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Holly Simmons says she tries to make her Elkin Elementary sixth graders look at math outside the textbook and see the excitement and the every-day application in arithmetic.
As part of her class, students take part in a statewide “math logo” contest, designed to make children aware of what math has to offer besides addition and subtraction. Kids are placed into groups and prepare colorful posters to illustrate math is a part of their everyday surroundings in ways they likely would not expect.
“The goal is to entice kids to like math,” Simmons said. “Math is fun; it’s not just sitting behind a desk solving problems. Math is everywhere.”
Simmons says she wants her students to think outside the box when it comes to math, she said. In addition to the students expanding their own views of math, she hopes the posters will intrigue younger kids about math in the world around them.
In addition to the academic benefits to the poster contest, the students’ artwork is part of a bigger art project known as the “Math Logo Contest,” sponsored by the North Carolina Council of Teachers of Mathematics. The Council holds the contest annually, with the winning poster becoming the logo for the NCCTM for a year. This year’s winner will be the design for the 2013-2014 year.
This is Mrs. Simmons’ class’ fifth year of competition. All 71 of her students had a hand in the making of a poster, in addition to smaller posters each student designed. The smaller designs are displayed outside Simmons’ classroom.
The NCCTM winners from 1998-2012 are all available on the Council’s website, at www.ncctm.org/logo_contest.cfm.
To reach Taylor Pardue, call 336-835-1513 ext. 15, or email him at firstname.lastname@example.org.
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CAN’T KVETCH ABOUT GUVETCH
I needed a quick, but tasty vegetable dish for Simchat Torah, so I turned to an old favorite, guvetch. (Technically, it was a yahni, but most Romanians subsume all of the various vegetable stews under guvetch.) Although many versions call for eggplant, we had none in the house and actually didn’t miss it. I threw together some red peppers, carrots, green squash, kohlrabi, tomatoes, and onions, sprinkled in a little salt and dash of olive oil, simmered it atop the stove until the carrots were tender (about 30 minutes), then stuck the pot on the platta (large heating plate) until dinner. Little fuss or muss. The results were sweet and delicious. My mother kept asking me what spices I added, but besides the salt none. The cooking caramelized the sugar in the vegetables, while the juice from the vegetables melds, producing a succulent dish.
Types of earthenware pots typified Near Eastern cooking throughout much of the Biblical and Talmudic periods when these vessels were arranged over horseshoe-shaped clay stands with the kindling underneath lit through the opening. The Turks adopted various clay utensils, slow cooking pieces of meat and vegetables, either over a fire or in a pit oven, becoming a preferred approach of Ottoman cuisine. As new produce arrived in the Near East, such as eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers, Turkish cooks readily included them into these stews. During centuries of occupation of the Balkans, the Turks introduced their slow-cooked vegetable stews as well as many of the ingredients common to them to that region, including the rustic baked djuvec, named after the thick-based, thin straight-sided earthenware vessel, appearing similar to a flower pot, in which it was cooked and frequently served. In Romania and Bulgaria, the dish was pronounced guvetch, also variously spelled ghiveci, ghivetch, guvec, and yuvetch, and quickly became a staple, ranking among the most popular of foods. Similar ragouts are common throughout the former Ottoman Empire and adjacent areas, including the Sephardic khandrajo (“rags” in Ladino), the Greek briami, and the Provencal ratatouille (derived from touiller, from the Latin tudiculare, meaning “to stir” or “crush”). Nonetheless, ratatouille arrived in that region relatively late in history, first recorded in the early twentieth century, while eggplant stews were already mentioned in Turkey in the fourteenth century.
When baked uncovered in the oven, the stew is a guvetch, while a covered baked stew is technically a kapama, from the Turkish kapamak (to cover). A yahni or yachni, similarly named after a Persian earthenware vessel in which it was originally cooked, entails covering the pot and stewing over a fire. A little water is added to uncovered stews, while no water is used when cooked covered. In eastern Turkey, Armenia, and parts of Greece, a synonym for guvetch is known as a turlu, from the Turkish for “mixture,” although some cooks contend that turlu should never contain eggplant, while others insist it should have pieces of mutton. Sephardim in Turkey typically cooked turlu in an oya, the Ladino for olla, a Spanish squat, rounded, wide-mouth earthenware pot.
As with most plebeian dishes, there is no definitive recipe. However, to be authentic, guvetch must contain a selection of vegetables and be slow cooked, the contents varying based upon personal preference, habit, and availability. A guvetch can be made with a few or more than twenty vegetables. Frequently, leftover vegetables and soup went into a guvetch. Most vegetable stews are actually better when made in large quantities and frequently when reheated the next day, the flavors having an opportunity to meld and mellow. Middle Eastern vegetable stews tend to be cooked until all the ingredients are very soft; any sign of crispness is a sign of a bad cook. Stews containing summer vegetables — eggplants, green beans, okra, peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini — are a guvetch yaz (summer stew). Guvetch de riz is cooked with rice. Those predominantly made with winter squash and various root vegetables — carrots, celeriac, potatoes, and turnips — are called guvetch kis. Other commonly added items include cabbage, leeks, lima beans, mushrooms, potatoes, and even sour grapes. Jewish versions tend to be vegetarian. Although an earthenware pot enhances and contributes to the flavor of the stew, it can be cooked in any oven-proof vessel or simmered in a pot. The flavors develop and meld during the long baking period. Seasonings in these stews are generally rather mild, the essential flavor derived from the combination of vegetables and the cooking process, not any specific content. Characteristic of Romanian cookery, there must be garlic and plenty of it, sometimes both minced and whole. Turks generally add a little lemon juice. Romanians brought guvetch to Israel where it is now commonly sold in containers in most supermarkets. But it is so easy to make at home, and tasty, and a great way to use those vegetables in the refrigerator, that I don’t know why more non-Romanians don’t do it.
Romanian Vegetable Stew (Guvetch) P
(6 to 8 servings as a side dish)
2 cups (14 ounces) peeled, seeded, and coarsely chopped plum tomatoes
4 medium onions, sliced
2 to 4 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound green beans, trimmed, or 1 pound okra, trimmed
4 small green or yellow squash or any combination, cut into chunks
2 medium green bell peppers, seeded and sliced
2 medium red bell peppers, seeded and sliced
4 to 8 whole cloves garlic
1 to 2 large carrots, sliced (optional)
1 small head cauliflower, cut into florets (optional)
About 1 teaspoon table salt or 2 teaspoons kosher salt
Ground black pepper to taste
½ cup vegetable stock or water
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
In a large pot, combine all of the ingredients. Cover and simmer over a low heat until the vegetables are tender, about 40 minutes. Or bake at 350 degrees, uncovered, until the vegetables are tender and most of the liquid evaporates, about 1½ hours. Serve warm, at room temperature, or slightly chilled.
Romanian Baked Vegetable Stew (Kapama): Omit the water. Cover the casserole with aluminum foil and bake in a 350-degree oven until tender, about 1½ hours. Or use the water, and sprinkle the bottom layer of tomatoes with ¾ cup long-grain rice.
Greek Vegetable Stew (Yachni de Verduras): Reduce the garlic to 1 to 2 minced cloves and the water to ¼ cup. Add 3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill or 2 teaspoons dried oregano. In Step 5, stir together all the ingredients, cover, and simmer over very low heat until tender, about 40 minutes.
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Our History in Orillia, Ontario
The Orillia & District Big Brothers Association was established in this community in November 1966 to meet the needs of young boys who would benefit from the consistent friendship of a caring male adult. Big Sisters of Orillia & District was established in this community in November 1979 to enhance the lives of young girls who would benefit from caring female role models. Throughout the years, thousands of boys and girls have found lasting friendships with caring men and women.
At the national level, Big Brothers of Canada, Big Sisters of Canada and Big Sisters of Ontario joined together to form Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada. Locally, the remaining few agenices which still operated separately in their communities, also explored the benefits of amalgamation.
Joint discussions regarding a proposed amalgamation of the Orillia & District Big Brothers Association and Big Sisters of Orillia & District were initiated in July 2005. Following that time, all aspects of an amalgamation were thoroughly examined, and a proposal was put forth to the Board of Directors of each Orillia agency. Both Boards unanimously supported amalgamation at the local level. This decision was further endorsed by the memberships of both organizations at a joint membership meeting in March 2006, with a legal amalgamation date of June 1, 2006.
As competition for charity dollars becomes more difficult, we felt we could work together to raise more revenue for our expanding programs and that funders in our community would applaud our efforts at partnership. Most important, however, will be our ability to serve more children with more mentoring programs, in a way that continues to meet the unique needs of both boys and girls. As two organizations providing many of the same activities to the same families, coming together as one organization was the most practical next step.
Our members experience many of the same events and activities that were unique to each organization, as well as new opportunities now available to us as a larger agency. As a joint organization, we provide service to over 150 children over the course of a year, and support approximately 120 volunteers. We are excited about our growing programs, but also want to continue to offer the personal service which means so much to our families and volunteers.
We thank the community for its support over many years and look forward to increased partnerships in the months and years to come.
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Looking at the Zoo through Sociology
On February 6th, 2009, the Sociology Department hosted noted sociologist and Professor Marjorie L. DeVault of Syracuse University who shared her research about family outings in the zoo with the campus community. Her presentation, "Beyond the Home: Family Life in Public," reported on research that explores the social organization of everyday experiences in the zoo. After the presentation, Dr. DeVault who supervised Dr. Brunson's dissertation had a photo op with the faculty of the Sociology Department.
Along with several scholarly articles, Professor DeVault is author of Feeding the Family: The Social Organization of Caring as Gendered Work and Liberating Method: Feminism and Social Research. Additionally, she has edited a book on the changing nature of work in the neo-liberal economy titled, People at Work: Life, Power, and Social Inclusion in the New Economy.
From left to right: Dr. Sharon Barnartt, Department Chair, Dr. Marjorie L. DeVault, Dr. Jeremy L. Brunson, and Dr. John Christiansen.
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Your Pregnancy Week 21
Download our BUMPWATCH Pregnancy Tracker. Everything there is to know week by week. FREE
Visiting your doctor or midwife this week could be a lot of fun. Halfway through most pregnancies your doctor or midwife will order an ultrasound as a routine procedure. The ultrasound checks baby's size, organ functions and overall health. During the ultrasound, the technician can measure specific bones, usually the leg, and tell if your due date is accurate. If the bone measures smaller or larger than normal, they may adjust your due date accordingly. Before your ultrasound, you will need to drink a lot of water so your bladder is full during the procedure. The purpose of a full bladder isn't to torture you! It is so the technician has an easier time viewing all of the parts of your baby.
In addition to your growing uterus, other parts of your body continue to change and grow. You may notice swelling in your lower legs and feet, particularly at the end of the day. If you're on your feet a lot, you may notice less swelling if you're able to get off your feet and rest for a while during the day.
75% of all pregnant women suffer from swollen fingers, ankles and feet. Some women experience pain when various parts of their body swell. If your feet swell, wear pregnancy support stockings to help keep blood from pooling in your feet. You may find swelling gets worse late in the day because of fluid retention.
- Managing your pregnancy anxiety
- Pregnancy food cravings
- Will you get varicose veins?
- Looking good during pregnancy
Baby is 26.7 cm long and weighs 360 grams. The sex of your baby will be distinguishable during this week so you can confidently find out what you are having if you wish. An experienced technician will be able to tell the difference, as long as your baby cooperates. Baby may have his hands between his legs, he may not turn the right way, or just won't move in the right position to get a good view. Even though the reproduction systems in your baby will be in place, it all remains immature until baby hits puberty and adolescence.
The fetal digestive system is functioning in a simple way. By the 11th week of pregnancy, the small intestine begins to contract and relax, which pushes substances through it. The small intestine is capable of passing sugar from inside itself into the baby's body.
By 21 weeks of pregnancy, development of the fetal digestive system enables the fetus to swallow amniotic fluid. After swallowing amniotic fluid, the fetus absorbs much of the water in it and passes unabsorbed matter as far as the large bowel.
It's not too early to start thinking about baby names. Sometimes couple have very different ideas about names for their child. Do you plan to honour a close friend or relative by using their name? Will you use a family name? What problems could arise if you choose a peculiar, difficult-to-say or hard-to-spell name? What do the initials spell out?
- Find maternity clothing
- Buy pre-loved pregnancy and baby goods
- Read our guide to the best pregnancy books
Pregnancy checklists and tools
- Check your pregnancy timeline
- Baby Name Finder
- Essential pregnancy and baby equipment
- Connect with other expectant mums through Kidspot Social
- Create your own pregnancy journal
- View all pregnancy checklists and tools.
Read next week: Your Pregnancy Week 22
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The Marine Fisheries Division of the NH Fish and Game Department is responsible for the regulation and promotion of recreational and commercial marine fishing in the salt waters of the state. State waters include all waters within 3 miles of the coastline; the area between 3 and 200 miles from shore is under the jurisdiction of the Federal government. The Marine Division conducts scientific investigations to monitor marine resources and habitat as well as the harvest of fishery resources within state waters. We also work with other states through the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, as well as the New England Fisheries Management Council, to manage marine species throughout their range.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC.org) was formed by the 15 Atlantic coast states in 1942, in recognition that fish do not adhere to political boundaries. The Commission serves as a deliberative body, coordinating the conservation and management of the states’ shared near-shore fishery resources – marine, shell, and anadromous – for sustainable use. The Commission’s mission is to promote the better utilization of the fisheries of the Atlantic seaboard by the development of a joint program for the promotion and protection of such fisheries, and by the prevention of physical waste of the fisheries from any cause. It currently manages more than 26 species, including lobster, striped bass, bluefish, Atlantic sea herring, spiny dogfish, northern shrimp, and river herring. New Hampshire is represented on the ASMFC by three commissioners, including one representative from Fish and Game’s Marine Fisheries Division.
The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC.org) is one of eight regional fishery councils created in 1976. NEFMC manages the living marine resources in the Federal waters (between 3 and 200 miles offshore) off the New England coastline. The NEMFC includes three New Hampshire members – the head of the Marine Division as well as two local fishermen. It has developed fishery management plans for groundfish (cod, haddock, flounders, etc.), scallops, Atlantic sea herring, monkfish, red crab, skates, Atlantic salmon, and habitat. The plans are approved by the US Secretary of Commerce and implemented by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Regulations in red are new this year.
Purple text indicates an important note.
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On the assassination of his father in 281 BC, the task of holding together the empire was a formidable one. A revolt in Syria broke out almost immediately. Antiochus was soon compelled to make peace with his father's murderer, Ptolemy Keraunos, apparently abandoning Macedonia and Thrace. In Asia Minor he was unable to reduce Bithynia or the Persian dynasties that ruled in Cappadocia.
At the end of 275 BC the question of Coele-Syria, which had been open between the houses of Seleucus and Ptolemy since the partition of 301 BC, led to hostilities (the First Syrian War). It had been continuously in Ptolemaic occupation, but the house of Seleucus maintained its claim.
War did not materially change the outlines of the two kingdoms, though frontier cities like Damascus and the coast districts of Asia Minor might change hands.
His eldest son Seleucus had ruled in the east as viceroy from 275 BC(?) till 268/267 BC; Antiochus put his son to death in the latter year on the charge of rebellion. Circa 262 BC Antiochus tried to break the growing power of Pergamum by force of arms, but suffered defeat near Sardis and died soon afterwards. He was succeeded in 261 BC by his second son Antiochus II Theos.
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Group favors rebuilding berms at marsh
The Associated Press November 25, 2012 9:36PM
DNA from silver carp, one of the two Asian species threatening the Great Lakes, was found in samples drawn from Lake Calumet. | File photo
Updated: November 25, 2012 9:45PM
FORT WAYNE, Ind. — A group that oversees a marsh straddling the Great Lakes and Ohio River basins favors rebuilding a berm to control the spread of Asian carp and other invasive species, one of its leaders says.
Six of the nine options for Eagle Marsh presented by the Army Corps of Engineers this month call for building a wall, a fence, screens or sluice gates to keep species from jumping from one basin to the other.
However, Betsy Yankowiak, director of preserves for the Little River Wetlands Project, which oversees the marsh, said the group favors two options that would tear down and rebuild a berm to federal standards because they use a structure already in place and present the least amount of long-term change to the area.
“They’re already in the landscape, wildlife is already used to a berm being there, so it’s not going to disrupt their traffic patterns,” Yankowiak told the Journal Gazette for a story published Sunday .
In late 2010, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources built a temporary fence across the marsh to prevent the migration of Asian carp, a voracious fish that has invaded the Mississippi River basin. The Ohio River empties into the Mississippi.
The eastern half of Eagle Marsh, on Fort Wayne’s southwest side, drains into the Great Lakes by way of Junk Ditch, the St. Marys River and the Maumee River. The western half of the marsh drains into the Mississippi by way of the Graham-McCulloch Ditch, the Little River, the Wabash River and the Ohio River.
Flooding in Fort Wayne can cause Junk Ditch to flow backward and overland through Eagle Marsh into the Graham-McCulloch Ditch, allowing species to move from one basin to the other. The berm that the Army Corps has proposed rebuilding lines one side of the Graham-McCulloch Ditch.
The nine options in a report released by the corps earlier this month range in estimated cost from $2.4 million to $20.2 million. The two options that call for rebuilding the berm would cost an estimated $5.5 million or $7.7 million. There’s no funding currently to pay for any of the nine options.
Yankowiak said the Asian carp has received the most attention, but many other invasive species also that could jump from one basin to the other.
“Behind the Asian carp are 40 other invasive species storming up the Wabash toward the Great Lakes,” she said. “And there are 160 invasive species in the Great Lakes that could threaten the Mississippi basin.”
The biggest priority for containment, the report said, is not the Asian carp at all, but a virus known as viral hemorrhagic septicemia.
That would appear to rule out many of the options because they would not stop a virus when the waters mix. A wall or the rebuilt berm would create physical barriers to prevent the waters from mixing.
The Army Corps will hold a public meeting on the report at 5 p.m. Dec. 4 at the Allen County Main Public Library. A 60-day public comment period began Nov. 16 and ends Jan 14.
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Deborah DupréExaminer Human Rights National News, 07 Apr 2010
Comment: Reposted from Examiner Human Rights National News with author’s permission.
Last week, Wikileaks’ Australian head, Julian Assange caused a global stir with its claims of classified video coverage of US war crimes and being tailed by operatives to the point of fearing for their lives, but the Aussie is possibly a black-op wizard, one of many in the Land of Oz that Christian groups and others Down Under oppose.
Wayen Madsen (WMR) reports that his intelligence sources in China and Thailand claim that people believe Wikileaks is linked to U.S. CIA cyber-warfare and computer espionage operations, as well as to Mossad’s cyber-warfare activities.
WMR in the article, CIA, Mossad and Soros behind Wikileaks reports that last week, Wikileaks claimed to have decrypted video footage of a U.S. Apache gunship killing civilians in Iraq, covert U.S. State Department agents following its editor from Iceland to Norway in a surveillance operation and having one of its interns detained for questioning. Continue reading
|(NaturalNews) The President’s Cancer Panel (PCP) recently released its yearly report to the President outlining the status of cancer in America. This year’s report focuses primarily on environmental factors that contribute to cancer risk. According to the report, pharmaceutical drugs are a serious environmental pollutant, particularly in the way they continue to contaminate waterways across the country (and the world).
Many reports have recently appeared about pharmaceutical contamination of water supplies, rivers, lakes and other waterways, but spokespersons from the drug and chemical industries have denied that this pollution poses any risk whatsoever to the environment. But this report, issued directly from PCP, provides a stunning indictment of the dangers associated with pharmaceutical pollution.
The executive summary of the PCP Continue reading
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(Editor’s Note: The following interview of Korean War veteran Don J. Lockwood was conducted June 21, 2011, in Bartlesville by Joe L. Todd for the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kan.. Due to length, the interview will be continued in the Dec. 3 edition of the Examiner-Enterprise.)
Todd: Sir, where were you born?
Lockwood: I was born in Osage County, close to Wildhorse on an oil lease.
T: When were you born?
L: May 17, 1928.
T: Who was your father?
L: William J. Lockwood.
T: And your mother?
L: Violet M. Lilley Lockwood.
T: Where did you start to school?
L: I started to school at Rock School in Osage County.
T: Where is that located?
L: About 12 miles north of Sand Springs.
T: How large was Rock School?
L: Not too large. I don’t know the number of students, about five kids in my class.
T: Was it a one-room school?
L: No, two rooms. Miss Helen Anderson, who later became Mrs. Childers, and a gentleman by the name of LaFortune were the two teachers. Miss Anderson taught from the first to the fifth grades and Mr. LaFortune taught the sixth through the eighth. It just went to the eighth grade.
T: Did your father work in the oil fields?
T: What did you do there?
L: He was a roustabout. He later, during the Depression, lost his job and he bought a 40-acre farm over west of where he worked on the oil lease, eight miles north of Sand Springs. He later went to work for OP&W, Oklahoma Power and Water, an electrical company. But he lost that job in the Depression, too. Later, in 1941, he went to work for Midcontinent Oil, DX Oil.
T: When you lived on the oil lease, did you live in a company house?
T: Describe the company house.
L: It was about a three-room house. One of the things, I remember, we had gas lights. It wasn’t much of a house. It wasn’t insulated, just siding, but was pretty nice.
T: When he was a roustabout who did he work for?
L: He worked for a company called Pioneer Oil Company.
T: When did you graduate from high school?
T: In your schooling, who was your favorite teacher?
L: Probably Miss Payton. She was a math teacher in Sand Springs.
T: Did you play sports in school?
T: What did you play?
L: Football, basketball, and I boxed.
T: Did you have a good team?
L: Yes, we had a real fine team. And a pretty good basketball team. The coach of the boxing team was Doyle Cannon, who had been a fighter. I won a few tournaments in the Golden Gloves. In 1949 I won the state championship.
T: Did you know Charles Page in Sand Springs?
L: No. He passed away before I came around.
T: Do you remember when Germany invaded Poland in 1939?
L: Yes. I remember when the folks were talking about that.
T: What did you think about it?
L: I was a little bit young. I remember my mother talking about the war in China, when Japan invaded China, and she was upset about this.
T: Did you think we would become involved in one of those wars, the war in China or the war in Europe?
L: I was a little bit young and I didn’t realize what was going on. I remember when Germany invaded Norway with the ski troops.
T: Where were you December 7, 1941?
L: I was in Sunday School in Sand Springs and didn’t hear about it until on the way home. Someone said the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. I didn’t have any idea where Pearl Harbor was. Later, I was walking home for dinner, which was about a mile, and everybody had their radio on listening to President Roosevelt. As you went from house to house, everyone had their radio on.
T: After the war started, was their work in school for the scrap metal drives or rubber drives?
L: Yes. They got together and we had a group that looked for scrap metal. There was a dump where people put old cars and there were some old oil wells that had equipment like steel cable that was wore out. And there was stuff in ditches. It wasn’t long before it was all collected.
T: When you collected the scrap metal, where did you take it?
L: There was a big coastal gun that set in the Sand Springs square and they piled the junk beside this gun. This naval gun was a huge thing and there was a sign next to it that said something like the gun had gone to war again. And, it was melted down and was gone.
T: How did rationing affect you and your family?
L: Everyone was rationed. And my mom was very strict. In that time, people didn’t cheat and the public was conscious about their (ration) stamps. My dad worked at the DX Refinery and he had an old model A Ford that he parked beside the house and he rode the street car to Tulsa and walked to the refinery during the war. He took his gas stamps to the company (where) they were given to people that didn’t have public transportation and had to drive.
T: In school, did you follow the progress of the war?
L: Yes. We had a teacher, Miss Johnson. She had a son who was an aviator and he was lost. It was real sad when she would talk about it.
T: What do you remember most about World War II, from being in Sand Springs?
L: Things were kind of shut down. People were well aware of the war and did their best to see the war progress.
T: What did you do on V-J Day?
L: I was in Sulphur at Boys State. There was nothing unruly. We were at the School for the Deaf and that was an education in itself.
T: After you graduated from high school what did you do?
L: In the summer, I went to California and worked with my uncle. He was a lineman for the electrical company.
T: Where in California?
L: Around Bakersfield. I came back and went to school in the fall at Central State College.
T: What did you study?
L: I studied industrial arts.
T: When did you get your degree?
L: In May of 1949. I have a teaching degree.
T: You said you joined the National Guard.
T: Why did you join the National Guard?
L: Coach Hamilton and Coach Barnett were both in the National Guard. It was started after World War II. They had both been in the Navy training draftees at Corpus Christi.
T: What year did you join?
L: In 1947, the year they re-organized. We had a mess sergeant named Arthur Peters. If you go to the 45th Museum, you will see a photo of him lying in Hitler’s bed.
T: Did you join in Sand Springs?
L: I joined in Edmond.
T: What unit did you join?
L: Regimental Headquarters of the 179th Infantry.
T: Where did you go for your summer camps?
L: We went to Fort Sill.
T: Tell me about summer camp at Fort Sill.
L: It was always in August. We drilled and, at that time, I did a little boxing. I drilled and trained in boxing. We had some boxers in our company who were real good and we won the championship the two years I was in.
T: When was the National Guard mobilized for Korea?
L: We left the first of August in 1949. We packed our equipment and moved to Camp Polk — re-opened the post that had been closed since World War II. They left me at the Armory to answer the phone and they were supposed to come after me. At 6 o’clock in the evening, someone came by and asked what I was doing — they just about left me. We drove all night and got there the next morning.
T: What did you do at Camp Polk?
L: Got ready to go to Korea.
T: How long did your training last at Fort Polk?
L: About six months — from the first of August until the last of January. We went to New Orleans and got aboard a ship and went through the Panama Canal. We got through the canal and got off at Panama City and had a little rest, maybe four hours, before we started for Japan. We had a case of spinal meningitis and were pulled into San Diego under quarantine. Under a yellow flag, they took him off. We left that night. The next morning, we were way out at sea.
T: What was the name of the ship?
L: The USS Marine Lynx. It had been a practice ship and was converted to a troop ship.
T: Had you seen the ocean before?
T: Where were your quarters on the ship?
L: Downstairs. But, after being there for a week or two, they decided they had a place for me up on the quarter deck.
T: How did you pass the time on the trip?
L: We had classes, read the manual and discussed it. If we had time off, we walked around or played dominoes. We were on that thing 29 days and were ready to get off.
T: What were you told to do if the ship was sinking?
L: We had drills. Put on our live vests, went to where they told us to be and had roll call. We had a particular life boat.
T: How many troops were on board?
L: About 1,800, a whole regiment.
T: Were there enough life boats for everyone?
L: I guess, I hadn’t thought about that.
T: Did you go to Hawaii?
T: Where did the ship land?
L: Hokkaido, Japan.
T: What did you do there?
L: We got there at night. I got up the next morning and there was a Japanese looking up at us. And I thought we had just been at war with them and wasn’t too sure. We got off ship and got on a train. It was on old engine made in England. We went up in the island.
T: Do you recall the date you landed?
L: It was late February 1951.
T: When did Korea start?
L: Korea started back in 1950.
T: What did you do in Hokkaido?
L: We trained and got ready to go to Korea — we trained night and day. And it seemed liked it rained every morning. There was snow and they used dog sleds up there.
T: What did they tell you to expect in Korea?
L: I don’t remember anything special. I was in a counter fire platoon and they training us for that.
T: What is a counter fire platoon?
L: They were having trouble in World War II when they had naval guns hide in the mountains and couldn’t find them. The counter fire set up two teams on the left and right. When the weapon fired on the right, the left team took a reading on the sound and projected a line. Where they (the lines) crossed is where the weapon was.
T: How many are in the counter fire team?
L: Six members in each team. We had 18 members in each platoon.
T: How do you take a reading on the sound?
L: You sat there, looked at a cathode tube and listen to this sound.
T: What artillery pieces did they fire on the gun?
L: It depended on the distance. We just reported back to the artillery.
T: You said you did not go to Korea?
L: That’s right.
L: I had done my year.
T: Tell me about the trip home.
L: They called me up and told my they were sending me home. I went from Hokkaido to Tokyo. We went to Camp Drake — and went by the royal Palace. I was in Camp Drake about a week, then came home to San Francisco.
T: What did you think when you saw the Golden Gate Bridge.
L: It was nice.
T: Were you discharged then.
L: I went down to Fort Sill and discharged.
T: What did you do after you were discharged?
L: I went to work on construction as a helper on a line crew.
T: What were you doing?
L: Building high-voltage electrical high lines.
T: You said you got back in the guard?
T: Was Korea over?
T: Were you in the same unit?
L: No, I was in the 279th Infantry in Tulsa.
T: Did you keep your rank?
T: What was your rank?
L: Sergeant First Class.
T: What did you do when you rejoined?
L: I was the S-2 Sergeant. Intelligence.
T: What does the S-2 Sergeant do?
L: He plans, or goes on recons, and does secret work with clearances. We get information on enemy units.
T: Was your unit called out for disasters?
L: Yes. When the river was flooded, and on tornadoes in Tulsa.
T: Any bad ones hit Tulsa?
L: Yes. One hit from the south, which is unusual. We were there several days.
T: How long were you in the National Guard?
L: Thirty years and 6 months.
T: When did you retire?
L: In the 1980’s.
T: Did you think you would go to Vietnam?
L: Yes, we had a program at Fort Lewis, Wash., and thought we were going, but didn’t.
T: Why didn’t you go to Vietnam?
L: I don’t know. About that time, President Johnson said we were getting out.
T: What about the Cuban Missile Crisis?
L: We were on that. We trained, and tried to figure out where we were going.
T: Did you take part when the Vietnamese and Cuban Boat people were here?
L: Yes, we were at Camp Chaffee. We didn’t do anything directly with the people — that was the federal people.
T: Who did you work for while you were in the National Guard?
L: I worked for Public Service. When the construction people finished the power plants, we checked them out.
T: When did you retire from Public Service?
L: I don’t remember.
T: When did you come to Bartlesville?
L: I have been here about nine years.
T: Why did you come here?
L: My wife passed away and I married a lady from up here.
T: Would you join the National Guard again?
L: Yes. I really enjoyed my time with the guard.
T: I’d like to do a word association. I’ll give you some words and you give me your reaction.
T: The first one is Adolf Hitler.
L: Well, he was a person that got overbearing. He tried to capture the world and didn’t quite make it.
T: V-J Day.
L: That was a big deal. The war was over.
T: Oklahoma National Guard.
L: That is a great unit.
L: Cold, cold.
T: Franklin Roosevelt.
L: A great president.
T: Harry Truman.
L: Another great president.
T: Dwight Eisenhower.
L: He was a great president and a great general.
T: Douglas MacArthur.
L: He was a great general.
T: How do you want to be remembered?
L: As an Oklahoma boy trying to make his way.
T: Tell me about Arthur Peters.
L: He was the mess sergeant and he would get up at 3 or 4 in the morning. Arthur loved to play poker. They had a room upstairs in the barracks where they had quilts over the windows and he played poker all night. The next morning, his hair wasn’t combed — but he was a good sergeant. He stood at the door, and you better have your hands washed or you went to the back of the line. At Fort Sill, when I first got in, I had been on a job and got off early and I went to the mess hall. I asked Peters what was wrong. He said he couldn’t get dinner ready and the general was going to be there. I told him I would help and peeled a few potatoes. From then on, I didn’t have any trouble. If I came late, he always fixed something. He was a good mess sergeant. And, he loved to play poker.
T: Anything else you want to talk about?
T: Sir, this is an excellent interview. I was to thank you for your service and thank you for the interview.
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Whether you are hoping for a big harvest, a beautiful landscape, or a little stress relief, knowing the when and how of gardening will help you be a success. Use these timely garden tips to eliminate some of the guesswork. For more gardening tips, check out Melinda's gardening books.
Add a bit of floral beauty to your outdoor gatherings. Plant a few tabletop container gardens to use as centerpieces on your table. Even a single annual in a small pot covered with fabric, paper or foil can make a big splash. Give them as party favors or use them in your own landscape.
Recycle your newspaper into the garden. Spread several layers of newspapers between your rows of plants. Cover with shredded leaves, herbicide-free grass clippings, or other organic mulch. The layer of newspaper provides an added barrier to the weeds. And, as it breaks down over the summer, it adds organic matter to the soil below.
Gardening Tips for Flowers
The garden centers are filled with beautiful flowers waiting for a home in your garden. Memorial Day is a traditional planting day for gardeners across the country. Unfortunately, the calendar is not always our best guideline, so let the air and soil temperatures be your planting guide.
Northern gardeners may want to wait until late May or early June when the soil and air are warm to plant tender annuals such as impatiens and coleus. I like to use ReeMay, Harvest Guard or other floating row covers to protect tender plants from cool temperatures. These materials allow air, light and water through, but capture the heat around the plants. Use them to get an earlier start or speed up plant growth early in the season.
Southern gardeners should consider replacing their spring annuals with more heat tolerant African daisies, ageratum, cockscomb, pentas, annual vinca, petunia, portulaca and zinnia. Add a few begonias, coleus and impatiens to shady locations.
Once your bulbs finish blooming, leave the leaves in place. Interplant a few annuals to hide the declining leaves. I like to mix my bulbs with perennials. As the bulb foliage declines, the perennials fill in and cover the leaves. It looks good and is less work for me. Remove foliage once it yellows or dries.Top
Gardening Tips for Edibles
The planting season is gaining momentum. Plant seeds of Brussels sprouts, snap beans, late cabbage and sweet corn directly in the garden. Remember to mark and label the rows, so it will be easier to distinguish the vegetables from the weeds.
Northern gardeners can start harvesting lettuce when the outer leaves are about 6 inches long. Wait until late May or early June to plant warm season crops such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash and melons. These plants need warm soil and air temperatures to grow and flourish. Cover plantings with ReeMay, Harvest Guard or other season extending fabrics. The coverings provide frost protection and added warmth to reduce the time from planting to harvest.
Southern gardeners can harvest broccoli when the flower buds are tight and green. Once the buds open and the yellow flowers appear, the flavor starts to decline. Pick your spring planting of peas often to keep the plants producing. Plant bean, cucumber, okra and southern pea seeds directly in the garden. Continue planting transplants of tomatoes, peppers, melons and sweet potato.
Do not use Home Orchard sprays or other pesticides containing insecticides on flowering fruit trees. The insecticides can prevent fruit formation and also kill the bees needed for pollination and fruit production. Make sure you need an insecticide before spraying. Then read and follow all label direction carefully and wait until petal fall before applying insecticides.
Click here for a weekly recipe to help you when planning, planting & harvesting your garden.
Trees, Shrubs and RosesPrune spring flowering shrubs such as lilac and forsythia after they finish blooming to control their size and still have blooms next spring. Remove a few of the older stems to ground level. Reduce the height by one third or less if needed. Make cuts where a branch adjoins another branch or above a healthy bud.
Lawns and Groundcovers
Mowing, watering and fertilization are the three factors in keeping your lawn healthy. Grow cool season grasses like bluegrass, fescue and ryegrass 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 inches tall. Warm season grasses like bermudagrass, carpetgrass, centipedegrass and zoysia should be grown at 1 to 2 inches tall, while St. Augustine should be a bit higher, 2 to 3 inches, for best results. Mow high and often enough, so you remove only 1/3 of the total length of the leaf blade. These short clippings will quickly break down, adding moisture, nutrients and organic matter to the soil.
Northern gardeners can start the holiday fertilization program in late May. A light fertilization of a low nitrogen slow release fertilizer, such as Milorganite, will provide the nutrients needed, while reducing the risk of burn. The majority of fertilization should occur in fall. Mark your calendar now, Labor Day and Halloween, are the next times to fertilize the lawn.Click for more on Lawns
Tips for Indoor Plants
Wait - don't move that ficus outdoors just yet. Decide if you want to put your houseplants through the stress of adjusting from indoors to outdoors and back inside for winter. The change in the environment can be hard on many tropical plants. Plus, the free-loading pests that move inside for winter can create a lot of work for you.
Harden off any houseplants moving outdoors for the summer. Stop fertilizing and allow the plants to go a bit drier between watering. Start with the plants in a shady location and gradually increase the amount of sunlight the plants receive each day. Cover or move tender plants indoors during cold snaps. Once outdoors, find a good location out of wind and the hot afternoon sun. I keep many of my tropical houseplants in a partially shaded spot for the summer. This makes the transition between indoors and outdoors a bit easier. My hibiscus, mandeveilla and other patio plants go out in a sunny location where I can enjoy their blooming beauty. The transition back indoors is a bit more difficult, but the plants survive the winter to spend another summer outdoors.
ASK MELINDA - Get immediate answers to your gardening questions! Check out my searchable database of more than 30 years of questions and answers, podcasts and videos.
LANDSCAPE MAKEOVER IDEAS - Check out my landscape makeover photo gallery to get ideas on making over your yard and then post photos of your accomplishments!
MELINDA'S GARDEN MOMENT VIDEOS - In need of more gardening tips that can visually walk you through the process? Watch online streaming video of my nationally-syndicated gardening videos.
PODCASTS - Listen to my gardening podcasts
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International Gem Society
Dedicated to bringing quality information and educational services to everyone interested in gemstones.
Amethyst The world's finest amethyst is found in Four Peaks, Arizona, just east of Phoenix. There are many other sources in the US and Mexico.
Ammolite Fossil ammonites, whose iridescence rivals opal, are found in Alberta, Canada.
Apatite Facetable apatite comes from Mexico.
Benitoite California’s state gem has the color of fine sapphire and more dispersion than diamond. It is found in San Benito County and is unfortunately rare.
Conch Pearls Conch pearls are an exotic gem found off the Florida Keys.
Coral Coral is Hawaii’s state gem. Gold, pink, and black coral is found in the coastal waters of this state.
Danburite Danburite is one of Mexico's gems.
Diamonds Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, Arkansas is a place where you can mine your own diamonds. As with other deposits, most are small and included, but some fine gems have been found here.
Canada has become a major source of diamonds. The Northwest Territories is producing some of the finest-quality colorless and near colorless diamonds on the planet.
Emerald Fine quality emeralds hail from Hiddenite, North Carolina.
Garnets Andradite, chrome pyrope and other garnets can be found in Arizona and Mexico. Magnificent spessartites are found in Southern California. Fine quality rhodolite garnets come from North Carloina.
Hematite Alaska is one of the primary sources of hematite.
Ivory Fossilized walrus tusk, and mastodon are found in Alaska and the Canadian Arctic.
Jade Jade Cove, just above Monterey Bay, all the way up to Dawson in the Yukon, have substantial quantities of nephrite jade. Plus, fine jadeite is occasionally found. Black jade from Wyoming is also prized by many.
Labradorite Labradorite comes from, (no surprise here,) Labrador, Newfoundland, in Eastern Canada.
Morganite Southern California produces a small amount of beautiful, pink morganite.
Obsidian Obsidian is found in several states. New Mexico’s is famous for it's “Apache tears” and California has several sources. Oregon is one of the few sources for bright red, green and blue obsidian. Rainbow Obsidian in Mexico is one of the more spectacular varieties.
Opal Opal is found in Idaho and Oregon, but the greatest prizes come from Nevada’s Virgin Valley. The material there is some of the most beautiful in the world, although little of it can be cut.
Pearls Natural pearls are found in the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Other rivers producing natural pearls extend into West Texas.
Abalone pearls and mabés hail from California, although their supply is now severely limited.
The U.S. cultured pearl industry is centered in Tennessee, where it began. Supplies are good, with qualities and designer shapes emphasized.
Peridot Peridot from San Carlos, Arizona is world famous. Supplies are plentiful on the world market.
Quartz Quartz is plentiful in North America. Besides the crystalline versions, there are many sources of agates, fire agates, and petrified wood.
Red Beryl One of the world's rarest and most desired gems is red beryl. It is found in Utah.
Sapphire Montana is famous for its sapphires. While many are “steely,” those from Yogo Gulch are world class. The stones are small and in limited quantities, but do not require treatments.
Sunstone The Dust Devil mine and other sources in Oregon produce world class sunstones. Schiller is common to these stones and some are in the very rich, red, green, blue and multicolored varieties.
Topaz Guerrero, Mexico is the best known source of topaz in North America, but California, Colorado, Utah, Maine, and New Hampshire have also produced topaz.
Tourmaline Maine and California are the main sources of tourmalines in North America. The Old Himalaya mine in San Diego County has been worked for more than a century.
Turquoise Arizona and New Mexico contain the some of the largest commercial deposits of turquoise in the world. Sleeping Beauty turquoise is considered some of the finest in the world.
Return to the Reference Library.
Return to the Reference Library.
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Across the nation, business owners, manufacturers and large public sector institutions face a challenging question: Are extreme weather events, such as this summer's record-setting heat waves, the new normal?
Meteorologists and scientists can't say for sure. What is certain is that volatile storms and extreme heat can send energy costs skyrocketing, putting a strain on one of the largest budget items for manufacturers, office building owners, government facilities, colleges and universities.
"If there's a silver lining to the extreme heat we've seen of late it's that it often prompts the private and public sector to look anew at the benefits of energy efficiency as a key part of their energy strategy," said Bruce Stewart, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Constellation, an energy supplier and energy-efficiency service provider. "Customers recognize they can't control the weather but can manage energy supply and usage. They're often surprised to learn how much they can save with relatively simple efficiency upgrades, such as new lighting."
Efficient lighting is among the lowest-cost efficiency upgrades and typically pays for itself in fewer than four years. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, approximately 25 to 30 percent of a building's energy bill is for lighting. Lighting upgrades are an important part of a comprehensive energy efficiency upgrade Baltimore's Convention Center recently undertook.
In Maryland, Stevenson University took advantage of this bundling strategy, combining the school's energy supply contract with efficiency upgrades.
"There's considerable value in managing both the price of power and the amount of power consumed," said Stewart. "A comprehensive energy strategy that includes an energy efficiency program can lead to long-term savings with little or no upfront spending, and in this economy, that's a critical factor for customers.
"An added benefit is that energy efficiency upgrades can help commercial and public sector users achieve sustainability goals and, in some cases, address critical state and federal compliance objectives," said Stewart, whose recent blog post describes an innovative program adopted by the Chicago Bears football team.
A third energy savings approach for public sector customers is energy performance contracting, which enables public entities to fund energy conservation measures based on the amount of utility savings they provide. Under these programs, a qualified energy services company audits a customer's energy usage, identifies potential savings and guarantees those savings through a long-term agreement.
One Constellation customer, the Trenton, N.J. Housing Authority, expects to save approximately $31 million over 15 years by installing energy efficient lighting, windows, HVAC systems and other conservation measures. The savings are guaranteed and tenant housing is upgraded, all at no upfront capital cost to state or federal taxpayers.
"Energy efficiency makes sense at any time, but it's particularly important during challenging economic times when budgets are tight and upfront capital is limited," said Stewart. "There are numerous ways to reduce usage and lock in long-term savings without significant upfront costs."
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The Telecommunications Equipment Manufacturer (aka TEM, sometimes "Network Equipment Provider", or NEP) industry has undergone a rapid upheaval in the way they develop and build their products since 2000. Previously an industry where products were built in an entirely proprietary fashion, from the physical design of the equipment (including boards and chassis), to the operating systems, the middleware, and the overlying applications, manufacturers have changed their product building blocks to include standardized boards, middleware interfaces, and operating systems.
There is currently a large ecosystem of telecommunications equipment "building block" providers supplying the industry with commercial-off-the-shelf components. Additionally, there are numerous industry standards bodies driving the definition of methodologies of how these COTS components work together.
Most of the notable TEMs/NEPs have been active in their participation with standards bodies, specifications, and promotional organizations relating to carrier hardware, carrier-grade linux, and middleware. Notably absent from participation in most of these organizations has been Cisco, one of the strong leaders in the telecom and networking product industry.
For many years, products made by TEMs and NEPs were completely proprietary, from the board to the application. This was highly expensive for these companies; however, they were able to absorb the engineering costs by virtue of the fact that their products, despite their relatively low "parts" costs, were extremely expensive. Additionally, TEMs/NEPs generally sold not a single product to a carrier, but a grouping of products for an end-to-end solution, and were thus able to gain additional revenue from services not simply consisting of service contracts (wherein they would agree to fix / replace a product or part within a certain amount of time), but also from installation and deployment.
Capital Expenditures by carriers peaked in 2000; the burst of the so-called "internet bubble", and later, the economic fallout from the September 11, 2001 terrorism attacks, led to significant cutbacks in carrier spending. Increasing competition in the carrier market, particularly in the mobile phone space, although leading to increasing numbers of subscribers, led to significant decreases in subscription pricing for end users, and in the end, a downward trend in ARPU (average revenue per user). At the same time, 3G was beginning to gain significant traction, and new equipment deployments were still needed, particularly to support the emerging, data-heavy applications demanded by mobile customers.
One thing was clear: Carriers were reducing capital expenditures, but the growing mobile base demanded an increase in infrastructure. The obvious conclusion was that carriers needed to be able to purchase equipment at lower costs.
Throughout the period of rapid technology evolution in the late 1990's and early 2000's, a number of initiatives and concepts were already in motion.
The collectively-developed vision, in the end, was to develop an ecosystem enabling the telecommunications equipment manufacturer industry to bring products to market by harnessing the power of commercial-off-the-shelf, or COTS, components. The term "standards-based building blocks" was also used to express this method of product development. The strategy proposed that TEMs and NEPs, in lieu of having mostly or completely proprietary systems from the board level to the application level, build their products using standard boards, standards-based operating systems, and standards-based middleware. This would enable the TEMs and NEPs to focus their respective company's engineering expertise in the area that defined the companies from one another, as well as where the companies held most of their Intellectual property rights - their applications. The expected outcome of this situation was that TEMs and NEPs would be able to sell infrastructure equipment at reduced prices.
There are a number of vendors supplying COTS components to the TEM/NEP industry.
This market encompasses the boards and chassis which make up the physical piece of hardware sold by a TEM or NEP. For the carrier-grade market, the current specification of board is called Advanced TCA, or ATCA. Boards are placed into a standard chassis, and communications between the boards are conducted over the chassis backplane. Chassis can then be connected together, and applications can run over multiple boards, over multiple chassis. The board specification was implemented by PICMG.
Vendors in the board and chassis market include:
Carrier-Grade Linux (CGL) is most likely the predominant operating system standard being deployed in next-generation carrier hardware. Some companies listed here, most notably Wind River, have non-linux embedded operating systems as well that have been, and continue to be, deployed in carrier environments on TEM/NEP hardware.
Other companies that have solutions that could address the carrier market include:
High availability middleware and clustering solutions are provided by a number of companies, as well as open-source projects. These solutions are mostly based upon SA Forum specifications.
I'm contemptible a air trnrapost incident has gotten to be a mess compared to what it used to be. Did this all come about after a 9-1-1 tragedies? Maybe all a intelligent would be air line stewardesses motionless to get an additional pursuit as well as left it to a ones who weren't means to get anything else. Sounds bad all right, though we know a approach they demeanour by all your things as well as chuck things out prior to a moody contingency get upon their nerves an horrible lot!!! My aged mom went upon a craft as well as they looked by her things (she was about 90 during a time as well as they stole a little manicure scissors from her as well as confiscated it. Those things have been costly as well as she had a robe of counting each penny so this was meant to do. Possibly this sort of unfolding has something to do with a bad attitudes of a passengers.
The applications space for carrier solutions is dominated by the TEM/NEP companies; their Intellectual property rights and applications that run on the hardware is what drives carriers to purchase their solutions. However, there are companies developing open source solutions that replace the TEM/NEP proprietary applications, such as Vyatta and Digium.
There are a multitude of standards bodies and initiatives working to resolve issues facing equipment manufacturers as well as to enhance the ecosystem's capabilities to serve equipment manufacturers.
PICMG, or PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group, is a consortium of companies which develops open specifications for telecommunications and industrial computing applications. It is comprised mainly of hardware vendors, including board and chassis manufacturers, as well as industry leaders such as IBM, Intel, and Hewlett Packard. This organization developed the specification for the AdvancedTCA board, which is the predominant standard for boards in next-generation carrier hardware.
Carrier-grade linux (CGL) is a term used to define a specific variant of Linux containing enhancements that make Linux a deployable operating system for use in telecommunications equipment, and hence, in carrier environments. CGL is also a set of set of specifications developed by the Carrier Grade Linux working group of the Linux Foundation. The specifications define standards such as availability and service response time of the operating system, among others, and OS vendors may register their version of Linux as being CGL-Compliant, provided their OS meets the list of standards.
Scope Alliance is an industry alliance composed of telecommunications equipment, operating system, middleware, and board manufacturers, as well as some industry heavyweights including Intel and IBM. Founded by a group of telecommunications equipment manufacturers, SCOPE does not publish specifications. Rather, they focus on developing profiles to enable the use of product building blocks (including boards, operating systems, and middleware) in conjunction with the specifications and standards defined by other ecosystem standards bodies, including those written by PICMG, SA Forum, and the Carrier-Grade Linux working group. They also identify gaps in existing specifications, and work with the respective standards bodies to resolve those gaps.
The Service Availability Forum is a consortium consisting of board, operating system, middleware, and telecommunications equipment manufacturers. The group's objective is to develop and publish high availability and management software interface specifications, used as standards throughout the telecommunications equipment ecosystem, so that product manufacturers would be able to pick and choose operating systems, middleware, and hardware and have assurance that the products will interoperate, and that any service software they develop would operate on any combination of the platforms they choose.
SA Forum currently has two specifications:
This new ecosystem is mostly a win-win for everyone. Carriers have obtained the added benefit of purchasing equipment at lower costs; Operating System vendors have grown in a market that has gone from nearly a 0% market share to one representing a significant foothold by Linux, and will continue to grow as new products go through testing and validation, and eventually out to the deployed market. Some OS vendors, such as Wind River, have likely seen a shift in the mix of the revenues from the various operating systems they sell; companies relatively newer to the overall OS market, such as MontaVista, as well as established Linux companies such as Red Hat and Novell, have significantly larger opportunities to grow their overall revenues by entering the carrier-grade linux market. Middleware vendors, like the operating system vendors, have also developed a significant opportunity, and this is shown by the large number of vendors who have sprung up to address this market.
For board and chassis vendors, the ecosystem has been mostly positive, but has changed their revenue mix in many ways. Previously, many of the vendors in this market developed custom board solutions for the TEMs/NEPs; this was a significant source of revenue for them. As the market has changed to adopt standard solutions, revenues from custom engineering have gone down, but overall costs related to paying the engineers have gone down, and board shipments have risen as carriers have expanded their infrastructure. The overall headcount reductions combined with the reductions in engineering revenues have likely stayed in line with each other, so although their overall total revenues may have dropped, their profit margins are likely in line with what they had been previously.
Like the board and chassis vendors, the TEMs have made gains and losses here. The move from proprietary products to standards-based building block products has forced pricing down on their solutions; however, the costs related to developing the hardware parts of the solutions have declined as well. The bread and butter of these companies is their applications, and this is the way that they differentiate amongst themselves in terms of their solutions.
The nature of an industry transitioning from top-to-bottom proprietary products to products built from COTS components creates risks for some companies, and opportunities for other companies.
Obviously, the Commoditization of PCs is a model that the TEM industry does not wish to follow in the footsteps of. At the dawn of the PC era, most personal computers were mostly proprietary in terms of their hardware, and were purchased by consumers at significant expense. As the PC market moved to standard form factors, pricing dropped accordingly. More importantly, although the majority of consumers purchase their PCs completely built, end-users did gain the ability to assemble their own computers. However, users still need to purchase the operating system and application software to run on their PCs.
Today, carriers could conceivably purchase boards, chassis, and other components directly from the vendors who currently supply these parts directly to the TEMs/NEPs. They can also pick and choose from a list of operating system vendors and middleware vendors. The overlying applications, at this point, are proprietary.
However, movements are slowly being made to develop open-source projects and products for the communications industry. Vyatta is a company utilizing the open-source business model to develop firewall, VPN, and routing applications for the SOHO and Enterprise business markets, available to run on standard, easily available hardware. Digium targets the VoIP/ telephony market with support and services for their open-source project, Asterisk. Although most applications in the carrier environment are significantly more complicated to develop, it is not inconceivable that open-source projects and companies could develop as competition to the legacy TEM/NEP products. Carriers could possibly welcome the opportunity to use open-source products in their environments, partially due to reduced costs, and also because obtaining the capabilities to customize their applications to enhance the services they provide to their end-users could prove to be lucrative, as well as a way to differentiate their services from other providers.
This type of scenario would, in the short term, not likely damage business of the TEMs and NEPs; however, in the long term, it could potentially be devastating to their businesses, particularly if value added resellers (VAR) or other companies adopt a business model of providing integration and support for carrier solutions that include COTS components and open-source carrier applications. This situation would not be as damaging to the value-chain supplying the TEMs/NEPs with COTS components, and in fact those vendors would probably realize added gains in business.
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If your 9 to 5 requires you to be a desk jockey for most of the day, chances are you either need to hit the gym to work off that Subway sandwich you had for lunch – or worse yet, you don’t work it off at all (Jared would not be proud). Enter the Sit to Walkstation. This desk/treadmill combo is the answer to every desk potato’s prayers! It allows you to sit, stand or even walk on a treadmill as you work so that your body can look as stacked as that last set of blueprints you handed in to your boss.
Author’s Note: I am standing as I write this article and will be attempting to work the whole day today on my feet. 10:34AM: My legs are about to give out, but I am going to try my best to power through.
The Sit to Walkstation is an integrated treadmill and desk with room to fit an office chair and all of the files, folders, accessories that you would at a normal desk. In order to switch from sitting mode to standing or walking, all you have to do is push a button. And while we can’t say that the Sit to Walkstation is truly eco-friendly, it is definitely an example of design for health and it’s got steel components (steel is often a recycled material and a very recyclable material).
So why stand or walk while working? Well, the answer may seem obvious – to burn calories and stay fit! – but if you aren’t convinced, read this article from the New York Times about how much of a difference having a standing desk can make. If you don’t do it for the weight-control benefits, do it for the positive effect it can have if you suffer from back pains associated with sitting in a chair for 8 hours.
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Physicians, laymen, and clinical investigators should find this a fascinating book. In nontechnical language it tells the story of an important phenomenon in the history of medical discovery. Self-experimentation has been more widespread than is generally appreciated.
The author, a physician, medical investigator, and eminent professional journalist, has long been fascinated with self-experimentation. He has traveled far and interviewed many medical investigators, especially those who have used themselves as experimental subjects. Hence, in addition to the well-woven historical threads, there are direct accounts from present-day participants. The book's subject is highly relevant to today's rapidly increasing ethical dilemmas stemming from
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Thursday, October 7, 2010
By ARIEL ZANGLA-GIRARD
From helping invest money in the local workforce to funding energy improvements and scientific research, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided funding to area colleges to help spur the economy in a number of ways.
In Columbia and Greene counties, money was funneled through the local community college to help individuals find new work or get training for a new career.
Mary-Alane Wiltse, director of the Columbia Greene Workforce Investment Office, said money came to the agency through the Columbia-Greene Community College in Greenport. She said the office received $154,000 for youths, helping approximately 65 students get temporary jobs at non-profit organizations and internships with private businesses. The office also received $216,000 to assist dislocated workers and $61,800 for adults to find work or get new training, Wiltse said. She said the office received an additional $90,000 when the initial funding ran out.
Many of the individuals who signed up for retraining enrolled in nursing, truck driving and advanced manufacturing jobs at local community colleges and at BOCES, Wiltse said. She said there is a lot of demand for nursing and trucking, and “we’re trying to get people to not think of manufacturing as a dying industry.”
Wiltse cited the semiconductor business as an example and said it requires math, science and mechanical skills. Jobs often require an associate’s degree, and some colleges have programs specifically to train people for the work, she added.
In neighboring Ulster County, two grants went to Ulster County Community College in Stone Ridge for job training and summer youth employment, according to Christopher Marx, director of continuing and professional education at the college. He said a $70,000 grant provided scholarships to individuals who wanted to be trained and certified as alcohol and substance abuse counselors. The college was able to train 25 individuals through that grant, Marx said. He said the other grant, for $258,040, was used to run a summer youth employment program in conjunction with the Ulster County Office of Employment and Training.
“They both were very successful,” Marx said of the stimulus-funded programs. He said all the grant outcomes were achieved.
Across the river, Marist College spokesman Tim Massie said $67,777 the college received in federal stimulus aid went to bolstering an existing work-study program for students. He said through that program, the college offers students part-time jobs to help them pay for their higher education. The program is part of the students’ financial aid packages, Massie said.
Marist, in Poughkeepsie, has about 800 students participating in work-study, which is paid for through the college and federal funding, Massie said. He said the stimulus money allowed the college to have an additional 60 students participate in the program. Massie said each student receives about $1,200 to $1,300 annually and does work that ranges from assisting in the cafeteria to working in an office on campus.
Massie added that funding is based on the financial need of the students.
Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, also received money for work-study grants, according Mark Primoff, director of communication. He said the college received $56,759 in matching funding from the federal stimulus program to create the equivalent of six full-time jobs. The students, though, worked part-time, Primoff said.
“We have a lot of students who have campus jobs through the work study program,” Primoff said.
Bard also received a $76,500 grant to upgrade the Stevenson Gym’s electricity and heating control system and a $101,000 grant for solar-thermal installations at the Kenne and Trembley dorms, according to Laurie Husted, the college’s environmental coordinator. She said the college also received some funding to help pay for two electric vans for the Buildings and Grounds Department and a Prius vehicle for security personnel.
Primoff said the college also received an approximately $1.59 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency through the stimulus fund to upgrade its water plant and install a water supply tower.
“Bard was in desperate need of upgrading its water supply,” Primoff said.
Primoff said the college also received some funding to allow an associate professor of biology, Felicia Keesing, to participate in research on tick-borne diseases.
Keesing studied babesiosis, a tick-borne disease emerging in the Northeast.She said she and her collaborators are researching the disease in Dutchess County, where Bard is located.
Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, also received stimulus funding for scientific research, said Emily Darrow, the college’s associate director of media relations. She said the college received three grants totaling $803,233 for projects led by Vassar science professors.
SUNY New Paltz, in Ulster County, was awarded approximately $19,000 for an energy conservation study and $291,220 to install a 47.8-kilowatt roof-mounted photovoltaic system connected to the grid operated by the local electric utility.
College spokeswoman Suzanne Grady said the system is expected to be mounted on the roof of the Elting Gym, on the west side of the campus, and that the college got the go-ahead for the project in July. She said the system is expected to generate approximately 71,956 kilowatt hours annually, which should result in an annual savings of approximately $8,014.
Information on additional stimulus funding SUNY New Paltz may have received was not available.
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A Short Essay on Burmese Cuisine [Moved from Boston Board]
Since there is now a new restaurant (again) in Boston, I thought I might write a short essay on the subject - to provide an introduction to a completely different Asian cuisine in an easy to understand manner.
I have read a few critiques of the various Burmese restaurants around the country, and noticed that, invariably, Burmese food is compared to Thai or Chinese or Indian or some other nation's cuisine. And I hope that this essay will help place Burmese food into its own context - and its enjoyment assured! My almost hidden intention is to allow the harshest critics of this food a basic understanding of the subject - since here in the USA, we tend to change other peoples cuisines (if not their cultures) to meet our expectations rather than to critique it in its original context. As a Burmese-American foodie, then, here is my contribution to enjoyment of Burmese food.
The main thing to keep in mind though is that each dish may have a "classic" Burmese (or Shan, or Kachin, or Kayah, or Mon, or other indigenous) rendition and a plethora of individualized interpretations – just as pizza, tomato pie, cheese pie, etc., have their renditions throughout the USA. To further this point, the classic Burmese "Indian" dish of "sour cooked pork" ("wet-thar achin chet") uses pork and very sour mangoes. The home cook then adjusts to the meat at hand (pork or beef or chicken) and the sour ingredients at hand (ranging from the traditional sour mango to canned indian lime or mango pickles). The Burmese restaurant in Washington DC uses beef.
Burmese food is not some variation of Chinese and Indian. Burmese cuisine is based on a large number and variety of dishes which obtain their various flavors from the thousand cultures that is Burma (the original name of the country was "pyi htaung zu bama naingan daw" - or "one thousand countries united into a royal Burma"). As in appreciating good wine, the aroma and flavor of Burmese cooking is nuanced and may be appreciated by an understanding of its components. In general, there may be one or more aromas (and I will here use the wine analogy) of “forest earth”, “sea”, “sour olives”, “musk”, etc. The tastes may consist of bitter, sour, spicy, salty, sweet, unctuous, bland, peppery, and so on.
Although come critics would insist that there is little in the way of complexity, I would suggest that complexity will be found in ample abundance in each dish – one has only to be aware of it and appreciate it for what it is. The complexity in Burmese food is found more by focusing on each mouthful rather than expecting it to immediately overwhelm the tastebuds. This is in keeping with the culture which encourages contemplation and meditation. To demonstrate this point at its best, I would say that the taste of tea leaf salad (lephet thoke) reveals its complexity only when each mouthful is carefully chewed for a longer time than normal. No fast food gulping here! In fact, Burmese food would probably fit well into a culture of slow cooking AND “slow eating”. (As an aside try this Burmese technique the next time you have some fabulous chocolate: let the chocolate take its time to melt in your mouth rather than rushing through it by chewing. You will have experienced an aspect of “slow eating”). Some foods are best masticated well, while others are best left to reveal their flavors in their own time.
As an example of the wide variety of dishes (but sadly usually unavailable outside of Burmese home cooking), "royal" pork with shimmering black bean paste ("wet thar pone yay gyi") or "night market" noodles with duck meat and duck fat ("kyar zahn jet"), or "southern" pork with sour bamboo shoots ("wet thar hmyit chin"), or "national" chicken soup noodles ("jet thaar khauk swear") and the ever present fish noodle soup ("moe hinghar"). In short, flavors of Burmese cuisine are subdued and nuanced with the flavors that are salty, sour, bitter, spicy, or even sweet.
This cuisine, like the people, is very individualized. Most dishes are made so that they exhibit a "basic flavor" which can be customized for individual preferences. When served in the traditional style, there may be anywhere from two to a dozen or even more condiments on the table - combinations which allow each person to adjust the final flavor to their own taste! The normal accompaniments would be "ngapi" (a shrimp paste based sauce - not something for the western palate, although several respectable food magazines are trying to introduce it in the western world), "balachaung" (a crispy combination of shrimp, garlic, onions, etc) and several cut fresh raw vegetables including lettuce, cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, mini-eggplants, etc. Various pickled vegetables may be present. Every Burmese restaurant should have these condiments at the table for a nominal price (or even free of charge)!
When eating at home or in a restaurant, the traditional way is to eat en-familie or “family style” – each dish is passed around following the bowl of rice – and each person serves themselves to whatever dishes they want. Then follows a round of everyone helping themselves to the appropriate accompaniments/condiments. The rice is invariably mixed with one or more of the items on the plate and eaten with the fingers. Each mouthful can then be adjusted to be different – or the same – depending on the mood and wishes of the individual. In a restaurant, a dessert spoon sized spoon and fork may be provided – the food is eaten with the spoon with the fork used to push the food onto the spoon.
Burmese tea or other drinks such as lemonade or beer are often served with a meal. Dessert in the form of sweets, salads (the tea leaf salad or ginger salad is considered dessert), or beetle leaf ends the meal.
For more celebratory occasions, desserts such as mo(u)nt lone yay baw (“round cakes floating on water”); mo(u)nt see jaw (oil fried chewy pancake); khauk mo(u)nt (folded cake), or others would be served to close (or rather prolong) the meal and allow enjoyment of friends and company.
I hope that this short essay will help you select the restaurant AND the meal the next time you see a Burmese restaurant. Please let me know if you want to get more information on any dish.
Kyammar bar zay (May you be healthy)
ps – The recently opened “Yoma” restaurant in Boston (Allston) has a wonderful array of classically cooked dishes which are authentic representations of their respective indigenous origins (often Shan – one of the States of Burma). Not many other chefs would take the risk of introducing these dishes in their authentic, unaltered form, and I encourage you to patronize this remarkable effort. As with every new endeavor, this little gem has its birthing pains (apparently in some slow service at peak times). But the quality of the food is wonderful and I would encourage you to nurture it to its full potential. Boston will then have another ethnic restaurant that it can be most proud of!
i've been considering where to eat next year and it's hard to choose! Burma (6 weeks), Syria (4 weeks), or Mauritius (2 weeks). so thanks for this. it's an enjoyable read as i have absolutely no idea about Burmese food.
have always wanted to visit your ancestral homeland (mostly to eat) but my eating & drinking adventure/travel list is a bit long lol... and then whenever Burma is in the news i think maybe i should go there asap. the Burma dream is still very much alive and well :)
Unless you have close/influential friends in Burma, I would not make the trip for food. Best to find someone who is a good cook near you - or take my suggestion and travel to Boston where the folks at Yoma will show you what authentic means without having to worry about eating near starvin gpeople and under the gaze of military personnel carrying semi-automatics.
cornFusion, great post! I have only had Burmese in San Francisco, but I am a fan and wish we had a Burmese resto in Vancouver. We now have to go to Larkin Express Deli on every trip to SF, and I plan to reread your essay before our next visit in November. If we are ever in Boston, will be sure to look up Yoma!
Very interesting to get to know a little bit about Burmese cuisine.
I haven't ever seen a Burmese restaurant, but somehow I have run into a lot of Indians and Pakistanis whose forefathers had settled in Burma for a few generations, so they describe themselves as Burmese (but are now living outside of South Asia, like in the US or Arabian Gulf). At a couple of these Indo-Burmese friends' homes I have tried "kaukswe" before (is this that same "national" noodle you mention), and a few other dishes, the names of which escape me.
I'll keep your article in mind if I ever get a chance to eat at a Burmese restaurant.
There are several "national" dishes depending on the region you visit in Burma. However, since most people would only know the "Burmese" region (as opposed to Shan, Mon, Karen, Talaung, Arakanese, etc.) I would say that the "Burmese" dishes dominate on the international scene (if you ever find yourself offered Shan "sour" rice - do try it. I would venture to call it a "national" dish also. But in the Burmese repertory, Khauk-swear (or literally translated "knock-pull" (whiich my mother and aunt did to my hair when describing the dish) is one that europeans are most fond of while mohinghar is the breakfast favorite of most Burmese. Khauk-swear is a coconut-broth-and-chicken-soup noodle while mohinghar is a fish-soup-noodle.
It's great to read your intro to Burmese food. It's made me rather hungry reading the dishes you mention. I would agree with you that the Burmese restaurants should have the ngapi kyaw and ngapi dip with an array of vegetables on the table!
I would love to find a Burmese restaurant with a simple concise menu (I rather they did only a few dishes really well than many that are mediocre) to offer someone new to the cuisine an authentic experience. Personally I love eating with my hand like we used to in Burma, especially when it comes to salads/thote. It think there's something wonderful about using your hands – the additional sense of touch adds to the eating experience.
Unlike the US, we are quite limited to the number of Burmese restaurants – there is only 1 in UK and 1 in Sydney where I am currently. I would love to visit Yoma – I've heard from Thawdar that her husband makes the Shan tofu himself.
If there isn't a local Burmese restaurant near you and you are up for cooking it yourself, I have put up several easy recipes on my website. I hope more people will discover this diverse yet unique cuisine.
I tried Burmese food for the first time this past weekend. Between two of us, we had a green tea leaf salad, fish cake salad, pork tongue and ear salad, and pork with pickled mango curry with rice. I should have read this post before I went, I was really surprised at how small the portion of curry was. So for future reference, you should order more dishes than you think you'd need (meaning more than one app and one 'entree' per person).
No pickled condiments at the table, but the flavors were vivid and pronounced. I was surprised at the OP's description of the food as subtle. I'm always afraid of restaurants (particularly Thai) diluting the real flavors of the dish for Western palates, but I was glad this place didn't.
My recommendation was based on how Burmese people would eat these dishes. For example, Tea leaf salad is something that is offered to visitors as a welcome snack (just as in the USA, one would offer visitors chips and dip). More of the same is generally how one would order the "night market noodles" ("see jet khauk swear") or "fish noodles" ("mohingha"). Each of these dishes is meant to be adjusted when successive bowls are ordered. For example, my first bowlful of mohingha would be with split pea crackers ("pear jhan jaw"), and my second bowl would be with deep fried gourd ("boo thee jaw") - perhaps with more lime and hot peppers in the second bowl!
In any case, I am very happy that you enjoyed what you ordered - after all, your enjoyment is what matters most! By the way, where did you have this wonderful meal? Not many places serve pork tongue and ear salad! The pork and pickled mango .... yummmm! How much were you charged for the small servings? Hopefully not much more than a big mac!
haha it's interesting to see that the green tea salad is the equivalent of chips and dip. The restaurant also had a bread and bean puree? appetizer that looked good.
I had this all at Burmese Cafe in Woodside, Queens (New York). If you look at the New York region Outer Boroughs board, you'll see it. Luckily it was all pretty cheap; actually the pork curry was cheaper than the salads, which surprised me (but I didn't feel ripped off). I did notice that they had a "Burmese Chinese" section of the menu. Photos here! www.flickr.com/photos/janethepain
Thanks very much for your reply. The bread is "nanpya" (cooked in an oven that is like an indian tandoor) and the beans - "pear bjok". So the dish is called "nanpya pear bjok" (simple, huh?). It is usually eaten for breakfast with lots of tea or coffee. The beans are actually garbanzo beans cooked until they are soft, and lots of sesame oil poured over and some salt added. I like to mash mine with a fork and use it in lieu of peanut butter.
Thank you Sister Y! I hope that by now you have had a meal at a Burmese restaurant.
The other day, I was at Yoma again, and witnessed some people ordering - obviously they had no idea what Burmese food was like, and the poor owner was not quite adept at recommending his own cooking. SO ... here is my suggestion for "first timers" trying out Burmese.
First - decide if you want a quick snack or a full meal. This is because many Burmese restaurants mix "itinerant peddlar" dishes with "night market" dishes and add in a few homestyle/restaurant style meals - and if you want an authentic meal, you might want to take my suggestions below to heart.
1. For a "quick snack" meal for one, order one of the appetizers (Boo thee jaw, Tohu jaw, or samoosar) followed optionally by a "single serving meal" such as mohingha, tohu thoke, khauk swear or See jet khauk swear. Thats it. have green tea with your meal.
2. For a quick snack meal for two, mix and match two of the appetizers and share, but order individual dishes of the "single serving meal" without sharing.
3. For a late afternoon meeting of friends, order several plates of appetizers and tea, or, several orders of lephet thoke (green tea salad) or gin thoke (gingger salad) and chew well and enjoy the company. Feel free to leave a good tip for usimg the place as a coffee house, but please make way for others when they are waiting.
4. For a group dinner, share several appetizers (order one appetizer or more per person at the table). Order several curry dishes such as Pork Curry, KongPoungJee, Beef Curry, Chicken Curry, Shrimp Curry, Cooked vegetables, Fish preparations (as recommended by your server). Stay away from the "one dish meal" dishes. Order LOTS of rice and have dessert afterwards.
YoMa Burmese Restaurant
5 N Beacon St, Allston, MA 02134
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Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: ACLU, arrest, capital punishment, cash, civil liberties, court, criminals, crowding, deficit, felony, incarceration, jail, judgement, law, money, over population, politics, prison, rights, unjust, unjustice | 2 Comments »
For some time now I had the knowledge of a mysterious part of Maine’s varied history, this time from Lewiston. I lived almost my entire life in the tri-state region of Massachusetts so upon reading this story I never acted on actually going for an actual visit. I cannot even tell you now that I have been there, I haven’t. What I can tell is the unusual stigma attached to a village in Maine by the name of Lower Dallas.
In the mid 1800′s the prosperous city of Lewiston in Maine had an innovative and at the same time bastardy plan at the same time. The roll call for welfare was quite large during this period. The city needed a way to turn the tide of people depending on the system. Someone, I do not know who, came up with the idea with shipping them off to what is known as Lower Dallas just east of Rangely in the northwest corner of the state. These people were hard up while living in Lewiston and after the move to Lower Dallas things only got worse. Stories of people running off into the fields to eat dandelions raw were the norm. Of all of these welfare afflicted Lewstonians the most prominent family was the Bubiers thus the towns name of “Boobytown” came into being. The Boobytowners were always known by the people of Rangely as honest and fair trading partners and always had the utmost respect for them. Sad that such a quality of people was shipped away in favor of saving a few dollars (in today’s money mush more).
Today if you can find the way to the location of Lower Dallas you will find a virtual ghost town, complete with newspapers from the period around WW 2 on the floor of some of the structures. It is in these ways that Maine is trully unique as if someone leaves the forest locks it up until later discovery. Last heard, the is only one descendant of the Bubiers still living near Boobytown, Virgil Bubier. If anyone is looking to go there I hear he is one of the best people out there with the history of the place. It’s an understatement to say that a general feeling of paranormal activity also prevails here according to reports, which can only be imagined with the history of these people stolen from their home. I hope in the future more attention can be brought to this incident in Lewiston’s history and the whole state of Maine in general. I can only hope this article keeps alive the drive for people to find out more about it.
I want to give special credit to Art Sordillo and Yankee Magazine for this other, somewhat related article, definitely a good read.
Filed under: Ghost Towns, Haunted Sites, Historical New England, Maine, Urban Exploring | Tagged: abandoned, Auburn, bizarre, Boobytown, Bubier, dandelions, ghost town, haunted, history, Lewiston, Lower Dallas, Maine, mysteries, Rangely, rights, starvation, unexplained, unfair, Urban Exploring, weird, welfare | Leave a Comment »
How Do You Smoke Pot And Stay Out Of Jail? Seattle lawyer Jeff Steinborn tells us how through the miracle of illustration! Please visit his website http://www.potbust.com/
Filed under: Marijuana | Tagged: cannabis, common sense, cops, court, drug war, drugs, ganja, hide, jail, Jeff Steinborn, laws, lawyer, Marijuana, paranoid, police, pot, rights, safe, war on drugs | Leave a Comment »
What follows is a write up that was done by a user by the name of Alfa on http://www.drugs-forum.co.uk. The original thread can be found here, http://www.drugs-forum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=415. I found it to be extremely informative and containing information that a scary amount of people dont know. I only hope to spread knowledge and crack down on the amount of police abusing the law and our civil liberties. Know what to do if the “worst case” happens. Remember question abuse! Read!
Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer; I’m one of you. What I write here is the best information that I’ve gleaned so far, and I’m prepared to use it myself. These are my best suggestions, and do not constitute legal advice. Check it out with your lawyer or a good second-year law student or better, and then mass copy it for all of your friends! Let us know what you find out, what your experiences are, and your ideas, so we can keep this up-to-date and make it even better.
What it is: Cops love to play word games, and they’re good at it. They’re also good at taking control and being the boss, or coming on like they’re your parents or something. They know that you have rights, but they’re betting that you don’t know what they are. Watch your ass! Many people get busted by falling into their traps, or by not realizing that the cop is trying to get you to give up your rights … so don’t let them get away with it! One lawyer said that 99% of the people in jail talked themselves into it.
Some of their cute little tricks: “May we search you? No. Why, got something to hide?”, or “Look, can I go? Not yet. Why, am I under arrest? Would you like to be?” Rather than keeping this sort of bullshit going, or trying to outwit them, it’s just better not to play that kind of game. Keep in mind that if you lie to a cop and they can prove it later, that’s one more thing you can be charged with … so don’t tell them anything one way or another! (One lawyer did say “Admit nothing, deny everything, and demand a lawyer”, so maybe you can lie to a cop since you’re not under oath, but it seems more prudent just to keep quiet.) Sometimes they’ll threaten “Look, we can go get a warrant anytime, so you’d better let us in”, but what that really means is “We tried everything, but couldn’t get one. Please let us in so we can bust you.” Well … just say “No.” Tell them to go get that warrant. Sometimes they’ll say “A friend of yours ratted you out and told us everything. You know the guy, (insert name here).” This is a fishhook … don’t bite! And don’t believe them! They’re probably trying to get you to “retaliate” and to spill the beans about your friend … who will be next on their pickup list because of what you just said.
Best case scenario: They detain you for a non-drug reason, such as a broken car light, a traffic violation, stereo too loud, etc. It’s best to play along as “the good citizen” and to be courteous. If you totally get into their game and promise to take care of it, at most they’ll write you a ticket, admonish you, and then let you go. Take the lumps! Express remorse! It works. If they go too far (like trying to search you or your property), then dig in your heels and exercise your rights. Read on.
Your rights: You have the right to refuse to let them into your home if they don’t have a warrant (4th Amendment). You can refuse to consent to a search (4th Amendment), but you can’t physically stop them. You can remain silent (5th Amendment), although it is often advisable to give them your name, address, and age. You have the right to have your attorney with you while they question you (5th Amendment, I think). You have the right not to sign anything they give you, except for a ticket. Do not make a statement!
Their “rights”: They can briefly do a pat-down search on the outside of your clothing and check-out suspicious lumps that feel hard and bulky … they want to make sure that you don’t have a concealed weapon (but you should say “I don’t consent to being searched” anyway to cover yourself, and you shouldn’t carry anything incriminating in that same pocket!). They can and will ask you everything under the sun (freedom of speech you know). If you blow it by: answering their questions, letting them into your house, or consenting to a search, then they gotcha cold … so don’t do it! They don’t have to read you your rights if you’re not under arrest, so you’d better know what they are. They can briefly detain you for various purposes, but they can’t hold you unless you’re under arrest (If you ask “Am I free to go?”, and they say no, ask “Why not?” or “What is the law that allows you to hold me?” or “I’m not under arrest, yet you’ve said I can’t leave … please clarify my legal status at this time.”). If you try to physically resist them or to run away from them, then they have the right to use force against you … even if you’re clean and have done nothing wrong! So … keep calm and be cool, they’ve got the deck stacked in their favor and they know it.
Reasonable Suspicion: Allows them to look briefly, but not to search.
Probable Cause: Having some kind of evidence against you, such as: a certain smell, an anonymous phone call about you, or seeing a joint lying on your living room table. Refusal to allow a search is not probable cause … if it were, then they could search you no matter what answer you give, which is totally against the US Constitution (4th Amendment).
At home: If they knock on your door to “ask you a few questions,” then either talk through the closed door or quickly step outside and lock your door behind you. This serves two purposes: One, do not give them an opportunity to look inside … if they see something, that’s probable cause. Two, if they want to conduct an illegal search, then they’ll have to break down your door to do so. Then you can use the broken pieces as evidence against them, whereas if there are no broken pieces, then they will claim that you let them in voluntarily. If they drag on their “question” thing too long, keep asking “Am I free to go?” until they give you a definite answer. If they have a warrant, then tell them they can’t start their search until your lawyer arrives to witness it, and then get that lawyer over real quick! During the search, have everyone sit together and instruct them to say absolutely nothing. If the cops ask you to do something, then you may politely tell them “Unless you are ordering me to do that at this time, I refuse. Are you ordering me to do that?” If they say yes, then you can ask “What law says that you can order me to do that?” If they can’t answer, then don’t do it. If they try to force you at that point, do not resist, and state “I’m not doing this voluntarily, but under protest and duress.” Remember your witnesses.
On the road: If you get pulled over, it may be best to grab your license and registration, get out of the car, lock the door behind you, and walk to the area between the two cars, and get ready to play the Good Citizen Game.
EDIT: This tip can lead to dangerous situations and is not advised for the USA. Getting out of the car may lead to shooting incidents.
Be friendly, but not “too” friendly, be at ease, and talk to the person behind the badge. That way you’re totally covered, they won’t have an easy excuse to look through your windows, and they’ll think that you’re an average citizen ready to be admonished for some minor traffic violation. If they do decide to search your car, then they will do so, since apparently they don’t need a search warrant if they have probable cause … so fer Chrisake don’t keep a joint sitting in your ashtray! Of course, you should tell them “I do not consent to a search”, just so you’re covered. When they ask why you’re refusing their search, and if you feel you gotta say something, then say “I’ve been advised by an attorney never to consent to a search.” It’s magic.
In public: If they want to search you, then say “I do not consent to being searched.” Always be clear about this, try to involve witnesses, and never physically resist. If you ever try to resist, then they will use force… they always do. So, be relaxed, move slowly, and keep your hands out where they can see them.
Tight situation: They conduct a search without your consent, and find something. Almost anything you say at that point will hurt you. The best thing you can do, and it is your Constitutional right, is to say “I want a lawyer” and then keep your trap shut ’til you get one! Don’t answer any of their questions (except name, address, and age) if your lawyer isn’t with you.
Worst case scenario: It’s 3:30 am, ten cops break down your door and they’re yelling and pointing their guns at you … freeze! Do not move a muscle, and keep absolutely quiet for at least a count of 3! They’ll frisk you and start to tear your place apart. When they know you’re unarmed, then ask “Do you have a warrant? I do not consent to a search.” If they do have one, then read it and make damn sure that they can legally do what they’re doing. If the warrant doesn’t specify what they’re doing right now, then say so and insist that they stop (but don’t try to physically stop them!). If they do not have a warrant, then tell them that they must leave. If they don’t, then call the State Police and FBI , and report an incident of trespass by the local police and ask them to come and remove them. Get your lawyer there as quickly as possible, if you can, and remember that the more witnesses you have, the better … there’s always your neighbors! If the cops arrest you, then they must give you a receipt for everything they confiscate (wallet, clothing, packages, etc.), so I would think that they must also give you one for whatever they take during the search.
If they arrest you: Ask “Why am I under arrest?”. They have to tell you. After they book you, demand your two phone calls, at your expense: first to an attorney, relative or employer, and second to a bailbondsman. If you can’t afford a lawyer, then demand that they provide you with one at no expense. Do not let your lawyer enter a plea of “not guilty” before the arraignment (the first trip to court where you will be formally charged, which by law has to occur within 48 hours of your arrest, barring holidays and Sundays), because that would automatically lock you into criminal proceedings, which is where your dear lawyer will try to make his/her money. You should try like hell to get your case dismissed before that arraignment! Your lawyer knows what to do, and if s/he won’t do it, then get one who will. If you can’t get it dismissed, then enter your “not guilty” plea at the arraignment and insist on a jury trial, which will be expensive and difficult for the DA. Do not let your lawyer waive the speedy trial time limits! (Which s/he might try to do so they can charge you more money for “preparation,” etc.) You don’t want the prosecution to have all the time in the world to build their case against you! If you are adamant about all that, and if their case isn’t strong, then they might actually drop it! What the hell, it’s worth a shot! If your case does go to trial, then try like hell to get that jury informed about their inherent right to judge the law itself, and to nullify it by letting you go, if they think it’s not fair or is totally ridiculous (like forcing you to go to prison for a year for having 1.5 ounces of pot, or some equally obnoxious law).
Drills: Knowing what to say and do is great, but it’s even better if you get together with your friends and practice on each other, preferably in at least two frames of mind. That way, if you’re one on one with a cop, you’ll be ready to handle the situation.
How you can help fight: Register to vote (preferably in a sympathetic group such as the Libertarian Party, which supports the legalization of drugs), for then you become eligible to serve on a jury and to use your right of nullification to free a brother or sister. Join NORML and get wise! Copy this pamphlet, give it to your friends, and help spread this, our only means of defense. And, most of all, be a good and conscientious person … nothing is more devastating to the “War on Druggie” types than to show the world that these assholes are persecuting some of the best people. Make ‘em think.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: abuse, Amendment, america, arrest, attorney, concealed, confiscate, Constitution, Constitutional, cops, drugs, FBI, freedom, illegal, knowledge, lawyer, Libertarian, liberties, miranda rights, NORML, police, Probable Cause, protest, question abuse, Reasonable Suspicion, rights, search, seizure, State Police, trespass, u.s.a., United States, warrant | Leave a Comment »
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1. Iraqis are safer because of Bush's War. In fact, conditions of insecurity have helped created both an internal and external refugee problem:
'At least 4.2 million Iraqis were displaced. These included 2.2 million who were displaced within Iraq and some 2 million refugees, mostly in Syria (around 1.4 million) and Jordan (around half a million). In the last months of the year both these neighbouring states, struggling to meet the health, education and other needs of the Iraqi refugees already present, introduced visa requirements that impeded the entry of Iraqis seeking refuge. Within Iraq, most governorates barred entry to Iraqis fleeing sectarian violence elsewhere.'
2. Large numbers of Iraqis in exile abroad have returned. In fact, no great number have returned, and more Iraqis may still be leaving to Syria than returning.
3. Iraqis are materially better off because of Bush's war. In fact, A million Iraqis are "food insecure" and another 6 million need UN food rations to survive. Oxfam estimated in summer, 2007, that 28% of Iraqi children are malnourished.
4. The Bush administration scored a major victory with its Status of Forces Agreement. In fact, The Iraqis forced on Bush an agreement that the US would withdraw combat troops from Iraqi cities by July, 2009,and would completely withdraw from the Country by the end of 2011. The Bush administration had wanted 58 long-term bases, and the authority to arrest Iraqis at will and to launch military operations unilaterally.
5. Minorities in Iraq are safer since Bush's invasion. In fact, there have in 2008 been significant attacks on and displacement of Iraqi Christians from Mosul. In early January of 2008, guerrillas bombed churches in Mosul, wounding a number of persons. More recently, some 13,000 Christians have had to flee Mosul because of violence.
6. The sole explanation for the fall in the monthly death rate for Iraqi civilians was the troop excalation or surge of 30,000 extra US troops in 2007. In fact, troop levels had been that high before without major effect. The US military did good counter-insurgency in 2007. The major reason for the fall in the death toll, however, was that the Shiites won the war for Baghdad, ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of Sunnis from the capital, and turning it into a city with a Shiite majority of 75 to 80 percent. (When Bush invaded, Baghdad was about 50/50 Sunni and Shiite). The high death tolls in 2006 and 2007 were a by-product of this massive ethnic cleansing campaign. Now, a Shiite militiaman in Baghdad would have to drive for a while to find a Sunni Arab to kill.
7. John McCain alleged that if the US left Iraq, it would be promptly taken over by al-Qaeda. In fact, there are few followers of Usamah Bin Laden in Iraq. The fundamentalist extremists, if that is what McCain meant, are not supported by most Sunni Arabs. They are supported by no Shiites (60% of Iraq) or Kurds (20% of Iraq), and are hated by Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Jordan, who would never allow such a takeover.
8. The Iraq War made the world safer from terrorism. In fact, Iraq has become a major training ground for extremists and is implicated in the major bombings in Madrid, London, and Glasgow.
9. Bush went to war in Iraq because he was given bad intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction capabilities. In fact, the State Department's Intelligence & Research (I & R) division cast doubt on the alarmist WMD stories that Bush/Cheney put about. The CIA refused to sign off on the inclusion of the Niger uranium lie in the State of the Union address, which made Bush source it to the British MI6 instead. The Downing Street Memo revealed that Bush fixed the intelligence around the policy. Bush sought to get up a provocation such as a false flag attack on UN planes so as to blame it on Iraq. And UN weapons inspectors in Feb.-Mar. of 2003 examined 100 of 600 suspected weapons sites and found nothing; Bush's response was to pull them out and go to war.
10. Douglas Feith and other Neoconservatives didn't really want a war with Iraq (!). Yeah, that was why they demanded war on Iraq with their 1996 white paper for Bibi Netanyahu and again in their 1998 Project for a New American Century letter to Clinton, where they explicitly called for military action. The Neoconservatives are notorious liars and by the time they get through with rewriting history, they will be a combination of Gandhi and Mother Teresa and the Iraq War will be Bill Clinton's fault. The only thing is, I think people are wise to them by now. Being a liar can actually get you somewhere. Being a notorious liar is a disadvantage if what you want to is get people to listen to you and act on your advice. I say, Never Again.
See also my article in The Nation, "Iraq: The Necessary Withdrawal," and this piece in the Toronto Star.
Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His most recent book Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) has just been published. He has appeared widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. His weblog on the contemporary Middle East is Informed Comment.
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The Smithsonian Institution is getting an exhibit ready that will highlight some of the many patents and products that Steve Jobs is responsible for. The exhibition will be displayed on the National Mall in conjunction with the US Patent and Trademark Office. The exhibit is set to open on May 11 and is called “The Patents and Trademarks of Steve Jobs: Art and Technology that Changed the World.”
According to Wayne Clough, Smithsonian Secretary, the exhibit will feature materials from the patent office and archival material held in Smithsonian collections. It will include an Apple Macintosh computer, mouse, and keyboard along with other Apple hardware. The other hardware will include an Apple NeXT monitor, keyboard and mouse, and iPod, and copies of documents.
The Steve Jobs exhibit will be the first in a series of exhibits the patent office plans to hold. We have heard that this patent exhibit would be held in the past, but we didn’t know when the exhibit would kick off. The May 11 launch is only a few days away, do you plan to go see this exhibit?
[via Washington Post]
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December 17, 2012.
No more hide and grovel. Repeal the second amendment.
by Mike Martin
Killings in schools by guns are so common that we practice it once a month. They call it "lock down" which means hide and grovel. Years ago it was "duck and cover" but now it is "hide and grovel." In April of this year The New Yorker published Battleground America: One Nation, Under the Gun, which led off with a description of the high school shooting on February 27, 2012, near Cleveland and noted: "I hate to say it, but we trained for exactly this type of thing, a school emergency of this type," Dan McClelland, the county sheriff, said.
The Children's Defense Fund has a publication Protect Children Not Guns in which they ask "Where is our anti-war movement here at home?" and "By any standards of human and moral decency, children in America are under assault ...." Then they talk about gun control.
I thought about gun control, read about gun control, and everyone says the second amendment is preeminent. People write about how to get around it. People write that because of the second amendment and how Heller interpreted it, we can only do this or that. I don't want to talk within the confines of that any more: repeal the second amendment. We don't need it any more, and despite Heller it was originally written only to ensure that there would be state militia at a time when there were no national standing armies. We don't need it despite the paranoid fantasies of the right wing nuts who patronize movies about fighting back against rioters or the federal government.
In an online article titled Sacrificing thousands of kids on the alter of racist rightwing fantasies David Atkins writes "It sounds too awful to contemplate, but reality is a cruel mistress. It's painfully obvious what motivates the rabidly pro-gun base: a deep-seated desire to unwind the social contract and cleanse undesirables who are allegedly stealing their tax dollars."
These are not the people who are rabid supporters of public education but as Atkins says "Unfortunately, both political parties are also motivated to hold onto the voters who carry these nightmarish visions in their heads." Indeed, other authors such as Paul Krugman note "David Atkins takes it further, saying the awful truth: the pro-gun fanatics are basically the kind of people who think that Obama is a Kenyan socialist atheistic Islamist, and the urban hordes are coming for their property any day now. People, in other words, who already vote 100 percent Republican -- and lose elections."
Atkins concludes "What this functionally means is that we as a nation are openly allowing thousands of our children to die every year so that certain segments of the population can role-play racist murder fantasies." And other writers suggest from the last election that Obama won without those people
These are the people who claim "you can have my guns when you pry them from my cold dead hands." After Sandy Hook I'm fine with that. Have it your way. But I don't really want to argue gun control with monsters. I spent 7 years as a U.S. Marine, including a year in the Vietnam War, and I'm at the point where I believe the NRA is more a threat than the NLF ever was.
I don't expect Obama, who I often refer to as Wuss In Chief, to stand up against the NRA. He'll work out some compromise at best. At this point I'm fed up with "hide and grovel" and I've got my own fantasies of going for the jugular: repeal the second amendment. But then I'm not a teacher
or administrator. My wife is an elementary school principal and it could have been her gunned down trying to save her children and her teachers.
Like Chris Clarke, whose ex-wife is a teacher, wrote on Pharyngula, "there’s not a single one of those grade school teachers I've known, my ex- emphatically included, who I could imagine doing anything but jumping between the gunman and his or her students." It's happened before and it's going to happen again. And again (rinse and repeat). And afterward, each time, as Chris Clarke pointed out: "I guarantee you this: public school grade school teachers will go right back to being the despised class."
Repeal the second amendment: no more hide and grovel. People are already saying that politically it is impossible to do anything. But as I recall, a Constitutional Amendment doesn't have to go through Congress. Repeal the second amendment.
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Today we are not going to talk about the noisiness and the heat dissipation of the Deskstar 180GXP, because this is far not the most important thing in this case. It is much more interesting to talk about the benchmarks results.
There used to be times, when testing hard disk drives was a relatively simple task: get the software, run the tests, write down the results and compare them. In most cases low-level benchmarks, such as linear speed and average access time, provided enough information for performance analysis. However, time passed and extensive development of the “physical” parameters didn’t ensure sufficient performance improvement any more. So the manufacturers started searching for other alternative ways to increase the performance of their products. Namely, they taught the HDDs to spend less time on user’s tasks processing, provided them with more intelligence. I will not go into details describing all the tricks the manufacturers resorted to in this respect. I will only say that they did succeed here and now the HDDs performance depends on the linear speed and seek time least of all. You don’t believe me?
Remember when the noise management system aka AAM appeared. Enabling “quiet” mode for IBM DTLA resulted into dramatic worsening of the average access time, however, the results in some more or less real applications didn’t indicate any performance drops. And Maxtor drives a little bit later performed even faster in Quiet mode than they did in the Fast mode! And the linear speed… Check our latest reviews in the Storage section and you will see that linear speed increase usually doesn’t push the performance any higher even in those tests where it seems the most logical: during file copy. The victory belongs to the product, which managed to prove the smartest during a certain task processing. And if we have hard disk drives with the same firmware version, higher data density and hence higher physical speed sometimes provide no advantage at all. This is how we got a few extra tough nuts to crack. But this is just the beginning!
Our today’s test session showed very clearly that HDDs, which seem similar at first glance, are completely different in reality. It would be incorrect to base your opinion of the HDD model on the performance and benchmarks results obtained for another model of the same family, even if the only difference between them is the storage capacity. And when we compare the HDDs of the same storage capacity but coming from different manufacturers, it would be incorrect to draw conclusions about the entire product family from this particular manufacturer: some of them distinguish between the top models and the low-end ones by worsening some of their parameters. The best example here will be lower buffer segmentation in the slower HDD models from WD, Maxtor and IBM, and Seagate U7, which differs from Barracuda V by microcodes, but works just like any other 5400rpm drive. We could recall much more examples, such as reducing the lazy writing efficiency by Maxtor drives or slowing down the track seek. Besides that, the performance of a hard disk drive may change drastically with the introduction of the new firmware version and improvement of the firmware algorithms.
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[Numpy-discussion] BOF notes: Fernando's proposal: NumPy ndarray with named axes
Thu Jul 8 13:27:19 CDT 2010
On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 1:35 PM, Rob Speer <firstname.lastname@example.org> wrote:
>> Forgive me if this is has already been addressed, but my question is
>> what happens when we have more than one "label" (not as in a labeled
>> axis but an observation label -- but not a tick because they're not
>> unique!) per say row axis and heterogenous dtypes. This is really the
>> problem that I would like to see addressed and from the BoF comments
>> I'm not sure this use case is going to be covered. I'm also not sure
>> I expressed myself clearly enough or understood what's already
>> available. For me, this is the single most common use case and most
>> of what we are talking about now is just convenient slicing but
>> ignoring some basic and prominent concerns. Please correct me if I'm
>> wrong. I need to play more with DataArray implementation but haven't
>> had time yet.
>> I often have data that looks like this (not really, but it gives the
>> idea in a general way I think).
>> city, month, year, region, precipitation, temperature
>> "Austin", "January", 1980, "South", 12.1, 65.4,
>> "Austin", "February", 1980, "South", 24.3, 55.4
>> "Austin", "March", 1980, "South", 3, 69.1
>> "Austin", "December", 2009, 1, 62.1
>> "Boston", "January", 1980, "Northeast", 1.5, 19.2
>> "Boston","December", 2009, "Northeast", 2.1, 23.5
>> "Memphis","January",1980, "South", 2.1, 35.6
>> "Memphis","December",2009, "South", 1.2, 33.5
> Your labels are unique if you look at them the right way. Here's how I
> would represent that in a datarray:
> * axis0 = 'city', ['Austin', 'Boston', ...]
> * axis1 = 'month', ['January', 'February', ...]
> * axis2 = 'year', [1980, 1981, ...]
> * axis3 = 'region', ['Northeast', 'South', ...]
> * axis4 = 'measurement', ['precipitation', 'temperature']
> and then I'd make a 5-D datarray labeled with [axis0, axis1, axis2,
> axis3, axis4].
Yeah, this is what I was thinking I would have to do, but it's still
not clear to me (I have trouble trying to think in 5 dimensions...).
For instance, what axis holds my actual numeric data?
axis4, with a "precipitation" tick?
> Now I realize not everyone wants to represent their tabular data as a
> big tensor that they index every which way, and I think this is one
> thing that pandas is for.
This is kind of where I would like the divide to be between user and
developer. On top of all of this, I would like to see a __repr__ or
something that actually spits out a 2d spreadsheet-looking
representation. It would help me stay sane I think. Fernando's nice
3D graphic only can go so far as a mental model (for me at least).
> Oh, and the other problem with the 5-D datarray is that you'd probably
> want it to be sparse. This is another discussion worth having.
> I want to eventually replace the labeling stuff in Divisi with
> datarray, but sparse matrices are largely the point of using Divisi.
> So how do we make a sparse datarray?
> One answer would be to have datarray be a wrapper that encapsulates
> any sufficiently matrix-like type. This is approximately what I did in
> the now-obsolete Divisi1. Nobody liked the fact that you had to wrap
> and unwrap your arrays to accomplish anything that we hadn't thought
> of in writing Divisi. I would not recommend this route.
> The other option, which is more like Divisi2. would be to provide the
> functionality of datarray using a mixin. Then a standard dense
> datarray could inherit from (np.ndarray, Datarray), while a sparse
> datarray could inherit from (sparse.csr_matrix, Datarray), for
Mix-ins sounds reasonable to me as long as this could easily be
accomplished. Ie., why use csr? Can you go between others? Are the
sparse matrices reasonably stable given recent activity? Not
rhetorical questions, I don't use sparse matrices much.
More information about the NumPy-Discussion
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Like many other public universities around the country, Mystery U has been hit hard by the economic hard times. Most of this year, we heard ominous rumblings that (at some point) there would be a budget reversion, i.e., we’d have to send some portion of our budget back to the state coffers. But all was pretty much business as usual until a few weeks ago when the axe fell. Instantaneously our whole university budget and we were under strict orders to conserve the precious resources we still had…you know, things like copier paper. Because we have no money to buy any more.
I’ve been biting my tongue in budget discussions because I’ve been thinking and talking for a long time about how to make universities greener places. And I’d suggest that some of the things we can do to make things greener will also make our university more money-efficient. For example: At the beginning of the year, (when we still had money) I enlisted the IT guys in our department in a bid for a printer that prints double-sided. I argued that we would save money in the long run by lowering our paper costs and that we were sending the wrong message to our students by printing on only have of the available space. Unfortunately, my arguments were ignored and now we’re facing a paper shortage with a week to go before exams.
Below the fold, I’ll present a couple of ideas for making my university both leaner (budget-wise) and greener. I’d also like to hear your ideas and suggestions.
- Invest in duplexing printers. Maybe you don’t need to immediately replace all of the printers on campus, but allow all faculty access to at least one duplexing printers.
- Set the default printer settings to double-sided.
- Provide incentives for faculty to give quizzes, exams, and assignments via Blackboard or other web-based software.
- Don’t distribute flyers and glossy magazines to all faculty mailboxes. A few copies per department should suffice for those who are truly interested.
- Reconsider the irrigation and landscaping strategies. Though the economics of water are truly distorted, irrigation does cost some money, and it makes no sense to water turf during a rainstorm or at noon on a sunny day.
- In warm climates at least, paint rooftops white to reflect sunlight and reduce air conditioning costs.
- Set building thermostats a few degrees warmer in the summer, cooler in the winter, and less intensively on weekends and at night.
- Have night-time maintenance workers turn off hallway and other unneeded lights when they are finished working in an area.
- Deploy campus security officers on foot or bike where possible to save money on gas and to reduce CO2 emissions.
My list above is focused on things that shouldn’t cost a ridiculous amount of money to implement and could be done fairly quickly. If immediate savings were no object there are lots of projects I could envision, but with budget conditions like we’re facing, I think those bigger projects are unrealistic any time soon.
What other changes should our universities be making in order to save a few $ and a few tons of CO2 or other environmental assets?
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LabCorp v. Metabolite (on writ of certiorari).
This case involves a patented method of correlating a body protein level with a vitamin B deficiency. (U.S. Patent No. 4,940658). The claim in question (Claim 13) includes two steps: (1) assaying a body fluid for an elevated level of total homocysteine and (2) correlating an elevated level of total homocysteine with a folate deficiency. (paraphrased).
The patent holder won at trial and at the CAFC. The defendant, Metabolite, then brought its case to the Supreme Court arguing that the patent is invalid because it “claim[s] a monopoly over a basic scientific relationship used in medical treatment such that any doctor necessarily infringes the patent merely by thinking about the relationship after looking at a test result.”
Interestingly, the question presented is not firmly grounded in any particular rule of patent law. Rather, it implicitly raises issues of indefiniteness, enablement, written description, and patentable subject matter. (to name a few). However, the Supreme Court has given some indication that it is most interested in this case because of the issue it raises regarding the patenting of natural phenomena under Diehr.
LabCorp has filed its brief on the merits as have a number of third parties:
Petitioner’s Brief PDF (211 KB)
In Part I, Petitioner LabCorp’s stance is essentially that the law is correct, but that it has been misapplied in this case.
Claim 13 violates this Court’s longstanding rule barring patents on “laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas.”
According to LabCorp, the claim involves “no actual invention beyond the scientific discovery it recites.” The claimed correlation is a scientific principle or law of nature, and its discovery alone cannot be patentable. The “trivial pre-solution” activity of assaying “cannot transform claim 13 into a patentable invention.” Here, Petitioner never strays far from the precedential pillars of Diehr, Chakrabarty, Funk Bros., and Flook.
In Part II, LabCorp goes on to argue that the claim is neither definite, enabled, nor adequately described. The Brief appears to ask the court to invalidate any claim that includes a “correlating” step unless the process of how to calculate a correlation is spelled out in the specification.
The Federal Circuit relied on the accepted dictionary definition of “correlate” as meaning “to establish a mutual or reciprocal relationship between.” But nothing recited in the claim or disclosed in the specification tells a practitioner how to actively “establish” a “relationship” between a particular test result and a vitamin deficiency. At most, the Patent discloses that such a scientific relationship
More is required for a valid claim. . . .
In the remaining sections of the Brief, Petitioner argues that, on policy grounds, a very broad claim hinders scientific and technological progress and that the lower court judgment should be reversed.
Solicitor General’s Amicus Brief for the U.S. Government PDF (165 KB)
The Solicitor General with assistance from the PTO’s counsel has filed its brief that falls closely in line with its prior unsuccessful brief in opposition to the petition for certiorari.
In line with Petitioner, the Government agreed that the patent “appears to [impermissibly] claim all substantial practical applications of the natural relationship.” However, the Brief specifically states that this case should not be decided on an issue of whether a law of nature has been improperly claimed because the lower court record has not been developed on this issue. Directly addressing Petitioner’s part II, the Government argues that the specification does satisfy the requirements of 35 USC 112 “by describing, enabling, and claiming the method.”
Intellectual Property Owner’s Association (IPO) Brief PDF (97 KB)
IPO realized that the question presented for review in this case does not directly challenge the current standards for patentable subject matter. However, the Supreme Court has indicated an interest in considering whether the patent-in-suit claimed patentable subject matter.
Diehr, correctly delineate between those innovations that should be eligible for patent protection and those that should not. Accordingly, IPO believes that this case should not serve as a vehicle for overturning or altering those standards. Rather, this case should reinforce the standards of Diehr and thus, support the expectation that innovations in yet unknown areas of technology will be eligible for patent protection.
IPO believes that the current standards for patentable subject matter, as set forth by the Court in
Specifically, IPO argues that a broad scope of subject matter eligibility properly places research and development decision-making into the hands of individuals and private entities rather than in the judiciary. This “free market” approach “beset allocates research and development resources without judicial entanglement.” The requirements of novelty, nonobviousness, and description protect against over-reaching patents and warrant against further restricting patentability based on subject matter.
* NOTE: I was a coauthor of the IPO brief along with Paul Berghoff and Joshua Rich from MBHB as counsel for IPO. The IPO Board of Directors approved the Brief.
Affymetrix Brief PDF (104 KB)
Affymetrix is a supplier of commercial DNA microarrays and “has an interest in ensuring that patents not issue on basic laws of nature so as to impede scientific progress in analyzing DNA and gene expression.” Affymetrix argues that the fact that “elevated levels of an amino acid in the blood correlated to a vitamin deficiency” is a natural phenomenon that leaves claim 13 unpatentable under current precedent.
Interestingly, Affymetrix argues that ambiguity of whether a claim impermissibly covers a natural phenomena should be resolved in favor of invalidity to avoid serious constitutional questions. (citing Feist).
Public Patent Foundation PDF (375 KB)
PubPat argues that the CAFC has gone astray by over-reaching the permissible bounds of patentable subject matter. (Citing Alappat and State Street). Rather, PubPat would have the Court return directly to Flook.
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Columbia Faculty on “What is the Entrepreneurial Mindset”
Entrepreneurship is one of those terms that’s a bit like the old saw about art or pornography - “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it”. If you want to bring a collection of entrepreneurship academics to a screeching halt, just ask the question “What is entrepreneurship?” This will provoke such a long and heated debate that all other purposes of coming together get lost in the shuffle. This has gone on at least as long as the 18 years I’ve been in the field.
It was therefore interesting for Columbia’s entrepreneurship center to collect different faculty members’ perspectives on the notion of entrepreneurial mindset in one place. You’ll find their definitions and observations here.
- Posted: Thursday, December 20, 2007
Next entry: Business Development Resources for New Entrepreneurs Previous entry: Dumbest moments in business 2007 - I do miss Business 2.0
Would you like occasional updates? Please sign up using the form below:
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On Monday night, Debra Ness and Judith Lichtman attended a birthday party. Ness is the president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, and Lichtman successfully lobbied for the group’s Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which turned 20 this week.
There was a yellow cake with white icing that was inscribed, Happy birthday, FMLA. It had two candles — a 2 and a 0. But it just as easily could have had 100 million, which is the number of times the Act has been used since its inception.
The FMLA is perhaps best known for guaranteeing pregnant women their jobs back after up to 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave. But it can also be used by employees who need time off to care for sick relatives. It’s particularly useful for employees who are granted no paid sick days.
Yet it’s far from a perfect piece of legislation. It only covers employers with 50 or more employees, and those employees must have worked more than 1,250 hours a year in order to qualify for the provisions. And, perhaps most significantly, it’s unpaid. So while 60% of U.S. employees are eligible, many may not be able to afford to temporarily forgo their salary.
The Act was the first piece of legislation signed by President Clinton, after being vetoed — twice — by President George H.W. Bush. Ness and Lichtman talked to TIME about the impact of the law that protects workers’ jobs while they stay home to take care of new babies, sick family members — or themselves.
What do you remember from 20 years ago when the bill was signed?
Lichtman: The first draft came from us on one of those old Selectric typewriters. We used White-out. It took about nine years to pass. In the middle of those years, it wasn’t so clear we’d be able to successfully pass a piece of legislation that was as broad as it is in the number of people it protects. We were offered the possibility of passing legislation just for pregnant women. We refused. It would have been a quicker fix, but it would not have provided the kind of broad coverage that makes a huge difference in workers’ lives.
When Clinton signed that law, he leaned back and handed me the pen. We have it in a wonderful frame up here in our office. It’s pretty noteworthy that the first word of the first bill he signed was “family.”
How did the legislation come about?
Lichtman: We actually wrote it in 1984 when we were known as the Women’s Legal Defense Fund. The driving force behind it was our understanding that there wasn’t existing policy that protected the jobs of women and men if they had family health emergencies. That was the inspiration to come up with a new and innovative public policy that is now really recognized as a revolutionary change.
Ness: Part of what this law did by virtue of being gender-neutral and available for both men and women and not just for taking care of kids but for the illness of parents, was counter some of the discrimination that women faced because of stereotypes of women as caregivers. This law was a way to move us beyond the stereotype of women as caregivers and men as breadwinners. So when we talk about what this law has accomplished, it has caused extraordinary cultural change in our society and in our expectations around care giving and gender roles.
But this was always just a first step. For sure, we are not in sync with the reality of today’s 21st century workplace. Today we live in a world where 50% of the workforce is female, women are primary breadwinners in 40% of households, and in 50% they are significant contributors. So we live in a world where nearly all adults are in the workforce for the most part and our family care giving needs are huge as a result of the aging of the population. There needs to be more progress made.
What sort of progress?
Ness: The FMLA only covers 60% of the workforce. And we need to institute a national paid leave insurance program. We are so behind other countries. There are so many benefits, not only to families’ economic security but to employers and society. When people are paid for leave, data shows pregnant women work longer into their pregnancies, come back sooner and are earning more a year later. They are also more likely to return to their employers. When people have paid leave, they are much less likely to need to go on public assistance. It’s a good win-win-win all around.
Has the law been amended at all?
Ness: In 2008 and 2009 the law was expanded to cover military families for the care of wounded service members and veterans, and they fixed a problem with airline employees. That’s it.
Is that not enough?
Lichtman: We did research which showed 74% of voters said they, their friends or neighbors face real hardships in managing work and family responsibility and serious health conditions. And 72% say they or their families would face real financial hardships if a major health need arose. Eighty-six percent said they favor new laws to help working families be economically secure and are supportive of family and medical leave insurance programs.
Ness: Those numbers are pretty stunning. They cut across demographic lines, Republicans as well as Democrats. The strongest support came from younger folk, people of color and young women.
So what else needs to change?
Lichtman: The law needs to be expanded. It protects your job but it doesn’t protect your income. We need to expand existing family and medical leave to more employees. It should also include incidents of domestic violence. Pending proposals include being able to take time off to attend school meetings.
Ness: It would also help to expand the definition of family. Right now it includes your own children up to age 18. It should expand to adult children. It also doesn’t include siblings or grandparents or grandchildren. It doesn’t include domestic partners or same-sex spouses. I would like to see the definition of family expanded to match the reality of our lives.
What specific changes do you plan to bring up this year?
Ness: The Healthy Families Act about paid sick days will be introduced. It enables workers to earn seven paid sick days a year at employers with at least 15 employees. We are also planning to introduce the Family Act, which is a national paid leave insurance program.
How would that work?
Ness: It’s a payroll deduction program administered through the Social Security Administration. An employer would also make a small contribution. It would go into a fund and when you need to take FMLA, you would get some sort of pay based on your amount of earnings, 66% of your salary up to a cap paid out of this insurance fund. It would amount to two-tenths of 1% of your paycheck — $1.50 per paycheck for the average worker. There are two states that have this: California and New Jersey. In both states it’s working quite well.
If you could look 20 years down the road, what would the FMLA look like?
Ness: I’m hopeful we’re no longer even having discussions about these kinds of proposals, that we have integrated them into our workplace and social culture so it’s just the way you do business in the 21st century. These are not just nice benefits. These are central economic necessities at a time when nearly all men and women are working. When you have to put your job on the line and your family’s economic security at risk in order to take care of basic family or basic health needs, that is a travesty. It’s harmful to our nation’s overall economic vitality. My vision is that we will have recognized that and gotten to a place where these policies are standard.
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Balada de Los Rios de Tabasco : Work information
- Work name
- Balada de Los Rios de Tabasco
- Work number
- Forlane CI
- Ivan Pastor
- Xavier Villalpando
- Recording date
- 1993-01-01 00:00:00
Carlos Jiménez Mabarak
A key figure in the revival of the Mexican dance movement, and the composer of two distinguished operas, Jiménez Mabarak is probably best-known for his work in Mexican cinema. His compositional style underwent an unusual life-cycle, beginning in a traditionally Spanish manner before embracing modernism with the use of serialism and electronic techniques. His later works, however, are in a more classical style, employing a tonal language and using elements of Mexican folk music.
Jiménez Mabarak was born in Tacuba, Mexico on 31 January 1916. He undertook his compositional training in Brussels, Rome, Mexico City (with Revueltas) and Paris (with René Leibowitz) and had his first success with the publication in 1935 of his Allegro romántico. In 1961, his film score for Deseada won the coveted Ariel prize, establishing his cinematic career. Further prizes were awarded for his scores to Veneno para las hadas (1961) and Los recuerdos del porvenir (1969), and he won first prize in the music competition for the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games.
Aside from movie music, Jiménez Mabarak composed music for dance, including the seminal works Balada del venado y de la luna and El paraiso de los ahogados, and wrote two important operas: Misa de seis (Mass at 6) and La güera (The Blonde). He taught composition at the National Conservatory from 1942-68 and at the Escuela Nacional de Música in later years. He died in Mexico City on 21 June 1994.
Of Jiménez Mabarak's more modern music, El paraiso de los ahagados and Misa de seis stand out as some of the most advanced Mexican scores of the 20th century. Of his return to tonality, the composer remarked that 'the discipline of a more conventional language allows me the greater possibility of freedom'. La güera and Sala de retratos belong to this last stage in his career and feature complex chromatic harmonies alongside folk-influenced melodies and rhythms.
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Computer games aren’t just for fun anymore — they’re also valuable research tools. Scientists are taking complex problems — like trying to figure out how proteins fold and how neural networks work — and turning them into engaging games. And they need your help.
Tagged with “games” (27)
Moisés welcomes Brett Terpstra to discuss their Hyper-Apathy over CES and the over-complication of consumer electronics. Brett also hosts 5by5’s Systematic. He calls himself a "horrible guest", which, God Bless His Little Heart, is a TERRIBLE lie.
Guillermo del Toro takes some time away from his giant robots & monsters movie Pacific Rim to talk about his formative influences, from Universal Monsters to Alfred Hitchcock and beyond, along with what he finds compelling and interesting in modern media.
Moisés welcomes legendary voice director Andrea Romano to discuss her substantial body of work, including (but not limited to) her early days at Hanna-Barbera, Disney shows like Ducktales, and the amazing Batman: The Animated Series (along with the rest of the DC Animated Universe).
They dig back into Andrea’s earliest creative influences, from favorite childhood cartoons to her start as an actress and subsequent move to Los Angeles. Stories include reuniting the original cast of The Jetsons over 20 years after the original show ended, the growth of her various "children" in voiceover, and the evolution of an art form that is now, more than ever, the new Radio Theatre.
Moisés welcomes omnipresent 5by5 mascot/wünderkind/spirit animal Merlin Mann to discuss his media habits, comic books, VIVA KNEIVEL, TiVo, Jonathan Coulton, comic books, MULAN, Tallahassee, and a little about comic books. Long live Vinyl Fever.
Shownote links (http://5by5.tv/screentime/14) take you to places you can learn more about our guests and read/watch the things they talk about on the show, like the insane 1994 FANTASTIC FOUR movie produced by "Friend of the Show" and future guest Roger Corman.
Moisés welcomes John August to talk about screenwriting, directing, app development, and the brand-new take on Atari classic Karateka (now on XBLA), which produced by John and original developer Jordan Mechner. John digs into how the urge to scratch the creative "itches" he has leads him to new pursuits in different industries.
Moisés interviews Stan Lee, creator of many of the most popular characters in the comic book world. They discuss Marvel’s wealth of characters to put in the movies, the work Stan does with POW! Entertainment, and the crisis of choice in modern entertainment. They also discuss Stan’s earliest influences as a creative person, from Sherlock Holmes and Jules Verne to Errol Flynn and the classic Universal Monsters films.
An estimated one out of every three Japanese are signed up to play games on their cell phones, helping to grow a mobile gaming juggernaut that’s currently dominated by a few Japanese startups. Now, those same startups are eyeing a new playing field â the U.S.
Aleks Krotoski examines how computer gaming is affecting our culture – by creating genuine works of art, by altering our notions of storytelling, and by simple virtue of being the cultural medium many people spend most time attached to.
Computer or videogames have been around for 40 years, but the wider cultural implications have tended to be glossed over in favour of discussion of the size of the gaming economy and concerns about games’ social impact.
Yet in recent years the artfulness of games has grown so much that the Smithsonian in Washington DC is now hosting a major exhibition of gaming art.
New technology and the spread of games to phones, tablets and PCs are creating millions of new users.
The immersive possibilities of this uniquely-interactive medium are just being explored.
Shift Run Stop is a free comedy podcast full to the brim with games, geeks and special guests.
Share our pleasure chatting about magic, coincidences and games with the fascinating Dave Gorman, then feel our pain as a tarry soft drink promotes the question: "What IS ‘malt’ anyway?"
Yes, it’s like a trip back in time to the early days of the show, as once again we find ourselves hijacking someone else’s office without asking, scouring the local shop for Drinks Most Likely to Withstand Nuclear Strike, and talking to someone in a room with terrible acoustics, in this all-new yet reassuringly familiar edition of Shift Run Stop.
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Sality.AK is a virus that spreads to other computers by copying its code to other files or programs.
Sality.AK does not spread automatically using its own means. It needs an attacking user's intervention in order to reach the affected computer. The means of transmission used include, among others, floppy disks, CD-ROMs, email messages with attached files, Internet downloads, FTP, IRC channels, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, etc.
Sality.AK uses the following infection strategies:
- Resident: once it has been run, the virus goes memory resident and stops functions belonging to the operating system. Therefore, every time the operating system or an application tries to access any of these functions, the virus will activate and infect new files.
- Stealth: when the virus is memory resident, it hides the modifications made to the boot sectors or files it has infected. These modifications are: changes in size, date, attributes, etc.
- Encrypted: it encrypts its code in order to make it difficult to detect. In order to carry out its infection, the virus decrypts itself and, once infection has been carried out, it encrypts itself again.
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The words immaculate conception are not in the Bible, yet the teaching that Mary was conceived without sin carries the weight of dogma: a Greek term for “what seems right.” A dogma is considered an infallible teaching. According to the First Vatican Council (the "other" Vatican council rarely talked about), a dogma must be 1. Contained in scripture or part of post-biblical tradition; 2. Explicitly proposed as a divinely revealed belief; and 3. Issued as a solemn decree that can be later developed but not deliberately rejected without risk of heresy.
Wow. That means this teaching about Mary’s beginnings is essential to Catholic understanding. Yet none of the four gospels mentions Mary’s origins. Even her parents, Joachim and Anne, are not named. The genealogies of Jesus in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 trace Joseph’s line.
We get our early stories about Mary from that “post-biblical tradition” alluded to above, records of hazy origin like The Birth of Mary, the Protevangelion of James, and The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus. While these documents didn’t make the cut when the canon of scripture was set, they remain valuable windows into the way early Christians expressed their beliefs. One thing they make clear: The early church had a powerful sense that the Incarnation-event bound Jesus and his mother in a singular, physical infusion of divine grace.
That helps us appreciate why the Immaculate Conception—celebrated as a feast in the 11th century and officially introduced as dogma in 1854—still represents a very early church understanding. Theologians point to scripture passages that validate the cosmic preparation of Mary for her role: Genesis 3:15 (sin will be conquered by a woman); Luke 1:28 (Mary is favored); Luke 1:42 (Mary is blessed among women).
The 12th-century theologians Anselm and Bernard of Clairvaux as well as Aquinas and Bonaventure in the 13th century voiced concern that a sinless Mary would put her outside of the need of Christ’s universal salvation. Do we really want to say she didn’t need saving? The Franciscan Duns Scotus resolved the objection by saying Christ could save in two ways: by lifting up the sinner or by preserving one from sin altogether. Mary remains the only person so far identified in the latter category.
Consider this: There was a time when your life and your mother’s were literally inseparable. For the sake of that time when Mary and Jesus shared life together in her body, why wouldn’t God prepare the way?
• Genesis 3:15; Luke 1:28, 42
• Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX’s Apostolic Constitution on the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1854
• The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), chapter 8, “The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God in the Mystery of Christ and the Church”
• The Virgin Mary and Theology of the Body edited by Donald H. Calloway, M.I.C. (Marian Press, 2005)
• Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament edited by Bart D. Ehrman (Oxford University Press, 2003)
• Tradition and Incarnation by William L. Portier (Paulist Press, 1994)
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- Shopping Bag ( 0 items )
August KleinzahlerMusicians—particularly jazz musicians of Monk's period, and most especially Monk, taciturn and gnomic in utterance by nature—tend not, as writers do, to write hundreds of letters sharing with intimates what is going on in their hearts or heads. A biography of Monk, perforce, has to rely on the not always reliable, often conflicting, memories of others. Instinct is involved, surely as much as perspicacity, in sifting through the mass of observation and anecdote. The Monk family appears to have shared private material with Kelley that had hitherto been unavailable. This trust was not misplaced. There will be shapelier and more elegantly written biographies to come—Monk, the man and the music, is an endlessly fascinating subject—but I doubt there will be a biography anytime soon that is as textured, thorough and knowing as Kelley's. The "genius of modern music" has gotten the passionate, and compassionate, advocate he deserves.
—The New York Times
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You may remember that some work was done on the World War 1 Memorial in 2010 - but that work did not include the fountain. In that sense, the restoration work was incomplete. The Memorial is a very important gathering place for Anzac and Remembrance Day commemoration. Conservation professionals are undertaking the plumbing rectification. This will involve coring the bowl and plinth, reconnecting the water supply and repointing the blue stone steps.
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- Also see: The German-Hollywood Connection
The Austrians, Germans, and Swiss, like many of their European neighbors, offer government subsidies to their filmmakers in an effort to encourage domestic motion picture production. Europeans, including the Germans, have traditionally tended to regard filmmaking as an art rather than a business. Because the resulting European films are often limited-budget, intellectually challenging productions that lack the Hollywood big-star, action/blockbuster formula, their mass appeal has been limited.
German film awards such as Der goldene Bär (The Golden Bear) awarded at the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), as well as other European awards (Cannes, the Felix, Venice), have been created in an attempt to compete with the American Academy Awards (Oscar) and to call attention to German and European film. The first Berlinale film awards took place in 1951. But even the Berlinale features many US productions.
It is ironic that the German film diet of today is predominantly American, especially in light of Germany’s historical role in world cinema. Almost from the first days of motion pictures, both the Austrians and Germans were at the cinematic forefront, exerting great influence over the medium. Although the first paid public showing of a movie is generally credited to the Lumière brothers in Paris in December 1895, the world’s first public demonstration of moving pictures took place in Berlin almost two months earlier. But German inventor Max Skladanowsky’s “Bioscop” would prove to be impractical for widespread use. Nevertheless, Berlin soon became the center of Germany’s fledgling film industry, and by 1905 there were 16 movie theaters in the city. In 1907 “Der Kinematograph”—a weekly journal for “the entire art of projection”—published its first issue, a tradition that endured until 1934.
Austrian and German film actors, cinematographers, and directors were pioneers in the new film art. Hollywood would not be what it is today without this Austrian and German impact. Even if non-German names like Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut, and Kurosawa are more famous in the world of international cinema, German and Austrian directors such as Fassbinder, Sternberg, Lang, Lubitsch, Murnau, Petersen, Preminger, Wilder, Wenders, and others (some of whom are still alive and working) have had an incalculable effect on American movie making. The New German Cinema is known to many film buffs, though there is no school of Fassbinder, Wenders, or Herzog as there is of the French Truffaut or the Italian Fellini.
In the dozen years between 1920 and 1932, the so-called “Golden Age” of early German cinema, before the Nazis ruined its reputation, German cinema led the way for future filmmakers. Beginning with the great pioneering silent films of the 1920s, such as Metropolis, Nosferatu, and Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, and continuing with the advent of sound after 1929—Der blaue Engel, Die Drei von der Tankstelle, M—German film became a model for a distinctive technique and style of filmmaking. Borrowing from the Germans, Hollywood adapted sound techniques, lighting, storytelling, and set design. German expressionistic films such as Caligari and Metropolis, which interestingly enough were not great commercial successes in their time, became the artistic forerunners that led Hollywood from flat lighting and mundane settings to what would become the more artistic light and shadow of film noir. In the 1920s and 1930s, directors like Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, and others left Europe for Hollywood. Even today, lured by bigger budgets and better opportunities, German directors continue to move to Hollywood after getting started in Germany. Roland Emmerich ([Independence Day], Stargate, Universal Soldier) and Wolfgang Petersen (Outbreak, In the Line of Fire, Das Boot) are two of the most successful.
Austria has contributed well-known actors like the bug-eyed Peter Lorre (Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) and great directors such as Fritz Lang (Fury, M, Metropolis, Rancho Notorious), Otto Preminger (Anatomy of a Murder, The Cardinal, Exodus, Laura), and Billy Wilder (Double Indeminity, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Witness for the Prosecution). Fred Astaire, born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska, was the son of Austrian parents.
The teutonic sex symbol Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992), who became an American citizen in 1939, perhaps more than any other single figure, exemplifies the vital role played by Germans and Austrians in the history of film acting. Beginning in 1930, with her groundbreaking portrayal of the sultry femme fatale in The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel), Dietrich’s film career spanned more than half a century from the earliest days of talking pictures into the age of Technicolor and Cinemascope. Dietrich’s 1992 death in seclusion in Paris came after a very public life that saw her starring in a western comedy with Jimmy Stewart (Destry Rides Again, 1939), entertaining U.S. troops during World War II, and performing on stage in Las Vegas in the 1950s—a flashback to her early days on the cabaret stage in Berlin. The late German actor Gert Froebe (1913-1988), best known as the villainous Goldfinger, and the Austrian Klaus Maria Brandauer (You Only Live Twice, Out of Africa) have both enjoyed success in German and American movies. Of course, the Austrian Arnold Schwarzenegger is in a cinematic class all by himself. (See also Point 50, Movies: The Hollywood Connection)
NEXT > Dialects
Book excerpt © 1999 McGraw-Hill/Passport Books
Web content © 1997-2013 Hyde Flippo
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News broke today that “American manufacturing declined in November to its weakest level since July 2009, one month after the recession ended.“
The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, said on Monday that its index of manufacturing conditions fell to a reading of 49.5. That is down from 51.7 in October.
Readings above 50 in the institute’s survey signal growth, while readings below indicate contraction. Manufacturing grew in October for only the second time since May.
A gauge of new orders dropped to its lowest level since August, a sign that production could slow in the coming months. Manufacturers also sharply reduced their stockpiles, indicating companies expect weaker demand. (Associated Press)
Congress needs to take immediate action to save American jobs and bring confidence to the U.S. manufacturing industry by passing a number of important initiatives, including the Production Tax Credit, the Advanced Energy Project Credit (48C) and the 1603 Treasury grant.
America’s wind industry supports more than 75,000 Americans and 400 manufacturing facilities, but more than 2,200 workers have lost their jobs in the last year. How many pink slips will need to go out before Congress truly understands the cost of waiting?
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|John J. Conley, S.J.
I treat the issue of conscience in my undergraduate survey of ethics, I ask the
students to prepare for class by sketching their own spontaneous definition of
conscience. My favorite is: "My conscience is my inner dog which barks when
I break my diet." Most of the definitions tend to fall into emotivist,
intuitionist or mystical accounts of conscience.
For the aspiring emotivist, conscience is a reservoir of moral sentiments. The following definitions are typical of the emotivist approach: "Conscience is the feeling that we should do something in particular." "Conscience is an emotion about what we've done." "Conscience is a feeling about good and evil." The student emotivists might disagree on the temporal traits of conscience—whether, for example, conscience is primarily antecedent to or consequent upon human action. They agree, however, that conscience involves arational emotions of attraction or repulsion concerning a particular object of moral choice.
For the young intuitionists, conscience is a faculty which provides immediate moral guidance. Their definitions frequently assimilate conscience to one of the senses. "I see conscience as an inner light." "Conscience is an inner voice which says 'yes' or 'no' when I have a problem." As one student poetically phrased it, "My conscience is an internal lighthouse in the storm of the world." For the budding intuitionists, conscience is an immediate source of moral direction which needs no further justification.
The more mystical definitions add a religious twist to the intuitionist account. The following definitions are exemplary of the mystical account: "Conscience is the voice of God within me." "I think that conscience is how God makes me know what's right." One punchy definition argues: "Conscience is being locked up with God. He talks and you'd better listen." The accounts of conscience which I classify as "mystical" all stress an immediate apprehension of God and God's will. As such, they differ from other religious accounts of conscience which emphasize ecclesial or scriptural mediation.
These undergraduate assessments of conscience reflect, in an informal manner, certain approaches to conscience defended by systematic philosophers and theologians. The emotivists echo Ayer's theory of the purely emotive nature of moral judgments. The intuitionists parallel the "moral sense" theory developed by Shaftesbury and revived by Prichard. The mystical account echoes classical Quaker doctrine of "the inner light" and a long tradition of American naturalism. These definitions of conscience also reflect a common understanding of morality in contemporary American culture.
Despite their variations, these assessments of conscience conceive moral judgment as the spontaneous product of each subject's idiosyncratic feelings, impulses and experience. Such a subjectivist account of conscience posits moral judgment as an unmediated decision of the isolated individual.
Since such decisions of conscience are not based upon reason, they are impervious to rational scrutiny by another. Since such decisions are the spontaneous work of the autonomous individual, the contribution of social bodies (such as church and state) remains moot. It is not surprising that with such a subjectivist account of conscience, the chief political virtue emerges as a vague tolerance: the defense of that personal psychic space where each individual undergoes the private drama of fabricating moral values and choices.
To counter the subjectivist impasse fostered by emotivist and intuitionist approaches, it can be useful to revive the neoscholastic theory of conscience. Austin Fagothey provides a definition of conscience typical of this tradition: "Conscience may.. . be defined as the practical judgment of reason upon an individual act as good and to be performed, or as evil and to be avoided." This definition insists upon the intellectual dimension of conscience. Conscience emerges as the judgment of reason upon human action to be performed or shunned. This process of practical reasoning is usually conceived as one of syllogistic deduction, wherein the moral subject implicitly moves from a major premise (a moral principle, such as "Murder is wrong") through a minor premise (a particular object, such as "Action X involves murder") to a practical conclusion ("Action X, therefore, should not be performed.") In practice, however, this process of practical reasoning is often problematic. The enormous neoscholastic literature on the resolution of a doubtful conscience and the elaboration of the principle of double effect witnesses the complexity in evaluating a specific moral object.
This particular approach to conscience not only defends the role of the intellect in moral judgment. It permits the elaboration of a more social account of conscience than theories built upon sentiment or intuition. This social note emerges in the formation of conscience. The effective development of the conscientious intellect involves a recurrent transcendence of the self through critical dialogue with secular and religious communities. While the individual subject maintains responsibility for his or her moral decisions, the practical intellectual capacity to render such judgments can only emerge through social mediation.
The intellectual nature itself of conscience, as delineated in the neoscholastic tradition, places conscience within a network of social interaction. In order to reason concerning a proposed course of action, the moral agent must inform himself on general principles and specific applications. While the moral agent might be inclined toward certain general goods (such as life or truth), such apprehensions remain too vague for much of the repertoire of conscientious decision-making. It is only through punctual interaction with others that the conscience may refine its inclinations into specific principles, such as "One may never directly kill an innocent human being." Specific applications require even more detailed interaction. The determination, for example, of whether a particular military action does in fact constitute the direct killing of an innocent human being requires a careful weighing of the evidence provided by different actors in the public policy debate. The particular judgments of possible actions in different circumstances engage the moral subject in analogous reasoning, which cannot rely on the moral subject's limited experience alone but must depend upon the moral judgments of others in the agent's community.
Moral sentiments can be communicated by osmosis. Repugnance to members of a particular ethnic group, for example, can be successfully transmitted in the humor and gestures of a given family. The social communication of moral principles, however, inasmuch as they are built upon justificatory evidence, are open to the critical scrutiny of the reason which transmits and the reason which receives such information. Theses concerning a certain ethnic group's equality to another can be evaluated upon the basis of the evidence given to support them. Moments of moral maturity can emerge precisely when such evidence contradicts the feelings of the moral agent and prods the agent to choose a certain act because of the weight of relevant reasons.
The formation of conscience requires social scrutiny not only to shape the norms and applications of the practical intellect. Social interaction forms the quality of the conscientious reasoning process. Neoscholastic literature developed an elaborate typology of the various tonalities of conscience, ranging from the lax to the rigorous. The question here is neither the content of reason nor even the accuracy of the particular syllogism it operates in the face of a specific moral dilemma. The question is more one of the global sensitivity of the conscience, its very capacity to identify moral problems, to effectively use moral resources in order to deliberate and to provide a plausible solution to an ethical problem.
Social interaction, beginning with the elementary dialogue of praise and blame, shapes the quality of conscientious reasoning. Failure in this formation indicates precisely the presence of a practical intellect which cannot properly detect moral objects as they appear in the social landscape. The lax conscience, oblivious to the moral demands of the other, serenely exempts itself from moral choices which involve the least sacrifice.
The rigorist conscience, on the other hand, paralyzes itself by the minute examination of the slightest problem and by a standard of absolute certitude for moral judgment which the peripeties of social action simply cannot bear. One of the chief tasks of the formation of conscience lies in the shaping of a practical intellect capable of discerning moral evidence, detecting relevant circumstances and choosing responsible action which suffers neither from insouciance nor scrupulosity. Much of the interaction in the familial, amical and religious cells of social life contributes to this refinement of the practical intellect in the art of moral discernment. The end here is more the formation of a moral style, rather than a moral program, for the intellect, as it weighs alternative courses of action. It is not surprising that this quality of the conscience is often described by philosophers through the aesthetic metaphors of balance, proportion or harmony.
Social mediation is also crucial in the religious formation of conscience. Unfortunately, as Robert Bellah has argued in his famous analysis of "Sheilahism," the contemporary American notion of the religious roots of conscience tends to correspond to the "mystical" theory I discussed earlier. The voice of God is conceived as immediately accessible to the moral agent through simple introspection. In fact, the religious formation of conscience operates through a complex network of social interaction. The Scriptures set before the moral subject the narrative of salvation which discloses the divine origin and horizon of the moral enterprise. The Eucharist incorporates the particular moral choices of the agent into the fundamental paschal mystery of Christ in the communion of the Church. The magisterial tradition of the Church traces the contours of a conscientious life, not only sensitive to the demands of the good, but united in docility to the Holy Spirit. The charismatic tradition of the Church, embodied in her hagiographical narratives, sketches the history and geography of moral conscience in its full maturity.
This religious mediation places the maturation of conscience in an itinerary of conversion. Rather than being immured within itself, the practical intellect deepens its moral horizons and sharpens its ethical discernment through participation in the ecclesial milieu.
The social mediation of conscience is not to be confused with the strict social determination of conscience. I may have learned from my family and church that stealing is wrong. However, stealing is wrong because it deprives others of their rightful property. It is not wrong because certain religious and secular authorities oppose it. The social apprenticeship of conscience is not a blind adherence to the voice of one's master. On the contrary, authentic moral formation involves the expansion of the intellect's vision of the good, the refinement of the intellect's skill in executing complex moral acts and the informing of the practical intellect through justifying reasons which may contradict the moral agent's ancestral prejudices. The reduction of the social occasions for learning the demands of the moral order into the causes of morality itself risks destroying the role and the rights of the intellect in the social itinerary of conscientious formation.
Contemporary efforts at retrieving the intellectual component of conscience must not succumb to the rationalist illusion of a moral reason sufficient to itself through an internal reservoir of clear and distinct ideas. If the neoscholastic account of conscience defended the rights of the intellect, in particular moral judgments, it equally stressed the fragility of the practical intellect. The manualists repeatedly detail the ignorance, the passion and the prejudice which vitiate the judgments of conscience. It is precisely the finitude and the egotism of the intellect which opens the human conscience to the social mediations necessary for its maturation. The social instances of intellectual formation, psychological refinement and sacramental inspiration are predicated upon a vulnerable conscience open to transformation by the human and divine other.
1 Cf. A. J. Ayer, <Language, Truth and Logic> (London: Gollancz, 1952), pp. 102-113.
2 Cf. Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, <An Inquiry Concerning Virtue> (1699), ed. by Joseph Filonowicz (Delmar: Scholars' Facsimiles, 1991), pp. 2-81.
3 Cf. H. A. Prichard, <Moral Obligation> (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1968), pp. 1-17, 87- 163.
4 For a study of the classical Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light, cf. Hugh Barbour and J. William Frost, <The Quakers> (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), pp. 95-107, 173- 174.
5 For a presentation of the persistent American strain of religious intuitionism, cf. Catherine Albanese, <Nature Religion in America> (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1990).
6 Austin Fagothey, <Right and Reason> (St. Louis: Mosby, 1959), p. 209. The classic locus for the neoscholastic discussion of conscience is found in Thomas Aquinas' <Summa Theologica> I, q. 79, aa. 12, 13.
7 Cf. ibid., pp. 209-210; Martin O'Keefe, <Known From the Things That Are> (Houston: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1987), pp. 129-132.
8 Cf. Fagothey, pp. 212-221.
9 Cf. Fagothey, pp. 152-156; O'Keefe, pp. 50-61.
10 Cf. Fagothey, p. 210; O'Keefe, p. 125.
11 Cf. Robert Bellah, <Habits of the Heart> (Berkeley: U. of Cal. Press, 1985).
12 For a discussion of the role of scriptural narrative in ethics, cf. Stanley Hauerwas, <A Community of Character> (Notre Dame: UND Press, 1981), pp. 59-78.
13 For an analysis of the roots of ethics in the liturgy, cf. John Baldovin, <City, Church and Renewal> (Washington, DC: Pastoral Press, 1991), pp. 59-78.
14 For an authoritative presentation of the relationship between magisterium and morality in Catholicism, cf. <Catechisme de l'Eglise Catholique> (Paris: Mame/Plon), pp. 419-423.
15 For a retrieval of hagiography from a postmodernist perspective, cf. Edith Wyschogrod, <Saints and Postmodernism> (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 1- 30.
16 Cf. Fagothey, pp. 104-110; O'Keefe, pp. 37-48.
This article was taken from the Fall 1994 issue of "Faith & Reason". Subscriptions available from Christendom Press, 2101 Shenandoah Shores Road, Ft. Royal, VA 22630, 703-636-2900, Fax 703-636-1655. Published quarterly.
Provided Courtesy of:
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Local Government Relations
Doctrina urbi serviat: Let Knowledge Serve the City
PSU works with the City of Portland, Metro Council and Multnomah and surrounding counties to ensure that not only our local government is giving PSU the support it needs, but also that PSU is meeting our motto, Let Knowledge Serve the City
- Current Local Initiatives
Cradle to Career
PSU is partnering with the city of Portland, Multnomah County, Portland Public Schools and other school districts, as well as the Leaders Roundtable, United Way of the Columbia-Willamette, and others to launch the Cradle to Career initiative to identify the most effective ways to help children and families, raise student achievement, and improve lives.
The Cradle to Career initiative that goes beyond another report card on schools to track educational, social, and economic progress from birth to job entry.
Click here to read a recent OpEd by PSU President Wim Wiewel about Cradle to Career.
University District Plan
The University District was established by the city of Portland in 1995 to define the areas where the University jointly with the City and the private sector can contribute to economic development and housing in the southwest corner of town. The University District planning process began in 2003, when a coalition was formed by PSU to address the universities growth and expansion needs, as well as the overall economic development of the southwest Portland area that surrounds the University.
Click here to read the original vision of the University District Plan.
Click here to follow current news on the University District Plan.
- Local Government Resources
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Sixteen of Mississippi's 82 counties have more registered voters than they have residents who are old enough to vote.
That's according to a new report from Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. His office checked a statewide elections database for number of
registered voters in each county, then compared that to the 2010 Census figures for the 18-and-older population.
Of those sixteen counties, seven also had over 10% of absentee ballots cast in either the 2011 Primary or General Elections.
The biggest discrepancy is in Humphreys County, which has 9,243 registered voters but only 6,673 residents who are 18 or older.
Hosemann says the other counties with inflated voter rolls are Issaquena, Walthall, Sharkey, Jefferson Davis, Leflore, Claiborne, Madison, Noxubee, Leake, Jefferson, Amite, Smith, Kemper, Lawrence and Clarke.
"We are required by law to report on elections to the State Legislature, Governor, and public on Election Day issues," said Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. "In many instances, our observers note the same Election Day issues, often in the same county. Where violations are found, our Agency refers those issues to the Attorney General and local District Attorneys."
The Associated Press reported in 2008 that 29 of Mississippi's 82 counties had more registered voters than residents.
Other issues outlined in the report include:
· Improper voter assistance;
· Campaigning at the polls;
· Improper signage at polling locations; and,
· High number of absentee ballots cast.
To review a copy of the 2012 Elections Report, click the link below.
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The investigation comes at an opportune time, since the legislature is looking at dramatically expanding a program that does not appear to be doing what it was supposed to do:
State records show that since 2005, the incentives have produced only 2,373 new jobs — about 11 percent of the 22,000 claimed by the program itself and politicians in both parties.
Why such a disparity?
Officials counted all jobs that companies initially promised in their applications, while the actual number of jobs generated so far is much lower. A Post-Dispatch review shows that many of those projects fizzled or were put on hold when the economy nose-dived.
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Adjusting to a baby in the family can be difficult for toddlers, who are still trying to understand their own place in the world. But there are ways you can help them handle their emotions and feel more confident in their new role of big sibling.More >>
Parents may want their young learners working on early math and reading skills, but teachers often have a different set of goals. Sitting still, paying attention and getting along with others are key to later success in school.More >>
By Jacqueline Mroz
When Paula Costa gave birth to a baby girl a few months ago, she expected her son, Alec, 2, to have a hard time adjusting. But she didn't expect him to take his aggression out on her.
"Initially, he wasn't interested in the baby, but he'd have tantrums with me," says Costa, of Glen Ridge, NJ. "He would get really ornery and say, 'I want milk.' When I gave him milk, he'd say, 'No, I wanted juice!' Then he'd say that the cup was wrong. He'd create situations where there was no way to please him."
Defiance and aggression are common reactions for toddlers who have suddenly become a big brother or sister and found their worlds turned upside down. "They don't know what's going to happen to them, and they have a lot of anger and grief over what they've lost," says Tovah P. Klein, a psychologist and the director of the Barnard Center for Toddler Development in New York City. "If the kids are showing affection to the baby, they're probably falling apart somewhere else.
If giving you a hard time is your toddler's way of expressing his feelings, that's a good thing. His acting out makes it easier for him to deal with the changes -- and for you to address his concerns. "You can say, 'I know you want that baby to go away, but I still love you,'" according to Klein. But you don't have to wait until your toddler is losing it before you can calm his fears. Here are some things you can do, before the baby comes and after, to help his transition to big sibling.
Lay it all out Explain to your toddler what will happen when the baby comes. Say, "Daddy and I will go to the hospital and the doctor will help me with the baby, and then I'll be back. Grandma and Grandpa will take care of you until we get home."
Remember No. 1 Try to focus all the attention on your older child in the very beginning. Give him a small gift at the hospital from the baby and avoid saying things like, 'Remember, now you're the big brother.' Instead say, 'Your brother's here and he's looking for you."
Enlist his help When you bring the baby home, try to make your toddler a part of the baby experience. Costa says her son, Alec, likes to help with diapering and bathing his baby sister. "It makes him feel good to help out," she says.
Make extra time To be sure, there will come a time when your child will say, "I don't want the baby." Just say, "OK, I'm going to put her to sleep and then spend some time with you." It's important to label what you're doing so your child knows it's her special time. Even taking five minutes to read a book with her is helpful. "Say, 'this is mommy and big kid time now,'" says Klein. "The message is, 'I always love you.'"
TIP:Give Them a Role to Play
Before the baby is born, help your toddler make signs to put around the house that will make him feel important, and more secure, in his role of big sibling: "This is where my new baby will sleep." "This is where I will feed my new baby." "This is where I will give my new baby a bath."
Copyright (c) 2010 Studio One Networks. All rights reserved
Jacqueline Mrozis a freelance journalist who has worked as an editor and children's book columnist for The Bergen Record and written for Parents magazine.<
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Clark's Point, AlaskaClark's Point
is a city located in Dillingham Census Area, Alaska
. As of the 2000
census, the population of the city is 75.
Geography\nClark's Point is located at 58°49'57" North, 158°33'9" West (58.832560, -158.552542)1
According to the United States Census Bureau
, the city has a total area of 10.5 km²
). 8.1 km² (3.1 mi²) of it is land and 2.4 km² (0.9 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 22.66% water.
Demographics\nAs of the census2
, there are 75 people, 24 households, and 15 families residing in the city. The population density
is 9.2/km² (23.9/mi²). There are 51 housing units at an average density of 6.3/km² (16.2/mi²). The racial makeup of the city is 6.67% White
, 0.00% Black
or African American
, 90.67% Native American
, 0.00% Asian
, 1.33% Pacific Islander
, 0.00% from other races
, and 1.33% from two or more races. 0.00% of the population are Hispanic
of any race.
There are 24 households out of which 33.3% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 45.8% are married couples living together, 16.7% have a female householder with no husband present, and 37.5% are non-families. 25.0% of all households are made up of individuals and 4.2% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 3.13 and the average family size is 3.93.
In the city the population is spread out with 38.7% under the age of 18, 6.7% from 18 to 24, 25.3% from 25 to 44, 21.3% from 45 to 64, and 8.0% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 30 years. For every 100 females there are 114.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 119.0 males.
The median income for a household in the city is $28,125, and the median income for a family is $41,250. Males have a median income of $30,625 versus $41,250 for females. The per capita income for the city is $10,988. 45.7% of the population and 20.0% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total people living in poverty, 66.7% are under the age of 18 and 36.4% are 65 or older.
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Study Finds Nearly Half of U.S. Kids Are Under-Vaccinated
MONDAY, Jan. 21 (HealthDay News) -- In recent years, nearly half (49 percent) of U.S. children under the age of 2 did not receive all the recommended vaccinations or received some vaccinations late, a new study shows.
All these children are considered under-vaccinated, according to the Kaiser Permanente researchers who analyzed the immunization records of more than 320,000 children born between 2004 and 2008.
The investigation revealed a significant increase in the number of under-vaccinated children during the study period, and also found that one in eight under-vaccinated children's parents decided not to follow Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) childhood vaccination guidelines, according to a Kaiser news release.
Those decisions meant that children went a longer time between vaccinations or received fewer vaccinations in a single office visit, leaving them under-vaccinated, according to the study published Jan. 21 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
The researchers also found that under-vaccinated children are less likely to visit their doctor's offices and more likely to be admitted to hospitals, compared to children who receive vaccinations under the standard ACIP schedule.
"While a large majority of parents in the U.S. choose to vaccinate their children, a growing number of parents are concerned about vaccine safety and choose to vaccinate their children according to alternative immunization schedules," the researchers said in the news release.
"The medical community doesn't have a lot of data on these alternative schedules, so we are hoping the results from this study will open the door to more opportunities to examine their safety and efficacy," they added.
Recent research found that children whose parents refuse to allow childhood vaccinations are nine times more likely to get chickenpox and 23 times more likely to get whooping cough than fully immunized children.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about childhood immunization.
SOURCE: Kaiser Permanente, news release, Jan. 21, 2013
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T2T || FAQ || Ask T2T || Teachers' Lounge || Browse || Search || Thanks || About T2T
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From: Joanne <email@example.com> To: Teacher2Teacher Public Discussion Date: 2009011100:38:02 Subject: Re: 5th and 6th grade math I have had to teach both general education and special education classes using Chicago Math and both of my children were subjected to this during their education in the same district. I hate it! I have heard it referred to as the ADHD math program because it can not stay focused long enough on one concept for anyone to master it. Both of my children went on to hate math and feel that they will never be good at math. As teachers we basically draw from "traditional" programs and when we use the program we jump around the text to try and present it in an order that bring success. We wish the district would get rid of the program but it was so contentious when adopted that they could never admit it is awful and doesn't deliver.
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One of the startling things about consumption behavior is that, despite the burst of spending surrounding the holiday season, per capita consumption in 2011Q3 has only re-attained the levels of 2008Q3. Various explanations have been forwarded, ranging from the failure of Keynesian economics , to the decline in income prospects or higher income uncertainty, or to the decline in observed net worth (deleveraging, in certain interpretations).
Figure 1 shows log GDP and consumption rescaled to 2009Q2=0.
Figure 1: Log GDP (blue) and consumption (dark red), Ch.2005$, SAAR, rescaled to 2009Q2=0. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: BEA, 2011Q3 2nd release, NBER, and author’s calculations.
Taylor has argued that the failure of consumption to rise with income tax cuts is proof of the failure of the simple Keynesian consumption function, viz.
C = a + bYd
Where C is real consumption, and Yd is disposable income.
Of course, nobody really takes the simple Keynesian consumption function as a realistic depiction [Update: In his 2011 JEL article, Taylor incorporates a wealth effect.]. As far as I know, all large scale macroeconometric models incorporate a wealth variable.
C = a + bYd + cW
Where W is real wealth.
In this perspective, the decline in consumption, despite the maintenance of disposable income, is no surprise, given the massive decrease in net worth starting in 2007.
Figure 2: Log consumption, Ch.2005$, SAAR (blue, left scale), log household net worth in billions, deflated using PCE deflator (dark red, right scale). NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: BEA, 2011Q3 2nd release, Fed via FRED, NBER, and author’s calculations.
There is some debate whether there is a distinction between the wealth effect and deleveraging. I think there is – the decline in wealth induces lower consumption, but higher income flow uncertainty and tighter liquidity constraints also affect consumption by alternative channels.
One point of interest is to think about the implications of Hall’s permanent income hypothesis. It’s important to recall that the model implies consumption service flows follow a random walk, rather than consumption expenditures. To the extent that service consumption expenditures most closely conform to the flow of services associated with consumption. Here’s a plot of the cumulative change in expenditure categories since 2009Q2.
Figure 3: Change in consumption by category, in billions of Ch.2005$, SAAR, since 2009Q2. Source: BEA, 2011Q3 2nd release, Fed via FRED, and author’s calculations.
The fact that services consumption has rebounded sharply in the last quarter (at 2% annualized) is consistent with a jump in perceived permanent income (or a big decrease in liquidity constraints).
There is a limit to what can be gleaned from time series. That’s why Atif Mian, Kamalesh Rao, and Amir Sufi have appealed to cross section data to identify the impact of deleveraging on consumption. From “Household Balance Sheets, Consumption, and the Economic Slump”:
Until recently, macroeconomic models often abstracted away from variation across households in balance sheet strength. In this paper, we show that weak household balance sheets played a central role in the dramatic collapse in aggregate demand from 2007 to 2009, and the continued weakness in consumption through 2011. We show that the presence of high levels of leverage implies that a large negative shock, like the shock to the housing market, has serious distributional implications. In particular, households with high debt balances experience the sharpest reduction in net worth when a large asset class such as housing loses value.
We also show that net worth declines resulting from high household debt and a collapse in asset values have serious implications for the real economy through their impact on consumption. Highly levered households cut back drastically on their consumption in order to repair their impaired balance sheets. Despite a sharp reduction in interest rates, there is no compensating increase in consumption by the non-levered households. The net result is therefore a large reduction in aggregate demand.
We quantify this effect in this paper through the use of disaggregated, county-level consumption data. Measuring consumption has long been a challenge, especially at a disaggregated level and over long time periods. We overcome these challenges with a novel data set on county and zip code level consumption of new automobiles, and county level consumption of durable, non-durable and grocery purchases. Using prior literature on the relationship between housing supply elasticity and house prices, we instrument the household debt levels with housing supply elasticity of the county.
Our estimates show that the household balance sheet channel is responsible for a very large fraction of the decline in consumption during and after the recession. Further, household balance sheet problems continue to depress consumption through 2011. The distributional implications of large wealth shocks in the presence of leverage cannot be ignored.
The core of the Mian-Rao-Sufi thesis is illustrated by the cross section patter of heightened sensitivity of durables spending to high leverage and big shocks to asset values (primarily in housing). For automobiles, see Figure 3. For a comparison of durables to essential goods (groceries), see Figure 4.
Figure 3 from Mian, Rao and Sufi (2011).
Figure 4 from Mian, Rao and Sufi (2011).
What are the policy implications? Although Mian et al. note that 65% of the job losses in the depth of the recession were due to balance sheet effects, they don’t make any specific policy recommendations. In my view, Torsten Slok’s assessment (“US Consumer Deleveraging: More adjustment needed,” December 2011, not online) provides a road map:
Most household deleveraging indicators are currently at their 2007/2008 levels. If they have to fall to their pre-housing bubble levels (=2003/2004 levels) then we still have several years of household deleveraging ahead of us. But how much more deleveraging to expect will depend importantly on what happens to equity and home prices. In other words, private consumption is not only driven by the liability side of households’ balance sheet but also — and perhaps most importantly — by the asset side.
In other words, working to reduce the indebtedness of highly leveraged households, either through formal restructuring or more rapid inflation, and supporting asset prices, will be necessary. Monetary policy can help support asset prices, but so too will faster economic growth which would accompany greater fiscal stimulus.
This post originally appeared at Econbrowser and is posted with permission.
2 Responses to “Consumption: Distinguishing Between Keynesian and Permanent Income Motivations, and Deleveraging”
One might also note that the notion of "maintenance of disposable income" is rather crude. If bankers have made more money, while 10% of the labor force is thrown out of work, how would that affect aggregate consumption? I think consumption would go down. So I would recommend an additional analysis where disposable income -maintenance or nonmaintenance- is broken down by propensity to spend / consume among different classes of wage earner.
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Source Newsroom: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Newswise — MADISON – Identifying the human impact of rising sea levels is far more complex than just looking at coastal cities on a map.
Rather, estimates that are based on current, static population data can greatly misrepresent the true extent – and the pronounced variability – of the human toll of climate change, say University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.
“Not all places and not all people in those places will be impacted equally,” says Katherine Curtis, an assistant professor of community and environmental sociology at UW-Madison.
In a new online report, which will publish in an upcoming issue of the peer-reviewed journal Population and Environment, Curtis and her colleague Annemarie Schneider examine the impacts of rising oceans as one element of how a changing climate will affect humans.
“We’re linking economic and social vulnerability with environmental vulnerability to better understand which areas and their populations are most vulnerable,” Curtis says.
They used existing climate projections and maps to identify areas at risk of inundation from rising sea levels and storm surges, such as the one that breached New Orleans levees after Hurricane Katrina, then coupled those vulnerability assessments with projections for future populations.
It’s a deceptively challenging process, the authors say. “Time scales for climate models and time scales for human demography are completely different,” explains Schneider, part of the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment at UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. “Future climate scenarios typically span 50 to 100 years or more. That’s unreasonable for demographic projections, which are often conducted on the order of decades.”
The current study works to better align population and climate data in both space and time, allowing the researchers to describe social and demographic dimensions of environmental vulnerability.
The analysis focuses on four regions they identified as highly susceptible to flooding: the tip of the Florida peninsula, coastal South Carolina, the northern New Jersey coastline, and the greater Sacramento region of northern California, areas that span a range of population demographics. (New Orleans was not included as a study site due to major population changes since the 2000 census.)
With help from the UW-Madison Applied Population Laboratory, the researchers used 2000 census data and current patterns of population change to predict future population demographics in those areas. By 2030, they report, more than 19 million people will be affected by rising sea levels just in their four study areas.
And many of those people may be in unexpected places. The case studies clearly reveal the importance of considering people’s patterns of movement.
“No area is completely isolated, and migration networks are one of the ways we think about connections across places. Through these networks, environmental impacts will have a ripple effect,” Curtis says.
In one example, if Florida floods, New York and Los Angeles will feel the effects – in 2000, 14,000 people from three New York counties and another 5,500 from Los Angeles moved to Miami-Dade County, Fla. Under the environmental scenarios in the study, those people would have to remain where they started or move elsewhere, consequently shifting their resources and needs to new sites.
Curtis and Schneider designed their approach with an eye toward helping local authorities identify and best respond to their own needs.
“Adaptation and mitigation strategies are developed and implemented at a local level. Part of the problem with large-scale population and environmental impact estimates is that they mask the local variation that is necessary in order for a local area to effectively respond,” Curtis says.
A population’s demographic, social, and economic profile affects the ways in which people can respond to local disaster, she adds. For example, children or elderly require a different approach to evacuation and resettlement than a largely working-age population, while workers from the agricultural lands of northern California will face different post-displacement labor challenges than those from the industrial corridor of New Jersey.
Even using rough estimates of sea level rise, their analysis makes clear that planning ahead for mitigation and adaptation will be crucial, Schneider says.
“As we anticipate future events, future natural disasters, we’ve learned how dramatic it can be – and there are things that can be done in advance to mitigate the extent of damage in a location,” Curtis says.
The work was supported by the UW-Madison Graduate School and the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station.
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Presbyopia is an eye condition in which your eye slowly loses the ability to quickly focus on objects that are close. It is a disorder that affects everyone people during the natural aging process of their eyes.
When light enters the eye, it passes through the cornea and then through the pupil. The iris, the colored ring in your eye, opens and closes the pupil to adjust the amount of light passing through it. It then passes through the lens. In its healthiest state, the lens changes shape so it can bend the rays further and focus them on the retina at the back of the eye. However, with age, the lenses of your eyes become less flexible and can’t change shape as easily. As a result, the lens is unable to bend the light properly to focus it on the retina.
When you’re young, the lens in your eye is flexible and relatively elastic. It can change its length or shape with the help of a ring of tiny muscles that surround it. The muscles that surround your eye can easily reshape and adjust the lens to accommodate both close and distant images.
With age, your lenses and the muscle fibers surrounding the lenses slowly lose flexibility and stiffen. As a result, your lenses become unable to change shape and constrict to focus on close images. With this hardening of your lenses, your eye gradually loses its ability to focus light directly on to the retina.
The most significant risk factor for presbyopia is age. Most people lose some ability to focus on close objects by age 40. It affects everyone, but some people notice it more than others.
Certain diseases or drugs can cause presbyopia in people younger than age 40. When the symptoms of presbyopia occur earlier than usual, it is called premature presbyopia. If you notice the symptoms of presbyopia at an age earlier than the normal onset, it may be a warning of an underlying medical condition.
You are at a higher risk for premature presbyopia if you have:
- anemia (lack of enough or normal blood cells)
- cardiovascular disease
- diabetes (difficulties metabolizing blood sugar)
- hyperopia (farsightedness, or greater difficulty seeing near objects)
- multiple sclerosis (an autoimmune disease that affects the spine and brain)
- myasthenia gravis (a neuromuscular disorder that affects the nerves and muscles)
- eye trauma or disease
- vascular insufficiency (poor blood flow)
Some prescription and over-the-counter drugs can reduce your eye’s ability to focus on close images. Taking the following drugs can put you at a higher risk for presbyopia:
- antianxiety drugs
Other considerations that may put you at a higher risk for the earlier onset of presbyopia are:
- being female
- having had intraocular (eye) surgery
- eating an unhealthy diet
- having decompression sickness, also called “the bends,” which results from rapid decompression; it typically occurs in scuba divers that surface too quickly
- living closer to the equator (giving you more exposure to ultraviolet radiation and higher temperatures)
The most common symptoms of presbyopia occur at around age 40 for most people. Signs of presbyopia typically involve a gradual deterioration of your ability to read or do work up close.
Common symptoms related to presbyopia are:
- eyestrain or headaches after reading or doing close work
- difficulty reading small print
- fatigue from doing close work
- need for brighter lighting when reading or doing close work
- need to hold reading material at an arm’s distance to properly focus on it
- overall problems seeing and focusing on objects that are close to you
Hyperopia is a condition that has symptoms similar to presbyopia. However, they are two different disorders. In hyperopia, as in presbyopia, distant objects are clear, but closer objects appear blurred.
Hyperopia occurs when the eye is shorter than normal or the cornea is too flat. With these malformations, the light rays focus behind the retina, as in presbyopia. However, hyperopia is a refractive error that is present at birth, while presbyopia occurs with age. It is possible to have hyperopia and then develop presbyopia.
If presbyopia is undiagnosed or uncorrected, your vision will likely deteriorate gradually and become increasingly intrusive to your lifestyle over time. If a correction is not made, you may experience a significant visual disability. You will develop problems maintaining your usual levels of activity and productivity at work and in everyday activities. When tasks such as reading small print become difficult and remain untreated, you are at risk for headaches and eyestrain.
Since everyone develops presbyopia as they age, it is possible to have presbyopia in addition to another type of refractive error. Presbyopia can combine with:
- astigmatism (an imperfection in the curvature of the cornea that causes blurred vision)
- myopia (nearsightedness)
It also is possible to have a different type of refractive error in each eye.
Contact your physician or eye specialist if you have any of the symptoms associated with presbyopia. Even if you are not experiencing symptoms, you should have an eye examination by age 40.
According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, adults who do not have any symptoms or risk factors associated with eye disease should have a baseline examination at age 40. An eye screening can identify early signs of disease and vision changes that can begin, sometimes without any symptoms, at this age. (FAAO, 2007)
Presbyopia can be diagnosed as part of a comprehensive eye examination. A typical exam will include tests to evaluate your eyes for the presence of diseases and vision disorders. It is likely that your pupils will be dilated with special eye drops to allow your physician to examine inside your eye.
No cure exists for presbyopia, but there are several alternatives available to correct your vision. Depending on your condition and lifestyle, you may be able to choose from corrective lenses, contact lenses, or surgery to correct your vision.
Non-prescription reading glasses may be sufficient if you did not need eyeglasses before the onset of presbyopia. These “readers” typically are available at retail stores such as drug stores. They typically work best when reserved for use during reading or close work.
When selecting a pair of over-the-counter reading glasses, try different degrees of magnification. Select the lowest magnification that allows you to read a newspaper comfortably.
You will need prescription lenses for presbyopia if you can’t find an appropriate magnification from the non-prescription offerings. You also will need a prescription if you already have lenses to correct another refractive error. There are several variations of prescription lenses, many of which are described below.
- Prescription reading glasses can be prescribed if you have no other problems other than presbyopia and prefer not to purchase your glasses off the shelf.
- Bifocals have two different types of focus with a noticeable line between them. The upper portion is set for distance while the lower portion is set for reading or close work.
- Progressive lenses are similar to bifocal lenses. However, they do not have a visible line. They offer a more gradual transition between the distant and close portions of the prescription.
- Trifocals have three different points of focus. The portions are set for close work, mid-range, and distance vision. They can be made with or without visible lines.
- Bifocal contact lenses provide the same option as bifocal glasses.
- Monovision contact lenses require that you wear a contact lens set for distance vision in one eye and a different contact lens set for close work in your other eye.
- Modified monovision contact lenses require that you wear a bifocal contact lens in one eye and a contact lens for distance in your other eye. Both eyes are used for distance. Only one eye is used for reading. Your brain adjusts to use the right lens for the distance of the image being processed.
Because your eyes will continue to gradually lose more of their ability to focus on close objects, your prescription will have to be reviewed and changed according to the advice of your eye specialist.
There are several surgical options to treat presbyopia, such as:
- Conductive keroplasty (CK) uses radiofrequency energy to change the curvature of the cornea. While effective, the correction may diminish over time for some people
- Laser-assisted in-situ keratomileusis (LASIK) can be used to create monovision. This adjustment corrects one eye for near vision and the other eye for distance.
- Refractive lens exchange involves the removal of your natural lens. It is replaced with a synthetic lens, called an intraocular lens implant, inside your eye.
In most cases, the vision you’ve lost to presbyopia can be corrected with eyeglasses, contact lenses, or surgery. The gradual decline of the elasticity required to focus your lens on near objects continues until about age 65, when most of the elasticity is gone. However, even at that point, correction to see close objects is possible.
There is no proven technique for the prevention of presbyopia. The gradual decline of the ability to focus on near objects affects everyone. However, you can help protect your vision with these precautions:
- Have regular eye examinations.
- Control chronic health conditions that could contribute toward vision loss, such as diabetes or high blood pressure.
- Wear sunglasses.
- Wear protective eyeglasses when participating in activities that could result in eye injury.
- Eat a healthy diet with foods containing antioxidants, vitamin A, and beta carotene.
- Make sure you are using the right strength of eyeglasses.
- Use good lighting when reading.
Consult with your physician or eye specialist regarding any changes in vision or eye health. Many eye diseases and conditions can benefit from early intervention and treatment.
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The world is in transition from an era of food abundance to one of scarcity. Over the last decade, world grain reserves have fallen by one third. World food prices have more than doubled, triggering a worldwide land rush and ushering in a new geopolitics of food. Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.
This new era is one of rising food prices and spreading hunger. On the demand side of the food equation, population growth, rising affluence, and the conversion of food into fuel for cars are combining to raise consumption by record amounts. On the supply side, extreme soil erosion, growing water shortages, and the earth’s rising temperature are making it more difficult to expand production. Unless we can reverse such trends, food prices will continue to rise and hunger will continue to spread, eventually bringing down our social system. Can we reverse these trends in time? Or is food the weak link in our early twenty-first-century civilization, much as it was in so many of the earlier civilizations whose archeological sites we now study?
This tightening of world food supplies contrasts sharply with the last half of the twentieth century, when the dominant issues in agriculture were overproduction, huge grain surpluses, and access to markets by grain exporters. During that time, the world in effect had two reserves: large carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins) and a large area of cropland idled under U.S. farm programs to avoid overproduction. When the world harvest was good, the United States would idle more land. When the harvest was subpar, it would return land to production. The excess production capacity was used to maintain stability in world grain markets. The large stocks of grain cushioned world crop shortfalls. When India’s monsoon failed in 1965, for example, the United States shipped a fifth of its wheat harvest to India to avert a potentially massive famine. And because of abundant stocks, this had little effect on the world grain price.
When this period of food abundance began, the world had 2.5 billion people. Today it has 7 billion. From 1950 to 2000 there were occasional grain price spikes as a result of weather-induced events, such as a severe drought in Russia or an intense heat wave in the U.S. Midwest. But their effects on price were short-lived. Within a year or so things were back to normal. The combination of abundant stocks and idled cropland made this period one of the most food-secure in world history. But it was not to last. By 1986, steadily rising world demand for grain and unacceptably high budgetary costs led to a phasing out of the U.S. cropland set-aside program.
Today the United States has some land idled in its Conservation Reserve Program, but it targets land that is highly susceptible to erosion. The days of productive land ready to be quickly brought into production when needed are over.
Ever since agriculture began, carryover stocks of grain have been the most basic indicator of food security. The goal of farmers everywhere is to produce enough grain not just to make it to the next harvest but to do so with a comfortable margin. From 1986, when we lost the idled cropland buffer, through 2001, the annual world carryover stocks of grain averaged a comfortable 107 days of consumption.
This safety cushion was not to last either. After 2001, the carryover stocks of grain dropped sharply as world consumption exceeded production. From 2002 through 2011, they averaged only 74 days of consumption, a drop of one third. An unprecedented period of world food security has come to an end. Within two decades, the world had lost both of its safety cushions.
In recent years, world carryover stocks of grain have been only slightly above the 70 days that was considered a desirable minimum during the late twentieth century. Now stock levels must take into account the effect on harvests of higher temperatures, more extensive drought, and more intense heat waves. Although there is no easy way to precisely quantify the harvest effects of any of these climate-related threats, it is clear that any of them can shrink harvests, potentially creating chaos in the world grain market. To mitigate this risk, a stock reserve equal to 110 days of consumption would produce a much safer level of food security.
The world is now living from one year to the next, hoping always to produce enough to cover the growth in demand. Farmers everywhere are making an all-out effort to keep pace with the accelerated growth in demand, but they are having difficulty doing so.
Food shortages undermined earlier civilizations. The Sumerians and Mayans are just two of the many early civilizations that declined apparently because they moved onto an agricultural path that was environmentally unsustainable. For the Sumerians, rising salt levels in the soil as a result of a defect in their otherwise well-engineered irrigation system eventually brought down their food system and thus their civilization. For the Mayans, soil erosion was one of the keys to their downfall, as it was for so many other early civilizations. We, too, are on such a path. While the Sumerians suffered from rising salt levels in the soil, our modern-day agriculture is suffering from rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. And like the Mayans, we too are mismanaging our land and generating record losses of soil from erosion.
While the decline of early civilizations can be traced to one or possibly two environmental trends such as deforestation and soil erosion that undermined their food supply, we are now dealing with several. In addition to some of the most severe soil erosion in human history, we are also facing newer trends such as the depletion of aquifers, the plateauing of grain yields in the more agriculturally advanced countries, and rising temperature.
Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that the United Nations reports that food prices are now double what they were in 2002–04. For most Americans, who spend on average 9 percent of their income on food, this is not a big deal. But for consumers who spend 50–70 percent of their income on food, a doubling of food prices is a serious matter. There is little latitude for them to offset the price rise simply by spending more.
Closely associated with the decline in stocks of grain and the rise in food prices is the spread of hunger. During the closing decades of the last century, the number of hungry people in the world was falling, dropping to a low of 792 million in 1997. After that it began to rise, climbing toward 1 billion. Unfortunately, if we continue with business as usual, the ranks of the hungry will continue to expand.
The bottom line is that it is becoming much more difficult for the world’s farmers to keep up with the world’s rapidly growing demand for grain. World grain stocks were drawn down a decade ago and we have not been able to rebuild them. If we cannot do so, we can expect that with the next poor harvest, food prices will soar, hunger will intensify, and food unrest will spread. We are entering a time of chronic food scarcity, one that is leading to intense competition for control of land and water resources—in short, a new geopolitics of food.
Adapted from Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity by Lester R. Brown (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.). Supporting data, video, and slideshows are available for free download at www.earth-policy.org/books/fpep.
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Q From Bob Fleck: An item circulating online under the title Interesting History claims, “They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot and then once a day it was sold to the tannery. If you had to do this to survive you were ‘piss poor’.” This screams of folk etymology. Can you offer real clarity?
A It certainly might be a folk etymology, except that the piece is in its intention merely a mischievous attempt to deceive its readers. However, as with other tongue-in-cheek suggestions about origins, a grain of truth exists in it. Urine has been widely used in many parts of the world in the preparatory stages of tanning, in particular to help remove the hair from hides before applying tanning agents.
The Romans, for example, collected urine for this purpose systematically and even put a tax on it. The most famous taxer was the emperor Vespasian in the first century AD. The long-gone French public pissoirs were given the name vespasiennes as a direct link to him. Vespasian’s son is said to have objected to the disgusting origin of the tax revenues, to which in legend his father replied pecunia non olet, money doesn’t smell, a tag that from time to time is still employed to argue that money isn’t tainted by its origins.
However, the expression piss-poor is recent and has nothing to do with tanning. The current state of research suggests that it may have been invented during the Second World War, because the first examples in print date from 1946. Though it is still classed as low slang by dictionaries, its mildly unpleasant associations have become blunted by time and familiarity.
The origin is straightforward. Piss began to be attached to other words during the twentieth century to intensify their meaning. Ezra Pound invented piss-rotten in 1940 (distasteful or unpleasant, the first example on record) and we’ve since had piss-easy (very easy), piss-weak (cowardly or pathetic), piss-elegant (affectedly refined, pretentious), piss-awful (very unpleasant) and other forms.
Piss-poor began life in a similar figurative sense for something that's third-rate, incompetent or useless, as it does in this recent example:
Larkin’s letters, wrote Philippe Auclair, writer and broadcaster, were “very funny, very beautiful, and very sad; the grace of an angel, the precision of a geometer, and the short-sighted, intolerant piss-poor idées fixes of a provincial buffoon”.
The Spectator, 27 Nov. 2010.
Americans who know the idiom so poor he didn’t have a pot to piss in, sometimes in the fuller form ... or a window to throw it out of, might wonder if this is the origin. The idiom appears in Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, published in 1936, so it does predate piss-poor. However, it’s a graphic literal reference to poverty; as piss-poor was first used in a figurative sense, it's unlikely to have been influenced by the older idiom. In fact, the literal sense of extreme poverty for piss-poor didn’t come along until a couple of decades later, which also provides another reason, if one were needed, that the story you quote is nonsense.
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Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
The Office of Institutional Research and Assessment (IR&A) is an information source and repository for many of the college’s descriptive metrics. IR&A advances the mission and values of Houghton College through commitment to
- generating, disseminating, and storing reliable evidence and analytical reports
- evaluating the institution through data analysis of local survey and national benchmarking research
- reporting accurately and effectively to various internal and external constituencies
- collaborating with our institutional leaders to support decision-making, program assessment, and overall institutional effectiveness
Two Major Purposes
- Institutional Research focuses on facilitating the systematic collection, maintenance, analysis, and reporting of institutional information, including benchmark comparisons with other institutions, in support of the college’s planning, decision-making, and management processes. Working closely with the Offices of Academic Records. Alumni Relations, and Enrollment Management, we are primarily focused on developing accurate and meaningful information about students, faculty, courses, programs, alumni, and other non-academic operations.
- Assessment encompasses student learning and operational outcomes in tracking our effectiveness in the academic and non-academic units, respectively. Extending from the college mission statement, our outcomes link down through the institution-wide Essential Learning Outcomes, to majors and programs, and individual courses. The IR&A office oversees the online course evaluation program, supports the periodic program reviews, and assists with annual student learning outcomes data collection. The operative questions are: How do we know what students are learning and what can they do upon graduation? How well does an office serve the campus community? In short, how effective are we being and how can we do better?
These functions require communicating effectively the current and historical status and character of the college to all campus constituencies, our governing board, accrediting agencies, alumni, and the public. This office assists others internally and externally with ad hoc requests for information, in addition to over 50 annual surveys and reports for off campus agencies. IR&A takes a lead role in meeting accountability requirements by our regional accrediting agency and supports the processes expected by higher educational standards for improvement.
Using the links at left, we invite you to explore this site. If you have further questions or needs, please contact us.
Daryl H. Stevenson, PhD
Willis Beardsley, EdD
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National push on for greater athlete safety
The Youth Sports Safety Alliance of more than 100 groups released the proposed rules, which call for health providers such as athletic trainers or doctors available for every school, warnings about performance-enhancing substances for athletes and the creation of a national registry to track student athlete deaths. The rules also would require schools to have clean and well maintained facilities, and require students to have a physical exam — including testing for concussions — before their season starts.
While many of the requirements are already standard practice in many places, the document being presented Wednesday to lawmakers on Capitol Hill is the first comprehensive and national plan aimed at protecting students who participate on their schools' teams. The group is urging each state to adopt the "Secondary School Student Athletes' Bill of Rights."
"In most states, the state high school athletic associations control all the health and safety policies for our student athletes," said Douglas Casa, an expert on sudden deaths in sports and a professor at the University of Connecticut who helped write the proposed rules. "That should scare a lot of people in this room. If you had a family member with cancer, would you seek out a coach for advice? Their opinion on health and safety issues is not relevant."
Among the ideas are requirements that all schools regularly update their sports facilities and equipment and tell parents and students about the risks of playing sports. Coaches would be required to know CPR, have plans in case of an emergency and have regular reviews of how to handle injuries.
At least 34 student athletes died last year, the alliance said. Some 39 student athletes died in 2011 and 49 in 2010.
The decline is in part because 43 states have passed laws that require a doctor's note before an athlete returns to play after a concussion injury.
But while the total number of injuries has fallen, the rate of concussions has risen, leading to long-term health risks for these athletes.
"We need to try harder to protect these student athletes," said Christopher Nowinski, the co-director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University's School of Medicine.
"Think about this: You get an injury in the NFL, you have two guys at your side right away," the former Harvard football player and WWE professional wrestler added. "We do not provide a single professional medical person to half of high schools. ... Every time we don't have an athletic trainer, we're leaving 80 percent of concussions on the field. The number one place where we're failing them is we aren't getting them off the field."
More students die during high school than in college or professional competitions. Yet only 42 percent of high schools have access to an athletic trainer and 47 percent of schools even come up short on the federally recommended nurse-to-student ratio.
That comes as some 400,000 concussions occurred in high school sports during the 2008-09 school year. More than 7.5 million students played that year, the National Federation of State High School Associations reported.
"You wouldn't put a football team out on the field if you don't have enough money to buy helmets. Why are you putting a football team on the field if you don't have enough money to hire a fulltime certified athletic trainer?" asked Dawn Comstock, an expert on school sports who teaches at the Colorado School of Public Health.
"How come less than a third of all high schools employ a fulltime certified athletic trainer?" she continued.
More than 7.6 million students played high school sports last year and scores more played on club or private-league teams. The increase in participation comes as childhood obesity rates have declined slightly.
President Barack Obama himself weighed in recently of the safety issue, saying that he'd think twice if he had a son who wanted to play football.
"We are a sports-crazed society," said Kevin Guskiewicz, a professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill who studies sports concussions.
Two of his three sons played football last fall and he recognizes the risks.
"There's not a concussion-proof helmet that's out there," he said. "My colleagues think I'm crazy for letting my kids play football."
Ron Lawrence wrote on Mar 7, 2013 2:42 PM:
We should do everything we can to get products such as helmet sensors to all those responsible for the safety of young athletes everywhere. While this will not prevent concussions from occurring it is definitely a proactive step to monitor the strength of impacts in real time and to notify someone via a smart phone so it can be a tool in a comprehensive concussion management program.
This would go a long way in addressing the concerns of Kevin Guskiewicz that there are no concussion proof helmets. "
- Ice hockey: Shepaug co-op making promising strides
- Woodland DQ helps Naugy win NVL indoor track title
- Summary for NVL indoor track and field championships
- Wolcott Tech wrestling win overturned
- Scoreboard for Jan. 30
- Wolcott Tech wrestlers lose rematch, CSC title
- Nonnewaug gymnastics enjoying another solid season
- Franklin's final high school meet drawing a crowd
- Nonnewaug gymnast Rinaldi claims SWC all-around title
- Chiefs' Brazauskas chooses Boston College
- Palladino: Scheduling woes aplenty
- BL cancels wrestling tourney
- Date for NVL swim showdown up in air
- Palladino: Cheshire skaters bounce back from slow start
- Swift, Ross capture Class S track gold medals
- Naugatuck's Reilly win Class L title in 600
- Palladino: Hearts rule Reardon pool
- Wrestling: Persson, Wilion capture Class S titles
- Palladino: Soothing voice will carry fans through tourneys
- Oxford's Swift places 2nd in 1,000 at State Open meet
- Swimming: Sacred Heart holds off Torrington, 87-83
- Palladino: Oxford athletes are where they belong: in the NVL
- Scoreboard for Feb. 22
- Wolcott cheerleaders tops in the NVL
- Southington wrestler wins 195 title at State Open meet
- Southington gymnasts win Class L
- Scoreboard for Feb. 23
- Palladino: Confusion will rule in new NVL divisions
- Cheshire's Aston headed for Hall of Fame
- Gallino claims NVL diving title
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The core of Apple’s litigation with Samsung stems from a very real problem: Samsung is getting stronger at Apple’s expense. Apple has resorted to litigation to offset this problem. If Samsung manages to take a bite of Apple, it wouldn’t be the first victim. The Korean company pretty much did the exact same thing to Sony in the TV market. While I could argue most of Sony’s problems originated in Sony, Samsung is clearly making these problems worse.
In the long term, the issue of copying can kill an industry, particularly with a company like Apple that builds markets. On the other hand, Apple needs to realize very quickly that it will need to up its game to overcome the issue, not just lawyer up. Samsung and others have learned to game the system. If Apple doesn’t adjust for that, it will end in deep, Sony-level trouble.
Apple was built on theft
Both Apple and Microsoft essentially built their businesses on technologies stolen from Xerox’s PARC. Apple took the ideas for the mouse and graphical user interface from Xerox, and Microsoft in turn took them from Apple. But this was almost a case of stealing someone’s garbage; Xerox’s PARC, like a lot of labs, didn’t have a clue what to do with much of what was developed. The company thought GUIs and mice were stupid and useless. You could also argue that, had Apple licensed these technologies rather than stealing them, it might have received exclusive rights and been able to block Windows in court. Of course, it’s hard to tell. Alternately, offering to license the technologies might have shown Xerox the value, and it might have charged Apple more than the fledgling company could afford. Or, it may have just licensed the technology to Microsoft earlier, which would have likely caused Apple to fail in the 1980s.
So Apple was built on theft, but it still performed the hard work to build the market. In other words, Apple’s investment to build PCs was much higher than Xerox’s.
Samsung is a better thief
Samsung doesn’t build markets. It enters after a market is built, then games it to take a leadership position. While this hasn’t worked with PCs (that segment is just too diverse now), it pulled it off with TVs, taking the market from Sony. (You could also argue Sony did the same thing to RCA.) Samsung also appears to have done it with smartphones like the iPhone, and it is trying to do it with tablets.
If you look at a Galaxy 10 tablet and hold it against an iPad, I think you will see that Samsung effectively made a better-looking iPad. A friend of mine bought one the other day and commented, “I can’t figure out how to get the damn thing to work.” While the appearance of the two products is similar – Samsung’s may even be better looking — the user experience with the Galaxy 10 is far worse. That means the consumer is getting screwed.
Now, you could blame this on Google, which clearly made a poor copy of iOS. But this is very different than what Apple initially did when it ripped off Xerox. Apple built the market with a ton of money and hard work. Samsung is attempting to steal existing value with an inferior product.
This is how Asian companies originally moved into automotive and consumer-electronics markets. They initially build good-looking cheap crap, and over time, improved quality so much so that Lexus is now the top-rated car in the US. Hyundai is trending to eventually match Lexus. Sony eventually displaced RCA and GE as top consumer technology providers, and in both cases accepted the responsibility to build markets with their leadership.
The Samsung problem
Samsung still appears to be slip streaming on the work of others. The company should be driving the TV market, but its leadership in the segment appears to have helped stall progress instead. Samsung doesn’t know how to drive markets after it conquers them, which isn’t great for consumers. If it significantly beats everyone else in smartphones and tablets, we would likely see those markets stagnate as well. That would be bad for everyone, including Samsung.
In addition, Samsung still seems to want to game the market rather than put in good value. It could do what Amazon did and create a massively improved user experience on their products to match or even exceed Apple’s, but that would cost money. It would rather let Apple do the work. To Samsung, “customer satisfaction” apparently just means assuring that no one gets vocal enough to drive away new customers.
Ultimately, Samsung beating Apple would be bad for anyone that loves high-quality products. For whatever reason, Samsung is still a knockoff company across the board. Its appliances look good, but typically have low customer satisfaction scores, and are very difficult to get repaired. Its TVs are good and inexpensive, but you look elsewhere for technical leadership. Its tablets and smartphones are attractive, but lag badly on user experience.
Why you should care
If Samsung wins yet another market, the products in it will drift into an uninteresting standstill. Love or hate Apple, the company fields a quality product, with arguably the best customer experience on the planet. Efforts like Amazon’s Kindle and even Google’s Nexus 7 at least try to match both build quality and experience quality. Microsoft is trying to go one step further with its Surface Tablets, and actually improve on the user experience. We can applaud all efforts, because they will drive the industry to improve and we’ll get better stuff at lower prices over time. Samsung represents a path where technology will stagnate and cost will rule the day. The result may still be lower prices, but they’ll suck the fun out of the market. I just don’t see how you could root for that.
The most recent legal battle illustrate that Apple is not set up well to defend against a company like Samsung, any more than GM was set up to defend against Toyota, or Sony to defend against Samsung. But it’s in all our interests for Apple continues to up its game and improve – and in its best interest too.
Litigation is a fall-back defense against a company like Samsung. The fact that Apple has to use it means it isn’t moving fast enough, and Samsung is able to get close. Samsung will eventually either buy RIM or do something else that removes litigation as an Apple weapon – they are good at gaming systems after all. If Apple isn’t moving faster by then, we’re all screwed.
Guest contributor Rob Enderle is the founder and principal analyst for the Enderle Group, and one of the most frequently quoted tech pundits in the world. Opinion pieces denote the opinions of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of Digital Trends.
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Today, PG&E, the largest utility company in California, released a statement about incentives for natural gas efficiency projects. Here’s our favorite sentence, which we will then translate to simple English:
“The recently approved State of California 2011-2012 Fiscal Year Budget (SB87) includes a provision that authorizes the transfer of funds from the Gas Public Purpose Program (PPP) Fund to the State General Fund. This provision was opposed by PG&E and significantly limits PG&E’s ability to pay gas energy-efficiency incentives and rebates.”
In English: California is out of money, so instead of raising taxes or cutting services, state legislators have chosen to rob the State’s energy efficiency programs. PG&E, and every other Investor Owned Utility (IOU) in California, will no longer be financially supporting gas efficiency programs.
In California (and New York, and many other States), everyone who pays a gas bill pays a small extra charge based on how much energy they use. This charge is collected by the utility and then used to run energy efficiency programs. The programs are heavily scrutinized and must pass what is called a Total Resource Cost test, or TRC. The TRC determines whether the program saves more money than it costs. This is determined very, very carefully and watched by many smart people and consumer protection groups.
California State and Utility programs, despite their flaws, have great TRC scores and save consumers much more money than they cost. This is driven by good old-fashioned supply and demand. By running an efficiency program and reducing demand for gas or electricity, prices fall. In California, for every dollar a consumer pays towards the gas efficiency program, their utility bill is lowered by two dollars and ten cents due to decreased gas prices. The people who actually make changes to their buildings are rewarded with rebates, and everyone else profits too. In short, the program is a fantastic use of money. It saves consumers twice as much money as they spend, and people who do good are rewarded for it with extra cash.
Until now. Now, every dollar that goes to that program will be sent to the General Fund. The California General Fund provides roads, firefighters, funding for the California State University Program, and pays the salaries of every State employee. Robbing utility programs, however, is a strange and obfuscating way to support the General Fund. Surely we can do better.
If you want to support better legislative policy, please contact the California Public Utilities Commission and ask them to reinstate the gas energy efficiency programs through a new ruling. You can help the economy and the environment at the same time.
The California PUC (the Public Utility Commission, which is responsible for regulating all utilities in the States) just put forward two proposals to help alleviate the situation. One would allow utilities to use unspent past gas efficiency money and program evaluation, measurement, and verification to continue funding the gas efficiency programs. This means instead of returning the money that wasn’t spent in previous years back to rate payers – people who pay utility bills like you, me, and your office building – the utilities can use those funds to fund this year’s efficiency programs. This is a good use of the money because every dollar spent on these efficiency programs saves rate payers two dollars. The first proposal would fill in about half of the money the Legislature raided.
The second proposal would also allow the utilities to use unspent electric efficiency money to fill in the gap, bringing us yet closer to a full reconciliation.
Please vote for the second option, which you can reference by stating you’d like to “support Commissioner Mark L. Ferron’s APD” before September 27th!
The California PUC just ruled to allow the utilities to use unspent efficiency money from previous years to fill in the hole in the gas efficiency funding; the utility natural gas efficiency programs are officially back in action. This does not change or reverse the legislature’s actions in raiding efficiency funds for the California General Fund, but it does provide a stopgap measure that enables California to continue leading the way in natural gas energy efficiency. Thank you CPUC!
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A lawmaker in New Mexico wants to make it mandatory for genetically modified foods to be properly labeled in supermarkets across the state. Given the last attempt, though, it’s likely to be an uphill battle.
State Senator Peter Wirth (D-Santa Fe) has proposed an amendment that won’t be brought into debate until next year, but he hopes it will be approved so shoppers can be sure of what they’re putting into their bodies. If Sen. Wirth’s amendment is approved, it will make it mandatory that genetically engineered food and items containing GMOs are adequately labeled.
“The premise of this amendment is simple – New Mexicans deserve the right to know what’s in the food they are eating and feeding to their families,” Wirth says of his proposal. “Labeling GE foods and feed will empower consumers with basic information to help them decide for themselves the types of food they want to buy.”
While Wirth’s legislation seems logical enough to be approved, precedent actually puts his amendment at risk. Just weeks earlier, residents of California shot down a bill that would have brought mandatory GMO labeling to the West Coast. In that instance, Proposition 37 was expected to be approved by voters, but on Election Day it was rejected by a margin of 53 to 47 percent. Proponents say the last-minute defeat was the result of a multi-million dollar campaign against the item that was waged by the biggest GMO companies in the country.
“Genetically engineered foods found on market shelves have most commonly been altered in a lab to either be resistant to being sprayed by large amounts of toxic herbicides, or to produce, internally, their own insecticide,” Mark Kastel of The Cornucopia Institute said in a statement last month. “Corporations that produce both the genetically engineered crops and their designer pesticides, in concert with the multi-billion-dollar food manufacturers that use these ingredients, fought this measure tooth and nail, throwing $46 million at the effort that would have required food manufacturers to include informational labeling on GMO content on their packaging,”
In New Mexico, Sen. Wirth is already seeing an influx of support. If biotech giants Monsanto and Dow dump millions into efforts to discredit his amendment though, there could be some serious challenges. Meanwhile, he’s making headway in terms of getting people to talk about his plan.
“Giving foods with GE ingredients a label will only improve and expand independent health and scientific knowledge about genetic engineering,” Food & Water Watch’s New Mexico Organizer Eleanor Bravo says of his amendment. “We need the research of genetic engineering to be expanded beyond the companies who own the seeds and stand to profit and labeling will allow this to happen.”
Shortly before the defeat of Prop 37 in California, Lundberg Family Farms CEO Grant Lundberg said, "No matter what happens, we've raised awareness of a very important issue.”
Under Sen. Wirth’s proposal, companies that don’t properly label GMO items will be subject to penalties under current rules pertaining to “misbranding.”
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Does this test have other names?
Vaccine responsiveness test
What is this test?
This test looks for tetanus antibody in your blood.
Tetanus is a serious disease caused by the toxin from Clostridium tetani bacteria. The toxin makes its way into the nervous system and causes muscle spasms and rigid muscles.
If you have been vaccinated for tetanus in the past, this test should show that you have enough antibodies against the disease. If your levels are too low, you will be revaccinated, and the test will be repeated after at least a month.
If you've never received a tetanus vaccination or you've been exposed to tetanus, you'll get vaccinated and return at later to have your tetanus antibody levels checked.
Why do I need this test?
You may need this test to make sure your immune system can protect you against tetanus or to see if you have a problem that prevents your immune system from working properly. This test can help diagnose:
Severe combined immunodeficiency, or SCID
Common variable immunodeficiency, or CVID
You may also have this test if you get unusual infections, need antibiotics more frequently than usual, or have recurrent infections in your sinuses, ears, or digestive tract.
What other tests might I have along with this test?
Your doctor may also order tests to check your immune system's response to diphtheria vaccination or Streptococcus pneumoniae vaccination.
What do my test results mean?
Many things may affect your lab test results. These include the method each lab uses to do the test. Even if your test results are different from the normal value, you may not have a problem. To learn what the results mean for you, talk with your health care provider.
Results are given in international units per milliliter (IU/mL). Normal results are usually greater than 0.1 IU/mL. If the test shows your levels are at least that high, it means your immune system had a normal response to the tetanus vaccination.
How is this test done?
The test requires a blood sample, which is drawn through a needle from a vein in your arm.
Does this test pose any risks?
Taking a blood sample with a needle carries risks that include bleeding, infection, bruising, or feeling dizzy. When the needle pricks your arm, you may feel a slight stinging sensation or pain. Afterward, the site may be slightly sore.
Tetanus vaccinations, which are combined with vaccinations against diphtheria and sometimes pertussis, may cause these side effects:
What might affect my test results?
Receiving gammaglobulin treatment in the eight months before the test or immune globulin in the five months before the test will affect your results.
Having cancer, receiving chemotherapy, or taking certain medications that suppress the immune system can also affect your results.
How do I get ready for this test?
Tell your health care provider if you have cancer, are taking immune-suppressing medication, or have received gammaglobulin or immune globulin in recent months. In addition, be sure your doctor knows about all other medicines, herbs, vitamins, and supplements you are taking. This includes medicines that don't need a prescription and any illicit drugs you may use.
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Shrink and Be Merry
Originally published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel April 3, 2010
KNOW YOUR RECYCLING SYMBOLS?
Keep your reading glasses on and let’s take a trip to your refrigerator. Open it up and grab the first plastic container you see. Hold it up in the air and squint at the bottom until you can make out the tiny number inside the triangle. Check out a few more containers and you’ll find that there are a whole lot of #1s (soda, juice, salad dressing) and #5s (yogurt, syrup, ketchup), and an occasional #2 (the milk jug) or #7 (“other” like Tupperware). You probably won’t see too many #3s (PVC pipe, outdoor furniture, vinyl siding) or #4s (plastic bags). But there might be a #6 in there, holding a dozen eggs or those leftovers you couldn’t finish at the restaurant the night before.
Polystyrene (also known as #6 PS) comes in a white, foam variety (packing peanuts, Styrofoam cups, meat trays), but also in a clear, rigid form, most commonly used by the food-service industry for to-go clam-shells and disposable drinking cups. Because the foam variety is full of air and the more solid variety is molded into throwaway containers, it’s very lightweight and easily carried away by wind and water currents. For this reason, and because it’s so commonly used away from home, #6 is an abundant form of trash accumulating across the American landscape.
HOW IS POLYSTYRENE UNIQUE?
Stay with me here, as I attempt to explain why polystyrene, unlike many other plastics, is an amazing material for crafts (the clear kind, NOT the foam variety). All the plastics we create from petroleum are formed from chains of polymers linked together in a variety of ways. A thermoplastic is a polymer that turns to a liquid when heated and solidifies to a very glassy state when cooled. Thermoplastic polymers differ from thermosetting polymers (Bakelite) as they can be re-melted and remolded. Polystyrene is a unique thermoplastic, in that, when heated, its chains of polymers will stay in the same conformation as they melt and solidify. So, you don’t just end up with a plastic blob after heating, but a shrunken replica of your original shape. A rectangle will still be a rectangle—it’ll just be smaller and thicker.
FUN FOR KIDS AND ADULTS
Shrinking #6 plastic for crafts (again, not the foam variety) is a really cool thing to watch. As it heats up, a flat piece will roll up, twist this way and that, and finally, resume its original flat formation. What starts out as a flimsy piece of brittle plastic is magically transformed into a shiny, glass-like trinket. Colors can also be added in a number of ways, and become quite concentrated after shrinking.
WHAT YOU NEED
To cut the plastic: Scissors and hole punch
To decorate the plastic: Sharpies, stamp pad ink, acrylic paints, colored pencils, fine-grit sandpaper
To shrink the plastic: Oven and non-corrugated cardboard
To avoid breathing any fumes created in the heating process: Use a toaster oven and do your heating outdoors on a patio table.
To see what’s possible: Go to www.etsy.com/ and search for “shrink plastic jewelry” to see what artists are creating with shrink plastic.
WHAT YOU DO
Start with a clear, clean, flat piece of #6 plastic. Cut into any shape you want. Amount of shrinkage will vary, but count on a 3-inch piece shrinking to about a 1 ¼-inch piece, or to 45% of its original size. Use a hole punch (for stringing as jewelry), decorative scissors or punches as desired.
Color the plastic piece with rubber-stamp designs (heat set and permanent pigment inks hold best on the slippery surface) or Sharpies. To get color pencils, acrylic paints or other inks to adhere better, sand one side of the plastic with fine-grit sandpaper.
Preheat the oven to 300-350 degrees. Put the plastic on a piece of non-corrugated cardboard in the oven. Watch through the oven door and remove the piece (with a potholder) on its cardboard tray once it is done shrinking and is again flat.
A MILLION VARIATIONS
There are a whole lot of ways to vary this basic technique. Here are a few:
To make a bead, roll up a long strip of decorated shrink plastic on a thin, metal knitting needle, wooden dowel or skewer, securing it in place with a twist tie. Using a heat gun (found in craft stores for about $15), heat the rolled plastic on a tile until it shrinks completely. To add texture, wrap the hot beat with an unmounted rubber stamp and press.
To add texture to a flat piece of plastic, layer two or three pieces together and cover top and bottom with a Teflon ironing sheet (found in notions section of fabric store). Iron the plastic with a medium hot iron until it shrinks, waves and then flattens. Remove the top Teflon sheet and immediately press a rubber stamp into the hot plastic.
To make a ring, heat a strip of plastic about 7½-inches long by ¾-inch wide. Use a paper cutter for straight cuts, and round the corners off with scissors. Decorate the plastic. Find an object about the diameter of your finger to mold the ring around, such as the handle of a wooden spoon, market pen, or lip balm tube. Preheat the oven and heat the strip on non-corrugated cardboard until shrunk and flattened. Wearing leather gloves or mittens, take the cardboard tray out of the oven and quickly shape the plastic around your mold. If the plastic hardens before it is correctly shaped, reheat it in the oven.
Shrink plastic is also sold under a variety of brand names, with different opacities, colors and finishes. It also comes in an ink-jet printer variety. Some has a frosted (sanded) finish so that you can decorate your pieces with colored pencils, chalk, fingernail polish, felt tip pens, make up, spray paint, pastels, and other inks. Chalks and pencils or any water-soluble colorant will need to be sealed with varnish or lacquer after baking.
Other plastics that can be heated for amazing effects are Tyvek (ironed between Teflon ironing sheets) and sheet-protectors (beads can be made with yarns, fabric, or thin paper rolled up inside before ironing between Teflon sheets). A great book featuring these plastic crafts and more is Creative Embellishments for Paper, Jewelry, Fabric, and More by Sherrill Kahn.
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Beacon of Hope Scholarship Fund
The Scholarship Fund is called “Beacon of Hope” in order to reflect the boundless hope that Catholic Schools afford to children throughout the Diocese of Albany. Moreover, the name reflects the hope that generous donors guarantee to future generations by giving to the fund.
What is Planned Giving?
Planned Giving is not just for the wealthy! This is a big misconception as there are many vehicles to make a difference through planned giving. Planned giving is finding ways to make charitable gifts now or after your lifetime while enjoying financial benefits for yourself. Although they require some planning and, often, help from professional advisors, planned gifts are easy to make. These gifts come to fruition upon your death, leaving your cash and assets open to you for use during your lifetime.
There are many giving options to choose from to help ensure a solid future for our schools. The Catholic Schools Office offers many opportunities to help you support the mission of education.
The most common planned gift is a bequest in your will or living trust. Other planned gifts include: retirement plan assets, life insurance policies, Charitable Gift Annuities, Charitable Remainder Trusts, an endowment fund, a remainder trust in your home, Charitable Lead Trust.
Please contact Tish La Torre at email@example.com for more information.
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| 0.950702
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‘Strangers are from Zeus’: Homeric Xenia at the Courts of Proteus and Croesus
This chapter discusses Herodotus' use of the Homeric concept of xenia in the Histories. It argues that the appearance of xenia in key passages reflects the importance of Homeric epic and of the Greek legendary and mythic tradition for Herodotus' historiography. Herodotus foregrounds xenia in two logoi: Croesus' acceptance of Adrastus as a xenos (I.35–45) and Proteus' rebuke of Paris for wronging Menelaus (II.114–117). These logoi culminate in the death of Croesus' son Atys and in Herodotus' statement of his own opinion about the reason for Troy's destruction. The terminology of xenia establishes a Homeric tone that highlights these passages' significance for one of the overarching themes of the Histories: from the earliest encounters of Greeks and Asians onward, the gods made it clear that great transgressions by Eastern rulers would be punished. Paris in the remote past and Croesus at the cusp of humanly verifiable memory are guilty of the same transgression as was Xerxes within living memory; they overstep their bounds and claim more than is their right. Herodotus' inclusion of recognizably Homeric xenia in these logoi underscores the inevitability of divinely-sanctioned nemesis against such transgressions.
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
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- It is based on sound understanding of reproductive biology,
- It follows a precise protocol for correct use, and
- It has been tested in an appropriately designed study to assess efficacy under various conditions.
CycleBeads and the Standard Days Method meet all of these criteria having been developed through extensive analysis of reproductive physiology, requiring a specific protocol for use, and having been tested in well designed studies in a variety of conditions. Furthermore, this natural family planning method has been integrated into numerous family planning guidelines around the world, included in the World Health Organization's family planning guidance documents, and is included in most modern reference books for family planning health professionals.
For more information on how this method meets these criteria or about how it has been incorporated into national and international health guidelines, read the full report from IRH.
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Native News Network Staff in Native Briefs. Discussion »
KLAMATH FALLS, OREGON When an internship comes to a close, the intern has feelings of both accomplishment and excitement that come from knowing the job they set out to do was done to the best of their ability. Gaining real-world experience in today's economic climate is an opportunity that can make a huge difference between just getting a job or actually beginning a career.
Rachel Mitchell, Klamath, working with Fish Biologists Darin Taylor
This is what pushed Rachel Mitchell to work for the Bureau of Reclamation this past summer as an intern for the Klamath Basin Area Office through the Department of the Interior's Klamath Basin Tribal Youth Initiative. The Initiative provides employment opportunities for tribal youth through mentoring and internship programs that are created to support the career aspirations of young American Indians like Rachel.
During summer, Rachel, a tribal member of the Klamath Tribes, took every opportunity offered to her to learn Klamath Basin Area Office's ins and outs, and she learned something new every day. Rachel started her internship at Klamath Basin Area Office's water quality lab. For several weeks, she learned how to work the equipment, input data, collect water quality parameters in the field, analyze data that she helped gather, and understand what the readings meant. The majority of her internship was spent working with Klamath Basin Area Office's Fisheries Resources Branch where the study of endangered sucker fish was the primary focus. Rachel spent several late-night shifts studying juvenile suckers captured at the Klamath Falls' A-Canal fish evaluation station, and she spent many hot summer days catching and tagging Lost River and short nose suckers at Clear Lake.
During her final weeks at Reclamation, Rachel worked outdoors with Darin Taylor, one of Reclamation's Fish Biologists, experiencing the joy of being a Lost River Short nose sucker wrangler, PIT tag coder and Trammel-netting expert.
For Rachel, catching and tagging these fish means more than just another day at the lake. For her it continues her tribe's connection to the Lost River suckers and short nose suckers, known as c'waam and qapdo to the Klamath Tribes. These fish were a primary food source for the Klamath and Modoc Indians throughout their history. Although they are no longer actively being fished due to a severe decline in population, each spring the Tribes hold a "Return of C'waam Ceremony" as they have for hundreds of years. The ceremony preserves the tradition of thanking the fish for their return to the Indian people and welcoming them back into the rivers.
Matching up young professionals with experienced Reclamation personnel is exactly what Klamath Basin Area Office's Native American Coordinator, Charles Korson, had in mind when Rachel was selected from the Klamath Tribes College Intern Program through a grant provided by the Mid-Pacific Region's Native American Affairs Program:
“Rachel was the type of student that we were looking for, as she fully immersed herself into this rotational position working successfully with Klamath Basin Area Office's water quality and fisheries field crews,”
“We had such a great experience that we'll do whatever we can to repeat the college intern employment opportunity next summer,”
As Rachel punched in her last time card, she was fully aware of all the great things she is taking away from this experience, and they include more than just her newly learned skills.
“Working for Reclamation this summer gave me aspiration to continue to learn more about the fish and the science we use to understand them, knowing that education will carry on the cultural and spiritual connection my tribe shares with the fish,”
Now that Rachel has completed her internship at Reclamation, she heads back to school to begin her last year at Central Oregon Community College, where she is studying Forestry Technology. Her plans for next summer include another internship, and she would like to stay within the field of natural resources; her hopes are high that Reclamation will be able to bring her back for another summer.
posted October 9, 2012 8:20 am edt
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The city launched a three year programme ‘Streets for People’ (2007-2009) that will work towards making the city totally accessible, promoting new alternative fuels for public transport vehicles and reallocating road space to non-motorised traffic. The Town Councillor of the city received the Award from the Commissioner in charge of the Environment, Mr. Stavros Dimas, who thanked Helena Hecimovic for its commitment and work.
The City of Koprivnica has been active in EMW since 2002. This year again, the city showed its great commitment to achieving sustainable mobility by launching a three year programme ‘Streets for People’ (2007-2009) that aims to make the city 100% accessible for all, to reallocate 1.5 km of roads in the centre to non-motorised traffic and to promote walking and public transport running on bio-diesel. The city also aims to engage the national and regional networks into more ambitious projects towards sustainable urban traffic.
The jury members were impressed by the comprehensive action plan developed by the city, including activities on all key transport themes: bicycle, responsible car use, public transport, green spaces and mobility and health. The bicycle trainings, the road safety promotion and the educational activities were attended by many citizens with an active participation of youngsters who took out the challenge to relay the information received to their parents and to influence their travel behaviours.
The city of Koprivnica achieved a number of its sustainable public traffic aims thanks to the six editions of EMW: run a traffic sustainability programme called ‘Town on the Move’, build 64 km of cycle tracks as well as 84.5 km of long cycle tourist tracks, enlarge green spaces by 20%, involve several dozens of partners in the year-long promotion of cycling and walking. Thanks to its long-term efforts, cycling has become a brand in the city. EMW helped the city in showcasing its achievements in sustainable mobility in its wider international region and Koprivnica has become an example for its neighbouring cities that are now following the same path.
The European Mobility Week started in 2002 and aims at encouraging citizens to change their travel behaviour and shift to more sustainable modes of transport. From 16 to 22 September, local authorities all over Europe and beyond are organising activities and launching permanent measures which will continue to exist after the Week is over. The European Mobility Week, therefore, provides a unique opportunity to test and launch new sustainable transport measures that become permanent after the Week has ended. This ensures long-term effects of the campaign, going beyond the duration of the Week.
Year after year, step-by-step, sustainable mobility will secure its place in cities and towns. This year, the local authorities participating in the initiative are strongly encouraged to reallocate some road space to non-motorised traffic as well as to create and enlarge social spaces where people can meet, shop, do sports and enjoy other outdoor activities.
European Mobility Week (EMW) is an initiative coordinated by the three European city networks, Eurocities, Energie-Cités and Climate Alliance, with the support of the European Commission (DG Environment).
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Northern Pintail Anas acuta
Description ADULT MALE Has chocolate brown head and nape, with white breast extending as stripe up side of head. Plumage is otherwise gray and finely marked, but note cream and black vent, and long, pointed tail, often held at an angle. Eclipse male resembles adult female, but retains pattern and colors on wings. ADULT FEMALE Has mottled buffish brown plumage. JUVENILE Similar to adult female, but complex feather markings are less well developed.
Dimensions Length: Male, 25-29" (64-74 cm); female, 21-23" (53-58 cm)
Habitat Several million occur in North America; numbers are declining due to changes in agricultural land use during breeding season. Favors marshy edge habitat and adjacent farmland for nesting. In winter, on arable fields, marshes, and estuaries.
Observation Tips Easiest to observe in winter. Often upends in water to feed, revealing striking vent colors and elongated tail.
Range Great Lakes, Alaska, Western Canada, Florida, Mid-Atlantic, Southwest, Southeast, Eastern Canada, New England, California, Rocky Mountains, Texas, Northwest, Plains
Voice Male utters a whistling call; female's call is grating and harsh.
Discussion An elegant duck. Feeds on aquatic plants by dabbling and upending; also feeds on land. Male is unmistakable; even rather drab female has distinctive, elongated appearance with pointed rear end. Unobtrusive during breeding season, but feeds in the open areas in flocks at other times. Looks long-winged in flight; male's gray wings and green speculum (with white trailing edge) are striking; female's white trailing edge on inner wing is obvious. Sexes are dissimilar in other respects.
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Highly innovative new drugs that can prevent scarring in the eye after glaucoma surgery have been discovered by a London-based team of scientists, who report today in the journal Nature Biotechnology.* By targeting more than one aspect of the scarring process at the same time, the team has been able to use the drugs safely and successfully in animal models of glaucoma surgery. The group includes scientists and clinicians from Imperial College London at Hammersmith Hospital, the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London, Moorfields Eye Hospital, and The School of Pharmacy, University of London.
Glaucoma is the most important cause of irreversible blindness worldwide, affecting more than half a million people in the UK alone. It is caused by increased fluid pressure within the eye compressing the nerves at the back of the eye. This pressure then causes irreversible damage to the optic nerve at the back of the eye. Patients require surgery to create a new channel in the eye to drain away the excess fluid and reduce the pressure. However, the channel can become blocked because of scarring and this leads to the failure of the operation and blindness.
The new drugs are sugar-like molecules designed and engineered to mimic the body's own immune defence mechanisms. "Our approach is a departure from traditional drug design and we have been astonished by the dramatic results," said Professor Sunil Shaunak of Imperial College London at Hammersmith Hospital, who leads this multidisciplinary effort. "The increase in the success rate of glaucoma surgery from 30% to 80% in animals treated with this drug has encouraged us to start planning clinical trials in humans."
Source: Eurekalert & othersLast reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Feb 2009
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
-- Carl Jung
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Recently, I read a blog post by a young Nepalese delegate that attended the World Bank’s Annual Meetings in Washington and thought (at the time) that he summarized an issue which was at the heart of a majority (if not all) youth in South Asia. In his own words, he says “Let’s be honest. As a youth growing up in Nepal, it is sometimes very hard to get people – and by people I mean seniors in decision-making positions - to take you seriously. It is even more difficult to get them to listen to your ideas or acknowledge you as an important demographic, capable of more than burning tires and picketing politicians”. It made me wonder if this was indeed the case with youth in Sri Lanka.
As far as I know, youth in this country are by no means a ‘push over’. For example, since the defeat of terrorism in May 2009, the youth of this country has stepped up in a noticeable way to try and make a ‘new beginning’. A ‘youth open house’ held at the World Bank premises on 01 September saw the dynamism of a handful of such youth groups engaged in activities that ranged from peace and reconciliation to the promotion of ICT development to urban planning. The fact remains that the youth of this nation are taking matters to their own hands and it’s high time that the Government as well as the development partners ‘STOP’ and ‘LISTEN’ to what the youth of Sri Lanka has to offer!!
During a lunch meeting with a group of youth, the visiting World Bank Vice President for South Asia Region said "Young people are the key players in shifting politics". During this discussion, it was also noted that ‘youth’ is not permanent; alluding to the fact that today’s youth would eventually have to move on. Therefore, to address youth issues there is a need to institutionalize mechanisms and plans of action.
To this end, the Government of Sri Lanka is attempting to make amends. The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Skills Development is making plans to draw up a National Youth Policy. Sri Lanka is one of those few countries that do not have a youth policy in place within its national policy framework and this effort is seen as an attempt to fill that space. The Ministry has outsourced the task of developing the policy to a competent third party and, as a result, the Department of Social Studies at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) is driving the process. This, by now, has become common knowledge. However, contrary to popular belief, the proposal for the development of the National Youth Policy boasts of extensive consultations, including public submissions for the drafting of the policy and conducting key informant interviews with members of the civil society, as well as carrying out public consultations on the draft policy document, prior to finalization.
The World Bank, on its part, is keen to mainstream youth in their projects and programs and, to that end, will look at the Bank’s project activities and take necessary actions to include youth as stakeholders in the development process, rather than mere beneficiaries of projects supported by the World Bank.
Something we (the ‘new’ generation) often complain about is the lack of coordination among the various actors to bring about a significant change. I believe it’s time that we practice what we preach. As a result, another initiative that is gaining momentum is the setting up of a ‘common space’ for sharing the dynamic efforts of youth groups across the country. Does it make sense to share and coordinate activities across youth groups? Can we use this space to disseminate vital information pertaining to youth? Can we use this space as a mechanism for consensus building? These are some immediate questions that spring to mind but will no doubt look forward to hearing what YOU(th) have to say. I am simply ‘youthful’.
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Any player may set forth a motion to take some official action. Official actions include, but are not limited to, amendment of or additions of rules.
All official motions must be in bold and italics and begin with "I make a motion to..." Additionally, official motions must end with "For the purposes of voting, this motion shall be referred to as [username]'s motion to...", followed by a summary of the motion's actions, with "[username]" replaced by the motion-maker's username. For example, one could say "I make a motion to promote ahammel to the cerimonial position of Grand High Poobah of the Nomic. For the purposes of voting, this motion shall be referred to as ahammel's motion to grant himself a meaningless title."
To vote in favor of or against a motion, one must declare one's vote by saying "I cast my vote [in favor of/against] [motion-maker]'s motion to [motion summary]." For example, one could say "I cast my vote in favor of ahammel's motion to grant himself a meaningless title.".
If at any point there are three votes from three different players in favor of a motion, the motion passes and is acted upon. If at any point there are three votes from three different players against a motion, the motion fails. If the motion passes, and requires that the rules be amended, the motion-maker must do this as soon as possible, and post the revised ruleset. If the motion-maker fails to do this within 48 hours of the motion's passage, the motion's state is changed, and it fails.
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ANCHORAGE (AP) The main offices for the Army's Cold Regions Test Center would be returned to Fort Greely in Alaska's Interior under a plan approved Wednesday by a commission reviewing proposed base closings and realignments.
The move is fairly minor, involving relocating five workers from Fort Wainwright, located about 100 miles northwest of Fort Greely, which is far closer to the actual testing grounds.
''It's a positive,'' said Lt. Col. George Bond, the center's commander. ''The headquarters needs to be located with the rest of the center. It would cut down on commutes and make for a more efficient center and work situation.''
Established in 1949 as the Arctic Test Branch, the center has access to more than 670,000 acres of ranges and controlled airspace to test equipment and operations for soldiers working in harsh conditions, officials said.
Peninsula Clarion ©2013. All Rights Reserved.
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Is Gaddafi’s U.N. speech winning him a fan base in Kashmir?
A street vendor in Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital, sold hundreds of framed portraits of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in the last one week.
Kashmiri separatists and many residents are all praise for Gaddafi after his maiden address to the U.N. General Assembly last week in which he said Kashmir should be an “independent state.”
It was a diplomatic embarrassment for India but has Gaddafi’s U.N. speech actually won him an enthusiastic fan base in strife-weary Kashmir where Muslim militants are fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989.
The Libyan leader told the U.N. General Assembly last week that Kashmir should be an independent state, not Indian, not Pakistani.
Last week, dozens of Kashmiris carried placards reading “Gaddafi The Lion of Desert II” referring to the 1981 Hollywood movie “Lion of the Desert”, which is about Omar Mukhtar, who led the rebellion against Italian rule in Libya and was captured and hanged in 1931.
The movie on Omar Mukhtar encouraged rebellion in Kashmir in 1985. This is for the first time in recent times a Muslim leader outside the Indian sub-continent has advocated Kashmir’s complete independence both from India and Pakistan.
The two countries claim the region in full but rule in parts.
Encouraged by the speech, separatist leaders say Gaddafi’s statement in the U.N. General Assembly should serve as an eye-opener for Indian and Pakistani leaders.
Despite two wars over Kashmir, India and Pakistan have so far failed to find a solution to the more than six-decade-old dispute over Kashmir.
New Delhi has so far largely struggled to win the hearts and minds of the people of Kashmir, where anti-India sentiment still runs deep.
Gaddafi also opposed the expansion of the U.N. Security Council by including countries like India. New Delhi, which has downplayed Gaddafi’s statement, has not yet reacted officially.
Has Gaddafi’s U.N. speech on Kashmir’s “freedom” won him foes in India and friends in Kashmir?
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Update: Stephanie Berault, Executive Director of HeartGift Louisiana, reports that Damali Ferguson is out of surgery and that the procedure went well.
Like most toddlers, Damali Ferguson knows how to keep his mother on her toes.
As he ran in circles around a conference room in an Algiers apartment complex Tuesday, it was impossible to tell the 22-month-old has a congenital heart condition that, as an infant, left him gasping for air.
His chance at a life-changing surgery comes today at Children’s Hospital on Henry Clay Avenue, almost 2,000 miles from his home in Kingston, Jamaica. Without the open-heart surgery, performed on hundreds of babies each year, chances are slim that Damali will survive to adulthood, said Deb LeBlanc, cardiac surgery coordinator at Children’s Hospital.
Damali’s condition — tetralogy of Fallot — is caused by a combination of four heart defects that cause a dangerously low supply of oxygen to flow through the heart and the rest of the body.
Pediatric heart surgeons Joseph Caspi and Timothy Pettitt will perform the six-hour operation today. This type of surgery, the third in Louisiana in the past year, is part of a coordinated effort between Gift of Life, HeartGift Louisiana and Children’s Hospital. HeartGift is a Texas-based foundation that provides heart surgeries to children who don’t have access in their home countries.
Damali’s 24-year-old mother, Yolader Gayle, said they were referred to HeartGift through the Bustamante Hospital for Children in Kingston.
The first scare came when he was 3 months old, she said.
“He was wheezing really bad, and the doctor said they wouldn’t call it asthma because he was too young,” said Gayle, who arrived in New Orleans on Sunday. “So we went to a private doctor and she said, ‘Do you know his heart is murmuring?’”
Damali has a small hole between the two bottom chambers of his heart and an overriding aorta that sits over that hole. There’s restricted blood flow to his lungs and pulmonary valve irregularities.
Typically, surgery to correct the problem costs $135,000, but through the HeartGift foundation, $15,000 will be paid by donors by Jeff and Lara Woodham of Lubbock, Texas. The surgeons volunteer their services, and the hospital underwrites the rest, said Stephanie Berault, director of HeartGift’s New Orleans chapter. Damali and his mom are being housed by members of the Algiers chapter of the Rotary Club.
Gayle, a student at Jamaica Theological Seminary, found out Damali was selected for the corrective surgery in May.
“I was happy knowing he’s getting the help because otherwise I could not afford it,” she said. “It was good news.”
Even in countries like Jamaica, advanced in some areas of medicine, there’s no infrastructure and medical equipment to support cardiac thoracic surgery, LeBlanc said. In the United States, the condition is typically fixed at birth, but in developing countries, the condition can go untreated for years, she added.
“Around the world, there is just a very sparse amount of surgical facilities, and they don’t have the technology or trained professionals,” she said.
An estimated 93 percent of the world has no access to pediatric cardiac care, according to the American Association of Thoracic Surgery.
During the surgery, doctors will open Damali’s chest, close the hole between the two bottom chambers of the heart and correct narrowing areas above and below the pulmonary valve. While he will likely take six weeks or more to recover fully, he has a very high chance of making a full recovery, LeBlanc said.
Most children with tetralogy of Fallot experience more pronounced symptoms of lethargy.
On Tuesday, Damali bounced around the room, pushing a toy truck, taking books off a bookshelf and plopping down to watch a few scenes of “Barney.”
With the surgery less than 24 hours away for her first-born child, Gayle said only one thing calms her down.
“I just pray,” she said quietly averting her gaze. “I’m worried; I’m nervous, but hopefully it’s successful — and he will have a normal life.”
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10. March 2011 11:45
Picture Source: http://morguefile.com/archive/display/146707
If you are looking for a low-key way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day I have an idea for you. Head over to the Law Library’s DVD collection and check out The Irish R.M. This series aired on PBS in the late 80’s and follows a retired British military man who becomes a Resident Magistrate in rural Ireland. The series takes place in 1897 and aired 18 episodes over three seasons. DVD’s of the first two seasons can be found in the Law Library. The bonus to watching this series is that it was taped in County Kildare so while you won’t be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland you can still enjoy views of the countryside.
5. March 2011 23:07
Apple and academic partners team up to highlight best practices in pedagogy and the power of the iPad 2 and the Apple LMS.
Read the rest of the story!
3. March 2011 10:48
Some interesting topics over at the ABA Podcast. You can freely subscribe in iTunes or your chosen RSS feed reader.
This month's episode is about why lawyers love what they do!
14. February 2011 16:39
On this day, February 14, 1912, the contiguous states welcomed their final and 48th sibling, Arizona!
Indeed, this is truly a celebration! 99 years old! Boy time sure flies by when you're a state! Here are some resources to celebrate Arizona and it's birthday:
Want Law Library resources about Arizona? Browse the Arizona Collection (see on map here) to the left of the Circulation Desk upon entering the Law Library.
10. February 2011 17:05
Use these links to be notified of every Arizona appellate opinion as it is released:
Remember that bar examiners often take the situations for essay questions from recent appellate decisions.
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Nov. 4, 2003 An international team of researchers has identified the role of a gene which may explain why some people overeat and become obese.
Their research, published today in Public Library of Science Biology, shows that the gene GAD2 has an appetite stimulating role, and that one form of the gene is strongly associated with obese people.
While the researchers recognise that obesity is a result of the interactions of many genes and environmental factors, this is one of the first genes to be strongly touted as a candidate 'gene for obesity'.
GAD2, which sits on chromosome 10, acts by speeding up production of a neurotransmitter in the brain called GABA, or gamma-amino butyric acid. When GABA interacts with another molecule named neuropeptide Y in a specific area of the brain - the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus - we are stimulated to eat.
The researchers behind this study believe that people who carry a more active form of the GAD2 gene build up a larger than normal quantity of GABA in the hypothalamus, and suggest that this over accumulation of GABA drives the stimulus to eat further than normal, and is thus a basis for explaining why obese people overeat.
Professor Philippe Froguel, senior author of the research, from Imperial College London, and Hammersmith Hospital, London, and who carried out the research while at the Institut Pasteur de Lille, France, said: "The discovery that this one gene plays a role in determining whether someone is likely to overeat could be crucial in understanding the continued rise in obesity rates around the world.
"Genetic factors alone can not explain the rapid rise in obesity rates, but they may provide clues to preventative and therapeutic approaches that will ease the health burden associated with obesity.
"Having identified this gene, it may be possible to develop a screening programme to identify those who may be at risk of becoming obese later in life, and take effective preventative measures."
The team compared genome-wide scans of 576 obese and 646 normal weight adults in France, from which they identified two alternative forms, or alleles, of the GAD2 gene.
One form of the gene was found to be protective against obesity, while another increased the risk of obesity. The normal weight group of French adults had a higher frequency of the protective form of the GAD2 gene. Obesity is three to five times less prevalent in France than in the USA.
In addition to the genome-wide scans, the obese patients also completed an eating habits questionnaire, measuring dietary restraint, disinhibition and perceived hunger. The results showed that those carrying the GAD2 allele that increases the risk of obesity were significantly more likely to reveal an inability to control their food intake, and perceive high levels of hunger.
Authors of this research are based at Imperial College London, Hammersmith Hospital, London, the Institut Pasteur de Lille, France, the University of Washington, USA, Paul Brousse Hospital, and Paris VI University, France.
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Imperial College Of Science, Technology And Medicine.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
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Having a close sibling of my own, I have always been interested in the topic of Sisters.
We moved here 11 years ago when we purchased At Cumberland Falls Bed and Breakfast Inn. I had never heard the term "sister city." It piqued my curiosity and so began my investigation.
The American sister cities program began in 1956 under the Eisenhower administration. Initially, under the umbrella of National League of Cities. In 1967 The American Sister cities program gained its own identity under the heading of Sister Cities International (SCI) defined as a not for profit, citizen diplomacy network designed to strengthen partnerships between U.S. and international cummunities in efforts to increase both global cooperation found at the municipal level as well as enhance cultural understanding, stimulate private business and economics. Staffed primarily by volunteerism, it paves the way for enhancing community developement by empowering private citizens to work toward long term goals of providing mutual benefits between the geographical locations
Asheville's Sister cities are:
San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico
Valladolid, Yucatan Mexico
Empower your area and investigate bringing your beloved hometown into the Sister City program. Making this journey will empower your city, yourself, create a better understanding of low level government and how it works and also provide an understanding in a very tangible way of the impact we can all have on our own environment, government and the lives of others. It really is a small world and your involvement in this program will allow a greater appreciation of that, yourself and the power we can all have to make a difference, even in a small way, if we will just seize it.
Patti and Gary Wiles Innkeepers At Cumberland Falls Bed and Breakfast Inn Your Asheville Bed and Breakfast
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In a special Rosh Hashanah interview with Israel Hayom, to be published in full on Sunday, Netanyahu addressed recent assessments by top defense officials, who suggested that there is still time before action against Iran becomes necessary. “I hear all those people who say that we should wait until the very last minute. But what if the U.S. doesn’t intervene? That is a question we have to ask,” he said.
Netanyahu also dismissed allegations that his insistence on red lines, beyond which the U.S. would commit to taking military action against Iran, was impacting the presidential race currently underway in the U.S., saying, “This is nonsense because the issue that is guiding me is not the U.S. elections, but the centrifuges in Iran, and what can I do if the centrifuges in Iran are inconsiderate of the U.S. political timetable? If the Iranians were to hit the ‘pause’ button and halt their uranium enrichment and bomb preparation until after the elections, I would be able to wait.” [Israel Hayom]
“It has nothing to do with the American elections. Because the Iranian nuclear program doesn’t care about the American political calendar.
“If the centrifuges stop miraculously, if they stop preparing enriched uranium to make atomic bombs, then I suppose I wouldn’t have to speak out. But the Iranian nuclear program proceeds unabated and they don’t care about the internal American political calendar. For me this is a policy issue, a security issue, and not a political issue.” [from Interview with the Jerusalem Post]
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The latest developments in Canadian arthritis research as well as reports on initiatives to speed up arthritis research, drug testing and drug approval will be discussed at The Canadian Arthritis Network (CAN)'s Annual Conference 2000.
The conference, Arthritis Research - From Bench to Bedside, will be held in Toronto from June 17 to 20 at the Courtyard by Marriott, 475 Yonge St.
CAN was established in October, 1998 to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic technologies and provide innovative services in partnership with government and industry to enhance the quality of life for people with arthritis.
The symposium will create a unique platform for discussion as researchers and clinicians from a variety of disciplines gather to find solutions to a disease affecting over four million Canadians.
Conference program highlights include:
- new approaches to looking at the severity of arthritis, providing a more detailed picture than traditional x-rays and a non-invasive alternative to arthroscopy
- the emergence of new pharmacological developments that modify the disease rather than treat the symptoms
- innovative strategies to repair cartilage defects associated with arthritis, using bioengineering techniques
- the growing importance of arthritis patient registries in testing theories and evaluating new treatments
- developing cost-effective guidelines and the monitoring, planning and delivery of health care services
-an explanation of CAN's Clinical Trial Group that speeds up clinical trials and increases the competitive advantage for Canada through its up-to-date online data base of patients with rheumatoid arthritis
-the role of various agents in preventing or reversing the loss of bone and cartilage
-the latest studies on arthritis and genetics and how this could be used to identify people with a predisposition to arthritis
-the role of consumers in arthritis research
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http://news.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-2/Canadas-leading-arthritis-investigators-and-practitioners-meeting-to-discuss-latest-developments-in-arthritis-research-9771-1/
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Since the dawn of time, people have been using the internet to share images of cats and food (and maybe some other stuff). Then something called Instagram came along that changed the way people share said images. As a social network based on pictures, everything from your bff's lunch to what your Aunt Cindy is making for dinner was only a tap, flick, and touch away. There was only one problem: Instagram was only available in the mobile space.
The Instagram team knew that people wanted pictures of food on places aside from their mobile, so they introduced the ability to see profiles from Instagram.com.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.androidpolice.com/tags/instagram-feed/
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Tires are collected and recycled at each of the County’s Household Hazardous Waste Events. Click here for the schedule.
In the United States, an estimated 240 million used tires are discarded annually. These used scrap tires fall into 2 categories, automobile and truck.
Scrap truck tires which are collected for recycling are primarily retreaded. The freshly retreaded tires are reused on trucks and buses. Automobile tires can be remolded or recycled into safety flooring, commercial fishing equipment, dock and boat bumpers, truck bed mats, mud flaps, farm equipment, garbage and recycling containers, recycled-rubber soled shoes and tire swings. They can also be used in the construction of artificial reefs and as river bank stabilizers as well as in road resurfacing.
Union County residents can bring their used automobile tires to each Household Hazardous Waste day. There is a limit of eight (8) tires per household, without rims please.
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California Proposition 3, the Closed Primaries Act (1998)
Proposition 3 said that only voters who belong to political parties can vote for President in primary elections, and they must vote for President in their own party. Independent voters would not, under the terms of Proposition 3, have been allowed to vote for any presidential candidate in the primary election.
Of voters who cast a vote in this election, 1,200,112 or 13.92% did not cast a vote on Proposition 3.
The ballot title was:
The official ballot summary said:
- Changes existing open primary law to require closed, partisan primary for purposes of selecting delegates to national political party presidential nominating conventions. Limits voting for such delegates to voters registered by political party. Provides partisan ballots to be voted only by members of the particular party.
The California Legislative Analyst's Office provided an estimate of net state and local government fiscal impact for Proposition 1. That estimate was:
- "Minor costs to state government."
- "Minor costs to county governments statewide."
No campaign contributions for or against Proposition 3 were reported to the California Secretary of State.
Path to the ballot
Proposition 3 was referred to the ballot through Senate Bill 1505 (Proposition 3).
|Votes in legislature to refer to ballot|
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Mr. Lloyd George gets a grip on those who read about him, but his personality is far more powerful and fascinating to those who have known the man himself, known him during the time his genius has been forcing him to eminence. He does not fill the eye as a sanctified hero should; he is too vitally human, too affectionate, too bitter, and he has, moreover, springs of humor which bubble up continually.
s. Lloyd George as the ring-leader was punished, but the rebellion he organized stopped the practice of forcing Church dogmas into the mouths of the children. This is a very suggestive story. I know the main facts to be true because not so very long ago Lloyd George himself confirmed them to me. At the same time I beg leave to doubt whether any great spiritual fervor was the motive power of Master Lloyd George at that time. It was just the first outbreak of his desire for revolt against the powers that be--wicked powers because his uncle had said so--and the satisfaction of that instinct for audacious action which has marked him ever since. To me there was not much of the saint about the boy Lloyd George; he was just a young daredevil--which, on the whole, is perhaps the more attractive.
By the time Lloyd George was ten or eleven years of age his mother and his uncle became filled with thoughts as to his future. They both knew the boy was specially gifted, both realized that unless special effort were
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Is nothing sacred anymore? Must professional sports be infected by the push and pull of politics? Can’t football players just play the game and keep their opinions to themselves?
There’s a battle being fought over homosexual marriage. Yes, professional football players have a right to voice their opinions, but can’t they keep it to themselves until after they retire?
Give us a break. Guys just want to sit down in the recliner with a bowl of chips, some hot wings, and a really cold beer and watch big guys move a pig skin up and down the field. It’s war where no one gets killed — a game that takes three hours to play with only 11 minutes of real action.
Homosexuality is irrational. The sexual equipment doesn’t fit. No matter how often two people of the same sex engage in a sexual relationship, there will never be any children. In football parlance, it would be like a running back running to the wrong goal every time he had the ball and then wonder why he never scores a touchdown.
Homosexual ‘marriage’ is like trying to screw two incandescent bulbs together and expecting light to come forth. It’s like trying to stick a square peg into a round hole over and over again and expecting a different result sometime in the future.
Then there’s the moral argument. In a Salon article, Mary Elizabeth Williams weighs in on the NFL controversy by attempting to neutralize the moral reasoning of Baltimore Ravens center Matt Birk who in a YouTube video for the Minnesota Catholic Conference and an Op-Ed for the Star Tribune takes a strong stance for his home state’s Marriage Protection Amendment:
Birk is undoubtedly working from as generous a moral template as his belief system affords. In his statements, you can see him reaching for some kind of neutral ground that’s tolerant, if not accommodating. He’s a smart guy, and probably a nice one. The problem is that he’s making the mistake religious conservatism so often does — taking belief as truth. There is no “natural” definition of marriage, no “basic reality” of it. It’s a human-made institution, and as such, we humans get to decide what it is.
Did you catch that? Marriage is a “human-made” institution. Given her human-only approach to morality, so is slavery. So why can’t we enslave people if a majority of people say it’s OK?
Furthermore, why can’t we say no to homosexual marriage and yes to father-daughter, mother-son, and multiple marriages?
She tells us that “we humans get to decide what [marriage] is.” Following her premise, if the anti-homosexual lobby gets enough people to decide that homosexual marriage will not be made normative, then the debate is over. But it’s never over until liberals get their way, by hook or by crook. A majority of people in California decided that they did not want to sanction homosexual marriage, and one judge gave the majority the legal middle finger.
Williams continues with this line of argument:
The Bible is riddled with examples of marriage between owners and slaves, rapists and victims, family members, and multiple partners. So can we please stop pretending that perfect man-on-woman matrimony is the only thing that’s ever existed since the dawn of time?
The Bible describes people and their relationships “warts and all.” There are stories about murderers, adulterers, polygamists, rapists, scoundrels, and thieves. There is a difference between descriptive ethics (stories of people who murder) and prescriptive ethics (you shall not murder). King David was an adulterer and an accomplice to murder, both of which are repeatedly condemned in the Bible. Williams is correct when she states that there are no “perfect man-on-woman” marriages. There’s no perfect anything. Should we “define deviancy down,” to use Patrick Moynihan’s apt phrase, to justify any irrational and immoral lifestyle?
Jesus made it clear that marriage is neither “human-defined” nor elastic to fit the times:
“Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?”(Matt. 19:5).
Williams continues with this line: “If our culture has reached a point where we’re evolved enough to understand that two men or two women have as good a shot at making a loving lifetime bond as two members of the opposite sex, isn’t that progress?” Love is not illegal. It’s the claim that same-sex relationships and marriage are rational and moral. Taking Williams’ evolutionary assumptions as secular holy writ, “everything is up for grabs” — not just marriage.
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Varicella zoster virus (VZV) is the virus responsible for the highly contagious disease commonly known as chickenpox. It is usually a disease seen in young children, from the ages of 4 to 12 years of age.
- A person is contagious from one to five days before the rash appears and continues to be contagious until all the blisters have scabbed over. This means that a person can contract chickenpox from someone who hasn't even showed signs of the disease yet, making avoidance nearly impossible.
- The incubation period is 10-21 days from the time of contact with a contagious person.
- Chickenpox is easily transmitted by coughing, sneezing or direct contact with open sores of an infected person.
It starts with a red skin rash which then develops into tiny liquid filled blisters that itch intensely. The blisters form mainly on the trunk and head, sometimes spreading to other parts of the body including the mucus membranes, such as the mouth, throat or nose. Within about two to three days, the blisters then begin to break open and become small open sores. They then begin to scab over. It takes approximately seven to ten days for the scabs to fall off after the onset of the initial rash. They heal for the most part without much scarring.
- Chickenpox usually goes away without any type of medical intervention.
- After a person develops chickenpox there is generally lifelong immunity from further episodes of chickenpox, even if the person is exposed again to an infected person.
- Chickenpox is usually more severe in adults than in healthy children and they run an increased risk for complications. Those people with suppressed immune systems and pregnant women are at the highest risk for complications.
- Pregnant women who were not previously immune to the disease and develop it during pregnancy can pass the infection via the placenta to the fetus. Depending on when the infection occurs, this can lead to a host of fetal malformations including underdeveloped fingers and toes, brain damage, neurological disorders and skin problems. It is essential that pregnant women avoid anyone who has been exposed to chickenpox or has shown signs of developing the disease.
- A reactivation of the varicella zoster virus can occur after the initial infection with chickenpox. When this occurs it is called shingles. This reactivation can occur decades after the initial infection.
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Silver Screen, Gold DiscThe Sincerest Form of ImitationSilver Screen, Gold Disc - RSS 2.0
Put it like this: Blade Runner invented the future. While others' view of the future is clear fantasy, as Ridley Scott's world unveils in front of us, there's a nagging worry that we may end up living there. Clearly, Blade Runner is a film that has had huge cultural impact on how everyone portrays the day after tomorrow.
If we were looking across the whole life of videogames, it's arguable that Star Wars would be the single most influential movie in the industry's history. Its release in 1977 provided inspiration in everything from high level ideas like game types (Space Invaders was created in 1978. Space remained the natural adventure-playground for games for years afterward) to the base implementation (even if videogame tech could have made more realistic noises, with Star Wars influence, it's entirely possible they'd still have applied an exciting and iconic array of bleeps). A virtual sub-industry has been created around the Star Wars franchise, and when a developer wishes to present an enormous space battle, he's thinking of matching what Lucas managed.
Ironically, while Alien was the original, it's Aliens where the majority of developers go when their creative well runs dry. For example, Giger's original design for the body-horror, genitalia-phobic organic alien has inspired anyone who sat down to work out something icky to shoot, but the implementation in games owes more to Aliens. An alien's lifecycle is too iconic to take without being too obvious, but the more generalized egg-laying queen has been used time and time over. Any alien race, if they're not taking from the "Grays" of urban folklore, is more often than not Giger-derived.
But that isn't even the primary influence. Instead, the movie's Colonial Marines provide the backbone for everything from Halo to Command & Conquer's view of the future. Where in even the dirtiest parts of the Star Wars universe are elements of romance, the Colonial Marines take their own visual cues from a post-Vietnam military with its array of firepower, gung-ho slogans and omnipresent wise-cracks. The Colonial Marine's weaponry provides the backbone of most shooters. Hell, if they managed to cram a mini-gun into the movie, they'd have a majority shareholding in weapons stocks in any given shooter.
It goes on an on, and watching Aliens can feel like an advertising video for game hardware. The drop-ship design specifically is borrowed whenever an orbital landing is called for. Actually pre-empting Full Metal Jacket, the easy, brutal camaraderie is reprised time and time over. Developers make use of the Marines' hand-scanners, which chirped faster the closer the enemy way, to build tension. The specific design of the armor, all clasps and hard edges, shows up everywhere. Even the use of dropped flares as a cliffhanger comes from Aliens. The billowing smoke and blue light that director James Cameron fills the corridors with are modern games' default atmosphere.
If we removed Aliens from existence, the list of games left without a premise could have filled this article. To badly paraphrase Voltaire: If Aliens didn't exist, someone would have had to invent it. And really, that would just be too much work, wouldn't it?
Kieron Gillen has been writing about videogames for far too long now. His rock and roll dream is to form an Electro-band with Miss Kittin and SHODAN pairing up on vocals.
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HONOLULU — Honolulu has completed a supplemental environmental study in response to a federal judge's ruling on the city's rail project.
The study says a Beretania Street tunnel is feasible but not prudent because of its "extraordinary costs" and long-term construction impacts. It also says the project won't "substantially impair" any of Mother Waldron Park's recreational uses.
The judge said Honolulu failed to adequately consider building a Beretania tunnel as part of an alternative route. He also said the city didn't properly evaluate whether the rail project would constructively use the park in Kakaako.
The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation said Thursday the authority and the Federal Transit Administration prepared the draft environmental impact statement to address those issues.
A public hearing on the draft will be held July 9.
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Contradictory character seems to mean a character who defies stereotypes or exhibits traits that contradict one another, in a literary sense. I wish to distinguish what I mean from round characters. ...
One of my players want to play an extremely stupid Orc fighter (yes, I know, a classic one). How stupid is as fool? What stats govern this and how low should they be? How do I get them that low ...
I searched the player's handbook a while ago for the sleep deprivation rules but I don't remember finding anything, even though I recall having been told about such rules. Apart from asking if any ...
When creating characters, I often face a dilemma between making a character. It feels like they can either be optimized so they can "pull their own weight" or having a character I think is creative ...
A few of the members of our gaming have had the probably-not-unique idea of statting ourselves as if we were player characters in a campaign. Our problem is trying to find a basis of comparison for ...
How do you build a party so that they all have social roles? In some games, I often find that one character ends up dominating the social part of the campaign. In our groups, we usually end up with ...
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A boy with autism bullied and abused by teachers: The story's been zooming around the web this week. It's horrifying and, if you have a child with special needs, particularly gut-churning. I'll recap it for you:
Stuart Chaifetz is dad to Akian, a ten-year-old with autism who attended Horace Mann Elementary School in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. As Chaifetz recounted in a piece he put online and video he uploaded to YouTube, he started getting notes home from school that his son was acting violently. That confounded him; Akian, he's said, is a sweet-tempered kid. Finally, Chaifetz placed a digital recorder in Akian's pocket and sent him off to school. What he heard shocked him. "They were literally making my son's life a living hell," he says in the video. "They treated [the kids] as if they were sub-human."
Teachers who abuse kids with special needs are exceptionally repulsive—they're attacking children who are more defenseless than other kids and who may not be able to speak up for themselves. Who are these people? A few bad apples, I figured. But the question literally kept me up at night. So I got in touch with the American Psychological Association, and they connected me with John R. Lutzker, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Healthy Development and Professor of Public Health at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He's an expert on developmental disabilities and child maltreatment.
While Dr. Lutzker cautioned that parents shouldn't be alarmed that teacher abuse of kids with special needs is a trend, it seems that there are some modern-day realities that make it particularly key for us to be on our toes. (Not that you need to wire up your child tomorrow.) What he had to say:
What sort of person—a teacher, no less—could treat a child so disdainfully and abusively?
"People who abuse and neglect children are much more likely to have experienced abuse or neglect growing up, or witnessed it, or had parents with mental illness. People are resilient and survive but anyone who experiences those things is more likely to perpetrate child maltreatment."
Why would anyone go into the field of special ed if they were disdainful of children with special needs? In my own experience, besides having infinite patience, these people usually care deeply about the kids.
"While I can't interpret this situation, what I can say broad-scale is that education has become lower-valued and the resources may not be there. There is nowhere near the training there needs to be, both in terms of sensitivities, recognition and skills that all teachers—special needs or not—need. Aides are not all that well-trained, in fact, and are very poorly paid."
So you're saying that cutbacks in schools could have an effect on teacher's behavior? Not that it excuses calling a child a "bastard!"
"Certainly frustration about lack of education resources and anger in general and feeling incompetent could be a cause. No matter what the job, a person who isn't feeling successful because they don't have skills or resources is more prone to behaving unprofessionally. And these days, people don't have a filter. There's been a general lowering of social standards, and there is far more rudeness in general in society and fewer inhibitions to say whatever you want."
What's important for parents to keep in mind about keeping kids safe?
"Your child's school should have an open-door policy. Pay a surprise visit every now and then, but in the friendliest of ways! Go in to see how he's doing. It is a form of surveillance, but the fact of the matter is, school should be a place where parents are welcome—and professional standards are met. More resources for better training for teachers and aides would undoubtedly help a lot, but short of that it doesn't mean everything's hopeless. There needs to be an open relationship between the administration, parents and teachers."
What should parents be on the lookout for?
"You know your child far better than anyone else! In fact, there's some evidence that parents are better diagnosticians of developmental delays better than professionals like pediatricians. It's terrific these parents noted unusual behavior and did something about it. If your child is acting out, having more tantrums or behaving differently, pay attention. Kids will try every which way to communicate. The best advice for parents in general is let your gut be your guide."
Here's where you can sign Stuart Chaifetz's petition requesting that New Jersey officials fire teachers caught bullying kids.
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The sacrifice of American soldiers on the beaches of Normandy, France, was recalled Saturday morning by Joe Lebinski, a past commander of American Legion Post 74, during Fairfield's annual Veterans Day ceremony on Town Hall Green.
Lebinski said he recently visited the beaches where American soldiers came ashore under fire from German troops and scaled the bluffs in one of the famous battles of World War II. Before going to the beaches, Lebinski said he spent the morning in a museum in the village of Caen, which has photographs and stories of soldiers who made the landing on D-Day.
"After boarding a bus, we then went to the actual beaches. Arriving, we could see a stretch of beach and people playing on them. What a difference from what we had seen at the museum and what was happening there now," Lebinski said. "It was hard to imagine the destruction of that day when the landings took place, but remembering what we had seen at the museum brought it back quickly."
Lebinski saw Pointe du Hoc, a clifftop on the coast of Normandy where German soldiers fired upon American troops as the Americans came ashore and scaled the cliffs. "The destruction of the bunkers does not tell the whole story; the bomb craters tell some. But the heroics of those who climbed the heights tell the story very clearly," he said. "If it wasn't for those who climbed the heights that day, it may have been a much bloodier day than it was."
"Once again, the American soldier past and present came through, getting it done," he said.
The final place that Lebinski visited was a cemetery, a short distance from the beaches, where Americans who died that day are buried. "When one enters this sacred ground, it's very quiet -- no one speaks loudly, and there is a hush silence all around," he said. "The first thing you see is the wall of names of those who are missing, after the landings were made, and have never been found. Over a thousand names line the wall."
Lebinski said the cemetery has more than 9,700 white crosses in rows that mark the graves of soldiers who died on the beaches June 6, 1944. "This is only one of the American cemeteries, of which there are many," he said. "For those who took part in that day, this country must never forget to honor their memory, and to all the others who gave their all in the past, or present, and in the future."
"Maybe someday there will be peace in the world, with no war. We can only hope and pray this may happen someday," Lebinski said.
Selectman Kevin Kiley, who represented the town's Board of Selectmen at the ceremony, said, "Today is the day we honor every member of America's military for their bravery and service to our great country. We want to thank our veterans for protecting our country and defending our freedom."
"Without your courage and service, our great country would not be possible and the course of history would be much different. You have successfully defended America and safeguarded the world many times over," Kiley said. "We are proud of every veteran and we honor you every day of the year."
About three dozen people -- veterans, town officials and residents -- attended the ceremony in front of the town's Honor Roll, which lists the names of Fairfield residents who served in the nation's wars.
After the brief ceremony, the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution offered food and beverages in the Old Academy building a short walk away, and members of the town's oldest Boy Scout troop greeted veterans, town officials and residents as they entered the former schoolhouse.
Chris Westervelt, a member of Troop 10 from First Presbyterian Church of Fairfield, held a sign thanking the veterans and said Veterans Day was "a time to remember what happened during the war and how to respect the veterans and people in battle at the moment." "It's important because it's the right thing to do, and it's very respectful too," he said.
State Rep. Brenda Kupchick, R-Fairfield, said, "Each of us is here because we do have such tremendous respect for those who protected us and kept our families safe."
"I always have such a deep sense of gratitude for them, for the opportunity to live in a free place, speak our minds, have opinions and express them in a free place," Kupchick said. "If they didn't stand up and have the courage to fight to give us this freedom, we wouldn't have it. They went and fought in areas of this world they had never been to and fought for our freedoms."
"We believe our determination made us better warriors because we fought with our minds and our hearts as well as our bodies," Bender said.
State Rep. Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield, said the town went through a rough time over the past two weeks because of Storm Sandy and a snowy nor'easter, but added that American soldiers serving abroad "lived and worked and protected us in conditions that are far, far worse than what we had to endure."
"They deserve our respect and our attention and our care every day," he said.
Referencing the future, Bender said veterans learned of purpose, sacrifice, tolerance, bravery and discipline from their blood and sweat and those "are solid foundation stones upon which a great nation is built."
"In our continuing quest for an honorable world peace, we must cultivate these virtues," he said.
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URGENT ACTION REQUIRED TO PROTECT AUSTRALIAN GREY NURSE SHARKS
Incredibly in April this year, the New South Wales Government decreased protection for the critically endangered grey nurse shark and opened up some of this gentle cruiser’s critical habitat areas to recreational fishing.
And right now, the NSW Government is considering where to go next with grey nurse shark conservation. They need to hear it shouted from the rooftops that these threatened creatures need the greatest protection possible. They need to be told to increase, not decrease safeguards for this species.
Please help the NSW Government write the chapter that ensures grey nurse sharks live happily ever after - take a few moments to send in a submission telling them to ensure NSW becomes a safe haven for grey nurse sharks. We only have until Friday 26th August to make a public comment.
We envision a world without shark finning.
We envision a world where human practices demonstrate an understanding of and respect for marine ecosystems and their preservation while gaining sustenance for human beings.
We think forward to a time when people will see our connection to the shark and the importance of creating a healthy, balanced marine ecosystem for both the species within it and for ourselves.
We imagine generations ahead enjoying the abundance of resources and beauty of the oceans.
At Majestic Aquariums, we believe it is vital to protect marine species from human activities which threaten their survival and stop shark finning. Show your support by signing the Australian Marine Conservation Society’s petition to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Hon Tony Burke MP. Use your voice to safeguard the future of Australian sharks and persuade our politicians to show global leadership on the issue of shark conservation.
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Today (August 8th) is the 42nd commemoration of the disastrous orca capture that snared a young whale and sentenced her to a life in a tiny tank.
She was first given the name Tokitae, which was changed to the cheesy “Lolita” by the Miami Seaquarium. A few years ago, as a reminder that she is a member of the endangered population of orcas, we gave her the honorary number L-pc25 (“L” for her natal pod, “pc” for Penn Cove where she was captured, and “25″ for the whale assumed to be her mother L-25, who still swims free).
The whales, for their part, are staging a protest:
To learn more, and to help bring this whale home to her family, consider attending one of today’s events:
Coupeville, Whidbey Island, WA – August 2012 marks the 42nd anniversary of Lolita’s capture from her family, the Southern Resident orcas, in Penn Cove off Whidbey Island, WA.
To commemorate this anniversary, Orca Network is holding our annual event in Coupeville on the waters and shore of Penn Cove to remember all the orcas who died during the captures or in captivity, and to honor Lolita, or Tokitae, the sole survivor of those taken from the Southern Resident orcas, held in a small tank at the Miami Seaquarium since 1970.
On Wednesday August 8th, please join us from 4 – 6 pm, for a ceremonial cruise on Penn Cove, Whidbey Island, around the perimeter of the capture site. Captain John Stone of Aeolian Adventures has generously offered his 52 foot classic ketch, Cutty Sark, for this two hour cruise with special guests (very limited space available – tickets $40/person), and Captain Billy Wind has offered his sailboat Stella Blue as well for those without boats who want to participate in the on-the-water portion of the event, for a $30 fee. You may also participate with your own sail or motor boat, kayak, or rowboat and join our fleet by launching from Capt. Coupe Park in Coupeville, to join our vessels at the Coupeville Wharf for a group departure at 4 pm.
We’ll travel to the capture site in Penn Cove for a wreath ceremony to remember the orcas killed in the capture, and those who have died in captivity. We’ll provide flowers and cedar sprigs to toss into the water, or you may bring your own flower or other eco-friendly offering to toss in the water during the ceremony. The vessels will circle Penn Cove and the capture site, and time/weather permitting, will take a short tour of Penn Cove before returning to the Coupeville Wharf at approximately 6 pm.
Following the on-the-water events, we will gather at the Coupeville Wharf at 6 pm for a few short presentations, music from the Shifty Sailors (6:30 pm), and sharing of stories about the captures, Lolita, and the future of her family, the Southern Resident orcas, and updates on other captive orca news, such as the release of the new book “Death at SeaWorld” by David Kirby.
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Extend two sides of a triangle and construct the circle tangent to those sides and the third side of the triangle. The resulting circle is called an excircle. The triangle formed by the three points of tangency is called an external contact triangle.
Let ABC be a triangle. Let and be the radii of the circumcircle and an excircle of ABC. Let be the area of ABC and be the area of the external contact triangle. Then .
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Fruits That Fight Fat
I look forward to summer fruits all year, and now new research from Texas A & M University finds that a particular type can also help ward off metabolic syndrome and weight gain. Stone fruits, or drupes, which include nectarines, plums, peaches and cherries, contain natural substances that fight inflammation and create a domino effect that protects against diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.
The scientists found that fruits’ phenolic compounds have anti-obesity, anti-inflammatory and anti-diabetic properties. The compounds work on different cells in the body, including fat cells, immune cells and cells that line the circulatory system, to protect them from aging and disease. They also found that each fruit contains similar phenolic compounds, but in different proportions that compliment each other, which means that eating a variety is a smart strategy.
They’re all in season now, so to take advantage of their superfood effects, here’s how to select the best of the bunch and some delicious ways to enjoy them:
Fortunately, picking ripe cherries is pretty straightforward. Just choose those that are firm but give a little when touched with plump, shiny skins and green (not brown) stems and avoid those that are mushy, dull, or have brown spots. Color isn’t a give away either, because it varies based on variety. For example, while Bing cherries are deep red, Rainier are golden pink. Cherries don’t ripen further after being picked, and unripe cherries will have less flavor and fewer nutrients, so look for cherries that are just right. Also they’re highly perishable, very delicate, and they absorb odors easily and dry out quickly, so keep them in a sealed container in the fridge and eat them up within a few days or freeze them.
Healthy Ways to Enjoy Them
Cherries are amazing on their own but they also pair well with many other healthy foods. One of my favorite is with dark chocolate! Just melt a few tasting squares, dip the bottom of each cherry in the chocolate and place on parchment paper to dry. Or removed the stems and pits and whip up a cherry smoothie.
Peaches, Plums, Nectarines
Like cherries these fruits should slightly give to the touch and for optimal nutrition should be ripe, almost to the point of spoilage – a recent study found that the more ripe the fruit the higher the antioxidant levels. These fruits will continue to ripen after picking, so if they’re too hard leave them at room temperature for a few days.
Healthy Ways to Enjoy Them
There’s nothing like biting into a juicy, aromatic, ripe peach, but there are many ways to incorporate them into meals and snacks. Slice and grill plums, nectarines and peaches in foil with a pinch of herbs or spices, from cinnamon, cloves or fresh grated ginger to rosemary or basil. Enjoy grilled fruit in a parfait. Layer it with toasted oats or cooked, chilled red quinoa, yogurt (regular or nondairy) and sliced or chopped nuts, or as a savory snack – spread a slice of hearty whole grain bread with organic nonfat cottage or ricotta cheese or crumbled organic extra firm tofu and top with grilled fruit and nuts or seeds. Or make fruit tacos like these; just swap the strawberries for peaches, plums or nectarines.
Cynthia Sass is a registered dietitian with master's degrees in both nutrition science and public health. Frequently seen on national TV, she's a SHAPE contributing editor and nutrition consultant to the New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Rays. Her latest New York Times best seller is S.A.S.S! Yourself Slim: Conquer Cravings, Drop Pounds and Lose Inches.
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MALDEF & NEA: Joint Report Aims to Improve Minority Parental Engagement in Children's Schools
LOS ANGELES, CA - December 16, 2010 -
MALDEF is committed to helping school officials and parents increase minority student academic achievement.
For the past year, MALDEF and the National Education Association (NEA) have worked together to refine a report that will help parents and communities across the country more easily overcome the challenges facing minority students in our schools.
MALDEF and the NEA are now pleased to announce a report jointly created by the two organizations entitled "Minority Parent and Community Engagement: Best Practices and Policy Recommendations for Closing the Gaps in Student Achievement." The report aims to increase the active involvement of minority parents in their children's schools by identifying obstacles to such engagement and recommending strategies for parents, schools and communities to come together and overcome these obstacles.
Thomas A. Saenz, President and General Counsel of MALDEF, stated the following:
"Latino children are a large and increasing proportion of public school enrollment nationwide. Increased involvement of their parents - and of the parents of children from other minority groups - is critical to the survival and success of public schools. Through their engagement, parents become partners and champions of public education, and help to ensure that communities recognize high-quality public education as a boon to the entire nation, not just a benefit to individual children or their families."
Dennis Van Roekel, President of the National Education Association (NEA), stated the following:
"We know that when adults work together, students benefit and do better in school. But too often there are barriers - ranging from language to resources and skills - that hinder adult involvement. And too often great ideas are not shared. These obstacles are especially problematic in ethnic minority communities, where so many students are at academic risk. NEA is proud to partner with MALDEF to remove these barriers and spur new opportunities to work together for student success. We hope this guide will inspire teachers, families, and anyone involved in schools to seek new ways to collaborate so that all students can achieve their dreams."
The report is a direct result of a meeting held in October 2009 that involved over 70 parents and providers of national and community-based organizations sited across the country. MALDEF and the NEA brought these leaders together in order to address the basic right of each child, regardless of background, race, ethnicity or immigration status, to obtain a quality education.
In addition to providing best practices taken from leading educational organizations from across the U.S., the report also includes policy recommendations submitted to Congress and the U.S. Department of Education during the 2010 reauthorization process of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Many of these recommendations can be applied on a state and local level.
MALDEF and the NEA encourage you to look through this report to find key strategies to increase parent engagement in schools to help ensure that minority children achieve their potentials.
You can access the report here: http://maldef.org/resources/publications/NEA_Report.pdf.
For more information about MALDEF's efforts to improve access to quality education for all children, please visit: http://maldef.org/education.
Founded in 1968, MALDEF is the nation’s leading Latino legal civil rights organization. Often described as the “law firm of the Latino community,” MALDEF promotes social change through advocacy, communications, community education and litigation in the areas of education, employment, immigrant rights and political access.
For more information on MALDEF, please visit: www.maldef.org.
The National Education Association (www.nea.org) is the nation's largest professional employee organization, representing 3.2 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators and students preparing to become teachers.
Follow us on twitter at www.twitter.com/NEAMedia.
CONTACT: Laura Rodriguez (310) 956-2425, firstname.lastname@example.org
Derrick Everett: (770) 362-3717
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. "The Role of Protein and Amino Acids in Sustaining and Enhancing Performance." Committee on Military Nutrition Research: Activity Report 1994-1999. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1999.
The following HTML text is provided to enhance online
readability. Many aspects of typography translate only awkwardly to HTML.
Please use the page image
as the authoritative form to ensure accuracy.
Several previous CMNR reports have focused on issues of protein nutriture and performance. In 1992, the CMNR noted in an evaluation of Army Ranger training that trainees experienced significant loss of muscle mass during periods of intense physical exertion (IOM, 1992b). A follow-up report (IOM, 1993b) found that increases in energy intake only partially prevented such losses. The report Food Components to Enhance Performance (IOM, 1994b) briefly considered the influences of protein and amino acids on physical and cognitive performance and response to stress. The most recent CMNR report, Military Strategies for Sustainment of Nutrition and Immune Function in the Field (IOM, 1999), considered the effects of diet, including protein and individual amino acids such as glutamine, on immune response. This report looks further into the many questions regarding the optimal level of protein intake in a high-stress field environment. How to measure protein balance and estimate protein requirements accurately; how these requirements are affected by physical activity, gender, hormonal factors, and stress; and whether muscle function and cognition are influenced by protein intake and by individual amino acids are all active areas of research.
The CMNR decided that the best way to review the state of knowledge in this area was through a workshop. The purpose of this workshop was to bring together leading scientists in the field of protein metabolism to seek their assessment of the current state of knowledge and to determine, based on these assessments, on a careful reading of the literature, and on the expertise of the committee members themselves, whether the recommended intakes of protein or individual amino acids for soldiers should be modified.
In May 1996, CMNR and USARIEM personnel met to frame a series of questions, outline the workshop, and identify qualified speakers. A follow-up planning meeting was held in January 1997 and included several members of the Subcommittee on Body Composition, Nutrition, and Health of Military Women. Invited workshop speakers were asked to prepare a paper for presentation and publication that described the key issues of protein metabolism. USARIEM scientists also participated in the workshop, which resulted in a well-rounded group. At the one-day workshop, held in Washington, D.C. on March 13, 1997, each speaker gave a formal presentation, which was followed by questions and a brief discussion period. The proceedings were tape recorded and professionally transcribed. At the end of each group of presentations, a general discussion of the overall topic was held. Immediately after the workshop, the CMNR met in executive session to review the issues, to draft summaries of the presentations, and to provide responses to the sponsor's task questions. Committee members subsequently met with staff in June 1997 and worked separately and together using the authored papers, additional reference materials provided by the staff through limited literature searches, and personal expertise and experience to draft the overview, summary, conclusions, and recommendations.
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A while back, I did a post about bringing DEM data into AutoCAD Civil 3D (you can read it HERE if you are interested). In the comments, people have asked several questions and have had some issues. One of the issues is, you have to know what coordinate system the DEM file is using. Another is that, no matter what coordinate system you are using, the DEM comes in as though the elevations where in meters (and will then convert those meters to feet).
Well, all that’s about to change. If you have the Autodesk Infrastructure Design Suite (Premium or Ultimate) then you also have Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler (AIM). You can use AIM as a DEM to Civil 3D surface converter. Simply import your DEM file into AIM, export to a .imx file, and then import that into Civil 3D.
Open up AIM and create a new project. Give it a name and a place to save it. Keep the coordinate system as LL84 (there’s no need to change it) and leave everything else the way it is.
Once the project is created, import the DEM file into AIM. This is done through the Data Sources panel. Expand out the different data sources and choose “Raster” as the data source. Browse to your DEM file, open it, and then Refresh the data. You will now have a beautiful surface in your model.
Now that the DEM is added to your model, export it out to Civil 3D via the .imx file. In the application menu of AIM (that’s the purple I in the top left corner of the application), choose the Export menu and then “Export to IMX”. In the Export to IMX dialog box, choose to export the entire model, and give it a file name. AIM will choose an appropriate coordinate system so just leave that alone. Depending on the size of the DEM file, this could take a few minutes.
Once the .imx file is created, open Civil 3D. To import the .imx file, it’s important to remember to assign a coordinate system to your drawing. If you aren’t sure how to do this, click HERE. Once in Civil 3D choose the Import IMX command (it’s on the Import panel of the Home tab of the ribbon or type IMX_IMPORT at the command line). Simply browse to the .imx file and bring it in. Because both the .imx file and your drawing have coordinate systems assigned, the DEM file comes in at the correct location and at the correct elevation. You may want to change the name of the surface as well as the style but, you now have a beautiful DEM file in your drawing and you didn’t ever have to know what coordinate system it was using!
And if anyone is wondering, the DEM file I used while creating this blog post created a surface in Civil 3D with almost 4 million points.
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The Deputy Minister for Children and Social Service, Gwenda Thomas, has announced that 34 organisation across Wales will benefit from the funding over the next two years.
The Children and Families Organisations Grant (CFOG) provides core funding for all-Wales voluntary organisations providing services that contribute to the delivery of the policies of the Welsh Government for children, young people and their families. Its aim is to develop the capacities of eligible voluntary organisations that help the Welsh Government to achieve its objectives of creating a more inclusive society with equality of opportunities for all children.
Gwenda Thomas said:
“The Welsh Government is committed to continuing its support of the voluntary sector despite the very tight monetary climate we find ourselves in.
“At a time of restricted public spending, we must focus our resources on funding organisations that put the wellbeing of our children and young people at the core of their decision-making.”
The funding was awarded on the basis that the applicants must be third sector organisations or part of a collaboration of third sector organisations that support children and their families. The successful applicants needed to demonstrate that their services offer value for money, contribute to the objectives and priorities of the Welsh Government and that they operate on an all-Wales basis.
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The Institute of Education Sciences lists its latest research reports on its What's New page. It also provides a publication search page that lets you search through everything it has published online.
Publications by IES divisions
- National Center for Education Research
- National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance
- National Center for Special Education Research
Evaluation Reports is a collection of evaluation reports on ED programs in the areas of elementary and secondary education, student financial assistance, higher education, and vocational education.
The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) is a searchable database of education research and information.
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I'm more or less in Tom's camp here. Part of the confusion, to me, is that I think he's arguing against a bit of a strawman:
The conflict between the Naturwissenschaften and the Geisteswissenschaften goes back at least two centuries, and became intensified as ambitious, sometimes impatient researchers proposed to introduce natural scientific concepts and methods into the study of human psychology and human social behavior. Their efforts, and the attitudes of unconcealed disdain that often inspired them, prompted a reaction, from Vico to Dilthey and into our own time: the insistence that some questions are beyond the scope of natural scientific inquiry, too large, too complex, too imprecise, and too important to be addressed by blundering over-simplifications. From the nineteenth-century ventures in mechanistic psychology to contemporary attempts to introduce evolutionary concepts into the social sciences, “scientism” has been criticized for its “mutilation” (Verstümmelung, in Dilthey’s memorable term) of the phenomena to be explained.
This doesn't strike me as a critique of science, it strikes me as a critique of bad
science. Scientists do love to model things mathematically, but the flipside of that is that they often have a better sense for when the model sucks. Economics is an obvious example, and generally I get the impression that tons of physicists have been happy to point out the shortcomings of Walrasian economics over the years.
As another example from the first page that jumps out at me:
The emphasis on generality inspires scientific imperialism, conjuring a vision of a completely unified future science, encapsulated in a “theory of everything.” Organisms are aggregates of cells, cells are dynamic molecular systems, the molecules are composed of atoms, which in their turn decompose into fermions and bosons (or maybe into quarks or even strings). From these facts it is tempting to infer that all phenomena—including human actions and interaction—can “in principle” be understood ultimately in the language of physics, although for the moment we might settle for biology or neuroscience. This is a great temptation. We should resist it. Even if a process is constituted by the movements of a large number of constituent parts, this does not mean that it can be adequately explained by tracing those motions.
But this is a cartoonish view of the goals of science. No mature scientist is going to argue with the last part. There is a substantial body of physics (statistical mechanics) developed to elaborate exactly this line of argument but showing that you can still get quantitative information out anyway.
He makes some good, non-controversial points but then seems to ignore them when inconvenient for his argument. To wit: he mentions that science is not a monolithic entity ("The enterprises that we lump together are remarkably various in their methods, and also in the extent of their successes") but then says a couple paragraphs later that historical linguistics and paleontology have similar evidential standards, ergo natural science and social science are totally on the same footing. Hrm.
Anyway, I started skimming at the end because I wasn't finding much of particular interest.
EDIT: If we define scientism in the way Aaron suggests, then I'd say I subscribe to some form of it. While I'm not convinced that Popper's ideas are the be-all and end-all of science, I do think that falsification is an important idea. And that's where I think science beats the humanities in terms of knowledge - it's a lot easier to demonstrate that scientific ideas are wrong than it is in the humanities or social sciences. This isn't to say there's no value in those other things, but whatever value there is should probably be not thought of in terms of knowledge.
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July 24, 2012 - Doctors say a popular treatment for multiple sclerosis is not effective. A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds the drugs called interferon beta, do not slow down the progression of the disease and they do not prevent or delay long term disability. Patients who used interferon beta drugs were as likely to experience long-term disability as patients who did not. Researchers say doctors should question regular use of the drugs.
Also, a British study finds a lack of physical activity causes 10 percent of deaths. Doctors say people who don't exercise regularly are at a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Researchers believe physical inactivity can shorten life expectancy similar to smoking and obesity. New research in The Lancet finds about one in 10 deaths worldwide are caused by people not getting up and engaging in physical activity such as walking 30 minutes a day for five days a week. The researchers concluded people's failure to spend a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate physical activity each week led to about 6 percent of cases of coronary heart disease, about 7 percent of Type 2 diabetes cases, and 10 percent of breast and colon cancers which adds up to 5.3 million deaths tied to physical inactivity. Smoking, meanwhile, is responsible for about 5 million deaths worldwide.
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Utopia Theater: The DVD is Dead!
Like the CD, the DVD was a great idea born prematurely. Claims for the 16-bit/44.1kHz CD's "perfect sound" by the music business and electronics manufacturers—and, worst of all, hi-fi press cheerleaders and whores—were absurd and frustrating for those of us who bothered to listen and who savored the emotional satisfaction that lifelike analog sound was capable of delivering.
Yes, CDs were high-tech, sexy, convenient, and a big improvement over vinyl in terms of what wasn't there, but the sound—especially in the early days of steam-powered D/A and A/D converters—was glassy, icy, and mechanical. As Neil Young once described it, "The mind is fooled but the heart is sad."
The distinct disappointment of sonic expectations wrought by those claims of "perfection" for early CD sound paved the way for the next giant step back: MP3. With the bad-sound genie out of the bottle and the great recording studios and spaces disappearing, some of the early digital cheerleaders are now, belatedly, sounding the alarm. But it's probably too late. The great recordings are mostly from the dimly lit corners of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. Thanks to reissues on vinyl, SACD, and DVD-Audio, a younger generation finally has the opportunity to hear worthwhile facsimiles of those recordings—or what's left of them on aging analog master tapes. But judging from sales so far of SACDs and DVD-As, few care, even with the "lure" of new surround-sound mixes.
The DVD Difference
The DVD was based on the stone-age NTSC TV standard, so the best visual resolution it could manage was a meager 480 lines. Whether you deinterlaced it or not, the image's resolution remained 480. At best, the horizontal resolution was little better. But thanks to processing tricks, craftily applied algorithms, and a format invented and crafted with a realistic view of NTSC video's true limitations, film-to-DVD transfers can look remarkably filmlike, even on relatively large screens—until you see the high-definition transfer. Then the DVD looks blurred, more like video than film.
But DVD was an enormous improvement over the VHS videotape or even the laserdisc, and its introduction was immediately embraced by videophiles and, to the surprise of most industry observers, the general public as well. When Warren Leiberfarb, then with Warner Brothers, championed the DVD, he was derided as misguided and worse—especially when he suggested that consumers might actually buy more movies on DVD then they'd rent.
Other than the small, diehard audiophile community (which includes me), the acceptance so far of SACD and DVD-Audio has been, at best, tepid. What can eager videophiles (again, me included) expect from the two forthcoming, incompatible, hi-def formats, Blu-ray and HD DVD, that now appear ready to duke it out in the marketplace?
In early December, Toshiba—a key developer and supporter of HD-DVD—announced content agreements with Paramount, Universal, New Line, and Warner Bros.—as many as two dozen titles from each studio are expected to be available on HD DVD by Christmas 2005. However, none of these deals is exclusive, which leaves the studios open to issuing the films on Blu-ray as well. HD DVD players will be available for around $1000, giving the Toshiba camp a big jump on the Blu-ray group, which is not expected to have hardware or software available for the US market until well into 2006.
No one knows how this hi-def format duel will play out, but those predicting that Blu-ray and HD DVD will suffer the same fate toward which SACD and DVD-A seem to be hurtling are probably mistaken. Early adopters and video fanatics will probably sell off their favorite DVDs as those titles are released on Blu-ray and/or HD DVD, just as they jettisoned their LDs when DVDs hit the shelves. These are the folks with big screens, on which they'll easily see and appreciate the difference.
But the biggest difference between the hi-rez audio and video scenarios is the playback gear of the general public. Most CD buyers don't have audiophile-quality gear and aren't likely to buy it in the future, making the sonic differences between CD and SACD or DVD-A academic. However, the move to big-screen HDTVs is just beginning to gather mainstream momentum. The installed base of sets capable of displaying the awesome visual power of Blu-ray and/or HD DVD will blossom just as the new formats reach the consciousness of the mainstream. These buyers won't be as likely to jettison entire DVD collections as readily as will hardcore videophiles. But they'll replace favorites with HD transfers, and buy spectacular-looking video productions shot in HD, because the improvement in picture quality will be so obviously apparent on their new HDTVs.
There are some big "ifs" associated with this scenario. It will occur only if the format war is resolved quickly and cleanly, either by the manufacturers themselves or by a decisive marketplace victory for one of the formats. And a hi-rez video format can succeed in the mainstream market only if the industries restrain themselves from pricing players and discs beyond the means of mainstream consumers. Sure, charge the max to begin with, but drop prices in time to catch the crest of the HDTV wave.
Meanwhile, signs of DVD's end were everywhere this past holiday season: $20 progressive-scan DVD players, second-tier DVD releases priced at five for $30, and older big sellers, such as American Pie, available for $10. Nor is there much left to mine from the studio vaults. How else to explain stuff like Paramount's 2-DVD set of Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica—The Complete First Season? Is anyone really going to buy that?
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The American Seedless Raisin Company Records (formerly the Franklin P. Nutting Papers), 1894-1956, contain materials related
to the raisin industry in California during the first half of the 20th century. The collection includes administrative correspondence,
legal documents, and material related to lawsuits and the Federal Trade Commission investigation of Sun-Maid Raisin Growers
Franklin P. Nutting, born October 18, 1876 in Worcester, Massachusetts, moved to Berkeley when he was seven years old. His
father, W. R. Nutting, in 1894 founded the American Vineyard Company headquartered in Boston to commercialize the Thompson
seedless raisin. Franklin, attorney for the company from 1901-1911, purchased control of the business in 1911 and moved the
headquarters from Boston, MA to San Francisco, where he practiced law. The company's name was changed to American Seedless
Raisin Company in 1917. His father went on to found the California Associated Raisin Growers which eventually became the
Number of containers: 29 boxes, 4 cartons, 1 oversize box, 4 oversize folders, 1 oversize scrapbook, 2 volumes.
Linear feet: 17
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in
writing to the Head of Public Services, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 94270-6000.
Consent is given on behalf of The Bancroft Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to
include or imply permission from the copyright owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright owner. See: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/reference/permissions.html.
Collection is open for research.
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Be warned: this story is beautiful but tragic. It begins with Orpheus, the best musician that ever lived. One strum of his lyre, one note sung, and beasts would crawl to him, rocks would shift their moss to move to be closer, trees would tear their roots to be closer to him. He had more power than a mortal man ought to for he was the son of the Muse Calliope.
He lived his life simply and carelessly until the day he met Eurydice. She was a Dryad, and when they fell in love it meant everything to them. But the rustic god Aristaeus saw Eurydice's beauty and desired it, and did not care that she was unwilling and in love with another. She ran from him in terror, without thought to her step, and so it was she stepped on a poisonous snake in her flight. The venom of its bite killed her at once and her spirit went to the Underworld. Orpheus was inconsolable. His grief was bitter, but he did not let it lull him into a stupor, he decided to take action.
With his lyre, Orpheus descended into the Underworld. A normal mortal would have perished any number of times, but Orpheus had his lyre and his voice and he charmed Cerberus - the three-headed monster dog of Hades who guarded the Underworld - into letting him pass. Facing Hades and his cold Queen Persephone he played for them his sorrow at the loss of his love. The heart that was frozen by Hades' abduction melted in Persphone's breast and a tear rolled down her cheek. Even Hades could not help weeping. They let Orpheus through to Eurydice, but warned him very carefully: Eurydice would follow him into the light of the world and once she entered the sunlight she would be changed from a shade back to a woman. But if Orpheus doubted, if he looked back to see her, she would be lost to him forever.
Orpheus heard and rejoiced. He turned and left the dark hall of Hades and began his ascent back to life. As he walked he rejoiced that his wife would soon be with him again. He listened closely for her footfall behind him, but a shade makes no noise. The closer to the light he got, the more he began to believe that Hades had tricked him to get him out of the Underworld, that Eurydice was not behind him. Only feet away from the light Orpheus lost faith and turned around. He saw Eurydice, but only for a moment as her shade was whisked back down among the other dead souls. She was gone.
Orpheus tried again to enter the Underworld and demand her return, but one cannot enter twice the same way - and no other way was open to him. All that was left to him was death. Here the story changes. There are different stories of his death. Some say he played so mournfully that his songs called for death, and that the animals who surrounded him tore him apart, weeping as they did. Some say it was Maenads in a frenzy who ripped the singer to shreds. Some say he was struck down by Zeus for disclosing mysteries that were meant to be kept sacred. Either way, he was torn apart, and much of him was thrown to the winds. But the Muses mourned the death of their son and prodigy, and saved his head to sing forever.
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Why not a nun for a Pope? Demoralized Catholic Church needs serious change from the Vatican down
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|Irish American Sister Pat Farrell|
Why stop at female priests? Has it occurred to anyone that maybe, just maybe, it would be a good thing for the next pope to be a woman?
And while it appears that New York’s own Timothy Cardinal Dolan might actually have a small chance to sneak into the Vatican, perhaps there is another Irish American who might be an even more inspired choice?
This week, the cardinals are congregating in Rome to elect a new pope and there is much muttering about serious changes.
Will the next pope be a conservative looking to shore up a dwindling but committed flock? Or a reformer, hoping to send a message that the church is willing to change in order to attract those who have left the church as well as new followers?
One of the issues that must be dealt with -- especially in countries like America -- is the dwindling number of priests. Just in time for this contentious topic, Catholic intellectual Gary Wills has just released a new book entitled Why Priests? A Failed Tradition.
Wills argues that there is no historical or even theological basis for maintaining the priesthood in the Catholic Church.
“As this (papal) election approaches, some hope that the shortage of priests, and their damaged reputation and morale, can be remedied by adding married priests, or women priests, or gay priests. But that misses the point,” Wills wrote last month in The New York Times.
“Whatever their sexual status, they will still be priests. They will not be chosen by their congregations (as was the practice in the early church). They will be appointed from above, by bishops approved for their loyalty to Rome, which will police their doctrinal views as it has with priests heretofore. The power structure will not be changed by giving it new faces.”
Wills makes some fine points, but he’s so critical of so many aspects of Catholicism that it’s hard to avoid calling him what he appears to be -- a Protestant.
If priests aren’t going away, is there much reason to believe we might see married or female Catholic priests in our lifetime?
Not likely -- and that’s a shame. It is starting to feel like this is a rare moment for truly radical thinking with the Catholic Church.
Well, how’s this for radical -- how about Sister Pat Farrell, former president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), for pope?
Okay, yes, Sister Pat is, indeed, a woman. And while rules say that any Catholic can technically be elected pope, the rules also say that that the pope must be a male.
Well, we know where this has gotten us.
Meanwhile, Sister Pat’s central point is one that 21st century Catholics can no longer ignore. How in God’s name can the leadership of the church continue to ignore the talents, energy and contributions of half of the people on the planet?
“I think there are many issues in the Catholic Church right now that could leave the faithful somewhat demoralized,” Sister Pat told NPR radio this month.
“And I think that the climate of scandal and abuse is one piece of that. The declining membership is another piece. The great and deep spiritual hunger of our time is another issue.”
She later added, “In other parts of society the roles for women have expanded. So the places where young women today can experience greater leadership typically are not within the Catholic Church.”
It is worth adding that in the wake of 9/11, many pointed out that one fundamental weakness of heavily Muslim countries was their inability to tap the potential of their female citizens.
Can’t the same be said for the Catholic Church? The extensive contributions of nuns at the parish level only makes the case for expanding their role in the church stronger.
Fittingly, rather than seek LCWR’s advice and input, Sister Pat and LCWR have been singled out as radicals by the church hierarchy. Which is particularly interesting because she is so clearly asking moderate, rather than radical, questions.
There are many who believe those like Sister Pat should be much more confrontational. And who knows? If the next pope does not seriously consider some of the issues she’s raised, more radical voices may yet rise up.
Or, worse, perhaps no one will care any more.
Maybe the church will finally be seen as a lost cause.
(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)
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By Helen Albert, Senior medwireNews Reporter
Silibinin, a key component of milk thistle seeds, can help protect against skin damage caused by ultraviolet B radiation (UVB), show study findings published in Molecular Carcinogenesis.
These results support previous findings by the same researchers that show that silibinin promotes destruction of cells damaged by ultraviolet A radiation (UVA), but not healthy cells.
"When you have a cell affected by UV radiation, you either want to repair it or kill it so that it cannot go on to cause cancer. We show that silibinin does both," commented senior author of both studies Rajesh Agarwal (University of Colorado, Aurora, USA) in a press statement.
The previous study, published in Photochemistry and Photobiology, showed that human skin cells that were treated with silibinin before being exposed to UVA were more likely to self-destruct after being damaged than those that were not, potentially acting as an early anti-cancer mechanism. The researchers believe that this was due to an increase in the release of reactive oxygen species.
The second, more recent study shows that silibinin protects human skin cells from being damaged by UVB exposure by increasing the amount of interleukin (IL)-12 that they produce, thus allowing them to repair damage more easily. IL-12 is able to induce immune responses and has potent anti-angiogenic activity, which has led to suggestions that it may be a useful anti-cancer agent.
These findings were validated in vivo in a mouse study. The team found that topically applied silibinin increased the amount of IL-12 in skin with UVB damage, but not in healthy unexposed skin.
"Considering the fact that millions of people get constantly exposed to solar UVB... the post-damage use of silibinin as an inducer of endogenous IL-12 in UVB-damaged human skin for the repair of DNA damage could be a practical and translational approach in reducing sunlight-caused damages in human skin which eventually lead to skin cancer," suggest the authors of the Molecular Carcinogenesis study.
"It has been 20 years of work with this compound, silibinin," Agarwal told the press. "We first noticed its effectiveness in treating both skin and solid cancers, and we now have a much more complete picture of the mechanisms that allow this compound to work."
Licensed from medwireNews with permission from Springer Healthcare Ltd. ©Springer Healthcare Ltd. All rights reserved. Neither of these parties endorse or recommend any commercial products, services, or equipment.
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