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- (Photo: Reuters/Joshua Lott)
Authorities have said the Arizona Wallow Fire is likely to become the largest in the state’s history, as it continues to threaten homes and is still only five percent contained as of Friday morning.
However, favoring weather reports predicting weakening winds, which have been driving the blaze at an unstoppable speed until now, may give fire crews their best opportunity yet to contain the fire further.
Thousands have fled the path of the fire since it broke out in late May, and it has spread wildly, burning an area of greater size than Los Angeles.
Firefighters confirmed that the fire has now destroyed 29 houses, including 22 in Greer, and crews were now informing evacuated residents whether their houses had survived or had been one of the unlucky ones destroyed.
A spokesman with the Southwest Interagency Incident Management team, Jim Whittington, told CNN, “It doesn't matter if they're rich or poor, if they live in a mansion or if they live in a very small house, the pain on people's faces is exactly the same. Our hearts go out to those folks and we're thinking about you.”
Whittington also announced that the fire was at the present time still only five percent contained.
However, it is hoped that the turning point has come in the fight to battle the Wallow Fire. Over Thursday, winds had already calmed significantly, and fire crews were able to hold the line in numerous areas, and prevented the fire from spreading to the towns of Eagar and Springerville.
Firefighters have been using all the techniques in their knowledge to hold back the blaze. One of these has been “backfiring,” where smaller controlled fires are lit in advance of the blaze reaching areas, with the hope that the already crisp timbers will kill the spread of the main fire.
Whittington spoke with hope that a turning point had arrived, saying, “We’ve been reacting to this fire since the beginning …this was the first day we’ve been able to go after it.”
Weather forecasts are predicting lighter winds for approximately 36 hours before winds increase again on Saturday afternoon.
On The Christian Post website, many readers left messages asking for God to bless those tackling the fire, as well as those affected in the ensuing devastation.
Stormy Dawn, from Anchorage, Ala., said: “Our guys, Crew 2 from Happy Camp and all the other responders have our thoughts and prayers. My honey is out there and he is good at what he does, they will get it under control, God bless them all.”
Sharon Leckington, of New Mexico Junior College said, “God bless and please keep safe all of our brave men and women who are working so hard to put this horrible fire out. Amen.”
Friday will be a crucial day in the fight back against the blaze. Whittington said, “Every minute, every second between now and when those winds hit, we've got to be doing really good work.”
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Brahms: The Complete Chamber Music
CDS44331/42 12CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
The Essential Hyperion 2
This album is not yet available for download HYP20 2CDs Super-budget price sampler — 2CDs Deleted
Movement 1: Allegro non troppo ma con brio
Movement 2: Adagio
Movement 3: Un poco allegretto
Movement 4: Vivace ma non troppo presto – Animato
The first subject’s soaring theme generates a fine paragraph of densely scored lyricism before secondary material arrives in the form of a discourse between paired violas and the remaining instruments. The extension of this theme embodies much conscious undermining or displacement of normal accentuation, often exacerbating the effect through cadence formations whose timing produces artificial stresses on otherwise ‘weak’ beats. This habitual tendency in Brahms might be seen as arising consciously or unconsciously from choral mastery: his study of Palestrina’s (un-barred) imitative polyphony, and his own consequent flexibility in subordinating metrical rhythm to patterns of syllabic stress where appropriate, may well be the source of the richly varied accentuation and harmonic rhythms of his instrumental music.
The Allegro’s development section thrives upon the polyphonic possibilities of the medium, beginning quietly in B flat but generating an unusually intensive exploration of the first subject’s implications. As indicated before, this is something which ceases to work with adequate balance and suppleness in the majority of Brahms’s chamber works with piano, and which does not arise in the comparatively stiff and strenuous context of the three string quartets. The same felicitous touch animates a spacious recapitulation and a coda which enables the respective instruments to meditate upon past thematic material as both soloists and ensemble members, much as in an operatic set-piece (though here any operatic connection ends). A gradual withdrawal into self-communing stillness is followed by two brusque final chords.
The Adagio (in D minor) opens with two bars whose rhythmic and tonal similarity to the Adagio e lento in Mendelssohn’s Op 87 Quintet may well be significant. The two movements are comparable in general rhythmic terms throughout, as well as in overall length. Moreover it is Mendelssohn who comes to mind as emotional and aesthetic model for the ‘careless rapture’ of Brahms’s first movement. The memorable melodic arch opening the earlier composer’s Octet might seem to support this, though Mendelssohn stands poles apart from Brahms in terms of variety of metre and accentuation, often becoming entrapped in his own form of ‘fearful symmetry’ from which fugal habit provides the sole relief and escape.
The third movement, Un poco allegretto, is in effect an intermezzo, again resembling its Mendelssohnian counterpart with which it shares the key of G minor (as does Mozart’s Quintet K516). However, the principal theme seems loosely to echo that which opens Schubert’s unfinished Eighth Symphony. Its characteristic falling semitone acquires a progressively abstracted and sorrowful mien, particularly upon its return after the central G major episode’s gently unexpected modulations. The curiously indivisible mixture of the idyllic and the melancholy has more than a little in common with Dvorák, Brahms’s younger friend and colleague who by this date was more than capable of reciprocating an influence.
The final rondo starts modestly in the ‘wrong’ key of B minor. Its mood is ambivalent and embraces several curious moments of whimsy of a folk-derived nature. Again kinship with Dvorák may be discerned in the gentle ‘humoreske’ style of the opening and in its suddenly forthright sequel which establishes the tonic key. A secondary subject in triplets reinforces the note of rustic simplicity but the central passage generates an unexpectedly single-minded exploration of the first subject, again in a fashion which would have been impracticable for Brahms in most other chamber media. Upon its re-emergence the complete subject seems to have shed something of its innocence, but after a brief recapitulation of the second subject in the tonic key the principal material proves capable of further regeneration. The spirited ‘coda’ increasingly assumes the character of a Dvorák ‘polka’ or ‘galop’ such as one finds in the ‘Dumky’ Trio, Op 90.
from notes by Francis Pott © 1995
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Arianna recently appeared at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford to discuss the theme of "Lost In Noise: Amplifying Untold Stories In An Age Of Flux." The Forum, as described on its website, "is the premier, international platform for accelerating entrepreneurial approaches and innovative solutions to the world's most pressing social issues."
During the panel discussion, Arianna explained that the media has a "false sense of objectivity."
"The idea that an objective media reporter should not take a stand on global warming, on evolution, practically on whether the Earth is flat or not, you know, not quite, but that's what makes a reporter objective, that I sit here and I interview on the one hand Carl Pope talking about the dangers and the opportunities, etc, around climate change, and on the other side Senator James Inhofe, for example, who believes that global warming is a fraud, and my job is to simply give them a forum, and let the public decide. Now just think of it. This is absurd."
She continued, "the media have been largely responsible for what is happening around big existential threats, because they have this Pontius Pilate approach to the truth. It's as though there is no such thing as truth."
As Arianna explains, another problem with the modern media is the habit of looking at issues "through the prism of right vs. left."
"You cannot look at the biggest problems of our time through this prism," said Arianna.
On the future of newspapers, she stated, "I don't actually see newspapers ending at all. I see a hybrid future where more and more of the best newspapers ... are adopting the best things of the web, and where digital natives like The Huffington Post are adopting the best of traditional journalism."
WATCH THE FULL PANEL DISCUSSION BELOW:
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A startup called FreedomPop recently launched a free 4G wireless service for email and basic web surfing, making 24/7 access to friends and loved ones easier than ever Just like Google has affected our relationships, the internet has greatly altered our love lives even more so. Let's look at how being connected influences modern dating, for better or for worse.
1. We're Meeting Partners Online
The service that connects us to people we know has also taken on the role of worldwide matchmaker. Today, one in five couples meet online. And, we're not just finding potential partners on the internet, we're talking to them virtually, dating them, falling in love, and even proposing online too. While online dating may not be any better than meeting someone at a bar, many people are still giving digital love a shot. A recent study by MBAPrograms.org found 49 million people search for love each month on eHarmony and Match.com alone. And those are just 2 of the estimated 1,500 online dating sites out there.
More from YourTango: Love Bytes: If His Parents Hate You, Should You Leave Him?
More from YourTango: A Fool-Proof Guide to Saying "I Love You" For The First Time
2. We Can Video Chat
Remember when we used to spend hours on the phone? It's almost hard to believe that's how couples communicated before the web. Now, we can see who we're chatting with in realtime on Google Hangouts, Facebook, Skype, FaceTime, you name it. More intimate than a regular phone call, video chats make couples and even strangers feel like they're with each other whether they're at opposite ends of a city or a country.
3. We Can Talk Any Time
Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Skype, Google, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Instagram — think about all of the online accounts you have (if you can remember). The internet makes us always available. Sure, you can let your email pile up over the week or your Facebook notifications go unnoticed, but doesn't it create some distress or anxiety when you're not tuned in? The second exchange any of our usernames with someone new, we instantly have the ability to connect with them. What's tricky is deciding how much or how little to communicate now that you have access to someone pretty much all the time. Which accounts do you follow and when?
More juicy stories on YourTango:
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Civil Air Patrol was conceived in the late 1930s by legendary New Jersey aviation advocate Gill Robb Wilson, who foresaw aviation’s role in war and general aviation’s potential to supplement America’s military operations. With the help of New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, the new Civil Air Patrol was established on December 1, 1941, just days before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
The CAP insignia, a red three-bladed propeller in the Civil Defense white-triangle-in-blue-circle, began appearing on private aircraft everywhere. CAP initially planned only on liaison and reconnaissance flying, but the civilian group’s mission expanded when German submarines began to prey on American ships off the coast of the United States and CAP planes began carrying bombs and depth charges.
The CAP coastal patrol flew 24 million miles, found 173 submarines, attacked 57, hit 10 and sank two. By Presidential Executive Order, CAP became an auxiliary of the Army Air Forces in 1943.
On July 1, 1946, President Harry Truman signed Public Law 476 that incorporated CAP as a benevolent, nonprofit organization.
And on May 26, 1948, Congress passed Public Law 557 which permanently established CAP as the Auxiliary of the new U.S. Air Force (created as an independent armed service the previous year). This law also gave the Secretary of the Air Force the authority to provide financial and material assistance to the organization.
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Sawdust, stalks and nutshells – new sources of fuel
At SABMiller India, we aim to integrate sustainable development into our daily business routines. One such practice is the use of rice husk and groundnut shells as fuel for boiler in our breweries. This year we have built a new briquette fired boiler in our brewery at Aurangabad which uses briquettes made out of sugarcane stalks, sawdust, groundnut shells and a variety of other biomass.
Our priorities: Energy & Carbon
Progress through Partnership – barley farmers in India
Barley in India has traditionally only been grown as animal feed. It has therefore not been a priority crop for farmers who get yields as low as 1.1 tonne per acre and often don't get a fair deal in terms of pricing.
However at SABMiller India, we have set ourselves the goal to introduce and develop malt barley cultivation in India and to source 100% of our malting barley from local suppliers in India, rather than relying on imports within the next five years. Realising the need to improve the quality of local barley, we began our "Progress through Partnership" (Saanjhi Unnati) programme in the State of Rajasthan in 2005.
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- Tools for Investors
- Stock News
- Investing Ideas
- Econ & Policy
- Personal Finance
Questionable mortgage practices at the nation’s largest financial institutions received a lot of attention from federal regulators after the financial crisis, and as part of its efforts to corral and remedy banks’ foreclosure violations, the Justice Department pursued legal settlements with Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Citigroup (NYSE:C), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), and Ally Financial (NYSE:GMA).
Last February, those institutions resolved the allegations of banking misconduct by agreeing to fund about $20 billion in consumer relief, with the majority of that amount reserved to help distressed borrowers stay in their homes. In the intervening year, the banks have made significant efforts to fulfill their obligations; a report issued by monitor Joseph A. Smith Jr., a former North Carolina Banking Commissioner, showed that all five were on track to meet the terms of their deal.
However, Smith did note that the banks still needed to improve their compliance with the loan servicing standards laid out in the settlement.
The terms laid out by the federal government required the five banks to furnish at least $10 billion in loan write-downs and $10 billion in other kinds of homeowner aid, including short sales, a practice by which banks accept less than the total amount owed on a mortgaged property to avoid foreclosure…
Don't miss one of the biggest bull markets in history! Covers Gold, Silver, Gold & Silver stocks, and miners.
There's always a bull market in some sector! Find the best opportunities in commodities.
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Jewish World Review Oct. 5, 2000/ 6 Tishrei, 5761
Looking at Lieberman from inside the 'ghetto'
ROME -- Just before he closed up for the Jewish sabbath, a haberdasher on the Via dei
Giubbonari, paused in settling the bill for a sweater with a visiting American, whom he recognized as
"How do you feel about a Jew running for vice president of the United States?'' he asked. The
American expressed feelings of pride mixed with a little nervousness. The shopkeeper nodded.
"It's fine if he's elected and there are no big mistakes, but as soon as the vice president stumbles,
won't Americans blame all Jews?''
That is a question often raised in a visitor's conversations with European Jews. Given their uneasy
history, they feel they have reason to be alarmed. Only this week thugs firebombed a synagogue in
Rome is the site of the first ghetto, literally. The Jewish relationship with Rome, which began over
2,000 years ago, the oldest in Western Europe, reads like the adventures of Candide in "the best of
all possible worlds.''
They arrived as freemen and merchants and flourished under the protection of Julius Caesar and
Augustus, but they were mercilessly mistreated by later pagan tyrants. After Constantine legalized
Christianity, they were described as a "foul, bestial, filthy perverse sect.''
In the Middle Ages Jews were forced to wear an ugly hat of identification which was round with a
protruding horn. At carnival time many Jewish men were often publicly stripped, forced to walk on
all fours, with riders mounting them as though they were horses. In 1555, they were ordered to live
in a ghetto with eight gates that were locked at night. Even though Raphael and Michelangelo drew
heavily on Jewish themes for their art at the Vatican, the phrase "perfidious Jews'' remained in the
Catholic Good Friday prayer until Pope John XXIII removed it.
Roman Jews gained equal rights in 1870 and prospered socially and commercially until the fascists
under Mussolini in 1938 passed racial laws against them, withdrawing all civil rights. Five years later
Italians stood by as the Nazis rounded up 2,091 Roman Jews, stuffed them into 18 sealed cattle
cars and sent them off to the gas chambers of Birkenau and the ovens of Auschwitz. Only sixteen of
the 2,091 survived.
Today there are 16,000 Jews scattered through Rome. They are sensitive to public opinion when
Jews gain distinction because their Jewish history alternates between prominence and prejudice.
Thus the speculation over the future of Joe Lieberman. In fact, a visitor spending a week in Rome
and Berlin finds Jews more curious and conflicted over the choice of Joe Lieberman than many
Jews in America.
In Berlin Jewish images are chic and trendy, especially among young Gentile Berliners. They listen to
klezmer music in their neighborhood clubs, hang six-pointed stars on their walls, nibble bagels and
commemorate the Holocaust at every opportunity. Although there are only 11,000 Jews in Berlin
today, an adult education course offers 50 lectures on Jewish culture and religion attended by Jews
and others alike. A popular museum show chronicles the lives of Jews who survived in Berlin from
In one small park in a neighborhood where Jews once lived, a bronze sculpture is made up of a
small table and two chairs. One of the chairs is knocked over and lies askew, suggesting that the
Jews it memorializes left in a hurry, either fleeing for their lives, or ending with arrest by the Gestapo.
Berliners I met were eager to hear about Joe Lieberman and his wife Hadassah, the daughter of
survivors. They see them as yet another example of a triumph against Hitler's Holocaust. They flinch
at anything remotely suggesting anti-Semitism.
So they listen with perplexity when they hear that Joe Lieberman is willing to meet with Louis
Farrakhan, the black leader in America who referred to Jews as "bloodsuckers,'' Judaism as a
"gutter religion'' and Adolph Hitler as a "great'' man and who only recently suggested that a Jewish
vice president would owe a greater loyalty to Israel than to the United States. Nevertheless, the
senator suggested that meeting Louis Farrakhan would be "a time to sort of knit the country
Oy, vay! (That's Yiddish, and it translates into English, Italian or German as "not on your
10/02/00: Campaigns, candidates, and kissy-face
09/28/00: Laughing and crying over Joe Lieberman
09/21/00: Targeting teenagers for money
09/21/00: Sexual politics in New York
09/18/00: Surviving the stereotypes and debates
09/14/00: Gloria Steinem runs cheerfully into captivity
09/12/00: Sex in the eye of the partisan
09/07/00: 'Sex and death' on the college campus
09/05/00: Joe Lieberman as a 'Menorah Man'
08/31/00: Rising suns of the conventions
08/17/00: Changing icons: From Loretta Young to Hillary Clinton
08/14/00: The Creator returns to the public square
08/10/00: Bursting with pride, but caution too
08/07/00: Brains, beauty and beastly politics
08/03/00: A candidate with a superego
07/31/00: The sizzling Lynne Cheney
07/27/00: The party of the aging Playboys
07/24/00 Hillary drives the Jewish wagon into a ditch
07/20/00 Conservatives gone fishin'
07/17/00: Snoop Doggy Dogg was a founding father, wasn't he?
07/13/00: When a teenager doesn't need a prime minister
07/10/00: Abortion as cruel and unusual punishment
07/06/00: Surviving 'survivor' TV
07/03/00: Independence Day with Norman Rockwell
06/29/00: Here comes 'something old'
06/26/00: Waiting too long for the baby
06/22/00: Good teachers, curious students and oxymorons
06/19/00: Wanted: Some ants for Gore's pants
06/15/00: Like father, like daughter
06/12/00: Culture wars and conservative warriors
06/08/00: Return of the housewife
06/05/00: Hillary and Al -- playing against type
05/31/00: The sexual revolution confronts the SUV
05/25/00: Waiting for the movie
05/22/00: Pistol packin' mamas
05/18/00: Journalists and the 'new time' religion
05/15/00: There's nothing like a (military) dame
05/11/00: 'The Human Stain' on campus
05/09/00: We've come a long way, Betty Friedan
05/04/00: From George Washington to Mansa Masu
05/01/00: Gore's ruthless doublespeak
04/28/00: Doing it Castro's way
04/24/00: Women's studies beget narrow minds
04/17/00: The slippery slope of anti-Semitism
04/13/00: A villain larger than life
04/10/00: When mourning becomes an economic tragedy
04/03/00: The last permissible bigotry
03/30/00: Seeking the political Oscar
03/23/00: The gaying of America
03/20/00: Pointy-eared quadrupeds on campus
03/16/00: The shocking art of the establishment
03/13/00: Sawdust on the campaign trail
03/10/00: Campaign rhetoric of manhood
03/06/00: The Amphetamine of the People
03/02/00: Elegy for Amadou
02/29/00: With only a million, what's a poor girl to do?
02/24/00: The changing politics of change
02/16/00: Tip from Hillary: 'Let 'em eat eggs'
02/10/00: No seances with Eleanor
02/07/00: Campaigning like our founding fathers
02/03/00: When neo-Nazis have short memories
01/31/00: George W. -- 'Ladies man' and 'man's man'
01/27/00: Dead white males and live white politicians
01/25/00: Smarting over presidential smarts
01/21/00: A post-modern song for `The Sopranos'
01/19/00: When personality is a long-distance plus
01/13/00: French lessons in amour --- and marriage
01/10/00: Reaching for the Big Golden Apple
01/07/00: Liddy Dole as the face of feminism
01/04/00: Hillary: From victim to victor
12/30/99: 'Dream catchers' for the millennium
12/27/99: In search of a candidate with strength and eloquence
12/21/99: The president as First Lady
12/16/99: Columbine with blurred hindsight
12/09/99: Homeless deserve discriminating attention
12/07/99: Casual censors and deadly know-nothings
12/02/99: Why mom didn't make general: A reality tale
11/30/99: Potholes on the road to the Promised Land
11/25/99: A feast for the spirit and the stomach
11/23/99: Fathers need to say 'I (can) do'
11/18/99: Adventures of a conservative pundit
11/15/99: Traveling with Jefferson on the information highway
11/11/99: Wanted: 'Foliage of forbiddinness' for the oval office
11/09/99: Eggs, art and rotten commerce
11/05/99: Al Gore, 'Alpha Male'. Bow wow.
11/01/99: Gay love
10/28/99: Lose one Dole, lose two
10/26/99: Rebels with a violent cause
10/21/99: Reforming parents, reforming schools
10/19/99: The male mystique -- he shops
10/13/99:The campaign of the Teletubbies
10/08/99: Money is in the eye of the art dealer
10/01/99: Lincoln's 'Almost Chosen People'
09/29/99: Introducing Bill and Hillary Bickerson
09/27/99: Must we wait for the next massacre?
09/24/99: Miss America meets Miss'd America
09/21/99: Princeton's 'professor death'
09/16/99: The Cisneros lesson
09/13/99: No clemency for personal politics
09/08/99: M-M-M is for manhood
08/30/99: Blocking the schoolhouse door
08/27/99: No kick from cocaine
08/23/99: Movies don't kill people
08/19/99: A rude awakening
08/16/99: Dubyah and that 'language' thing
08/09/99: Chauvinist sows -- oink oink
©1999, Suzanne Fields. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate
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New pollution rule to hurt state, Inhofe says
BY JIM MYERS World Washington Bureau
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
1/26/10 at 4:24 AM
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency announced a new pollution standard Monday to protect Americans from short-term exposure linked to major roads.
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., a major congressional player on such issues, warned that the EPA's move is yet another example of "more job-killing regulations" that will hurt states and local communities.
"In this case, Oklahoma will be directly affected," he said.
The top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Inhofe vowed to work closely with officials in Oklahoma to ensure that the EPA's "misguided rules" do not restrict economic development.
The Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality said it was still looking at the ramifications of the announcement.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the agency's action is the first of its kind to prevent short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide in high-risk zones such as urban communities and areas near roads.
"This new one-hour standard is designed to protect the air we breathe and reduce health threats for millions of Americans," she said.
Short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide has been linked to impaired lung function and increased respiratory infections, especially in people who have asthma.
The EPA set the new one-hour standard at a level of 100 parts per billion.
Establishing new monitoring requirements in urban areas, the EPA also said it will use at least 40 monitors in locations to help protect communities that are susceptible and vulnerable to elevated levels of nitrogen dioxide.
It expects to identify areas not meeting the new standard by January 2012.
Those designations will be based on the existing monitoring network, and the agency plans to redesignate areas when three years of air-quality data become available with the new monitors.
Those new monitors are expected to be operating no later than January 2013.
Earlier this month, the EPA announced its proposal to beef up the nation's smog standards.
"Improving air quality is a top priority for this EPA," Jackson said.
"We're moving into the clean, sustainable economy of the 21st century, defined by expanded innovation, stronger pollution standards and healthier communities."
The American Petroleum Institute expressed concern that the EPA is basing its new short-term standard on a faulty science record.
The EPA "rushed to a decision without completing a thorough review of the science in a manner that allowed proper public participation," the institute stated.
"There is no significant evidence that the short-term NO2 standard established today by the administrator is necessary to protect public health."
Jim Myers 202-484-1424
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe: He vowed to help ensure that the EPA's "misguided rules" don't restrict economic development.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson: "Improving air quality is a top priority for this EPA. We're moving into the clean, sustainable economy of the 21st century, defined by expanded innovation, stronger pollution standards and healthier communities."
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Maryland chefs will collaborate with local growers July 19 for the fifth-annual Buy Local Challenge Cookout hosted by Governor Martin O’Malley at the Maryland governor’s mansion in Annapolis.
The cookout starts a weeklong promotion encouraging Marylanders to eat locally grown produce, said Mark Powell, chief of marketing and agribusiness development for the Maryland Department of Agriculture in Annapolis.
According to the Maryland Agriculture Statistics Service, the state’s vegetable production totaled $61 million in 2010, with $19 million worth of fruit. Maryland growers produced about 42.5 million pounds of apples, 4,000 tons of peaches and 714,000 cwt. of potatoes in 2010, Powell said.
To show the growing demand for local food, the number of Maryland farmers selling directly to consumers via farmers markets, farm stands and community supported agriculture grew from 1,168 farms in 2002 to 1,407 in 2007, he said.
“The value of those sales increased from $12.5 million to $21.2 million,” Powell said.
The department promotes local produce through promotions and advertising in the Baltimore and Washington area.
“We also work with produce buyers to help them source locally,” he said.
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History of The Miami-Dade Public Library System
Throughout the past century, Miamians have watched their public libraries grow from a tiny one-room library in Coconut Grove to 48 libraries spanning the county’s southernmost point in Homestead to its northern reaches in Sunny Isles Beach. The library system has not only grown, but dramatically evolved in the way services are provided – all in an effort to meet the informational, educational and recreational needs of the people of Miami-Dade County.
A Look Back
Public libraries in Miami have a long, rich history – a history that traces back to the late 19th century. The earliest libraries in Miami were founded through the efforts of local women’s club. In 1942, these libraries were brought together to form the City of Miami Public Library System. In 1971, city and county libraries joined forces and formed the Miami-Dade Public Library System. Almost immediately, the new library system experienced an unprecedented boost in its growth. This expansion was a result of the 1972 Decade of Progress Bond Program – a $553 million initiative which made possible many important local projects including the construction of 13 new libraries. Through the Decade of Progress Bond Program, regional libraries were constructed in South Dade, West Dade and North Dade, as well as branches in Northeast, Model City, Kendall, Miami Lakes, South Miami, Homestead, Coral Reef and Key Biscayne. Finally in 1985, at the newly constructed Cultural Plaza in downtown Miami, a new Main Library opened.
This period of growth was followed in 1990 with the opening of two additional libraries in the areas of North Central and West Kendall. In 1992, the world’s first library on an elevated transit system opened at the Metrorail’s Civic Center station. Over the next eight years, no further expansion of the system was funded and no new libraries opened. It wasn’t until the fall of 2001, when the Mayor and Board of County Commissioners voted to increase the library system’s budget which provided funding for capital improvement initiatives – making way for the opening of 18 new libraries by the year 2011.
When the Board of County Commissioners approved the library system’s Capital Plan in 2001, it was the first time in nearly a decade that the department had resources to open new libraries. The plan called for the immediate opening of a new wave of smaller libraries and the subsequent construction of 10 new libraries. These smaller libraries were fashioned after a homework center in the City of Doral and became the model for storefront libraries which were located in shopping centers throughout the County. In rapid succession, the library system successfully opened these storefront libraries in Country Walk, Hialeah Gardens, Tamiami, Naranja, Lakes of the Meadow, Concord, California Club, Doral, Palm Springs North, Opa-Locka, and Sunset.
Since 2001, seven newly-constructed libraries have opened. These include Golden Glades, International Mall, Kendale Lakes, Naranja, Palmetto Bay, Pinecrest, and Virrick Park. The Arcola Lakes Branch is currently under construction and is scheduled for completion in 2011. In addition, four branches have been relocated to larger facilities and major renovations have taken place at six branches.In the more than 100 years of serving the community, the library system has experienced tremendous change and growth and all the while remaining committed to being “the compelling community destination, by providing a five-star customer service experience.”
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The prolific William Gurstelle has shared over 20 how-tos on the pages of MAKE over the years. Needless to say, he has a lot of materials lying around his workshop, including some relatively expensive clear PVC left over from the Night Lighter 36 stun-gun-triggered potato cannon project that appeared in MAKE Volume 03. He decided the last thing he needed was another potato cannon, so he came up with the simple but great-sounding, and even better-looking, Sound-O-Light Speakers, which appear on the pages of our current issue, Volume 31.
Gurstelle used $10 HiVi B3N speaker drivers, which ended up sounding amazingly good. And for visuals in each speaker, he connected 3 ultra-bright LEDs in series, in parallel with each speaker. At moderate volumes the LEDs pulse in time to the music. We had these boomin’ beats at our MAKE booth at Maker Faire Bay Area this year, and they were by far the most attention-getting and talked about project we had on display.
Here’s a video of Gurstelle demoing his speakers:
We’ve shared the full how-to on Make: Projects so you can get started building right away. And if you’re wondering what that rad little amp pictured above is, it’s the Elekit TU-879S Stereo Tube Amp, built from kit and reviewed in our Make: Ultimate Kit Guide by our own Jake Spurlock.
For those about to rock, we salute you!
From the pages of MAKE Volume 31:
The maker movement is making science exciting again. Forget the lame baking soda “volcanoes” and the zillion-dollar supercolliders — just as punk rock took music back from the supergroups and big studios, “punk scientists” are making inexpensive new tools to conduct real experiments in garages, schools, and hackerspaces. In MAKE Volume 31, you’ll learn how to make DIY laboratory equipment (even a scanning electron microscope!), create high-voltage sparks from falling water, control a cockroach electronically, get started in biotech, and see how individuals and schools are networking their data for real scientific discoveries. Plus: Get started with multicopters or servo controllers, and build an automatic dog ball launcher, great-sounding speakers with flashing LEDs, a classic folding-wing Rocket Glider (a new MAKE kit), an iPad music desk, a levitating solar Mendocino Motor, and much more.
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General principles of Vatican II
The church is a mystery, or sacrament, and not primarily a means of salvation.
The church is the whole People of God, not just the hierarchy.
The whole People of God participates in the mission of Christ, and not just in the mission of the hierarchy.
The mission of the church includes service to those in need, and not just the preaching of the Gospel or the celebration of the sacraments.
The church is truly present at the local level as well as at the universal level. A diocese or parish is not just an administrative division of the church universal.
The church includes Orthodox, Anglicans, and Protestants.
The mission of the church includes proclamation of the Word, celebration of the sacraments, witnessing to the Gospel individually and institutionally, and providing service to those in need.
All authority is for service, not domination.
Religious truth is to be found Outside the church as well. No one is to be coerced to embrace the Christian or the Catholic faith.
The church is always for the sake of the Kingdom of God and is not itself the Kingdom.
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View Full Version : Daily News on Thursday
11-10-2005, 10:01 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_o ... 0082c.html (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/364133p-310082c.html)
Third one down.
or even better:
11-11-2005, 08:44 AM
11-11-2005, 02:47 PM
that's great... found it in the paper at work and passed it around the office. it's on the bulletin board there somewhere.
11-12-2005, 09:38 PM
I don't understand why they gave me the title "Ja ja ja" or what it means.
that's the spanish version of "ha ha ha"
My spanish-speaking friends used to type "ja ja ja" all the time and at first I just thought they were dumb and always type-o'd the "ha ha" thing, but I was thinking about it and realized that maybe it's because a "j" in spanish is pronunced like an "h"... and an "h" in spanish is silent... therefore making "ja ja ja" make sense to me... Oh, and their reason for using "ja ja ja" as opposed to "ha ha ha" is most likely because of "Aqui".
I like to figure things out and that's what I came up with, but I could be wrong for all I know. I hope I am right though. I like being smart 8)
11-13-2005, 10:35 AM
Sounds right to me, yaas.
i like that photo of newspaper column! talk about true physical evidence -- also I learned something new today -- the meaning of Ja ja ja!
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.1.9 Copyright © 2013 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.
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COMMON NAMES: CUMIN
LOCATION: Full sun
PLANTING: Plant seed or transplants in the spring. Seed can be started in the winter indoors and set out after the last frost.
HEIGHT: 12 inches
SPREAD: 6 to 8 inches
FINAL SPACING: 4 to 6 inches
BLOOM/FRUIT: Small heads of tiny pink or white flowers followed by small tan aromatic seed with tiny bristles.
GROWTH HABITS/CULTURE: Short growing annual that’s easy to grow from seed. Grass-like leaves, but often look droopy. Likes hot, dry summers for the best seeds. Grows best in well-prepared and well- drained soils. Use lots of compost and volcanic sand.
PROBLEMS: Rain can ruin the seed harvest. Plants usually need protection for winds.
HARVEST/STORAGE: Harvest seed as they mature and store in a dry place in glass.
CULINARY USES: Cumin is primarily grown for its seed. Use to season chili, meats, breads and vegetable dishes. Mexican cuisine herb. Stems are used to flavor Vietnamese and Cajun dishes.
MEDICINAL USES: According to Lesley Bremness in her book Herbs, the oil is used for massages to reduce cellulite. The crushed seeds aid digestion, relieve flatulence, colic and diarrhea. Take as a tea.
LANDSCAPE USES: None.
OTHER USES: Cumin is included in some veterinary medicines.
INSIGHT: Cumin is one of the “Bible Herbs”.
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This year, 7th grade has learned about nutrition and exercise for our bodies in health class. Super-Size Me is a documentary that we watched during class to learn more about nutrition and exercise. This is a reflection on the documentary.
Super-Size Me is about documentarian named Morgan Spurlock who decides to prove that McDonald's foods are unhealthy by eating only McDonald's food for thirty days for three meals a day. And if he is asked if he would like his meal super sized, he has to say yes. Morgan also has to eat every single thing on the menu by the end of the thirty days at least once. Before Morgan starts his experiment, he is tested by three doctors- general practitioner, a cardiologist, and gastroenterologist. They say his health is good and will monitor him during the experiment. Morgan also talks to a dietitian/nutritionist and an exercise physiologist. Morgan is also imitating the lifestyle of the people who eat fast good so he will not exercise for the thirty days, limiting his steps to under 5,000 per day. As the experiment begins, Morgan starts off good. He eats three meals a day and tries to limit his steps to under 5,000. He finds the meals addictive because of the ingredients in the food. During the documentary, Morgan discusses issues in America's obesity and the problem with McDonald's food. As the days go on, Morgan finds himself feeling sick eating McDonalds food. His visits the three doctors again as well as the dietitian/nutritionist and the physiologist. They tell him he is gaining more fat and loosing muscle mass and if he does feel sick and unwell, it would be wise to not continue the experiment because it could endanger himself. But he continues with the experiment anyway. Then as the experiment nears the end, Morgan experiences heart palpitations. The doctors tell him he should stop immediately because it could cause his heart severe damage. And despite the warning, Morgan continues. Doctors are surprised at the damage done to his heart and other problems that the diet had caused as he finishes his experiment. He makes it to day 30, achieving his goal.
I learned from this documentary that McDonald and fast food is not healthy for you. It doesn't provide all the nutrients you need to have a healthy diet and life-style. People should exercise at least 30 minutes a day or depending how many calories you had eaten that day. You can also eat foods that are not so healthy for you less and foods that are good for you more. The more calories you eat and the less you exercise, the more weight you gain. The fewer calories you eat and the more you exercise, you can end up losing weight. But if you eat the same amount of calories and exercise the same amount, you can maintain good body weight. This documentary taught me to really watch how I eat because it could really affect my health. Seeing Morgan feel sick and unwell from eating McDonald's food made me realize that I shouldn't eat those foods and put whatever is in them into my body because it could do damage to my body and to my health.
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- Historic Sites
The Civil War ignited the basic conflict between a free press and the need for military security. By war’s end, the hard-won compromises between soldiers and newspapermen may not have provided all the answers, but they had raised all the modern questions.
A veteran reporter looks back to a time when the stakes were really high—and vet military men actually trusted newsmen.
Westmoreland and Sharon embarked on costly lawsuits to justify their battlefield judgments. They might have done much better to listen to Mrs. William Tecumseh Sherman.
In 1983 our country went to war and left the press behind. The outcry that followed raised issues that first came up when Abraham Lincoln was President and still remain with us.
The story of AT&T from its origins in Bell’s first local call to last year’s divestiture. Hail and good-bye.
His works ranged from intimate cameos to heroic public monuments. America has produced no greater sculptor.
A lot of people still remember how great it was to ride in the old Pullmans, how curiously regal to have a simple, well-cooked meal in the dining car. Those memories are perfectly accurate—and that lost pleasure holds a lesson for us that extends beyond mere nostalgia.
His job was to destroy German submarines. To do it, they gave him twelve men, three machine guns, four depth charges, and an old wooden fishing schooner with an engine that literally drove mechanics mad.
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Melville: The Making of the Poet
by Hershel Parker
Northwestern University Press, 238 pp., $32.95
Exiled Royalties: Melville and the Life We Imagine
by Robert Milder
Oxford University Press, 290 pp., $55.00
On August 1, 1860, Herman Melville’s forty-first birthday, he was aboard the clipper ship Meteor, captained by his younger brother Thomas, as it made the hazardous passage around Cape Horn bound for San Francisco. A gale arose that day and lasted, as Melville noted in his diary, for three brutal days of “snow, rain, hail, sleet, mist, fog, squalls, head-winds, refractory stove, smoky cabin, drunken ship &c &c &c.” A week later, as strong winds continued unabated, a young sailor from Nantucket was blown from the rigging to the deck and was killed instantly. After the funeral service, presided over by Tom, the body was tipped into the ocean and the blood washed from the deck. “All goes on as usual,” Melville reported, “as if nothing had happened—as if I did not know that death is indeed the King of Terrors.”
If the Meteor had suffered the fate of the Pequod, with no Ishmael left to tell the tale, Melville’s strange, bifurcated career would look quite different to us. Shorn of its three concluding decades, with their autumnal outpouring of poetry and verse-related prose, we might now divide Melville’s precocious pre-1860 writings into three satisfying phases. First would come the exotic, lightly fictionalized adventure yarns Typee (1846), published when he was twenty-six, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), vivid accounts of life among native Pacific islanders, closely based on Melville’s own experiences after abandoning a whaling ship in the Marquesas in 1842.
These books, Melville’s only popular successes, are remarkable both for their sympathetic openness to local customs, including sexual practices, and for their cold-eyed disdain for the work of Christian missionaries. “How often is the term ‘savages’ incorrectly applied!” he wrote in Typee.
None really deserving of it were ever yet discovered by voyagers or by travellers. They have discovered heathens and barbarians, whom by horrible cruelties they have exasperated into savages.
Melville’s middle, more philosophical phase would encompass the meditative and rambling Mardi (1849), with its imaginary South Sea islands; the hurriedly yet sturdily written White-Jacket (1850), based on his return journey from the Pacific aboard an American naval frigate; and the magnificent Moby-Dick (1851), in many readers’ judgment the greatest of all American novels. Ahab’s obsessive quest for vengeance on the white whale is known even to whose who have never read the novel, as is the name of poor Starbuck, the first mate who naively imagines that the Pequod is in the oil business. Melville made room in the novel for many things besides his epic plot—brilliant baroque essays reminiscent of Sir Thomas Browne on such topics as “the whiteness of the whale,” with its bracing conclusion that “though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.”
“Late Melville” would consist of the bizarre urban romance Pierre (1852), with its uneasy theme of incest, and the equally bizarre picaresque tale of Mississippi riverboat life, The Confidence-Man …
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THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES
It is very rare that among the annals of Ufology there should appear a UFO case which involved military, yet is accompanied with actual photographic proof. Such is the case of an event which took place over the Los Angeles area on February 25, 1942. A giant UFO would actually hover over the city, and be witnessed by hundreds of observers.
Pearl Harbor Scare:
As America was gathering its senses after the shocking attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, there was a heightened feeling of insecurity and anxiousness. The skies were being watched as never before as a giant UFO moved through California, alerting the military and civilian watchers as well. This case is known as the "Battle of Los Angeles," and is one of the most important cases in Ufology.
It would be early morning on February 2, 1942 when the incoming craft sirens were first heard in the Los Angeles area. Many Americans were expecting another wave of Japanese fighter planes, and thought this is what they would see as they left their homes, and ventured outside. How wrong they were! The first sightings of a large UFO would be made in Culver City, and Santa Monica.
- THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES - Theresa, 2012-05-10, 02:16
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The town's logo is centered around a representation of the Sadamisaki Peninsula, the longest peninsula in Japan. Ikata's "i" wraps around it, joining with the waves in creating a powerful symbol for the dynamism and energy of Ikata.
This tree in the beech family can be found all over Ikata, firmly embracing the earth as they grow. Their wood makes an extremely sturdy building material. This tree fits perfectly with the ever-growing town of Ikata.
This flower, the Japanese silverleaf, grows all over Ikata, its simple yellow blossoms hinting at the unassuming warmth of the town and its people.
This fish in the jack family can be found in the Iyo and Uwa seas, and is an important part of the local diet. Its energetic frolicking in the ocean waves is just like the energy and vibrance of Ikata.
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Does Dementia Affect Weight?
If you are sure that your husband has been eating well and yet has obviously lost weight, he needs to have a thorough evaluation by his doctor. Weight loss is common in patients with early dementia, particularly if they live alone, because they often forget to eat or can no longer prepare balanced meals for themselves. But if you're the one preparing meals for your husband and you have been monitoring his eating habits without any indication of a problem, then his weight loss is likely not due to dementia or Alzheimer's disease.
Unintentional weight loss in older adults (particularly if their appetites are good) is very worrisome and may indicate a serious underlying illness. I recommend that you and your husband go see his doctor together as soon as possible so that he can have a full workup done.
For more on this topic, see:
Do Alzheimer's Patients Forget How to Eat?
How Can We Stop Mom From Starving?
Do Alzheimer's Patients Get Fixated on Food?
Always Hungry With Alzheimer's?
Last Updated: 08/03/2009
Alzheimer's disease and dementia expert Dr. Kaycee Sink
is a geriatric-medicine specialist and director of the Kulynych Memory Assessment Clinic at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C.
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Photo by Nina Matthews Photography via FlickrYou may love caffeine's feel-good effects, but overdosing can harm your health. Here's how to tell if you're overdoing it
You know you're a caffeine addict when your eyes won't open before you've taken your first sip of morning Joe, or if your co-workers call you "Crabby" when you skip your afternoon Diet Coke. While the best part of waking up may indeed be Folgers in your cup, being over-caffeinated may also be harmful. "Studies have found that some caffeine can improve mental acuity and performance throughout the day, but too much caffeine can negatively impact your mood, energy, and even health," says Erin Palinski, RD, CDE, CPT, who has a private practice in New Jersey.
Enjoying a latte probably won't hurt you, and may even have surprising health benefits such as lowering your risk of Alzheimer's disease. Just keep in mind that-as with most delicious things in life-it is possible to have too much of a good thing.
"Some research has linked high doses of coffee to infertility and increased risk of hip fractures in older women," says Keri M. Gans, MS, RD, CDN and author of The Small Change Diet. "If you stop drinking coffee abruptly, you may experience irritability, fatigue, headaches, and even depression."
So how much caffeine is too much? The American Dietetic Association recommends having no more than 300 mg a day, or the amount in about two or three 8-ounce cups of coffee. Even if you're not a java lover, you may be getting caffeine from sneaky sources unknowingly: Sports drinks, supplements, and even certain medications contain caffeine. Sneaky sources of caffeine include:
- 2 tablets Excedrin for headaches; 130 mg
- Vital Energy water; 150 mg
- 16-ounce Snapple ice tea; 42 mg
- 1 cup Ben & Jerry's No Fat Fudge Frozen Yogurt; 85 mg
- 1 cup Dannon Coffee Yogurt; 45 mg
- Barq's Root Beer; 22 mg
- Hershey's chocolate bar, 12 mg
For perspective, one 8-ounce cup of coffee can have anywhere from 125 to 150 mg.
While caffeine's effects may be different for different people, here are some common warning signs that you may have overdosed.
1. You hit an afternoon slump.
If you can't get through the day without a Diet Coke fix, you may be hooked on the caffeine. "There is about as much caffeine in one can of Diet Coke as there is in a shot of espresso," says David J. Clayton, MD, author of The Healthy Guide to Unhealthy Living. Having a few cans a day could leave you feeling high, and then low when you come down from the caffeine buzz." Besides triggering major dips in energy, the acidity in soda can damage tooth enamel if sipped daily. Limit your Diet Cokes to one a day to avoid hitting a wall in the afternoon, and brush your teeth if possible after drinking soda to help reduce its enamel-eroding effects.
9 All-Natural Ways to Fight Fatigue
2. You're peeing orange.
Urine that is dark yellow or orange is a telltale sign of dehydration. "Coffee is actually a diuretic that can lead to dehydration by increasing the amount you urinate so you lose too much body fluids," says Amy Gross, MPH, RD, CDN and a clinical dietician at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Caffeine usually doesn't trigger dehydration until after you've had about 500 mg, so you should be safe if you stick to a cup or two of coffee a day.
14 Diet Foods to Avoid
3. You can't sleep.
"Caffeine takes about 45 minutes to 1 hour to get absorbed and has a very long half-life, meaning it lingers in the body for several hours and can affect your sleep cycle," says Molly Morgan, R.D., owner of Creative Nutrition Solutions in Vestal, New York, and author of The Skinny Rules. If it takes you longer than 30 minutes to doze off at night, you might try cutting out caffeine once the clock strikes 12 p.m. to see if it helps you get more restful sleep. That applies to all caffeine-containing substances: Sipping green or Chai tea may be a sleep stealer, too, because both beverages contain caffeine. Also keep in mind that decaf coffee and decaf tea are not caffeine-free: both have about one-third the amount of caffeine as the regular kind.
20 Ways to Sleep Better Every Night
4. You feel anxious.
Sweaty palms, a racing heart, restlessness, and feeling jittery are all clues that you've overdosed on caffeine. "Caffeine can exacerbate stress and depression because it interferes with a tranquilizing neurotransmitter chemical in the brain called adenosine," says Palinski. Caffeine can also act as a stimulant that triggers the adrenal gland to excrete more stress hormones like adrenaline, which can increase heart rate, making you feel more anxious.
How to Stay Calm and Feel Less Anxious
5. You have heartburn.
Acid reflux happens when the muscle at the end of the esophagus, known as the lower esophageal sphincter, allows food and stomach acid to come back up, causing a burning feeling under your chest. If this happens to you, caffeine could be a culprit. "Caffeine relaxes esophageal sphincter, which allows acid to come up in the throat," says Gross. Try cutting out caffeine altogether to see if it soothes your throat.
Tell us: How much caffeine do you drink on a daily basis?
--By Holly Corbett Bristol, Prevention
More from Prevention:
Calculate: How Much Caffeine Do You Drink?
7 Ways to Beat Stress Fat
10 Tips to Keep Your Mind Sharp
Lose pounds and inches and watch your Belly Flatten!
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Lent is like a pre-Easter retreat in
which we do special things that keep us focused and prepare us to walk
with Jesus through his passion, death, and resurrection. Christians
traditionally observe Lent with prayer
. These disciplines are in no way
meant to be an indulgence in masochism or self-punishment or
self-improvement. They are meant to lead us back to the grace we
received in Baptism.
How can I pray more?
Try taking more time for quiet. Stop in
at the Chapel of the Holy Family, or the Eucharistic Chapel in the AMU,
or St. Joan of Arc to be quiet with the Lord. Do some "spiritual
reading." The Memorial Library has a good selection of books on the
lives of the saints, prayer styles, and reflection. Campus Ministry
also has a small lending library. Just stop in AMU 236 and ask at the
front desk if you can see the selection and check out a book or two.
Why should I fast? Fasting is a
discipline Christians use - just as Jesus did - to lead us back to the
fervor of our baptism when we put on Christ and vowed to follow Him.
Our fasting reminds us to be more Christ-like in our everyday lives. “By denying ourselves food at certain times, we recall the reality of hunger, the needs of the poor, and our citizenship in the heavenly kingdom by moving ourselves away from an unhealthy focus on material goods and their consumption and intentionally changing our body’s focus.” (Blaha, Lenten Disciplines)
What are the Church Laws on fasting and abstinence
- Catholics who have celebrated their 14th birthday are bound
to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and each Friday of Lent.
- Catholics who have celebrated their 18th birthday, in
addition to abstaining from meat, should fast, i.e. eat only one full
meal on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Smaller quantities of food may
be taken at two other meals but no other food should be consumed at
other times during those two days. Catholics should not lightly excuse
themselves from these prescribed minimal penitential practices.
Why should I give alms? Almsgiving helps us to
focus on someone else's needs instead of our own. Lent is not a
personal spiritual workout; it is a communal experience of renewal and
a recommitment to our Catholic beliefs and mission. Students attending
Masses sponsored by Campus Ministry during Lent will have the chance to
contribute to St. Ben’s Community Meal and the Heifer Project.
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I was at a Mobile event recently when the topic of gamification in banking came up. It’s a term that has come to polarise so many opinions. I happened to be on the panel when a member of the audience asked for our thoughts. One of the panel ‘experts’
proceeded to talk and they had absolutely no idea… He touched on using his Xbox to bank and he even mentioned Monopoly in there. In case you have lived under a rock for the last 12 months, gamification is the use of game techniques such as challenges, rewards
and rankings to influence desired user behaviour. It’s digital equivalent of dangling a carrot on a stick…
Even though the term is relatively new, gamification has actually existed since the dawn of civilisation. Our economy, culture and sports are all driven by the desire to win, beat, and compete. Over the last three decades we have applied these themes to
the act of video gaming. We don’t play video games because of the quirky characters. Even though an Italian plumber in blue overalls and a bad accent has a certain appeal - it is not our main motivator. We play video games because of the trials and tribulations.
We love a good challenge and a happy ending. The harder and more complex the game is the more we strive to clock it.
In a banking context, gamification understanding and its application is at its very infancy. The ‘suits’ are finally getting their heads around mobile and social let alone gamification. This will change soon enough. So what does gamification offer to
the industry? Banking, in itself, is something that no person wants to do. It’s tedious and for most people quite stressful. For most, it results in them having to shift around the little money they have. It’s the reason Personal Financial Management (PFM)
hasn’t really taken off. No one really wants to work to understand their financial situation in more detail. This is the very reason why gamification is perfect for banking.
If done correctly gamification is a great way for banks to make banking a little bit more enticing. It can be used to encourage people to adopt a service or to influence how those services are used. Banks can take advantage of their customer’s psychological
predisposition to engage in challenges to change the status quo. It can be used to drive, encourage or promote end user behaviours that either benefit the user themselves, or achieve strategic business objectives. Through the application of appropriate persuasive
design principles banks can actually help customers make a difference. Gamification can be a key component of the future of banking.
Banks need to move away from offering tools that allow customers to manage their money, and instead offer capabilities that help customers maximise their money. Manage to maximise. A slightly different word and a brave new world. At the moment most banking
services are relatively dumb. They don’t really do anything for you. Unless you are in trouble, or the bank wants to sell you something, you never really hear from them. They don’t help you save or spend appropriately. They give you some (average) tools
so you can manage it yourself. It’s like going to a restaurant that allows you to use their kitchen to cook dinner for yourself.
Gamification is a great opportunity to make banking more engaging, by encouraging users to engage in desired behaviours, recognising achievements, and by helping to solve problems. Through this banks can begin to engage with customers at a different level.
Beyond servicing customer needs it can deliver a lot of benefits to the bank. It can influence cost reduction by rewarding customers for using low cost channels. It can reward customers who adopt mobile payments and stop withdrawing cash. It can also encourage
customer acquisition. Referral is a great way to deliver new customers by rewarding your existing base for registering their friends. Gamification should be applied throughout all elements of the service proposition from the underlying product configuration
to the marketing strategy.
For banks who don’t know where to begin there are a few good examples already out there. The Smarty Pig concept has been around for a number of years. It encourages users to reach savings goals through rewards and then socialise them with their peers.
SaveUp.com is a new financial website that rewards customers with credits for big money prize draws based on their online activity. It really is only beginning though and there will be plenty of activity over the next 24 months. For most start-ups and new
entrants gamification is a core feature of their service because it can create the loyal usage and virality that will drive success. Banks need to think similar and act as if they don’t have a base. The build it and they will come mentality isn’t sustainable.
The final question is, are they game enough?
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Educated at Harvard under Walter Gropius and Jose Luis Sert and trained in the Cambridge office of Paul Rudolph, William Morgan was appointed a Lehman Fellow of Harvard University and studied as a Fulbright grantee in Italy in 1958 and 1959. Subsequently he received a Wheelwright Fellowship of the Graduate School of Design, and a Graham Foundation Grantee for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for research. Mr. Morgan is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a past chairman of the AIA Committee on Design.
In 1961 Mr. Morgan established his architectural practice in Jacksonville, Florida. Well known for excellence in architectural design, his works range from modest residences to such major projects as the Florida State Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan; the U.S. Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Westinghouse World Headquarters in Orlando, Pyramid Condominium in Ocean City, Maryland; Bloomingdale's store in Miami and Neiman Marcus in Ft. Lauderdale. Often published in the United States and abroad, numerous design awards have recognized his work.
Over the years, Mr. Morgan has lectured and served as a visiting critic at such architectural schools as Harvard, Tulane, North Carolina State University, and the University of Florida. Appointed Gibbons Eminent Scholar in Architecture and Urban Planning in 1990, he also has served as the Beinecke-Reeves Distinguished Chair in Architectural Preservation at the University of Florida. In 1998 the American Institute of Architects conferred an Institute Honor on Mr. Morgan in recognition of his lifelong research into the beginnings of architectural creativity.
William Morgan, Architect
1945 Beach Avenue
Atlantic Beach, Florida
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Maize breeder Kevin Pixley laughs when asked how to identify his new, nutritious variety.
"Oh, it's beautiful," he says. "The enriched maize is generally bright orange."
Dried ears of brilliant vitamin A-enriched orange maize decorate the tables at a recent conference in Washington, DC. Pixley was one of the experts gathered here to talk about a new method to fight malnutrition among the world's poor.
While nearly one billion people worldwide suffer from chronic hunger, experts say as many as two billion experience what is known as "hidden hunger" - malnutrition brought on by diets that lack critical nutrients such as iron, zinc and vitamin A.
The consequences include reduced productivity, stunted children's development, and increased risk of disease and death. Vitamin A deficiency, for instance, is the world's leading preventable cause of blindness, and it greatly increases the risk of serious illness and death. Research shows that delivering supplements to vitamin A-deficient children cuts the death rate by a quarter.
While fruits, vegetables and animal products are excellent sources of vitamins and minerals, many of the world's rural poor cannot afford to eat a balanced diet. Instead, they survive on staple crops that lack many of the nutrients that are essential for good health.
Programs to deliver nutrient supplements or fortify food ingredients have largely failed to reach the rural poor.
Now, Kevin Pixley and other experts are taking a different approach.
"In many countries of Asia, people eat rice every day," Pixley says. "In many countries of sub-Saharan Africa, people eat maize or cassava every day. So if these foods can be more nutritious, then even the rural poor consumers are going to receive [essential nutrients] on a daily basis."
To make maize more nutritious, Pixley and other researchers found varieties that naturally produce higher-than-normal amounts of vitamin A. But it took years of selective breeding to increase the content to levels that would prevent malnutrition.
They used conventional breeding, not genetic modification, he says, because "in many countries, the use of genetically modified products would be a hindrance to acceptance."
But will it feed my family?
The most important factor for acceptance, however, is not vitamin content. The primary concern, Pixley says, is that the crop produces enough food for farmers to feed themselves and sell a surplus for a profit.
"For a maize variety to be successful, it has to be resistant to all the common diseases," he says. And in Africa, drought tolerance is a must. "And you also have to be sure that the maize grain that you're going to harvest is going to be useful for making the local foods."
Orange maize passes that test at the conference dinner here in Washington. Conference organizers provided Chef Michael Snead with about 36 kilograms of orange maize meal. Yesterday, Snead made maize meal cakes topped with sautéed wild mushrooms. Today, maize muffins are piled in the center of the table next to stacks of dried ears of bright orange maize.
"The maize was the main attraction for our event," Snead says. "So I made sure it stood out as the main attraction for dinner as well."
Orange maize vs. white maize
Researchers will be testing the crop's other properties in field trials about to begin in Zambia. If successful, it should be on the market in two or three years.
But orange maize may have an image problem in Zambia, where white maize is the staple. In fact, says Victor Manyong, East and Central Africa Director of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Zambians avoid yellow maize because it was brought into the country during periods of drought and famine as food aid.
"They associate yellow maize with lazy people, hard times and so on," Manyong says. "So when they have any other option, they don't take yellow maize."
And because yellow maize sells for much less, farmers growing white maize might worry about contamination.
"The farmer that is growing white maize for a commodity buyer will get frustrated if pollen from orange maize from [another] farmer crosses into his field," says Marx Mbunji with the southern African seed company Seedco International.
For the same reason, Mbunji adds, millers also might be reluctant to grind orange maize into flour with the same equipment they use for white maize.
A healthy brand
The good news is that early studies show that Zambian consumers see orange maize as different from yellow maize. And when they learn about its nutritional benefits, they are willing to pay a premium for it. Mbunji says that could make orange maize more profitable for farmers.
But IITA's Victor Manyong says backers will need to get the word out about the health benefits of orange maize.
"We should not just expect that by bringing this product to the farmers, they will accept it, " he says. "I'm very amazed by a product such as Coca-Cola, which is already a well-known product [to] every consumer. But still, Coca-Cola continues to make advertisements."
Like Coca-Cola's trademark red labels, experts say the bright orange color of vitamin A-rich maize will make an easily recognizable brand.
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What more can you say: thanks.
He was 16 when he shipped off to France in 1917 to join the ambulance corps with the serial No. 15577 -- one of 4.7 million Americans to serve in "The War to End All Wars" against Germany.
"I always knew I'd be one of the last because I was one of the youngest when I joined," Buckles said in his interview with the Daily News, after he became the last surviving member of those 4.7 million.
"But I never thought I'd be the last one."
Even after the war, Buckles couldn't escape the battlefield. In 1941, Buckles was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines while working as a purser for a steamship company. He languished for more than three years in prison camps before he was rescued in a military raid.
"I was never actually looking for adventure," Buckles once told The Associated Press. "It just came to me."
He also wasn't looking for the fame that came his way in 2008, when the second-to-last American veteran of World War I, Harry Richard Landis of Florida, passed away. But once he achieved the status of last surviving veteran, Buckles helped lobby to rededicate the existing District of Columbia World War I memorial on the National Mall in Washington as a national memorial.
With Buckles' passing, there are only two documented surviving veterans of The Great War left - 109-year-old Claude Choules and 110-year-old Florence Green, both of whom are British.
"Somebody has to pass it down. If I'm the last one, then I have to be the one to do it," Buckles told The News.
Hat tip URR.
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My Thanks to Ned Nikolov, who has just sent the first part of the ‘Response to comments on the Unified Theory of Climate’ to us.
Part 1: Magnitude of the Natural ‘Greenhouse’ Effect
Ned Nikolov, Ph.D. and Karl Zeller, Ph.D.
January 17, 2012
We’ve decided to split our expanded explanation into two parts, so that we do not overwhelm people. From what we’ve seen on the blogs so far, there appear to be 2 main areas of confusion: 1) the size of the GH effect. Most people have a hard time wrapping their minds around the fact the atmosphere boosts the surface temperature by well over 100K; and 2) the physical nature of the pressure-controlled thermal enhancement. Although, this follows seamlessly from the gas law, most people (including PhD scientists) appear to be totally confused as to how precisely the effect of pressure works or is even possible. So, this will be topic of our reply Part 2.
(a) The term Greenhouse Effect (GE) is inherently misleading due to the fact that the free atmosphere, imposing no restriction on convective cooling, does not really work as a closed greenhouse.
(b) ATE accurately conveys the physical essence of the phenomenon, which is the temperature boost at the surface due to the presence of atmosphere;
(c) Reasoning in terms of ATE (Atmospheric Thermal Effect) vs. GE (Greenhouse effect) helps broaden the discussion beyond radiative transfer; and
(d) Unlike GE, the term Atmospheric Thermal Effect implies no underlying physical mechanism(s).
We start with the undisputable fact that the atmosphere provides extra warmth to the surface of Earth compared to an airless environment such as on the Moon. This prompts two basic questions:
(1) What is the magnitude of this extra warmth, i.e. the size of ATE ? and (2) How does the atmosphere produce it, i.e. what is the physical mechanism of ATE ? In this reply we address the first question.
The pdf is available here. UTC_Blog_Reply_Part-1
Please try to focus on the content of the pdf in comments to this thread. We can carry on posting our general thoughts about the overall theory and how best to formulate our understanding of the proposed gravity effect on the existing threads – thanks.
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Monday, March 14, 2011
The Carnaval de Oruro (or Carnival of Oruro), is the biggest annual cultural event in Bolivia.
Celebrated in Oruro, the folklore capital of Bolivia, the carnival marks the Ito festival for the Uru people. Its ceremonies stem from Andean customs, the ancient invocations centering around Pachamama (Mother Earth, transformed into the Virgin Mary due to Christian syncretism) and Tio Supay (Uncle God of the Mountains, transformed into the Devil). The native Ito ceremonies were stopped in the 17th century by the Spanish, who were ruling the territory of upper Peru at the time. However, the Uru continued to observe the festival in the form of a Catholic ritual on Candlemas, in the first week of each February. Christian icons were used to conceal portrayals of Andean gods, and the Christian saints represented other Andean minor divinities. The ceremony begins 40 days before Easter.
Legend also has it that in 1789, a mural of the Virgin Mary miraculously appeared in a mineshaft of the richest silver mine in Oruro. Ever since, the Carnival has been observed in honor of the Virgen de la Candelaria (Virgin of the Candle Mass) or Virgen del Socavon (Virgin of the Mineshaft). The most important elements of the Carnival now occur in and around the Sanctuaria del Socavon (The Church of the Mineshaft).
Oruro's Carnival has become Bolivia's most renowned and largest annual celebrations. It's a great time to visit, when this somewhat unfashionable mining city becomes the focus of the nation's attention. In a broad sense, these festivities can be called re-enactments. The festival is so interlaced with threads of both Christian and indigenous myths, fables, deities and traditions that it would be inaccurate to oversimplify it in this way.
Ceremonies begin several weeks before Carnaval Oruro itself, with a solemn pledge of loyalty to the Virgin in the sanctuary. From this date on, there are various candelite processions and dance groups practice boisterously in the city's streets.
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We present a neural network methodology for clustering large data sets into pertinent groups. We applied this methodology to analyze the phytoplankton absorption spectra data gathered by the Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefranche. We first partitioned the data into 100 classes by means of a self-organizing map (SOM) and then we clustered these classes into 6 significant groups. We focused our analysis on three POMME campaigns. We were able to interpret the absorption spectra of the samples taken in the first oceanic optical layer during these campaigns, in terms of seasonal variability. We showed that spectra from the PROSOPE Mediterranean campaign, which was conducted in a different region, were strongly similar to those of the POMME-3 campaign. This analysis led us to propose regional empirical relationships, linking phytoplankton absorption spectra to pigment concentrations, that perform better than the previously derived overall relation.
© 2007 Optical Society of America
Atmospheric and ocean optics
Original Manuscript: November 10, 2006
Revised Manuscript: March 12, 2007
Manuscript Accepted: March 13, 2007
Published: May 31, 2007
Aymeric Chazottes, Michel Crépon, Annick Bricaud, Joséphine Ras, and Sylvie Thiria, "Statistical analysis of absorption spectra of phytoplankton and of pigment concentrations observed during three POMME cruises using a neural network clustering method," Appl. Opt. 46, 3790-3799 (2007)
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What is micropenis?
Micropenis is defined as a normally structured penis that is below the normal size range for an infant. Normally, the length of a newborn boy's penis is between 2.8 to 4.2 centimeters (1.1 to 1.6 inches) with a circumference of 0.9 to 1.3 centimeters (0.35 to 0.5 inches). This measurement is taken by carefully stretching the penis and measuring from the tip of the penis to the base of the penis. A penis length of less than 1.9 centimeters (0.75 inches) is usually considered micropenis.
What causes micropenis?
Micropenis can occur alone, but usually occurs in combination with other disorders. Hormone disorders that cause an abnormal level of the hormones involved in the development of the sexual organs may be seen in combination with micropenis. This can involve the pituitary gland or the hypothalamus.
What are the symptoms of micropenis?
While each child may experience symptoms differently, the most common finding with micropenis is an infant penis size that is less than 1.9 centimeters when stretched gently. In some cases, low sperm count, resulting in infertility or decreased fertility, is found in adulthood. Micropenis may or may not be seen in conjunction with other disorders. Always consult your child's doctor for a diagnosis.
How is micropenis diagnosed?
Diagnosis is usually made by physical examination. Your child may then be referred to several specialists including a pediatric urologist (a doctor who specializes in disorders and care of the urinary tract and the male genital tract) and a pediatric endocrinologist (a doctor who specializes in hormones).
What is the treatment for micropenis?
Specific treatment for micropenis will be determined by your child's doctor based on:
Your child's age, overall health, and medical history
The extent of the condition
Your child's tolerance for specific medications, procedures, or therapies
Expectations for the course of the condition
Your opinion or preference
There is no cure for micropenis. Hormone therapy may be indicated for some children to stimulate penile growth. Other treatment options will be discussed with you.
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en
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W4KRL at arrl.net
Wed Sep 10 16:53:35 CDT 2008
It is so much easier to rely on revealed "knowledge" than to use science.
By the way, CNN interviewed a scientist this morning saying there was no
danger from the CERN experiment because most black holes are the size of the
sun and this was a mosquito by comparison.
According to Wikipedia, a mosquito weighs 2.5mg. That mass would yield
22.5x10^13 Joules, about 62 million KWh. Maybe that is not the same as
getting sucked into a black hole but you wouldn't want to be standing next
to that mosquito when it got converted.
73 Karl W4KRL
From: tacos-bounces+w4krl=arrl.net at amrad.org
[mailto:tacos-bounces+w4krl=arrl.net at amrad.org] On Behalf Of Joe Bento
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 12:49 PM
Subject: Hadron Collider
What has happened here in the USA? Have we completely abandoned our
quest for scientific knowledge and the unknown? To read the comments
posted on CNN regarding the beginning experiments with the Hadron
Collider, one would think we are opening Pandora's box and the wrath of God.
If you want to know how the world began, read Genesis. End of discussion.
The money would be better spent in Dalfour.
If the scientists say the experiments are safe and know the expected
outcome, why perform the experiment in the first place?
They'll create a black hole to swallow the earth.
Black holes will be developed for military evil.
I'm dismayed to think that we had enough interest in the unknown to land
a manned craft on the moon 40 years ago. My, but how we've regressed as
a nation! We were once a world leader in technology and innovation, and
today it hardly seems that we're even participants.
Tacos mailing list
Tacos at amrad.org
More information about the Tacos
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<urn:uuid:764a8add-bf22-44c6-94bf-dea893d2303b>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://amrad.org/pipermail/tacos/2008/006139.html
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en
| 0.918049
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En español | In the realm of family relationships, I've always wondered why aunts and uncles don't get more attention. Admittedly, I am perhaps more aware of this because I don't have kids of my own but am totally dedicated to my three nieces and two nephews, as well as honorary auntie to several close friends' children. This is one of the most important roles I play. And I know that my own aunts and uncles were enormous influences on my life.
See also: Be a Great Grandparent
If you've got children of your own, you provide your nieces and nephews with cousins, those family members who are like brothers and sisters, only nowhere near as annoying.
But regardless of whether you've got kids, these are the kinds of roles that aunts and uncles can play:
• The "Cool" Adult. You have different life experiences than your nieces and nephews' parents, which makes you cool right off the bat. Free of the responsibility of the parenting role, you allow the kid in you to come out. When adults reflect back on their aunts and uncles, having fun with them is often among the top memories.
• Confidant and Trusted Adviser. Kids often say they can talk to aunts and uncles about things they are uncomfortable talking to their parents about. You can add a different perspective, and they may be open to telling you things and listening to your advice when they really need it but don't want to talk to parents — if they can trust you.
• Extra Provider. I hear a lot about aunts and uncles who provide "extras" for their nieces and nephews, such as an aunt who made doll clothes or provided spending money for a special trip; an uncle who paid for rock climbing lessons or bought a wedding dress. These extras can make nieces/nephews feel so special and can even shape their life experiences. You may also provide the extra finances to cover education, housing or important purchases for them.
• Role Model. These days, more than ever, children are influenced by media and friends — not always positive role models. You give your nieces and nephews alternative examples of family, career, relationships, hobbies and values. You will teach them more by how you live than you ever could by talking to them.
• Family Compadre. Because you have the same family — and you've known their parents all or most of your life — you might share their frustrations or understand their viewpoint more than anyone else does. Being familiar but somewhat outside the situation when conflicts with parents arise can be a plus. Kids may listen to you in a way they won't listen to their parents, and you may even be able to play a mediator or peacemaker role in the family.
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<urn:uuid:de67e178-17d0-4b5c-893d-11ffad83d8f6>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.aarp.org/relationships/family/info-04-2011/unique-role-of-aunts-uncles.html;andstart/0/filter/%3A/%3A/%3A/%3A/.html
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en
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UA-GAMES (Universally Accessible Games)
Universally Accessible Games (UA-Games) constitute a research activity of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory of ICS-FORTH. In this context, we research, design and develop Universally Accessible Games and we create and test new related concepts, interaction techniques, methods and software tools.
What are UA-Games?
The concept of UA-Games has been proposed as a means to overcome the limitations of previous approaches to game accessibility, and as an effective technical approach to achieve game accessibility coupled with high interaction quality, also putting forward the objective of creating games that are concurrently accessible to people with diverse abilities.
UA-Games are interactive computer games that:
- Follow the principles of Design for All, being proactively designed to optimally fit and dynamically adapt to different individual gamer characteristics without the need of further adjustments via additional developments.
- Can be concurrently played among people with different abilities, ideally also while sharing the same computer.
- May be played on various hardware and software platforms, and within alternative environments of use, utilizing the currently available devices, while appropriately interoperating with assistive technology add-ons.
In other words, a universally accessible game is a game that can adapt its interface and content to best serve the requirements of a specific gamer under specific gaming conditions. Imagine having a palette comprising all of the game elements and their attributes that you can use in order to render a fully customized, personalized, version of the game for each distinct player (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Illustration of the concept of a universally accessible game
The underlying vision is that through such games people will be able to have fun, cooperate and compete on an equal basis, while interacting easily and effectively, irrespective of:
- their individual requirements, skills and preferences;
- the technology they use;
- their location.
Furthermore, this approach has the potential to render accessible several "physical" games that in their original form are not accessible to several groups of people with disabilities, e.g., the original chess game is not accessible to the blind or the motor-impaired.
UA-Games strongly cater for the needs and actively support the right of all people for social interaction and play irrespective of their individual differences, thus providing a steppingstone towards a more inclusive (and fun!) Information Society.
Creating UA-Games may not be a trivial task, but it certainly is a manageable task. It requires handling and understanding a very large design space, comprising diverse users, operating in several different contexts of use, which may not all be known at design time, and also mapping and transforming all related requirements and (dis)abilities to coherent, usable and accessible interaction designs.
- A design method: Unified Design for UA-Games
The systematic design approach that we have followed in order to create our UA-Games. This method reflects a process-oriented discipline emphasizing abstract task definition with incremental polymorphic physical specialization.
- A novel concept: Parallel Game Universes
This theory aims to provide a way for creating multiplayer games where people with diverse abilities can play cooperatively, or against each other, while at the same time experiencing the game in an optimally adapted way.
- Four games that have a two-fold role, acting both as proofs of concept and as case studies
- UA-Chess: a universally accessible web–based chess.
- Access Invaders: a universally accessible multiplayer and multiplatform version of Space Invaders.
- Game Over!: the world's first universally inaccessible game, meant to be used as a game accessibility educational tool.
- Terrestrial Invaders: a UA-Game packed with numerous accessibility features that was developed in order to be able to create Game Over!
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<urn:uuid:0938f5e2-a888-4cf0-b514-c843e78110c9>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.ics.forth.gr/hci/ua-games/index_main.php?l=e&c=555
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en
| 0.926431
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| 3.125
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|
Minnetonka Middle School West is a sixth through eighth grade middle school located in Excelsior, Minnesota. We are part of the Minnetonka Public School District #276. The Minnetonka Public School District serves the communities of Minnetonka, Chanhassen, Deephaven, Eden Prairie, Excelsior, Greenwood, Shorewood, Tonka Bay, Victoria, and Woodland. We are located a few miles west of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Our student enrollment is approximately 900.
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<urn:uuid:c1139323-7419-490d-8e7f-bd0f73e506b8>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.minnetonka.k12.mn.us/Schools/MiddleSchoolWest/About/Pages/default.aspx
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en
| 0.948562
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This is the exam task:
You have had a class discussion about traffic problems in your country, and your teacher has asked you to write a report on transport where you live. Describe the forms of public transport available in your area, and suggest how they could be improved.
The purpose of this report is to describe the forms of public transport available in my area and also explain suggestions as they could be improved.
Living in a little town close to the mountains, actually here there are not many kinds of public transport. Though, we can find buses which carry every day some workers and students and the train which is by far the fastest transport in my area.
Certainly the services given by these two transports are not excellent. In fact I see a lot of disorganisation and the timetables not always are followed. As regards cleanness, according to the majority of citizens the trains are quite messy and filthy, besides fares are going up.
Nevertheless, on other hand, public transports have lower accidents rates than using private cars, indeed they prevent every year many deaths and injuries. Moreover, the use of trains reduces the emission of C02 and traffic jam.
To sum up, I would still suggest a greater use of public transports to save the environment.
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<urn:uuid:7ecb2e0a-ce70-42b6-9c82-568d2741b440>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/editing-writing-topics/157608-will-anyone-please-revise-my-report.html
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en
| 0.969992
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|
The phrase 'fiscal cliff' invokes images of an economy spiralling to the bottom.
It was that image that was supposed to force politicians on Capitol Hill to work together to avoid the simultaneous expiration of tax cuts as well as the implementation of deep spending cuts.
"It's a sham. It's a political game played cynically by both sides to appeal to their bases ...They could care less about what the economic effect of all of this are, it's a lot of posturing. If the American people are not much engaged with the details then that should have shown the politicians what they ought to do, the people are right, the politicians are, again, wrong."
- Richard Wolff, an economist
But negotiations came down to the wire with Democrats and Republicans both blaming each other for the potential consequences of not reaching an agreement.
It is just the latest in a string of standoffs in Washington DC.
When Barack Obama, the US president, spoke to the media earlier, he described the way he wanted the process to unfold:
"I have to say that ever since I took office to run the campaign and over the last couple of months, my preference would have been to solve all these problems in the context of a larger agreement, a bigger deal, a grand bargain … that solves our problems in a balanced and responsible way, that doesn't just deal with the taxes but deals with the spending in a balanced way so that we can put all this behind us and just focus on growing our economy. But with this Congress, that was obviously a little too much to hope for at this time."
Obama also emphasised the importance of sharing the financial sacrifices equally:
"By definition it (fiscal cliff) was completely manufactured. They sat down behind closed doors and manufactured it, brought it out and voted on it in broad daylight. The extent of the economic crisis remains to be seen if, for the course of the entire year, none of this was undone."
- Ryan Grim, the Huffington Post's Washington bureau chief
"If Republicans think that I will finish the job of deficit reduction through spending cuts alone, that sort of, after today, we're just going to try to shove spending cuts that will hurt seniors or hurt students or hurt middle-class families without asking also equivalent sacrifice from millionaires or companies with a lot of lobbyists etc.
"If they think that's going to be the formula for how we solve this thing, then they've got another thing coming. We've got to do this in a balanced and responsible way … and if we're going to be serious about deficit reduction and debt reduction, then it's going to have to be a matter of shared sacrifice."
Inside Story Americas asks: What does this say about the American political culture and its ability to govern?
Joining the discussion with presenter Kimberly Halkett are guests: Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform; Ryan Grim, the Huffington Post's Washington bureau chief; and Richard Wolff, an economist.
"[Deficit is not the problem], total government spending is the problem .… The argument that all government spending is somehow a service strikes me as nonsense. All military spending does not make it safer, some military spending is wasted, some makes us less safe … farm subsidies are not a service, they drive up the cost of food for poor people."
Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform
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<urn:uuid:6a6d8d33-56e1-4152-90b7-3a15cb02bccd>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2013/01/201311135046579796.html
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.969462
| 700
| 1.984375
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Mal Peet's Carnegie Medal Acceptance Speech
Tamar is a historical novel. It is also, at a certain level, about history. A
fifteen-year-old girl discovers that her life has been shaped by events that occurred fifty years ago, in a past
of which she is only dimly aware, and that those events were, in turn, dictated by earlier ones.
She realizes, in other words, that as well as being an individual she is part of a human
continuum. This is hardly a profound or difficult concept, but it worries me that it is in danger of being
lost. I sense a widespread disconnection from history, that people - younger people in
particular - have little idea about how they "got here."
Disconnection or alienation from the past has political consequences. A clear
example is the popularity of Margaret Thatcher's mutilation of the trade unions in the 1980s.
Many of those who supported her in this seemed to have forgotten or not known that they owed
the social benefits they enjoyed - health, education, social security - to the trade union
movement. Now I do not think that there is a single young person of my acquaintance who has any
knowledge of the social history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I have the
somewhat gloomy feeling that, as a result, those struggles will have to take place all over
again. There are already companies, including supermarkets and call centers, whose attitudes toward their
employees are not that different from those of nineteenth-century mill owners. And
"globalization" is, of course, a euphemism for the exploitation of cheap labor. I'm not quite crazy enough to
think that my novel can address, let alone affect, any of these matters, but I'd like to think that
one or two readers might take a livelier interest in the "connectiveness" between their present and
I've done little bits of work for [England's] National Reading Campaign. In
fact, I'm a "Reading Champion," and I've got a badge to prove it. The National Literacy Trust
campaigns under the slogan "Reading Is Fundamental," which is of course true. But as the Carnegie
award ceremony takes place on July 7, 2006, it is perhaps appropriate to say that reading is
also anti-fundamentalist. Fundamentalism - of any variety - is a form of illiteracy, in that it asserts that
it is necessary to read only one book. It is unbelievably stupid to imagine that this kind of illiteracy
can be combated with bombs and bullets. And terribly scary that the U.S. and Britain are being led by
men who do not, or cannot, read. Three hundred years ago, Jonathan Swift wrote a satire called
The Battle of the Books; it would be great if Bush and Blair could be helped to read it. It has a
great deal to say about the "collateral damage" that is incurred when violence is used in a battle over
the printed word. They might also discover that when it comes to struggling with fundamentalism,
there are arsenals packed with weapons of mass education in all our towns and cities. They are
Behind The Scenes With Mal Peet - Carnegie Medal Winner For Tamar
"The three things that kept me sane as a child were bikes, books, and soccer"
Mal Peet grew up in what he describes as an emotionally impaired family in a
small and very dull market town in Norfolk, England. His bike took him many miles from home, and his
passion for soccer led him to play for his school, his town, and his county. But naturally,
books took him the farthest away of all, often to islands: Coral Island, Treasure Island, and
wherever it was that the Swiss Family Robinson found themselves. He also had - and still has - a passion for
comics. (He originally envisioned his award-winning first novel for young adults,
a graphic novel.) Peet says that he didn't grow up with a burning ambition to be a writer - in fact,
his main ambitions were to be a soccer player and a cartoonist. He wrote and illustrated
stories as a child and often handed in his school history essays as cartoon strips.
"I get bored too easily"
Mal Peet studied English and American Studies at the University of Warwick,
in England. There he began drawing cartoons in earnest, first for his friends and then for the
university newspaper. After obtaining his B.A., he wasn't sure what to do next, so he decided to try
his hand at academia. In the early 1970s, he received a master's degree, then went to Exeter
to pursue a Ph.D. in American political cartoons and graphics. He was lured into teaching by
the luxury of a regular salary, but, afflicted by a low boredom threshold and an allergy to
routine, he quit after a few years.
In Devon, England, while working variously as a plumber and a builder, Peet
met his future wife, Elspeth Graham. Elspeth persuaded him that in spite of his having no formal
training in art, he ought to use his talent for caricature and cartooning to become an illustrator.
Since then, Mal and Elspeth have made their living writing for children and young adults - mainly
school texts and literacy books. He supports the work of England's National Literacy Trust,
for whom he is a "Reading Champion." Keeper, a tale of soccer and the supernatural, lent itself
to the National Learning Trust's "Reading the Game" project to get boys reading, and the author
has given readings from the book at schools and soccer grounds all over the country. When
it comes to children and literacy, he believes that the most important thing is to cultivate
a desire to read, not to impose it.
"It's possible that in writing Tamar I was getting in touch with long-lost
Mal Peet's name is of Dutch origin, but his direct connection with Holland stops
there; in fact, he only really got to know the Netherlands while researching this book. There
are probably two key things that inspired him to write Tamar. One is that he is passionate about
history and what he calls historical "connectiveness"; he feels that the way history is taught in
schools now is fragmented and episodic, and that young people don't get to understand the
relevance of the past to their own lives. The other is his acquaintance with Paul Peters, the
father of a close friend, who had been a Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent in Holland toward the
end of World War II.
In conducting his extensive research for Tamar, Mal Peet spent a good deal of
time with Paul Peters and his wife, discussing their wartime experiences. Peters and his wife
retained vivid and detailed memories of Holland under the Nazi occupation and had even held on
to the silk code sheets from Peters's time with the SOE in Amsterdam. Peters provided Peet
with a fact that became pivotal in the novel: that despite the extreme and constant danger,
operating "underground" was often so boring and solitary that it threatened one's sanity.
Peet describes himself as a very visual writer. He "films" his stories in his
head, often drawing storyboards for episodes. His visual imagination comes through strongly in
Tamar; his capacity for imagery, metaphor, and simile help bring this powerful story alive to the
point where the reader can visualize events and feel the fear, horror, and intense cold and
hunger the characters experience.
Although Keeper has a more or less linear narrative, Peet confesses to a taste
for more complex structures for fiction. Tamar consists of two interlocking stories separated by
fifty years. After the author had written the two stories separately, he and his editor, Averil
Whitehouse, decided independently how they might best be "spliced." Fortunately, they both came to
pretty much the same conclusion, and the final work emerged.
"I'm passionate about libraries, they're our arsenal in the war on error"
Mal Peet started reading at a very young age and quickly consumed the book
collection at his local primary school. He was then given special dispensation to join the town
library at the age of eight. It was just one room in a basement off a narrow alleyway, but it
seemed to him like a subterranean treasure house. Peet loves his local library in Exmouth and feels
that the librarians do a fantastic job in cramped and difficult circumstances. He believes that reading
is vital not only to develop imagination but also to develop the empathy and understanding that help
people cross racial and social boundaries.
For some time, Peet has been working
"furtively" on a satirical novel for
adults. He describes this work in progress as a black comedy. It's the story of an author who writes
sensitive, issue-based fiction for children, but when his career stalls is bullied by his agent into
attempting a "sword and sorcery" fantasy. In his own words, it's "sort of Faust with goblins." In October 2007, Candlewick Press
published The Penalty, a young adult
novel by Mal Peet that returns to the fascinating South American setting of Keeper. The
author was working on a third novel in this series when he "was suddenly interrupted by astonishing
news" - the announcement that he had won the Carnegie Medal.
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<urn:uuid:4765da4b-d85f-4255-bc40-be7b704f5686>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm/author_number/1481/mal-peet
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en
| 0.980216
| 1,994
| 1.921875
| 2
|
According to Zen teaching, everything in the universe exists interdependently, so valuing the welfare of one being over another, or of humans over the planet, makes no sense at all. This teaching, which can empower us to care passionately about the earth and its future, is not only a Zen principle, it’s something that comes up for anyone who carefully investigates the nature of reality. It’s a lesson found everywhere we look in nature. And the idea is also found in writings by figures as diverse as Lao Tzu, Walt Whitman, Hermann Hesse, and Henry David Thoreau. John Daido Loori reveals the underlying environmental ethic animating these teachings and shows how it can be a wellspring for our appreciation of the earth in the new millennium.
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<urn:uuid:37e0d0a1-e6bd-4d22-a246-83e8d1c515c0>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.shambhala.com/authors/g-n/john-daido-loori/teachings-of-the-earth-1.html
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en
| 0.940459
| 161
| 2.640625
| 3
|
|This is a semi-weeping, spreading, deciduous tree. Leaves are ovate, often lobed, dark green, up to 3 inches long. Red buds produce pale pink blooms, fading to white as flowers mature. Followed by red fruit approximately the size of a cherry. This tree does well in most soil, but will be more attractive if fed peat and compost. 'Sensation' bears single buds in carmine red, opening to white, followed by bright orange, red-cheeked fruits on a graceful, semi-weeper, to 12 feet tall with dark green leaves.
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<urn:uuid:c5d76c40-78a2-4fc7-857f-b88b785890ef>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.backyardgardener.com/plantname/pda_6d75.html
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en
| 0.935638
| 126
| 1.921875
| 2
|
Course #: SS 172
Class/Lab Hours: 3, 0
This course is designed to examine various regions of the world by concentrating on the social, political and economic problems as they relate to the geographic characteristics of those areas.
This course is Internet accessible and may be completed entirely online. Learn how!
Check the availability of the course.
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<urn:uuid:0a7985b7-1c26-4602-a003-58a3f65c42b7>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.herkimer.edu/academics/view_course/regional_geography/
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en
| 0.921584
| 71
| 1.71875
| 2
|
There are still relics of the Cold War in Seattle. When I worked for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, I was trained at the regional headquarters in Bothell, which is housed in a nuclear bunker built to withstand a direct hit on Seattle from a Soviet warhead. That Cold War is a memory, but some of the concerns are being revived. When North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong Il, threatens to unleash his nuclear arsenal on America, it's mostly a negotiating tactic. But it works because we believe North Korea actually does have the capability to fire a missile that could hit the U.S. mainland, most likely somewhere in the arc from Alaska to California. That possibility has put our region at ground zero of George W. Bush's missile defense initiativea multibillion-dollar system that is supposed to knock enemy missiles out of the sky. Boeing is a major contractor; Everett is a possible homeport for a new floating radar system. But there are big questions about whether the systemdesigned to fight a war above our headsis much more than a money pit in the sky. Here we offer several views of the issues involved in this underreported story.
Missile Defense: The Northwest Front • An introduction. By Knute Berger • The problem with Bush's missile defense plan. By Philip Gold • Heads Up, Seattle. Kim Jong II may be a nut job, but he's a nuclear nut job. By Matt Rosenberg • Should Seattle worry about rogue missile attacks, or the multibillion-dollar program being deployed to stop them? By Fred Kaplan
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<urn:uuid:07582c75-2ce9-4e9f-831d-4e4981a36f07>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.seattleweekly.com/2003-05-07/news/missile-defense-the-northwest-front/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.945383
| 313
| 1.898438
| 2
|
Lutein is one of the most abundant carotenoids found in nature. Carotenoids are fat-soluble antioxidants found in a rainbow of fruits and vegetables. Lutein plays a role in eye health and is the principal carotenoid found in the central area of the retina called the macula.* Lutein gives you the nutritional support you need to support the health of your eyes.*
* Note: Unless otherwise noted, products on our web site have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. They are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
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Visual SlickEdit: A Commercial Editor for Programmers
Manufacturer: MicroEdge, Inc.
Price: $195 US
Reviewer: Larry Ayers
There is no shortage of high-quality free editors for Linux. A commercial editor would have to be quite powerful and easy to use to attract prospective customers in the Linux community, where the tradition of using freely-available software is deeply rooted. Visual SlickEdit, developed and marketed by MicroEdge, fits these two criteria. This editor is cross-platform, with versions available for all three Windows variants, OS/2 and a variety of Unix platforms. Recently MicroEdge released version 3.0 of SlickEdit, which brings several new enhancements to an already powerful editor. The closest free equivalents to SlickEdit are GNU Emacs and XEmacs, so in this review I will use these two editors as benchmarks for comparison.
In contrast to the two Emacs variants, SlickEdit is strictly an X application, although it originated as a character-mode editor. The character-mode console version is still available but is marketed separately.
Visual SlickEdit comes on five floppy disks. The installation is initiated by directly unpacking (using tar) the first disk's contents into a temporary directory, setting execute permission on an installation binary, then running the binary. From this point questions concerning preferred paths are asked, and eventually the option of whether or not to install the uncompiled macro files is offered. These *.e files aren't necessary for normal editor operation but can be installed if a user wishes to modify them. Not installing them will save some disk space.
I consider the choice of installation directories to be a very desirable feature, as each user will most likely have a different partition or directory with enough space. A full installation occupies about 18MB. Network installations are possible with each user sharing a common executable but running the program with personal initialization files and home directories.
The 250-page printed manual supplied with the software is well written and complete, though the well-indexed on-line help system (see Figure 1) offers more than enough guidance while learning to effectively use the editor. About a third of the printed manual is a reference guide to the Slick-C language, which is invaluable for advanced users needing to create new macros and routines.
The MicroEdge developers have written a new macro programming language for this editor called Slick-C, which is derived from C++. The syntax is very close to that of C++, but the language has built-in features which are useful for building graphical user interfaces. Slick-C is analogous to Emacs LISP in that many of the routines and functions of the editor are implemented as compiled macros which are called as needed by the main executable.
The developers of Slick-C have attempted to address several shortcomings of C++, such as the lack of built-in types. Boolean, string and container types can be useful when developing editing functions, and Slick-C is designed to work with such types. As with any application-specific programming or macro language, the disadvantage is the necessity of learning yet another language if extensive customization is desired. Slick-C is close enough to C++ that the learning curve for C or C++ programmers shouldn not be too steep, but it's still there.
Just as the Emacs LISP *.el files are ASCII text compiled for efficiency into *.elc files, the Slick-C *.e files can be compiled into binary *.ex files. The advantage of a separate macro language is that new routines and functions can be written without the need of a new executable, and macro routines tend to be easier to write and debug than an entire editor with the new functions included.
Clipboard Inheritance is an interesting feature of the language, allowing new code to be added to existing controls without affecting the original. That is, parts of existing dialog boxes can be copied to the clipboard and pasted elsewhere; if new code is added to the original dialog box, it is inherited by its offspring.
A feature which programmers will find useful is called SmartPaste. This is an intelligent, syntax-aware version of the standard editing function. If a block of code is cut or copied and then pasted into another source file, the indentation of the pasted block will automatically match that of the surrounding code. I'm unaware of an equivalent Emacs function, but evidently there hasn't been a strong demand or (I surmise) someone would probably have written one by now.
SlickEdit uses its own versions of several Unix/Linux utilities such as diff, find and grep, among others. This feature would probably be more desirable for users with the Windows or OS/2 versions of the editor. The only advantage under Linux is that the interface is via dialog boxes, and the utilities are optimized for use with the editor. In version 3.0 the traditional Unix regular expression syntax is supported.
Support for a variety of version-control systems is included, and unlike the Emacs editors, various commercial version-control programs are supported, which is an advantage for programmers working in a commercial environment.
The command-line window can be used to enter shell commands as well as native editor commands. The command can be executed in a separate terminal window, such as an xterm, if the output needs to be monitored or if interaction is required. Some basic shell conveniences, such as aliasing and command history, are built into this interface.
Like the various Emacs editors (and few others) SlickEdit has an incremental search command, finding the next match of a search word, phrase or regular expression as it is typed. In most cases, the search finds the desired pattern before it has been completely typed in, speeding up the process.
Most modern Integrated Development Environments, such as Borland's, allow all of the files involved in a programming project to be accessed as a unit. SlickEdit includes this feature. A SlickEdit project includes the working directory, compile/make command lines and a list of pertinent files. Tagging (like Emacs' Etags program) is supported, enabling quick navigation through function definitions and other programming constructs.
The syntax-highlighting support is well done and easy to configure, once again with dialog boxes. Several color schemes are included with the default installation, and they provide good starting points for further modification.
SlickEdit has a number of nicely implemented formatting features, such as the ability to indent or un-indent selected lines with the tab key.
Although this editor has its own file-manager window, the list of most recently accessed files found in the File drop-down menu is very convenient. A few other editors, such as Nedit and FTE, save a similar history of files opened in previous sessions, and it's a time-saving feature if there are certain files which are repeatedly loaded.
Some of the other useful features are:
three-way file merging
built in spell-checker and dictionary (not quite as extensive as ispell)
spell-checking can be restricted to only the comments and strings in source files
normally invisible characters such as tabs, spaces and end-of-line characters can be made visible
multiple clipboards with dialog interface
preconfigured support for many languages
C++ and Java code beautifiers
syntax expansion for several languages
file size up to one gigabyte
API Apprentice (help for APIs)
search and replace in multiple files, buffers or directories
multiple-level code folding, allowing comments, functions, etc. to be hidden and revealed at will
easily redefinable Enter, Backspace, Delete, Home and Tab keys
a variety of windowing treatments: tiling (horizontally or vertically), cascading, or a basic MDI interface
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Enter to Win an Adafruit Pi Cobbler Breakout Kit for Raspberry Pi
It's Raspberry Pi month at Linux Journal. Each week in May, Adafruit will be giving away a Pi-related prize to a lucky, randomly drawn LJ reader. Winners will be announced weekly.
Fill out the fields below to enter to win this week's prize-- a Pi Cobbler Breakout Kit for Raspberry Pi.
Congratulations to our winners so far:
- 5-8-13, Pi Starter Pack: Jack Davis
- 5-15-13, Pi Model B 512MB RAM: Patrick Dunn
- 5-21-13, Prototyping Pi Plate Kit: Philip Kirby
- Next winner announced on 5-27-13!
Free Webinar: Hadoop
How to Build an Optimal Hadoop Cluster to Store and Maintain Unlimited Amounts of Data Using Microservers
Realizing the promise of Apache® Hadoop® requires the effective deployment of compute, memory, storage and networking to achieve optimal results. With its flexibility and multitude of options, it is easy to over or under provision the server infrastructure, resulting in poor performance and high TCO. Join us for an in depth, technical discussion with industry experts from leading Hadoop and server companies who will provide insights into the key considerations for designing and deploying an optimal Hadoop cluster.
Some of key questions to be discussed are:
- What is the “typical” Hadoop cluster and what should be installed on the different machine types?
- Why should you consider the typical workload patterns when making your hardware decisions?
- Are all microservers created equal for Hadoop deployments?
- How do I plan for expansion if I require more compute, memory, storage or networking?
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Bakken Turns Oasis Into Target as Fracking Costs Slide: Real M&A
Among the biggest U.S. explorers in the 200,000 square-mile (518,000 square-kilometer) geological formation centered in North Dakota, Oasis and Whiting owned the most Bakken shale acreage versus their takeover value, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. On that basis, both control more land than Brigham Exploration Co. (BEXP), which sold itself to Statoil ASA (STL) this week for more than $12,000 per Bakken acre in the most expensive major acquisition in the region, said Pritchard Capital Partners LLC.
Energy companies around the world are pursuing unconventional oil assets such as Bakken shale to boost output as the average cost for finding and developing the fuel for the largest U.S. producers surged more than sixfold in the past decade, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Oasis and Whiting, along with Continental Resources Inc., may now attract interest from Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) and India’s Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) as the cost to extract Bakken shale oil falls, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey and RBC Capital Markets said.
“Brigham just underpins what an attractive basin this is,” Stephen Berman, a New York-based analyst for Pritchard Capital, said in a telephone interview. “There are other companies that could be gobbled up in the consolidation. If they want to get in the basin in a big way, they’ve got to buy a Brigham or an Oasis.”
The Bakken formation, the largest contiguous oil deposit in the continental U.S., lies within the Williston Basin, an ancient sedimentary deposit that stretches from South Dakota into Canada’s province of Saskatchewan.
The formation may contain as much as 4.3 billion barrels of technically recovered oil under western North Dakota and eastern Montana, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated in April 2008. That’s enough to meet all U.S. crude oil needs for more than 220 days, based on an estimate by the Central Intelligence Agency.
So-called tight oil plays such as the Bakken have only been accessed in the past decade by drilling horizontally through oil-bearing rock and then fracturing the formation by injecting water mixed with sand and chemicals to keep the cracks open and petroleum flowing, a process known as “fracking.”
Most oil production so far has been in western North Dakota, where companies have tapped the so-called middle Bakken, a deposit trapped between two layers of shale, and Three Forks, rock underneath the lower shale layer.
“Given the size and potential of what this field could be, that’s attractive,” Christian O’Neill, an oil analyst for Bloomberg Industries in Skillman, New Jersey, said in a telephone interview. “You’re just entering in a development stage. It has the potential to be a prolific field over time.”
Statoil, Norway’s biggest oil company, gained about 375,000 net acres in the Williston Basin, where the Bakken and Three Forks are located, after saying this week it will purchase Austin, Texas-based Brigham for about $4.5 billion including net debt, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Based on the number of acres acquired, Statoil’s deal for Brigham would be the costliest major Bakken deal on record and at least 50 percent more than what Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OXY) and Hess Corp. (HES) paid for Bakken acreage in the past year, according to RBC Capital.
Oil companies are expanding into unconventional drilling areas as the cost to locate, extract and produce the fuel skyrockets. Over the past 10 years, the finding and development costs at Exxon, the biggest U.S. producer, has jumped more than 10-fold to $14.21 a barrel, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Among companies drilling for Bakken shale oil, Oasis and Whiting now offer the greatest value per acre, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Houston-based Oasis controls 303,000 net acres in the Bakken and has an enterprise value, or the sum of its equity and net debt, of about $2.87 billion.
That equals 106 acres for each $1 million in enterprise value, the data show. Whiting of Denver had about 96 acres per $1 million. Both had almost three times more acreage implied by the median ratio for oil companies operating in the region.
Using Statoil’s deal offer of $12,082 per acre for Brigham, shares of Oasis and Whiting could now be worth at least 20 percent more in an acquisition, the data show.
Oasis is a likely takeover candidate because it has properties close to Brigham’s fields and is probably open to selling itself, Pritchard Capital’s Berman said.
Whiting, which has much of its 579,000 net acres in the southern part of the basin, is the most leveraged to the Bakken of any oil producer with almost five acres per thousand shares, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Exxon’s 450,000 net acres amounts to less than 0.1 acre per thousand shares.
“You’ve done most of the land grab at this time, and so now to get a position in the Bakken for the most part you’re going to have to buy companies because it’s hard to buy large attractive acreage anymore,” Scott Hanold, a Minneapolis-based analyst for RBC Capital, said in a telephone interview. If the larger oil companies “want to get some of the better positions they’ve got to act sooner than later,” he said.
Richard Robuck, director of investor relations at Oasis, and Whiting’s John B. Kelso didn’t return telephone calls seeking comment.
Oasis shares rose as much as 4.3 percent before closing down 1 percent at $30.99 in New York today. Whiting climbed as much as 9.3 percent before closing up 3.9 percent at $43.92. The gain was the second-biggest among 72 companies in the Russell 1000 Energy Index, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Exxon, ConocoPhillips (COP)
Falling costs to find and extract oil from the Bakken is luring producers such as Exxon and ConocoPhillips, according to Jason Wangler, a Houston-based analyst for SunTrust Robinson.
Costs at Enid, Oklahoma-based Continental Resources, the most leveraged explorer to the Bakken after Whiting, have plummeted about 60 percent to $9.63 a barrel of oil equivalent since 2008, data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s $4.58 less per barrel than Exxon’s expense.
“We get approached all the time” by potential buyers, Kristin Miskovsky, a spokeswoman for Continental Resources, said in a telephone interview. “Our policy is not to comment on speculation.”
Shares of Continental Resources slid 0.8 percent to $58.37 today in New York.
While RBC Capital’s Hanold said Exxon may want to increase its position in the Bakken through acquisitions, Mumbai-based Reliance, India’s biggest company by market value, and The Hague-based Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, may be among other buyers, according to SunTrust Robinson’s Wangler.
Jeffrey Neu, a spokesman for Exxon, said the company doesn’t comment on industry rumors or speculation. Kelly op de Weegh, a spokeswoman for Shell, declined to comment. Manoj Warrier, a spokesman for Reliance, didn’t respond to a telephone call or e-mail outside normal business hours.
Bakken shale oil companies may also attract interest from Chinese energy companies, SunTrust Robinson’s Wangler said. Asian companies may spend $150 billion on takeovers in the next five years to secure energy resources for their faster-growing economies, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.
Although the Bakken formation contains so-called light sweet crude oil that commands higher prices, one challenge for companies looking to shore up acreage in the region is a lack of pipelines to transport the oil to areas with higher demand, according to Bloomberg Industries’ O’Neill. Fracking may also cause serious environmental damage unless companies commit to the best engineering practices, a task force commissioned by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu concluded in August.
Still, with oil approaching $90 a barrel and the breakeven price for production from Brigham’s Bakken acreage at just $55 a barrel, the Statoil deal may spur more acquisitions of shale oil assets in the area, SunTrust Robinson’s Wangler said.
“We may look back on this transaction as the start of a major consolidation,” he said. “It would be very tough to assemble a package of acreage without buying somebody out.”
Bloomberg moderates all comments. Comments that are abusive or off-topic will not be posted to the site. Excessively long comments may be moderated as well. Bloomberg cannot facilitate requests to remove comments or explain individual moderation decisions.
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EASE-e Data Analysis
TetraData Corp. (www.tetradata.com) and Scantron Corp. (www.scantron.com) have formed a partnership that will allow schools to use TetraData’s EASE-e Data Analysis software to analyze data generated by Scantron’s Achievement Series assessment system. The TetraData EASE-e Analysis suite helps educators explore, measure and assess student learning and the learning environment, while Scantron’s Achievement Series is a Web-based test-management engine that handles large-scale district and state assessments as well as classroom-level testing. The combined solution allows superintendents to better measure the performance of students in aggregate or by groups, and on a continual basis, while allowing teachers to monitor areas of strength and weakness against state standards.
This article originally appeared in the 09/01/2004 issue of THE Journal.
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The outsider who got in
OUTSIDE IN by Peter Hain (Biteback Publishing Ltd)
The trouble with politicians’ memoirs is that they are fatally prone to self-congratulation, self-vindication and the settlement of ancient scores.
Peter Hain’s Outside In is not entirely free of these vices, but much of it does have the benefit of being written in an accessible, even racy narrative style.
And although it centrally revolves around his years in the New Labour cabinets of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, moderately well-informed and politically aware non-Britons should find it accessible.
Some sections of the book — for example the chapter on the arcana of Europolitics and Britain’s confused relationship with its continental neighbours — will hold little interest for local readers.
But his account of his role in helping to bring settlement to the seemingly intractable sectarian conflicts of Northern Ireland — undoubtedly the greatest political achievement of Blair’s government — should engage local readers because of its parallels with the South African experience.
The politician’s natural egotism and belief that readers must share his or her personal sense of outrage over alleged mistreatment is most evident in Hain’s version of the events leading up to his resignation from the Cabinet in 2008.
He may or may not have been the victim of a media feeding frenzy over his failure to disclose donations made to his campaign for the Labour Party deputy leadership. His nondisclosure may have been an innocent oversight, and other, more scarlet sinners may, indeed, have escaped scot-free.
But frankly, the rights and wrongs have all been swallowed by what TS Eliot calls “the languor of broken steel”. As Hain himself observes, the only certainty in politics is the end of ministerial terms. And four years later, who — particularly from the remote vantage point of the tip of Africa — really cares?
As a Kenyan-born South African suddenly transplanted to England in his teens when his liberal parents chose exile, Hain is preoccupied with the phenomenon of the political outsider — hence the book’s title.
Particularly once in government, he was the outsider who was now in the belly of the system. He suggests that this was both a drawback that he never completely overcame, and a source of strength and alternative vision that helped him as a campaigner, mobiliser and deadlock-breaker.
The activist passions he imbibed in apartheid South Africa, particularly from his liberal parents, who were both banned, undoubtedly informed his role as agitator-in-chief during the protests against touring Springbok rugby and cricket sides in the late 1960s.
The direct-action tactics that made the protests so effective were partly the product of the envelope-pushing, hellraising youth culture of those years. But one suspects that they also grew out of Hain’s distinctly nonBritish sense of what was proper and lawful.
His upbringing also left him free of British snobbery, suspicion of “foreigners” and class-consciousness, which made him an ideal secretary of state for Wales, well equipped to deal with local Labour leaders and his parliamentary constituency of Neath.
His account of the referendum on Welsh devolution shows him in his natural element — pressing the flesh and winning round ordinary people in a face-to-face campaign.
It was to the Northern Ireland crisis that he most obviously applied his outsider’s perspective. He understood that the typically British reflex — to favour moderates and build consensus around them — was a blind alley and that without the buy-in of the “extremist” Sinn Fein and Ulster Unionists, there could be no lasting solution. He specifically refers to the failure of centrist initiatives in South Africa, including attempts to bolster Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
His opening move was to court Protestant hardliner Ian Paisley, whom the British government had traditionally seen as a pain in the neck, and prepare him to lead a future coalition government. The Paisley of his narrative is a surprise: he is portrayed as “an old-fashioned gentleman” with a wry wit.
Outside In contains other interesting vignettes, including an unflattering glimpse of Thabo Mbeki urging the inclusion of apartheid stooge and mass murderer Jonas Savimbi in Angolan settlement talks, on grounds that the Unita leader and his followers were real Africans whereas the MPLA were only “mesticos” (mulattos). So much for Mbeki’s “I am an African” speech ...
Apart from the odd slighting comment about his centralising tendencies, the depiction of Blair is overwhelmingly positive. Much is made of his ability to keep numerous balls in the air at the same time, his rhetorical skills and his instinct for the political heart of any issue.
Hain’s persistent ooh-ahing about Blair — whom he describes as the greatest Labour premier — is my main quarrel with Outside In. Some would argue that New Labour was a betrayal of the party’s essential traditions and character, and that Clement Attlee, for one, was a far greater socialist leader.
But more importantly, Hain’s account downplays the central shame of Blair’s leadership — his odious truckling to George Bush and the United States’ neocons, a betrayal of Labour’s historical ties with the Democrats, and the whole duplicity-ridden, unlawful British adventure in Iraq.
It is a travesty to argue, as Hain does, that the Blair government’s legitimate case for war was drowned out by the unfortunate discovery that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. The alleged weapons, not human rights concerns, were the official rationale for war!
Hain’s stance on Iraq perhaps reveals a more complex truth — that by the end of his 12 years in Blair’s government, he was no longer an outsider. The ideological aliens were his fellow ministers Robin Cook and Clare Short, who had the decency, and old-style Labour instincts, to quit over Iraq.
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Classic novels are usually classic for good reason: they offer memorable characters, gripping plots, intricate psychology, compelling history, linguistic brilliance. But surely very few novels can claim to have glamour. Actually I can think of only one: The Great Gatsby. First published in 1925, Gatsby continues to dazzle readers today—even to inspire parties, which can’t be said of many novels (try throwing a Bleak House party, or having guests come as their favorite 1984 character). But what exactly makes The Great Gatsby so, well, great?
Gatsby is a connoisseur’s guide to the glamour and glitter of the Jazz Age—but it’s also a nearly prophetic glimpse into the world to come. Writing at the height of the boom, in the midst of the Roaring Twenties, Fitzgerald detected the ephemerality, fakery and corruption always lurking at the heart of the great American success story. Four years later, the market would crash—but the age of advertisement that Fitzgerald was among the first to condemn had only just begun. Nearly a century later, his cautionary tale has become all too apt once more, anticipating as it does our own boom and bust, our tarnished dreams and tawdry failures.
Although slight—about 50,000 words—The Great Gatsby is well-known for its style and shimmering beauty. But although Gatsby is a haunting meditation on aspiration, disillusionment, and romantic love, it isn’t just a lovely cipher, the novelistic equivalent of Greta Garbo. It’s also a blistering exposé of the materialism, duplicity, and sexual politics driving what Fitzgerald calls America’s true “business”: “the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.”
And this is precisely the business of Fitzgerald’s hero, the farm boy who reinvents himself as Jay Gatsby, who “sprang from a Platonic conception of himself.” Gatsby epitomizes the self-made man; Fitzgerald’s narrator, Nick Carraway, says talking to Gatsby is “like skimming hastily through a dozen magazines.” Gatsby tries to create his own fortune in every sense—but although he can make money, Gatsby can’t make destiny. What makes Gatsby none the less “gorgeous” to Nick is his “heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.” That heightened sensitivity is shared—and transmitted—by the novel.
It might seem startling that a novel so rooted in time has become so timeless: the story takes place across the summer of 1922, and ends tragically in September, as the leaves are falling and death is in the air. Time is seasonal, suggesting history, mortality, perishability and impermanence. Gatsby wants to recapture the past, recover lost opportunities, even as he chases “the orgastic future” (it is not, incidentally, the “orgiastic future,” as so many editions print it). Fitzgerald sensed even then that the orgastic future would never come: and he was right. What would come were Crash, Depression, World War, and Holocaust—all so catastrophic they would be capitalized. Gatsby may be a product of his age, an American emblem of hope, faith, and self-fashioning—but he is also our tragedy, a universal symbol of the impossibility of those hopes, and the poignant grandeur of splendid failure.
All of which Fitzgerald understood. When he composed Gatsby, Fitzgerald was one of the most successful writers of his era, who had shot to fame with two bestselling novels (This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned), and was the highest-paid short story writer of the decade. He’d been young, brash, ambitious; when he became his own success story he won Zelda Sayre and the pair rapidly became legendary for their revels, the incarnation of the “flappers and philosophers” who populated the Jazz Age—the name Fitzgerald himself bestowed upon the era he and Zelda would forever embody.
But Fitzgerald also had serious artistic ambitions, and in 1924 he set out to write “a consciously artistic achievement.” Published in the spring of 1925, The Great Gatsby barely sold out its first printing, and Fitzgerald didn’t live to see its pre-eminence recognized. It received some good reviews, while a few great older writers, including T. S. Eliot and Edith Wharton, recognized its significance. But Gatsby was generally dismissed by its first readers as trivial, an “anecdote,” in the dismissive opinion of influential critic H. L. Mencken.
There were two primary reasons for this critical lapse: first, the novel was so much of its time that its first readers couldn’t see beyond its topicality; it seemed so much ephemera. And second, Fitzgerald was perceived as a popular writer, not a serious artist. It wasn’t until the 1950s that Gatsby began to be recognized as a tour de force, in part because Fitzgerald’s prescience could only be appreciated in hindsight. By then it had become clear that he wasn’t merely farseeing, he was himself an uncanny incarnation of America’s fortunes: just as Fitzgerald rode in on the Boom of the 1920s, he would crash with the Bust, despair in the Depression, and die just as America entered the Second World War.
The greatness of Gatsby derives not only from Fitzgerald’s perceptiveness, however, but also from his astonishing prose. The novel is so vivid in part because its language is so consistently surprising: “The world and its mistress returned to Gatsby’s house and twinkled hilariously on his lawn.” Only in Fitzgerald do people “twinkle hilariously” on lawns. He is painting with words, using bright shocks of color like a prose Fauvist. In Gatsby’s “blue gardens,” Nick says, “the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a key higher”. A woman whose husband is drunkenly flirting appears at his side “like an angry diamond.” It is world of “triumphant hat-boxes,” and low-slung cars “crouching” in garages—a single word suggesting the danger that cars will pose to the novel’s characters. The almost synaesthetic mixing of sensory effects creates impressionism in prose, evoking an image without getting trapped in the prison of realism—precisely the trap into which Gatsby himself falls.
Bringing objects to vivid life doesn’t just enable Fitzgerald to set the scene—it allies the reader with Gatsby, who inhabits a world of enchanted objects. Daisy is the most important: she represents the lost paradise Gatsby seeks, but however rich he becomes Gatsby will never be able to afford her. The only man who can afford Daisy is her fabulously wealthy and even more careless husband Tom Buchanan.
Viewed cynically, Gatsby is a stalker—he falls in love with his own projections onto Daisy, refuses to accept rejection, and spends his life constructing an elaborate fantasy, trying to force a happy ending. But Fitzgerald aligns cynicism so firmly with the repellant Tom and his unlikeable (if pitiable) mistress Myrtle Wilson, that unless we want to join the likes of Tom and Myrtle, we have to choose romance. When Nick shouts to Gatsby at story’s end that “they’re a rotten crowd” and Gatsby is “worth the whole damn bunch put together,” he speaks for us. The Great Gatsby makes hopeless romantics of us all.
And hopeless romanticism is the book’s great theme: Gatsby’s glorious romance with possibility itself—and the tragedy of wedding such “unutterable visions” to anyone’s “perishable breath”. Gatsby’s dreams may “romp with God,” but they are corrupted by materialism. As Fitzgerald understood, realizing a dream is sufficient to kill it; and so he keeps the novel’s romantic dreams indescribable. Instead of insisting upon the power of communication, Gatsby is littered with words like “unutterable” and “uncommunicable,” sustaining the novel’s romantic intensity through suggestion. Populating the novel with “owl-eyed” characters and giant unblinking eyes on billboards, Fitzgerald invokes vision but also suggests that it can be unseeing, a signboard rather than a sign.
Gatsby dwells in possibility, to borrow a phrase from Emily Dickinson: his visions are fragile, ineffable, numinous; he is destroyed not by the dreams, but by “the foul dust” floating in their wake. Gatsby is a visionary whose world is inadequate to his romantic intensity.
In the novel’s unforgettable ending, Fitzgerald makes clear that if his story is American, it is also a universal tale of human aspiration, of our facility for hope, and for wonder. Nick wanders to the shore and imagines Dutch sailors seeing America for the first time, a moment when man came “face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” It is his desire to be great, his craving for “the incomparable milk of wonder,” that makes Gatsby great. And it is Fitzgerald’s ability to evoke that incomparable wonder without diminishing its enchantments that makes the novel so wonderful itself. We can, in fact, come face to face with something commensurate to our capacity for wonder once more: when we read the wonder that is The Great Gatsby.
First published in the Times, 1 October 2009. (c) Sarah Churchwell. All rights reserved.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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Children learn to use language not only by imitating what they hear, but by playing with testing the limits of words. Most grown-ups who love language continue to play with words their entire lives.
As International Punster of the Year (there really is such a title), I guarantee you that “Lederer on Language” will abound with wordplay and linguistic humor — riddles, jokes, puns, bloopers, malapropisms, anagrams and palindromes. Laughing and learning make great team teachers.
For starters, here’s a little puzzle: Can you make one word out of all the letters in new door?
The answer appears upside down below.
Puzzle answer: one word.
Please send your questions and comments about language to email@example.com
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en
| 0.911127
| 176
| 2.890625
| 3
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PDT Staff Writer
Bridge engineers and inspectors from the Ohio Department Of Transportation (ODOT) District 9 were in Ironton Monday morning inspecting the Ironton-Russell bridge, after being struck by a barge Saturday night. By mid-afternoon Monday, the engineers and inspectors determined the bridge received no significant damage and the structure has been cleared for traffic.
The bridge had been closed since the incident to allow for crews to inspect the bridge.
Matthew Merical, Public Affairs officer of the United States Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit of Huntington, W.V. said the incident appears to have been related to weather.
“As of right now, it appears it (the incident) was related to the weather, there were high winds that were blowing across the river,” Merical said.
He said the Ohio side of the bridge was struck. Once the incident occurred the coast guard sent someone to inspect the barge itself for damage.
Merical said no charges are pending but, the incident remains under investigation.
ODOT, District 9 spokeswoman Kathleen Fuller said if the bridge received significant damage, ODOT may have closed it permanently while its replacement is being constructed.
“We’ve always said, that if the bridge gets beyond the point of repair, we will close it permanently to traffic while we are building the other bridge,” Fuller said.
Last year ODOT awarded an $81.3 million contract to Brayman Construction Corporation of Saxonburg, Penn. to construct a replacement bridge for the Ironton-Russell.
According to ODOT, the project calls for replacing the existing bridge that connects Ironton, Ohio, with Russell, Ky., by relocating it between Second and Jefferson Streets in downtown Ironton and the U.S. 23 viaduct south of Russell. The project also includes demolition of the existing or old bridge upon completion of the new structure.
Fuller said progress on the new bridge is going well and crews will be working through the winter.
Wayne Allen may be reached at 740-353-3101, ext. 228, or email@example.com.
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en
| 0.965823
| 446
| 1.578125
| 2
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According to Inuit culture in Greenland, a person possesses six or seven souls. The souls take the form of tiny people scattered throughout the body.
By Annie Dillard.
I don't know much about this yet, but the idea of six or seven souls sounds almost overbearing. With just one soul, you can feel enough love, and in times of sorrow, too much pain.
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| 0.963891
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Alan S. Blinder Penguin Press, 400 pages, $29.95
Do we really need another book about the financial crisis?
The economist Alan Blinder certainly thinks so. In “After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response and the Work Ahead,” he says, “the American people still don’t quite know what hit them.”
A former economic adviser in the Clinton administration and ex-vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, Blinder is especially good at providing political context. Unlike some post-crash commentators, he doesn’t unburden himself of utopian proposals that have no chance of adoption.
Given his understanding of the dismal realities in the nation’s capital, Blinder thinks Uncle Sam did surprisingly well in coping with the crisis, and his book is an extended — and reasonably persuasive — apologia for the bailouts, the Fed’s unprecedented interventions and even the Dodd-Frank reforms aimed at making a replay less likely.
There isn’t much that’s new here for crisis sophisticates, except perhaps Blinder’s emphasis on the bond bubble that predated the crash and a vivid chart showing that, adjusted for inflation, home prices today are about the same as they were in 1890.
Lay readers will occasionally be flummoxed by references to balance sheets and the like. They will also be depressed by the portrayal of a government heavily influenced by lobbyists and unable to effectively address the foreclosure mess.
Fortunately, that’s not the whole story, for every reader should come away with a sense of optimism as well. Blinder makes a good case that, in the face of catastrophe, public officials acted boldly and effectively.
The tragedy is that people don’t seem to get that. This book is likely to help.
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Temecula residents joined together Tuesday evening to memorialize the victims of the September 11th terrorist attacks at the city’s annual ceremony at the Temecula Duck Pond.
Eleven years ago nearly 3,000 people were killed when Islamist militants hijacked four passenger airplanes, crashing two of the jets into the Twin Towers of New York City’s World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon outside Washington and a fourth in a field in Pennsylvania.
The memorial service featured live music from The Spirit of Great Oak Band, speeches from city officials, a flag presentation by the Temecula Valley Young Marines and the signing of a keepsake journal in which people wrote notes and prayers for the attack victims.
A Dutch representative from Temecula’s sister city Leidschendam-Voorburg also presented a wreath at the foot of the “Singin’ in the Rain” sculpture, which was donated to Temecula by the Dutch city in 2002.
The evening closed with a candle-lit moment of silence. However, much of the crowd had already dispersed and only a hand-full of folks remained by the end.
“The crowd thinned out pretty quickly, but there are still plenty of people here who won’t forget the souls of the 9/11 victims,” said attendee Blake Romin, 43.
Early in the evening, city officials reminded the crowd of America’s resilience and urged the audience to rejoice in the American spirit.
“What we need to do is celebrate the bravery of those who gave everything to save a few,” said Council Member Jeff Comerchero. “Remember who we are, what we are about, and why we are the greatest nation.”
Mayor Pro-Tem Mike Nagger asked the audience to unite within their communities in order to preserve freedom, which he stressed did not come without cost.
“Hold liberty in your hand like a torch or flame and pass that neighbor to neighbor around the community,” said Nagger. “Do not squander liberty, but pass it along, Let freedom ring!”
Temecula resident Lisa Ricks said that she always attends her community’s September 11th event, regardless of where she is living.
“We just came to remember,” said Ricks, who brought her son David, 9, along to the event. “It was so tragic and senseless you have to feel for all those families of the victims.”
Although David was born after the attacks, he told his mother of his dedication to the memory of the Sept. 11 victims.
“Even when I’m bigger and my kids are born, I’m always going to remember to go,” said David. “I’m going to take them right here so they will remember too.”
Amy Donnelly is a local photojournalist and regular contributor to SWRNN.
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The desolate rocky cliffs and ancient, crooked Celtic tombstones certainly help to further the impression of a haunted land. Ireland has been a land of magic and ambiance since ancient times, and no one has quite been able to put their finger on what makes the "land of the leprechauns" so special. Perhaps it's the wide green valleys that haven't been touched by human hands or the scenery of ruined castles with sheep grazing calmly in the meadows below.
Ireland's castles, many in ruins, certainly have a lot to do with its mystic imagery. If you travel to Ireland consider going on a haunted castle tour. Like England, Wales and Scotland, there are plenty of castles chock-full of stories to keep you guessing. Many of these "haunted" castles may have their run-of-the-mill "white lady," but there's a lot more to the stories than that. These grand residential fortresses each have their own story, of treason between clans, thwarted love, or Druid magic that still seems to permeate the land.
Some castles seem more foreboding than others. Take Bunratty Castle near Shannon, in County Clare. The small main entrance may not seem ancient or majestic, but it's both. The Celtic name for Bunratty is Bun Raite (many times the original Celtic names are much more romantic than plain Anglicized names!) and its name attests to the fact that it is situated near the Shannon River. Known as a tower house, it is still thought of as a castle, and has a violent history just as many other castles do.
All of the previous castles were each ruined throughout time until a building made of stone rose up on this spot. Thomas de Clare, a Norman noble who had been given charge of the nearby lands, lived here in the 1200s. The castle's very own ghost story begins soon after. A man named Brian Rua, who had once been of high political standing, asked Thomas to assist him in his hopeful rise back to power, giving him land in return. As the days passed, Brian soon earned Thomas de Clare's anger and the Norman ordered the luckless man killed by hanging as soon as possible.
Charleville Forest Castle is located in North Tullamore in County Offaly, and many people believe it to be the Emerald Isle's most haunted. Although the castle is relatively new, (at least as far as castles go) dating from the late 18th to early 19th century, it has all the majestic bearing of a more ancient building. Charleville boasts its share of ghosts as well! Unseen children are sometimes heard playing around the residence and strange voices from another time talk to each other from an unknown realm. An ancient tree is located outside the castle; whenever a branch rains to the ground, it is rumored to portend evil for the Charleville family, and this prophecy has rarely failed!
Leap Castle, also in County Offaly, is a name often associated with Irish spirits. The castle in its original form was built by the 1500s, when the head of one clan instigated the massacre of a rival family clan. Their ghosts are only some of those with "unfinished business" who linger here. A century later, an Irishwoman who had given her heart to an imprisoned soldier discovered his true personality when he killed her brother in the castle. A forgotten dungeon was uncovered in the early 20th century, attesting to the cruel way prisoners were dropped into the narrow hole and left to die. It appears many never left.
Huntingdon Castle is definitely worth the trek to County Carlow. Its modest facade seems to contrast with the stately gardens, and it is widely believed that supernatural powers are at work here! Even before you enter the castle, mystery abounds in the form of centuries-old trees that form a "ceiling" above you. The castle itself is a spooky paradise, complete with suits of armor (what castle doesn't have that?) A soldier makes his presence known here, bemoaning his untimely fate, and a woman awaiting her husband's return from battle is also acknowledged to be an "honorary resident."
Ireland is just one of the places where haunted castles can be found. Additional exciting places to visit if you want to check out these castles for yourself are found in other European countries.
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<urn:uuid:c0fb4e85-4d27-427f-a9f8-dd51583ca542>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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en
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Getting The Royal
Warrant is the coat of arms of the reigning monarch of England.
It is granted by the Sovereign and gives the holder the privilege
of using the Royal Arms in connection with his or her trade or business.
order to receive the Warrant, firms must have supplied goods direct
to the Royal Household Departments for a minimum of three years.
Warrants become void on the death of the reigning monarch and had
to be reapplied for with each new monarch.
Walker & Sons Ltd. was granted the Warrant of Queen Victoria
on September 17, 1898. Queen Victorias coat of arms appeared
on Canadian Club labels soon after.
Queens death, Hiram Walker applied for and received the Warrants
of subsequent Monarch, Edwards VII, George V, George VI and Queen
the later years of Queen Victorias life, Hiram Walker also
held the Warrant for the Prince of Wales. Canadian Club labels with
both the Arms of Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales are quite
holding the Royal Warrant for Queen Elizabeth for 10 years, the
Warrant was reviewed and withdrawn. The action was probably political
the Queen no doubt wished to endorse whiskies made in Great
Britain rather than a "foreign" country.
Walker & Sons was the only North American distiller to have
been granted a Royal Warrant.
leading up to Queen Victoria drinking Canadian Club and Hiram Walker
receiving the Royal Warrant are rather interesting.
Victorias physician, Sir William Jenner, ordered her to cease
drinking claret and champagne; he prescribed as a digestive Canadian
Club Whisky and mineral water, in the proportions of four parts
of water to one of whisky.
of Wales tried the prescription, liked it, and it was soon adopted
as the favourite tipple in the Princes "set."
drink now in vogue in the clubs of the metropolis of the Empire
is Walkers Canadian Club Rye
Sir William Jenners
prescription has the endorsement of physicians as well as the pleasant
tingle of aerated waters."
enormous increase in the consumption of Walkers Canadian Club
has been largely due to the desire of the public for a mild spirit,
which makes a most beneficial beverage with cool mineral waters."
from a newspaper article c. 1900
Go To The Hiram Walker
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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| 0.927775
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| 1.859375
| 2
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Out of the ethical wreckage that the cultural revolution of the sixties left behind, one value emerged more or less intactthe value of work. True, the revolution flirted with the idea of "dropping out" (along with "tuning in" and "turning on"). But before long, the counterculture's flower children and radicals were agitating for tenure and partnerships; Yippie Jerry Rubin went to work on Wall Street, and Black Panther Bobby Seale went into the cookbook business. Only the very poor remained marooned in the idea, retailed to them by the cultural vanguard, that working in some "jive job" for "chump change" was beneath their dignity, worse than taking welfare (which was no more than their due) or "hustling" (which was a manly rebellion against oppression).
Now workfarethe subject of our two remarkable cover stories, "Welfare Reform Discoveries" and "At Last, a job Program That Works"seeks to reverse that dysfunctional state of affairs. For welfare reformers, work is the perfect rallying cry, because troops of varying beliefs can utter it with conviction. But different reformers mean different things by it. For followers of Charles Murray, the work requirement changes welfare's incentive structure: welfare recipients are rational beings who weigh costs and benefits and decide that welfare's economic package, obtained with no countervailing effort, is a good bargain. Change the economic equation by adding in the work requirement, and you'll change the resulting behavior. For reformers who believe, as we do, that the self-destructive behavior of underclass welfare recipients, including their welfare dependency, springs from the worldview in their headsthat such behavior is a product of culture and valuesthe work requirement is a welcome change in the cultural message. People will do what the surrounding culture tells them is right.
Though it suggests that the culture is changing, a change in social policy isn't by itself cultural change. Nor does making people work necessarily inculcate them with a work ethic. The great Victorian evangelists of the work ethic praised work for its effect on the inner being. To them, work was the great instrument of self-development, the medium through which individuals learn who they are and become everything it is in their power to be. Work develops a host of accompanying virtues, like steadfastness and self-respect. Butand here's the rubonly for those who already have the inner discipline to work in the first place. What our stories both report is that many welfare recipients lack those personal qualities. They need to develop several more primitive virtues, including punctuality and a willingness to oblige, before they can participate in work and reap its psychic as well as its material benefits. For them, having to go to work is only part of the cultural change they need, and not the part they need most right now.
If workfare doesn't do much for these people, it also doesnt begin to address the biggest welfare problemthe passing down of dependency and its social pathologies from generation to generation by unmarried mothers who have babies they aren't qualified or ready to raise properly. As "Welfare Reform Discoveries" points out, despite workfare's successes in Wisconsin, the illegitimacy rate is going up. Fortunately, as both stories report, efforts to change the cultural messages welfare clients receive are under way, and they point the direction that the next round of welfare reform will have to go.
And what about the opposite extreme of the social scale? Was snatching the value of work from the cultural wreckage enough to make a fulfilled life for the privileged? Not according to Jonathan Foreman, whose hilarious account of working for a white-shoe Manhattan law firm, beginning on page 88, is a chronicle of 100-hour weeks, with no life outside the office, not even to see if the sky is blue, much less to participate in a family or a community. It is an existence in which the work ethic is the only ethic, and Foreman found it proved too thin to be sustaining. The task of cultural reconstruction, these articles suggest, needs to be accomplished at all levels of society.
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| 0.969143
| 852
| 2.46875
| 2
|
Amazing presentation from TED 2008 by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. How often does a neuroanatomist get a chance to study their own stroke from the inside out? A touching story, great education on how the two halves of the brain function and an example of someone who knows how to give a captivating presentation. A standing ovation is always a good thing. Take the time to watch this one.
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en
| 0.944402
| 82
| 1.5
| 2
|
Apollo Elementary School students transform classroom into city
April 17, 2012
By Christina Lords
Amid Lauren Molnar’s third-grade Apollo Elementary School classroom, student Emily Robinson squares her shoulders and raises her hand.
All around her, the room has evolved into the city of Merlinville, which boasts streets of elaborate buildings made of cardboard representing shops and offices for the goings on of the town.
Robinson, the city’s health officer, has a burning — and legitimate —question
“Do we get paid before we have to pay our rent?” she asks.
Like the everyday businesses owner, she’s relieved to find out that yes, she does.
Classroom City, a six-week simulation project that allows the children to come up with a business, be elected to public office and learn about real-life scenarios, enables students to learn about government and citizenship in a hands on, practical way, Molnar said.
Students must maintain a viable balance of profits and expenses from their business. Other classrooms will be able to visit Merlinville during the project to help stimulate its economy.
“This is based on a real-life simulation” she said. “They have to learn how to run a business and what it’s like to be an adult and how stressful it is.”
Merlinville has a police chief who can hand out fines and violations if a business has been vandalized, and the water department controls when students can get a drink or go to the bathroom. The town has a city council and newspaper reporters, and each student creates products to be sold during market days.
The students need to make money to help pay for real-life necessities, like business licenses and insurance.
“They came up with the ideas for their businesses by themselves,” Molnar said. “They have to think about who they’re selling to, who their audience is.”
Sam Nelson, owner of Sam’s Barrel of Fun shop, has several products for sale, including a rentable plastic duck, joke-of-the-day cards and Sam’s Wacky Tunes mixed CD, featuring bands such as Katrina and the Waves, Bowling for Soup, The Beach Boys, and Captain Bogg and Salty.
“They’re just pretty much the best pirate rock band on the planet,” he said. “They had to be on there.”
Aoife Buckley, the 8-year-old mayor of Merlinville, said she’s learning about how to make decisions that will benefit the town and not to play favorites among her friends.
“We all had to write a campaign speech,” she said. “I promised the city I would keep it safe and make fair decisions.”
She said she thought she had what it takes to be a good leader within the community.
“I get to cut the city’s ribbon, and I get to have the biggest salary,” she said. “I really do think it’s one of the best roles in the city that there is.”
Vice Mayor Allyson Mangus, owner of Puzzling Puzzles, a business dedicated to providing booklets to entertain and stretch the mind, said she’s been busy trying to determine what the best price for her product might be.
“Right now, my booklets are $5. But if no one buys them, I may have to drop the price,” she said.
Molnar said each student is graded on lessons based in real-life occurrences, such as keeping accurate records of purchases at their businesses and maintaining a checkbook.
“They’ve really put a lot of thought and time into this,” she said. “You can see that they really do take themselves seriously.”
Christina Lords: 392-6434, ext. 239, or firstname.lastname@example.org. Comment at www.issaquahpress.com.
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| 0.970149
| 852
| 2.125
| 2
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14 February 2013
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) launched today an emergency appeal of just over USD 300 million to support some of the most disadvantaged Palestinians in the Middle East; those living in the occupied Palestinian territory.
The largest component of the Agency's Emergency Appeal for 2013 is USD 78 million to provide food assistance to nearly 750,000 impoverished beneficiaries in the Gaza Strip, now in its sixth year of blockade. The appeal also supports temporary job creation and cash assistance programmes.
Read a summary of the appeal:
At a launch event in the Gaza Strip, UNRWA’s Deputy Commissioner-General Margot Ellis said: “As political leaders and donors are called upon to respond to new disasters around the globe, the man-made humanitarian crisis right here in Gaza and the West Bank remains and intensifies with no sign of abating after more than six decades.”
Ms. Ellis continued: “Funding shortfalls for essential, fundamental services in the occupied Palestinian territory have become a reality despite the growing basic needs of Palestinians—particularly Palestine refugees—with no resolution to the conflict in sight.”
Director of UNRWA’s Relief and Social Services programme Martha Myers told journalists: “Palestinians have moved from living in a second world country over the past 30 years to living in a third world country in Gaza and outside of the bubble of Ramallah in the West Bank. The descent continues unabated, with the ability of Palestinians to produce and innovate stifled by the blockade; ruining lives, undermining an entire society and the hope for political harmony, and debilitating the chances of a positive outcome.”
UNRWA’s directors in Gaza and the West Bank both spoke of the urgency of the Appeal. “For many of our beneficiaries, UNRWA is the first port of call for assistance, so this aid is urgently needed,” said Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza Robert Turner.
West Bank Director of UNRWA Operations Felipe Sanchez said: “In the West Bank, we are witnessing an increased number of demolitions and settler-violence incidents that often lead to dispossession and forced displacement, largely impacting the refugees. As a result, continued humanitarian funding is required.”
UNRWA’s Emergency Appeal will also fund community mental health programmes, emergency health interventions, and water and sanitation initiatives in Gaza and the West Bank.
The Agency’s 2012 Emergency Appeal was only half-funded by the donor community. This has a debilitating effect on increasingly desperate communities. The Agency is nonetheless grateful to those donors who did fund last year’s Appeal. UNRWA’s emergency work is having a positive impact on the lives of some 700,000 Palestine refugees.
UNRWA is a United Nations agency established by the General Assembly in 1949 and is mandated to provide assistance and protection to a population of some 5 million registered Palestine refugees. Its mission is to help Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and the Gaza Strip to achieve their full potential in human development, pending a just solution to their plight. UNRWA’s services encompass education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement, and microfinance.
Financial support to UNRWA has not kept pace with an increased demand for services caused by growing numbers of registered refugees, expanding need, and deepening poverty. As a result, the Agency's General Fund (GF), supporting UNRWA’s core activities and 97 per cent reliant on voluntary contributions, has begun each year with a large projected deficit. Currently, the deficit stands at USD 66 million.
For interview requests with Margot Ellis, Martha Myers, Robert Turner and Felipe Sanchez, or for further information please contact:
Mobile: +972 (0)54 240 2659
Office: +972 (0)2 589 0267
UNRWA Arabic Spokesperson
Mobile: +972 (0)54 216 8295
Office: +972 (0)2 589 0724
Adnan Abu Hasna
UNRWA Media advisor
Mobile: +972 (0)599428061
Office: +972 (0)8 288 7531
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Equal Access Nepal received Avon Communications Awards: Speaking Out About Violence Against Women yesterday for their work on VOICES-Samajhdari. Actress and Avon Foundation for Women Ambassador Salma Hayek Pinault presented the award during an adjunct event to the 57th session of the Commission of the Status of Women at the United Nations. Equal Access Nepal was one of the five global organizations to receive the prestigious award, which recognizes outstanding communications campaigns that are helping change communities, policies, institutions, and behaviors to end violence against women. Equal Access Nepal implemented Voices-Samajhdari project between 2007-2010 which included radio programs and print materials to end violence against women.
Other winners are Bytes for All (Pakistan) , Engender Health (Tanzania), State Service for Youth and Sports & International Women’s Rights Center ‘La Strada’ (Ukraine) and PCI Media Impact (Peru). The winning organizations will also receive an Avon Foundation grant to fund the continuation of their work.
“People are willing to speak out, but they don’t always know how to recognize the signs of abuse or how best to intervene,” said Avon Products, Inc. CEO Sheri McCoy.
Executive Director of Equal Access Nepal Dr. Bharat Devkota said the award is recognition for EAN's efforts to end violence against Women. He added, "Through the materials, we tried to address the intersection between HIV & AIDS and Violence Against Women. It was found that majority of the women living with HIV & AIDS were also the victims of violence. This award inspires us to work further in the field."
An international panel of judges selected VOICES-Samajhdari from more than 425 submissions to the Communications X-Change by 119 organizations in 46 countries, ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
The awards coincide with International Women’s Day, and the Commission of the Status of Women, which this year focuses on the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls. The Commission of the Status of Women drew nearly 6,000 representatives from UN Member States, UN entities and NGOs from around the world for a two-week session.
Equal Access Nepal envisions an informed and equitable society where all voices are heard and respected. EAN works with an aim of reaching the unreached by providing critically needed information and knowledge through media, capacity building and community engagement for positive transformation.
More information about the award: http://www.avonfoundation.org/causes/domestic-violence/funding/avoncommunication-
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A new report says some conventional wisdom about browser security might be wrong, as a series of tests to choose the most secure browser delivered a result that may surprise many IT pros:
The test concluded that the most security browser available is currently Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 — and its competition isn’t particularly close, either.
While many IT pros would say ditching IE in favor of Chrome or Firefox is a best practice of browser security, a recent report from NSS Labs reached a different conclusion.
The security firm tested several different browsers (IE 9, Apple Safari 5, Google Chrome 15-19, and Mozilla Firefox 7-13) against 84,000 malicious URLs over the course of 75 days. The result: IE 9 nearly aced the test, blocking malware in 95% of cases.
In comparison, Safari and Firefox were way behind at 6%. Chrome fell between 13% and 74%, depending on the version and the date of the test.
However, as anyone who’s followed the browser security debate knows, these results won’t end the argument. One study conducted by Accuvant last year named Chrome the most secure browser — but the study was paid for by Google, so the results may have been suspect.
Likewise, developers of other browsers have accused NSS Labs of favoring Microsoft in its previous browser security tests.
Browser security key to network protection
Though its browser security rankings may be in dispute, one point made in NSS Labs’ report is impossible to argue with: Since most IT security attacks come from the Internet, securing web browsers is key to protecting the company’s data.
Choosing a secure browser is one key step, but with so much disagreement over which software is the most secure — and with constant updates changing browser security features — many experts say companies should choose the browser that best meets their users’ needs and secure the software as best as they can.
To do that, IT and the company’s users can follow these browser security essentials:
- Make sure the browser — as well as all add-ons and plug-ins — are kept patched and up to date. Many malicious attacks attempt to exploit known vulnerabilities in older software — and they’re often successful because the average Internet user isn’t diligent about updating their browser.
- Disable popups in the browser’s settings. Not only are popup ads annoying, but hackers often use infected popup windows on legitimate sites to spread malware.
- Evaluate the security of the browsers on your company’s PCs using free browser security testing tools to know what vulnerabilities need to be fixed.
- Install browser extensions to boost security. Depending on the browser, tools may be available to warn users about potential malware infections, block unnecessary Flash and Java content, and warn about sites that don’t encrypt passwords.
- Train users on safe web browsing — after all, a browser is only as secure as the person who is using it.
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Fungal meningitis is a rare illness that causes swelling in the membrane surrounding the brain and spine. It cannot be passed from person to person, and health officials say the outbreak is caused by tainted drugs that were injected into the spine to relieve back pain.
The current outbreak, first reported last week, is linked to an injectable steroid made by the New England Compounding Center-- a pharmacy in Massachusetts. It has recalled the injected steroid. 75 facilities in 23 states received the product, according to the CDC.
Health officials say patients who received an injection at one of the facilities beginning May 21 and who started showing symptoms between one to three weeks after the injection, should see their doctor as soon as possible.
Symptoms include headache, fever, nausea, and neck stiffness. They can also include light sensitivity, confusion and dizziness.
Treatment includes high doses of anti-fungal medications, which are typically given through an IV line in the hospital.
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Tags:Toning the Lower Body,fitness drill,fitness routine,lower body,lower body workout,monkeysee,workout,workout routine
Grab video code:
Jonathan Reff: Hi again, Jonathan here. We are at SomaFit in Washington, DC, learning about how to lose weight through exercise and diet. We are now beginning the weight training portion, specifically the weight training for our lower body or the portion of how to tone and strengthen the legs and muscles of our lower body. We are going to start with a very basic squat. We are going to position our feet a little wider than hip-width apart and feet should be perfectly parallel to each other.
Now, for those of us who are just beginning a workout routine or just getting back into exercising, when you start a squat you want to position yourself in front of a bench or something very steady there. You are going to actually, physically sit down onto it. So again, I am going to sit down as I breathe in, my negative emotion being the downward motion as I breathe in and as I exhale my positive. So again, breathing in and I am using my abdominals here, exhaling and standing up. Starting this way is excellent because it keeps the biomechanics of the exercise or the position of your legs in perfect alignment and it's almost impossible to get something wrong here.
So, the kind of things you want to watch out for when doing a squat or the positions of your knee, your knee, each knee should be directly over its course binding foot and should not leave that position, meaning it should not go forward by any means nor should it bow out or tip in. We want it directly over there course binding feet and that the knees stay exactly where they were when we started. Exhaling and pressing up, breathing in and exhaling. As far as my alignment of my spine is concerned it's again neutral and long.
So, I am going to now, move on to a more advanced squat. I am going to go grab some dumbbells and move this bench out of the way. I've added as well some extra weight in the weigh of 220 pound dumbbells. Now, this is not necessary, you could do squats free standing without weight, but for my intentions, I am going to just use this to make this a little more challenging for myself.
So, with my arms on my side, shoulders relaxed, my posture is nice and long and tall. I am going to go ahead and just like I sat down onto the bench, take my hips behind me, sit to down to approximately 90 degrees and then exhale and press my body up. So again, we are going name both directions, a negative and a positive. So, I am breathing in on the negative, exhaling on the positive. Breathing in, exhaling and because I've added this extra weight, I am really getting a good burn through my hamstrings, the back of my leg and my quadriceps, the front of my legs as well as my back side, it feels really good.
As we take a side angle, again you can notice that my spine is as straight as I can make it and my chest is out and I am really sticking my backside behind me as if I were sitting into a chair and then pressing and stepping out of it. So, from the squat, I am going to then show you one other exercise, which I'll put the dumbbells down for. Now, lunge, vary the positioning of your legs from that of a squat. and now, we are going to actually step forward. So, I am stepping forward with one foot, long enough so that both legs are stretched out, they are in line with each other but staggered a foot's length in between. I am going to bend both knees straight to the floor at a 90 degree angle. By no means should my back knee touch the floor.
Then I am going to exhale, press up and step my foot in and then alternate to the other side. So, I am breathing in, exhaling, breathing in, exhaling, same breathing as a squat. You will notice that my spine is nice and tall, just like I was doing a squat. Again, I am stepping in, going down, stepping up and going back. Alternating legs again provides me with just enough instability to allow me to work my core just down my charter. You can vary the pace to make it more challenging. As long as -- again those knees must stay over their feet or at least the front knee, very, very important. Great, so, we -- as far as lower body is concerned, we've done squats, we did squats with some added weight, free standing and we did some alternating lunges. We are going to now move onto the upper body, I'll see you guys there.
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Travel to U.S.: Oklahoma: Oklahoma's Small Towns
Many and maybe most of Oklahoma's small towns are in desperately poor shape. In some cases, the residents aren't as poor as their town suggests, mainly because they work and shop an hour's drive away. Still, the places they call home are dying. For more on the character of these places, see Where the Jokes Wear Thin.
All told, Oklahoma has about 3.3 million people. The number's been pretty stable over the last 20 years, with losses during most of the 1980s countered by very modest growth during the 90s. Of the 3 million, almost 2 million live in greater Oklahoma City (1 million), Tulsa (775,000), or Lawton (113,000). All the state's seven cities with a population exceeding 50,000 are in those metropolitan areas, which leaves about 1.5 million people scattered in places smaller than 50,000. Here's a main-street building in one of them, Tecumseh, population 5,900 (Pottawatomie County). It's suggestive of the urban aspirations of the state's founders--and of the scramble to put obsolete buildings to some use before they're abandoned altogether.
This sign is going to wind up on "Antiques Roadshow" one of these days. It's overkill here in Coyle, population 300 (Logan County), north of Oklahoma City.
Rule of thumb: proximity to an Interstate is good; remoteness from one is bad. Here's bad: a domino parlor in Ringling (Jefferson County), on the Texas border. Population 1,200.
Ringling's broad and deserted main street, on an August afternoon hotter than a firecracker .
Two counties west of Ringling is a major agricultural county: Tillman County, population 9,400 and falling. Here's a building on the mainstreet of the county seat, Frederick, population 4,700. The swinging doors are a nice reminder of the cotton crop once so important here. Farming doesn't take many people nowadays.
Not a lot of demand (Frederick).
North a bit: an abandoned hotel in Comanche, population 1,600. The town is southeast of Lawton on U.S. 81, once a major interstate arterial.
U.S. 81 as it comes through Comanche, not far from the abandoned hotel.
The main residential avenue of Waurika (Jefferson County), population 1,800. The Union Pacific Railway comes through, and this avenue runs perpendicular to the track, but there's no passenger service, and folks shop at the Wal-Mart in Ardmore, population 23,000 and one county to the east, over on Interstate 35.
Another oversized street, this one farther north in Medford (Grant County). This is prime wheat country, just south of Kansas, but there are only a thousand people in this country seat--and only 5,000 in the whole county.
Mainstreet Waukomis, population 1,300. The town is only a few miles south of Enid (Garfield County), close to the center of this country's winter-wheat area. Big deal: being a contender in primary production doesn't help build population.
West of Enid a few miles: Ringwood, population 400.
Cleo Springs, (Major County) west of Enid. The town has 330 people.
A century of hard knocks doesn't seem to have done much to dent the local faith in growth, perhaps because a few of these towns actually are still growing. Geronimo, population 1,000, had only 103 people in 1960; it's close to Lawton, however, and to Fort Sill with its retirees.
West of Oklahoma City, U.S. 66 and Interstate 40 run through Weatherford, population 9,600. Thanks to the Interstate and Southwest Oklahoma State University, the town is hanging on, even if bank buildings become second-hand clothing stores.
A similar story: the main street of Clinton, 20 miles farther along the Interstate on its way west.
The once-upon-a-time center of Clinton, population 8,700. The action today has shifted toward the freeway.
Clinton used to have a big old hotel, closed for many years. In 2000, it was brought down.
The last wall.
The Katy Station in Elk City. It's now a steakhouse, mighty convenient if you're hungry between Amarillo and Oklahoma City.
It wasn't always the Katy. It started out as the Wichita Falls and Northwest Railway.
Nearby: downtown Butler, population 320. Butler was settled during the great land runs of a century ago. A lot of the folks who settled here at that time moved on after a few years; it was tough then, as now, to make a living here.
Still farther west: Erick, last stop in Oklahoma. This is the main intersection in town.
Down the street a block: an antique store in the old butcher shop.
Before you know it, you're in Shamrock, Texas.
It's the U Drop Inn Cafe, part of the Tower Building, built in 1936 by a businessman from nearby Pampa.
Nice '48 Plymouth--or was that just my imagination?
Back in Oklahoma: looking along that road--U.S. 66. Ready for the movie?
* Australia's Northern Territory * Austria * Bangladesh * Belgium * Brazil (Manaus) * Burma / Myanmar * Cambodia (Angkor) * Canada (B.C.) * China * Czech Republic * Egypt * France * Germany * Greece * Hungary * India: Themes * Northern India * Peninsular India * Indonesia * Israel * Italy * Japan * Jerusalem * Jordan * Kenya * Laos * Kosovo * Malaysia * Mexico * Morocco * Mozambique * Namibia * Netherlands * Norway * Oman * Pakistan * Philippines * Poland * Portugal * Singapore * South Africa * Spain * Sri Lanka * Sudan * Syria * Tanzania * Thailand * Trinidad * Turkey * United Arab Emirates * United Kingdom * U.S.: East * U.S.: West * U.S.: Oklahoma * Uzbekistan * Vietnam * West Bank * Yemen * Zimbabwe *
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My Country and the Way to America
This is an extraordinary story, extraordinarily told, first published in the May/June 1985 issue of Stone Soup. It is a story about how Huong made his way from Vietnam to America. We have published several stories about a child’s travel from a land of danger to one of safety, but this one remains our favorite. The style is sparse, even austere. The section about their time on a boat, beginning, “After three days or four days out the ocean, the boat have a hole and the water coming. Everybody was cry and scary . . .” is a particularly strong section. In it style and content are perfectly blended. A more grammatically correct English would be hard pressed to tell as effectively this frightful tale.
I live in Vietnam. I go to school in Vietnam. I have three pigs and one dog, but the dog is dead. My mother she was sad. My mother my father my sister is go to work. Me and my younger sister we stay home. Everybody is go to work. We has a restaurant in Vietnam. So my family they work there.
In Vietnam is very awful so we leave. One night my sister she take my younger sister and I go in to the boat. But we ask her where do we going, and she said she take us to the zoo. And we very happy because we don’t know what the zoo mean. She tell us the zoo is for the animals use to live.
So we go to see we saw the lion and the tiger and the elephant and the monkey and the wolf and snake and the bear and the very old cat. The old cat is very big but if we touch that cat he bite you and you have to go to the hospital. That cat so grumpy.
After we went to the zoo and we go to buy a lot of food. My younger sister she ask what for? My oldest sister said we going to have a party.
And she take us to get on the boat. And I see too much people. When we start to go I am too small and I am so stupid.
Because they want everybody to put the children to go sleep because they start to go but I don’t want to go to sleep but I want to play with the water. I put my feet under the water. The people in the boat they gave me a medicine but I don’t know what is that. Then I drink the medicine. After I drink I was sleeping.
When I wake up I saw the ocean. And I put my feet under the water again.
After three days or four days out the ocean, the boat have a hole and the water coming. Everybody was cry and scary. The boat was rocking and raining. The people they felling down the ocean. The captain in the boat. He jump down the ocean and he help everybody to get on the boat. Then he was tired and he can’t swim no more. He dead under ocean. His wife was sad and lonely. Everybody they are wet. Me and my younger sister we are under boat. And we didn’t get drop down the ocean. My sister she said we are lucky. The people they take care of the lady because that lady she is very lonely and sad.
We stay in the ocean for a month and two days. The last day we saw a people dead on the water. We saw money and the wood, the shoe, the paper, the clothes, the pants. And everybody was scary.
Another day we saw a big ships. We are happy they let we get on the ship. We saw a lot of toys. We play on the ship for one day.
And they get my boat to Malaysia. We lived there two month.
And they take we go to Indonesia. We lived there one years. We live in Indonesia. We have no food no water to drink no soap and shampoo for hair in Indonesia is very dirty and messy. They has a lot of the bad fly. If the bad fly sting we get sick. And no medicine. The people they dead every day.
I sick one time but not much because I drink the bad water it make me sick.
My sister she think I might dead so she feel sad. And worry about my mother and my father and my sister in Vietnam.
Next morning the America people they call my family name to get on the ship. They take us go to the big mountain.
A lot some people. And we are talking to the Vietnamese people. We came to a big mountain they have everything. They have water and food, and no fly nothing. We lived there we don’t have to cook. They cook for us to eat every day. We can eat anything if we want to. Because we got to come to America some day. So we very happy.
The mountain is very beautiful. It look very big then in Vietnam. The mountain look like a city. I like America we like to live there. We live there they give us candy every day. We live there one week. Then we get on the airplane to came to Hong Kong. And we came to America. Then we live in the hotel two days in Los Angeles.
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Flu Terms Defined
- Seasonal (or common) flu is a respiratory illness that can be transmitted person to person. Most people have some immunity, and a vaccine is available.
- Novel H1N1 flu is a new influenza virus causing illness in people. This new virus was first detected in the U.S. in April 2009, and has spread to many countries around the world.
- Pandemic flu is virulent human flu that causes a global outbreak, or pandemic, of serious illness. Because there is little natural immunity, the disease can spread easily from person to person.
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Indoor Garden – The Super Cropper
The story of the Super Cropper
told by the founders of Urban Hydroponic Growers Union, Charles and Zach.
You can also visit the Super Cropper page on our Indoor Gardening Blog (urbanhydro.org)For a bit of the history of the system
The Super Cropper is really the culmination of our journey into hydroponics. Driven by our desire to found local hydroponic growers unions but faced with lack of knowledge about hydroponic food production, we set out to develop systems and methods of production that would further the concept of distributed urban agriculture.
Here is the idea… a community of growers each using indoor, backyard, and/or rooftop methods of hydroponic cultivation to grow a specific crop or crops. By specializing each grower will be able to be far more productive than when trying to produce a variety of crops. Coming together as a club, co-op, or even business these communities could produce for their members or clients a wide variety of valuable produce year round. Sort of a grow network.
Making this a reality really does require specific systems and methods for cultivation in spaces of all sizes. So we started with the smallest unit we felt could be a productive grow space, the 4×4 grow tent. After growing will all sorts of DIY and purchased hydroponic systems we finally settled in on our favorite method of cultivation, Aero-Hydroponics.
In our experience this method of cultivation is by far the easiest and most enjoyable in a 4×4 indoor grow room. It is clean, requires fewer timers and less medium. Only one problem. There really weren’t any Aero-Hydroponic systems on the market to fit in a 4×4 tent…at least not ones that we could afford.
After two years of trial and error with multiple self designed, self built systems, the Super Cropper emerged as our true favorite. Not only because it’s easy to grow in. Not only because plants grow incredibly fast in the Super Cropper, but also because it just looks so darn cool! We know you’ll enjoy growing with a Super Cropper as much as we do and we have worked very hard to deliver a great system at a great price.
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The IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) (not to be confused with the Intercontinental Railroad!) has announced the end of cotton, coffee, sugar, cocoa and OJ options floor trading. The futures floor was closed some time ago.
The decision was spurred by the movement of options trading to ICE's computerized trading system. This is significant, and is likely the beginning of the end of floor trading. Options have been the last major bastion of open outcry. Many options trades involve more complicated multi-leg strategies (including spreads of various sorts) that are more difficult to computerize than simple outright futures trades, or simple futures strategies like calendar spreads, but which can be done efficiently on the floor; locals on the floors quote many of the common spreads. If options can be done on the screens, there's nothing really left for the floor to do.
Thus, we are witnessing the culmination of a process that began about 20 years ago. I first did some research on electronic trading in the early-1990s, and remember the disdain with which the futures and options communities looked on computerized markets. In 1995, I wrote a study comparing the electronic DTB and the open outcry LIFFE market which found that the former was as liquid, or more liquid than the latter. This study was met with much derision by LIFFE, and by most people in Chicago. The derision of electronic trading died down substantially in 1998, when volume in the Bund futures market tipped completely to DTB's successor (Eurex), and LIFFE suffered a near death experience.
The floor held out in the U.S. for sometime longer, but by the early-2000s the writing was on the wall here as well. By the mid-2000s, options trading was keeping the floors going. But that's no longer true of ICE, and it is likely a matter of time before it is no longer true on CME/CBT (CME) or NYMEX.
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Minnesotans just don't want to pay sales tax on their clothing purchases, something Sen. Tom Bakk proposed Thursday as a way out of a state budget hole.
"Our phone calls are about 80 percent against it," Bakk said in an early evening Thursday interview. "Not a surprise, though."
Bakk used a St. Paul Capitol news conference Thursday morning to unveil his bill, which would repay the delayed education aid payments, reduce the state's general sales tax rate from 6.5 percent to 6.25 percent, reduce the current biennium budget deficit and remove the sales tax exemption on clothing.
"We have a $1.2 billion cut to schools and no way to pay it back," Bakk, Senate Taxes Committee chairman, said. "I'm proposing to commit to pay the schools back $120 million a year, and then cut the rate from 6.5 to 6.25, so everybody benefits from that."
At the end of 10 years, Bakk said he'd cut the rate again by the extra $120 million.
According to Bakk, for the current biennium only, the new revenue would be used for deficit reduction of about $257 million. Starting July 1, 2011, the general sales tax rate would be reduced by 0.25 percent and the education aid shift would begin to be paid.
Still, extending the sales tax to clothing is an uphill battle and has been for anyone who has proposed it, including former Gov. Jesse Ventura.
"Somebody has to propose something here," said Bakk, who is also seeking the Democratic endorsement for governor. "We've been here a month and everybody's sitting around starting at each other."
While this week's economic forecast lightened up on this biennium's projected shortfall -- from $1 billion to $994 million -- it deepened the deficit for the next biennium to $5.8 billion, which doesn't include inflation.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty, in his budget solution, counts on $380 million in federal funds that has yet to be approved Congress and may not be anytime soon, he said.
"People can not like it, but at least it's honest," Bakk said of his bill. "It's real money, it's not some fairy tale money from Washington that's never even been appropriated.
"I'm just trying to put something out there to get a discussion going," he said. "Bold ideas require strong leadership."
He said he met with business leaders prior to his news conference, and wrote a letter to Pawlenty, asking for a face-to-face meeting. The latter will not happen, Pawlenty staff told Bakk.
"It's pretty clear that the governor's moved on -- he's got his national ambitions," Bakk said. "I tried to engage the business community on the fact that we're still going to be here next year. ... We have to be honest with the fact that this $1.2 billion the governor is delaying from schools - there is no money to pay that back, and no requirement in the law to pay that back."
The sales tax provision actually comes from Gov. Pawlenty's 21st Century Tax Reform Commission, he said. Minnesota is one of only five states that still carries the exemption for clothing.
Bakk argues that his proposal is a tax cut. "I'm reducing the general sales tax rate. Does it bring in new tax revenue? Yah. But is it's not a tax increase because I'm cutting the sales tax."
Businesses pay 45 percent of all the sales tax in the state, Bakk said, which should interest them in his proposal. "For them, cutting the sales tax from 6.5 to 6 ... if they pay 45 percent of that, that's a significant business tax cut."
Bakk said a lot of details need to be worked out. His proposal calls for a straight sales tax on all clothing, regardless of family income. But he's open to discussions about tax credits for families up to a certain income.
"If the governor wants to meet and have a discussion about some kind of low-income tax credit," Bakk said he'd be open. One of the major opponents, he believes, will be groups representing young families with kids in school who need to make school clothes purchases every year.
"The discussion I'm willing to have with the governor about that is I'll give the governor the authority to declare a clothing tax holiday," Bakk said. "We can give him a couple of days in law that the governor could pick where there wouldn't be a sales tax on clothes. You can do that right before school."
And he said such a notation could create a "Thanksgiving Friday in August for people wanting to shop for back-to-school stuff."
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For thousands of years, the ability of blind people to participate fully in social, political, and cultural life was limited by the lack of access to written or printed forms of information. Although the work of many others contributed to his accomplishment, Louis Braille’s invention of a tactile six-dot reading and writing system revolutionized the way blind people perceived and contributed to the world.
Born January 4, 1809, in Coupvray, France, Louis Braille lost his sight at age three as a result of an injury. Educated at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, Braille was recognized as highly intelligent and creative. By fifteen, he had developed the initial version of a tactile system of reading and writing—later refined to a raised, six-dot cell with sixty-four possible combinations corresponding to the alphabet, punctuation, and key symbols. He later devised braille systems for music and mathematics.
When Braille died in 1852 from tuberculosis at age forty-three, he did not realize that his invention would enable blind and visually handicapped people throughout the world to read and write as well as sighted people. Today, we have approximately eighty-five braille systems in the world based on Braille’s invention. In mounting Louis Braille: His Legacy and Influence, the Library of Congress joins the worldwide commemoration of the inventor’s 200th birthday.
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Research & Commentary: Digital Learning Possibilities and Pitfalls
Harnessing modern technology to tailor education personally and make it efficient is new and greatly unsettled territory. States, schools, entrepreneurs, and families are testing variations on many programs to see what works for them. Every state offers K-12 students some option for digital learning, but many programs are poorly funded and structured. The result is a wide variation in online learning quality between states and within states.
Critics of online learning and supporters of the current education system tend to see any shortcomings as reasons to entirely abandon integrating technology with education. They point to low student achievement levels of some online programs and the expense of building stronger wireless networks and purchasing computers, and they say little value is added by making computer use one more task for teachers and students.
Those who champion markets and individual liberty, however, say these occasional difficulties are part of the learning process, offering guidance on how states and families should proceed. Technology allows families and students greater freedom to finish school more quickly or more slowly depending on each student’s needs; greater freedom to travel and blend learning styles and opportunities; and relief for teachers and schools from many administrative burdens. All of this, digital learning proponents say, allows the best teachers and instruction to reach more students while reducing education costs.
Understanding that freedom to fail is necessary for innovation, proponents of online education generally advocate policymakers create a level playing field for various learning opportunities and provide an appropriate amount of oversight for public funds to ensure excellent options rise and poor options fall.
The following documents offer more information about the possibilities and pitfalls of digital learning.
In South Korean Classrooms, Digital Textbook Revolution Meets Some Resistance
South Korea has decided to scale back a plan that would have fully digitized textbooks and classrooms in the country by 2015, citing concerns from educators that students might benefit from less exposure to gadgets, reports the Washington Post. Research shows 8 percent of South Korean children ages 5 to 9 are addicted to the Internet. The number is similar for the United States.
Newsweek reports on Internet addiction in South Korea, the world’s most wired country. Online gaming is one of the few places an average student can escape from the country’s high-pressure academic system and excel. The country has sponsored addiction counseling and treatment centers and is considering laws to alleviate the problem, especially among young users.
Manhattan Moment: No, More Computers Will Not Fix Our Broken Schools
The nation’s education decline was not caused by a lack of technology—use of technology has increased while our education system has declined, writes Heather MacDonald in the Washington Examiner. True reform comes not by adding expensive technology to existing school structures but by shifting education from a morass of flabby standards and curriculum to tough, content-centered, discipline-demanding environments.
The Morning-After Pill for Blended Learning
Regulating online education while it is still unsettled could abort the transformation it promises to bring to U.S. schools, writes Heather Staker for the Innosight Institute. The steps policymakers have taken so far to define online and blended learning and even their attempts to encourage it are more likely to stifle it, she observes. Because the innovation is still fresh and fermenting, policymakers should let individuals and organizations solve their own problems.
Critiquing Online Learning, Part One
Online education is like working out at home, writes Jason Fertig, a professor who has taught classes online at medium and large public universities: showing that something can be done is not the same as knowing it will be. Blended and hybrid learning are more likely to have good outcomes than strictly online education because they include tighter accountability and relationships between student and teacher. Online education can offer greater efficiency, he says, but there are caveats.
Critiquing Online Learning, Part Two
In a follow-up post for National Review Online, online professor Jason Fertig discusses why online education is not always a boon. Many traditional students see online classes as a way to earn three more credits without putting in three credits’ worth of work. Students with lower GPAs fail online classes more often than regular classes. This means online schools should screen students and implement accountability measures to compensate for the reduced amount of teacher contact.
The Possibilities of Online Learning
Online courses work best in blended environments and when teachers and schools reimagine the classroom and assignments to harness the power of technology, writes online teacher Gary Stager in the New York Times. Online learning can support classroom instruction and offer greater communication and collaboration than is currently allowed in classrooms.
Four Implementation Challenges for High Quality Digital Learning
To prevent digital learning from becoming ubiquitous but not transformative, schools and policymakers must keep close tabs on progress to ensure accountability for public funds without strangling innovation, writes Bill Tucker for Education Sector. He recommends four strategies: providing for transparency and free flow of information so parents can make good choices; not allowing credit recovery and alternative programs to be low-quality; engage local, private, and community organizations in new learning alternatives; and create new school finance and accountability structures to ensure equitable treatment for digital learning.
Digital Learning Now!
This 2010 report from the Foundation for Excellence in Education has become a central guidebook for policymakers seeking to establish smart digital learning policies. After explaining why states and schools must integrate online education, it outlines ten essential components for digital learning policies that provide equal access for students and a level playing field for providers while ensuring accountability and transparency of public funds.
Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning
The Evergreen Education Group’s annual report details policy changes and innovations in online learning across the United States. As of late 2011, it reports, online and blended learning opportunities existed for at least some students in all 50 states, but no state had a full suite of full-time and supplemental options for students at all grade levels. Developments over the past year include: Single-district online learning programs are the fastest-growing and tend to be blended instead of fully online; intermediate offices and education service agencies are assuming larger roles; several states passed important new online learning laws; and programs with reliable and substantial funding work best.
Nothing in this Research & Commentary is intended to influence the passage of legislation, and it does not necessarily represent the views of The Heartland Institute. For further information on this and other topics, visit the School Reform News Web site at http://news.heartland.org/education, The Heartland Institute’s Web site at http://www.heartland.org, and PolicyBot, Heartland’s free online research database, at www.policybot.org.
If you have any questions about this issue or The Heartland Institute, contact Heartland education policy research fellow Joy Pullmann, at 312/377-4000 or email@example.com.
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Today, the executive directors of the Iowa Association of School Boards, the Iowa State Education Association, the School Administrators of Iowa, and the Iowa Department of Education sent a joint letter to U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa offering a set of principles for revising the No Child Left Behind Act as Congress considers the reauthorization of the law.
The letter expresses concerns that “the law’s prescriptive federal mandates are heavy-handed and imbalanced,” and that its “one-size-fits-all approach to accountability and school improvement is ill-suited for many states,” including Iowa.
The letter, signed by Tom Downs of the Iowa Association of School Boards; Mary Jane Cobb of the Iowa State Education Association; Dan Smith of the School Administrators of Iowa; and Jason Glass of the Iowa Department of Education outlines principles on which they stand in agreement.
The principles include work to restore the appropriate balance of state and federal authority, a focus on closing achievement gaps and better serving students in poverty, and setting high standards while allowing states the flexibility to design accountability and assessment models that fit their individual state-specific contexts.
The letter continued: “Federal policy can serve an important and supportive role with states providing an equitable and high-quality education for students in poverty. Some progress has been made; however, only through focused and evidence-based approaches, tailored to meet each state’s individual context, can we hope to meet our goal: Providing an equal opportunity for all children to achieve the American dream, regardless of their economic conditions.”
The letter followed a meeting in Des Moines this week between the four executive directors and Sen. Grassley. Similar meetings are planned with U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, as well as Iowa’s five U.S. representatives.
“We so appreciate and commend Sen. Grassley for his time and attention on this important matter, as well as his position that one size does not fit all with regard to No Child Left Behind,” Glass said. “We look forward to his leadership on this issue.”
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|Sponsored by the HealthcareTrainingInstitute.org providing Quality Education since 1979|
Substance Abuse: Treating the Addicted Teen Client
There have been numerous reports that substance abuse is more prevalent among gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents than among their heterosexual counterparts. For example, Remafedi (1987) found that 58% of his small sample of Minneapolis gay and bisexual youth met criteria for substance abuse. Another study found high rates of alcohol abuse (76%), marijuana use (42%), and cocaine/crack use (25%) among a sample of predominantly Hispanic and African-American gay and bisexual males in New York City (Rotheram-Borus et al., 1994). Estimates for substance abuse in heterosexual youth vary widely (and often include sexual minority youth because studies neglect to ask questions about sexual orientation), but estimates are that 4% of youth drink alcohol daily, 33% have had 5 or more drinks at one time within the past two weeks, and more than 90% of high school seniors have experimented with alcohol at some time in their life (Adger, 1991). A recent study that surveyed students in 59 schools in Massachusetts found that gay, lesbian, and bisexual students (who represented 2.5% of the population) were more likely than students who did not report they were gay, lesbian, or bisexual to engage in 24 substance-use related behaviors including using alcohol before age 13 (59% vs. 30%), binge drinking (46% vs. 33%), using marijuana (69% vs. 47%), using cocaine (33% vs. 7%), and sharing needles (16% vs. 1%) (Garofalo et al., 1998).
Minimal information exists for substance abuse patterns among lesbian and bisexual female adolescents. However, at least two reports have indicated that similar patterns exist among adult lesbians and adult gay men (Anderson, 1996; Glaus, 1988). McKirnan & Peterson (1989) found slightly lower rates of alcoholism in lesbians than gay men (9% vs. 17%), rates which were similar to those for heterosexual women (7%) and men (21%).
These statistics must be interpreted with caution because the youth included in the studies are not a representative sample of sexual minority youth. Rather, they are youth that have been willing to identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or questioning youth to researchers or participate in some organized activity for sexual minority youth. Furthermore, the samples are predominantly male.
It should be noted, as well, that youth with poor coping skills and poor networks of social support are at a greater risk of engaging in self-destructive behavior, regardless of their sexual orientation. Thus, youth with good coping skills will be at less risk of succumbing to substance abuse, even though the stress of "coming out" is great. This is supported by research findings mat many sexual minority youth are engaged in healthy, positive activities (e.g., Jordan, Vaughan, & Woodworth, 1997).
Two additional life-threatening issues associated with drug and alcohol abuse are frequent unprotected sexual encounters and suicide attempts. Both of these behaviors have been noted to increase when substance use is present (e.g., Rotheram-Borus et al., 1994). Gibson (1989) reported that as many as 20% to 35% of gay youth have experienced suicidal ideation. Studies have found that substance abuse may be linked to higher levels of suicidal ideation and attempts (Roles, 1983) and that gay-related stressors are more common among adolescents who had attempted suicide than those who had not (Rotheram-Borus, Hunter, & Rosario, 1994). Use of drugs and alcohol may impair judgment and lead youth to engage in more risky sexual behaviors such as sex with multiple partners or unsafe sex practices (Rotheram-Borus et al., 1994).
School psychologists are in a unique position to respond to and affect this problem. One growing phenomenon is the presence of gay, lesbian, and bisexual groups or clubs in high schools, often supported by faculty and administration. These groups offer age-appropriate opportunities for socialization and for meeting other gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, or supportive teens thereby providing social support and furnishing opportunities for developing social skills. In addition, these programs may offer avenues for addressing the prevalent harassment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning teens in schools, thereby reducing stimuli for substance abuse. In one study of sexual minority youth in the Chicago area, gay, lesbian, and bisexual high school students reported that school-based groups or clubs for gay, lesbian and bisexual students and straight supportive allies, with administrative support and assistance, were an important part of making the school environment amenable to sexual minority students and alleviating their sense of alienation and differentness (Jordan, Vaughan, & Woodworth, 1997).
Reflection Exercise #5
Others who bought this Addictions Course
Email yourself a link to this page and start a "Professional Reference Folder of Interventions" for your future use. Or email a link to this page to Mental Health Professionals. No further emails will be sent to them.
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NOT that it's of earthshaking importance in these parlous days, but . . . wait. All days are parlous. All days - by which is meant all eras - are rough and tumble, and they are also fancy free. We think a little economic uncertainty is nightmarish, compared to what? World War? Cold War? The world immediately before this one, that 99.99percent of human history without lights, plentiful food, warmth, that cellphone savant with all human knowledge sitting in your pocket?
So what I was going to say was that the naming by a city of its poet laureate is not a matter of life and death - except you will recall what William Carlos Williams said: "It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." Williams was a revered physician in Paterson, N.J., the kind who made housecalls in the middle of the night, that most practical man, a man of life and death. And yet what is he remembered for? Writing great poems. If you haven't read them, turn from this now and do so. They might save your life.
As I was saying: When I heard last week that Eloise Klein Healy was named the first poet laureate of the city of Los Angeles, I breathed two sighs of relief.
The first was that a poet was named poet laureate. When city muckamucks announced that they would search for one, all kinds of non-poets came out of the Encino woods and announced that they should be the laureate of the City of Angels, even if they weren't,
That they weren't actually poets was small beer so far as they were concerned.
This is the kind of thing that happens to poets all the time, and I am mystified as to why. No one who is, I don't know, a newspaper columnist would, when the time comes to name that year's Nobel Prize in physics, claim that it is he instead of those fellows writing the equations who should be feted by the king at the banquet in Stockholm. So why should poetry - which I assure you is precisely as complex an art as physics - be considered a craft in which every Jasper with a mildly creative streak is a candidate for the post the same as those who have actually written, and published, poems?
Don't know. Just know that it's so.
Second sigh of relief: Eloise is a wonderful choice. Man alive, is she a real poet. You can look her up - she is an ardent practitioner of the craft, which is a life's work. The non-poet could no more write her poems than I could paint a Picasso. But here's a fun one, a stanza from "Entries: LA Log": I never owned a map / to the stars' homes / but I sent to JPL / for 8x10 glossies of Mars / to stick up around my mirror.
Of course there's a Pasadena connection. There always is. While Healy lives in Sherman Oaks, her publisher is Kate Gale and Mark Cull's Red Hen Press, headquartered right here in town, the biggest small press on the West Coast. Red Hen has published a number of her books; she even runs a special imprint of poetry books by others through the press; and it will publish her next, which is not only a volume, but comes with what poetry started out as, sound. "A Wild Surmise: New & Selected Poems & Recordings" will be released in March.
So congratulations to Eloise, and to Los Angeles, for picking a real poet as its laureate. Every town should have one - Altadena does, for instance, and she is dynamite: Linda Dove, who we at LitFest Pasadena got to hear reading at that finest versifying location, the Altadena Ale House. What's more, every town should pay its laureate, as Los Angeles will: $10,000 a year. There will not be any money from the municipal treasury better spent next year than the bucks engaged in spreading the good word.
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Monday, March 1, 2010
Gone But Not Forgotten
Title: Davenport Cement Centennial
By: Alverda Orlando & Robert Piwarzyk
Librarian Alverda Orlando has been an authoritative historian on Davenport, California for decades. This is the first time she has collaborated with Robert Piwarzyk, a limestone expert/engineer, to compile a complete history of Davenport Cement Plant, one of the few cement plants existing in California. It will be of even more significance in light of reports of the plant's permanent shutdown.
Unlike some books devoted to company history, Davenport Cement centennial is focused on a single and simple point: how events evolved as a continuing history. It narrates how the plant was conceived in 1903, as William Dingee, owner of the Standard Portland Cement Company, saw the potential of the significant limestone and shale deposits of Ben Lomond Mountains. Together with his partner Irving Buchman, he purchased a property 12 miles northwest of the city of Santa Cruz, to erect the second largest cement plant in the nation. Just a few months after the construction in 1905 of Santa Cruz Portland Cement Company plant and quarry, San Francisco was hit by earthquake and subsequent fire. This historical backdrop has predestined the fate of the Davenport plant ever since. To respond to the sudden overwhelming demand for cement and concrete, the construction of the Davenport plant was completed one year ahead of schedule. In late 1906, the plant started its limited operations. By 1910, its annual production rose from 560,000 barrels of cement to 1.4 million barrels, until World War II. With the years gone by, the importance of Davenport cement has by no means been diminished. On the contrary, its presence has been felt throughout the state of California, from San Francisco War Memorial Opera House (1932) to Golden Gate Bridge (1937), from Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to Oakland-Alameda Coliseum (1966), and from Stanford Medical Center to the expansion of San Francisco International Airport, not to mention countless private homes built in California's cities and suburbs which used Davenport cement for their foundations.
For specialized readers, Davenport Cement centennial is an interesting read. It narrates a century of cement innovation by showing how limestone was obtained from the quarry, what raw mill process was involved: homogenizing raw material, calcinations in the kiln and then finish mill, and finally transportation: how cement was shipped. However, the book does not dwell exclusively on technology, but also focuses on the community behind the plant: the people who made natural resources and technologies work, and their small but complete society. The Davenport residents and cement plant workers built St. Vincent de Paul's in 1915, Crocker Hospital in 1910, a one-cell prison, and the one-room Pacific School.
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Ducks Unlimited is working with several partners to enhance over 2,000 acres of wetlands and wetland associated uplands near the mouth of the Silvies River in Harney County, Oregon. The project is located about one mile north of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The project includes the restoration of two miles of the Silvies River. The ditched river is being replaced with over two miles of newly constructed meandering river channel. Levees and water control structures will be installed to restore approximately 1,500 acres of seasonal wetland habitat. These wetlands will provide critical migration and breeding habitat to waterfowl, wading birds and other wildlife species. Of particular importance, the shallow, extensive wetland habitats on this site will provide important feeding and resting habitat for pintails during the spring migration. Harney County is an important stopover for northward migrating pintails that breed in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Alaska and other northern breeding areas. The project will also provide breeding habitat for several species, including mallards, Canada geese, northern shovelers, gadwalls, cinnamon teal and blue-winged teal. Other partners involved in this one million dollar project include the two landowners, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, Harney Soil and Water Conservation District, and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Construction of the project commenced in the fall of 2004.
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Thomas Frank (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1994) rose to prominence as editor of The Baffler, an influential journal of cultural criticism. Started in 1988 by Frank while he was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, The Baffler moved with him to the University of Chicago as he pursued a doctorate in American History under Neil Harris. While The Baffler is famous for rekindling popular interest in the Frankfurt School , it is also often remembered as the journal which broke "The Great Grunge Hoax" story. A November 15, 1992 piece in the New York Times explored the then recent phenomenon of "grunge" and included a sidebar discussion entitled "Lexicon of Grunge: Breaking the Code," which defined the hip new "grunge speak, coming soon to a high school or mall near you." The lexicon purported to translateterms current in the youth subculture of grunge, including "wack slacks" (ripped jeans), and "lame stain" (an uncool person).
Unfortunately for the New York Times , the slang was pure invention. The information on which the paper based their story was part of an elaborate prank perpetrated by Megan Jasper, a Sub Pop Records employee in Seattle who had similarly duped the British magazine Sky. When The Baffler revealed the hoax, theTimes demanded an apology from Frank and his fellow editors, but received instead a surly response which read "(W)hen The Newspaper of Record goes searching for the Next Big Thing and the Next Big Thing piddles on its leg, we think that's funny." After news of the story hit Seattle, tee-shirts featuring the word "lamestain" in the Times ' famous font appeared in the city.
Beyond The Baffler and the two books used in this course, Frank's writings have appeared in The Washington Post, Harper's, In These Times, and The Nation.
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- Crateria, Maridia
A large crustacean-like creature. Scisers have adapted to living in many areas throughout Zebes, but the majority of these amphibious creatures live in the depths of Maridia. They come in tan, green, and red varieties. Tan-colored Scisers often travel throughout the water-eroded cave networks in Crateria, the green variety are primarily land-based, while red Scisers thrive underwater in Maridia.
Scisers may look weak, but their hide makes them difficult to take out. Charge up an effective beam combo or just use two missiles. Surprisingly, they can also be killed with a single Grapple Beam shot.
Sciser corpses can be found in Draygon’s lair, suggesting that they might have been used as a source of nourishment.
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5.14K Views1 Comments0 Likes
To reflect on one's practice is only one step in continuous professional development. Without this step, however, teachers cannot improve their performance; they do not know what to improve without considering what happened in the past. One of the best ways to reflect is to write, so here are a few resources I can suggest to teachers who want - and need - to think and write about what they are doing in the classroom.
143.91K Views125 Comments0 Likes
Here's a brief look at the evolution of classroom technology. Do you have a piece of technology that you think should be included? Tweet @edudemic or let me know in the comments!
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The process called "geo-tracking," a series of simple steps that allows people to extract location data embedded in online pictures, could allow someone to track your movements simply by downloading the photos you post on social media accounts.
Certain photos are embedded with "EXIF" data that can be downloaded via software or online applications.
That data contains GPS coordinates that record where the photo was taken.
A simple Google search with the coordinates can easily pull up the location.
A series of photos taken by a KSAT reporter today were plotted in a matter of minutes.
But there is a way to protect yourself, according to cyber-security expert Kevin Kjosa, who works at UTSA.
“Simply go into the settings on your phone and look for something that says ‘location-services,' or something (similar),” said Kjosa. “Just turn that off, and no EXIF data will be recorded to your phone.”
Certain websites like Twitter have policies that strip that data to any photo uploaded to its site, if it hasn’t been done so already.
But there are plenty of social media sites that don’t have that policy, so users must take matters into their own hands.
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I joined tonight's meeting of the Montgomeryshire Community Health Council (CHC) as an observer. Person's responsible for developing a Bowel Screening Programme for Wales were presenting an update on progress. I'm interested in this subject.
At long last, it seems that we are finally getting there. Its anticipated that the screening programme will begin in October. Testing kits, which cost just 37p each will be sent out to all 60-69 year olds in Wales. The aim is to extend the age range to 74 in two years time, and eventually include everyone between 50-74. This is the first time that men are involved in a comprehensive screening programme. But I do wonder how many will join in. We men are a bit funny about this sort of thing. It involves spreading a bit of what is delicately termed 'feacal matter' on the 37p card, and sending it back via the Royal Mail. I chuckled when Reg Taylor, an ex-postman, who is a member of the CHC, chipped in the opinion that he was glad that he'd retired! I believe that the 'marked cards' will b ein some sort of sealed envelope. The cards will be tested in a central lab to check for any signs of blood, not easily detected by the naked eye.
If there is blood, there will be follow up, involving a Specialist Screening Practitioner (SSP), who will conduct a phone call to assess whether the next stage is appropriate - a colonoscopy, which is a camera up the backside and around the bowel to search out any nasties. The reason all this is so important is that Bowel Cancer can be wholly curable - as long as its detected early enough. I do know this better than most.
This programme has been too long coming, but we want it to be a success.
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http://glyn-davies.blogspot.com/2008/09/bowel-cancer-screening.html
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UCI starts anti-doping hotline
Paris - The International Cycling Union (UCI) on Wednesday launched an anti-doping helpline for professional riders, in the wake of the damaging fallout from American Lance Armstrong's spectacular fall from grace.
The free 24-hour, confidential helpline (+ 800 8884 8884), which will take calls in English and French, can be accessed from anywhere in the world and "is for all athletes in the UCI registered testing pool as well as any professional cyclists taking part in UCI competitions".
UCI said that an outside organisation had been mandated to handle the process to "guarantee strict confidentiality".
"It guarantees that all calls can also be made anonymously at any time, and any day of the week, which is in line with the recommendation of the Association of Professional Cyclists (CPA)," world cycling's governing body said.
The calls will be recorded and, depending on their nature, forwarded to specialists in the legal, anti-doping and medical fields, who will decide what follow-up action should be taken, it added.
"Athletes can call the helpline if for example they are being pressured to dope, if they have participated in organised doping, or if they know or suspect doping activities are taking place."
UCI president Pat McQuaid urged professional riders to make use of the helpline: "The integrity of cycling is at stake. We have established this helpline to encourage the sport's professionals to come forward and reveal, in the strictest confidence, anything they know about doping practices within the peloton."
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Phone manufacturers’ penchant for full high definition displays is already starting to be the emerging trend in mobile phones in 2013, if Las Vegas’ recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is anything to go by.
That show saw all manner of phone manufacturers – including Sony, ZTE and Huawei – announcing their latest flagship devices, sporting 1920 x 1080 resolution screens. Even HTC launched one of these, at the tail end of last year.
They have displays around the 5-inch mark, and names such as the Sony Xperia Z, ZTE Grand X, Huawei Ascend D2 and HTC J Butterfly respectively.
That theme follows on from last year’s trend of faster and more powerful processors in mobile phones. These souped-up CPUs were found in popular devices like the HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S III and LG’s Optimus 4X HD.
This was by no means a fleeting fad either, as they are now to be found doing most of the heavy lifting in this new generation of HD mobiles. Having both these technologies included together highlights that the two work well in unison, but are these 1080p screens worthwhile?
HD quality has been in television sets for well over half a decade, whilst resolutions of 1280 x 720 – or 720p – have been in phones since late 2011, most notably in the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
These types of mobiles, along with many others, have been capable of recording video in 1080p – only they weren’t able to play back their own footage at its full quality. Until now…but this isn’t the sole reason why a phone would benefit from a HD screen.
There is no quibbling that 1920 x 1080 films, whether on Blu-ray, streamed, or however it’s viewed on a compatible television, offers great quality. But why be limited to viewing movies at this visual quality when sitting in front of the TV?
There should be no reason why that level of playback is limited to the home, when other aspects of home entertainment can be enjoyed away from the comfort of the sofa – from playing games to music and more.
In fact, this new spate of mobile phones can offer that level of film playback quality on the move, with off-line movie services such as Google Play adding more and more titles for download – in high definition – all of the time. And, with 4G LTE soon to be more widespread in the UK, this could conceivably offer content streaming in full HD.
There are other benefits, from gaming to viewing and capturing pictures – all of which can take advantage of bigger and better screens.
As for the future, Qualcomm chose CES to unveil its Snapdragon 800 chip.
That is noted to offer video recording in ‘Ultra HD’ (previously called 4K). It has four times the pixels of 1080p; a whopping resolution of 4096 x 2304 compared to 1920 x 1080.
This guest post was written by Rob Kerr, contributing editor for mobile phone comparison site Omio.com
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About the South East LHIN
The South East Local Health Integration Network (SE LHIN) is one of 14 networks established by the province to plan, manage, and fund the health care system at the local and regional level. Promoting integration and networking among our health care resources is already showing results. The South East region extends from Brighton on the west to Prescott and Cardinal on the east, north to Perth and Smith Falls, and back to Bancroft. This map is for funding and planning purposes only: residents of the LHIN can seek health care services wherever they prefer, inside or outside these boundaries.
Achieving better health through proactive, integrated and responsive health care in partnership with an informed community.
What does that mean?
Better health: improvement in individual/population health
Proactive: promotion, prevention, treatment
Integrated: seamless, value for money
Responsive: timely access to care
Partnership: working together
Informed community: knowing how to access the system and knowing how to maintain good health
The South East LHIN is home to close to 500,000 people. It has a sizeable rural population with 44% of its residents living in communities of fewer than 10,000 people. One-quarter of the South East population resides in Kingston.
Corporate Providers and Services
The range of health care corporate providers and services located within the South East LHIN included, but was not limited to:
Local Sector Overview
- Hospitals - 7 Hospital Corporations operating 12 sites
- Cancer Centre - 1 Organization
- Long-Term Car Homes - 37 Homes operating 4,106 beds
- Community Care Access Centres (CCAC) - South East CCAC
- Community Health Centres (CHCs) - 5 organizations operating 8 locations (5 main sites and 3 satellites)
- Children's Treatment Centres (CTCs) - 2 Organizations
- Community Mental Health & Substance Abuse - 8 Addictions Programs and 19 Mental Health Programs
- Community Support Services - 42 Community Support Services Agences (CSS), 3 Agencies providing Acquired Brand Injury (ABI) services, 3 Agencies providing Assisted Living Supportive Housing (ALSSH)
For more information about this region, please review our Fact Sheets.
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A Reference Resource
Bill Clinton came into office with relatively little experience in foreign affairs. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the uncertainties of the post-Cold War world produced a number of foreign policy crises which challenged Clinton's abilities as a statesman.
Missteps in Somalia, Rwanda, and Haiti
Weeks before Clinton took office, outgoing-President George H. W. Bush had sent American troops into Somalia, a country located in eastern Africa. What started out as a humanitarian mission to combat famine grew into a bloody military struggle, with the bodies of dead American soldiers dragged through the streets of the Somalian capital of Mogadishu in October 1993.
Public support for the American mission waned, and Clinton announced a full withdrawal of U.S. forces, which took place in March 1994; United Nations (UN) peacekeeping troops remained in the country until the spring of 1995. The intervention ultimately accomplished little in Somalia: warlords remained in control, and no functioning government was restored in the country after the United States and the United Nations left. The failure of American troops to be properly equipped for the mission led ultimately to the resignation of Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and created the impression of a President ill-prepared for foreign affairs.
In April 1994, a vast killing spree broke out in Rwanda, a nation located in central Africa. An estimated 800,000 Tutsi and their defenders were murdered in a government-sponsored genocide. With the failure in Somalia still very much in the minds of American policymakers, neither the United States nor the United Nations moved aggressively to stop the slaughter. Both Clinton and the world community were criticized for not acting quickly and decisively to stop the violent deaths of Rwandans. In 1998, the Clintons embarked on an extensive six-nation tour of Africa, during which the President stopped briefly in Rwanda to meet with survivors of the civil war and to issue an apology for actions not taken.
In Haiti, following Clinton's failed October 1993 attempt to oust Hatian strong man Raoul Cédras, former President Jimmy Carter stepped in to negotiate with the brutal military dictator for his removal from power. Cédras had overthrown the Caribbean nation's democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in a 1991 coup. Accompanied by retired General Colin Powell and Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), Carter communicated Clinton's threat to invade unless the generals of the junta relinquished power. With American planes in the air, the generals buckled and agreed to leave. United State forces were sent in to make certain that the agreement was enforced, but they were eventually withdrawn. The democratic institutions of this impoverished nation remain fragile and endangered.
Doctrine of Enlargement and Policy Successes
Notwithstanding these early difficulties, Clinton knew that the success of his presidency required a cohesive foreign policy. Trained as a student at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, Clinton eventually focused on the creation of a new approach to international affairs, a policy his advisers called the "doctrine of enlargement." This doctrine, based on the idea of expanding the community of market democracies around the world, embraced free trade, multilateral peacekeeping efforts and international alliances, and a commitment to intervene in world crisis situations when practical (i.e., with little risk and low cost in U.S. lives) and morally defensible. The policy promoted an activist role for America and was designed to extend and protect basic human and civil rights insofar as it was within the power of the United States to successfully achieve those goals without undermining national security or depleting national resources. In Clinton's mind, the United States must continue its role as the principal leader of the world in promoting human dignity and democracy, with the understanding that it must never act in isolation or overextend its reach.
The Clinton administration achieved some notable accomplishments in foreign affairs. Russia was successfully persuaded to withdraw troops from the Baltic Republics of Estonia and Latvia in 1994. It also pushed through Congress two new massive trade agreements: NAFTA in 1993 and a revision of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1994. Administration initiatives also staved off an impending economic collapse of Mexico in 1995 and helped produce remedies in similar crises with Asian markets two years hence. Furthermore, an administration emissary, former senator George Mitchell, brokered peace negotiations between the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Sinn Fein ("Ourselves Alone"). In the Middle East, the administration facilitated negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. While these talks seemed to offer hope of a potential settlement, they broke off amid mutual recriminations and were soon followed by a renewed and more lethal round of fighting between Palestinians and Israelis.
Ethnic Wars in Europe
Major international challenges also came from the numerous civil and ethnic conflicts in the Balkans. After two years of keeping U.S. involvement in the conflict to a minimum, Clinton was eventually moved by Serbian atrocities against Bosnian civilians. The administration pushed NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) to begin bombing Bosnian Serb positions. Eventually, that use of force, in tandem with diplomatic efforts led by Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Richard Holbrooke, brought the three warring parties—Croats, Serbs and Bosnian Muslims—to the bargaining table. The resulting Dayton Peace Accords ended the fighting. Clinton sent a peacekeeping force of 20,000 American troops (part of a larger NATO deployment) into the region to enforce a cease-fire that was to be followed by free elections in September 1996. American and NATO troops enforced an uneasy settlement that stabilized war-torn Bosnia with no American casualties.
In 1999, Clinton moved with NATO to begin a massive bombing campaign against the Serbian government to end its "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians in the Kosovo region. Specially trained forces from the Serb Interior Ministry, along with paramilitary forces that had been active in Bosnia years before, had created hundreds of thousands of refugees through the application of this policy; Serb forces also murdered thousands of ethnic Albanians. But the bombing worked and, with the help of Russian diplomacy, forced the Serbian government to withdraw from the region. With no American battle casualties during the fighting, U.S. troops joined British, French, and other NATO forces to occupy Kosovo as peacekeepers under an agreement worked out with Yugoslavia. The province remained nominally part of Yugoslavia, but the Kosovars had gained autonomy, and the possibility of eventual independence. Clinton's forceful stand in Bosnia and Kosovo enhanced his foreign policy resume.
Dealings with the Former Soviet Union
The former Soviet Union and its East European client states constituted yet another challenge for the Clinton administration. The President lobbied successfully for the inclusion of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), indicating to Russia that neither nuclear weapons nor large numbers of troops would be placed in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, some Russians regarded expansion as an aggressive step by NATO and the United States. Clinton also supported the besieged leadership of Russian president Boris Yeltsin as well as the funneling of billions of dollars in loans to Russia from the International Monetary Fund.
In 1999, Clinton's support for financial aid to Russia came under attack in the face of mounting evidence that much of the borrowed money may have been stolen by an organized criminal syndicate which included members of Yeltsin's own family. However, supporters of Clinton's pro-Yeltsin policies credit his administration with an important achievement not easily measured in dollars or in the short run: the security of the Russian nuclear arsenal. Working through the provisions of the Nunn-Lugar Act, the administration provided extensive technical assistance and funding to the former Soviet states in the safeguarding of nuclear power plants and dismantling of nuclear weapons—an astounding achievement in view of the animosity that once existed between the United States and the Soviet Union. By the end of the Clinton presidency, the likelihood of a nuclear exchange between the superpowers was almost nonexistent.
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Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is making a push for gun control two years after she was shot in Arizona and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's national gun control group released an ad Tuesday challenging lawmakers to pass legislation as well.
Giffords and her husband have created a political action committee and launched a website called "Americans for Responsible Solutions."
They're calling for efforts to prevent gun violence while promoting responsible gun ownership.
On Jan. 8, 2011, Giffords was almost killed as she was meeting with constituents outside a grocery store near Tucson, Ariz.
The gunman killed 6 people and wounded 13.
He was sentenced to life in prison.
Giffords was forced to resign from Congress to focus on her recovery.
The shooting sparked other gun control advocates into action as well, including the mother of one of the victims who has joined Mayor Bloomberg's national gun control group.
"Twenty heartbroken families lost a child in the Sandy Hook school shooting," Roxanna Green said in an ad for Mayors Against Illegal Guns. "I know how much it hurts."
The new TV ad features Green, the mother of 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, who was killed in the Tucson shooting.
It was released Tuesday by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an organization co-chaired by Bloomberg.
In the ad, Green demands legislators take action to enact stronger gun control.
"I have one question for our political leaders. When will you find the courage to stand up to the gun lobby," she says.
The ad aired in Tucson to coincide with the anniversary of the shooting.
It will also air in Washington, D.C. through Jan. 14 and in other markets where there have been mass shootings.
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*Cancelled* Anthropological Imperialism and the Ethics of Research
From site: News & Events
Date: Monday, November 12th, 2012
Time: 7:30 pm
Duration: 2 hours
Location: Shaw Gallery (2nd floor), Logan Museum of Anthropology
Sponsored by: Logan Museum of Anthropology, Three Rivers Archaeological Society, Beloit College Initiatives Program / Contact: Bill Green 363-2119
Contact: Bill Green
As anthropology emerged into the 20th century as a science, Franz Boas led the field toward contemporary standards of research. His notorious colleague, Frederick Starr, was marginalized and Starr’s contributions to 21st-century anthropology were left behind. Professor McVicker will critically examine Starr’s treatment of his subjects (or some would say victims) and try to separate his vices from his virtues.
Donald E. McVicker is professor emeritus of anthropology at North Central College and a research associate at the Field Museum. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago and has done extensive archaeological research in Mesoamerica. His biography of Frederick Starr, Frederick Starr: Popularizer of Anthropology, Public Intellectual, and Genuine Eccentric, has just been published by AltaMira Press.
This event is free and open to the campus and community.
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Introducing Sue Mainka, Head of IUCN Science and Learning
02 March 2010 | News story
Sue Mainka has been appointed Head of Science and Learning in the newly established Science and Learning Unit in IUCN. This is the new home for the Commission on Education and Communication within the IUCN Secretariat.
Sue Mainka has been appointed Head of Science and Learning in the newly established Science and Learning Unit in IUCN. In this new post her responsibilities include building a higher profile for the science generated by IUCN and supporting the integration of science into what IUCN does, and developing and promoting knowledge management standards and practices. This team is part of the larger Programme and Policy Group in IUCN, the group that includes programme support, policy, monitoring and evaluation, and programme cycle management.
What is her vision for her new Unit? "I would like the Science and Learning team to catalyse a new appetite and motivation to integrate science as a way to make IUCN’s work more effective and efficient. Learning is an important part of science and, hopefully, the work of the S&L team will reflect an attitude towards learning and adaptation and benefit from it."
And how will CEC be engaged? There are two aspects to that answer, Sue explains, with the first relevant to all Commissions. "IUCN needs to better profile that available science it has, especially in Commissions which we advertise as our ‘science banks’. I am starting discussions with each Commission Chair as to how to best integrate Commission science in IUCN’s programme delivery and how to better profile the science that IUCN is producing. CEC is part of those discussions," Sue explains.
Within CEC, Sue is particularly interested in expertise related to knowledge management. "At an institutional level, IUCN needs to continually work on knowledge management and learning and, of all our Commissions, CEC has some unique expertise to contribute. The programme officer which we are about to recruit will have a specific task to ensure that CEC is specifically linked in to relevant networks and processes to facilitate the KM and learning as much as possible – through introduction of new ideas and technologies and support for the cultural shift that will be needed along with the technology"
Sue has extensive experience in species conservation and programme management and a keen interest in ensuring policy is informed by sound, relevant and timely science. She has held several positions in IUCN since 1997 and has played key roles in IUCN’s Congresses.
Sue Mainka was born in Toronto, Canada, She currently lives in Switzerland. A veterinarian with 20+ years’ experience in wildlife conservation. Over the years she has worked on Giant Panda conservation based in the Wolong Nature Reserve in China, on captive management of wildlife in several countries, and as a clinical veterinarian both in a zoo environment and in private practice in Canada. Sue has been with IUCN since 1997 and was Head of the IUCN Species Programme from 2001-2004, prior to joining the Global Programme Team.
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It’s not often that you read a book that solves a mystery that has baffled you for years. But that's what happened a couple of weeks ago when I read Why Good People Can't Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It . Written by Peter Cappelli, a professor of management and director of the Wharton School’s Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania, this tiny book provides a remarkably enlightening, strikingly original, and extremely important explanation of what’s wrong with America’s skilled labor market and how to fix it. Should this little book get the attention it deserves, it could, like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring or Michael Harrington's The Other America , change the way Americans think about a pressing issue.
That's because the book resolves the vexing conundrum of how two conflicting narratives about high-skilled employment have coexisted in our national conversation. On the one hand, countless unemployed or underemployed workers with perfectly good skills, education, and experience are struggling through a severe job drought, many sending out hundreds of applications and resumes to no avail. On the other hand, employers (especially in technical fields) complain of great difficulty finding workers, citing serious gaps between the requirements of available jobs and the skills of the workforce. One company that Cappelli mentions didn’t find a single worker that it considered qualified among 25,000 applicants for a fairly ordinary engineering job. Employers and their organizations fault an inadequate school system that fails to prepare Americans and restrictive immigration laws that prevent employers from importing the skilled workers they need from abroad.
Is one side hallucinating? Are American workers really not up to the challenge of today’s workplace? Are employers, as some critics argue, lying to hold down wages? Is something else entirely going on?
Something is indeed broken, Cappelli compellingly argues, but it’s not America’s schools or the skills of its workers. He finds the workforce “largely competent and able” and clearly up to the jobs on offer. Instead, Cappelli writes, “the hiring process by which supply and demand are brought together is an absolute mess.” The needed workers are available, but employers don’t know it because they use ineffective, self-defeating methods to evaluate applicants’ qualifications. They also eschew obvious and time-tested steps that could mold those abilities to meet their exact needs.
Fixing “the present, debilitating disconnect between job supply and job demand” would immeasurably aid countless companies and workers, saving the former the huge but generally unrecognized costs of persistent vacancies and the latter the very obvious costs of unemployment (and underemployment). Fixing this problem—which isn't that hard—could unleash a new age of invention and prosperity in the United States.
The main reason that companies aren’t finding the workers they seek in an ocean of available ability, Cappelli believes, is that in recent decades, for reasons he explains, those companies have allowed their traditional human resources (HR) departments and training programs to atrophy. Another reason is that some complaining companies simply offer too little money to attract the people they want.
The current lack of adequately staffed HR departments, and companies’ refusal to teach workers on the job, have combined to produce what the book terms “a Home Depot view of the hiring process, in which filling a job vacancy is seen as akin to replacing a part in a washing machine. … Like a replacement part, job requirements have very precise specifications. Job candidates must fit them perfectly or the job won’t be filled.”
The problem, Cappelli writes, is that “no perfect fit exists between applicants and job requirements.” In a great many cases, people with various combinations of credentials and experience can do a given job well, and work can be structured in many different ways. In decades past, companies routinely hired people with capabilities related to the work and then, if necessary, trained them to do specific jobs; those jobs needed doing, after all, and there didn't seem to be any viable staffing alternatives. But then Silicon Valley “invented the ‘free agent’ model of hiring for new skills rather than training and then letting workers go once those skills aren’t needed.” That model has spread to other industries.
Rather than investing in workers to cultivate the skills that companies need, many employers now think—erroneously, Cappelli persuasively argues—that it is cheaper to limit hiring to people who can do a job from day one. The best way to ensure that applicants have the desired skills, those companies believe, is to find people who’ve done the job before.
We have often mentioned in this space that many nonacademic employers complain that early-career scientists don't understand business culture and such practices as budgeting and project management. Following Cappelli’s logic, companies could solve that problem by hiring deeply educated, very able people and then providing on-the-job opportunities—as part of a probationary period, perhaps—to pick up the nonscientific knowledge they lack. Instead, too many employers refuse to consider applicants who do not already meet exact requirements. Jobs stay needlessly unfilled. Workers stay unemployed.
If this weren’t bad enough, another supposed cost saver has tremendously complicated the hiring process. Instead of using humans—who, admittedly, expect salaries, paid leave, and health insurance—to evaluate applications and decide which candidates possess or can quickly learn needed skills, companies entrust these tasks to computer algorithms, which are cheaper in the short term but lack any ability to judge what resumes and applications indicate about applicants' abilities. Instead of weighing various combinations of education and experience against a job’s demands, they search for keywords and reject as unqualified all applications that do not use exact, predetermined phraseology. “Once it’s in the software,” Cappelli writes, “each requirement, critical or trivial, essentially becomes something like a hurdle that applicants have to clear to become a qualified candidate.”
Computers cost more in the long run because they discard applications from people capable of excelling at a job but who failed to divine the right wording or demonstrate the specified qualifications exactly, Cappelli states. The book recounts the reductio ad absurdum of this system: a temporary employee doing very well at a job but disqualified from permanent hiring because she doesn’t match the job’s computerized criteria. “Apparently,” Cappelli marvels, “doing the job well wasn’t enough of a qualification.” Not every company is so foolish: He also describes companies that build capable staffs by helping smart, motivated people with relevant abilities learn how to do those jobs.
“I think all the [people who sell application-screening software] know that the clients would find candidates if they would only hire some recruiters, some humans, and put them to work on this,” Cappelli tells Science Careers in an interview. “But the vendors don’t make any money on that. [Instead,] they say to clients, … ‘Here’s a system that automates the process so you can get rid of the HR department.’ It’s not in their interest as vendors to say, ‘You ought to staff up your company and do a lot of this stuff yourself.’ ”
Employers thus have it in their power to eliminate the skills gap. Currently, he writes, the United States is “the only country in the world where the notion that employers are simply the consumers of skills is seriously considered.”
After showing how the “skills gap” originates in company policies, Why Good People Can't Get Jobs explains why “the skills gap argument has gotten so much traction, and the actual causes of the supply-demand job mismatch are so poorly understood.” It’s because “the associations and organizations that serve employers dominate the discussion.” Those associations and organizations are “reluctant to tell employers that they should do something the employers don’t necessarily want to do, such as provide more training.”
In addition, top executives who perpetuate the narrative are often ignorant of the true situation because they do so little analysis of human resources issues. “If this were in their supply chain, if they were buying widgets, they’d be all over these problems,” Cappelli says in the interview. That doesn't happen because “it’s human resources and they’ve gutted the human resources function, and they’ve decided long ago that this is not a place they were going to apply analytics.” Often, there are people within these companies who know that the skills gap narrative is false, but they’re generally “pretty far down in the organization. They’re not inclined to raise their hands and say, ‘Excuse me boss, what you said here is stupid.’ ”
Mismanagement of the HR function is not the whole story. A desire for more low-cost foreign workers motivates some complainers, as critics contend. “There are people in the IT world who really do want to see more H-1B people,” Cappelli says. “They’re cheaper. They’re easier to manage. There’s no doubt about that.”
Anyone who wants to understand what's going on in employment will find Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs a swift and persuasive read. It's really a long article designed to be read on mobile devices rather than a traditional book, Cappelli tells me. Company executives absolutely need to read it, but so do many others including government and educational policymakers, university career advisers, recruiters, job seekers, and journalists who help perpetuate the skill-shortage myth. If enough people were to take the message to heart, this little book could change America by drastically reducing the frustration—and, in millions of cases, the misery—of people on both sides of the hiring equation.
The hiring conundrum has stymied the nation’s economic and technological progress long enough. It’s time for Cappelli’s lucid and compelling call to action to get the attention it deserves.
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Egyptians, like Israelis are desperately searching for peace
While most of the media focuses on Egypt's youth, it is Cairo's oldest residents who are experiencing the most ecstatic transformation.
CAIRO - Over the past 10 days, the world media has focused on Egypt's youth, 20-something students and unemployed who were born after President Hosni Mubarak came to power; those who used Facebook and Twitter to organize protests, who faced down police truncheons and tear gas, and who from Wednesday on defended Tahrir Square from the mobs who came out to support Mubarak - armed with Molotov cocktails and sharpened sticks.
But it is two much older Cairenes, in their late 60s, who will remain most sharply in my personal memory of the past week. They can still recall King Farouk, and grew up under presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat.
Last Sunday morning, after the street battles died down and the police and the looters left, they walked around the square as if in a dream. One stood in the middle and shouted "The people demand the president's departure" and "The people and the army are one hand," until he lost his voice. The other repeatedly approached foreign correspondents, looking for someone who could translate the words he'd written down on a sheet of paper, about the people's desire for freedom. For the first time in their lives, they could finally speak freely.
Were we, the foreign press, infected by the naivete in the square? Were we remiss in not seeing the Muslim Brotherhood's hidden hand behind the events, waiting to turn the democratic revolution into an Islamic one? Can we, for just a moment, turn off our Israeli security sensors and not panic when a demonstrator shouts "Mubarak, go to Israel"?
At the height of Wednesday's battles between pro- and anti-Mubarak protesters, the cry "First the square, then we'll liberate Al Quds" was heard (referring to Jerusalem ). Did this represent a single voice, or an entire nation's desire to go back 32 years in time - to a state of war between Egypt and Israel? It is much too early to tell.
This week we saw a very different side of Egypt. We saw tens of thousands of Egyptians willing to risk their lives to demand change - and a regime willing to risk its economic and social health to save itself, as tens of thousands of supporters defended it with unrestrained violence. And we witnessed a large army, equipped with the latest American technology, incapable of determining its role in the crisis. Last Monday the officers promised to protect the protesters, but Wednesday they stood by as these same demonstrators were attacked by Mubarak loyalist militias.
Perhaps the most appropriate thing to say is that the Egyptians are like us, confused and desperately searching for a way to live in peace and plenty, as individuals and as a society. Now they are grappling with polar opposites - an uncertain, democratic future on the one hand, and the familiar security of limited personal freedom and reliance on an omnipotent regime on the other.
Permit us to wish them success.
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Museum Offers Cultural Celebration
Black History Month begins two days early at the Ninth Annual African American Cultural Celebration Saturday, Jan. 30, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh.
Each year, the event's presenters arrive from across North Carolina to share their history and culture during this large festival.
"Bring the family to this fun and educational event with more than 50 presenters and loads of hands-on activities for all ages," says a spokesman. "Truly a celebration, the variety of dancers, musicians, actors, authors, storytellers, artists, craftspeople and others will bring to life the rich heritage of the state's African Americans, past and present."
Admission and parking are free.
This year's African American Cultural Celebration continues its strong tradition of engaging presentations. For example, visitors will hear music performed by legendary bluesman Big Ron Hunter and nationally acclaimed musician Grenaldo Frazier, composer of the off-Broadway gospel musical "Mama I Want to Sing," to name a few.
But the event encompasses much more than music. Modern dance company Cyrus Art Productions will perform and teach dance moves, storytellers from the N.C. Association of Black Storytellers will captivate both young and old, Rhonda Muhammed will serve up hometown cooking tips, and artists like carver Frank Barrow and basketmaker Neal Thomas will demonstrate their talents.
"Many cultural groups have made significant contributions to North Carolina, yet their achievements are not always recognized in textbooks," says Emily Grant, the museum's youth programs coordinator, who organizes the annual event. "This celebration gives us a wonderful opportunity to tell the stories of many individuals. We try to strike a balance between historical programs and presentations about contemporary topics."
Special guests include staff from the Freelon Group, who will highlight Durham architect Philip Freelon's recent projects, such as the Harvey Gantt Center in Charlotte and the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro.
They will also share their plans for the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. With construction slated to begin in 2012, this will be the first national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life.
History and drama will be part of the event. Visitors can watch scenes from the play "Phillis Wheatley and Friends"; see historical figures come to life from the museum's upcoming exhibit on Thomas Day, who operated North Carolina's largest furniture workshop in 1850 and became the state's best-known cabinetmaker; or learn about the George Eastman School in northeastern North Carolina.
For a complete schedule or more information, go to ncmuseumofhistory.org or call (919) 807-7900.
More like this story
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Most of 16 Race to the Top finalist have lame online learning plans–and this is the best of the bunch. iNACOL posted a useful review.
FL is the best of a bad lot and they’re just coasting on Jeb’s leadership and still protect district enrollments by stopping the Internet at district boundaries (no statewide v-charters).
NC may have the best state v-school plan but no v-charters. KY was an early mover with a state virtual school but quashed innovation and competition. Both will make some most progress incorporating online resources into traditional classrooms (but they won’t save any money doing it).
NY, RI, and PA plan to launch v-highs (PA ignores existing operators). It’s such a bad idea for SEAs to try to develop and manage virtual schools–they can only do a mediocre job and dampen innovation and competition. States should authorize great operators and do everything they can to reduce barriers.
SC plans expansion of poorly funded SCVSP with a focus on STEM and PD. If they just funded v-charters adequately, they’d expand access to quality options.
The rest (CO, DE, GA, IL, DC, OH, LA, MA) are just embarrassingly bad with a nods toward online PD, a little credit-recovery, and a few more AP courses.
RttT and i3 plans were designed for districts not kids. This country has great online learning providers that, in spite of ridiculous restrictions are serving hundreds of thousands of students with high quality curriculum, strong supports, and efficient management systems. Connections Academy, K-12, KCDL, Apex, Kaplan and others are poised to expand and invest in a new generation of curriculum. I’m a huge Pastorek fan, but the LA state board just rejected proposals from three of these providers. This is a massively scaleable educational resource that will be almost completely excluded from ARRA investment. If we’re serious about doubling college completion rates, we need to encourage authorization of virtual charters and adoption of virtual courses.
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A.K.A. An idea to tax and regulatethe consumers, the hosting companies, banks and credit card companieseven more, by"Pressure" and "Indirect Pressure"to unleash a “Tsunami of Federal felony cases” sent down from A God.
“By placing "pressure" on [intermediaries like hosting companies, banks and credit card companies] to cut off service to customers [who break the law,] we can indirectly place pressure on companies, banks and credit card companies.”
Alex and Josh above attempt to illustrate their point with the example of "secondary" liability for "copyright" infringement and [use, of all things, gasp,] Judge Kozinski’s own Roommates.com decision. Indeed. They reject “the conceit that [cyberspace] exists at all” as a distinct, let alone "exceptional" place, as well as arguments that the costs to Internet companies of handling traditional regulations are too high.
Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Josh Goldfoot, Department of Justice litigator—each writing only in their "private" [nudge, nudge, wink-wink] capacity—in “A Declaration of the Dependenceof Cyberspace.” 32 Colum. J.L. & Arts 365 (2009).
Exceptionalism (if it is to even be "percieved" to be a "real" word) is the "perception that a country, society, institution, movement, or time period is "" (i.e., unusual or extraordinary) in some way and thus does not need to "conform" to "normal" rules or "general" principles. ..."
In short, Alex and Josh want nothing more than to regulate the local state, even more, and tax and regulate the consumers, the hosting companies, banks and credit card companies more, by "pressure" and "indirect pressure" at a federal and state level and create a bigger tsunami of federal cases.
It is all about the control and power of the Internet. @ their hands, of course. And such corrupted hands they are, wasting valuable resources.
Resources are diminished and misspent, however, and confidence undermined, if there is judicial disregard for the sound and established principles. That judicial disregard is inherent in the opinion of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit here under review.
In a case decided last Friday (December 10, 2011), a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the conviction of Prabhat Goyal, former CFO of Network Associates, Inc., the producer of antivirus and network security software formerly known as McAfee. What makes this reversal so remarkable is that the panel tossed out the verdict not on the basis of some misstatement of the applicable law by the judge. It actually overturned the decision of the jury, one of the most unusual outcomes in appellate law. That outcome is rare because the court’s standard must be: “whether ‘after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime[s] beyond a reasonable doubt.’ ”
"§223(a)(1)(B), §223(a)(2), §223(d) of the CDA are unconstitutional and unenforceable, except for cases of obscenity or child pornography, because they abridge the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment and are substantially overbroad. The Internet is entitled to the full protection given to media like the print press; the special factors justifying government regulation of broadcast media do not apply.
Contemptible police tactics - Cops raid the home of a licensed medical marijuana provider in Washington, handcuff the fourteen year old son and put a gun to his head, and search the nineteen year old daughter and take the contents of her mickey-mouse wallet.
How To Survive Traffic Stops in America, Submit, Instantly! - What the cops want is immediate obedience and submission. Many cops are ex-military and view the civilian motorists of America about like they viewed the hapless peasants of Iraq and Afghanistan, that is, with contempt, not as fellow citizens deserving of civility and respect. It is a possibly lethal mistake to do anything other than submit, instantly and obey! Or be ready to shoot first. But aim high.
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Monday, July 23, 2012, the colorful pageantry of Mexico's Guelaguetza is reenacted once again during the Lunes del Cerro (Mondays on the Hill.
A Zapotec word signifying offering or offertory, Guelaguetza was the term used to describe the Oaxaca ceremony and celebration held each year to propitiate the gods in return for sufficient rain and a bountiful harvest.
More than three thousand years ago the indigenous peoples in what is now the state of Oaxaca began to cultivate plants to augment hunting, fishing and gathering. The most important of these was corn which formed the basis of their diet and, with the addition of tomatoes, beans, chiles and squash, evolved into a richly varied and delicious regional gastronomy. Thus the gods and goddesses involved with water and corn were vital among the hagiarchy and the tribute to them was a lively and colorful celebration of the music, dance and products of the people.
This offering of life's gifts took place midway through the rainy season, when it was essential that the rains continue moderately and without excess to bring forth the best crops. The feast of Xilonen, goddess of tender corn, falls in this period on what in the modern calendar is July 16 and is the signal to begin the two weeks of celebration.
When the Spanish arrived in Oaxaca in 1521 they converted all the indigenous people and imposed the Catholic religion. One of their tactics was to "convert" to Catholic ways the deeply rooted customs honoring pagan beliefs. For example, razing temples and building churches on the ruins, conserving the holiness of the place but identifying it with the new religion. In the case of the Guelaguetza, the idea was to change it to a celebration of the feast on July 16 of the Virgin of Carmen and that is why the Guelaguetza begins with calendas, monigotes (giant "puppets" manipulated by persons inside them) and other festivities at the church of Carmen Alto.
The Spanish also introduced new products and techniques which resulted in changes to lifestyles and traditional dress. Where before textiles were made from cotton, now you will see silk, wool and glass beads in the clothing of the delegations to the Guelaguetza.
Overlooking the present city of Oaxaca is the hill now known as the Cerro del Fortín from the location of Aztec garrisons there in the 15th century. This Cerro was a very popular place for outings and came to be the traditional place for celebrating the Lunes del Cerro (Mondays on the Hill) when the Guelaguetza began to focus on the celebrations held on the two Mondays following July 16.
In 1932 the city of Oaxaca celebrated the 400th anniversary of its designation by Carlos V as a royal city. As part of the festivities the Lunes del Cerro were organized into the forerunner of what we may call the "modern" Guelaguetza, with representation of the ethnic groups from all the seven regions of the state. Over the past 57 years it has become a highly publicized major spectacle and in 1974 an amphitheater seating about 11,000 was built to accommodate this most impressive expression of Oaxacan folklore. Ancillary events have grown up around the basic two Mondays — some original indigenous traditions, especially in the villages, and some more modern innovations such as the contest to select the goddess Centeotl who presides over the festivities and the Bani Stui Gulal which is a dramatic presentation of how the Guelaguetza was celebrated in different epochs.
The "official" Guelaguetza is now organized and promoted by the state Tourism office (Sedetur). It is held on the two Mondays following July 16, unless July 18, the anniversary of the death of Benito Juárez, falls on Monday, in which case it is on the following two Mondays. There are a number of official events, the most important of which are the contest to select the goddess Centeotl on the Sunday before the first Monday and the Bani Stui Gulal on the same Sunday night, plus the presentation of the Legend of Donaji on both Monday nights in the Guelaguetza Auditorium. The goddess Centeotl is chosen from among the candidates sent by each delegation, not for physical beauty but for her knowledge of her area's history, customs and traditions. The Legend of Donaji is the story of the last Zapotec princess, full of light, sound, fireworks and drama.
Monday dawns on the hill and people are already walking up the hill to the auditorium, with music, fireworks and pageantry. Around 9 a.m., the delegations and spectators begin to arrive, the seats fill up and the excitement builds. The morning is perfect with bright sunshine and no rain is permitted. Promptly at 10 a.m., the goddess Centeotl and all the delegations are presented and parade around the stage. Centeotl then takes her seat with the governor of the state and invited dignitaries (such as the President of the Republic, King and Queen of Spain, high officials and personalities from all over the world, guests of the governor for this fabulous spectacle) and the first delegation is introduced and the celebration begins.
As on the first Monday, so on the second — pageantry, music and breathtaking beauty, enlivened by the scrabbling to catch one of the pineapples from the Papaloapan, a sombrero de palma from the Mixteca, mezcal from Ejutla or any of the varied products of their region thrown by members of each delegation into the audience.
It is impossible to adequately describe the heart-stirring beauty of this spectacle in its jewel setting — the music, the color, the vivacity of the participants infecting the audience which remains spellbound until the final Danza de la Pluma around 1 p.m. and wishes that the morning would never end. You may see the dances performed in other places and it is wonderful but nothing compares to being in this place at this time taking part in the Guelaguetza.
Tickets are sold at the state Tourism offices at the corner of Independencia and García Vigíl and cost 800 pesos for Palco A, 600 for Palco B; seating in Sections C and D is free of charge. Some businesses purchase a block of tickets for sale, at official prices, to their clients. At La Casa de María Bed & Breakfast you may reserve your tickets when you reserve your room and they will be waiting for you on arrival.
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As a 2007 college graduate, Rebecca Bria knew how expensive textbooks could be, so she was prepared to shell out lots of money when she returned to school last May to earn a master's degree in communication arts.
Bria, a part-time graduate student at Marywood University in Scranton, has a partial scholarship, but it doesn't cover textbooks. She was facing a $180 bill for two books. Then she learned of a program that would allow her to rent her textbooks, instead of buying them.
I wasn't familiar with the fact you could rent books. When I found out, I was surprised, said Bria, a former Times Leader reporter.
That $180 bill was cut to $90. For someone (like me) working full time and putting themselves through school, she said, it's a tremendous cost savings.
Bria is among a growing number of students nationwide who are taking advantage of the cost savings provided by textbook rental programs, industry officials say.
The average full-time college student spends about $1,200 a year on books and supplies, according to the College Board, a nonprofit organization that promotes education.
The amount saved by renting texts varies, but typically runs about 50 percent of the purchase price for a new book, industry officials say.
We have books that are almost $250; you can rent it for only $85, said Diane Morreale, bookstore manager at Misericordia University in Dallas Township, which began offering a rental program in 2009.
Textbook rentals started gaining popularity around 2008 in response to skyrocketing prices of textbooks, said Nicole Allen, a staff member for Student Public Interest Research Groups, a nonprofit organization that advocated for reforms to make textbooks more affordable.
It's really taken off, Allen said. Back when we started fighting to make textbooks affordable, only a handful of campuses had textbook rental programs.
Today many private companies offer rentals. Among the major players are: Chegg.com, Rentatext.com, Bookrenter.com, Campusbookrentals.com, Collegebookrenter.com and Amazon.com.
Brick-and-mortar bookstores, including Barnes & Noble, and college campus bookstores, also have gotten into the textbook rental business.
Misericordia University operates its own rental program. Wilkes University and King's College, in Wilkes-Barre, have a rental program through their agreement with Barnes & Noble; Marywood University has a contract with Follett Higher Education Group.
Luzerne County Community College in Nanticoke offered book rentals last semester, but had to cease the program this semester after the company it used went out of business, said Cheryl Baur, bookstore manager. It is looking for a new vendor and hopes to offer rentals again next semester.
In addition to rentals, students have sought out other options to reduce costs, such as purchasing used books or buying e-texts – books that are downloaded to a computer. Book rentals remain the most popular alternative, several area bookstore managers said.
From the time we started three years ago, it's exploded, said John Chaump, manager of the joint Wilkes/King's bookstore operated by Barnes & Noble on South Main Street, Wilkes-Barre. It doubled from year one to two. This year it's running about 20 percent above last year.
Rentals are attractive to students because they guarantee them savings. Typically students who buy their books will sell them once the semester ends, but they often get only get a fraction of the original price. It takes away the risk factor of trying to sell it back at the end of the semester, Allen said. You hear stories of students selling back a $200 text for $5. Renting allows them to get all the savings up front.
Those savings can be substantial.
Joan Diehl, manager of the Follett Higher Education Group bookstore at Marywood, said the company estimates its rental program has saved students nationwide more than $300 million since 2010.
The increase in rentals, as well as competition from other textbook sellers, such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, has put a squeeze on the profit margins for college campus bookstores, managers said.
It takes a longer time to make a profit off a book that's going out to rent, Diehl said. It takes four consecutive terms to get the same profit as if we were to sell it outright.
College bookstores were faced with little other choice but to join the market if they wanted to remain competitive, Chaump and other bookstore managers said. Students were looking for it, he said. When we didn't have a rental option they were going to (private sellers like) Chegg.
While renting is a great option, it's not always the best choice for students, the managers said. Some majors, particularly biology and history, use the same books for different classes, Morreale said. In those instances it would be cheaper to buy the book, new or used, rather than rent it twice.
And while most students will never need their books again, some, such as business majors, might want to keep them for reference for their jobs.
Students also need to take special care to ensure the book remains in good condition, though most companies permit students to highlight paragraphs and write notes, as long as it's not excessive.
The ability to rent books has certainly helped students, but advocates at Student Public Interest Research Groups remain concerned about the high cost of textbooks, Allen said. It has advocated for legislation that would help reduce the cost of textbooks, including a federal law enacted in July 2010 that requires publishers to advise professors of the cost of the book, Allen said.
While (rentals) have helped students, it's only a marginal solution. It doesn't solve the problem in the long run, Allen said. We need to focus on producing lower-cost textbooks. Students should not have to rent in order to afford them.
Bria said rental has been a perfect fit for her. Her only regret is the programs were not available when she was an undergraduate at Wilkes University.
You get all the advantages of a brand new book other than the fact you have to return it, she said. It's a great deal. I don't know why people didn't offer this years ago.
The cost of college textbooks has increased significantly over the past few years, but there are ways to save money, according to the Student Public Interest Research Groups.
• Shop for used and new books online: Shopping online gives you greater selection, which usually means lower prices. Several websites provide cost comparisons, including: campusbooks.com; Bigwords.com and Allbookstores.com.
• Rent books on campus or online: This option is good if you don't want to keep the book. If you are taking a multi-semester course, it might be more economical to buy the book.
Popular rental sites: Chegg.com; Rentatext.com, Bookrenter.com and Campusbookrentals.com
• Swap or sell books to other students: Some colleges offer online classified ads in which fellow students sell their used books. Also, check out postings on Facebook or Craigslist.
• Buy e-textbook subscriptions: This option is good if you don't want to keep the book and don't mind reading on a computer screen. Also, consider that the subscriptions usually expire after 180 days. Some popular e-textbook sites are: Coursesmart.com; Barnesandnoble.com and Kno.com.
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WordPress and Blogger are the two platforms for bloggers where they can post anything they want, anytime and these platforms have been competing each other since a long time. WordPress has an upper hand though, with a lot of advantageous features when compared to Blogger and this becomes a lot better when the self hosted version of WordPress is used.
Here are a few reasons why WordPress is better than the Blogger Platform -
WordPress is much more customizable:
This is the main difference between WordPress and Blogger, In wordpress you will be able to customize your Blog the way you like, with the numerous plugins available and the platform being open for developers it is very useful for customization. We can say that WordPress is an Own House and Blogger is a Rented House. In your rented house you cannot make a lot of changes except some minor superficial changes. But if you own a house then you can do whatever you want with it. Tear it down and change the whole landscape.
You own your WordPress blog:
WordPress Blogs are Owned by you and you can do anything you want with them, right from the Domain name to the Database it’s all yours, but not in the case of Blogger which are owned by Google and the main complaint I heard from many Blogger Bloggers is that their Websites suddenly disappear from the Web without any prior information and it will be showing “Blog Not Found” and all the content in the Blog is lost for good with no database and no back up. But with WordPress you can have your own Database and Back Up your work and get all your content back even if your website is hacked.
WordPress is more SEO friendly:
Many might not agree with me because Blogger is owned by Google and SEO is mainly concentrated on Google, but I must say WordPress is more SEO friendly than Blogger you can search anytime and you will find that the WordPress blogs are the one’s found in the top 99% of times. With many good plugins to support SEO are very helpful in getting your blog in the top search results.
Sorting your Blog out for Readers:
I think this is a main advantage of WordPress which allows you to bring back your visitors back to you, just because of 1 simple reason that is WordPress can be easily customizable and can be categorized into any number of categories you want to and make the reading experience pleasant for your readers.
You can shift Hosts if not satisfied:
If you own your domain and WordPress site, you can simply pack up and move to a new host, you’re your blog in the same condition and position as it was before without having any impact in the search engine results and the. Again, it isn’t likely that Google would shut you down like that, but as mentioned above your website will be gone without a trace without your knowledge suddenly and you won’t even know why that happened. And in Bloggers case you cannot transfer your content to a different host which I don’t think Blogger will allow.
Other Blogger Users can flag up your blog and get it blocked/closed:
In case of Blogger, if you are flagged as it is called by other Blogger users and you get a minimum number required to Block or close your Blog then Google will just go ahead and Close your Blog. With WordPress, you are the sole owner of the blog. And no one can block or close your website without your notice.
WordPress is better in sorting out Spam:
WordPress I guess is better in identifying what Spam is than Blogger can, with all the plugins in the box for WordPress I can say that Spammers cannot cross the line put by WordPress and introduce themselves through us in the Web.
In the end I can say that all the quality bloggers in the town are using WordPress and Blogger is left to be used for casual work and not for serious Bloggers.
About the Author:
Chetan Bhawani is a dentist, a tech blogger and a web hosting adviser. He recommends to use WordPress web hosting, which provides the best deals in hosting the wordpress blogs, and the web hosting company reviews. Check one of the tutorials, which explains on how to install wordpress.
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After our first trip to Darfur together nearly a decade ago, we were certain that the enormity of the human rights crimes unfolding there would result in a major international response.
At the time, the largely Arab government in Sudan had armed and backed a loose collection of militias known as the Janjaweed to crush an insurgency composed of non-Arab ethnic groups suffering systemic discrimination by the regime. The result was 1,600 non-Arab villages burned, more than 300,000 deaths, and more than three million displaced by the Sudan government's scorched-earth policies.
So, as we traveled around the U.S. over the next few years, seeing the crowds get bigger and bigger as the anti-genocide movement grew, we continued to believe that international involvement to stop the Sudan government's atrocities was possible.
We were wrong. The international community responded tepidly, confounded by competing objectives, including counter-terrorism and peace-making efforts in Sudan's other war in the south.
Now that the Darfur conflict has reached its 10th anniversary and the civil war has spread to other regions of Sudan, what lessons can be learned so that the next anniversary might be more hopeful?
The first lesson is that the Sudanese people will lead any change in their country. The campaign to "Save Darfur" called for intervention to stop genocide in Africa, but couldn't compete with higher priorities in Iraq and Afghanistan. The global anti-genocide movement did, however, shine a bright spotlight on genocide's survivors, which forced the Khartoum regime to allow a U.N. peacekeeping force and life-saving humanitarian assistance into Darfur. Meanwhile, Darfuri people fought back, joining rebel groups, organizing opposition in the displaced camps, and demanding their rights.
The second lesson is that root causes must be addressed. A billion dollars a year is spent on that peacekeeping mission in Darfur and numerous peace agreements have been signed with various minor Darfur factions which have ended up further dividing Darfur. But none of these external efforts has focused on the fundamental issue that drives conflict in Darfur and other regions of Sudan: authoritarian governance.
By excluding all but a narrow clique of Sudanese from access to the power and wealth of the country, marginalized groups from the west (Darfur), south (Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains) and east have all taken up arms against that regime. The far south left in a 2011 referendum, creating South Sudan, the newest country in the world. Any peace effort should deal comprehensively with all the rebel movements, the unarmed opposition, and civil society, in search of a solution for the whole of Sudan. Until the abusive governing system in Sudan is radically reformed, there will be blood.
The third lesson is that no progress is possible without opposition unity. For many years during Sudan's north-south war, southern factions fought among themselves, undermining efforts to forge a peace deal. Finally, in the late 1990s, southern factions realized they would all hang separately if they didn't hang together, and once united were able to force negotiations that led to their successful self-determination referendum.
When we first went to Darfur, we were struck by the level of division within the Darfur rebellion. That is changing as the main Darfuri opposition is slowly coalescing, building coalitions with other rebelling regions, and beginning to articulate a collective opposition vision of future governance in Sudan in the form of a document called the New Dawn Charter.
The fourth lesson is that the U.S. has a role to play in supporting the Sudanese in crafting their own solutions. President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice all have long records of commitment to peace in Sudan. A new policy for the Obama administration is needed for a new reality on the ground in Sudan, focused on democratic transition.
Secretary Kerry could create a team of diplomats whose job it is to deepen contacts with Sudanese opposition and civil society organizations, as well as to better understand the dynamics inside the competing factions within an increasingly divided regime. The diplomats should be based in Khartoum, Juba, Addis, Doha, Cairo and Beijing, not in Washington, and be led by a senior, experienced special envoy. The team could be backed by a basket of aid resources focused on building the capacity of opposition and civil society elements, supporting Sudan's future leaders.
The final lesson is that the political constituency for peace in Sudan matters. Members of Congress, student organizations, faith-based groups, human rights advocates, and others comprising the anti-genocide movement have put Sudan's plight on the mattering map of the U.S. government over three presidencies. Great bipartisan effort has been expended in ending the north-south war, providing life-saving humanitarian aid to millions of Darfuris, and supporting the creation of the world's newest state in South Sudan.
Another great populist push is needed for Sudan. Its people still suffer, but they are coming together in support of a better future. Regardless of short-term political calculations here, we should stand with them.
Don Cheadle, a co-founder of the anti-genocide organization Not On Our Watch, notonourwatchproject.org, was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Hotel Rwanda. John Prendergast is co-founder of the Enough Project, enoughproject.org, and the Satellite Sentinel Project, satsentinel.org.For more information, view a video by the Enough Project.
In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions
from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors.
Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Read the original story: Cheadle/Prendergast: Lessons from Darfur, 10 years later
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Coast and Country
The River Dart at Dartmouth
Devon's rivers: The Dart
The River Dart winds its way down from Dartmoor to the port of Dartmouth on the South Devon coast.
Dartmoor, Dartmouth, Dartington, Dartmeet - the River Dart lends its name to many of the places it meanders through en route from the moors down to the sea.
On Dartmoor, the East Dart and West Dart meet at a point where the Dart heads south towards Buckfastleigh. The Dart's entire catchment area covers 475sq kms, and takes in a population of 31,000 people.
The Dart has helped to mould southern Dartmoor and the towns and villages is touches - like Buckfastleigh, Totnes, and Dartmouth.
In fact, legend has it that the River Dart played a major role in the history of Britain. It's claimed that after the Trojan War between Greece and Troy in the 12th century BC, the defeated Trojans set out to find a new home.
The river at Newbridge in Holne Woods
Led by a young prince called Brutus, they reached an island (Britain) and sailed up the Dart. Brutus came ashore and proclaimed: 'Here I stand and here I rest; And this place shall be called Totnes.'
They named the country Britain in around 1170BC, and, although there's absolutely no proof this ever happened, you can - to this day - see the Brutus Stone, where the prince was said to have landed.
The threat of invasions via the River Dart was a distinct possibility hundreds of years ago. So, in the 14th century, a castle was built at the mouth of the river by local merchants led by John Hawley.
The remains of Dartmouth Castle still stand and the site is managed by English Heritage.
Industry, trade and wealth
With its estuary location, Dartmouth grew into wealthy port full of merchants. It also developed links with the navy, and the Royal Navy's officer training base, The Britannia Royal Naval College, overlooks the Dart.
Dartmouth is linked to Kingswear on the other side of the estuary via car and passenger ferries.
The Dart at Totnes
The river is tidal from Totnes, and there are no bridges between the town and the mouth of the Dart.
Like Dartmouth, Totnes also thrived as a result of overseas trade. Merchants made a killing thanks to the river location, and mills were built along the banks of the Dart.
It was the same story for towns further up the Dart - including Buckfastleigh, where woollen mills, paper mills and tannery works were all built.
The monks at Buckfast Abbey made the most of their riverside position.
A little bit further up, and the Dart reaches Dartmoor, where you can see some lovely old stone bridges. At Dartmeet, the East and West Dart rivers converge - hence its name.
These days, the Dart - as well as being a base for boat-building - is a honeypot for visitors and it plays a big part in Devon's tourism industry.
At the Dartmouth end, there are the yachts and pleasure boats, while up river, the Dart attracts walkers, anglers, canoeists and people who just want to take in the scenery.
Looking after the wildlife
The extremely diverse River Dart is hugely important for wildlife - which is why the Dart Biodiversity Project was started in 1998, involving all the relevant bodies - including the Dartmoor National Park Authority, the Environment Agency and English Nature.
The Dart has populations of trout and salmon; bats can be found in sections alongside the Dart; birds thrive in the riverside woodlands; and even seals have been known to poke their heads into the estuary.
So that's the Dart in a nutshell - a beautiful river with a colourful history which has helped to shape some of Devon's best loved towns and villages.
last updated: 06/02/2008 at 13:38
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Overcoming SAD: Seasonal Affective Disorder
WebMD Live Events Transcript
When the mornings and late afternoons of fall and winter succumb to darkness, many people's moods sink with the setting sun. We talked about seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and how to diagnose and treat this form of depression on Nov. 11, 2004. Our guest was SAD expert Norman Rosenthal, MD.
The opinions expressed herein are the guests' alone and have not been
reviewed by a WebMD physician. If you have questions about your health, you
should consult your personal physician. This event is meant for informational
Are there any prescription medications you have used successfully for SAD that are better than others?
Many different antidepressants have been used for the treatment of SAD with some success, but so far, no study has actually tested on antidepressant against another. So at this time, nobody can answer your question with confidence.
In one interesting new set of studies, the antidepressant Wellbutrin-XL was used to try and prevent SAD before it even began, and was successful in preventing the development of SAD in some people.
You mean people who had it the year before?
Yes. People with a history of SAD in previous winters were entered into the study in the autumn before the development of their winter symptoms, and were given the antidepressant or placebo at that time. There were fewer relapses of winter depression among those that received the antidepressant.
And they didn't need light either?
In this particular study, there was no light used. So some people can prevent their winter depression by starting Wellbutrin-XL early in the season.
What is the success rate of light therapy?
It really depends on how you define success rate. About 80% of people with SAD get some benefit from the use of light therapy. However, a smaller proportion have their symptoms completely cured, maybe only 40% to 50%. For that reason, many people use more than one kind of treatment and combine light therapy with other forms of treatment in order to obtain complete reversal of symptoms.
I cannot afford a vacation down south. What is the best, cheapest lamp to buy for SAD? Or, better yet, is there a special bulb I can screw into my normal lamp?
That's a great question. Many times people ask me if they can screw different kinds of bulbs into their lamps. Unfortunately, that rarely solves the problem. The reason is that you need a certain amount of light, a large amount, concentrated in one place, and that's what special light fixtures do; they pack a lot of light into one place.
As far as the best deal is concerned, I recommend that you shop around. You can find a link on my web site, which is www.normanrosenthal.com, to a variety of reputable manufacturers of special SAD lights. You need to be careful, though, because often the smallest and cheapest ones also give off the least total amount of light and are, therefore, not as effective as the larger more expensive models.
One good tip for you to remember is that many of these companies have a 30-day money back guarantee on their products, no questions asked. Check this out before ordering from any of the companies, because what this essentially allows you to do is try out the light and see if it works before settling on your investment, once and for all.
|"About 80% of people with SAD get some benefit from the use of light therapy. However, a smaller proportion have their symptoms completely cured, maybe only 40% to 50%." |
How long should you try it before you should see a difference? ROSENTHAL:
Most people see a difference within one to two weeks. There are several things to consider in order to get the best effect of light. For a complete trouble-shooting manual, you may want to look at my book, Winter Blues: Seasonal Affective Disorder: What It Is and How to Overcome It
. But here are some of the most important things to keep in mind:
- First, mornings seem to be the best time for light therapy. The earlier the better.
- Second, your eyes have to be open and you have to be facing the light in order to benefit, though you do not need to stare at it.
- Finally, be sure there is enough light. And here's where those teeny weeny light boxes may be less effective than the larger ones.
Are light visors any good? I'm considering a 2,500 lux one.
Many people like the light visor and speak well of it. I, in fact, was one of the people who originally helped develop the light visor. But in several clinical studies we haven't been able to show a difference in the effects of visors of different light intensities. So by all means, go ahead and try it. But if it doesn't work, you may still benefit from the light box.
Regarding light therapy, how long of time does one need to be in front of the light?
The amount of time varies. I recommend people start with 15 to 20 minutes in the morning, but some people can go up to a couple hours a day. That sounds like a lot of light, but if you think about it, you'll be sitting in one place for a certain amount of time anyway, so you may as well have the lights on.
Remember that if you have a light fixture that puts out a lot of light, you don't have to sit at the prescribed 20 inches or so all day long. The light can be beneficial even if it's in the background. Though for some part of the day you should be close up to get the maximum benefit. What is best is to customize the program for each individual, starting slow and building up gradually.
Remember, light therapy, like any other treatment, can have side effects. These include headaches, eye strain, and overactivation. If used at night too late, it can cause insomnia. So people often learn to be their best judge as to how much light they need in order to get the benefit and minimize the side effects.
Other than medication and light therapy are there other forms of treatment?
There are lots
of things you can do for SAD:
- Managing stress is an important consideration. If you know you have depression in the winter, try not to undertake your heaviest workloads at that time.
- Exercise is great and can be combined with light. For example, you can walk outdoors in the morning on a sunny winter day. Or do your stationary bike in front of your light box.
- A positive attitude always helps. Keeping active, staying engaged with the pursuits that you love, and doing things that you enjoy.
- Friends and family can be invaluable at this time, even if you don't feel at your social best. It is good not to isolate yourself.
I should hasten to add that for those people where these self-help measures don't work within a few weeks, you should consult your doctor or mental health professional, because SAD can really be quite bad.
What are your thoughts on herbal therapy as an alternative to drugs?
St. John's Wort has been shown in many studies to counteract depression, and can be quite useful. You should probably avoid using St. John's Wort together with bright light, as the herb may sensitize the tissue in the eyes to the effects of the light. Some patients have complained about painful eyes and eye sensitivity when using St. John's Wort and light together.
As far as the other herbs are concerned, there is not much evidence to support their benefits. One thing to keep in mind is fish oil extracts. Not an herb admittedly, but a supplement, which holds early promise as a potential antidepressant supplement.
I take antidepressants daily for major recurring depression and anxiety. During winter months my medications seem to be too weak when I get symptoms of SAD. Do you recommend higher doses for your patients at this time (after talking to my doctor, of course)?
Many people require more medication in the winter than in the summer, but some patients can benefit from having light added to their medication, and can get just as good an effect without increasing the side effects of the medication. Your doctor would certainly be the best judge of which way to go on this question.
Is it a "you have it or you don't" thing, or are there varying degrees of SAD? I guess I've always gotten a little down and tired during the winter months, but I don't know if it is clinical or not.
I'm glad you asked that question. It's definitely not an either/or thing. Seasonality, which is what we call seasonal variation in mood and behavior, exists on a spectrum. At the one end of the spectrum are people with serious cases of SAD; at the other end are those that don't mind the winter at all, and in the middle are a huge number of people who are under the weather to some degree or another.
These estimated 25 million people in the U.S. with the so-called winter blues may never feel bad enough to seek medical attention, but may nevertheless experience a decrease in productivity or quality of life during the winter months. The good news is that these people can benefit from all the same measures that I recommend for those with more extreme symptoms of SAD, and may also find many helpful tips in my book, Winter Blues .
|"Many people require more medication in the winter than in the summer, but some patients can benefit from having light added to their medication." "About 80% of people with SAD get some benefit from the use of light therapy. However, a smaller proportion have their symptoms completely cured, maybe only 40% to 50%." |
Does cold aversion play any role in SAD, or just light? I never want to leave the house when it's cold. It "defeats" me. I find myself longing for warm weather like a drug!
Some people dislike the cold and think it contributes to their SAD symptoms. Certainly the cold keeps people indoors and keeps them from getting their quota of light from the sky. So whichever way you slice it, cold contributes. But it is really light rather than warmth that has been shown to help SAD symptoms.
I think I'm just the opposite with SAD. Summers here are oppressive and I seem to go into a deep depression that lifts only in the fall/winter/spring. Is that also SAD?
There is clearly a group of people who have symptoms just like yours -- summer SAD, if you will. Nobody knows exactly what causes it, though we suspect it may be the intense heat or, in some cases, too much light. In any event, summer SAD can be quite severe, and I usually treat it by anticipating it and starting my patients on antidepressant a few months before their summer symptoms normally kick in.
Do you believe that cardio exercise is of greater importance in alleviating SAD?
I think cardio exercise is useful for SAD, just as it has other benefits, but I'd hesitate to overstate its importance.
What guidelines are used in diagnosing SAD?
There are of course formal guidelines, but here are some useful tips. Look back over the last several winters and ask yourself, have you had some or all of the following during the winter months:
- Decreased energy
- Increased need for sleep
- Increased appetite
- Craving for sweets and starches
- Weight gain
- Sad, blue feelings
- Difficulty concentrating
- Withdrawal from friends and family
- Trouble in your job or in running your household
- Problems with your relationships
If you answered yes to several of these questions you may surely be a candidate for SAD. To double check on that, you may want to check in with a professional or get further information from my book. My web site, which also contains relevant information on this point, is www.normanrosenthal.com.
How do you politely ask someone to seek treatment for this ailment? My dad is like a recluse in the winter months. He will not leave his home for days at a time. If there is rain or snow expected, you can forget seeing him. He is only 64 years old and acts as though he is 90. I have very nicely told him I thought he may have some depression, but he denies it. So, if you can give me some advice, I would greatly appreciate it!
Maybe you might consider purchasing him a light box for Christmas, or something that he might like, too, is the so-called dawn simulator. This is a little electronic gizmo that plugs into a bedside lamp and can be programmed to turn that lamp on early in the morning, thereby simulating a summer dawn. The model I like best is called the Sun Up, and it is available through several of the manufacturers listed on my web site.
It is amazing that light of not brighter intensity than a bedside lamp that comes on while a person is still asleep in the morning can be effective, but that shows how sensitive the eyes are in the early morning hours.
Back to your dad, you might couch it simply by saying, "You know, it gets so dark and dreary, I thought this might cheer the place up." Or, help him install and program the light. That's one thought. It doesn't sound like a direct approach might go down that well.
How can you differentiate between SAD and clinical depression?
SAD is clinical depression. It can be just as bad as depression that occurs at other times of the year. Its hallmark is that it typically occurs in the wintertime. So it's really one and the same thing.
|"Once you get a hang of this thing, winter can become an enjoyable season. I look forward to the winter now, as do many of my SAD patients." |
You mention several diets in your book. Any new info? ROSENTHAL:
Yes. I now feel that the low-carb diets are really the best way to go. We had observed in our research that people with SAD are energized by carbohydrate-rich snacks, which normally sedate other folks. That led me, in my early days, to encourage people to snack regularly on these foods. Unfortunately, it was not a winning strategy. The carb-rich foods have a backlash. People feel tired after the initial activation, and of course there is the inevitable and unwelcome weight gain.
Take a look at the very popular protein diets, and pick the one you like the best. I am currently developing a new one, but basically a protein-based diet is what I recommend. In fact, that's what I eat myself because, as I mention in my book, I have a certain amount of SAD myself. MEMBER QUESTION:
The Zone is a good one then? ROSENTHAL:
I've never gotten into the Zone, because I've found it to be complicated. If you remove pure sugars in your diet and follow that up by taking out the white starches, bread, pasta, potatoes, and rice, you are 3/4 of the way there. Then it is a matter of figuring out how to prepare enjoyable foods without those very high-carbohydrate substances. MEMBER QUESTION:
Earlier you referred to anticipating the SAD season. Do many people resume medications or take other steps leading up to SAD season? ROSENTHAL:
Yes. After many years, people begin to recognize that winter is going to be a difficult time and plan accordingly. Get out your light box, start or increase medications, start an exercise program, get a jumpstart on your diet, or plan that winter vacation early. All of these steps will help gear you up for the winter and make it less unpleasant.
In fact, once you get a hang of this thing, winter can become an enjoyable season. It's hard to believe for a SAD patient, but I look forward to the winter now, as do many of my SAD patients. It's only when you get it figured out that you can enjoy all the benefits winter has to offer. No mosquitoes, no intense heat, the beauty of the landscape, the joy of the holidays, the quiet, the unexpected splashes of color like holly or a cardinal on a bush, or a decorative cabbage. All of these are so much appreciated when the rest of the landscape doesn't compete. MEMBER QUESTION:
How does someone with SAD deal with the "stigma" associated with depression as a mental health problem? ROSENTHAL:
I've been amazed at how little stigma SAD seems to involve. Perhaps that's because all of us can understand the changes that come about with the changing seasons; the squirrel hiding its acorns, the reindeer shedding their antlers, and so on. So to think of ourselves as seasonal creatures is not so stigmatizing. I've been surprised at how well accepted light boxes have been for most of my patients who have chosen to bring them in. MEMBER QUESTION:
Can SAD turn into bipolar disorder
(or other mental health problems)? ROSENTHAL:
Some people with SAD are also bipolar. They become depressed in the winter, and may become manic in the spring and summer. So bipolar and SAD can sometimes go together. Most people with SAD, however, do not become manic. MODERATOR:
Do you have any final words for us, Dr. Rosenthal? ROSENTHAL:
Thank you for having me on your web site. I can't resist mentioning that people who want more information should look at my book. It sums up 20 years of my experience, sufferer, and clinician, and I am now working on a third revision. Also you may look at my web site, www.normanrosenthal.com. MODERATOR:
Our thanks to Norman Rosenthal, MD, for joining us. To learn more about SAD please read his book, Winter Blues: Seasonal Affective Disorder: What It Is and How to Overcome It
©1996-2005 WebMD Inc. All rights reserved.
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comprehend the Jewish association to Jerusalem we must
start with the (Old Testament) Jewish Bible. In the Bible
the area of extraordinary holiness is Mount Moriah, today
known as the Temple Mount. This area is to be found below
the platform on which the Moslem Shrine, and sits the
"Dome of the Rock. " Jerusalem has many names
in the Bible. Salem, Moriah, Jebuse, Jerusalem and Zion.
The most common term for the city, is Jerusalem, it's
mentioned 349 times in the Bible, while Zion is mentioned
an additional 108 times.
In Kabala, the Jewish metaphysical
tradition, the rock of Mount Moriah is known as the
"Even Shtiyah" = the Drinking Stone. This
is the spiritual center of the universe, the place from
where the world is spiritually "watered."
Later patriarchal stories in Genesis are also connected
with the site.
Many extraordinary moments of
History take place on this Dome of the Rock.
- Genesis 4:18, marks the first
statement about Jerusalem. When Abraham interacts with
Malchizedek, King of Salem.
- When God created the world,
He created the world by Mount Moriah
The Binding of Isaac took place in the "land
of Moriah" on the site of the present-day
Temple Mount. Abraham chooses the site specifically
because he sensed how God's presence is strongly
connected to this site(Genesis 22:1-19).
When Isaac goes out into the fields to pray prior
to meeting Rebecca for the first time, he is standing
on Mount Moriah (Genesis 24:63-67).
Jacob's dream of the ladder to heaven with the
angels ascending and descending, takes place on
this site (Genesis 27:10-22).
Over five thousands years, the
Jewish people have always found Temple Mount being the
holiest place on earth - the place where God's presence
can be felt more intensely than any other place on earth.
This connection is still very
much vibrant in Jewish practice.
- When religious Jews pray three times a day, they always
turn toward Jerusalem. (Someone praying in Jerusalem
faces the direction of the Temple Mount.) As the sages
teach us, all prayers travel towards the Temple Mount,
and subsequently goes to heaven. - Jerusalem is mentioned
numerous times in Jewish daily prayers and in the "Grace
- The Jewish people close the
Passover Seder with the words "Next Year in Jerusalem."
These same words are invoked to conclude the holiest
day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur.
During a Jewish wedding ceremony, the groom breaks
a glass as a sign of mourning to commemorate the
destruction of the two Temples which stood on
The breaking of the glass is accompanied by the
recitation of part of Psalm 137: "If
I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand
forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee,
let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest Joy."
Religious Jews often keep a small section of one
wall in their house unplastered and unpainted,
as a sign of mourning for the destruction of the
In adding to the events already
mentioned, the Book of Joshua (ch. 10) illustrates how
Adoni-Tzedek, the Canaanite king of Jerusalem, wages
war against the Jews.
Nearly the 400-year period from
the entrance of the Jewish nation into the land, until
the period of the Judges, Jerusalem remained a non-Jewish
city. It was not until the reign of King David (ca.
1,000 BCE) that Jerusalem was captured from the Canaanites
(2-Samuel 5) and converted into the political/spiritual
capital of the Jewish people. (Archaeologists agree
that the original Canaanite city and the City of David
was located in what is now the Arab village of Silwan,
a few meters south of the "modern" walls of
the Old City.)
King David purchased the peak of Mount Moriah (2-Samuel
24:18-25) as the site for the future Temple and gathered
the necessary construction goods. The Book of 1-Kings
(ch. 6-8) describes in great detail how King David's
son, King Solomon, built and dedicated the Temple: "And
it came to pass after the 408th year after the Children
of Israel left Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's
reign over Israel... that he began to build the house
of the Lord" (1-Kings 6:1).
The Temple of Solomon's is also
known as the First Holy Temple. While all archaeologists
agree that it stood on Mount Moriah, probably on the
site of the present Gold Dome of the Rock, its exact
location is unknown.
The Holy Temple lasted for Four
hundred and ten years and was destroyed by the Babylonians
when they besieged Jerusalem; there is no trace of it
Subsequent to the Babylonian
destruction, most of the Jewish population of Israel
was forcibly exiled from the land. This forced exile
on the road to Babylon is mentioned in the famous verse
from Psalm 137: "By the rivers of Babylon, there
we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion."
After Fifty years, Babylon was
captured by Persia, the Jews were permitted to return
to Jerusalem. Under the leadership of Zerubavel and
Nechemiah, the Jews rebuilt both the Holy Temple and
walls around the city (Nechemia 4-6).
This rebuilt Holy Temple is known
as the "Second Holy Temple." It stood for
420 years on the same site as the First Temple, on Mount
Moriah. The Second Holy Temple was remodeled a number
of times, but reached its most glorious form during
the reign of King Herod the Great (37-4 BCE). The great
Jewish historian, Josephus, who lived during the end
of the Second Holy Temple, gives detailed descriptions
of both Herod's construction and the layout of the Temple
compound (see "Antiquities" ch. 15 and "Jewish
Wars" ch. 5).
Second Temple period ended with the Roman destruction
of Jerusalem in 70 CE. It is possible that the
Jews tried to rebuild the Temple at later periods,
but they were never successful, and for over 600
years the site of the Temple Mount lay in ruins.
only remains are the massive retaining walls that
encompass Mount Moriah, built by Herod to support
the platform on which the Temple stood.
fact, the Talmud says that if the Romans (who
destroyed the Temple) had realized how much benefit
they themselves were benefiting from the Temple,
they never would have destroyed it!
Kotel was the only remaining part of the Holy
were Jews from around the world come to pray daily.
The Modern Jewish Association
While the Holy Temple hasn't stood for nearly 2,000
years, Jerusalem continues to be the focus of the Jewish
world. The Holy Temple may not be there, but the Jewish
belief is that the natural holiness of the site remains
forever. As well the Jewish tradition also maintains
that in the End of Days, during the Messianic Era, a
third and final Holy Temple will be built on Mount Moriah.
The holiest site in the world
to Jews is the Western Wall. The holiest spot for Jews
is Mount Moriah itself, several feet behind the Wall.
The Western Wall is merely a small section of Herod's
massive retaining wall and has significance only as
it relates to the Temple Mount itself.
So why do Jews pray at the Wall?
Since the destruction of the Temple, the Sages decreed
that due to the sanctity of the site, Jews (and non-Jews)
should not go up on the actual Temple Mount. Therefore,
the Western Wall became the site of prayer for Jews
wishing to get as close as possible to their holiest
site, the Temple Mount, as God's presence is strongly
connected to this site, It earned the mark "Wailing
Wall" because Jews coming to this site would shed
tears over the loss of the Holy Temple.
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