radio Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota
Richard Dillman, SAFER Manual Writer and KWMR Transmitter Engineer
Hurricanes, fires, blizzards, chemical spills, floods, earthquakes — is your station ready to provide critical public service in a time of critical public need? SAFER — Station Action for Emergency Readiness — is a joint project of NFCB and NPR, funded mostly by CPB. The SAFER project has created a detailed guide for stations to develop their own emergency readiness plans, plus digital tools for station websites.
This Intensive is for stations that have started work on their plan. It will be very interactive. We will work with plans from a variety of stations — different sizes, different kinds of markets. We will workshop the plans, help you solve problems that have you stumped and help you move forward.
You will have opportunities to pick the brains of and share ideas with people from other community and public radio stations. Regardless of where you are in your planning — as long as you have begun — we encourage you to attend this Intensive and take advantage of the best thinking of the SAFER team and stations working through some of the same problems.
Who should attend this Intensive? The staff person who is most involved with and responsible for developing your station’s emergency preparedness plan.
This Intensive is supported by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Although the registration fee for the SAFER (Station Action for Emergency Readiness) Intensive is only $50, we know that for some of you the cost of getting to St. Paul, staying in the hotel, etc. will be prohibitive.
We are able to offer 3 scholarships, each worth $1000, to 3 stations so that they may attend the Intensive (and the Community Radio Conference, if you wish). The scholarship application can be found here.
Ginny Z. Berson
Vice President and Director of Federation Services
National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB)
510 451-8200 ext. 305
1970 Broadway, Suite 1000
Oakland, CA 94612 | <urn:uuid:f9566080-4988-459c-8aaa-f09181e4ec10> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fluportal.org/category/blog/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929872 | 538 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The town took part in last week’s statewide emergency drill, successfully opening and operating its Emergency Operations Center to deal with a fictitious Category 3 hurricane. Kudos to those who participated and to the officials who have taken so seriously the need to plan for emergencies and to be prepared for them.
There is, however, another link in emergency preparedness, and that is homeowners. Homeowners must have their own emergency plans, the supplies they will need to shelter in place for at least 72 hours, and designated alternate sites where they can go if they can’t remain in their homes.
If you have to move to a shelter, remember it is not a hotel, and not even necessarily a comfortable place, it just provides the basics: shelter, water, and power if possible. You must take towels, toiletries and bedding — even an air mattress if you have one.
Besides preparing for human needs, homeowners also need to remember their pets and have a means of transporting them to a shelter, either with a crate or carrier. Pet owners need to bring their own pet supplies, including food, litter boxes, etc.
A list of the emergency items that homeowners’ should have on hand and other valuable information is on the town’s website at westonct.gov under Important Info, Emergency Storm Info.
Don’t get caught unprepared. | <urn:uuid:a1e0b8d4-6417-42ea-91bd-ee1c48d675ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thewestonforum.com/2591/editorial-be-prepared/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969002 | 280 | 1.96875 | 2 |
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iran stepped up allegations Monday against the West of "meddling" in its disputed presidential election even as its election authority reportedly acknowledged that the number of ballots cast in dozens of cities exceeded the number of eligible voters in those areas.
Image obtained on June 21 shows Iranian riot police blocking protesters on a Tehran street June 20.
Speaking to reporters, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi alleged that foreign media organizations, such as CNN and the BBC, were mouthpieces of their respective governments that were exaggerating reports of police clashes with protesters who have demonstrated daily since the June 12 race.
He also said that government-run news sites, such as the Iranian Student's News Agency, had been hacked in recent days and implied foreign outlets were behind it.
"Isn't it a cyber war of the media with an independent government?" Qashqavi said. "They ask people to use the DOS (denial of service) system to hack our Web sites." Watch more about Iran's female protesters »
Denial-of-service attacks make it difficult for users to access a Web site, either temporarily or indefinitely.
Qashqavi's comments came a few hours after government-funded Press TV said Iran's Guardian Council -- which approves all candidates running for office and verifies election results -- said excessive ballots were found in 50 cities.
But, said council spokesman Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, voting in those locations did not noticeably affect the outcome of the election.
The council declared incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner of the election with 62.63 percent of the vote. His closest rival, Mir Hossein Moussavi received 33.75 percent, surprising many experts who expected him to win. Watch more on Iran's criticism of the West »
Moussavi rejected the election as fraudulent and has demanded a new one. Since then, tens of thousands of Iranians echoing the call have taken to the streets daily -- sometimes engaging in violent clashes with police and Ahmadinejad backers.
On Sunday, thousands of riot police and militia lined Tehran's streets as large crowds marched through thoroughfares shouting, "Don't be afraid. We're together!" and "Death to the dictator!"
There were no immediate reports of violence, unlike on Saturday, when hospital sources said 19 people were killed in clashes. Press TV confirmed 13 fatalities, while unconfirmed reports put the number as high as 150.
The station also said police arrested 457 people Saturday who vandalized property. Tehran's prosecutor general's office said it had launched an investigation into the killings.
Moussavi has called on Iranians to "exercise self-control," while still supporting their right to demonstrate.
"The country belongs to you. The revolution and the system is your heritage," a statement attributed to Moussavi said on the candidate's Web site. "Protesting against lies and cheating is your right. Be hopeful about regaining your rights. Do not allow anyone who tries to make you lose hope and frighten you, make you lose your temper."
CNN has not been able to verify the authenticity of the site.
Though Moussavi supporters on social networking sites have accused police of brutality, Tehran police Chief Maj. Gen. Azizollah Rajabpour told Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency that officers do not have permission to use firearms when confronting protesters.
Allegations to the contrary were false and "spread by those who want to muddy the waters," Mehr said.
The foreign ministry spokesman leveled the same allegations, saying the West and its media were sowing discord in Iran.
The government has restricted international journalists from covering the rallies.
On Sunday, the BBC said Iran had expelled Jon Leyne, its permanent correspondent in Tehran. And the Tehran bureau of the Dubai-based Arab satellite station Al-Arabiya was ordered closed, the station said.
Qashqavi, the foreign ministry spokesman, said lawmakers were meeting Monday to discuss how to respond to foreign tampering.
"There is a heated debate in parliament right now," he said. "We will take necessary steps regarding the West's interference." Also Sunday, the daughter of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was released after her arrest while taking part in a protest.
Rafsanjani supports Moussavi, while Khamenei remained staunch in his defense of Ahmadinejad.
|Most Viewed||Most Emailed||Top Searches| | <urn:uuid:698f90e3-2fce-4d92-9634-2fc8993749ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/22/iran.election.criticism/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973285 | 920 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Change and Bug Tracking System: Anjung Penchala Sdn. Bhd.
Defects or bugs have been existed as a problem in the system and they are normally inevitable in software development. Most software bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's source code or its technical design. Huge amount of bugs could be found in system development. It was relatively difficult to manage bugs in simple word documents or remember everything in one's head. Thus Change and Bug Tracking (CBT) System has been introduced in order to keep track of the reported bug in the system. By using this tracking system, every user can report and follow up the issue in the system. | <urn:uuid:331ff89b-0791-467a-850f-3de80ad55f6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techrepublic.com/whitepapers/change-and-bug-tracking-system-anjung-penchala-sdn-bhd/32839369?cname=security-administration | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948279 | 140 | 2 | 2 |
Life imprisonment in Finland
In Finland, life imprisonment is a particular type of punishment, which lasts for the remainder of a convict's life; it currently consisting of imprisonment in closed prison and possible periods of imprisonment in halfway house, supervised parole and full parole.
After the Second World War, the death penalty was abolished for ordinary crimes and life without parole, which had been an alternative for the death penalty in wartime, became the sole maximum sentence. From 1948 until 2006 there were two types of life sentences in Finland, life without parole (f. elinkautinen vankeusrangaistus) for first degree murder, aggravated high treason, aggravated treason and aggravated espionage and life with parole (f. eristäminen pakkolaitokseen) for repeat offenders in aggravated violent crimes. The latter system about parolable life sentences was somewhat similar to some versions of "three strikes" laws in the U.S.A. In practice, many life prisoners had their sentences commuted by the President, after serving 10–20 years of it, allowing parole even in cases where the original sentence was not meant to have possibility of parole at all.
In 2006, life imprisonment was abolished altogether in "repeat offender" cases, to be replaced with determinate sentences up to 15 years of which at least 5/6 has to be served and life without parole was replaced, even retroactively, with life imprisonment with possibility of parole after 12 years served, in murder cases. There were no convicts at the time serving life without parole for any other crime than first degree murder.
Currently, Helsinki Court of Appeals (Helsingin hovioikeus) acts as Parole Board and a life prisoner is considered for parole after serving 12 years. If the parole is rejected, a new parole hearing is scheduled in 2 years. If the parole is accepted, 3 years of supervised parole follows until full parole, assuming no violations. If the convict was less than 21 years of age when they committed the crime, the first parole hearing is after 10 years served. Juveniles cannot be sentenced to life imprisonment in Finland, the maximum penalty for an offender who was under 18 years of age is 15 years, with possibility of parole after 7½ years.. | <urn:uuid:e2d606f7-ede6-4ed2-8048-092a2433a17b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_Finland | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957621 | 457 | 2.375 | 2 |
The Bush Family's
The Emmitsburg Historical Society
recently received the following e-mail from Alice Davis of Cates, Vista,
I am interested in Emmitsburg [history] in an indirect sort of way. I
share a bit of Cecil County ancestry with President Bush's family, which
is nice, except that the Presidential genealogies are masterpieces of
incorrectness when it comes to Cecil County. I decided to do a paper on
the Bush family roots in Maryland, but I have now scaled that back to
Cecil County, as the Bush family has just too many roots in Frederick
County for me to understand.
George Walker, an orphan, was sent by his Cecil or Kent Co. guardian to
Mount Saint Mary's in 1811 and 1812, when he was 14 or 15 years old. I
thought it was interesting that he was sent to a Catholic school,
especially since George W. Bush has gotten into trouble with his visit
to Bob Jones U. Also, I wondered, and still wonder, why young George was
sent to Emmitsburg, which is quite a way from Cecilton.
I then noticed that George's son, David Davis Walker, married in St.
Louis Martha Adela Beakey, a girl born in Emmitsburg. Was this
coincidence or connection?
I'd like to learn more about the Beakey/ Beachey/ Becchi/ Beche family.
My only source to date is Americans of Gentle Birth and Their Ancestors,
compiled by Mrs. H. D. Pittman, Burton and Skinner, St. Louis, Mo.,
According to this book and my interpretation of it Victor Emmanuel
Becchi immigrated from Strasbourg in Alsace Lorraine after the
Revolutionary War and was a friend and ally of the Rev. Prince
Gallitizin in establishing a Catholic prescence around Loretto in
Pennsylvania. His son Joseph, who I think is the Joseph in your history,
studied for the priesthood but chose
another vocation. He was said to be a gifted linguist. He married a
Catherine Shriner and settled in Emmitsburg. His son, Joseph Ambrose
Beakey, went to Philadelphia where he met and married Mary Ann Bangs, a
girl of Quaker family. They returned to Emmitsburg, she converted to
Catholicism, and then in the 1840's moved to St. Louis by 1850. The
senior Joseph is said to have died in Emmitsburg in 1854 and the younger
while on the Minnehaha steamboat on the Mississippi in 1858.
At this point, this is mainly undocumented. I'm going to suggest that it
would be a good subject for a paper by some Mt. St. Mary's student---the
archivist there helped me with some of George Walker's school financial
George Herber Walker, the son of David Davis Walker and Martha Adela
Beakey, was President Bush's maternal grandfather. On the Bush side the
family also has a lot of Frederick County ancestors, the Shellman and
Fout families, mostly Lutheran, I think.
Alice Davis Cates, Vista, CA
PS: Should George W. not get Gored, he should have a real fondness for
Frederick County, if anyone tells him about it.
know of an individual who helped shape Emmitsburg?
If so, send their story to us at: email@example.com
to Previous Page > | <urn:uuid:37d8b710-2677-4f42-bbd6-604a2a9f917d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.emmitsburg.net/archive_list/articles/people/people/bush.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961101 | 742 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Part II in Series: Surviving the Sandwich Generation When Siblings Can't or Won't Help
By Tom Wright, Edelman Direct Advisor
Read Part I: The Sandwich Generation
This is the second of a two part story exploring the Sandwich Generation: those who provide financial support to aging parents while raising young children — and trying to save for their own retirement at the same time. Last email update’s column explained how to work with your siblings and your parents to ensure that parents’ needs are met.
Caring for an adult family member and your own children simultaneously is a financial and emotional challenge, as my colleague Sean Wintz explained in the last issue. Despite the difficulties Sean faced — taking a leave of absence from work to help care for his mother after she had a stroke — his story ultimately had a happy ending as he and his siblings worked together to find the best solution for ensuring that his mother got all the help she needed.
Unfortunately, families don’t always work together like that. In fact, just one-third of adult caregivers receive help from their siblings, according to a study from Clark University.
Sometimes the reason siblings or other family members can’t pitch in is benign; they and other relatives often live thousands of miles away or are too young or impoverished themselves to be of any assistance.
Of course, in many families it’s not geography or resources that cause conflict — it’s family tension that has been simmering for years. Perceived slights over who the favorite was or who got the most attention or financial aid can bubble to the surface when it’s time to talk about who will take care of Mom or Dad. Family members can devolve to the worst version of their teenage selves by bickering, throwing tantrums or simply ignoring everyone else. And that’s before we consider the input of the people you and your brothers and sisters married.
In other cases, children are hesitant to help out because they don’t have the best relationship with their parents. Maybe one child has always been very close with a parent, while another has had rocky relations or has been (or felt like) the “problem child.” Even though everyone grew up in the same family, they may not have the same feelings about Mom and Dad.
Regardless of how family members get along, one person= usually emerges (either deliberately or inadvertently) as the primary caregiver. But if the rest of the family abdicates involvement, allowing that individual to handle all the parent’s needs, problems can occur. The caregiver can develop feelings of animosity because others aren’t helping, while the others can become dissatisfied with the caregiver’s decisions and actions — which antagonizes the caregiver, creating a vicious cycle. Ill feelings aren’t limited to siblings, either. They can actually develop between the caregiver and the parents receiving care — resentment, embarrassment, even jealousy. And the spouses (who are, after all, “just in-laws”) can create issues as well.
Things get complicated when one or more siblings live far away. Feeling inept due to distance, they may demand updates or harshly question, criticize or judge the actions of the primary caregiver, who already feels he or she is doing his or her best to balance family, work and a social life with the needs of a parent.
So what do you do when you find yourself involved with family members who either can’t or won’t help, or whose interference (however well-meaning) is disrupting the needs of the family? Here are some tips to guide you.
The caregiver should serve only if he or she wants to. Guilt, coercion or the apparent absence of alternatives must never force anyone into accepting this role. Caregivers suffer significant reductions in income, damage to their careers, impairments to their own health, and relationship problems with their own spouses and children, according to a 2009 AARP study. In the end, the problem is ultimately that of the parent; no one should be made to feel that a parent’s problem belongs to anyone else.
Caregivers must never expect or demand gratitude; nevertheless, they should receive it from the parents and other family members. When a family member willingly and selflessly volunteers to be a caregiver, he or she should do so for personal reasons, not for external reward or recognition. But the risks and costs incurred by the caregiver and his or her own family make it appropriate for siblings and the parents themselves to convey appreciation. When everyone keeps the caregiver’s sacrifices in mind, other relationship problems can be avoided.
Communicate. Talk often with your parents and siblings about how things are going. Caregivers should report if they are feeling trapped, overwhelmed or taken advantage of. If siblings aren’t helping, caregivers should talk about it.
Siblings have specific roles. Even though a brother or sister might not be the primary caregiver, he or she may be able to help. By working together, chores can be distributed, helping everyone feel involved and reducing the risk that one sibling might become overwhelmed. Suggestions might include transportation to appointments, household cleaning or maintenance, cooking or managing financial and legal affairs.
The caregiver is contributing time; the siblings and parents should therefore contribute money. Siblings can help pay for gas or groceries. If a caregiver quits a job or suffers a loss of income, the parents should consider paying the caregiver for his or her services (perhaps even signing a personal services contract) or leaving him or her a greater share of the inheritance as compensation for his or her hours of toil.
Focus on relationships. Everyone in the family must strive to avoid acting petty. Caring for aging parents can bring everyone in the family closer, and it can create the most heartwarming and memorable years of everyone’s lives.
Seek outside help if family resources are exceeded. Remember that lifeguards are taught to save themselves first if there is danger of drowning. Don’t let your own life be destroyed out of your desire to care for your parents. Instead, seek community help. Talk with neighbors and your church, or contact the U.S. Administration on Aging at www.aoa.gov for information and assistance.
These guidelines can help sandwiched children, parents, siblings and family make the best of their situation. | <urn:uuid:ccf8d90e-cd44-4364-9661-f378aabb786b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ricedelman.com/cs/education/article?articleId=1182&titleParam=Part%20II%20in%20Series:%20Surviving%20the%20Sandwich%20Generation%20When%20Siblings%20Can't%20or%20Won't%20Help | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960648 | 1,322 | 1.554688 | 2 |
A couple of months ago, we published a blog post criticising the way the launch of a new ‘super broccoli’ was reported in the media.
The researchers at the Institute of Food Research, who carried out the science underpinning this, contacted us to clarify the strength of the evidence of a link between broccoli and cancer – specifically prostate cancer. We agreed that we’d post their response, and to make clear that they do not endorse any media headlines or other coverage that are not based upon scientific evidence, and disassociate themselves from many of the headlines. Here’s what they had to say:
In their blog post, Cancer Research UK referred to a paper published in 2004 as part of the EPIC study, that reported no link between how much fruit and vegetables a man ate, and his risk of prostate cancer.
This paper also reported no association between ‘cruciferous’ vegetables – including broccoli – and risk of prostate cancer.
However, a later paper published in 2009, also as part of the EPIC study, reported a ‘statistically significant’ association between cruciferous vegetable consumption and risk of prostate cancer, based upon a study of a smaller group of men known as the EPIC-Heidelberg cohort.
The association between relative risk and cruciferous vegetable consumption for both studies are shown together in Figure 1.
Both studies were similar in many ways, including the range of vegetables they ate. So why do they give different results?
The answer is in the finer details of the study.
The 2004 EPIC study followed 130,544 men for an average of 4.8 years. 1,104 of them developed prostate cancer (0.85 per cent) over this period. Their average age was 52.
In contrast, the Heidelberg cohort followed a smaller number of similar men, but for much longer – nearly ten years. In this subgroup, there were 11,405 men, 328 of whom developed prostate cancer – that’s 2.9 per cent. Their average age at the start – 52 – was the same.
In this second diagram, you can see how age affects a man’s chances of prostate cancer.
As you can see, prostate cancer risk for men in their mid fifties – the average age at the end of the 2004 EPIC study – is very low, which is why in this study only 0.8 per cent of the men developed prostate cancer.
Rates of the disease increase as men enter their late fifties and early sixties (the endpoint of the 2009 Heidelberg cohort) which is why in this study there is a higher incidence, 2.9 per cent, (although this is still relatively low).
This means that conclusion of the 2004 EPIC paper – ‘no link’ – isn’t necessarily very helpful. It was assessing a group of men for whom prostate cancer is unusual, and thus it is not surprising that it found no significant association with diet.
There are two other similar studies worth highlighting.
Firstly, in 2007 a Canadian group found a reduced risk of aggressive prostate cancer in men who ate large amounts of cruciferous vegetables. Again, this study contrasts with the 2004 report from EPIC in two important respects.
Firstly, the men were older at the start of the study, and secondly the follow up period was longer. Both factors contribute to the increased risk of prostate cancer. Here are the numbers:
- Men in study: 29,362 (all without prostate cancer)
- Number of cases of prostate cancer: 1,338
- Percent incidence: 4.6 per cent
- Mean age of men at start: 63
- Average follow up: 8 years
Secondly, earlier this year, a US team found that men who already had early-stage prostate cancer (that hadn’t spread) who ate higher amounts of cruciferous vegetables had a lower chance of their prostate cancer spreading. Again, here are the details:
- Men in study: 1,560 (all with early prostate cancer)
- Number of cases of progression of prostate cancer: 134
- Percent progression: 8.6 per cent
- Age of men at start: <60 – >70
- Average follow up: 5 years
So, when Cancer Research UK’s bloggers’ highlight the 2004 EPIC paper to imply that the link between broccoli and prostate cancer is still debatable, they’re not reflecting the whole picture - it’s a study of men who would not normally be at risk of prostate cancer, and it is therefore not surprising that no association with diet is reported.
Other studies that have used more informative cohorts have reported statistically valid links between prostate cancer risk and cruciferous vegetable intake. So that’s why we’re continuing our research efforts to understand the science behind this phenomenon, which will hopefully end up benefitting men in the long run.
- Professor Richard Mithen, Institute of Food Research
So there are indeed some studies that appear to show that prostate cancer is less common, or spreads less readily, amongst people who eat large amounts of cruciferous vegetables. But we need to be clear – none of this is conclusive, and this is an area where more research is needed.
And there’s certainly no conclusive evidence – yet – if there’s a particular chemical in broccoli that’s behind these associations. Future studies, such as ones we’re funding, and those carried out by our colleagues at the Institute of Food Research, will help answer these questions.
The link between diet and cancer is complex, and unravelling the effects of different foods and nutrients on cancer risk is very difficult. In terms of diet, the strongest scientific evidence for cancer risk reduction is a healthy balanced diet high in fibre, fruit and vegetables and low in red and processed meat, saturated fat and salt.
Yinka Ebo, Cancer Research UK | <urn:uuid:508f1f66-d8b1-47cb-b68f-8fbbb0c23529> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2011/12/06/broccoli-and-cancer-a-response-from-the-institute-of-food-research/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957509 | 1,229 | 2.4375 | 2 |
How do I make X threads?
CSS Zen Garden + firebug. Read this NOW.
Step 1: Download Firefox.
Step 2: Download and install the add-on Firebug. This one is very important. Learn how to use this tool well. Get acquainted with the element inspector. This will let you highlight anything on a web page and see the HTML and CSS used to make it happen. This is extremely important, because this is how I learned to make web sites.
An extremely useful tool: Visit CSS Zen Garden. This web site was built around the concept of taking a page of HTML markup and displaying it in very unique ways using CSS. There are SO MANY different layouts using the EXACT same HTML. Not only is this totally awesome for the vast number of techniques you can learn, but you can download each example and see what files go into making that web site happen.
When you first visit the site, you'll see the basic design. On the right is a sidebar with more designs. Click "next" link to see more. As you visit each site, you'll see that it has the exact same markup displayed differently. Let's say you chose the design The Lonely Flower. If you like this site and what to see the CSS that goes with it, there's a link on each page called "View this Design's CSS."
The base HTML and CSS file should be on there as well. Look for "Download the sample HTML file and CSS file."
I can not emphasize how important it is for you to be able to learn how to pick apart another person's web site and learn how to do things. Even if you consider yourself to be a master, there will always be something new to learn. This tool is also awesome for seeing what's wrong with your own web site. You can also use Firebug to design inside the browser, which is something I'm doing more and more these days | <urn:uuid:0f2fc3cd-69ce-4c51-9a72-df4cadd59962> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://webdevrefinery.com/forums/topic/1156-how-do-i-make-x-threads/page__p__7508 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937399 | 394 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Nov 30, 2007
Stories of the unintended consequences of market forces.
- Host Ira Glass talks to reporter John Bowe about the story of John Nash Pickle, who ran a company in Tulsa, Oklahoma that made steel tanks used in the oil industry. According to 52 Indian men whom Pickle hired and brought to America, Pickle was trying to compete with foreign companies, doing something most companies never try. Instead of simply opening a factory overseas with cheap labor, the men say, Pickle decided to run an overseas factory with cheap labor...on American soil...inside his own Tulsa Oklahoma plant. (3 minutes)
Tulsa. Image credit John Bowe. | <urn:uuid:2d489990-0993-40c4-b853-eaea10dc7180> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/344/the-competition?act=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95667 | 138 | 1.890625 | 2 |
In recent years local government administrators have experienced plenty of stress. They've been dealing with rapidly diminishing revenues, expansive and expensive workforces, vocal organized labor, elected officials and the mandate to deliver essential services while cutting taxes.
But, before the stress, they had a pretty nice run. Let's face it, from the late nineties until about 2005 they had exponentially increasing tax revenue or as we say in Miami - "coño como tenían dinero". With plenty of cash in their general fund, they did what most government administrators do. They increased government by expanding services.
Fair enough. Everyone wants a robust portfolio of services. However, some public administrators got into the strange practice of spending your money by trying to match the private sector. The phrase "being more like the private sector" entered the vernacular but these good natured folks misinterpreted what it meant. They missed the point.
To start, "being more like the private sector" doesn't mean mimicking services that the private sector offers at a higher price, including pensions, merit pay, civil service rights, Department Directors, Assistant Department Directors, and Assistants to the Assistant Department Directors. No, that's not it. It means offering a good service efficiently and at a value to the customer, the individual paying for it, or in this case, the taxpayer.
For example, many administrators implemented services like 3-1-1 call centers. For those of you who don't know, 3-1-1 is the easy-to-remember access to non-emergency municipal services or a Citizen Information Center. Basically, it's a customer service hotline and a good thing. It provides a fast, simple and convenient way for residents to get information from their local government. Residents get one-on-one personal customer service in various languages by dialing one easy-to-remember number.
Well, unfortunately, some administrators implemented this service by building facilities, leasing or purchasing expensive call center equipment, entering into long-term maintenance contracts and hiring a lot of call center staff to take your calls at all hours at the night.
The same service could have been offered more efficiently and at a value by outsourcing it. I'm not saying to outsource the call center to India, the Philippines or Transylvania for that matter. But, if an administrator is smart, they would have a private company offer the same 3-1-1 service with the stipulation that they must be located in the community they serve and only employ residents of that community as the call center's staff and administrators. This provides better value, creates jobs and keeps the dollars in the local economy.
Local governments can also look at outsourcing some of the more traditional government functions. For example, the public school system's primary mission is to educate our students and take care of our teachers. If that is their goal, why should they expend resources trying to run a business transporting students? Wouldn't it be better for our teachers and kids if student transportation were outsourced to a national company that could leverage the significant economies of scale, global resources, capital investment, and expertise in safety and systems for transportation solutions? I think so. They too could be mandated to only hire local drivers and maintenance workers. By doing so, our public school systems would be able to invest more money in our teachers and students, which is what the families depend on them for.
Now, before I go too far, there are some core services that government should clearly not outsource. Public safety is number one. We need our cops on the street, in uniform, and ready to do the job whatever it takes. The last thing we need is a private corporation taking over a police department. That type of outsourcing could open the doors to some kind of future dystopian nightmare. Scary! But there needs to be a dialogue on other services as well.
If done right, outsourcing provides the best of both worlds: a robust portfolio of services offered to the taxpayer at a price they can tolerate and, more importantly, afford. | <urn:uuid:1933dce8-180d-45fb-b169-6c497db0d6ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/luis-andres-gazitua/outsourcing-done-right-fo_b_936417.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960726 | 824 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Graduation Quotes and Sayings
Don’t cry because it’s the end, smile because it’s a new begining.
In the beginning of Senior year, we beg the year to go by fast. Toward the middle, we beg it to slow down. And at the end, we wish it to never stop.
Somthing I made up…
“So in our senior year the moment where we throw our caps into the air, I won’t be crying because we will never see each other or because it will be goodbye forever, no I will be crying because I know that is the moment we are grown up where we will have to take a little break and have our own little adventures without each other until we meet again.”
School is like a big chapter of your life in the beginning of a book. When you’ve finished that chapter the final and best part begins.
Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
- Albert Einstein
Graduation isn’t the closing of a door, It’s the opening of a thousand.
To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.
- Anatole France
Education is the best provision for old age.
The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after.
- Newton Diehl Baker
He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.
When you graduate don’t forget those that put up with you for all those years, because they are you true friends since they loved you enough to stick with you until the very end.
College professor: someone who talks in other people’s sleep.
- W.H. Auden
You can lead a boy to college, but you can’t make him think.
- Elbert Hubbard
Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back.
- Chinese Proverb
The important thing is the educational experience itself – how to survive it.
- Donald Barthelme
A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that ‘individuality’ is the key to success.
- Robert Orben
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition… Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
- Steve Jobs, Stanford University, 2005
Every man is the architect of his own future.
Always do more than is required of you.
- General George S. Patton
Graduating college in four years is like leaving a party at 10:30 | <urn:uuid:cb4df89a-fac0-4a70-9c50-536c7b567990> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coolnsmart.com/graduation_quotes/?sortby=popularity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92943 | 594 | 2.046875 | 2 |
The outpouring of public affection for Jack Layton took me by surprise, as it must have taken many other people, and it also set me seriously to think about those Canadian values that are so often spoken about, and so seldom defined.
This remarkable event cannot be seen in isolation: after all, when the CBC gave Canadians a chance some years ago to vote on who they considered the greatest Canadian of all time, their choice was Tommy Douglas, who as premier of Saskatchewan marched Canada into the modern world by creating what eventually became the national health scheme for the entire country.
This program had to be fought for bitterly, as it has in every country it has been introduced, but it is now so thoroughly accepted by Canadians that it is often regarded as the single thing that Canadians believe makes them different from Americans.
Now comes this extraordinary outpouring of affection and respect for the man who has led the NDP to its greatest electoral success ever, making a massive breakthrouth in Quebec, a territory that had previously been immune to the siren call of social democracy, having always preferred to vote for their nationalism, or ethnicity.
Of course, much of the affection came from Layton’s long and fruitful service as a municipal councilor in Toronto, whose citizens remember him as a decent man and an honest man, but also as a man whose optimism and humanity marked him off from the common herd of politicians.
A great deal of the admiration for Jack must have come from the last election, when he was seen --- a sick man --- bravely stumping the country, cane in hand, keeping up a pitiless schedule in his successful effort to lead his party to its huge breakthrough.
Still, the scale and intensity of the outpouring of public regard was a surprising thing. After all, until his recent breakthrough, the NDP had always been very much the third party in Canada, important for its policy initiatives, essential for its success in keeping the social democratic idea as part of the Canadian political discourse, and therefore a major element in the differentiation of Canada from the United States.
But can anybody have seriously believed such support exists for the values espoused by the New Democrats throughout the country: values of community, sharing, the idea that we are our brother’s keeper, essentially the value of equality and egalitarianism, the idea that everybody in the nation has a right to a fair chance, to develop his or her talents to the maximum. This is a way of saying social democracy that seems to suit Canadians, and yet, time after time, year after year, Canadians have voted against these values that they now seemed --- at least for a week or so --- to be so vociferously espousing.
Personally I have only twice joined a political party: the first time was when I arrived in England in 1951 in time for Labour to blow the immense majority they won in 1945 to let the reactionary Churchill back into office; the second time was when Layton was going for NDP leadership, and I joined to give his effort some support.
I have to confess that in neither case was my membership long-lasting. Although I have always supported the NDP in Canada, I have extravagant hopes of left-leaning parties that are never satisfied, and when I saw that Layton was not really a radical leader, I allowed my membership to lapse.
I never met Layton, not really, although on the one occasion I was introduced to him as he worked a room, he delivered a kind acknowledgement that he knew my work. I never heard from him again.
Anyway, politics isn’t about the stroking of egos, and I have always said --- I said this in relation to the fact that it took me 26 years to apply for Canadian citizenship --- that I believed I voted every day through the medium of my work.
The memorial service, as I would prefer to call the state funeral service held in his honour, was a very moving occasion that allowed a wide range of expressions of admiration for the man and his unquenchable optimism and friendliness --- which, I have got to admit, is something that separates him from me, a perennial grouch and pessimist. I could have done with less of the religious gentleman, whoever he was, a friend of Jack’s, who did manage, in the last moments, to invoke God and his blessings on everyone, something that I wuld have thought was against Jack’s inclinations.
Perhaps as a total event, it was a little over-the-top. How could it help but be when graced by one of Stephen Lewis’s over-heated tributes. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the event was that it had been ordered by the Prime Minister. And the most remarkable thing at it was when the entire crowd rose with a burst of wild applause when Lewis described Jack’s last letter as “a manifesto for social democracy.” That caught Harper and his Conservative Cabinet ministers on the hop, not sure whether to rise with the applauding crowd, or to mark their disapproval by just sitting there. Eventually Harper, bowing to the inevitable, rose to his feet and began to applaud, surely some kind of apotheosis for him.
Well, Jack is gone, and the choice os his successor lies ahead. Personally I would like someone like Libby Davies, a sound radical politician, but I know they will never support her, and it is almost certain that she would not succeed in building on Jack’s achievement, if only because she doesn’t speak French.
Some may have begun to wonder whether Lewis’s ringing elegy might not herald an effort by him to take over the party: he certainly would be a good choice, but I doubt if he would succeed in earning the trust of Canadians any more than he did last time when he led the Ontario NDP in the provincial legislature.
Besides, having been involved so internationally, one doubts if his ego would permit him to retire to the national stage again.I have no idea who should be the leader: clearly, he has a tough act to follow, and whoever he or she is, it seems unlikely to be anyone with Jack’s common touch. We now have to just wait and see to what extent the outpoiuring for Jack has touched the hearts of Canadians, if at all. | <urn:uuid:ca19b700-dded-4629-9c27-7b0552ff25f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://boycerichardson.blogspot.com/2011_08_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986169 | 1,298 | 1.726563 | 2 |
British politicians frequently boast about how the foundations of ‘modern’ British law are rooted in the Magna Carta declaration of 1215.
The logic being that the world did not know justice until King John put his seal on the Magna Carta on 15 June 1215 and so ‘modern’ British laws derived from the Magna Carta deliver justice even today and they remain a shining example to the rest of the world, especially the ‘backward’ African and Asian countries. The Magna Carta essentially states that no man shall be deprived of his liberty (i.e. imprisoned) or exiled from the land (i.e. extradited) without the lawful judgement of his peers (i.e. a fair public trial in which he is allowed to give his side of the story). For medieval 13th Century England that was still deep in savagery and barbarism it can be said that the Magna Carta was a big achievement.
Yet the truth is that some 600 years earlier an advanced civilisation in East Africa had been practically implementing the principles of justice found in the Magna Carta. But you wouldn’t know it because black African ‘savages’ teaching justice to ‘sophisticated’ white earls does not look too good in a school History textbook. The basic principle of justice that this 7th Century black African civilisation realised is that you cannot punish someone without giving them a fair trial in which you allow them to give their side of the story.
One of the earliest recorded extradition trials in international case law is Jafar bin Abi Talib and others vs Government of Quraish in the Royal Court of Justice of Abyssinia, 615 C.E. In the year 615 of Christian era, a group of Muslims fled torture and religious persecution in Makkah and migrated to Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia) to seek sanctuary in the kingdom of the righteous Christian King Negus. The 16 Muslims were led by Jafar bin Abi Talib (may Allah be pleased with him), the cousin of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). They had only just arrived in Abyssinia when the Government of Quraish sent an extradition request seeking the return of the group to Makkah. Amr bin Al-Aas QC (Quraish Counsel) with junior counsel Abdullah bin Abi Rabia were sent to Abyssinia to advocate for the men’s extradition.
The court convened one morning in the packed Royal Court of Justice of Abyssinia and presiding over the matter was the Honourable King Negus himself due to the seriousness of the matter. Amr bin Al-Aas QC, opening for the prosecution, laid out the basic facts of the case against the Muslim group. He stated that they were apostates who had abandoned the religion of their forefathers and so should be extradited back to Makkah.*He further added that since the Tribe of Quraish and the Kingdom of Abyssinia were major allies, under the terms of the Extradition Act 2003 Category 2 legislation no prime prima facie evidence had to be presented in order to seek the group’s extradition.* Read the rest of this entry » | <urn:uuid:7a2d1397-b10f-4c45-91b4-f7f5ba5a38d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aseerun.org/tag/babar-ahmad/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961603 | 662 | 3.640625 | 4 |
The Justice Department announced that it has filed a joint motion with the state of Arkansas to dismiss the settlement in United States v. Arkansas, a case involving conditions at the Arkansas Juvenile Assessment and Treatment Center in Alexander, Ark. The state has fully complied with the settlement, which includes reforms in mental health care, fire safety, education and religious freedom for the youth residing at the facility. In addition to complying with the settlement, during the course of the department’s investigation and settlement, the state shifted its focus on juvenile justice from an institution-based model to a community-based model. The result has been a significant statewide decrease in the number of incarcerated youth. At the same time, crime in Arkansas has dropped even though the population of youth under 18 has grown.
“In the Justice Department’s view, the state has met the requirements necessary for dismissal of this case. We reached this conclusion after thoroughly reviewing information gathered during the department’s enforcement of the settlement,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “We commend the state for its successful efforts to reduce the number of youth in secure institutional confinement, and for its commitment to ensuring that the constitutional rights of youth are protected.”
In March 2003, the Justice Department and state of Arkansas entered into the settlement to resolve the department’s findings of unlawful conditions at the then-named Alexander Youth Services Center following a comprehensive investigation under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The settlement called for broad reforms in areas related to mental health care, fire safety, education and religious freedom.
For more information on the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, please visit www.justice.gov/crt . | <urn:uuid:d8f5d485-5603-4d64-8a28-651914dd8f71> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/November/12-crt-1403.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953631 | 365 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Builders Encourage Efforts to Step Up Residential Energy Efficiency
As national policymakers consider enacting more stringent energy-efficiency requirements for new homes, the NAHB Executive Board last week approved a resolution to support these attempts as long as they remain practical and cost-effective for home buyers.
The resolution affirms NAHB’s support of efforts that would make the 2012 International Energy Conservation Code 30% more energy-efficient than the 2006 model code.
At the same time, the resolution challenges home builders, manufacturers and policymakers to meet that goal in ways that are “technologically achievable and economically justified,” while allowing for multiple paths to achieve the reductions though improvements in equipment, appliances and the building envelope.
The Executive Board unanimously approved the resolution when it met March 23 in Washington, D.C. the day before scheduled visits to Capitol Hill during the association’s annual Legislative Conference.
There are several ways to enhance residential energy efficiency, including making sure that heating and air conditioning equipment is efficient and sized appropriately for the home, said Dwight “Sonny” Richardson, chairman of the NAHB Construction, Codes and Standards Committee.
“We can’t just assume that there’s a one-size-fits-all approach to increasing energy-efficiency,” Richardson said. “Every home is different, and every climate unique. It’s our job as builders to provide an appropriate energy-efficiency solution for each home and each home buyer,” he said.
“We need to make sure that we can use every tool in our toolboxes — all the products, materials and construction techniques we employ — as we strive toward these goals. We need to ensure that there are a number of simple, prescriptive solutions available to the nation’s builders. Flexibility ensures that we can build homes that are not just right for the neighborhood, but for our customers’ pocketbooks,” he said.
The resolution acknowledges the role that the home building industry plays in reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and energy use while making that reduction technologically feasible for home builders and economical for home buyers.
Because code changes only affect new homes, the resolution also points policymakers to the national imperative of getting existing homes on the energy-efficiency path, as well. “New homes are far more efficient and contribute far less to greenhouse gas emissions than existing homes and can save our customers money month after month”, noted Richardson. “We can get a lot more 'bang for our buck' by upgrading the energy efficiency of the existing housing stock, while at the same time providing employment opportunities for remodelers.”
NAHB has long been an advocate for energy-efficiency provisions that are cost-effective and affordable for home buyers throughout the nation and is committed to researching and developing new products and building techniques, as well as financing practices that promote energy efficiency in new and existing buildings, the resolution says.
Working with the International Code Council, NAHB also played a pivotal role in developing the ICC-700 2008 National Green Building Standard, which is more stringent than code. It is the first national green standard to be approved by the American National Standards Institute, Adopted in January, the standard is already being used to design and direct the inspection and certification of green homes, developments and remodeling projects.
The resolution affirms the importance of a code development consensus process that brings together all parties — including building code officials, energy-efficiency experts, builders, environmental advocates, product manufacturers and building science consultants. This process does a more effective job of achieving significant reductions in energy use than mandates, the resolution says.
Congress should not “authorize the Department of Energy to develop a federal energy-efficiency code or amendments to any other model energy code that would effectively be a federal mandate for energy efficiency in residential construction,” the resolution states.
“We want to make sure that a transparent, rigorous, consensus code process stays intact because it respects the regional and climactic differences of our nation,” Richardson said. “We need to work through the code process together to achieve our goals, and not, as some would advocate, throw the baby out with the bath water.”
For more information, e-mail Calli Schmidt at NAHB, or call her at 800-368-5242 x8132. | <urn:uuid:7e0fb5c7-6588-4764-9d6a-c03b235d4e92> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbnnews.com/NBN/issues/2009-03-30/Front+Page/4.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938355 | 898 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Jardim Botânico, Gávea
Rio de Janeiro
Tel: 55 21 3874 1808
Concierge.com's insider take:
Rio's botanical garden in Gávea is the oldest of its kind in South America. Founded in 1808 by King Dom João VI, it covers an impressive 338 acres of the city, giving Cariocas a real oasis within the city limits. It is one of the few places in the country where you can still see the smooth-barked, yellow-flowered pau-brasil, a sought-after brazilwood tree that was felled in vast quantities by early Portuguese explorers. The garden contains some 8,000 species of tropical trees and plants, including a 130-foot kapok tree, whose roots extend some 20 feet up from the earth, and the aptly named cannonball tree, whose heavy nuts fall with a dangerous crunch. The cocoa and rubber trees are also present, but the collection is not confined to Brazilian species: There are some fine Madagascan traveler's trees and splendid avenues of Cuba's royal palm. Extensive collections of orchids, cacti, and medical plants, many housed in elegant glasshouses, also rank among the richest in the Americas, particularly the bromeliad collection, whose 1,700 species offer a seemingly unlimited variety of color, shape, and texture. Children, in particular, make a beeline for the insectivore greenhouse, where pitcher plants and venus flytraps form part of the carnivorous plant collection.
Park officials have been working on filling the information gap: Maps in English are available at the visitor center; most trees now bear name tags in Portuguese and Latin; and an interpretative trail has been blazed through a dense patch of Atlantic forest. If you don't fancy walking, watch for the electric carts that depart with a small number of passengers every two hours (the tours are free, but sign up early at the visitor center). Even if you're no botany buff, it's difficult not to enjoy wandering through the gardens, which provide habitat for myriad butterflies, hummingbirds, toucans, and guan. Look carefully, and you can even spot lizards in the undergrowth and several tribes of marmoset monkeys, which cavort through the trees in the late afternoon. | <urn:uuid:d667fc47-f5ed-4af2-83ff-e5f79ea64692> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.concierge.com/print/travelguide/riodejaneiro/seeanddo/501228 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936439 | 491 | 2.171875 | 2 |
You exercise your body to stay physically in shape, so why shouldn't you exercise your brain to stay mentally fit? With these daily exercises you will learn how to flex your mind, improve your creativity and boost your memory. As with any exercise, repetition is necessary for you to see improvement, so pick your favorite exercises from our daily suggestions and repeat them as desired. Try to do some mentalrobics every single day!
Previously, we learned how natural brain deterioration is mostly caused because of disuse. If a neural pathway is not activated from time to time, it will slowly diminish in strength until the memory is no longer recoverable. Having a rigid daily routine is a sure way to make sure your brain doesn't have to think very much. To keep your memory intact, make sure that you use it on a daily basis. Vary your routines, do the crossword, or try memory games to keep your brain active.
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Sudoku Logic Puzzle
This puzzle requires logic and a good memory. | <urn:uuid:b504c9c6-d17e-4b2b-b553-08ef9ca6c3b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.braingle.com/mind/327.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940031 | 235 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Electric Fence Systems are:
Charged fence systems, also known as electric fence systems, provide a safe alternative to woven and barbed wire fences. A pulsed electrical current is sent along the fence wire, at about one pulse per second, from an electric fence charger, which is also known as an energizer.
These short electrical pulses produce short and sharp but safe shocks which translates to a psychological barrier that trains the animal to avoid the electric fence. The shock is sufficient enough that the animal will remember and stay away from it.
»Easy to Install
Electric fence systems install quickly with minimal tools, saving on time and labor. The planning and installation can be done by one person and typically takes less time for installing than traditional fencing.
Electric fencing can also be added to an existing fence to improve its effectiveness.
Cost savings of an electric fence are significant when compared to other fencing options such as wood, rail, vinyl, woven wire or barbed wire. Less metal wire is needed and fewer posts are needed which is where most of the cost for an electric fence system is generated.
An electric fence system can easily be designed to work in most environments or geographical conditions. An electric fence can be placed fairly easily in all types of soil, rocky, sandy, clay etc.
When compared to other fencing options, with the work involved in digging the post holes and carrying the large spools of wire for those systems, electric fence installation can be done with relative ease.
Fi-Shock®electric fence systems provide safe, secure, superior quality electric fencing for all your animal containment and control needs. | <urn:uuid:72564fb4-d471-4a84-bb53-10596c8b8666> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fishock.com/advice/why-electric-fencing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952691 | 326 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Heart, Body and Soul Reaches Into Community By Chris Rowett The two-story building on North Chester Street in East Baltimore stands out among its neighbors. Located in an area struggling against poverty and crime, the Mattie B. Uzzle Outreach Center is the first new building constructed there in more than 40 years. The center, named after the first director of the Israel Baptist Outreach Center, will celebrate its opening Thursday, Dec. 8. It offers services including the treatment of substance abuse, counseling, education and the distribution of food and clothing. The facility's existence is the result of many efforts, not the least of which may be attributed to Heart, Body and Soul, the School of Medicine-affiliated service organization dedicated to the well-being of the East Baltimore community. "It is our beacon of hope," said Diane Becker, an associate professor in the School of Medicine and a founding member of Heart, Body and Soul, Inc. "We see this as a way to demonstrate that grass roots can really take back the community." But Dr. Becker is quick to give credit to the individuals who volunteered through churches or other organizations to ensure the completion of the 2-year-old project. "Hopkins played a role, but we were not in the driver's seat," she said. "We all learned together from this." Dr. Becker's fellow "students" are also among her fans. "She's always there to do whatever is necessary," said Lowell Whitehurst, one of the founding volunteers of the center. "She's a catalyst." Whitehurst, president and owner of a Baltimore engineering company, is a member of the Israel Baptist Church, which is across the street from the center. "[Helping to create the center] is one of my ways of giving back," he said. "The Lord has been good to me. I've been at the right place at the right time. It has afforded me a good life." In 1992 the volunteers applied for and received a grant from the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The project later received funding from the city of Baltimore and a loan from Nation's Bank. Whitehurst said he hopes the center will service 500 people in need each year. "If anybody has a substance abuse problem--be it drugs or alcohol--we'll address that," he said. Heart, Body and Soul will provide health screenings, and there are 20 beds for recovering substance abusers. The center will accept referrals from hospitals and individuals. Whitehurst said the group is hoping to hire a teacher for those who wish to pursue high school equivalency tests. "We're helping to improve the lifestyle of the folks around here," Whitehurst said. His efforts, he said, go beyond the outreach center. Whitehurst, whose company's latest projects are the renovation of Baltimore police headquarters and the completion of Baltimore Arena, would like to see work done on the homes in the neighborhood. "Some of the buildings you wouldn't put a dead cat in," he said. "But folks are living in them." The Collington Square neighborhood that houses the center is just eight blocks north of Johns Hopkins Hospital. A few years ago, it had probably the highest levels of substance abuse and drug dealing in the city, Dr. Becker said. "It was the worst mess you could imagine," she said. Since work on the center began, residents have witnessed change. "In the two years since we started, crime has gone down 30 percent," Whitehurst said. "That's a fact." Nelson Sabitini, state secretary of Health and Mental Hygiene, will be honored for his efforts on behalf of the center at the Dec. 8 celebration, from noon until 3 p.m. at the facility at 1211 North Chester St. Several city officials are scheduled to attend.
Go to Gazette Homepage | <urn:uuid:d6bc4fa1-6ef5-4442-bbcd-f75a38039fa8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/1994/dec0594/soul.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979326 | 775 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Special Education: Strengthening Services
With increased accountability for students with disabilities, meeting the goals of No Child Left Behind and students' Individual Education Plans is challenging. Greater emphasis on access to the general curriculum, accommodations, and differentiation requires stronger teacher partnerships to ensure an appropriate education in the least restrictive environment.
JBHM Education Group provides professional development and on-site mentoring to plan and implement effective inclusion programs. Both general and special educators benefit from our focus on collaboration and instructional differentiation. Our specialists model and mentor scaffolded instruction, identifying essential skills and monitoring progress to raise the achievement of students with disabilities. Adding behavioral and instructional supports improves services in all types of special education classes. Through partnering with JBHM Education Group, schools ensure students with disabilities’ successful participation in the general education curriculum to the maximum extent appropriate. Best use of personnel in the inclusion classes and the commitment to increase all students’ academic growth also improve.
Our specialists are available to assist in developing standards-based IEPs, implementing transition programs, and resolving disproportionality issues. | <urn:uuid:9ff569f1-0d83-44bc-930d-53dd7c5efbb4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jbhm-edgroup.com/learning_communities/special_education/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912666 | 214 | 2.484375 | 2 |
North American ranchers are the most productive in the world — but we are also the least profitable, and our ranches are therefore unsustainable in their current models.
We tend to work in our businesses, but we rarely work on our businesses — we know how to drive tractors and brand calves, but not how to build a cash flow or read a profit-and-loss statement.
And most ranchers don’t have a firm grip on their financial situations, either, with most having more than 90 percent of their money tied up in “fixed assets,” but very little working capital. Most ranchers are wealthy on their balance sheets, but broke at the bank.
Finally, most ranch businesses are structured to fight nature, instead of work with natural cycles and the environment. The result is economic, financial, environmental and personal stress.
A webinar will teach each participant how to start out with no land, no livestock and no time, and show them the three things they must do to build a sustainable ranching business from scratch. Each participant will learn why most ranches show a loss; how to overcome the challenge of no working capital; and what it takes to build a sustainable ranch business and earn a healthy profit.
The Archuleta County Extension Office will host the Ranching for Profit Webinar. The program speaker is Dave Pratt, a fifth-generation rancher who learned ranching working for northern California cattle and sheep producers. Dave earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from the University of California and Washington State University, respectively.
The session will be held Thursday, Dec. 9, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Archuleta County Fairgrounds. The cost will be $40 per person or $70 per ranch couple and includes lunch. We will accept the first 20 persons registered due to space limitations. Please register by Monday, Dec. 5. Forms are available at the Archuleta County Extension Office or online at www.archuleta.colostate.edu. Call 264-5931 for more information.
Real Colors workshop
Archuleta County CSU Extension is excited to sponsor a Real Colors workshop on Thursday, Dec. 9, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. This workshop will be open to the public and held at the Pagosa Springs Youth Center located at 269 1/2 Pagosa Street.
Adult couples and singles are invited to attend,noting that this is not a program for children. Light refreshments will be served.
A $6 fee is requested to cover take home material costs.
Through Real Colors, you’ll gain a completely new perspective on yourself and the things that are most important to you. As you learn more about the colors, you’ll instinctively recognize characteristics of people you know, and their color. This knowledge gives you valuable insight into what is most important to them, why they may react to situations differently than others, how you can best communicate with them and much more. Please R.S.V.P. to the Extension Office at 264-5931 to attend Real Colors. This workshop will be limited to the first 30 persons to register.
USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline: (888) 674-6854.
The CSU Extension Office will be closed Thursday, Nov. 25, and Friday, Nov. 26. | <urn:uuid:5b823c81-2527-40f8-91fa-6bf2aeb5b707> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pagosasun.com/archives/2010/11November/112510/extension.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930613 | 702 | 2 | 2 |
In California some teachers have been laid off and budgets are tight. However, in California education stakeholders continually hype and exaggerate the number of layoffs and do not distinguish between pinkslips and layoffs. Today the Associated Press turns it into a national story. "Schools Struggle to Recover Among Years of Cuts," reports among other whoppers that California has laid off more than 40,000 over the last three years.
The union's state of emergency site claims the chairs "represent the 40,000 educators (30,000 teachers and 10,000 support professionals) who have been laid off over the past 3 years due to the state budget crisis." There is the additional claim that "More than 40,000 educators and support staff have been laid off in the past three years. This year, another 20,000 teachers could be lost."
I'm not even going to try to determine where CTA got its numbers. Its rhetoric clearly states that these are education employees who were laid off and did not return.
Here are the actual numbers from the California Department of Education's DataQuest:
Number of teachers - 307,864
Number of classified staff - 285,501
Total - 593,365
Number of teachers - 308,790
Number of classified staff - 287,613
Total - 596,403 (up 3,038)
Number of teachers - 310,361
Number of classified staff - 294,202
Total - 604,563 (up 8,160)
Number of teachers - 306,887
Number of classified staff - 303,607
Total - 610,494 (up 5,931)
Number of teachers - 299,666
Number of classified staff - 300,734
Total - 600,400 (down 10,094)
There are no teacher numbers available for 2010-11 but the number of classified staff was reduced an additional 9,140.
You can worm your way to 40,000 if you assume 21,000 teachers were laid off in 2010-11. That would mean virtually every teacher who received a pink slip last year was laid off,something we know isn't true.
Regardless, there is no denying there are sizable layoffs of education staff going on in California. They seem a little less devastating and apocalyptic when you see they were preceded by adding more than 17,000 jobs over three years.
This of course calls into question all the data in the AP article in every state as the unions seem to be the number one source, which I'm sure the reporter did not verify with actual state data. | <urn:uuid:5b76ea72-4923-430e-b7f1-2d4bb6bb2941> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reason.org/blog/show/the-teacher-layoff-lie-in-californi | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952 | 527 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Learn how to make cannons that fire projectiles such as ball bearings, tennis balls, soda cans and exploding projectiles such as grenades.
An improvised homemade cannon is any improvised large tubular firearm designed to fire a heavy projectile over a long distance. These cannon designs lend themselves perfectly to employment as primary defensive weapons, should firearms or firearm ammunition be unavailable.
These powerful cannon designs are easy to build from common items and powered by easily accessible fuels.
The purpose of this document on the "art of cannonry" is to guide the reader through the production of a number of different types of cannons. Learn how to make a device that fires a tennis ball out when ignited. All Tennis ball cannon plans mentioned here are tested and are easy to build and fire.
This manual contains the instructions for the construction of an exploding–rocket projectile cannon. Learn how to make rocket firing cannons with ease. Additionally, you will learn methods for making exploding projectiles and assembling a reinforced pipe cannon.
Hydrogen/Oxygen Powered Serious Tennis Ball Cannon manual, supplies info on building a gas powered tennis ball cannon with ignition switch. In addition to this, find details on construction of a propellant generator and complete loading and firing instructions. Basic diagrams for clear understanding are also provided to complement the instructions.
Soft-Drink Can Mortar, is a comprehensive guide on assembling a mortar out of a soft drink can. Information covers: construction materials, construction procedures, launch materials/procedures, theory of operation, load and safety notes. This is an ultimate guide for building improvised soft-drink can mortar!
The ultimate guide to Spud Gun Ignition: Using a Stun Gun, which details the ideal way of devising or modifying a stun gun, so that it can be used as ignition for a potato cannon or suchlike. This spud gun ignition provides battery economy, fewer insulation problems and safety benefits. Learn how to make this spud gun ignition in this well illustrated handbook.
An excellent, comprehensive manual on how to make a pneumatic potato cannon (spud gun). Includes step-by-step instructions, blueprints and remarks for better understanding. Read on to make a powerful pneumatic compressed air potato cannon out of easily obtainable materials which can fire much further than conventional ignition based models! | <urn:uuid:95ee0085-de1b-4f17-85ed-d753bf624c25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.weaponscombat.com/make-cannons | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90173 | 466 | 3.140625 | 3 |
The operation theater complex at SHRC has three ultra-modern operating rooms with state-of-the art equipment and technology ensuring an experience that is error-free and as painless as possible. Well-defined infection control measures and microbiological monitoring protocols that conform to the latest industry standards provide minimal chances of surgical site infections.
Each operating room is equipped with steel clad walls for optimum infection control. Our infection control protocols ensure that airborne particles are eliminated from the operating rooms, preventing the spread of airborne bacterial and viral organisms.
Medical equipment, such as anesthesia machines are ceiling-mounted. All power lines, communication lines and gas lines run on the ceiling to ensure a clutter-free floor and prevent tripping and accidental disconnections. Operating tables are fitted with advanced medical equipment, which are electronically controlled to ensure optimum patient comfort and precise surgeries.
The recovery room is adequately equipped with four bed sections that cater to better post-surgical recovery. | <urn:uuid:312ebd1b-8985-41c1-897e-ed2d4c6e6c9b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shrc.asia/operation-theaters | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931359 | 190 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Our Wildlife Without Borders program continues to make a global impact.
One of our grantees – Grupo de Estudios Ambientales (the Environmental and Social Studies Group) – just won a 2012 Equator Prize, a highly competitive award with over 800 nominations from 113 countries.
Grupo de Estudios Ambientales has been one of our grant partners for nearly ten years. We’ve provided a total of nearly $346,000 in competitive grants to their community conservation projects, which they have matched with more than $720,000 in leveraged funds.
Working hard to protect wildlife. (Photo: Grupo de Estudios Ambientales)
The Grupo de Estudios Ambientales secures access to safe water for local people in the central mountain region of Guerrero, Mexico, and at the same time shows communities how to use their resources in a sustainable way. They train subsistence farmers in land management, and build the farmers’ capacity to work the land in a way that benefits both people and wildlife.
The group has reforested more than 1,200 acres of land and established 60 organic farms that provide income and food to local people in the Chilapa region. They teach women and youth how to grow and store local food and improve household sanitation. The group has been instrumental in establishing nine community reserves and protected areas for wildlife.
The Equator Prize was awarded at the United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development.
We are proud to support this award-winning conservation initiative that benefits local communities and wildlife. | <urn:uuid:97d75fff-8830-4ff0-ab36-5b29d2ef5a55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fws.gov/news/blog/index.cfm/2012/8/22/Wildlife-Without-Borders-Grantee-Wins-Coveted-Conservation-Prize | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928093 | 320 | 2.140625 | 2 |
In honor of Valentine's Day, we're going to spend this week on 13.7 publishing love letters (really, chaste appreciations) to some of our biggest intellectual crushes.
These are the people our bloggers think you should know about, people who have had a significant influence on their lives and their thinking. As they're published, I'll keep a running list of the posts right here:
I'll kick things off with my own quick nod to a fictional character. She's the unreal combination of brains and brawn from the Ghost in the Shell oeuvre known as "The Major."
A cyborg with the "ghost" of the real human she used to be, The Major could have been just another empty, entertaining action figure, fighting for all that's right in a world full of wrong. What we get with this character, instead, is a guide to the question: What does it mean to be human?
Adventure and intrigue lurk just around every corner for The Major and her team, known as Public Security Section 9. But what makes both Ghost in the Shell and The Major so interesting is the constant questioning of what it means to be human in a world where it is possible to leave your natural body behind to live inside a machine, or even out on the network as an un-embodied ghost.
Let the action, the big guns and cliffhangers, the futuristic world, pull you into the vortex. Once you're there, join The Major as she dives ever deeper into the human question. The answers you find will be your own, but you wouldn't have gotten there without her guiding hand.
Wright Bryan edits 13.7 and is a member of NPR's Social Media Desk. You can keep up with more of what he is thinking on Twitter: @wrightbryan3 | <urn:uuid:3a0e28ff-f8a7-4bb3-9418-5730fa474fa4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/02/11/171728961/all-this-week-minds-that-make-us-swoon?ft=1&f=1060 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968434 | 372 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The Australian Altruism Foundation dinner and presentation of the 2006 Turtle and Humanitarian awards was held in Melbourne on Thursday May 3. The awards recognise and honour those who "stick out their necks", not for themselves, but for the greater good. Acknowledgment is given to those people in every walk of life who demonstrate the best attributes of leadership.
Shane Holst, the President of the Altruism Foundation, said that "is imperative for the word 'leadership' to be understood, to stand for something wise, decent, and honest if humanity is to reach its greatest and most brilliant potential."
When the turtle "sticks out his neck" he is vulnerable. And so it is for recipients of the Turtle Award, one of whom was Jane Dai, who was an award recipient in the Spiritual category.
Ms Dai is Australia's ambassador for the Petals of Peace project.
"This initiative assists in raising public awareness of the needless suffering of innocent children in China," said Mr Holst, "and encouraging children to actively participate in contributing towards a more peaceful and tolerant world."
Petals of Peace visited schools and also established a website "so children could learn more about the folding of an origami lotus flower as an expression of hope for other suffering children", said Mr Holst.
Ms Dai's husband is believed to have been murdered by Chinese security officials in 2001 because he practised Falun Gong, a meditation discipline that the Communist regime has brutally persecuted since 1999.
Since that time, Ms Dai has embarked on a journey to raise awareness of the brutality of the persecution, which has taken her to the UN human rights commission in Geneva and many countries throughout the world.
On the night of the Turtle awards she accepted the honour with her young daughter Fadu by her side.
"This award is not only for me, but for Falun Gong," said Ms Dai. "For Falun Gong teaches me for what I am...to always think of other people first and all the practitioners around the world, because they helped me.
"On the table, everyone got the lotus flowers under a little bookmark saying Falun Dafa is Good, Truth Compassion Tolerance ... it is beautiful," she said.
The recipient of the Australian Humanitarian Award in the Charity Category was Philip Wollen, who gives away over 90 per cent of his income. Mr Wollen does not fund-raise. The only money he gives away is his own. He supports 250 plus groups in over 30 countries. He provides them with money, advice and facilities. When he spots a need in the community he finds a way to fill it. Mr Wollen says: "Governments can't do everything and it is 'un-Australian' to expect it. Individuals, on the other hand, can do anything."
Christa and David Bidgood were recipients of the Turtle Award in the category of Altruism. They are the founders of the Australian Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. The couple "stick their necks out for the common good" on a daily basis.
"Our society is often dictated by alcohol and drugs. There is a disease," said Ms Bidgood, "called alcohol and addiction which causes fragmentation of our society and culture, and our families as well, and what we endeavour to do is assist to rebuild and restore their lives and rebuild their families…the very foundation of our society."
The night's guest speaker, Bev Brock, told the 200 guests at the dinner: "I really think what we are seeing here tonight are ... people who are committed to help in the wider community, who give freely of themselves."
"And I am very sure that every one of these people has self-worth, because a community is only as good as the individuals in it." | <urn:uuid:877667eb-0ded-449f-956a-004b7ffcf2cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/7-5-6/54943.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974367 | 775 | 1.539063 | 2 |
WASHINGTON — Pete Rustan once devised a way to keep Air Force planes from being damaged by lightning. He led a project to build a spacecraft that performed important scientific experiments on the moon. He earned a PhD while serving as an Air Force intelligence officer. He became a designer of spy satellites.
All of those achievements came after he made a daring escape from Cuba to come to the United States.
Colonel Rustan retired from the Air Force in 1997 but went back to work after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, at a federal agency so secretive that its budget, projects, and accomplishments are classified information. His job was to lead research efforts in satellite reconnaissance for the military and CIA.
He might have been unknown to the general public, but Pedro L. ‘‘Pete’’ Rustan was something of a legend in the tight-lipped world of aerial intelligence and engineering. No one who worked with him is at liberty to say exactly what he did for a living.
Yet this much is true: When Colonel Rustan retired last August from the little-known National Reconnaissance Office, the Navy SEAL unit responsible for killing Osama bin Laden presented him with an American flag that flew at its forward operating base in Afghanistan.
On June 28, Colonel Rustan died at his home in Woodbridge, Va. He was 65 and had prostate cancer, said his wife, Alexandra Cary Rustan.
Any single element of Colonel Rustan’s life — political escapee, scientist, military officer, satellite designer — sounds like the stuff of fiction, but he embodied them all.
‘‘This guy was intense,’’ said Daniel S. Goldin, a former NASA administrator who knew Colonel Rustan for 20 years.
When Goldin took charge of NASA in 1992, one of his goals was to build spacecraft that could be deployed quickly and could produce important scientific results at relatively little cost. His slogan was ‘‘faster, better, cheaper.’’
Colonel Rustan managed a joint NASA-Defense Department project to build a 1,000-pound experimental spacecraft to go to the moon. The project, known as Clementine, took just 22 months from concept to launch pad.
‘‘Each time I went back,’’ Goldin said, ‘‘I gained more respect for him. He always seemed to take on things that were impossible.’’
Clementine went into space Jan. 25, 1994, and sent back 1.8 million images of the moon. It measured reflected light and radiation, created a topologic map of the lunar surface, and discovered evidence of frozen water in craters at the moon’s south pole.
After Clementine, Colonel Rustan went to work at the National Reconnaissance Office, which was created in 1961. Its existence was not officially made public until more than 30 years later.
All we know of Colonel Rustan’s work at the agency is that he helped design and manage spy satellites.
‘‘This is rocket science,’’ said Charlie Allen, a 47-year CIA veteran and former assistant director of the agency. ‘‘It has helped give the United States a decisive edge in the Cold War and in post-Cold War conflicts.’’
After Colonel Rustan retired from the Air Force, he consulted on commercial space ventures and for federal intelligence agencies. He was on an advisory board that recommended changes at the National Security Agency, one of the country’s largest intelligence agencies.
‘‘He was hands-down the most valuable member of that board,’’ said Michael V. Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA, in an interview. ‘‘He was creative. He was energetic. He was candid without ever being caustic or unkind.’’
After the 9/11 attacks, Colonel Rustan left the lucrative private sector and went back to work for the National Reconnaissance Office. He eventually led its Advanced Science Directorate and Mission Support Directorate.
In March, Colonel Rustan received the Philip J. Klass Lifetime Achievement Award from Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine. The citation said that, in the past decade, he designed two classified spacecraft that have ‘‘significantly improved US capabilities in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.’’
Even though his work was confidential, Colonel Rustan often traveled to theaters of war and was known to troops on the front lines, including members of SEAL Team 6, the elite commando unit that killed bin Laden on May 2, 2011.
Pedro Luis Rustan was born in 1946, in Guantanamo, Cuba, a small city about 40 miles from the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay. His father, a labor leader, was jailed as a political prisoner in 1961 by the regime of Fidel Castro.
In August 1967, when Pedro Rustan was 20 and a student at the University of Oriente-Santiago in Cuba, he looked up from his desk in the college library one evening to see his father standing before him. ‘‘This night we’re leaving,’’ said his father, who had escaped from prison through a ruse.
Colonel Rustan left his textbook open on the table and fled. With his father, two sisters, and a brother-in-law, he climbed inside a railroad boxcar carrying sugar cane. They jumped from the moving train as it approached the US naval base at Guantanamo and waded waist-deep through a snake-infested swamp before reaching a tall security fence topped with barbed wire. Colonel Rustan carried his younger sister on his back over the fence, then scaled a second fence inside the perimeter of the naval base. After they were picked up by US forces, the Rustans asked for political asylum.
In addition to his wife of 33 years, Colonel Rustan leaves two children, Peter of Bealeton, Va., and Amy Rustan of Washington; and three sisters. | <urn:uuid:291990da-4e73-42f6-979f-e4b22c82827e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/obituaries/2012/07/08/pete-rustan-acclaimed-scientist-top-secret-world/AZBk3A9DXIU7ZNpnJvaSyM/story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979005 | 1,257 | 2.5 | 2 |
Dog Nose Cells Repair Spine: Scientists used nose cells from pet dogs paralyzed in accidents to restore movement to their legs. The clinical trial, which involved 34 pet dogs with spinal cord injuries, is the first to show that using olfactory ensheathing cells could significantly repair damaged spines.
It’s been known for more than a decade that these cells support nerve fiber growth. But so far, no one has found a way to effectively use them to treat damaged spinal cords. Professor Robin Franklin, one of the study leaders from Cambridge University, and his colleagues took olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) from the lining of a group of dogs and injected those cells, with a liquid, into the injury site. Each month, the scientists test the dogs for neurological function. Significant improvement was seen in the dogs injected with OECs, but not those receiving the placebo treatment. The scientists reported their results in the journal Brain.
The researchers cautioned that these are preliminary results and that the new nerve connections that were generated occurred over short distances. That means that the technique might be able to restore a small amount of movement in human patients with spinal cord injuries, but would not likely restore all function. | <urn:uuid:13da3d4c-4732-4f76-9230-84054433d110> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.discovery.com/tech/dog-nose-cells-repair-spine-dnews-nuggets-121119.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967041 | 247 | 2.875 | 3 |
Child-Resistant Packaging - Testing and Certification
As a packaging and market research institute we have been working towards better standards of child-resistant packaging since 1975. During this time the scope of our client base has broadened and as consequence so too has the scope of our testing and certification capabilities.
Today, ivm is one of the few institutes in Europe accredited according to ISO 17025 as a testing laboratory for child-resistant packaging. Furthermore we are the only accredited certification body for child-resistant packaging in Europe in accordance with EN 45011. We are recognised for our high standards by both consumers and governing bodies from within the industry, as an institute that can issue certificates in conjunction to the testing conducted. We are also proud to be recognised by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a testing body for child-resistant packaging.
As a result of our successes with regards to testing and certification of child resistance we also undertake this activity for child resistant lighters. This is mandatory within the European Union as per Decision 2012/53/EU and also in the US as per US 16 CFR 1210. | <urn:uuid:fd646ddd-9f9e-4af3-9073-5440151f4fad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ivm-childsafe.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953958 | 239 | 1.546875 | 2 |
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Shared Use: Progress and Evolution 83 Advantages · Increase accessible passenger market; public transportation available in new, less served areas. · Potential for route extensions, connections and passenger growth. Flexibility for test services. · Walkability to and from stations. · Downtown distribution. · Lower cost than light rail. · Quieter and with lower emissions than traditional commuter rail. · Induced growth may be economically beneficial to locality. · Shorter, faster trains. · Viable in edge cities and suburban neighborhoods. · Additional utilization of an existing railroad asset. · Reduced social disruption construction relocation, and environmental disturbance by using existing facility. Disadvantages · Conflicts with growth in freight traffic. Temporal separation can be a zero-sum game, with winners and losers. · Capacity limitations, not suitable for high density, high volume passenger movements. · Stations require parking and improved highway access, and generate traffic. · Noise generated by horn warnings when trains traverse grade crossings. · Increase in noisy freight movements that will likely shift to night. · A lightly used freight line must exist. The concept is applicable in selective circumstances. · Existing freight corridor may not be optimally placed to generate ridership. Growth may be induced where inappropriate or constrained by other factors. Ridership may be induced rather than mode shifted. · A cooperative freight partner is required. · Extended and complex bureaucratic process; success not assured. · Requires added systems and technology to protect passenger traffic from freight-based accidents. · Route will likely include a large number of grade crossings. Realistic or not, concern is increased with noncompliant vehicles. · Disparate speeds and weight, structural incompatibility of vehicles increases risk. · Each incremental change requires approval from the FRA. Market appeal can benefit from increased advocacy by state or local government entities and community movers and shakers as an economic stimulus and a practical approach to new sys- tem starts. Collaboration between a transit agency and a local shortline or branch line owner may be encouraged by explaining the potential infrastructure, economic, and operating advantages that would accrue. Shared-Track Operation--An Evolving Concept The future growth of shared-track operations is contingent upon shared-track being afford- able and achievable without sacrificing safety. Technical advances and evolution of a more sophisticated business case is likely to enhance shared-track's appeal. The following recommen- dations for research and action will support progress for present operations and those being planned or considered: 1. Demonstration projects should encourage funding for development, evaluation, testing and documentation of methods to expand concurrent track sharing, and involve the SSO orga- nization too. In both California and New Jersey, it would include a detailed evaluation of what
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84 Shared Use of Railroad Infrastructure with Noncompliant Public Transit Rail Vehicles: A Practitioner's Guide types of concurrent operations are necessary and desirable. The demonstration would provide for development and evaluation of approaches to facilitate those operations. The demonstra- tion project would provide for design, deployment, testing, evaluation, and documenting, and recommend a preferred approach. Finally the project would report on the actual costs and derived benefits of extending concurrent shared-track operations. 2. The business case template and risk analysis technique illustrated in Chapter 4 should be adapted to a specific candidate line segment under consideration by a transit agency. The research for this report used hypothetical data for illustrative purposes. Expanding upon this research by applying the method to a real system could validate and calibrate the model, and quantify the benefits in a way that may be transferable to other prospective systems. 3. APTA currently sponsors a shared-track working group that serves to disseminate relevant experiences and information. A more active intervention and role by APTA in promoting this application of technology should be encouraged. One means of doing that is developing new FRA standards for shared-track under the auspices of APTA. The existence of any type of standard may assure that each project will not be treated as the first of its kind by the FRA. An approach similar to PRESS and RTOS programs could be adapted for Shared-Track. Cre- ating standards and self-regulation may obviate some FRA concerns. 4. More structural research is needed, such as computer modeling and simulation of light pas- senger rail cars and freight vehicle collisions. Ideally a real-world test should be performed and results can be incorporated in new CEM designs and risk analysis models. 5. Investigate whether it is possible to use federal funding available for shortline/branchlines reconstruction or rehabilitation for a shared-track service, thus reducing costs to the transit agency. | <urn:uuid:f3dee231-652a-4ce8-9a99-d22feea51047> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=14220&page=83 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920719 | 1,069 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Feb. 20, 2011 Tropical deforestation is intimately linked with urban dynamics and needs to be considered along with the role and effect of national and regional policies on land use decisions, and the dynamics of economic globalization in the next generation of sustainability science research, according to an Arizona State University geographer.
"You just can't think of isolated farmers operating out there by themselves. They are linked to whatever are the closest urban areas," noted B.L. Turner II, whose research concentrates on human-environment relationships focusing on land-use change. He addressed change in tropical forests and the challenges that address its complexity at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was one of the presenters in a Feb. 19 session on the research frontiers in sustainability science.
"Today, there is a lot of work on ecosystem services related to forest change, yet there really is a paucity of work that says how those ecosystem services come back and affect human outcomes," said Turner, the Gilbert F. White Professor of Environment and Society in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He also is a professor in the School of Sustainability.
"We have a lot of work informing us about the environmental impacts of deforestation, but it doesn't tell us how people react to it and deal with it. We only now are beginning to ask how those environmental services link to farm income. How do those factors link to whether people abandon land and go off someplace else or sell their land rights to a cattle farmer. And, how does all this link to changes in rural-urban ties, policy, and global economy changes," he said.
"It's linking the feedback of environmental changes themselves on decisions to cut forest, or not; to expand agricultural land, or not. It isn't just the amount of forests that's cut or the amount of agricultural land lost. It is the spatial and temporal patterns of them," Turner stressed. "It matters whether people are cutting big chunks of land in a uniform pattern or cutting little chunks of land in an ad hoc random pattern."
Turner argued that "all of this matters to biodiversity and rainfall in the tropics. We have the capacity to account for these consequences if we aim our research that way," he said.
What needs to be done now in sustainability science research, according to Turner, is to create models that are fluid and open to the complex changes we observe, full of feedbacks between people and environment.
"Tropical deforestation still remains very high on the sustainability global change/climate change agenda for a variety of reasons that range from it being the lungs of the planet to housing the most terrestrial biodiversity," Turner said. "The new challenge that we face in sustainability science is understanding more fully the ties between the socioeconomic factors affecting forest change and the environmental feedbacks from decisions we make. We can incorporate these types of dynamics directly into how we understand and forecast what's going to fall, where it's going to fall, and what the implications are."
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Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead. | <urn:uuid:3414e521-3327-4ad3-8010-117a06363021> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110220193025.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954898 | 649 | 2.609375 | 3 |
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This unit uses graphing and diagrams to help students piece together the fundamental elements of the human body and unleash the mysterious aspect of the brain as our body’s navigator. Learning, thought, creativity and intelligence are not the sole process of the mind alone, but of the entire body. Human qualities that we often associate with our mind can not exist separate from our body. Our body plays an integral part in our body’s intellectual processes through our senses which feed our brain information. We then can draw a better understanding of our world furthermore creating infinite possibilities. Our ability to facilitate greater cognitive function is connected to the body’s movements and functions.
This unit examines the relationship between mind and body using graphical displays to chart elements of daily life such as food intake, sleep, exercise and mood. Students will also examine the skeletal, digestive, nervous and respiratory systems. Through a series of inquiry-based investigations students will comprehend that everything we do affects our mental, physical and emotional well being. Students will develop a nutritional awareness which will help them realize how positive lifestyle changes can lead to strong bodies and emotionally stable minds. By the end of the unit students are expected to explain and discuss the body systems and their connection with the brain and understand the greater importance of proper nutrition and its application to their daily lives.
(Recommended for Mathematics and Science, grade 2) | <urn:uuid:2b45f421-9981-4b6f-81ed-16c161867ce6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yale-university.com/ynhti/curriculum/guides/2008/6/08.06.05.x.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918867 | 288 | 4.1875 | 4 |
Woven Treehouse Inspired by Bird’s Nest
August 20, 2012
Images courtesy of Michael Smallcombe
Commissioned by the Dartmoor Arts Project for the second year in a row, London-based Jerry Tate Architects has completed a temporary treehouse inspired by a bird’s nest for local farm owners in Devon. Working in collaboration with Dartmoor students and timber specialist Henry Russell, the treehouse was designed as a safe play-space as part of the summer school’s “Spatial Structures“ course. Read more.
The course, which is aimed at architectural students, architects, designers and all around “makers,” allows students to work directly in the field, with an emphasis placed on materials and place. The treehouse created for this summer’s “Studio on the Moor” includes an accessible walkway and a circular seating “pod” that provides both the aesthetic appeal and secured construction of a weaver bird’s nest.
Designed and constructed in a matter of only five days, the treehouse was built around the base of a mature oak using locally sourced materials. The structure requires only two mechanical fixtures to the tree, with woven pieces of spruce, larch, and western red cedar providing additional structural stability. The project cost £600 and will remain on site, along with other timber structures from previous Dartmoor Art Week events, for two years. | <urn:uuid:24e060e3-d836-4c51-8b1a-7be197193eb2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.architizer.com/en_us/blog/dyn/47573/woven-treehouse-inspired-by-birds-nest/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947549 | 297 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Read aloud Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and discuss how the author developed the idea of using food in the place of weather. Brainstorm other ideas for a story in a chart titled, “Cloudy With a Chance of. . .” Some ideas may include: toys, candy, sports, or games.
Lesson Idea: After students brainstorm a list of other ideas, have them choose one to develop into a writing piece.
Text to World Connection: If students see the movie, ask them to compare the movie and the book. How did the movie stay true to the author’s ideas? Or use the brief movie trailer below to make some comparisons: | <urn:uuid:3eea3258-a48d-4a9b-8c93-e1082adcc9e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://teachingwithpicturebooks.wordpress.com/category/text-to-world-connections/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903625 | 139 | 4 | 4 |
Decorate your tree with this homemade Christmas craft. Make Recycled Heart Ornaments from Rebecca Parsons out of old quilts - it's a cheap and easy project!
- An old, ragged quilt to cut up
- Old buttons
- 6 strand floss in color to coordinate with quilt
- Sharp needle with large eye
- Lay quilt flat on hard surface and choose a place to begin cutting.
- Cut hearts with sharp scissors.
- Thread your needle with 2 strands of floss as long as you can handle. I used an arm length plus some.
- Chose a button or two that will look good on the heart. Place it on the heart in position and run thread through a button hole and down through the heart and return it back up through another hole. Leave a 3-4 inch tail at the beginning and the end. Repeat this process several times to anchor the heart. Tie the ends together several times to secure.
- Run your thread into one side of the fabric quilt and through the batting if possible coming out of an edge. Do a blanket stitch around the edges of the heart. See the how to on blanket stitch below.
- Pull floss through back side of the fabric.
- Move over about 1/4″ and do that again from the back side to front. Come down so the stitch is aligned along the bottom.
- Before you pull the floss tight, run the needle back through the loop of the floss making sure your thread loops under the needle, pull it through until it lies tightly against the emerging thread. You’ll see that each new stitch secures and holds the loop of the previous stitch.
- Then pull taught, not tight. It will create a L shape. The first one always looks a bit odd, but the rest will be okay.
- Repeat step 2 through 4 around the heart.
- When you come to the end, take your thread to the back over the last loop to secure it. Bring your needle back through the fold to hide the ending and run it back through the batting an inch or so and cut. | <urn:uuid:f003e37f-66ef-403c-b782-f8747860c53d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.favecrafts.com/Ornaments/Recycled-Heart-Ornaments | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902772 | 440 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Most of us would agree that as each day passes we are drawing closer to the end times and the Lord’s return. Many of us feel we are in the actual last days, of course, the Apostles felt the same way. The Apostle Peter gave lots of great advice in I Peter Chapter 3 about dealing with mockers and scoffers. First he foretold that in the last days we would experience a rise in the number of mockers and scoffers against God and our faith. I think most of us would agree that we are already seeing that. When things like the May 21 fiasco happen, it pushes a rise in the number of mockers and scoffers. In chapter 3 verses 3 -7, Peter gives us some good instructions for when we deal with these people:
“3 First, be aware of this: scoffers will come in the last days to scoff, following their own lusts, 4 saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they have been since the beginning of creation.” 5 They willfully ignore this: long ago the heavens and the earth existed out of water and through water by the word of God. 6 Through these the world of that time perished when it was flooded by water. 7 But by the same word the present heavens and earth are held in store for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”
Peter reminds us that this mocking and scoffing is nothing new. He brings to mind the story of Noah. Noah lived in a world of evil people and God had determined to bring judgment. He told Noah to build the Ark and warn the people. Noah preached for 120 years and only reached his own family. While he preached all those years and built the Ark, he dealt with the people mocking and scoffing at him. What persistence and faith Noah had to go on through all of that. Inside this passage Peter reminds us that we need to look to God’s Word when people mock us or our faith. Inside God’s Word we will find stories of God’s faithfulness to us and stories that show God is not slack in keeping His promises.
So when people come against you and question your faith, remember God’s Word. Go to God’s Word and show them through God’s Word that when God says something will happen, it will in His own timing and His own way. These are wise instructions from Peter. Don’t depend on your own wisdom, reasoning and logic to explain to people what God is doing. Use God’s Word to respond to mockers. Just as Peter used the story of Noah to remind the people that God keeps His Word.
In light of the recent skepticism and mockery created by the recent false prophecies of a certain religious group, we need to address as Christians how to handle being mocked or respond to the mocker and skeptic. As Christians our witness is put on the line by all those around us proclaiming to be Christians, as well. So when groups like this do things that put Christians in a bad light, we are going face more pressure from the world for our faith. We need to know how to respond. Jesus gave us the best demonstration of wisdom when it came to those who deliberately mocked and scoffed at Him. All throughout the four gospels you will find accounts of Jesus being ridiculed, laughed at, and asked skeptical questions. Many of the questions He was asked were just to make Him look bad and place Him in jeopardy of the law. When it came to His last days on Earth we see Him deal with mockers and scoffers even more frequently. During His various trials before the Jews and conversations with Pilate we see Him being continually accused. In Mark 15: 3-5 we read:
“3 The chief priests were accusing Jesus of many things, 4 so Pilate questioned him again,
Aren’t you going to answer? Listen to all their accusations! 5 Again Jesus refused to say a word, and Pilate was amazed.”
In our own human nature, we want to defend ourselves. Jesus was the only truly innocent man there ever was. Of all people, He had a right to defend Himself. He also had all the power and wisdom to defend Himself that He needed. Yet, in His wisdom He chose not to respond to the mocking and accusations. His actions really did speak loudly for Him in the end. By the time Pilate was done with Him, he felt Jesus was innocent and should be released. Think about how you would feel about Jesus if you knew that He didn’t go innocently to the cross for us. If Jesus lashed out at His accusers, and punished them for what they were doing, what would you be thinking about Him? By the way He responded we see Him more as that true gentle, peaceable, loving Lamb of God. We see Him as the true sacrifice for sin. If He had gotten revenge on those who blatantly did wrong against Him, we would probably have a whole different view of Him. He did more for the faith by staying strong and silent, then by coming back at those who mocked. Even on the cross Jesus asked that the Father forgive them and in wisdom stated, “For they know not what they do.”
Mockers, scoffers and skeptics truly don’t know what they are doing. They react out of worldly conditioning and sinful natures. We need to learn to respond to those who come against us for our faith in wisdom like Jesus did. We need to remember where they are at spiritually and if it were not for Jesus, we would be there too. | <urn:uuid:6dd0d758-b1e7-4611-8099-7f1006c78c56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wisejunction.wordpress.com/tag/dealing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978582 | 1,177 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Plunging your feet into a tank containing flesh-eating fish sounds like something Blofeld might inflict upon James Bond, but in recent years this has become a very popular alternative to traditional pedicures. The fish, the garra rufa fish, eat only dead skin and the tickling sensation as they nibble on your feet is touted as far more enjoyable than being treated with a foot-file or razors. However, these fish spas are coming under increasing scrutiny by health authorities around the world and, in some countries, have even been banned. Just last month health protection authorities in Thailand, where there are an estimated 1,341 fish spas, and the UK launched investigations into potential health concerns.
The garra rufa fish, or "doctor fish", is a toothless freshwater fish native to Turkey. Originally used as a medical cure for psoriasis and other skin conditions, the fish are now being used commercially in spas. Clients at such spas sit with their feet, or whole bodies, in a tank and let the fish nibble away emerging buffed and glowing. The health authorities, however, are concerned about the transmission of disease from person to person through open wounds, and in December last year, the Ministry of Health also released a warning raising health concerns about fish pedicures in the UAE.
The Wild Wadi waterpark in Dubai is home to the FISHO Fish Spa which has around 6,000 garra rufa in its tanks. Chris Perry, the general manager of Wild Wadi, points out that the Government's warning was aimed primarily at unlicensed beauty salons. The FISHO Fish Spa markets the experience as a fun activity rather than as part of a cosmetic procedure, says Perry, and has been approved by Dubai Municipality's Health Department since its launch in April last year.
The spa enforces strict health policies to protect its clientele, Perry explains: "It is hygienic, the water is filtered and treated with ozone and UV. We also ensure there is ample circulation of the water for the effectiveness of the filtration and treatment process." Clients wishing to use the spa are required to wash their feet and have them examined by the trained staff supervising the spa. "The safety and security measures we employ at FISHO Fish Spa are very strict, and anybody with blisters, skin conditions or open wounds are not permitted to use the facility."
But even on dry land, how can clients in beauty salons be sure they are not making themselves vulnerable to disease with scissors, cuticle cutters and tweezers being used on one person and then another?
"If you had asked me 15 years ago, I wouldn't have recommended any woman go to any nail salons," says Jörg Stöbel, a German Board-qualified podiatrist and the general manager of the Chiropody Center in Dubai. "But about seven and a half years ago the big spas started opening up with proper hygienic standards and it's become much better."
He recommends that women going to nail salons should be more aware of the general cleanliness of the establishment before offering up their feet for treatment. "If you go to a small salon, you should take in the whole appearance of the place; that the girls are wearing a uniform, for example. You expect that they are clean, that they wash their hands, that they have a clean outfit. If they use a footbath, then check it is clean first. When they start using the tools, make sure they are coming from a steam-sterilised pouch."
The greater problem, according to Stöbel is more a matter of the techniques the pedicurists use to beautify your feet, which could lead to a visit to the podiatrist. "The girls try to make toe nails look like finger nails," he says. "Therefore they give them a certain shape that can lead to ingrown toenails. Many have no idea what a topical fungus looks like and have no idea that when they put nail polish on they will close in a certain number of bacteria and fungi. These days it's very rare that I see anybody with problems due to substandard hygiene in whatever beauty salon they are coming from, it is just what they are doing when they are there."
The key things to remember, recommends Stöbel, are to take off any nail polish after three days to prevent nail fungus occurring and never to have your cuticles cut. "The cuticle is a natural seal between the skin and the nail. The moment you start cutting it, it grows even faster and if you don't do it properly, then you basically open up the space between the nail and the skin for bacteria and dust to get in. If you have a cuticle which is overgrown and covering the nail, it should only be removed chemically. They use cuticle softener and push it back a little bit. But cutting it, with small scissors and clippers - no way."
Sara Abdulrazak is the managing director of the Sisters Beauty Lounge, with three salons in Dubai and one in Abu Dhabi. The health departments of the municipalities in Dubai and Abu Dhabi have rules for salon hygiene strictly enforced by fines and unannounced inspections, explains Abdulrazak.
"All the metal tools, the nail cutters, tweezers, any of this stainless steel equipment, gets scrubbed in an antiseptic solution and then put into a sterilisation machine." Abdulrazak says there are also regulations around the cleaning of hairbrushes and prohibiting "double-dipping", or recycling, of wax, and some of it is commonsense. "It's very important that before every client they spray and sterilise the footbath, you don't want to put your feet in a footbath someone else has used who has something wrong with their feet, just as you wouldn't want to share a bathtub. Then we, of course, have the usual: clean towels, clean paper, tissues."
Staff training is key in maintaining hygiene standards, believes Abdulrazak, who has instigated standard operating procedures and training for all her staff. She also has support from Dubai Municipality which holds forums and group meetings to educate salon owners. As Abdulrazak explains: "The last time they had a forum on health and safety, I sent all the branch managers, and they explain the dangers of henna, the dangers of various bacteria." Inspectors bring pamphlets to the salons and even show the nail technicians how to clean the tools. "Some of them are really good, really hands-on." Says Abdulrazak.
"I love it, it keeps my staff on their toes. I'm not there 24/7 and the Municipality can walk in at any time," she says.
Follow us on Twitter and keep up to date with the latest in arts and lifestyle news at twitter.com/LifeNationalUAE | <urn:uuid:96bdf5ef-d6db-4b9e-ac7c-fa5f453e8d59> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/well-being/safety-in-the-salon-does-your-salon-follow-proper-hygiene-rules | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968296 | 1,432 | 2.03125 | 2 |
26 July 2010
Making a difference - UK Electronics Skills
The mission to improve UK electronics skills is making progress.
There is no definitive way to measure the level of skills inherent in the UK electronics sector, but it is safe to say the general level is not high enough. If it was, organisations like Semta, the sector skills council, and the newly created UK Electronics Skills Foundation (UKESF) would have little purpose.
It is this belief that UK electronics would benefit greatly from 'training' that has focused attention over the recent past. While much of this attention has been aimed at manufacturing and design technicians – looking to give a boost to the abilities of a range of companies – there is also a perceived need to improve leadership skills.
Lynn Tomkins, operations director for Semta, said that, despite the economic conditions, skills is a top business driver, along with quality, cost and delivery. "Other issues of concern include business improvement techniques, leadership and management, and new product development and introduction."
Indro Mukerjee (pictured), executive chairman of C-MAC MicroTechnology, is deeply involved in the skills development arena. He is chairman of the UKESF's strategic advisory board and a board member of Semta. "One of the challenges has been that the electronics industry, as a whole, was quite far behind other sectors." The reason, said Mukerjee, is because the sector is dominated by SMEs. "We don't have the equivalents of BAE Systems, which means we have to work through the major trade associations."
One of the targets over the last year has been to get the electronics sector engaged with the Government's Train to Gain programme. Under Train to Gain, individual companies and the Government work together to improve the skills of staff members. Train to Gain says its expert, impartial service is a tool for long term business success. Partly, the focus was to make sure other sectors didn't benefit too much. "To not have taken that route would have meant other people would have got electronics' share," Mukerjee said.
Now, the focus for electronics skills development is broadening. "We have the ambition to take the skills offering beyond today's levels," Mukerjee continued. "It's also valid for IP generation and design. We need an end to end offer for electronics skills."
While there are, apparently, justifiable concerns at the skill levels of the industry, there are also worries about the industry's future. Tomkins said: "A good supply of graduates is very important and this is becoming an issue for electronics companies. We need new blood: a supply of new people is key for the industry's growth."
Tomkins, who has embarked on a campaign of direct engagement with electronics companies across the UK, outlined the scale of the challenge. "There are about 8500 companies in the sector, employing around 159,000 people. Many of these are small companies involved in high value work. We are currently working with more than 1000 of these companies, helping them develop skills. Of these, 174 companies have completed their plan and 2500 people are working towards a recognised qualification, supported by Train to Gain funding."
The fractured nature of the electronics sector means it can be harder to get training providers interested. Tomkins noted: "With big companies, there are big numbers of people to train and providers will take note. They may not be as interested when there are smaller numbers of people to train. If we can get more people together, we can then take advantage."
UKESF is compiling a map of who provides top level training, because it believes the sources are not always visible.
Mukerjee sees two major targets for the campaign. "There are two kinds of company," he believes. "One is the company which knows it lacks skills and that's the least problem. The biggest problem is posed by companies who don't know they need their skills upgraded." This latter problem can be addressed with a skills assessment.
"The skills assessment approach has a clear method," Mukerjee asserted. "It's a model that will go online. Businesses can work through it and then get advice. People's eyes are opened when they take this approach and it's important for small businesses to have upgraded skills because they work in a global industry."
Derek Boyd, chief executive of the UK Electronics Alliance, is a UKESF board member. "The UKESF launched at the beginning of 2010. Since then, we have been formalising agreements with agencies, founding partners, the IET and the Engineering Development Trust. There has been significant development work, with a website now up and running (www.ukesf.org). Promotional material can be downloaded and this is finding its way into the industry.
"While we are seeing growth in recognition, we have a growth plan for UKESF and are confident the model will scale to offer companies both quantity and quality."
A particular achievement of which Boyd is proud is that companies have committed the money needed to support 31 approved scholars in nine companies. "There will also be a UKESF summer school next year, so we're making good progress," Boyd claimed.
An important milestone will be passed imminently – the UKESF's first Board Meeting. "We have established UKESF as a standalone company," Boyd pointed out, "and we will begin business in earnest later this year."
He says all Board members are committed to making a difference. "We are all concerned about falling numbers of people studying electronics and the small pool from which employers can recruit. There is a commitment to solve that problem and we are identifying and executing on a small, but significant, number of areas."
"Electronics is mainly SME based," Mukerjee reiterated, "and there is a tendency for these companies to say they're too busy. But, at the same time, they complain they don't have enough skilled people. What has been heartening is the way the founding members of UKESF have gone 'above and beyond'; it's refreshing to find people who will put their money where their mouths are."
Tomkins underlined the challenges of getting employers to participate. "We will be talking with the 1000 companies we are working with to see how they can source the graduates they need through UKESF. Companies may want to take on young people, but they don't always know how to do it. We can help."
While there is emphasis on training delivery, there are other approaches, including working within other sectors. "We can also get electronics companies involved in the skills agenda through such initiatives as SC21, the aerospace supply chain. Vertical supply chains such as this give companies an incentive to get up to the mark and develop their skills," he concluded, "and we're on track to make a difference."
Tale of the tape
* The sector:
8580 companies employ 159,500 people
* Semta's activity since October 2008
1902 companies approached
993 follow up telephone calls
1005 electronics companies engaged with Semta from levels 1 to 4
79% are SMEs with 39% employing less than 50 people
174 training plans complete, with funding identified
2552 qualifications and training programmes on the plans
£1000 management and leadership grants available for companies who employ less than 250
All age apprenticeships worth £14,600 over three years
* Business drivers
Quality, cost and delivery performance
Ways of working
* Top skills demanded
Business improvement techniques
Productivity and competitiveness
ESF training programmes, including vendor and software training
New product development and introduction
Management and leadership
Performing manufacturing operations
Team leader training
All age apprenticeships
RF2M Microelectronics Ltd
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[Find continuing updates on the transport of the boulder for Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass here.] In other news: Opening this Sunday, March 11, Robert Adams: The Place We Live, A Retrospective Selection of Photographs presents the artistic legacy of photographer Robert Adams (b. 1937) and his longstanding engagement with the changing landscape of the American West and the lives of its inhabitants. With a timely opening during California’s Arbor Day celebration (March 7–14), the exhibition reveals Robert Adams’s eloquent preoccupation with the presence of trees, featured in series dedicated to the Los Angeles region, cottonwood trees in Colorado, and poplars, alders, and firs growing in Oregon. Edward Robinson, associate curator of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department, talks to Dr. Matt Ritter, a botany professor at California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo and California trees expert, about the flora of Robert Adams’s photographs. Dr. Ritter will lead a gallery talk about the exhibition on Thursday evening, March 22.
Edward Robinson: Adams began photographing the Southern California region in the late 1950s and early 1960s, returning many times to describe the citrus groves, eucalyptus, and palm trees that flourish in the area. Looking at Robert Adams’s series, “Los Angeles Spring” (1979–83), what do the many different kinds of trees featured suggest about the region’s horticultural history and changing land use over time?
Matt Ritter: At different times in Southern California’s history, certain plants have been more or less horticulturally popular. An example is the Canary Island Date Palm (Phoenix canariensis) featured in Robert Adams’s Edge of San Timoteo Canyon. Although young Canary Island Date Palms are rarely planted anymore, they were very popular around homesteads at the turn of the last century. When the homesteads and agricultural fields were abandoned, destroyed, or developed, these palms, which can live for centuries, remain as reminders of the activities, cultural history, and interests of early Californians.
Not all plants were utilitarian; a large Canary Island Date Palm would have stood proudly as a symbol of status and stateliness in the yard of a farmhouse. On the other hand, Red Gum eucalypts (Eucalyptus camaldulensis), the sole species in Abandoned windbreak, were entirely utilitarian and favored by early agriculturalists in Southern California. These trees, which seem to thrive on neglect, offer shade, protection, and wood, and were often the only trees in otherwise desolate and hostile landscapes.
ER: Other series on view describe the cottonwoods in Colorado, where Robert Adams lived for much of his career. Adams writes that “Cottonwoods have been our friends for a long while. The Arapaho believed that the stars came from cottonwoods, from the glistening sap at the joints of twigs. Immigrant wagon trains followed along from one grove to the next, with cottonwoods serving as landmarks, shelter, and fuel.” What is distinctive about cottonwoods as a species of trees and an element today of the inhabited west?
MR: It is not surprising that cottonwoods (Populus fremontii) caught Adams’s eye. They are like few other trees in the American West, with their twisted, wide-branching forms, corrugated, gray-skinned trunks, and leaves that ripple in the wind. They are the patriarchs of the landscape—survivors in a place of drought, heat, and shattering cold. Inhabitants of the American West have always known cottonwoods to be indicators of precious resources. They grow where water is available, in fertile alluvial bottomlands. Cottonwoods in the distance are a promise of arable land, water, food, shade, and better times.
ER: For the last fifteen years or so, Adams has lived in Oregon. His series “Turning Back” is dedicated to the subject of deforestation in the Pacific Northwest. One of Robert Adams’s photographs features his wife, Kerstin, standing beside a large stump, a remnant of an ancient wood where trees once commonly grew to be five hundred or more years old; others depict the “harvest” of newer forests. What is your sense of the future of the rainforests in the region?
MR: I grew up in a rural part of Mendocino County in Northern California, where logging the remnant coastal redwood forests was one of the main industries in the area, and I witnessed those logging activities change greatly in a relatively short period of time as the trees disappeared. In my part of Northern California and the parts of Oregon depicted in Robert Adams’s photographs, there is so little of the original, virgin, old-growth forests remaining (less than 4 percent).
The wholesale plunder of California and Oregon conifers that took place in the early part of the twentieth century is over, but the scars remain. These scars take form in the infrastructure: abandoned towns, mills, railroads lines, and logging roads, and the human-modified ecosystems of Adams’s photographs: half-rotted, massive old stumps, second-growth forests, and slowly recovering waterways and fisheries. Fortunately, most old-growth rainforests of the Northwest are protected in perpetuity, and logging practices have improved greatly, with many companies finding new ways to sustainably harvest timber.
ER: Robert Adams writes, “Art should finally be encouraging. That’s the promise that brings people to museums. And since lies are finally discouraging, that means art should be truthful. Truthful and affirmative, presumably even about what has happened to most of the landscape.” Amid LACMA’s twenty-acre campus, visitors can also experience firsthand artist Robert Irwin’s Palm Garden, an installation of some one hundred palm trees, designed with landscaper Paul Comstock. Bringing together more than thirty varieties of palm trees and other specimens, Irwin has noted that certain cycads for the site are among the first plants on earth. As the author of A Californian’s Guide to the Trees Among Us (Heyday Books, 2012), and thinking about the importance of trees to local and worldwide communities, what do you think some of the most exciting and rare plantings to look for are when visiting LACMA?
MR: Robert Irwin’s Palm Garden is a truly impressive collection of trees. Not only does it have one of the greatest diversities of palms in any collection in California, it also houses a number of rare cycads. Cycads, although ostensibly like palms, are actually distantly related ancient plants that evolved during the time of the dinosaurs and have changed very little in the last 250 million years. They have declined in abundance in the places where they occur to a point now where all three hundred species of cycads in the world are rare and endangered in the wild.
A particularly awesome individual in the palm collection is the Chilean Wine Palm (Jubaea chilensis) planted in a submerged position near the elevator to the Pritzker Parking Garage. Individuals of this species are the widest palms in the world. If its massive trunk is cut, a sugary sap will flow from it for a long time—hundreds of gallons of syrup can be harvested. In Chile, where the palms are now protected and rarely cut down, this syrup was fermented into a sweet wine. Chilean wine palm fruits are also edible and similar in appearance and taste to small coconuts (called coquitos in Chile). Riding the LACMA’s plaza elevator and observing this massive tree is a special treat during a visit to the museum and palm collection, and you may even get to eat a coquito.
Robert Adams: The Place We Live, A Retrospective Selection of Photographs opens March 11. Members get a sneak preview today, Friday, and Saturday.
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