text
stringlengths 213
24.6k
| id
stringlengths 47
47
| dump
stringclasses 1
value | url
stringlengths 14
499
| file_path
stringlengths 138
138
| language
stringclasses 1
value | language_score
float64 0.9
1
| token_count
int64 51
4.1k
| score
float64 1.5
5.06
| int_score
int64 2
5
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The Winston-Salem Journal takes to its editorial page today with its support for an independent redistricting commission. And good for them. It's a subject that needs to be discussed, but just isn't as sexy as taxes or smoking or filling $2 billion budget holes.
honorable endeavor it could undertake to restore public confidence in
government. Legislators could hand redistricting duties to an
The best road back to competitive elections for both the U.S.
Congress and the two houses of the General Assembly is independent
redistricting. A nonpartisan commission would draw maps according to
redistricting standards laid out in a state Supreme Court ruling. Only
voter registration and demographic data that had been stripped of party
references would go into the computer programs.
It's not too late to implement such a system. If legislation were
approved this year, the commission's structure could be outlined in a
constitutional amendment and put before the state's voters in 2010. The
commission could draw the maps in 2011, and they'd be in use during the
We can hope that this will get some traction this session, but somehow I doubt it will happen. It would involve the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate thinking beyond protecting their own majorities and doing something in the best interest of the state.
|
<urn:uuid:bfba6eec-b8b2-466a-8e00-8b76383399d6>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.civitasreview.com/elections-campaigns/for-a-redistricting-commission/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.958093
| 267
| 1.789063
| 2
|
I finished up Alan Gaff’s If This Is War: A History of the Campaign of Bull’s Run by the Wisconsin Regiment Thereafter Known as the Ragged Ass Second last week. Based mostly on soldiers’ letters written to hometown newspapers, similar to the letters you can find here and here, this is great stuff. Now, you can find countless other micro-histories just like this, as long as the topic rhymes with Gettysburg. This volume is illustrative of the potential for literary contributions that exists for a market that outsiders doubtless view as saturated.
Gaff presents the soldier accounts less than critically, and I’m OK with that. For instance he reproduces various accounts of Daniel Tyler giving orders on the Sudley Road west of Henry House Hill. Of course Tyler was never anywhere in that area. I find it likely that members of the 2nd WI, less than familiar with their new division commander and probably only glimpsing him at a distance during the march to the battlefield, mistook the gray-headed and equally ancient-looking Samuel Heintzelman, who was in the area giving orders to whoever would listen, for Tyler. But that’s how the Badgers remembered things, and how they remembered things is what this book is all about. I suspect that If This Is War would be more widely read and recommended had it been more thoroughly annotated, and think that readers should be careful when using it. But as I said, all in all I’m OK with Gaff’s approach.
|
<urn:uuid:532be308-5430-4a9f-b09f-c2478c4a4c06>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://bullrunnings.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/bull-run-micro-history/?like=1&_wpnonce=aaa135d5d2
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.971473
| 318
| 1.546875
| 2
|
Temperatures were above normal for the month of June at the Dodge City Regional Airport. The average temperature was 77.9 degrees, which was 3.6 degrees above normal. The average high was 90.8 degrees and the average low was 65.0. The highest temperature was 101 degrees on the 26th, and the lowest was 55 degrees on the 3rd. No records were set during the month.
The total precipitation for the month was 4.44 inches, which was 1.29 inches above normal. There were three days during the month when there was at least an inch of rain. The highest 24 hour total was 3.30 inches from the late afternoon on the 12th to the mid morning hours on the 13th. The total precipitation from January 1st 2010 to June 30th 2010 was 12.04 inches, which was 0.52 inches above normal.
The average wind speed was 13.4 mph. The highest wind gust was 60 mph from the south on the 22nd. The wind gust that night was from dissipating showers that produced a warm downburst in Ford County. The temperature at the airport warmed about 5 degrees.
|
<urn:uuid:ed9d4689-1ffa-4dfa-ba34-bbc58ad9d3b6>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=ddc&storyid=54419&source=2
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.990459
| 234
| 1.796875
| 2
|
We are committed to ensuring our research helps address some of the key global issues by focusing on selected societal challenge themes (PDF 1.26 MB), as part of our overall focus on excellence with impact.
These themes address the demand side of research by responding to some of the most pressing needs within society. Our three themes are:
Our Changing Age theme is a development of our expertise on the ageing process and the implications for society. We have the largest number of academics working on aspects of ageing in Europe, many based on a purpose-built campus operated in partnership with the NHS Trust.
Newcastle has significant strengths in research relating to how individuals, communities and organisations adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing and challenging environment. We have created the Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal as a hub for research activity which is focused on asking the big questions facing our society.
|
<urn:uuid:73d8b19b-5971-41f2-97f9-41480e59c4da>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/executive/societal/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.960161
| 173
| 1.765625
| 2
|
The Economic Life of Refugees by Karen Jacobsen. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2005. 131pp.
Karen Jacobsen advances the novel (and heartening) thesis that refugees can be and often are independent economic actors notwithstanding the exceptionally difficult circumstances in which they find themselves. Her first chapter, while not directly relevant to the book’s argument, is of great importance insofar as it illuminates the subtleties and the principal characteristics of protracted refugee situations. For example, she discusses the numerous categories of displaced persons, including those that cross borders, namely refugees. The core of her text (Chapters 2 – 6) addresses the economic livelihoods of many types of refugees: those who settle in camps; those who move to cities within the country of first asylum; and those who end up relocating far away from their home country. How do they adapt? What factors facilitate and constrain their adjustment? What effect do they command on their host community, and vice versa? How is it that many are able to become entrepreneurs? The remainder of Jacobsen’s book explores how international and local nongovernmental organizations can provision humanitarian assistance in the service of the settlement and advancement of refugees.
Jacobsen properly notes that the refugee’s hardship does not end once he or she has found a place to resettle; in many ways, it begins at that point. She duly offers the reader a comprehensive story of displacement, beginning with the events that serve as the initial stimulus for individuals to leave their homelands, and concludes with accounts of their attempts to rebuild their lives.
However, The Economic Life of Refugees is deficient on several counts, three of which merit particular attention.
First, Jacobsen focuses disproportionately on African refugees, with countries such as Côte D’Ivoire, Zambia, and South Africa each eliciting detailed discussion. While this emphasis is understandable, one questions the applicability of her conclusions to other countries or regions. The United Nations has recognized that the international community’s focus on high-profile emergencies like those in the Balkans and Sudan, for example, have detracted from attention to the majority of the world’s refugees that are found elsewhere (on this topic see Ron Redmond’s article, part of the UN’s “Ten Stories the World Should Hear More About” series.).
Second, it is unclear why she chooses to not address the plight of internally displaced persons (IDPs), who, by her own admission, represent a “larger problem” and have far less access to community safeguards or humanitarian assistance (17, 91).
Third, Jacobsen’s model of refugee assistance is problematic. She asserts, quite reasonably, that “host countries should designate a zone of legal residence for asylum-seekers” and that “all asylum-seekers should be accorded the economic and social rights assigned to them in the relevant international charters and laws” (93-94). Such idealistic precepts will not convince most readers of her proposals, especially given the gravity of the problem that Jacobsen seeks to mitigate. Even though she admits that few governments have implemented these policy prescriptions, she concludes that her model is “feasible and politically viable” (100, 105) . This conspicuous contradiction leaves her reassurance of the model’s efficacy suspect.
An expanded edition of her book (should one be forthcoming) would have to address these concerns. Ideally it would also discuss two recent events: (1) the tsunami that devastated Southeast Asia in December 2004, creating two million refugees, and (2) the ongoing crisis in Iraq, where sectarian strife has displaced four million individuals (almost half of whom are IDPs). While natural disasters and military intervention are admittedly uncommon sources of large-scale displacement, they are of critical importance, as the above figures suggest.
To be sure, Jacobsen’s account requires considerable strengthening. Nonetheless, she is to be commended for writing a scholarly book that aims to reach “‘non-experts,’ including undergraduate and graduate students taking courses or doing research on forced migration” (vii). It is too often the case that activists are uninformed and scholars cynical. As with any global issue, improving the welfare of the world’s refugees will require a marriage of the two communities’ insights.
Ali Wyne, Undergraduate Student
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
|
<urn:uuid:50dc89a8-1478-4877-a3e3-4655683908c0>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/booknotes/2007/wyne-2007a.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.949179
| 913
| 2.03125
| 2
|
The Heat Goes On
Just about everything is wilting and there's no end in sight
Published on: August 1, 2011
Blistering Kansas was supposed to get a "respite" Sunday from 100-degree heat, with a forecast high of "only" 96. It hit 101.
Things heated up more today, topping out at 108 and Tuesday is expected to be hotter still with highs around 112. That's air temperature for the folks accustomed to talk about "heat index."
The stats for July were tallied over the weekend, making it officially the second hottest July on record, with an average temperature of 89.3 degrees, topped only by the heat of July, 1980, when the average temperature was 90.4. That's average temperature, not average high.
The month saw at least 100-degree heat on 24 of July's 31 days, a tie for the record with 1980. With 11 days in June hitting 100 and the earliest ever 100-degree day on May 9 this year, 2011 so far has racked up 36 days above 100 degrees. The record is 50 days in 1936. We still have all of August -- our traditionally hottest month -- to go.
I talked today to a couple of farmers who say the dryland corn crop south of I-70 is toast and the irrigated acres will be lucky to harvest half of a normal yield. Many circles have already been chopped for silage and more will likely come in the next few days.
Cotton is holding on. It will likely make a crop, although perhaps not as good of one as the potential was a couple of weeks ago. Late-planted soybeans have a shot if the heat breaks within the next two weeks. If it doesn't, they are toast. Pastures are already toast. Hay fields are toast. Ponds are dry or drying. Cattle herds are being liquidated.
The full picture of just how bad this situation is hasn't fully hit home yet. As usual, it will be February or March when all of sudden folks in Topeka start screaming they just can't imagine where the "unexpected revenue shortfalls" are coming from. They ought to take advantage of the legislative recess and take a drive south and west. It might give them a clue.
|
<urn:uuid:f4ddfcbf-eac7-43b8-8219-688f2d6904bd>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://farmprogress.com/blogs-the-heat-goes-on-2509
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.972793
| 464
| 1.78125
| 2
|
What's going on
Over the next three years the Science Museum will present a series of exhibitions, events, debates and education projects that will tackle the big issues in sustainable waste management.
Antenna - Dead Ringers?
We look at one of the most ubiquitous accessories – the mobile phone – and ask what happens to the millions that are replaced every year.
On 22 May 2007 we opened an exhibition celebrating the centenary of plastics. Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic, was invented 100 years ago and this display will look at how plastics have evolved since 1907, as well as their legacy and future.
Dana Centre events
A series of four evening events in 2006/07 will allow adults the chance to debate some of the hottest topics surrounding sustainable waste.
Every year over 700,000 tonnes of textiles are thrown away in the UK. Now top fashion designers are turning our waste into wear. Come and meet them at our catwalk extravaganza - and bring your own clothes for a revamp at our next event on 15th February 2007. Fully booked.
A new drama character is being planned for spring 2007; watch this space for more details.
In autumn 2007 these Museum sleepovers will offer children aged 8-11 years the chance to explore the issues surrounding reducing, reusing and recycling waste in a fun and creative way with hands-on activities, lively demonstrations and trails before settling down in sleeping bags for the night. More details to follow.
We will be running a 45 minute classroom workshop for 10 schools on the subject of waste management. It will be fun, exciting and include lots of audience participation.
Students will work in teams as boroughs of a fictitious city called Bindon to raise money to take care of the waste requirements.
The subjects covered are how much waste we produce and the problems that can have on the environment. We will look at how we can limit waste by recycling, reducing and reusing. We also look at what happens to waste if we do not do any of these.
We are now taking bookings and will be delivering these workshops to London schools between the 2nd May to the 11th May 07.
Sownload a family activity trail (pdf) to help you explore the Museum and find out more about eco-friendly ways of getting rid of things.
|
<urn:uuid:1e7774a4-0e0a-4093-bd47-b505f34c851d>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/wastedopportunity/whatsgoingon.asp
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.9529
| 473
| 2.765625
| 3
|
A home of their ownTalk about a busy week. Between ripping out their bedroom carpet in favor of a wood-finished floor, shopping for a stove and curtains, and transporting a second-hand fridge into their new home, Kristy Dreyer and Matt Baker also had a graduation to attend.
By: Hank Long, Woodbury Bulletin
Talk about a busy week. Between ripping out their bedroom carpet in favor of a wood-finished floor, shopping for a stove and curtains, and transporting a second-hand fridge into their new home, Kristy Dreyer and Matt Baker also had a graduation to attend.
Earlier this month Dreyer finished up her master’s degree in special education at the College of St. Catherine. She is now on the job hunt.
But until very recently both Dreyer and Baker were on a different kind of hunt. A house hunt.
After several weeks of searching real estate high and low in the east metro area, the couple said they now feel relieved and excited to be in their new home, a town house on the 3000 block of Juniper Lane in Woodbury, which they closed on and moved into a little more than two weeks ago.
Their excitement is generated partially from the fact that Dreyer and Baker, who have been married three years, are first-time homebuyers. And the sense of relief?
Until a few months ago, they weren’t 100-percent sure they would be able to afford the upfront costs of purchasing a home in Woodbury, which Dreyer’s home town. Or the month-to-month mortgage payments that come along with responsibility of owning a home.
“Everybody kept telling us this is the time to buy,” Dreyer said. “So we knew that with my graduation coming up and both of us having full-time jobs, that maybe it was. But we really weren’t sure if Woodbury was affordable for a young couple like us, just starting out.”
That notion became easier to swallow when the couple learned more about a new federal income tax credit for first-time homebuyers and also found out they were eligible for the city of Woodbury’s new home foreclosure purchase loan program, which they say provided enough of a financial incentive to nudge them off the fence to purchase their first home.
Local stimulus for prospective homebuyers
The city of Woodbury’s foreclosure purchase loan program, which was debuted in January, allows prospective homebuyers to take out a maximum $25,000 loan with the city’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority to help towards the purchase of a foreclosed home within the city limits.
The loan has a fixed 3-percent interest rate and can be used to help with down payments and closing costs, which Baker said factored heavily in the couple’s ability to make a down payment large enough to reduce their monthly mortgage and move into the town house they are now calling home.
The new home is part of a town house development along the west side of Pioneer Drive and just south of Bailey Road. Behind their home is a natural open space, which Baker said was a huge selling point.
“It’s a great view, right out our dining room window, not something you’d necessarily expect with a town house,” said Baker, who plans to start a vegetable garden in the backyard early this summer.
Baker and Dreyer are the first couple to use the city of Woodbury home foreclosure purchase loan program, and city housing specialist Karl Batalden hopes they are one of many.
The program, which was instituted with three other homeowner based loan programs via the city’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority, aims to encourage the purchase of foreclosed properties in Woodbury by providing financing to low- and moderate-income purchasers. The program is in its pilot year and the city’s HRA will evaluate its performance on a yearly basis, Batalden said.
According to the program guidelines low-interest, deferred loans of up to $25,000 are available to qualified families who earn no more than 115 percent of area median income, capped at $90,000 per household. The purchase price of the affected homes may not exceed $256,500. Single-family detached houses, town homes or condo units are eligible for this program.
But beyond the guidelines, Batalden, who works as the housing specialist in the city’s community development department, said the loan program serves two major purposes: providing opportunities to families on the cusp of homeownership and improving neighborhoods affected the foreclosure crisis.
“With this program, in addition to the all the wonderful positive attributes of having a new home owner in town we are also reducing the number of vacant properties in the city,” Batalden said.
Opportunity out of crisis
The city contracts the underwriting for the loan program with the Greater Metropolitan Housing Corporation, a non-profit organization that helps low and moderate-income families with affordable housing issues.
GMHC program administrator Laura Bolstad, said Woodbury’s foreclosure purchase program is unique to Washington County, which has not been immune to the foreclosure crisis that has plagued other areas of the Twin Cities such as north Minneapolis and east St. Paul.
Bolstad said she believes Woodbury has developed the program at the right time, as many prospective home buyers are looking to take advantage of a situation presented by the drop in home prices and the foreclosed homes that are often priced well below their assessed value.
“From our perspective we have seen a lot of activity in terms of people who are looking to purchase foreclosed homes as a means of affordable housing,” Bolstad said. “I think these are people who are renting and all the sudden they are looking at the numbers and saying, ‘Maybe this is a possibility for me.’”
And those opportunities provided by the foreclosures on the market are still out there, even in Woodbury, which county officials say has not suffered as much as other similar communities when it comes to foreclosures over the last three years.
In 2007 Washington County recorded 225 sheriff’s sales in Woodbury. In 2008 that number increased to 335. And in the first quarter of 2009, more than 90 homes were put into a sheriff’s sale, which doesn’t necessarily mean the home is vacant, but means it is in some state of foreclosure.
City officials have said that many of those foreclosed homes are eventually turned over to bank ownership and then sit vacant for several months. Many issues arise with the vacant homes that often become issues where the city may have to step in, including frozen pipes in the winter, mold issues in the spring and unmowed lawns in the summer.
In response to some of these issues, the city has organized a foreclosure task force among its staff members from various departments to look for proactive ways to tackle the foreclosure problem that has crept into the city.
Woodbury City Council member Paul Rebholz said the foreclosure purchase loan program is one way the city is trying to do just that.
“This is one way for us to try to make a small difference on these homes that are vacant (due to foreclosure),” said Rebholz, who as a council member is also a member of the city’s HRA which allotted the funding for the loan program. “We’re helping people who are already living in the community and renting. They are able to buy the home and then that’s a way that we can help bridge the gap to get people in the home, and improve the neighborhood just by eliminating the presence of one more vacant home.”
For Baker and Dreyer it’s an opportunity to start a life in a community they didn’t necessarily see themselves owning a home in so early in their adult lives.
“We looked in a lot of neighboring communities at first, because we figured Woodbury wouldn’t have the price range we were looking for as a young couple starting out with plenty of college loans to pay off,” said Dreyer, who grew up in Woodbury and has parents that still live in town. “We looked in Oakdale, Cottage Grove, and then some in St. Paul, but when we heard about the loan program the city of Woodbury has, we realized that was enough to push us over the edge to find a home here.”
Baker said the couple looked at several foreclosed homes in town and noticed that many had neglect issues such as mold.
“The mold was probably the biggest issue we ran across with a lot of the houses we looked at,” Baker said. “With this house, we saw it was in good shape, no mold problems, and didn’t need a lot of work, so for us, it was perfect.”
|
<urn:uuid:4ac4fad7-c8ec-49aa-b1cd-5a89c44b3fd6>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.woodburybulletin.com/event/article/id/31641/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.978937
| 1,863
| 1.523438
| 2
|
Plan your trip to Marrakesh (مراكش), Morocco
Marrakesh (مراكش, French: Marrakech) is the second largest city in Morocco. Often called the Red City, it is an important former imperial city and presently the capital of the Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz region. The city has a population exceeding one million people (2011 estimate). Its old city, the Medina of Marrakesh, is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Guide to Marrakesh Hotels
Here's a list of hotels in Marrakesh that you can book online, with full description, star rating, address, location map, evaluation, and prices as offered by different booking sites. This helps you to make your room booking with the site that offers the best price.
Koutoubia Mosque, Marrakesh
Author: BetacommandBot (public domain)
More on Marrakesh
The name Marrakesh means "land of God". It is from the name of this city that the European form "Morocco" was derived. Indeed, in earlier times, the city itself was known as Marocco. It was only in 1911, following the Treaty of Fez, that Marrakesh denotes the city while Morocco denotes the country under French protectorate. A separation between the name for Marrakesh and Morocco came about during the reign of Mohammed Ben Aarafa, when the city became known in Arabic as al-Mamlaka al-Magribiyya, meaning the Western Kingdom.
The city of Marrakesh is located at the foot of the High Atlas, the highest mountain range in North Africa. To the south of the city stretch the shrublands that graduate into the Sahara desert while to the west the Atlantic Ocean. Marrakesh experiences a semi-arid climate with dry summers and wet winters. Hottest month is July, when the average high temperature reaches 36.8°C (98.2°F). Coldest month is January, when the average low drops to 5.9°C (42.6°F). Marrakesh receives only 281.3 mm (11 in) of rain in a year, with the wettest month being November, which receives 40.6 mm (1.6 in) of rainfall.
Bab Agnaou, Marrakesh
Author: Lionel Leo (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported)
The area around Marrakesh has been inhabited for over a thousand years. Until the 11th century, the town was part of neighboring Aghmat. In 1070, the ruler of Aghmat, Abu-Bakr Ibn-Umar relocated his capital of Marrakesh to avoid the overcrowded Aghmat. The new capital was built beside the Tensift River.
Successive rulers turned Marrakesh into a center of intellectual scholarship. The Koutoubia Mosque was built during the rule of Yaqub al-Mansur, along with a new kasbah, or citadel. Marrakesh became the capital of Morocco until 1672, when Moulay Ismail relocated the capital to Meknes.
Saadian tombs, Marrakesh
Author: Viault (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported)
Although not an administrative capital, Marrakesh continued to function as a center of religion, where the festival of seven saints were celebrated on a grand scale. The tombs of many Sufi Muslim saints are also located in the city.
Today Marrakesh is a bustling Moroccan city with the largest souq or traditional market in the world. The city provides tourist a kaleidoscopic view of Morocco from its food stalls, bazaar, mosques and architecture.
The Marrakech-Menara Airport (RAK) is an international airport with direct flights from London, Paris and Madrid.
Camels at La Palmeraie, Marrakesh
Author: Viault (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported)
Places of Interest in Marrakesh
The Medina of Marrakesh is a World Heritage Site of Morocco.
- Aguedal Gardens
A historic garden and orchard created in the 12th century. It is within an enclosed area measuring 3 km by 1.5 km, and planted with various fruit trees.
- Bab Agnaou
Monumental gate built by Yacoub el-Mansour to mark the entrance to his palace.
- Bab Doukkala Mosque
Mid-16th century mosque built by the mother of the Saadian ruler, Ahmed el-Mansour.
- Ben Youssef Madrasa
One of the biggest and finest Koranic schools in the Magreb, with a student body of 900.
- Chrob ou Chouf Fountain
Literally the fountain of "drink and admire", this is one of the most beautiful fountains in the medina of Marrakesh.
- Dar el-Makhzen
The royal palace built by Sisi Mohammed ben Abdallah in the 18th century, next to the ruins of Palais el-Badi.
- Dar Si Saïd Museum
A modern museum housed in the late 19th century palace of Si Saïd ben Moussa showcasing various artifacts from intricate plasterwork to doors, carriages, carpets, pottery and more.
This is the new town of Marrakesh, built by the French after they made Morocco a protectorate in 1912.
- Kasbah Mosque
Mosque with a distinctive minaret, built by Yacoub el-Mansour in the late 12th century. This is the only other surviving Almohad building, apart from the Koutoubia Mosque.
- Koubba Ba'Adiyn
The only example of Almoravid architecture in Marrakesh, this was once part of a mosque that has since been demolished.
- Koutoubia Mosque
One of the largest medieval mosques of the Western Muslim world, this was built by the Almohad Sultan Abd el-Moumen in 1147, following his victory over the Almoravids.
- La Mamounia Hotel
The legendary hotel opened in 1923 is a blend of Art Deco architecture with Moorish elements.
- La Palmeraie
The Palm Grove of Marrakesh, which legend says was created in the 11th century when the soldiers of Sultan Youssef ben Tachfine sat out the stones of the dates they were eating.
- Majorelle Garden
A lovely garden within Guéliz had its beginnings when French painter Jacques Majorelle decided to build a Moorish villa in Marrakesh in 1923.
- Méchouars of Marrakesh
These are the three large parade grounds around Dar el-Makhzen palace where royal ceremonies and processions are held.
Until the country's independence, the Jewish quarter of Marrakesh was the biggest in Morocco.
The imperial garden from the 12th century covering almost 90 hectares, beautifully landscaped with pavilions and pools.
- Mouassine Mosque
Mosque established by Sultan Moulay Abdallah between 1562 and 1573, built on the site of a former Jewish quarter.
- Musée de Marrakech
Museum housed in the Dar Menebhi, the 19th century palace of the grand vizier of Sultan Moulay Mehdi Hassan. The museum displays a disparate collection of art objects.
- Palais Bahia
Literally the Palace of the Favorite, this palace complex was built in the late 19th century comprising two different parts, built in two different phases.
- Palais el-Badi
The grand palace of Ahmed el-Mansour, built to cement his position as ruler, after defeating the Portuguese in the Battle fo the Three Kings in 1578.
- Place Jemaa el-Fna
The central square of Marrakesh, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is alive with activity throughout the day, from the large morning market to the shops and open-air performances of the evening.
- Ramparts of Marrakesh
Medieval fortification that encircle the medina of Marrakesh.
- Saadian Tombs
These tombs represent some of the finest examples of Islamic architecture in Morocco. Although the necropolis dates to the 12th century, the tombs built between the 16th and 18th centuries.
- Souq of Marrakesh
One of the biggest and most fascinating old bazaars of the Maghreb.
- Zaouia of Sidi ben Slimane el-Jazouli
Medieval mausoleum to a venerated mystic who founded Moroccan Sufism in the 15th century.
- Zaouia of Sidi bel Abbès
Mausoleum to Sidi bel Abbès, the 12th century patron saint of Marrakesh.
|
<urn:uuid:41e8e75c-9b17-42b9-8d59-d330985ae2d7>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.my-world-travelguides.com/marrakesh-morocco.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.924883
| 1,867
| 2.15625
| 2
|
Opening a window is a simple natural ventilation strategy. | Credit: ©iStockphoto/Simotion
Natural ventilation relies on the wind and the "chimney effect" to keep a home cool. Natural ventilation works best in climates with cool nights and regular breezes.
The wind will naturally ventilate your home by entering or leaving windows, depending on their orientation to the wind. When wind blows against your home, air is forced into your windows on the side facing into the wind, while a natural vacuum effect tends to draw air out of windows on the leeward (downwind) side. In coastal climates, many seaside buildings are designed with large ocean-facing windows to take advantage of cooling sea breezes. For drier climates, natural ventilation involves avoiding heat buildup during the day and ventilating at night.
The chimney effect relies on convection and occurs when cool air enters a home on the first floor or basement, absorbs heat in the room, rises, and exits through upstairs windows. This creates a partial vacuum, which pulls more air in through lower-level windows. The effect works best in open-air designs with cathedral ceilings and windows located near the top of the house, in clerestories, or in operable skylights.
Passive solar homes are often designed to take advantage of convection to distribute heat evenly through the home. These homes encourage natural ventilation by placing operable windows and skylights on the top floor.
Natural ventilation can be enhanced or diminished through landscaping. Depending on the house design and wind direction, a windbreak like a fence, hedge, or row of trees that blocks the wind -- can force air either into or away from nearby windows.
|
<urn:uuid:f23ebd22-52bb-4a7c-983d-152860425125>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/natural-ventilation
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.927692
| 350
| 3.5
| 4
|
Selfish Giving – The Face of Modern Philanthropy?
Cause marketing has found its ideal platform in social media. As resources like Facebook and Twitter allow brands and nonprofits to collaborate through a single and globally accessible interface. It’s how they collaborate that’s open to design, however, enhanced social awareness and responsibility of the part of consumers has forced many for-profit brands to redefine their nonprofit involvement. As Best Buy demonstrated recently, “selfish giving” (which is refers to the act of consumers purchasing goods or services that are affiliated to a specific cause) is allowing brands to encourage donations from their customers in the course of their daily activities.
Give.mobi: Promoting Brands and Nonprofits to the Consumer
Backing the youth educational program the Boys and Girls of America, Best Buy pledged to donate $2 for every mobile Facebook check-in made by their customers. As the brand’s first Facebook Check-in for Charity program, Best Buy hopes to engage the consumer and raise up to $250,000 for the nonprofit’s endeavors. They are not alone in using the concept of selfish giving to raise funds and awareness for causes. Social media is playing a key role in this drive.
One of the very best resources in this field is Give.mobi, which provides a platform for brands and nonprofits to collaborate through a range of promotional activities. It affords a brand the opportunity to place a specific code on any type of marketing material that links directly to a customized giving page. This then provides information about the brand’s sponsored cause, which allows for sharing across Twitter and Facebook to raise awareness and encourage donations. Now businesses are able to promote a cause through their own brand marketing campaigns, giving consumers a way to discover viable nonprofits while shopping online.
Why Selfish Giving Gained Popularity
Cinnabon Bakeries used a version of selfish giving to promote their fundraiser for the anti-hunger organization Share Our Strength. By placing a small message on packaging and marketing fliers that encouraged consumers to visit their page and to either share their cause or make a donation, Cinnabon Bakeries were able to raise an estimated $3,800 in just five days for the childhood hunger campaigners. The average donation was $43 per individual, with each costing a mere $3.40 per donation.
These projects show just why selfish giving has gained popularity in 2011. To begin with, we have a depressed economic climate, creating difficult financial times for both brands and consumers. This means that businesses are earning less revenue while consumers have less disposable income to donate to worthwhile causes. So the concept of selfish giving allows for-profit and nonprofit organizations to benefit from single transactions.
Secondary to this we have the role of social media, which is beginning to change the way in which consumers search for, research, and purchase their products. As brands respond to this by marketing their goods through Facebook Pages and Twitter updates, it’s provided an opportunity for nonprofits to partner with relevant companies and target the same social demographic. Given the increased social awareness and responsibility of the modern-day consumer, causes are able to spread quickly and efficiently through social media and its users.
The Bottom Line
While many accept that selfish giving provides an excellent opportunity for nonprofits like the Boys and Girls of America to prosper, some claim that it should not be confused with straight philanthropy. Given the strained economic climate and a high level of global unemployment however, selfish giving through cause marketing allows consumers to satisfy their sense of social responsibility without spending income they do not have. This is not to be underestimated as we enter 2012 and cause marketing continues as the fastest-growing area of nonprofit activity.
|
<urn:uuid:89c19c2f-2ccb-4913-bddb-d44b76556765>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.revenews.org/selfish-giving-the-face-of-modern-philanthropy/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948115
| 750
| 2.390625
| 2
|
Mother travels to spread awareness about buckling upA Jamestown woman has reshaped her life to build awareness of seat belt use following the loss of her daughter in June 2011. Becca Olson, 16, died in a pickup accident in Mandan, N.D. A passenger in the vehicle, she was not wearing her seat belt when the crash happened. Her mother, JoAnne Olson, has championed the cause since then raising awareness to buckle up in the Dakotas.
By: By Ben Rodgers, The Jamestown Sun, The Jamestown Sun
A Jamestown woman has reshaped her life to build awareness of seat belt use following the loss of her daughter in June 2011.
Becca Olson, 16, died in a pickup accident in Mandan, N.D. A passenger in the vehicle, she was not wearing her seat belt when the crash happened. Her mother, JoAnne Olson, has championed the cause since then raising awareness to buckle up in the Dakotas.
“It’s a nightmare to relive your daughter’s death every day,” Olson said. “But on the flipside every day somebody tells me ‘you saved my life because I was in an accident today and buckled up and it was because of Becca.’”
The start of 2013 was the start of Olson’s “Buckling Up for Becca” campaign.
She plans to speak to high school students in Fargo later this year and eventually Jamestown students when a video collage of pictures of Becca is completed. She also plans to hit the public radio airwaves as well in 2013.
She has spoken primarily in Mandan and Bismarck in the past, but also talked to students in South Dakota at a conference at Mobridge in March.
Accompanying her to these events is a group of Becca’s friends, who talk to students as well.
“I cry my way through it every day but I’m so thankful for the girls in Mandan because they’re strong and they don’t want to go to another funeral,” Olson said of her presentations.
Olson brings statistics along with her from the North Dakota Department of Transportation. One of the most shocking ones for her is that an unbelted person dies in North Dakota on average every 4.7 days.
“No matter what city or what state I’ve been to, everyone has a Becca story,” Olson said.
Her ultimate goal now is to purchase a driving simulator for students to try as she travels, or for use in Jamestown — with a seat belt, of course.
She said simulators now will call a student’s cellphone and crash when they answer. Some also include a tire blowout, or a deer running across the road.
“If we’re going to get things to change the statistics we’re going to have to get kids to practice on a driving simulator,” she said.
For now she will continue to travel and spread her message, which is on shirts she gives to students, that reads “U R Loved” with the words “Belt Me” across a heart.
Olson was shocked at Becca’s death because she normally always wore a seat belt. She was shocked again when she started looking up the statistics.
After the accident, she couldn’t stand to stay in Mandan.
“The night of Becca’s accident I packed a suitcase in the house we shared and I never spent a night there, and I ended up here,” she said of moving back to Jamestown. She had lived in Mandan for 20 years.
Olson brings that emotion with her when she speaks to students, but approaches them with the message they are loved and that’s reason enough to buckle up.
She also gives the message that one funeral for somebody who didn’t buckle up is more than enough — especially when it’s your daughter.
“You don’t ever plan to bury your child,” she said.
Sun reporter Ben Rodgers can be reached at 701-952-8455 or by email at email@example.com
|
<urn:uuid:36539207-17a4-4d20-9ced-53c5355939d3>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.jamestownsun.com/event/article/id/176793/publisher_ID/10/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.973515
| 906
| 1.882813
| 2
|
The tour is an effort to draw attention to the lack of a designated place on the Kenai Peninsula to bring soil contaminated by fuel or chemicals for treatment.
Much of the soil to be remediated was removed from the area around the former Trailside General Store in Homer following a 1998 gasoline leak. More than 3,000 cubic yards of soil will be remediated in six sessions, according to Lindsay Winkler, coalition watershed coordinator.
Advance registration to see the process is recommended. Call the Homer Soil and Water Conservation Service at 235-8177, extension 5 for more information.
|
<urn:uuid:ac4d5251-bb7e-4823-9498-0de8a4eaef7f>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://homernews.com/stories/060602/new_060602news0060002.shtml
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948547
| 119
| 1.539063
| 2
|
Migration and Pro-Poor Policy in West Africa
This report highlights that West Africa has a long history of population mobility, both regionally and internationally. Linked with factors as diverse as long-distance trade, the search for pasture, urbanisation and the growth of administrative centres, the demands of mining, industrial production and plantation agriculture, armed conflict, land degradation, drought and rural poverty, migration has played a major part in shaping settlement patterns. It is estimated that one third of West Africans live outside their village of birth. Contemporary West African migrants are found in significant numbers around the world, with major consequences for poverty.
|
<urn:uuid:64368f8d-e73c-4215-b7ae-dbd74f3a7fd8>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.refugeeresearch.net/ar/node/6780
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.951519
| 125
| 3.4375
| 3
|
** FILE ** In this Nov. 8, 2007 file photo, wounded soldiers involved in physical therapy wait for President Bush to visit a physical therapy lab for wounded soldiers at the Center For The Intrepid at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Lines of U.S. troops are limping away from the military with damaged bodies and minds, a surging increase in disabled veterans that will cost the nation billions for decades to come _ even as the total of America's vets from all wars has begun to shrink. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
Amendment #2 on Florida’s 2012 ballot deals with veterans.
If passed, it would allow all combat-disabled veterans in the Sunshine State to have access to discounts on their property tax.
In 2010, a law was put in place that gave discounts to veterans if they lived in Florida previous to their service.
This amendment would give the benefits to all combat-disabled veterans, regardless of where they lived previously.
|
<urn:uuid:283d1dad-108b-45e6-973d-50171d8eda5f>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.wtvy.com/home/headlines/On-the-Ballot-Florida-Constitution-Amendment-2-176213011.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.959271
| 201
| 1.914063
| 2
|
Sleep deficiency, which includes sleep deprivation, affects people of all ages, races, and ethnicities. Certain groups of people may be more likely to be sleep deficient. Examples include people who:
Certain medical conditions have been linked to sleep disorders. These conditions include heart failure, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke or transient ischemic attack (mini-stroke), depression, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
If you have or have had one of these conditions, ask your doctor whether you might benefit from a sleep study.
A sleep study allows your doctor to measure how much and how well you sleep. It also helps show whether you have sleep problems and how severe they are. For more information, go to the Health Topics Sleep Studies article.
If you have a child who is overweight, talk with the doctor about your child's sleep habits.
Clinical trials are research studies that explore whether a medical strategy, treatment, or device is safe and effective for humans. To find clinical trials that are currently underway for Sleep Deprivation and Deficiency, visit www.clinicaltrials.gov.
The NHLBI updates Health Topics articles on a biennial cycle based on a thorough review of research findings and new literature. The articles also are updated as needed if important new research is published. The date on each Health Topics article reflects when the content was originally posted or last revised.
|
<urn:uuid:5c0b8784-d434-4c55-a5bb-f3dc1cea84cf>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/sdd/atrisk.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.937994
| 290
| 3.453125
| 3
|
Celia Martinez has been hired by the Mexican electoral agency to register Mexican expats to vote in the next election. Helpers like her are stationed in Mexican consulates in 30 U.S. cities until Jan. 15.
December 24, 2011
Stories this photo appears in:
The deadline for Mexicans to register to vote in 2012 is Jan.15.
The last presidential election in 2006 was the first time Mexicans expats had the right to vote, but just over 32,600 of the millions residing in the United States cast a ballot.
|
<urn:uuid:81c31009-f529-4cae-9e74-c39cb2418fa8>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.fronterasdesk.org/photos/2011/dec/24/13724/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.968624
| 112
| 1.742188
| 2
|
“George Washington Carver:
• laid out the reason for organic farming 37 years before the man credited with articulating it did so. Organic farming, if practiced universally now, could slow or stop climate change by locking carbon in the soil, keeping it out of the atmosphere.
• envisioned the end of the petroleum industry and anticipated a movement towards replacing all petroleum products (hydrocarbons) with products from plants (carbohydrates).
• promoted an overhaul of standard educational curricula to teaching everyone to know the life around them and how to interact with it for benefit both to us and to all life.
• had a vision of the Spirit speaking through all of nature which, absorbed by enough people, can reconcile all the conflict between religion and science which he considered totally unnecessary.
• saw war as entirely about resources, and scorned it as lack of vision in fixing the world by constantly improving soil so everyone is fed and happy.
• was a genuinely spiritually enlightened soul with a true love for all humanity.”
On Wednesday, the group, living in a heavily guarded refugee camp in Turkey, claimed responsibility for killing nine Syrian soldiers, including one uniformed officer, in an attack in restive central Syria.
Turkish officials describe their relationship with the group’s commander, Col. Riad al-As’aad, and the 60 to 70 members living in the “officers’ camp” as purely humanitarian. Turkey’s primary concern, the officials said, is for the physical safety of defectors. When asked specifically about allowing the group to organize military operations while under the protection of Turkey, a Foreign Ministry official said that their only concern was humanitarian protection and that they could not stop them from expressing their views.
“At the time all of these people escaped from Syria, we did not know who was who, it was not written on their heads ‘I am a soldier’ or ‘I am an opposition member,’ ” said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in keeping with diplomatic protocol. “We are providing these people with temporary residence on humanitarian grounds, and that will continue.”
|
<urn:uuid:a67735c0-9a5b-4f78-9bdb-940c21926054>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/humanitarian?language=pt_PT
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.965062
| 450
| 2.015625
| 2
|
So it's the three-legged stool. It's development, it's rule of law and governance, as well as security. And I think not unlike Iraq, we get security to a point where these other -- these other aspects can be developed much more fully, and we'll know at that point in time how far we've gone and what our next step should be.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Specifically, what can be achieved in the next year?
MULLEN: I think with the troops that we put on the ground there, that over the next 12 to 18 months, we have to dramatically change the security situation and stem the tide. We've had an increasing level of violence in the last three years from in '6, '7, and '8, and I think in '9 and '10, we have to start to turn that around.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me talk about the issues of gays in the military. The president has told you that he wants to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy so that gays and lesbians can serve openly in the military. And the Pentagon said this week that you personally, along with Secretary Gates, are working to address the challenges associated with implementing the president's commitment.
What exactly are you doing? And what exactly are you worried about?
MULLEN: The president has made his strategic intent very clear. That it's his intent at some point in time to ask Congress to change this law. I think it's important to also know that this is the law, this isn't a policy. And for the rules to change, a law has to be changed.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And there's legislation introduced in the Congress.
MULLEN: And there is. Exactly. And so I've had discussions with the Joint Chiefs about this. I've done certainly a lot of internal, immediate staff discussions about what the issues would be and how we...
STEPHANOPOULOS: What are they? What are the challenges?
MULLEN: Well, it's my job as the senior military adviser to provide best advice, best military advice for the president. And what I owe him is an objective assessment of what these changes would be. What they might impact on. And there could be speculation about what that might be, but my goal would be to achieve an objective assessment of the impact, if any, of this kind of change.
In addition, you know, I would need some time for a force that's under a great deal of stress -- we're in our sixth year of fighting two wars -- to look at if this change occurs, to look at implementing it in a very deliberate, measured way.
And what I also owe the president, and I owe the men and women in uniform, is an implementation plan to achieve this based on a timeline that would be set, obviously, after the law is changed.
STEPHANOPOULOS: One of your predecessors, General John Shalikashvili, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs back in the early '90s, has said he has second thoughts on this whole issue now. He was against opening up service to the gays and lesbians then. Now he's written, "I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces. Our military has been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle East, and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job."
Is he right?
MULLEN: He's certainly entitled to his own personal opinion. And certainly, I have the greatest respect for him.
There are also lots of retired generals and admirals on the other side. STEPHANOPOULOS: What's your opinion?
|
<urn:uuid:2143a15c-19e6-40d5-9ff9-a2cbbfddef9b>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/story?id=7664072&page=6
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.983281
| 794
| 1.507813
| 2
|
I had been walking in the wrong direction for twenty minutes with the most impossible heels. The pain in my right shoulder was getting worse from carrying my computer, and the worst part was that I was going to be late for my presentation. I couldn’t get anyone to answer my calls and I was about to lose it when I was finally able to reach my contact and let her know about my delay. When I arrived, mortified about the situation, my host, who was kindly waiting for me at the door, said with a smile: “Don’t worry about it, we are on Latino Time.”
For the first time in my life, I was happy that LT existed. Having been raised by a German mother, more often than not, I live in conflict with the timing of many of my Latino friends and colleagues as I’m usually the first to arrive everywhere.
During the presentation, part of the Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations, I spoke about how we can modulate our levels of Latinoness throughout the day and depending on the roles we play.
Going back to the example, in this country, punctuality is key in obtaining others’ respect and trust in you. So you must consider it a basic trait for professional success. But, if you have a party at your house over the weekend you’re probably not going to send out invitations with a beginning and an end time as most Anglos would. We experience time more as an event than as a chronological episode. Which means that the party starts when you arrive and it ends whenever it ends. For Anglos it is more like an 8- 11 PM thing.
The problem begins when this trait spills over your professional space and you are consistently late to turn in your projects or to a conference call. This can have an immediate impact on your personal brand as your colleagues and bosses make assumptions about you being untrustworthy.
It’s good to realize that you are not just Latino (or Mexican, Salvadorean, Dominican, etc.) Your identity is made up of numerous experiences, influences, beliefs, culture, religion, sexual orientation, race, and so on. Paradoxically, modulating the Latino aspects that may negatively affect your career opportunities is something very Latin.
We are a group known for our adaptability therefore, there’s no need to fear losing your Latino identity as a result of making these small adjustments. The ability to manage the different aspects of your identity according to the situation you are in or the role you’re playing at the time, is the best demonstration of your Latinoness in action.
If you liked this blog, you may also like: Uncover your Latinoness
|
<urn:uuid:c86b4213-4e22-4ffd-9114-679ac7d3d77e>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://blog.marieladabbah.com/?p=404
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.970128
| 556
| 1.554688
| 2
|
12 Business Founders Who Succeeded Without a College Degree
As the cost of college education rises, it leaves many young people (and their parents) with a hard question: Is college really worth it?
I myself almost dropped out halfway through my junior year, but after a chat with my father and a semester break, I managed to eventually squeak by with a degree. It certainly didn't keep me from asking myself what I would have done with those five extra years of my life. Seth Godin made waves last year by providing an opportunity for an "Alternative MBA" program. Seth designed this because most colleges have a system for students built on life avoidance and racking up debt (to quote Chris Guillebeau).
Here are a few incredibly successful business founders who decided to take the leap and start a business without going to college. Not only did they succeed — many have some of the most successful businesses in the world. Some never went to college, others dropped out. Others on the list failed miserably by society's standards. (One student was even expelled from an Ivy League school!) Yet these moneymaking juggernauts have proven that you don't need an advanced degree to succeed as a business owner.
David Geffen has a long and distinguished career in the music industry, most notably as a founder of Geffen Records and Dreamworks SKG. Geffen attended three separate colleges, never to finish his degree. Instead of taking the scholarly approach, Geffen started his career in the music industry in the mail room of the William Morris Agency. As he moved up the ranks as an agent, he needed to prove that he actually graduated from a university. So, like any savvy businessperson would do, Geffen forged a college diploma.
David Ogilvy is known to many as the "Father of Advertising." During his lifetime, he appeared in Time as the "the most sought-after wizard in today's advertising industry." Yet Ogilvy never received a college degree. In fact, the young Ogilvy managed to get into Oxford on scholarship but was later expelled from the school because of his dismal grades. Ogilvy would later go on to work with successful companies like Dove, Rolls-Royce, and Shell. He also became a best-selling author with his book Confessions of An Advertising Man, which is still one of the most famous books on advertising.
Who doesn't have a stack of Reader's Digest magazines on their coffee table or in their bathroom? The tiny magazine boasts a readership of over 17 million worldwide and was the best-selling consumer magazine in the US for years. DeWitt Wallace co-founded Reader's Digest with his wife in 1922 and attempted to get his college degree at two different colleges.
David Oreck started the Oreck Corporation, which sold vacuum cleaners by mail. The company would later sell air purifiers, with Oreck as the popular spokesman in commercials and infomercials. Before Oreck became an entrepreneur, he skipped the typical college experience and instead enlisted in the Air Force in World War II and flew B-29 bombers.
Frederick Henry Royce
While most of the founders in this article had at least most of a high school education, Frederick Henry Royce is quite the exception to the rule. Royce only had a single year of formal elementary education during his lifetime. Royce accumulated vast amounts of money and success with the Rolls-Royce car and other mechanical products.
Ingvar Kamprad is known as the founder of IKEA and one of the 11 wealthiest people in the world. Kamprad started IKEA when he was 17 years old with a reward for good school grades from his father.
Phillip Ruffin is an American businessman, who has ties in casinos, greyhound racing, oil, and real estate. He's most notably known for selling his Las Vegas casino New Frontier for $1.2 billion in 2007. He also made headlines for marrying 2004 Miss Ukraine Oleksandra Nikolayenko. (Ruffin was 72 years old when they married in 2008; Noklayenko was 26.) While he had enrolled in both Wichita State and Washburn University, Ruffin never graduated with a degree. He was famously quoted as saying "you get the most experience from the business of life."
John Mackey is the founder of Whole Foods, a highly-successful retailer of natural and organic foods. Mackey has an interesting past when it comes to higher education: He dropped out of college twice and never took a business course. Mackey eventually received an honorary degree from Bentley College in 2008.
Rachel Ray is one of the most popular cooking show stars in television and a food industry entrepreneur. Not only did Ray never finish college, she had no formal culinary arts training, either. Instead, Ray worked extensively in the food industry as a restaurant and pub manager, a buyer for a gourmet market, and taught cooking classes for beginners. Today, the Rachel Ray empire includes three cooking show segments, best-selling cookbooks, and a syndicated talk show.
Bill Gates is easily one of the most famous college dropouts of all time. While enrolled at Harvard, Gates actually had a scientific paper published, and one of his sorting algorithms was developed as a solution to a professor's unsolved problem. The algorithm remained the fastest solution for 30 years. Gates dropped out of college in 1975 (with the blessing from his parents), and started Microsoft.
Walt Disney is one of the most influential entertainers of the 20th century. Disney did just about everything under the sun inside the entertainment industry. He was a film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entertainer, and eventually an international icon. He was also one of the most prolific motion-picture producers in the world, and a pioneer in theme park design. Disney did all of these things without earning a college or high school diploma. Today, the Walt Disney Company boasts annual revenues of about $35 billion.
Michael Dell is the founder of Dell, Inc. and one of the richest men in the world. Michael started the computer company in his dorm room as a pre-med student at the University of Texas and eventually dropped out at the age of 19. His company is currently the most profitable PC maker in the world, and his personal wealth is estimated somewhere around $19 billion. In 2006, Dell gave $50 million to his alma matter to build three research centers.
|
<urn:uuid:6abc491b-930f-4fd8-b9e2-5f58c97cae73>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.wisebread.com/small-business/12-business-founders-who-succeeded-without-a-college-degree
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.982111
| 1,314
| 2.125
| 2
|
The idea that it is even possibly to censor the Internet is hilarious. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of computers can easily bypass filters.
Last edited by Aspiringlawstudent; 04-05-2012 at 16:40.
Will agree to disagree that porn is a part of growing up as we have different ideas of what growing up constitutes.
(Original post by TheCaledonian)
Pornography is a part of growing up but more importantly it is extremely culturally importance as since it's introduction society has become much more sexually permissive, which (I would argue) has accounted for greater self esteem and less people suffering from depression during puberty because they didn't understand what was happening and no one discussed it (in the Victorian era many young girls that either A didn't have an older female to talk to or B were too embarrassed/ashamed to talk to them about it committed suicide).
It can be argued that society is now too sexually permissive however surely that's better than being too sexually repressed because it's the sexually repressed that do the crazy **** and snap one day and when they snap it's usually in the form of rape.
One last point the parents that don't talk to their children to tell them that too much porn can be dangerous are also the parents that don't tell their children about the things that they will learn from pornography about how everything works and are pushing for this ban
Think what it comes down to is parents being responsible and teaching their kids how to be responsible at the same time, tougher task for some than others as some parents aren't exactly responsible, and very complex to get everyone on board, only way to do it would be to get some kind of sex ed (not government run as they are all bent and daft as ****, also there is no room for political correctness when explaining such things, put the wee wee in the nunny lol) at a certain age which is compulsory no matter what the parents beliefs/religion(because no matter what the religion they all be having sexy time other than nuns and monks and even then some of these deviate from their chosen path).
The ban won't happen anyway, or the security will be something like "you need to give your date of birth before you can enter this site".
Each to their own but lads under 16 should not be viewing porn as I don't believe their mind is ready for what they might see, plus some are more susceptible to addiction than others, and like you say it comes down to a parent saying what you view online is not necessarily a good thing to try on a girl yadayadayada.
Not too sure on history so will take your word for it.
I agree with your last point.
Last edited by SubAtomic; 04-05-2012 at 17:15.
Because, unlike schools, it costs parents almost nothing to install keylogging software/internet filters at their end and the state very generously provides child benefit so that parents can cover these costs. Putting the filters at the ISP end would not make them that much more difficult to overcome. What it would do is force adults who have chosen not to have children yet to pay yet another childcare cost.
(Original post by dreiviergrenadier)
All of these 'oh but the parents!' comments are really disingenuous. There are plenty of cases where parents have responsibilities for their children, but where the state also has responsibilities. It is the responsibility of parents to educate and provide for their children, ut that doesn't stop the state from providing schools or benefits (and nor should it). There is no reason why the two duties cannot co-exist - so if there is good reason to stop children viewing pornography, the state can step in to assist parents.
Last edited by electriic_ink; 04-05-2012 at 17:51.
|
<urn:uuid:cae2d28d-7319-4506-a710-becb318d92f5>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1989901&page=3&page=3
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.981038
| 789
| 1.773438
| 2
|
In a mixed economy, regulations always grow
In my last post, I shared an observation that government regulation always seems to grow in scope and, once established, almost never shrinks. How does that pattern become established? There are many factors that lead to the entrenchment of regulatory power and it’s ever-growing reach. Over the next few posts, I’ll discuss some of these underlying causes.
Ayn Rand viewed the pattern of increasing regulation as inevitable in the kind of political system that we have, which she described as a “mixed economy.” Because we have a combination of freedoms in the form of individual rights and controls in the form of ad-hoc, piecemeal regulations curtailing those rights, Rand viewed our system as inherently unstable. In her words:
“A mixed economy has no principles to define its policies, its goals, its laws—no principles to limit the power of its government. The only principle of a mixed economy—which, necessarily has to go unnamed and unacknowledged—is that no one’s interests are safe, everyone’s interests are on the public auction block, and anything goes for anyone who can get away with it. Such a system—or, more precisely, anti-system—breaks up a country into an ever-growing number of enemy camps, into economic groups fighting one another for self preservation in an indeterminate mixture of defense and offense, as the nature of such a jungle demands. While politically a mixed economy preserves the semblance of law and order, economically it is the equivalent of the chaos that had ruled China for centuries: a chaos or robber gangs looting –and draining the productive elements of the country.”
When a question arises about whether stem cell research of the kind that Regenerative Sciences is doing should be regulated, think about all of the lobbying groups with their varying agendas and motivations that claim to have a stake in what the outcome is. Doctors, private corporations, researchers, patients, relatives of patients, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, religious opponents of scientific research, universities, political parties, and so on. Each group will immediately feel the urgent need to clamor for regulations and actions that will protect what they claim are the interests of some deserving group. Each group claims to have its own need for protection or concessions–which entail new restrictions or controls on others. No wonder lobbying is a multi-billion dollar industry! No wonder massive institutions like the FDA have expanded, in the face of these alleged high-priority claims! The upshot is a continual erosion of freedom in favor of regulation.
In all of this clamoring, legitimate questions get lost. Questions such as whether there is really a safety threat presented by these particular stem cell technologies (unclear), whether existing laws around fraud and product liability are already sufficient to protect patients’ rights (they are), whether there might be private groups or companies that can offer an independent evaluation of stem cell technology providers (try Googling it).
Instead, in a mixed economy, the pattern is that every problem looks like a nail and the hammer is always to increase regulation.
But surely there’s a limit to all the claims that might be raised and therefore some limit to the growth of regulation? Stay tuned for my next installment.
|
<urn:uuid:44af0d12-b752-4756-b4ee-f2de8be4028b>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://blog.aynrandcenter.org/in-a-mixed-economy-regulations-always-grow/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948225
| 674
| 1.554688
| 2
|
Date: August 2008
Creator: Samphansakul, Attaphorn
Description: This thesis examines why some governments and rebel organizations but not others recruit children to be child soldiers. The theory posits that if a country fights in a civil war of long duration, armed groups are more likely to recruit children as soldiers. I find that the probability of child soldier recruitment increases when a country experiences following conditions: a longer duration of civil war, a large proportion of battle deaths, a large number of refugees, a high infant mortality rate, and the presence of alluvial diamonds. An increase in education expenditures and civil liberties would decrease the probability of child soldier recruitments.
Contributing Partner: UNT Libraries
|
<urn:uuid:306f6733-5d28-411e-b00a-31830418ab43>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://digital.library.unt.edu/search/?q=%22War%20--%20History%20--%2021st%20century.%22&t=str_subject
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.912581
| 145
| 2.90625
| 3
|
We have seen it played in tournaments even in some people’s backyards.
But while the game of chess is enjoyed by some as a past time, now chess activists
want to use it as an educational tool to help develop the minds of primary school
students. According to the co-founder of the Belize National Youth Chess Foundation
Ian Anderson, the game develops learning capabilities. And now they’re
trying to make chess a part of the school’s curriculum. The idea will
be volleyed around this weekend during the first Belize national education symposium.
Ian Anderson, Co-Chair
“We thought that if we could encourage, maybe 20 or 30 teams from
the country with 200 to 250 kids, primary school children to be playing when
in actual fact we have over 50 teams that are now organized and playing chess
with over 500 primary students from across the country, from the northern border
right down to the southern villages in Toledo playing chess and when we exercise
the brain in that way, a lot of wonderful things happen. Some of those things are critical thinking, the brain starts developing the ability to do critical
thinking and logical thinking and memory development because they constantly
have to think what might happen and what’s already happened in the past,
they are developing memory. We’re not playing chess for the sake of chess
but to develop our young primary students’ minds in a way to think more
positively than they’ve been taught to in the past.
Chess in Belize program, introducing it into the primary school curriculum
is probably one of very few options that the education system has in Belize
to take our education one step further and to solve a lot of the problems we
have in the Belize educational system now is to use chess as an educational
tool and introducing it to our primary schools as an educational tool to assist
them in the development of our young children’s minds.”
The Belize national educators symposium is scheduled for Saturday morning
at the George Price Centre in Belmopan. You must pre register to attend. If
you would like to participate you can do so by calling 822–2800. Among
the special invited guests to the symposium are international chess player and
coach, Jennifer Shahade and Jean Hoffman.
|
<urn:uuid:1348ac20-a7f0-4830-97c9-c8a7a3e76255>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://7newsbelize.com/sstory.php?nid=11699
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.956372
| 490
| 2.84375
| 3
|
Some interesting blog posts and research have emerged recently shedding light on how teenagers are using social media tools.
In a blog post Josh Miller wrote about his 15 year old sister’s attitude to social tools and how her use of them differed from his own and that of his peers. He noted that she described Tumblr simply as a photo service, rather than a blogging tool. She and her friends were purely consumers of information on the tool, rather than publishers or creators. She also confirmed the view that has been discussed here previously – namely that (generally speaking) Twitter simply does not appeal to this age group.
Inspired by Miller’s post, others joined in the debate. Gary Tan sought to find more hard data. He surveyed just over 1000 young people in two age groups (13-18 and 19-25) to find out more about which services young people were using regularly. Tumblr came top of the tools for both age groups (61% of 13-18 year olds; 57% in the older group). Facebook came second, followed by Twitter. Instagram and Snapchat also had significant usage figures, in particular with the younger age group.
Another blogger also noted the popularity of Snapchat and Instagram with their teenaged children and friends and reports how they are using Google+ hangouts to – well – hangout.
Finally, Justin Hoenke, a teen librarian working in Portland, ME responded, reporting on how 12-19 year olds are using the library space and technology within it. Interestingly he reported an ongoing interest in Facebook amongst his teens. When it comes to providing Facebook support he is often helping teens regain access to their accounts, mostly because they have forgotten their email account passwords (due to infrequent use). He also differed from other bloggers, noting that he has seen none of his teens using either Instagram or Snapchat.
His other observations include:
Music and entertainment
- YouTube is an entertainment platform for teens, providing access to free music, TV shows and more.
- They use YouTube as their main source of entertainment and music (unless they have iTunes vouchers, in which case they often need help to redeem them). They are not using music streaming services such as Spotify or Pandora.
- Hoenke agrees that when teens do use Tumblr they do not use it as a blogging tool. He has set up a teen-themed Tumblr for his library.
- If they do use Twitter, they are doing it differently to follow celebrities or for ‘rambling’
|
<urn:uuid:6cf5d1ea-3311-4dbe-bfc7-5d5b7cf1994e>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.infotodayeurope.com/2013/01/23/teen-technology-trends/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.976917
| 507
| 2.625
| 3
|
Find benefits in automating boiler systems
Dynamic models unravel potential problems in high-pressure steam production and consumption
Steam-load shedding is a series of automated actions implemented to prevent or to minimize the impact to a refinery or petrochemical complex due to a shortage of steam supply shortage or in drop steam-system pressure. Steam load is eliminated by shutting down or shedding expendable steam users. Without an appropriate strategy, safety systems will engage possibly shutting down critical equipment to prevent catastrophic consequences, and production will be lost. It is important to note that steam load shedding is done to improve the reliability of the steam system; it is not a safety system. Steam load shedding will replace or eliminate the need for a properly designed emergency shutdown system.
To continue reading please, log in to hydrocarbonprocessing.com.
Subscribe now for premium access and unlimited access to the site, including archived articles and the process handbooks. Start a free trial to gain access to articles from the current issue of Hydrocarbon Processing.
Already have an account?
Subscribe today and gain unlimited and immediate access to the site. Plus, you'll receive the next 12 issues of the magazine in your choice of print or digital format. Start your subscription today.
Start a free trial and gain immediate access to the current issue of the magazine plus additional, select content.
30 Day Trial
|
<urn:uuid:9a9f30a7-acb5-468a-9cd3-c867cbc3d8b8>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/IssueArticle/2912965/Archive/Find-benefits-in-automating-boiler-systems.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.902541
| 273
| 3.171875
| 3
|
POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Oct 03, 2010
LAST UPDATED: 10:28 p.m. HST, Oct 21, 2010
Republican James "Duke" Aiona said if he wins the gubernatorial election, he will propose a constitutional amendment in 2012 to ask voters whether marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman.
Neil Abercrombie, the Democratic candidate, said if he becomes governor, he will sign a civil unions bill into law if passed again by the state Legislature, but believes the state should not take up the issue of same-sex marriage.
The divide over civil unions is among the widest between the two major candidates for governor, and their views provide some insight about how they would handle emotion-laden social policy questions if elected.
Through the past decade, civil unions and physician-assisted suicide have been the two main social policy issues to come before the Legislature. A civil unions bill passed the Legislature this year but was vetoed by Gov. Linda Lingle. A physician-assisted suicide bill cleared the state House but failed in the state Senate on the last day of the 2002 session. The last debate by lawmakers on assisted suicide was in 2007.
Aiona equates civil unions with same-sex marriage. He does not consider marriage a civil right, so he is comfortable putting the question on the ballot.
He says the state could expand a reciprocal beneficiaries law to address any inequality for same-sex couples.
SOCIAL POLICYFormer U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie and Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona hold sharply different views on civil unions but agree that the state Legislature should not take up physician-assisted suicide. Civil unions and physician-assisted suicide have been the two main social policy issues to come before the Legislature in the past decade.
» Promises to sign a civil unions bill into law if passed again by the state Legislature.
» Vows to veto a civil unions bill if passed again by the state Legislature.
"We have reciprocal beneficiaries in the law right now, and we can use that provision -- that piece of the law -- if they (civil union advocates) have any issues on civil rights," he said.
Abercrombie sees civil unions as separate from same-sex marriage.
"It's a civil rights bill that affected everybody equally regardless of their gender, regardless of their sexual orientation. It was a bill about civil rights and responsibilities under the Constitution, and did not constitute -- in my judgment -- anything approaching a revision or recalculation or redefinition of marriage," he said of the bill, which would have applied to both same-sex and heterosexual couples.
Abercrombie supported a constitutional amendment voters approved in 1998 that gave the Legislature the power to reserve marriage for a man and a woman because he thought lawmakers should have that responsibility. He said he does not think the state should reopen the debate on same-sex marriage, an issue that may ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The former congressman said a debate on same-sex marriage would be needlessly divisive and counterproductive. He said his views are that people should be entitled "to make any arrangement they want with their lives."
While they hold different views on civil unions, neither candidate wants the Legislature to take up physician-assisted suicide.
Lt. Gov. Aiona, a Catholic, said he has seen several family members -- including his late mother-in-law -- struggle with debilitating illness and understands the emotions involved in end-of-life decisions. But he said physician-assisted suicide does not preserve the sanctity of life.
"It cuts across not only just basic values that we have and morals, but it's also, in regards to my religion -- the sanctity of life is foremost," he said.
Abercrombie said physician-assisted suicide, like same-sex marriage, would be too divisive an issue. He said the elderly population is growing as people live longer, so policymakers should focus on hospice and palliative care.
"We need to be supportive of families and physicians and competent medical personnel being able to make decisions ahead of time with regard to the end of life," he said.
Abercrombie, who said he was confirmed as an Episcopalian, said he has never felt that it was important to have an institutional foundation to religion. But he said there is a spiritual element -- a sense of humanity -- to his approach to social policy.
"I hope that such spiritual reflection, as I've engaged in in my life, if it's taught me anything, it's taught me to be very wary of judging others too harshly and judging myself too easily," he said. "I'm much less inclined to give myself good marks."
House Majority Leader Blake Oshiro (D, Aiea-Halawa Valley-Aiea Heights) said that if re-elected he will introduce civil unions and physician-assisted suicide bills next session.
"I think it's still something that deserves public discussion and debate," Oshiro said.
Lawmakers would likely move a civil unions bill with a majority if Abercrombie is governor, since he says he would sign it into law, but would likely want a two-thirds' vote necessary to override a veto under Aiona. The House fell short of a veto-proof vote this year.
Donald Bentz, the treasurer of Equality Hawaii, said the debates at the Legislature during the past two sessions have helped advocates make the argument that civil unions are a civil rights issue.
"It has opened the door for a lot of education," he said.
Allen Cardines Jr., a pastor at Hope Chapel Nanakuli and the executive director of the Hawaii Family Forum, said activists will continue to oppose civil unions and physician-assisted suicide.
"We believe that life is precious from conception to natural death," he said.
|
<urn:uuid:2e0b1b93-54d2-46ba-a859-8f03fcd9ce0b>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/20101003_Candidates_for_governor_in_conflict_on_civil_unions_other_social_issues.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.970404
| 1,223
| 1.664063
| 2
|
Friday night in Copenhagen for everyone who had come for the climate talks – whether you had come to participate in the talks, to host an ancillary event to have your voice heard, or to publicly demonstrate against the process perceived by many as unfair and corrupt – was surreal.
At the vast Bella centre where the talks were held, sleep-deprived, jargon-fatigued, confused, and frequently demoralized politicians and reporters slogged late into the morning hours to forge a piece of paper that from the start had been labelled both as humanity’s last chance to save itself and a political sham. Working so hard on something potentially so meaningless must have been a strange experience.
For me the most surreal, unforgettable moment came not when the accord was signed, but when it wasn’t. I didn’t learn something eye-opening about climate change or about global politics, but about the most powerful news organization in the world and their endorsement of the political equivalent of a napkin to the entire world.
Sitting at the internet-equipped press table at the alternate Klimaforum09, I was thrashing out a piece on the tar sands while a gypsy folk band played in the main hall and people danced and drank the last night of the fortnight away.
Grumpy, tired, and focusing on an issue that can easily leave you feeling overwhelmed and depressed, I tried to shut out the sounds of the party. Its very existence utterly baffled me: what is there to celebrate? The deal hasn’t been signed, and even if it had, it is highly unlikely to satisfy anyone serious about tackling climate change in a socially just way. The juxtaposition between the gloomy news threads reporting continual deadlock at the Bella, the devastating images of the tar sands on my computer screen, and the uproarious music and cheers from downstairs was truly surreal.
My gloom was broken suddenly by shouting and cheers from a group of American members of NGOs sitting next to me: 'There it is, there it is!'
'The deal – they signed the deal. This is fantastic, just fantastic Check out the New York Times.'
There it was, a New York Times piece: 'President Obama announced here on Friday night that five major nations, including the United States, had together forged a climate deal.'
It seemed utterly improbable. How could something have been signed this early? Sceptical, I checked the news sites of several other main news organizations. Nothing. No pieces criticizing the 'deal', examining it – or even reporting its existence.
'It’s not perfect, but he did it, Obama broke the deadlock,' said one of the Americans, smiling broadly, and cheerfully scrolling through the piece. 'We did it! This is so much better than I had hoped for. Just shows what perseverance can come to.' Two others high-fived.
As the deal was not the concern of the article I needed to finish, I decided to focus on my own work; I skimmed the piece, but kept several other mainstream news sites open and waited for their coverage. Curiously, nothing appeared on any of the websites I trust – most notably the Guardian’s - by the time I shut off my computer several hours later.
Published the next day, The Guardian’s first piece on the accord makes for an interesting comparison: 'Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure' reads the headline.
Describing the 'deal' that prompted such elation in my American neighbours the previous evening, The Guardian notes that the 'weak outline of a global agreement' was only signed by five countries, would continue to be scrutinized and debated through the night, and 'it was unclear whether it would be adopted by all 192 countries in the full plenary session.'
The final piece describing the accord in The Guardian – published a day later after more details (meagre as they were) had been worked out and more countries (few as there were) had signed – is headlined: 'Copenhagen closes with weak deal that poor threaten to reject.'
The first sentence – the most important sentence in any piece, and the only one that very many readers will bother to read – from the main article in the Times of London, is markedly unoptimistic in comparison to the New York Times: 'The United Nations climate change summit ended last night without setting any emission reduction targets.'
So what had happened? Why the publication in the New York Times so many hours before any other major news outlet – and why the optimism?
In short: negotiations were deadlocked. Obama came to the conference on the last day and selected four key countries – China, India, Brazil, and South Africa – for a conference. They agreed to a preliminary accord that featured no emission reduction targets, no specific details on finance, but merely a simple recognition of the fact that global temperature rise needs to be kept to 2C.
This 'deal' was the political equivalent of a napkin. The napkin would then need to be debated, negotiated and signed by 190 other nations, and could change throughout.
Obama’s media team then held a press conference about this napkin, which the New York Times quickly noted would still be subject to scrutiny by the rest of the UN, but 'might not need ratification by the entire conference.'
Analyses of the final 'Copenhagen Accord' in The Guardian, the New York Times, and elsewhere all note that the treaty is non-legally binding, sets no specific emission reduction targets or timelines, is shady at best on financial details of transfer of technology and funds to developing countries, and dropped many of the most important clauses necessary to avoid 'runaway' climate change, such as an 80 per cent overall drop in emissions by 2050. There is little reason to describe the conference and its conclusions as a success, and a thorough diary and analysis of COP15 in this publication as 'appalling - not worth the paper it was hastily photocopied on.'
What I found fascinating from my last night in Copenhagen was not the length of the talks, nor the 'weak' and 'unfair' nature of the 'accord.' It was that the most powerful and influential news organization in the world, in the race to be the first past the gate to publish (an unfortunate by-product of the transition to online publishing), reported on a napkin deemed by others to be too premature to be worth reporting.
And that they did so based first and foremost on a press conference held by the White House, rather than waiting to see how the rest of the world would respond.
And that this article – by the most powerful news organization in the world – conveyed an overriding sense of achievement, optimism, and American leadership. A typical reader, without the time or desire to read through an entire piece, could easily come away with the general impression that the deal was signed, that America had brokered it, and that it had been a success.
Granted, those sitting near me – and around the world, reading the most powerful news organization in the world – who were most excited by the initial accord may have waned in their enthusiasm over the coming days as the analyses showed the weakness of this document. But only those interested in taking the time to read through the sticky, mathematical and legal details.
But the fast and Whitehouse-friendly publication is interesting indeed. And it reminds me of other fast and Whitehouse-friendly publications: the premature assertion of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
I’m definitely not an a fan or advocate of conspiracy theories – I’m definitely not implying deliberate collusion or an attempt at confusion.
But I do find this interesting.
|
<urn:uuid:41d3ef28-9825-40ec-a1a1-986564b481ff>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://newint.org/blog/editors/2009/12/23/much-ado-about/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.964469
| 1,582
| 1.5625
| 2
|
Born in Finland in 1910, Saarinen emigrated with his family to the States in 1923. The family settled in Michigan, where his father, Eliel, also a well-known architect, opened his own firm and taught at Cranbrook Academy. Saarinen went to to school at Cranbrook, where he met Charles Eames and Florence Knoll. After graduation, he studied sculpture in France, then returned to the States to study architecture at Yale. A scholarship allowed him to tour Europe before he came back to Michigan to work at his father's architectural firm; he also signed on to teach at Cranbrook.
His old friend Eames suggested they work together. Their collaboration produced a series of furniture in molded plywood which they submitted to The Museum of Modern Art's "Organic Design In Home Furnishings" competition in 1940, garnering first prize. From there, Saarinen went on to design furniture for Florence Knoll's new company including the Grasshopper chair (the red chair, above), the Womb chair (above, the architect demonstrates how comfortable it is) and its matching ottoman, the Pedestal collection (which includes that table) and its accompanying Tulip chair.
But furniture design was only one note in Saarinen's design arsenal. While working for Knoll, he'd continued to work at his father's architectural firm. His first high profile solo architectural design was the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, Missouri. He won the commission after a fierce competition which drew architects from all over the country, including his father. In fact, due to the similarity of their names, the award was originally sent to Eliel and not Eero! Two of his other projects, the Dulles Airport and the majestic TWA terminal at JFK in New York (both pictured above), evoke the beauty of flight in their swooping lines.
But it's only since his death in 1951 that Saarinen's reputation has really soared. The attitude that alienated him from his Modernist peers, whose vision was considerably less playful, fits in perfectly with the current vision of modern which balances the clean lined with the sexy, the organic and the curvaceous. Actually, Saarinen considered himself more of a Structural Expressionist, believing that we "must have an emotional reason as well as a logical end for everything we do" and he worked diligently to sublimate his desire to express himself creatively to the needs of the job at hand. But that didn't mean he didn't have strong opinions. The Saarinen table's design grew out of his dissatisfaction with “ugly, confusing, unrestful world resulting from the slum of legs underneath typical chairs and tables." The curving organic design of the base was inspired by a drop of "high viscosity liquid".
images: Image of Saarinen curled up in his Womb Chair, photo by Arnold Newman; Dulles Airport, TWA Terminal, Grasshopper Chair via Knoll
|
<urn:uuid:93ce7970-2eae-4fd9-9099-38b713e03c3e>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/eero-saarinen-148247?img_idx=1
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.98179
| 609
| 1.601563
| 2
|
First, most decisions don’t come with a finite set of nicely lined up choices. For our biggest decisions in life—finding a mate, choosing a career, and so on—it’s often hard to know exactly how many options are at our disposal. In addition, we often have limited information about how the various choices we can identify will actually affect our happiness. For all these reasons, real decision making usually fails to live up to economists’ lofty standards. Given the difficulty of maximizing payoffs, it’s no surprise that we make tons of bad mistakes all the time. What is surprising, is that we don’t just make random mistakes, we seem to make systematic mistakes. We don’t just experience a catastrophic cognitive meltdown when facing hard choices; we instead systematically switch on a set of simple (though mostly irrational) strategies to weigh those choices.
To witness one of your own irrational strategies in action, consider the following scenario: Imagine that you are an economic adviser to the president of the United States. Your goal is to choose a course of action that will reduce the rate of housing foreclosures for the 3 million home owners currently in danger. Two plans are on the table. If Plan A is implemented, the government will be able to save 1 million homes. If Plan B is implemented, there’s a one-in-three chance that the government will be able to save 3 million homes and a two-in-three chance that no homes will be saved. What’s your advice?
You probably suggested that the president go with Plan A. Any plan guaranteeing that at least some people will keep their homes seems like the better option. Fair enough. But what if the options are slightly different? Imagine a choice between two new plans, C and D. If Plan C is implemented, 2 million people will lose their homes for sure. If Plan D is adopted, there’s a two-in-three chance that 3 million people will lose their homes and a one-in-three chance that no one will lose his home. Here you might advise the president to go with Plan D. It’s a riskier option, but it also offers the possibility that no homes will be lost. When the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky tested undergraduates using similar scenarios, most of their subjects showed the same pattern: they preferred Plan A to Plan B and Plan D to Plan C.1 The problem with this pattern of decision making is that the two sets of plans are identical. Plans A and C are statistically indistinguishable (since the 3 million homes are at stake in all scenarios, a result in which 1 million people keep their homes is identical to a result in which 2 million people lose theirs). The same is true of Plans B and D. As Kahneman and Tversky observed, small changes in the wording of a problem have a big effect on our preferences. When plans are presented in terms of the number of houses, lives, or dollars saved, people tend to play it safe, but when plans get us thinking in terms of houses, lives, or dollars lost, we switch to riskier tactics.
Why does a simple change in wording so critically influence our decisions? Kahneman and Tversky discovered that the culprits are two psychological biases: reference dependence and loss aversion. The first of these is our tendency to see things not in absolute terms but relative to some status quo. Most people think about their decisions not in terms of their overall happiness or total net worth but as gains or losses relative to some reference point, usually the here and now. A $20 parking ticket won’t have a significant effect on our life savings, but it’s still a negative change from our current wealth level, and thus we tend to find the event salient. The parking-ticket example also highlights the second psychological bias at work: loss aversion. We generally avoid situations in which we could incur a loss. Indeed, Kahneman and Tversky’s studies have shown that we work twice as hard to prevent being in the red as we do to seek out opportunities to land in the black.
Reference dependence and loss aversion appear to wreak havoc in a number of real-world situations. Investors tend to view the value of a stock not in absolute terms but relative to a salient reference point: what they paid when they bought it. Averse to the loss of selling below the purchase price, many investors irrationally hold on to stocks while they’re dropping in value.2 These biases also cause problems in the housing market; people are averse to selling for less than what they paid, which has led some families to decline such offers.3 Indeed, these biases are so widespread that they affect the scores of professional golfers. A golfer’s only true measure of success is his or her final score, but each hole has a salient reference point: par. The economists Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitzer analyzed more than 1.6 million PGA tour putts to determine whether players tended to perform differently when putting for birdie and eagle (i.e., strokes that put them under par) than when faced with comparable putts for par and bogey (i.e., strokes that could put them over par). Consistent with loss aversion, players were more accurate when putting for par and bogey, meticulous in their attempt to minimize the “loss” of going one or two strokes over par. Players putting for birdie or eagle, in contrast, were about 2 percent more likely to miss the hole. This small percentage of errors adds up fast—just ask Tiger Woods. Tiger’s loss aversion statistic was one of the highest on the tour; that is, he was 3.6 percent more likely to miss his birdie putts than his par putts. Indeed, this bias may have been what cost him the 2009 Barclays on the eighteenth hole.4
Why do house sellers, professional golfers, experienced investors, and the rest of us succumb to strategies that make us systematically go wrong? A few years ago, my Yale colleagues Venkat Lakshminarayanan and Keith Chen and I decided to try to get to the bottom of this question. After reviewing examples in which people succumb to these biases time and again, we started thinking that reference dependence and loss aversion might be more fundamental than economists had previously thought. This led us to a somewhat radical idea: perhaps these biases are a natural part of the way we view our choices, a result of a long evolutionary legacy. If so, we hypothesized, humans might not be the only species to use these poor decision-making strategies. Rather than investigating the biases of human subjects, we decided to test whether similar errors showed up in the decision making of one of our primate relatives: the capuchin monkey, whose last common ancestor with humans lived around 35 million years ago.
Our question was whether capuchins would show humanlike patterns of reference dependence and loss aversion, even though they lacked experience with the kinds of economic problems that typically lead human decision makers astray. Our first challenge was figuring out how to demonstrate loss aversion and reference dependence in monkeys. Capuchins aren’t all that good at investing in stocks or playing golf, so the way ahead was unclear. In the end, we decided to give the monkeys some money and see whether they could be taught to use it.5
The idea of teaching monkeys to use money might seem daunting, but the process took only a few months. We began by introducing them to a token economy. The capuchin “tokens” were coin-sized metal discs that could be traded with experimenters for food. Although the monkeys didn’t know what to do with the tokens at first, within weeks they were handing tokens to experimenters and holding out their hands for the food. We then allowed the capuchins to use the tokens in a real economy. Each monkey was given a wallet of tokens before entering a “market,” in which two “salesmen”—research assistants—offered it two different kinds of food at two different prices. The monkeys could spend their tokens to buy whichever treat they wanted. Like human shoppers, our monkeys quickly became skilled at maximizing their token value. They bought more food from experimenters who gave them a better deal. They bought more food during “sales,” when prices were cheaper. They carefully weighed the risks of dealing with unreliable salesmen who switched their behavior over time. Our monkeys’ performance so closely mirrored that of human consumers that the data fit perfectly with formal economic models of human market choice.
We were now ready to ask the real question of interest: Would monkeys’ market behavior be affected by loss aversion and reference dependence? To study this, we set up two situations: in both, the salesmen didn’t always hand over the number of apple pieces they had originally displayed—sometimes the monkeys got more pieces than they had been offered, sometimes fewer. We hypothesized that the monkeys might make their choices based not just on how many apple pieces they managed to get overall but also on how many they got relative to how many they originally saw displayed. In other words, we predicted that the monkeys would use the original offer as a reference point and, like professional golfers thinking about par or birdie, make their decision based on whether the payoff seemed like a loss or gain relative to that reference point.
First, each of the monkeys got to choose between dealing with Salesman A or Salesman B. Salesman A would always offer a monkey one piece of apple and, when the monkey made its payment of a token, add a second piece as a bonus. Salesman B was more of a risk. He also began by showing a monkey one piece of apple, but his apple payoff changed across trials: on some trials, after receiving the monkey’s token, he added a large bonus of two apple pieces, while on other trials he gave no bonus at all. Just like humans asked to choose between the government plans A and B, our monkeys bought more food from Salesman A than from Salesman B. Like people, they preferred to play it safe when dealing with bonuses.
We then introduced monkeys to two new salesmen, C and D, whose payoffs felt like losses. Salesman C always gave a small but consistent loss — he showed the monkeys three apple pieces but gave them only two in return for the token. Salesman D was riskier. He began by showing the monkeys three pieces and sometimes gave them all three but other times gave them only one. As predicted, our monkeys took greater risks when their token payments felt like losses; that is, they consistently preferred to trade with risky Salesman D over reliable (but shortchanging) Salesman C.
Overall, our monkeys behaved just like humans tested in Kahneman and Tversky’s scenarios: they thought about the market in terms of arbitrary reference points and responded to payoffs differently depending on whether the payoffs appeared to be gains or losses relative to those reference points. In this and other studies, monkeys seemed not to consider their choices in absolute terms. Moreover, they made decisions differently when dealing with losses than when dealing with gains. These findings suggest that the biases that human decision makers show may be far more fundamental than originally thought. The biased strategies that cost Tiger Woods millions of dollars each year may be at least 35 million years old.
The discovery that loss aversion and reference dependence may be deeply evolved psychological tendencies has important implications for our ability to overcome these biases. For years, economists have assumed that decision makers would stop using irrational strategies in the face of enough negative financial feedback. Unfortunately, there is growing evidence that people don’t drop these strategies as soon as they become costly. Pope and Schweitzer estimate that loss aversion causes even experienced professional golfers to lose more than a million dollars a year, yet nearly all golfers on the tour exhibit these biases. Similarly, investors tend to hold on to losing stocks even after suffering repeated losses because of doing so. Our capuchin findings suggest an answer to why these biases might be so hard to overcome: reference dependence and loss aversion may be as deeply ingrained as some of our other evolved cognitive tendencies. Just consider how difficult it is to switch off our natural fondness for cheesecake, our squeamishness about bugs, our disgust at a pile of feces. When natural selection builds in a strategy, it’s hard to get rid of. If reference dependence and loss aversion are phylogenetically ancient enough to be shared with capuchin monkeys—as our work suggests—it’s unlikely that the human species will overcome these tendencies anytime soon.
How, then, should we deal with the fact that our choices are at the mercy of deeply ingrained irrational strategies? One way, advocated by the behavioral economist Richard Thaler, is to harness these biases for our benefit.6 We may be at the mercy of reference dependence, but there’s lots of flexibility in what counts as a reference point. Using subtle changes in wording and framing, we can switch how we instinctively think about a problem and make the most rational option feel more intuitive. Thaler has used this idea to develop a better retirement savings plan, one that increases people’s savings contributions automatically after they’ve received a pay raise. By taking retirement contributions before people have a chance to adjust to their new paycheck’s reference point, Thaler’s plan avoids loss aversion and allows people to feel better about saving more.7 Similar reference-point changes have been used to increase other good behaviors. The psychologist Noah Goldstein observed that hotel guests are more likely to reuse bath towels when they are informed that most previous guests chose to do so. The actions of others provide a powerful reference point against which we strive to avoid seeming less environmentally correct.8
With newfound insights about the phylogenetic origins of our irrational decision-making strategies in place, social scientists are now poised to discover new ways we can harness our evolved biases to further modern decision-making agendas—such as making better financial choices and perhaps even increasing our happiness. Even professional golfers have made some headway in this regard. Reference dependence may have cost Tiger a win at the 2009 Barclays, but it also gave him a way to feel better about his poor performance. When interviewed about his score on the eighteenth, Tiger was quick to highlight an alternative reference point for the press: his final putt wasn’t the worst final putt in the tournament. “It’s frustrating when you misread a putt that bad,” he said. But one of the players he tied with “did the same thing. His putt broke more.” Changing your reference point may be an evolutionarily old strategy, but it’s also a smart one. And as any golfer can tell you, if you look carefully you can always find a worse putt.
1 D. Kahneman and A. Tversky, “The Framing of Decision and the Psychology of Choice,” Science 211 (1981), 453–58.
2 T. Odean, “Are Investors Reluctant to Realize Their Losses?,” Journal of Finance 5 (1998), 1775–98.
3 D. Genesove and C. Mayer, “Loss Aversion and Seller Behavior: Evidence from the Housing Market,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 116 (2001), 1233–60.
4 D. G. Pope and M. Schweitzer, “Is Tiger Woods Loss Averse? Persistent Bias in the Face of Experience, Competition, and High Stakes” (2009), http://ssrn.com/abstract=1419027.
5 M. K. Chen, V. Lakshminarayanan, and L. R. Santos, “The Evolu- tion of Our Preferences: Evidence from Capuchin Monkey Trading Behavior,” Journal of Political Economy 114 (2006), 517–37.
6 R. H. Thaler and C. R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions on Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008).
7 R. H. Thaler and S. Bernartzi, “Save More Tomorrow: Using Behavioral Economics to Increase Employee Saving,” Journal of Political Economy 112 (2004), S164–87. For other helpful suggestions about how to use your biases to your advantage, see Thaler’s blog, http://nudges.wordpress.com/
8 N. J. Goldstein, R. B. Cialdini, and V. Griskevicius, “A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Con- servation in Hotels,” Journal of Consumer Research 35 (2008), 472–82.
Edited by Max Brockman
JUST PUBLISHED — AVAILABLE IN BOOKSTORES AND ONLINE — ORDER NOW!
Advance Praise for Future Science:
"This remarkable collection of fluent and fascinating essays reminds me that there is almost nothing as spine-tinglingly exciting as glimpsing a new nugget of knowledge for the first time. These young scientists give us a treasure trove of precious new insights." — Matt Ridley, Author, The Rational Optimist
"I would have killed for books like this when I was a student!" — Brian Eno, Composer; Recording Artist; Producer: U2, Cold Play, Talking Heads, Paul Simon
"Future Science shares with the world a delightful secret that we academics have been keeping — that despite all the hysteria about how electronic media are dumbing down the next generation, a tidal wave of talent has been flooding into science, making their elders feel like the dumb ones..... It has a wealth of new and exciting ideas, and will help shake up our notions regarding the age, sex, color, and topic clichés of the current public perception of science." — Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor, Department of Psychology, Harvard; Author, The Language Instinct
Eighteen original essays by:
Kevin P. Hand: "On the Coming Age of Ocean Exploration" Felix Warneken: "Children's Helping Hands" William McEwan: "Molecular Cut and Paste" Anthony Aguirre: "Next Step Infinity" Daniela Kaufer and Darlene Francis: "Nurture, Nature, and the Stress That Is Life" Jon Kleinberg: "What Can Huge Data Sets Teach Us About Society and Ourselves?" Coren Apicella: "On the Universality of Attractiveness" Laurie R. Santos: "To Err Is Primate" Samuel M. McLure: "Our Brains Know Why We Do What We Do" Jennifer Jacquet: "Is Shame Necessary?" Kirsten Bomblies: "Plant Immunity in a Changing World" Asif A. Ghazanfar: "The Emergence of Human Audiovisual Communication" Naomi I. Eisenberger: "Why Rejection Hurts" Joshua Knobe: "Finding the Mind in the Body" Fiery Cushman: "Should the Law Depend on Luck?" Liane Young: "How We Read People's Moral Minds" Daniel Haun: "How Odd I Am!" Joan Y. Chiao: "Where Does Human Diversity Come From?"
|
<urn:uuid:4a1442b6-06d1-45a5-8444-c8fd4f8f6691>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.edge.org/conversation/to-err-is-primate
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.946047
| 4,004
| 3.171875
| 3
|
At 10:35 a.m. on Aug. 19, 2009, Joe Lindsay was pulling out onto Kenny Road in his Ohio State delivery truck when he was hit by a pickup truck. His seat belt came loose and Joe was thrown through the window onto the road. He was rushed to the Emergency Department, where they determined that he suffered spinal cord injuries C3-7. The next day Joe had neurosurgery at The Ohio State University Medical Center to repair his spine.
After about a month in the Medical Center, Joe was admitted to the Spinal Cord Injury Program in Dodd Hall with incomplete tetraplegia (weakness, spasticity and paralysis involving all four limbs). Joe chokes up when he talks about how Ohio State’s Rehabilitation Program has helped him recover. “Without the therapists at Dodd Hall, Morehouse and the NeuroRecovery Network Center, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today,” he says. “They care a lot about their patients.”
His therapists, in turn, give Joe credit for doing his part to progress well with his rehabilitation. “Joe had a great work ethic and ability to push himself,” explains occupational therapist, Amy Grace. “He also did the therapy exercises we gave him to work on at home,” she adds.
Learn more about Joe’s rehabilitation journey:
When I arrived at Dodd Hall … in September 2009, I could move my legs but couldn’t move my arms. During my two months of inpatient rehabilitation, I had between three-four hours of daily therapy (speech, physical and occupational). All of the therapists were fantastic. They were always right there beside me and helped keep me up and focused on getting better.
I was very motivated to do my therapy because I wanted to walk and be independent. I remember another man in therapy who told me a month ago he couldn’t move his legs. One month after rehabilitation, he said he was walking with a walker.
After my rehabilitation at Dodd Hall … I was able to walk with a platform walker but I was getting around mostly in a power wheelchair. I still needed assistance to eat and perform basic self care. My left arm recovered faster than my right, so I initially I used my left hand to do things, such as dial my cell phone, use a TV remote control and eat with adapted utensils. I still had limited range of arm motion, however, so I couldn’t lift the phone to my ear; I used a speaker phone.
I began the next phase of my rehabilitation … in January 2010 with outpatient physical and occupational therapy at Ohio State’s Martha Morehouse Medical Plaza. I had therapy two times a week primarily focused on strengthening my upper and lower body and core muscles and relearning skills. During PT, for example, we focused on things like balance and walking, and transfers from sitting to standing, as well as from wheelchair to bed.
Trips to the zoo, the grocery store and a restaurant … were among the activities we did in outpatient occupational therapy. These activities let me practice skills and helped build my confidence in becoming more independent. In addition to building physical endurance, you learn how to navigate places with a wheelchair. It shows you that you don’t have to wait until you’re completely mobile until you are able to get out in the community.
Key to helping me walk again … was my participation in the NeuroRecovery Network (NRN). I started the NRN in March 2010 for additional outpatient therapy at Dodd Hall. This program includes intense walking therapy in which you are in a harness over a treadmill supported by therapists. During that time, I progressed from walking with a walker to walking with someone beside me, then walking on my own. I “graduated” from the NRN in November 2010. I can walk unaided, although I have a brace on my lower right leg to keep my foot from dropping to decrease my risk of falling. I also still use a wheelchair for longer distances.
A high point in my rehabilitation was when … I was able to go to the 2010 Ohio State/Michigan game with my wife. Before my accident, we used to go to every home Ohio State game.
By the end of my outpatient therapy in November 2010 … I was able to do a lot of the things I enjoy doing, such as fixing things and going to the grocery. I can also help out with housework – cooking, vacuuming and doing the dishes. Although I am not 100 percent back to normal, I can do a lot more on my own now. I am really looking forward to driving, which I haven’t done since my accident. I was recommended for Ohio State’s Driver Evaluation Program but wanted to wait until the weather got nicer to start the program. I am still working on building strength and range of motion in my arms every day. If I keep working at it, I hope I will continue seeing improvement.
|
<urn:uuid:7bb07774-ea3b-4594-93c3-0ab4525dfc40>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://medicalcenter.osu.edu/rehabilitation/stories/Pages/Joe-Lindsay.aspx
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.980848
| 1,037
| 1.78125
| 2
|
Complying with the EPA's GHG reporting rule may cost some landfills nearly $5,000 this year, but if the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill becomes law, landfills may be able to earn money by providing landfill gas and selling emissions permits. Photo: © Michael Zysman | Dreamstime.com
With legislators, federal agencies, and industry debating how to limit further destruction of the earth's atmosphere, any and all related regulations are in a state of flux.
Except one: EPA's Mandatory Reporting of Greenhouse Gases (40 CFR 98) rule. The new requirement, which took effect Jan. 1, applies to just about every waste-to-energy (WTE) plant in the country — there are about 90 of them — and most landfills, even landfills that have been closed.
Although not paired with an emissions-reduction program, the results of the rule will provide the baseline from which future reduction legislation will be established. So what happens this year has far-reaching impact.
The rule requires large greenhouse-gas-producing facilities, such as municipal solid waste landfills, that produce more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent to report emissions annually. The first reporting date is March 31, 2011. Operations that fail to comply may face administrative, civil, and criminal penalties.
“Our biggest problem is how fast implementation came down,” says John Skinner, executive director and CEO of the more than 8,000-member-strong Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA). Although the proposed rule was published in April, facilities were reluctant to invest in monitoring equipment until after comments were submitted and requirements finalized. “The final text was supposed to be in place six months ago, but it was published in October — which gave us only 90 days to comply,” He says. “That's unbelievably difficult to do.”
To buy some time for facilities as they scramble to hire consultants and install equipment, the EPA's allowing managers to use their best available monitoring methods for the first quarter of the year. But if they won't be ready to follow all requirements by April 1, 2010, they must submit an extension request by Jan. 28.
“We estimate first-year compliance costs will be $4,876 per landfill, and subsequent-year costs to be $2,161,” says EPA Spokeswoman Cathy Milbourn. “These figures include initial planning; developing and implementing a QA/QC plan; record-keeping; calculation; operating and maintenance associated with gas collection monitoring systems and gas sampling programs; industrial management hours and administrative support; equipment associated with record-keeping; and annual costs for reporting.”
EPA doesn't have cost estimates for WTE projects, other than an annualized estimate ranging anywhere from $1,000 to $56,000/facility for stationary combustion sources. “Costs will depend on many factors, including the equipment already in place and the method used to monitor emissions,” says Milbourne.
Managers may be able to offset expenses, however, if another piece of legislation becomes law.
Sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D – Calif.) and Ed Markey (D – Mass.), the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454) requires energy suppliers to produce an increasing percentage (6% by 2012; 20% by 2020) from renewable resources, and establishes a greenhouse-gases cap-and-trade program. Regulated industries would have to reduce emissions to specified targets and acquire permits for emissions. If a utility doesn't have enough permits, it can buy them or borrow future credits and pay interest on them.
|
<urn:uuid:41719bd5-4ca7-431c-b11b-51e09f628702>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.pwmag.com/associations/caught-in-the-middle.aspx
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.963302
| 773
| 2.59375
| 3
|
Adam Smith’s outlook still inspires and informs modern sensibilities and argumentation. It is of interest beyond Smith aficionados whether a particular line of modern thought “fits” Smith. One important such dispute involves recent “left Smithian” writers who argue that he was more open to government intervention—especially on behalf of the poor—than had previously been believed. Perhaps the best short statement of this view is Emma Rothschild’s 1992 essay “Adam Smith and Conservative Economics.” Although insightful in many ways, this article seems to imply—in the historical context of the British grain supply crisis of 1795-96—that a minimum wage law is consistent with a Smithian worldview. Rothschild associates opposition to a minimum wage policy (as proposed in 1795), an opposition elaborated and defended by William Pitt, with “principles of political economy” and coldness toward the poor. Advocacy of the policy, led by Samuel Whitbread, marked, according to Rothschild, a warmth and compassion true to Smith but since forsaken by posterity. The tension Rothschild sees in the debate between these two men isn’t, however, found in Smith’s own writings or in the actual discussion Pitt and Whitbread held in Parliament. A closer look at this historical episode invites reconciliation between the ostensibly opposed strands of “warmth” and “principle” in Smith’s writing and in our own thought today.
|
<urn:uuid:516fd69c-2af3-4261-9788-fc7a3cb899ab>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://econjwatch.org/articles/adam-smith-and-liberal-economics-reading-the-minimum-wage-debate-of-1795-96?ref=section-archive
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.94876
| 300
| 2.609375
| 3
|
Amazing accomplishment: An Israeli
hockey team of children ages 11 to 13 took first place in an international tournament recently, beating 91 other teams – all without ever stepping on the ice prior to competition.
The kids, mostly from Bat Yam and Rishon Lezion, dreamed of practicing their hockey moves at a real hockey rink with real ice. Unfortunately the only hockey rink in the entire State of Israel is located up north in Metula, so the inventive team decided to play street hockey instead using rollerblades.
The team, consisting of 17 Israelis, recently competed in a Canadian tournament. They call themselves "The Bat Yam Club" despite the fact that the group members also come from Rishon Lezion as well as two other children from Ma'alot who regularly play ice hockey on real ice.
Many of the teams which took part in the Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament 2011 came from countries where ice hockey is very popular and played by tens of thousands of kids, including: Canada, the United States, Finland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and more.
Israel was considered to be an underdog in the competition due to the fact that Israeli kids, unlike most of the children participating, only practice their hockey moves on dry ground using rollerblades instead of hockey skates. The Israeli team gets to play at the ice rink in Metula only a few times a year.
The Israeli team was able to participate in the Quebec tournament thanks to a donation made by Jewish-Canadian millionaire Sidney Greenberg who paid for most of the expenses. The kids stayed with Canadian families. The families of the children only paid for plane tickets, costing each family about NIS 3,800 ($1,051) per ticket.
The State of Israel did not, of course, contribute a single cent.
"We had five tournament matches, including the final match, and we won them all. The tournament organizers couldn't believe these kids, who barely even know what real ice hockey looks like," said Aaron Aharonovich, chairman of the Rishon Lezion hockey club. Together with his Bat Yam counterpart Evgeny Gusin, the two produces and organized the Israeli delegation sent to the tournament.
If winning is not enough, exhibition matches were held after the official games and the Israeli team came out on top once more, beating two teams from Canada and France. They also tied with another Canadian team and only lost once – to Switzerland.
"Honestly I couldn't believe that these kids could play like that. There was lots of fighting spirit, lots of tactical discipline. We were definitely the talk of the day in the tournament: 'How could these Middle Eastern guys, most of whom had barely seen any snow in their lives, managed to beat the ice super-powers and take the trophy?'" added Aharonovich.
Team Captain Dani Bodnikov, 13, said: "It was an amazing experience to play in such a big tournament and see such high level hockey teams."
The outstanding player in the tournament, David Levin, 11.5, said: "It was an incredible feeling to score goals in such a big tournament and beat Canadian groups."
Liorr Shein, 13, added: "I couldn't believe we, who practice mostly on roller skates, would be able to bring home the gold medal."
|
<urn:uuid:4743b60b-e15a-46da-af3a-6ef57df202e6>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4038071,00.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.979288
| 682
| 2.109375
| 2
|
“God heard their moaning and God remembered His covenant
with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. “(Exodus 2:24)
Parashat Sh’mot is the first parasha (portion) in the Book of Sh’mot, known in English as Exodus (an abbreviation of the Greek, Exodus Aegyptous.) It establishes continuity with the end of the Book of Genesis by repeating the names of the Children of Israel who go down to Egypt. The parasha then succinctly describes their descent into oppression and slavery. This unexpected reversal of fortune drives the classic commentators to comb the text for explanations.
When Pharoah appeals to his people, saying,” …Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us.” (Exodus 1:9) he separates the nation into two groups: “them” versus “us.” Creating an “other” is usually a prelude to exclusion and discrimination. Ohr Ha-chaim (Chaim ben Moses ibn Attar (1696-1743); Moroccan Talmudist, Kabbalist, and commentator) adds a twist; he claims mimenu, (Hebrew for “for us”) can also mean “from us.” Not only are the Israelites separated out from the Egyptians; Phaorah incites hatred by accusing the Israelites of prospering “off the backs” of the Egyptians. This is why the parasha uses the present tense to describe the Israelite’s descent to Egypt (Exodus 1:1). Despite their living in Egypt for three generations already and despite their having contributed mightily to the country’s economy, Pharoah views them as strangers with no shared history or memory (Exodus Rabbah 1:4).
Sh’mot shows the question of “how long till you belong?” is a current issue with ancient roots. Every JCC has newcomers. But the JCC Movement’s ethos of welcome creates diverse and pluralistic communities based on combination, not separation.
Gut Shabbos/Shabbat Shalom
|
<urn:uuid:5f2240ab-ea57-44f0-ae1c-136c8313e9f1>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.jcca.org/parashat-shmot-exodus-11-61-2/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.919134
| 445
| 3.65625
| 4
|
There are many changes going on at YouTube and many of them aren't likely to improve user experience. Let's start with the search box that is displayed before playing a video in an embedded player. It was a great feature when it was displayed at the end of a video, but now you'll see it before playing the video and every time you pause it.
There's a parameter that can be added to your embedded videos if you don't want to display the search box: edit the code and add &showsearch=0 after http://www.youtube.com/v/VIDEOID&hl=en&fs=1.
YouTube updated the header and there's a new overlay that shows the duration of a video over the thumbnail. YouTube's blog says that the thumbnails will no longer be selected from the 25/50/75 points of the video's index, but they'll be selected algorithmically to minimize the impact of manipulative thumbnails.
Another change, which caused considerable uproar, is demoting videos that include suggestive content and profanity. "Videos that are considered sexually suggestive, or that contain profanity, will be algorithmically demoted on our 'Most Viewed,' 'Top Favorited,' and other browse pages. The classification of these types of videos is based on a number of factors, including video content and descriptions." Probably YouTube didn't like that the list of popular videos usually looked like this (NSFW). Users didn't understand YouTube's goal and they started to call the change "censorship".
"Algorithmically demoted... That's a nice way to make a video that is top favorited or most viewed not be in that category anymore for no apparent reasons. Angry parents and other narrow-minded people shouldn't get through with putting the pressure on youtube. Where's the freedom of saying or expressing what you want?," commented dirtbiker100890. "One of the main reasons I watch videos on youtube is because people have been able to say what ever they want, for the most part. If the youtube staff starts censoring everything then I won't have much of a reason to come here anymore," thinks GeneralCrazyIvan.
YouTube shouldn't demote a video because it includes suggestive content or profanity, but only if it uses misleading thumbnails or descriptions to artificially increase popularity. YouTube could include a preference that filters suggestive content and profanity, so the videos will be excluded from search results and the list of popular videos.
"Videos featuring sexually explicit content like real sex acts are not allowed. Other content like nudity and dramatized or implied sexual conduct may be considered sexually suggestive depending on whether or not it is intended or designed to arouse viewers," explains a help page.
From now on, videos that include suggestive content will be filtered from the lists of popular videos and they'll be age-restricted, so you'll have to confirm your age before viewing them.
Five Best Android Phones: 2013 Edition
3 hours ago
|
<urn:uuid:db34ef60-052e-4e97-b497-8f8d3d9c47ab>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/12/youtube-changes.html?showComment=1228387560000
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.944254
| 610
| 1.539063
| 2
|
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009
Contacts: HHS (202) 690-6343
DOL (202) 693-4676
DOC (202) 482-4883
DHS (202) 282-8010
Federal Guidelines Encourage Employers to Plan Now for Upcoming Influenza Season
Recommendations Range from Encouraging Hand Washing to Allowing Some Employees to Stay Home
Department of Commerce (DOC) Secretary Gary Locke, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today announced new guidance for businesses to plan for and respond to the upcoming flu season.
The guidance, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is designed to help employers prepare now for the impact that seasonal and 2009 H1N1 influenza could have this fall and winter on their employees and operations.
Employers' plans should address such points as encouraging employees with flu-like symptoms or illness to stay home, operating with reduced staffing, and possibly having employees who are at higher risk of serious medical complications from infection work from home, according to the CDC guidance.
It is not known whether the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus will cause more illness or more severe illness in the coming months, but the CDC recommends that everyone be prepared for influenza. Because seasonal and 2009 H1N1 influenza pose serious health threats, employers should work with employees to develop and implement plans that can reduce the spread of flu, and to encourage seasonal flu vaccination as well as H1N1 vaccination when that vaccine becomes available.
Secretary Locke suggested businesses set the right tone in the workplace. That means implementing common sense measures to reduce the risk of spreading the flu and encouraging workers who are sick to stay home.
"The President has mobilized the federal government to get America prepared," DOC Secretary Locke said. "But government can't do it alone. For this effort to be successful, we need the business community to do its part." Making the right decisions will not only improve public health, it also has the potential to protect economic productivity: Employees who are sick and stay home will not spread the flu in the workplace.
"This new guidance will help our private sector partners continue to prepare for the upcoming flu season to keep our economy functioning and our critical infrastructure secure," said DHS Secretary Napolitano. "Ensuring business continuity is important to our cooperative efforts to keep Americans safe."
There are many actions that can be taken to help reduce the spread of flu. The guidance notes the importance of using these actions, including regular and frequent hand washing and routine cleaning of commonly touched surfaces.
"One of the most important things that employers can do is to make sure their human resources and leave policies are flexible and follow public health guidance,'' said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. ``If employees are sick, they need to be encouraged to stay home. If people begin to experience flu-like symptoms at work, they should be sent home and possibly encouraged to seek medical treatment. ''
Employers should review sick leave policies and ensure employees understand them, according to the guidance. Employers should try to make sick leave policies flexible for workers who may have to stay home with ill family members or if a child's school is closed, the CDC says.
Employers should consider offering vaccine against seasonal flu, and encourage employees to be vaccinated against seasonal and H1N1 flu, the guidance says.
Employers also might cancel non-essential face-to-face meetings and travel, and space employees farther apart, the report says. And employees who are at higher risk for flu complications might be allowed to work from home or stay home if the flu is severe, it says.
"Keeping our nation's workers safe is a top priority," said Deputy Secretary of Labor Seth Harris, who participated in the announcement. "Faced with a renewed H1N1 challenge during the coming flu season, we are developing tools that will help ensure America's workers stay healthy and our businesses remain viable."
For more information, visit www.flu.gov.
|
<urn:uuid:924f6cb3-8728-4fb2-bfc8-5326be112140>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=NEWS_RELEASES&p_id=16233
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.953402
| 848
| 1.625
| 2
|
Clint Eastwood gave the Republicans some offbeat remarks to remember this year. Will the Democrats come up with any memorable lines? Here are some past Democratic convention speeches that live on:
1896: William Jennings Bryan snares the nomination with his plea to help indebted farmers by abandoning the gold standard: "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!"
1976: Barbara Jordan becomes the first black and first woman to deliver the party's keynote address: "My presence here is one additional bit of evidence that the American Dream need not be forever deferred."
1984: How to choose? Geraldine Ferraro is the first woman on a major party's ticket, but her speech is eclipsed in this Year of Orators. Mario Cuomo declares that President Ronald Reagan's "city on a hill" is more "A Tale of Two Cities" - one wealthy and one struggling. In another stem-winder, Jesse Jackson says "our nation is a rainbow" and insists, "Our time has come." Nominee Walter Mondale admits he'd raise taxes, words he rides down to defeat.
1988: Texan Ann Richards' skewering of Vice President George H.W. Bush causes a sensation: "Poor George. He can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."
2008: Many rank Barack Obama's 2004 keynote address as his finest speech ever; it made him a political star. But in 2008 he made history - a black man accepting the nomination for president on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Obama tells a football stadium of supporters: "This election has never been about me. It's been about you. ... At defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington."
- Connie Cass - Twitter http://www.Twitter.com/ConnieCass
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
|
<urn:uuid:afc5b96e-3b66-4c42-9524-ba40d27d6f7c>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.thv11.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=225079
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.947294
| 414
| 1.546875
| 2
|
Got an itch - scratch it. Great Grey Owl
Biography: Roberta Murray approaches photography much the same as the Pictorialist photographers of the late 19th century to tell a more personal, interpretative story based on her dreams and imagination. Murray combines traditional techniques, historical ideas and contemporary tools, using the camera more as a paintbrush than a mechanical device in creating her images.
"When I look through the viewfinder of a camera all I see is a small rectangular representation of reality. My view of the world becomes isolated and distorted. Sometimes out of the corner of my eye, reflected in the looking...
|
<urn:uuid:7a9b3a4c-2b9c-45e3-bba1-1c4110283b7c>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://thespiderawards.com/gallery6/gallery.php?g=n&x=p&cid=100&fid=65852
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.935394
| 125
| 2.078125
| 2
|
On January 11th, Google added Dartmouth’s campus to its Street View, an interactive feature of Google Maps introduced in 2007. Dartmouth is one of approximately 20 colleges and universities included in the feature. With Street View, prospective students are able to take a virtual walk around campus an enjoy a 360-degree view of Hanover.
“This new feature of Google mapping is a great way for the world to see Dartmouth’s campus,” says Jane Seibel, Assistant Dean of Recruiting and Diversity. “Prospective students, visitors and alumni can navigate to places of interest and get an up-close look at the area.”
“I have always loved the power of Google Earth and it is great to have the technology to get even closer to a point of interest and especially exciting that it is available for the Dartmouth campus.”
For more information on Google Street View and Dartmouth’s involvement, read the full article on Dartmouth Now.
Photo: Joe Mehling
|
<urn:uuid:af954d19-bf0a-4ed1-8811-d36c4a0da769>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~gradnewsforum/?p=4193
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.945592
| 207
| 1.757813
| 2
|
After finding a switch that turns off some hyperactive genes, UTMB researchers may be poised to point the way to a more effective treatment for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the most common cause of lower respiratory tract infections in infants. In the United States alone, more than 120,000 infants are hospitalized every year due to severe RSV infections, which have been linked to chronic wheezing and even asthma. But the impact of the disease is much greater in developing countries.
When RSV attacks, a number of hormone-like mediators that attract immune system cells to particular sites in the body are produced. Called chemokines, these mediators summon too many cells to the lungs and cause the airways to become inflamed, says Roberto Garofalo, professor of pediatric infectious disease and immunology and senior author of a study on the subject published last March in the Journal of Virology. Rather than trying to target genes for each of these excitable chemokines, Garofalo’s group instead took aim at the chemical molecule that activates them.
This molecule, known as nuclear factor kappa B, or NF-kB, is the “master switch” that turns on the genes for chemokines downstream, Garofalo explains. When his group infected mice with RSV and then treated them with a substance called interleukin-10 (IL-10)—a natural immunosuppressive drug known to block NF-kB—the mice’s lungs were far less inflamed. IL-10 also can block the protein IKK, a molecule even farther upstream and one that influences NF-kB. When communication between IKK and NF-kB is blocked, the chemokine genes are not fully expressed and the immune response is damped down.
“It’s important that products of the chemokine gene attract some cells to the lung to fight the viral infection, but there has to be a balance,” Garofalo says. His group’s data show that the IL-10 or a specific inhibitor of IKK stopped the severe inflammation without shutting down the desired antiviral immune response.
There is still no vaccine to prevent RSV, so Garofalo and his colleagues are working to prevent the most severe manifestations of the disease. The infection is currently treated either with steroids to reduce inflammation or with antiviral medication. Neither therapy is very successful.
“My vision of the disease is that we probably need a combination of therapies—an anti-inflammatory therapy, similar to the approach we discussed in the Journal of Virology paper, and an antiviral agent,” Garofalo says. He posits that both therapies should be administered quite early—probably even before the infection moves from the upper respiratory tract to the lower.
To diagnose the infection this early, doctors will need very specific, sensitive tests. Finding the early signals of disease, known as biomarkers, is one of Garofalo’s latest research goals. “There are subsets of babies—such as those born prematurely, those born with congenital heart disease or affected by chronic lung diseases, as well as others for whom there are no obvious medical risk factors—who are prone to have this exaggerated response, and these are the ones we need to target early on with the aggressive combination of therapies,” he says.
—Judie L. Kinonen
|
<urn:uuid:28ebd0b8-122d-43b5-afa0-526a3af7f749>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu/utmbmagazine/archive/05_Spring/strands/rsv.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.952823
| 699
| 3.265625
| 3
|
The 5th biennial Science, Technology and Research Symposium will be October 22-23, 2013 at Waterfront Place Hotel in Morgantown.…
Federal grant will foster innovation, growth of region’s manufacturers
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – West Virginia’s Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing (RCBI) is a partner in a major federal investment that will establish the nation’s first Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute under the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI).
The new initiative, which will receive $30 million in federal funds, is designed to connect industry, universities, community colleges, federal agencies and states together to jumpstart manufacturing innovation and foster the nation’s economic growth. RCBI’s Advanced Manufacturing Technology Centers will be key components of this initiative. With a 50/50 match, the three-year project totals more than $60 million.
The new initiative was announced today in Youngstown, Ohio, by Gene Sperling, the President’s National Economic Council Director; Rebecca Blank, the Acting U.S. Secretary of Commerce; Frank Kendall, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, and Brett B. Lambert, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy.
“RCBI is pleased to join with 40 dynamic partners for this extraordinary opportunity,” said Charlotte Weber, RCBI Director and CEO. This regional team includes major universities such as Carnegie Mellon, Penn State, the University of Akron, Youngstown State and Kent State; businesses; community and technical colleges; research facilities and government agencies. The National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) will serve as the lead for the Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania regionally concentrated team.
“This federal funding renews our fight for American manufacturing jobs and serves as a significant national stamp of approval for RCBI. As part of this new multi-state workforce and industry hub, RCBI is helping chart a new direction for the workhorse of the American economy, our manufacturing industry,” said Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va.
“RCBI brings its proven technology, tools and talent to a larger table to help train America’s next generation of manufacturing workers for a greater competitive edge in the global marketplace,” Rahall said. “Some current trends show American manufacturers are returning their operations to our shores. RCBI’s training and operational capabilities in flexible manufacturing, especially in the promising additive manufacturing process I have watched in operation, provide extra incentive to reinvest in West Virginia workers.”
“Additive manufacturing has the potential to reduce start-up costs and speed up prototyping,” said Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. “It presents a great opportunity for this country’s manufacturing sector. This is an enormous opportunity for West Virginia to create new jobs, expand the innovative manufacturing strength of our country and enhance the future of our citizens. It demonstrates strong confidence in West Virginia, our capability to innovate and the ability of our workforce to prepare for today’s more technological workplace. We commend the collaborative approach that RCBI and its many partners took to apply for and win this award. That same teamwork will enable our public, private and educational sectors to combine our strengths to successfully carry out this multi-dimensional program.”
The purpose of this new institute will be to accelerate the development, integration, evaluation and exploitation of efficient/rapid/flexible additive manufacturing technology for commercial manufacturing. With that goal in mind, the partners will conduct extensive outreach to businesses for the open exchange of additive manufacturing information, design tools, shared manufacturing equipment options, demonstration, process improvement and energy/cost efficiency.
“West Virginia has a strong history of manufacturing and developing new technologies, and it’s only appropriate that our state continues to help lead the way with a groundbreaking new program to guarantee that America is making the best, most innovative products, and putting more people back to work. I applaud the Obama Administration for putting together such an innovative, forward looking program,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller. D-W.Va.
“Over the past two years, I have convened several manufacturing roundtables with West Virginia workers and business owners, held three Congressional hearings – including one in West Virginia – on the future of manufacturing, and introduced or supported a dozen bills that would help create jobs and boost manufacturing in the state – including bills to train American workers in emerging manufacturing fields and help American manufacturers stay competitive, and others to end tax breaks for companies that send jobs to foreign countries. We can’t sit and watch American jobs get shipped overseas. With this new institute, and help from the four key West Virginia partners, we can work to keep our manufacturing center competitive and bring jobs back to the United States.”
“The people of West Virginia and I believe that now is the time to start rebuilding America by creating good American jobs right here at home, and I am pleased that this project will take a step in that direction,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who is the cosponsor of the Rebuild America Jobs Act. “We need to take advantage of regional opportunities to work together to save and create good jobs in the manufacturing sector. I’ve been proud to support countless efforts to help this important industry and will continue to work with leaders on both sides of the aisle to address the loss of manufacturing jobs and our trade imbalance. I’ve always said that West Virginians are some of the hardest working people in the world, who can compete with anyone in the world – as long as the playing field is fair.”
“The proven expertise of RCBI and the resources that this grant will provide are a powerful combination in terms of promoting the development of innovative and expansive applications of additive manufacturing technology,” said Marshall University President Stephen J. Kopp. “RCBI and Marshall have a rich history of strong collaborations that have advanced business solutions, which have fostered businesses growth and economic development. The new opportunities provided by RCBI’s additive manufacturing technology capabilities continue to fuel our robust partnership and inspire tremendous pride.”
“RCBI will be a key player in this partnership because our centers provide the region’s manufacturers – small and large – with a unique set of offerings of shared manufacturing equipment availability, additive manufacturing expertise and 3D design technology,” Weber said. “With our Design Works labs in Charleston and Huntington and our Advanced Composites Technology & Production Center in Bridgeport, RCBI is a valuable resource for the region’s business and industry to access affordable design and production options in additive manufacturing technology.”
Utilizing its statewide Advanced Manufacturing Technology Centers and skilled instructors, RCBI will leverage its extensive education and training programs to provide degree and certification programs, workforce training and on-the-job training that are specific to additive manufacturing. RCBI also will participate in the development of “cradle to career” additive manufacturing educational programs for STEM students K-12 through college.
In addition to RCBI, West Virginia is represented by other strong partners in this new initiative. FMW Composite Systems Inc., of Bridgeport, W.Va., brings a wealth of resources – state-of-the-art equipment, facilities, composites expertise and an ongoing drive for research and innovation. Touchstone Research Laboratory in Triadelphia, W.Va., has a history of research and development that has made it a top 100 leader in innovation for the past four years. All involved will work closely with the National Energy Technology Lab in Morgantown.
# # #
Visit our Press Room for more news stories about education, science, research and innovation in West Virginia.
|
<urn:uuid:d4277d58-4626-44d4-9bc5-3c1bbbf338cd>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.wvresearch.org/archives/4837
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.936035
| 1,608
| 1.898438
| 2
|
Who, Where, When
Office Hours: Mon 2:30-3:30pm, Tue 2-3pm, Wed 1:30-2:30pm
|TAs||Nathan Lindzey (lindzey at cs dot colostate dot edu) |
Off hrs: Tue 3-5pm, Thu 3-5pm (in the Linux lab)
Erin Nagoshi (nagoshi at cs dot colostate dot edu)
Office hrs: Tue 2-3pm, Wed 1-2pm (in the Linux lab)
|Tutors||Tue 3-5pm (John Herndon) 6:30-9:30pm (Ryan Moore)|
Wed 1-3pm (John Herndon) 2-3 (Alex Norton)
Thu 2-3pm (Alex Norton) 6:30-9:30pm (Ryan Moore)
Fri 1-3pm (Alex Norton)
Sun 3-5pm (Alex Norton)
|Lecture||9:30-10:45pm TR at Micro A 101|
|Recitation||Wed 5:00-6:50pm |
|All recitations are in comsc 215|
A student completing this course should be able to:
- Implement object oriented programs and understand the underlying principles such as encapsulation, abstraction and reuse.
- Design and build more complex programs (multiple files and multiple objects) that solve non-trivial problems.
- Design more efficient programs by understanding basic algorithms, analyzing their complexity and understanding how they are implemented in hardware and software.
- Relate concepts from theory to programming and architecture, such as how recursion is implemented in the system, and when it is an appropriate programming technique.
- Objects: creating, instantiating, basic operations
- Inheritance, interfaces, exceptions, polymorphism
- Induction and recursion
- Mechanics of recursive programs; method invocation and activation records
- File IO
- Arrays, lists (dynamic arrays), and binary search
- Binding and scope
- Parameter passing
- Graphical User Interfaces
- Linked lists
CS160 or CS153 with a C or better; M124, M126 (both with a C or better).
Data Abstraction and Problem Solving with Java: Walls & Mirrors, 2nd edition
Frank M. Carrano and Janet J. Prichard
Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications, Sixth Edition
Your cs160 Java book:
Java: an introduction to problem wolving and programming, Fifth edition
Walter Savitch and Frank M. Carrano
|Assignments||40%||Programing and written assignments|
|Recitations||10%||Attending and completing labs|
Note: in order to pass the class you need to have a passing grade for the average of the exams. There will be a programming exam as part of the final exam
Assignments will be done individually.
Quizzes will typically be given during one lecture class each week, except those weeks in which a midterm exam is being given. No makeups will be given for quizzes, but two quiz grades will be dropped.
Class participation is strongly encouraged. Students who ask or answer a question during lecture will be given a chit (maximum of one per student per class session). Three chits earned translate into 10 additional points on the next quiz.
The assignment of letter grades will be made as follows:
|Letter Grade||Point Range|
NOTE: We will NOT cut higher than these points (but may cut lower).
Late and Makeup Policy
Midterm and Finals: Make-up exams are only given in extraordinary circumstances (e.g., illness, death of family member). Students must consult with the instructor as soon as possible, preferably before the start of the exam. Course examination dates are listed in the syllabus; be aware of them and plan accordingly.
No make-ups will be given for missed quizzes.
Programming assignments are to be submitted electronically using the checkin program. Always check the assignment page for due dates. Late assignments submitted within 48 hours of the time required (or otherwise specified) will receive a 20% late penalty. Electronic submission is closed 48 hours after assignments are due (or as otherwise specified); students not having submitted programs receive an automatic zero on the assignment.
Written assignments are to be submitted in class. These may be handwritten, but must be legible. The instructors and TAs reserve the right to decide whether or not a paper is legible. Late assignments are accepted in class on the first MWF after the original due date, and will receive a 20% late penalty.
Assignment will be returned within 5 working days of the end of the late period.
First Midterm: TBD
Second Midterm: TBD
Final Exam: Dec 16th 9:10am-11:10am
All exams are in the same room as the lecture.
Course withdrawal date:
All students are expected to conduct themselves professionally. We assume you are familiar with the policies in the student information sheet.
Additionally, you are (beginning) computing professionals, so you should be familiar with the code of conduct for the primary professional society, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
You MAY discuss assignments but the work you turn in must be your own.
We work to maintain an environment supportive of learning in the classroom and laboratory. Towards this end, we require that you be courteous to and respectful of your fellow participants (i.e., classmates, instructors, TAs and tutors). In particular:
- Please turn off the ring on your cell phone. If you are expecting an emergency call, sit near the door and slide out discretely to take it.
- If you plan to use a laptop during class, please sit at the back of the classroom and turn off any sound from the machine. The tap-tap of the keyboard and the images showing on a screen can be distracting to those sitting around you. Also, be aware if you IM during class, that giggles, snorts or other reactions to what you are reading can be heard by the class and instructors and may be completely inappropriate with what is going on in the classroom.
- Laptops and other personal computing devices must be shut during exams and quizzes.
|
<urn:uuid:be8411d3-52bf-45f0-b647-2fb8822cee67>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~asa/courses/cs161/fall09/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Syllabus
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.902175
| 1,321
| 1.820313
| 2
|
AGRICULTURE SECRETARY VILSACK NAMES JAY JENSEN AS DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY FOR NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT
WASHINGTON, April 22, 2009 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced the appointment of Jay Jensen as USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment (NRE). In this position, Jensen will have responsibility for the U.S. Forest Service (FS), which manages 193 million acres of National Forest System lands and provides assistance to the more than 10 million family-forest landowners in this country.
The NRE mission area includes the FS and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). NRCS is the federal agency with primary responsibility for working with private landowners in conserving, maintaining and improving their natural resources.
"Jay Jensen brings the combination of on-the-ground and government experience that we need in this role," said Vilsack. "He is a forester and wildland firefighter with an extensive background in policy, management, and legislation. I'll be looking to Jay's leadership as we address the health of our forests. This is a top priority for USDA because it relates to several critical challenges—the intensity of forest fires, climate change, biomass and renewable energy, clean water and revitalizing forest-dependent communities."
Since May 2005, Jensen has been Executive Director of the Council of Western State Foresters/Western Forestry Leadership Coalition. The Coalition is a federal-state governmental partnership. Jensen had served earlier as the Coalition's Government Affairs Director.
He has also served as Senior Forestry Advisor for the Western Governors Association, where he was responsible for the biomass energy program. Before that, as lead forestry advisor for the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, Jensen helped develop programs under the 2002 Farm Bill. He has also served as lead policy analyst for the National Association of State Foresters.
Jensen holds a B.S. degree from the University of California at Los Angeles and an M.S. in Forestry from Colorado State University.
A southern California native, Jensen will be moving to the D.C. area with his wife Shawna Friedman and their young daughter Kayden.
|
<urn:uuid:9fe28c39-5886-43a4-9f24-b5c37c4cf6a1>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2009/04/0123.xml&contentidonly=true
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.951759
| 449
| 1.710938
| 2
|
THIS IS WHAT A CITY LOOKS LIKE AFTER 112 STRAIGHT DAYS OF SEIGE AND SHELLING. VIDEO COMPILATION OF THE DAILY HELL.
Homs was shelled and attacked long before June 2012. However, the actual siege of the city, where nothing can come in and no one can go out, started in June. No food, no water, no electricity, no medicine, no doctors … nothing. The daily misery is compounded immensely by the non-stop shelling that happens every single hour of every single day.
However, there are people who risk their lives to make the perilous trip inside to help the wounded, the desperate and the destitute. You can help them.
Please donate to one of the following or contact your local representatives
Syrian Orphans - A collection of Non-Profit Org’s supporting orphans in Syria
Rise 4 Humanity - Dedicated to helping the children of Syria via donations and awareness campaignsHumanitarian Relief For Syria - Supports needy families and orphans as well as distributing aid in Syria
Syrian Sunrise Foundation - Promotes social and economic opportunity and growth in Syria through humanitarian relief efforts.
Syrian Assistance - Independent, Non-Profit Org of volunteers set up to raise money for the basic humanitarian needs in SyriaMedecins Sans Frontieres - The only reputable international org. with doctors and a purpose built medical facility on the ground in Northern Syria.
|
<urn:uuid:30f4cce2-32ee-4f98-892d-1a1e0ab6a526>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.therevoltingsyrian.com/post/32525085255/this-is-what-a-city-looks-like-after-112-straight
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.917981
| 290
| 1.828125
| 2
|
Rio Tinto should abandon London and move its headquarters to Australia where it logically belongs, mining billionaire Gina Rinehart has urged.
Ms Reinhart, the richest woman in the world and Australia’s wealthiest person, said that the appointment of Australian Sam Walsh as chief executive last week presented the ideal opportunity to make the move. Mr Walsh’s predecessor, Tom Albanese, stepped down after the miner was forced to write down assets worth $14bn (£9bn).
"In congratulating Sam on his promotion to such an important position within Rio Tinto, we have urged him to take this opportunity and also move the Rio Tinto headquarters from London to Perth where given most of Rio Tinto's revenue is generated in Australia, it logically belongs," Mrs Rinehart said.
"We also hope other Australians will join our call that now that there is an Australian CEO for Rio Tinto, and given the history of mainly success for Rio Tinto's projects in Australia, a renewed emphasis will be undertaken by Rio Tinto to reinvest more of the profits it earns in Australia.
"(That will) benefit ... its shareholders who have seen much diminution in value via investments in risky countries, and for the benefit of Australia, which given its increasing debts, greatly needs," she said.
Ms Rinehart is head of Hancock Prospecting, a private company that was established by her father and is Rio’s partner in the massive Hopes Downs iron ore project in Western Australia. Most of Hancock’s revenues come from the partnership with Rio.
"We hope Rio Tinto and Sam will lose no time in advising the Australian government in clear and straightforward terms, what it would wish to make the decisions to increase its investment in Australia," Ms Rinehart added.
"No uncompetitive carbon tax springs to mind as one example to help interest in investment and reduce the increasing problem and very great concern of Australia's diminishing cost competitiveness."
Ms Rinehart, worth an estimated £19bn, is no stranger to controversy. In August she rebuked her poorer Australian countrymen, calling them “jealous” and telling them to work harder and cut down their drinking, smoking and socialising.
|
<urn:uuid:aebc070f-014f-482b-a7c2-466c76428602>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/mining/9813927/Rio-Tinto-should-move-HQ-to-Australia.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.964083
| 453
| 1.578125
| 2
|
The Quick 10: Curious George Gets _flossy
Curious George and The Man in the Yellow Hat have been around for nearly 70 years, and yet the little monkey has the same appeal to kids today as he did back in 1941. Here are a few facts "“ including H.A. and Margret Rey's narrow escape from Hitler "“ that you may not have known about George and his creators.
1. Curious George showed up in another H.A. Rey book before getting a series of his own. The book is titled Cecily G. and the Nine Monkeys and it's still in print today, although the focus is less on Cecily G. (for giraffe, of course) and more about how it's "The First Book About Curious George!" If you buy the book, though, don't go looking for a monkey named George "“ the one that goes by the name "Fifi" in the book is the one that would eventually become the classic character.
2. The Man in the Yellow Hat never had a name in any of the books or their resulting cartoons"¦ until the 2006 film, when his name was given as "Ted Shackleford." He's just Ted in most of the movie, but a deleted scene revealed his surname as well.
3. Is a George by any other name as Curious? Our inquisitive little monkey friend is known by many other names around the world. He's "Peter Pedal" in Denmark, " "Nysgjerrige Nils" in Norway, "Nicke Nyfiken" in Sweden, "Hitomane Kozaru" in Japan, and "Choni Ha'Sakran" in Israel.
4. Although he's plain old George in the U.K., it wasn't always that way "“ at first he was renamed Zozo because it seemed rude to have a monkey that was seemingly named after then-King George VI (that would be the current Queen Elizabeth's dad).
5. If the Reys hadn't been quick thinkers, Curious George may have never been. They fled Paris, France, on homemade bicycles just hours before Hitler's army invaded during WWII. As you can imagine, fleeing on two wheels doesn't really leave much room for luggage. But the Reys decided they definitely wanted to bring several in-the-works manuscripts with them and managed to pack five in their meager belongings. One of them was the first Curious George book. It makes George's love of his bicycle a little more poignant, doesn't it?
6. That first book was published just a year after H.A. (Hans Augusto) and Margret fled Paris. Since then, more than 30 million copies of George books have been sold, and since the book has been translated into 16 languages (including Yiddish, Afrikaans and Braille), kids all over the world have had the pleasure of reading about George's adventures.
7. The drawings in the Curious George books are deceptively simple, but make no mistake that the Reys knew what they were doing. They were both trained artists and Margret even studied at the Bauhaus.
8. If you've ever noticed that some of the books credit only H.A. Rey and seem to leave poor Margret out of it completely, there's a reason. There were so many children's books on the market written by women at the time that George's marketers thought having a male (or ambiguous) author might make the book's appeal a bit broader. Once George was established as a hit, Margret was given the credit she deserved. Margret was in charge of writing and plot while Hans generally stuck to ideas and illustration.
9. It's no surprise the Reys wrote about monkeys and giraffes and other zoo animals "“ Hans grew up right by the Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg, Germany, and took great inspiration from it. Margret was an animal lover and whenever the two traveled together, one of the first stops on their list was the local zoo.
10. George has some fans in very high places. Or at least, he did. The CEO of Vivendi Universal, a media conglomerate that owned Curious George publisher Houghton Mifflin at the time, decided the little monkey would be a perfect corporate mascot for the brand. While he never became the official mascot, he did turn up in ads for Vivendi in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times in 2001. The CEO resigned in 2002, however, and by 2006 Houghton Mifflin had been sold again. I'm glad "“ I don't really want to see a beloved children's character shilling for a corporation, but maybe that's just me.
Are there any George fans reading? What's your take on the fairly recent revival - just as good as when you were a kid or not?
|
<urn:uuid:e4202099-5b7b-41e5-8f2b-4e1e3a045045>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://mentalfloss.com/article/24513/quick-10-curious-george-gets-flossy
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.986166
| 1,016
| 2.515625
| 3
|
When a government agency issues rules and regulations related to a law, it is required to estimate the cost, time and paperwork burden caused by such rules. The staff of the House Ways and Means Committee has compiled a list of each of the rules and regulations issued to date related to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
While this type of burden is by no means limited to Obamacare, the impact of these regulations on employers, insurers, health care providers and others should not be underestimated. These costs may not appear in government cost estimates, but they are quite real and eventually become part of the cost of doing business and therefore are ultimately reflected in the price of goods and services, both public and private.
To date the agencies issuing regulations have estimated that compliance will consume 127,602,371 hours of work annually. That by the way is equivalent to 61,347 person years of work.
You can view the Obamacare Burden Tracker and can also get a sense of the number of rules and regulations issued to date.
- Obamacare and 2014, the perfect storm is on the way (quinnscommentary.com)
- Obamacare Is Raising Healthcare Costs, Not Lowering Them (usnews.com)
- CLANCY: Labor unions that pushed Obamacare through want out (washingtontimes.com)
|
<urn:uuid:9f9bbc4c-5fe2-4971-851b-0829e8a1313b>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://quinnscommentary.com/2013/03/01/time-effort-and-cost-to-implement-obamacare/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.954471
| 267
| 1.976563
| 2
|
Motorcycle riders will take to the highways of northern and central Harford County this Saturday, Sept. 8, for the Patriot Ride in remembrance of the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Patriot Ride 2012 will help raise money for the Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania, according to Chuck Ritz, the founder of the event.
Riders will gather at Chesapeake Harley Davidson in Darlington at 8 a.m. and will take part in six moments of silence beginning at 8:46 am, the time that American Airlines Fight 11 crashed into the North tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.
Other activities at the start will include the Pledge of Allegiance, led by area firefighters, and the playing of the "Star Spangled Banner."
Riders will depart at 11:30 a.m. along with Honorary Ride Captain Kenny Nacke, whose older brother, Joseph Nacke III, was a passenger on United Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Pa. Kenny Nacke is a detective with the Baltimore County Police Department.
The ride will travel south on Route 1 through Harford County to Fallston, where it will make a right onto Route 147 (Harford Road). Riders will then travel south into Baltimore County, ending on Putty Hill Avenue in Parkville, where they will ride through the Path of Honor - 2,977 American flags set to honor each and every victim and hero of 9/11.
The Path of Honor will be along Putty Hill Avenue between Harford and Old Harford roads, with the ride ending at McAvoy's at 2531 Putty Hill Ave. Ritz said the flags will be put in place Friday morning.
Ritz, a Cockeysville resident and an avid biker who works for the Baltimore Child Abuse Center, said Saturday's Patriot Ride is an outgrowth of the former Ride to Remember out of Baltimore.
"I felt that the 11th anniversary of 9/11 is just as important as the 10th or any other, which is why I decided to organize this, keeping the promise of never forgetting," said Ritz, who also rode in last year's America's 9/11 Ride, an annual event in August which comes through Harford County on I-95.
Ritz said he has worked for a year on the Patriot Ride program and expects between 400 and 600 motorcyclists to participate, possibly more.
"We've had a great response so far," he said. "I'm keeping my figures crossed the weather is good."
Ritz encourages area residents to come out in support of the riders along the ride route from 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. and join the group in helping keep the promise of Never Forgetting 9/11.
Event proceeds also benefit the Metro Burn Fund. Registration fees, event schedules and other information are available online at http://www.911patriotdayride.info or e-mail PatriotDay2012@aol.com.
|
<urn:uuid:45c908af-7330-4fb4-afce-183c0e53f516>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-09-04/explore/ph-ag-patriot-ride-0905-20120904_1_riders-harford-county-cockeysville-resident
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.949866
| 623
| 1.609375
| 2
|
Western Illinois University: Macomb Campus
Web Tools and Search Bar
ASH Hosts Panel Presentation on Teaching Careers and Jobs
Mar 27, 2009
Three education professionals provided honest advice and answered students' questions on obtaining teaching positions at a professional development panel, "So You Want to be a History Teacher?," sponsored by the Associated Students of History (ASH) on the evening of Thursday, March 26. Panelists Lonny Lemon (Superintendent of Schools for Quincy Public Schools), Rick Parker (a History teacher at Brown County High School), and Brock Bainter (a Social Studies teacher at Macomb Junior High School) spoke to a group of approximately 45 students and faculty members in 121 Stipes Hall, the auditorium of the WIU College of Business and Technology's auditorium. Abby Lagemann, President of ASH, organized the program and moderated the panel.
After introducing themselves and speaking briefly about their backgrounds in the field of education, Superintendent Lemon (who holds the MSE in Educational Administration and the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from WIU), Mr. Parker (who holds a BS in Social Studies from WIU), and Mr. Bainter (who holds a BA in History Teacher Education from WIU) responded to questions submitted to ASH prior to the program as well as to follow-up questions from the audience. At the conclusion of the evening, ASH raffled off a television set donated by History Advisor Ralph Heissinger. ASH Vice President Dan Mieszala announced that History Teacher Education senior Amy Kallenbach was the lucky winner.
The speakers stressed that what school boards and principals are looking for are smart people who have demonstrated that they are student-centered in their approach to education. They are interested in both "academics and character," Superintendent Lemon observed. In terms of academics, doing outstanding work in college classes is a major plus - employers pay a great deal of attention to candidates' GPAs, and having C's (or lower) in History or social studies classes is a significant red flag to school officials. Having additional endorsements (middle school or reading endorsements, for example) and in some cases being able to speak a foreign language makes an applicant more flexible and therefore potentially more desirable to schools. Active participation in community and college volunteer service activities is also important, as it is seen as an indication of "character." Teachers are also expected to be good role models for their students, which means, among other things, having no criminal record.
In answer to a question about how to write an effective resume and what pitfalls to avoid in resumes and cover letters, the panelists stressed the need to present a comprehensive, well-organized, truthful, neat, and impeccably formatted and spelled resume and cover letter. The speakers emphasized that nothing gets an application thrown in the "rejection" pile faster than being messy or containing spelling errors. Community and college service activities should be included on the resume, as well as specific information about course projects and undergraduate research projects the student has completed; one never knows, they pointed out, what a particular school will be looking for in an applicant. Clubs, service activities, civic organizations, and other extra-curricular activities with which the student has been involved should also be listed, as should study-abroad experiences, involvement in Peace Corps, and military service or other national service activities, as all of these provide applicants with a broader perspective and are seen by potential employers as indicators of "character." Having worked one's way through college also shows dedication and organizational skills, and should be listed on the resume, even when the job(s) are unrelated to one's degree. The speakers also pointed out that it helps to get to know the superintendents, principals, and teachers who might know of hiring opportunities, and that attending conferences is one way to develop that networking skill.
When invited for a job interview, it is important to do your research first, Mr. Bainter stressed. Know who the school board members, district superintendent, and school principal are, and be aware of their approach to education. For example, do they use a middle school or junior high model? How is the school's schedule arranged - do they use 8-block? Check out the school's report card for the last 5 years for trends. (The web sites of both the Interactive Illinois Report Card (IIRC) and the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) contain useful information on individual schools and their districts for those preparing for interviews.) Mr. Parker stressed the need to have thought through one's philosophy of education before the interview.
During an interview, the speakers emphasized the need to demonstrate to those who are conducting the interview that you have a student-centered (not teacher-centered) approach to education, that you want to make a difference in students' lives, and that you are eager to collaborate with other teachers, administrators, and parents to help the school do the best possible job educating its students. Candidates should always be honest in answering questions ("always look them in the eye," Superintendent Lemon advised) and should be aware of the values and expectations of the school district with which they are interviewing. Being an alum of a district may well work to the applicant's advantage in this regard. All three speakers told the students that they should be prepared to respond to specific "scenarios" about classroom management issues, how to deal with angry parents, etc. When on the job market, candidates should always be conscious of the impression that the outgoing message on their voice mail or answering machine gives to potential employers, as well as anything they may have posted on Facebook, My Space, or similar on-line networks or elsewhere on the web, which might turn off potential employers.
In answer to a question about on-line recruiting and on-line applications, the speakers observed that this is becoming more and more common for teaching positions. They advised being concise when answering questions in on-line forms, and attaching a resume electronically, when possible. Superintendent Lemon recommended that after completing on-line applications, candidates still send a resume through the mail with a cover letter which refers to the on-line application already submitted. (WIU Career Services includes an electronic recruiting service for all WIU students and alumni.)
When asked about the value and timing of earning the M.A. in History, the speakers advised that it would not hurt a candidate to obtain the graduate degree before going on the job market, as it means the applicant would be much better prepared academically; as far as the school district is concerned, the added value of the stronger academic credentials outweighs the additional cost to the district of hiring someone with an advanced degree. It also demonstrates that an applicant has goals and is able to achieve them. Superintendent Lemon also stressed that it was less difficult to do the graduate work when not also working full-time as a teacher. On the other hand, if a teaching position is available upon graduation with the BA, there's no reason not to take it and work on the MA later. Pursuing an advanced degree while teaching has the added advantage of allowing teachers to apply in their own classroom the knowledge gained from the MA, as well as allowing teachers to bring their classroom experience to bear on their graduate studies.
The panelists next addressed the importance of experience with or ability to lead extracurricular activities in school districts. All three gentlemen have or do serve as athletic coaches, and pointed out that often, experience or ability with coaching will get applicants an interview. Mr. Parker observed that in some small districts, coaching ability is often more important that teaching credentials when making hiring decisions. However, all three speakers also pointed out that schools need people to advise Quiz Bowl, Student Council, various clubs, and the school paper, as well as coach athletic teams. Mr. Bainter emphasized that getting to know students outside the classroom in these different venues also helps teachers connect with them inside the classroom and can help one become a better teacher.
The final portion of the program was dedicated to the panelists' advice for new teachers in their first year. "Expect to be overwhelmed!," warned Mr. Bainter, a comment echoed by Mr. Parker and Superintendent Lemon. Mr. Bainter also emphasized the need to establish one's classroom discipline from the first day of class; new teachers should be tough from the start and not worry about trying to get the students to like them. He also advised setting a routine for the classroom and sticking to it, which helps the students adjust and know what to expect. Mr. Parker added that teachers needed to be honest with their students; if the teacher doesn't know the answers to students' questions, they shouldn't try to pull the wool over the students' eyes. He also emphasized the need to be prepared for one's lessons - if the teacher is not, the students will see right through you. Superintendent Lemon reminded those present that high school students are not adults and "you can't be their buddy." New teachers need to find ways to separate themselves from their students. It is also vital, he said, to be honest not only with the students, but with their parents, as well as with your colleagues in the schools and the community which employs you. He recommended finding a peer you can trust to talk with regularly, whether it is someone you went to school with, someone in your school or district, or someone you met through professional development opportunities.
The speakers closed by emphasizing the tremendous gratification that teachers get from teaching their students well, and received sustained applause from the appreciative students and faculty in attendance.
More History Department News
|
<urn:uuid:5af1ed16-c221-49dd-9271-b7861b3b99bc>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://wiu.edu/cas/history/news/content.php?action=release&id=106
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.972197
| 1,953
| 1.929688
| 2
|
Existence is only real when it is conscious to somebody.
~ Carl Jung
Suppose you observe two men, man A is aiming a gun at the man B whose arms are raised. As a strict positivist, who only accepts the evidence of the senses, that is the limit of what you can say about this “fact”. But have you really explained anything?
Man A could be robbing man B in the street. Man A may be a police officer placing man B under arrest. Or perhaps Man A is a private citizen looking for his daughter whom Man B kidnapped. Three quite different stories about the same alleged fact.
A physicist may treat man A and man B as physical objects and try to predict their future actions based on their mass, momentum, and so on. Of course, he will fail. We cannot understand the scenario without taking into account human consciousness, particularly in its relation to social and political structures that would legitimize or criminalize the observed facts. Similarly, there are “spiritual” facts, of a totally different kind, and these require their own methodology. Consider the following table:
First we have the traditional three kingdoms — nature, man, heaven — as expounded, for example, in the Tao Te Ching. Science, or positivism, is the study of nature in an external way, as a set of facts to observe and theorize about. Depending on the object of study, we have physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology.
Philosophy, or idealism, is related to the second kingdom. Its method is the contemplation of concepts transcending the natural world. Such systems as the Vedanta, Buddhism, Pythagoreanism, Platonism, and Stoicism are the results of such contemplation.
Religion is not the result of purely human expression and creation. They enter the world as a revelation from a divine, supra-human, source. Certain of the world’s religious traditions have preserved that revelation in a superior way, and it is these that deserve our special study.
Boris Mouravieff, in Gnosis, shows the three realms directly influence our world; he refers to these influences as the A influence, B influence, and C influence; all our ideas can be traced to one of these influences. Valentin Tomberg looks deeper into things, and claims to understand the hidden inner nature of these influences. These he calls “occultisms” and categorizes them as mechanical, hygienic, and eugenic. This study, he claims, leads to a higher positivism, where we achieve direct and certain knowledge of higher things; this he calls spiritual science. Julius Evola similarly claimed that there is a positivism of metaphysical wisdom.
So we see that facts don’t speak for themselves and require a consciousness to penetrate into their inner nature.
|
<urn:uuid:d98df151-4dbf-4b22-9674-c6d6de5c84f8>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=309
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.936916
| 588
| 2.375
| 2
|
Mapping Africa in the English Speaking World addresses issues of representations of Africa in the English speaking world. English has become a global language which has transformed the world into a global village, and as Graddol (2008) states, it "is now redefining national and individual identities worldwide; shifting political fault lines; creating new global patterns of wealth and social exclusion; and suggesting new notions of human rights and responsibilities of citizenship." The book grapples with the relationship between Africa and the rest of the English speaking world, and touches on issues of (Euro-American) misrepresentations of the continent in literary works and films etc, misrepresentations which are nevertheless passed as true and infallible knowledge about Africa; the marginalization of Africans; the marginalization of African scholarship, the English language and culture versus African languages and cultures; language policy and language diglossia in the continent, African theatre in post colonial Africa, negotiations of identity in the post colonial era, and relations between gender and language, among other things. These issues are bound to stimulate debates on Africa and its representation(s) in the English speaking world.
Ling & Literature
|
<urn:uuid:fb2ab9f8-29c9-4f8b-9a20-ad4fc9e91a38>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://linguistlist.org/issues/21/21-4553.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.926836
| 228
| 2.625
| 3
|
Real estate is an excellent way for some individuals to make a significant gift to the REF that might otherwise not be possible. A gift of real estate is a tax-wise method of providing support for the Foundation. A residence, summer home, farm, commercial property, or vacant land may have appreciated in value to the extent that its sale would result in a sizable tax on the gain. If given outright to the REF, you can avoid this tax and realize a charitable deduction for the full fair market value. The property gift can also shelter your estate from future taxes.
Benefits of a Real Estate Gift to the REF
- You can bypass capital gains taxes
- You can obtain a charitable income tax deduction equal to the appraised value for up to 30% of your adjusted gross income
- You play an integral role in advancing patient care
Generally, gifts of real property should result in a contribution to the Foundation of at least $50,000.
Please note: To substantiate the value of a gift of real estate for income tax purposes (if it is worth more than $5,000), you will need to obtain an independent appraisal from a qualified appraiser.
An Outright Gift
For an outright gift of real estate to occur, a deed is drawn up that transfers your property to the ACR Research and Education Foundation. The REF credits you with a gift equal to the fair market value of the real estate. This value is determined by a fair market value appraisal which is the donor's responsibility to obtain. You are eligible for a charitable income tax deduction for the appraised value and you avoid any capital gains tax for which you might have been liable had you sold the property.
Example of Real Estate Gift
Dr. and Mrs. Brown, who are in the 31% income tax bracket, would like to make a charitable gift to the REF. They have owned a rental home - now worth $250,000 - since purchasing it ten years ago for $100,000.
By donating this property to the REF, the Brown’s will receive a $50,000 charitable deduction, which saves them $77,500 in income taxes (31%). In addition, the Brown’s avoid the potential capital gains tax of $30,000 on the $150,000 appreciation (20%).
|
<urn:uuid:d021fb30-c6ca-4399-8246-a544f7943a64>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.rheumatology.org/ref/contribute/realestate.asp
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.942429
| 475
| 1.578125
| 2
|
About Site Map Contact Us
|A service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine®|
On this page:
Reviewed July 2008
What is the official name of the LGI1 gene?
The official name of this gene is “leucine-rich, glioma inactivated 1.”
LGI1 is the gene's official symbol. The LGI1 gene is also known by other names, listed below.
Read more about gene names and symbols on the About page.
What is the normal function of the LGI1 gene?
The LGI1 gene provides instructions for making a protein called leucine-rich, glioma inactivated 1 (Lgi1) or epitempin. This protein is found primarily in nerve cells (neurons) in the brain, including a part of the brain called the lateral temporal lobe. The temporal lobe of the brain is involved in hearing, speech, memory, and emotion.
Although researchers have proposed several functions for epitempin, its precise role in the brain remains uncertain. This protein is probably involved in normal brain development.
Some studies have suggested that epitempin plays a role in the normal function of potassium channels in neurons. These channels are embedded in the cell membrane, where they transport charged potassium atoms (potassium ions) out of neurons. Potassium channels are critical for normal electrical signaling in these cells. Other studies have found that epitempin is transported (secreted) out of neurons. The function of this protein outside cells is unclear.
Epitempin may also help regulate the communication between neurons. Researchers have determined that epitempin attaches (binds) to a receptor protein called ADAM22 on the surface of neurons. Together, these proteins help control the release of certain brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. These chemicals allow neighboring neurons to communicate with each other, which is how signals are relayed throughout the brain.
How are changes in the LGI1 gene related to health conditions?
Where is the LGI1 gene located?
Cytogenetic Location: 10q24
Molecular Location on chromosome 10: base pairs 95,517,565 to 95,557,915
The LGI1 gene is located on the long (q) arm of chromosome 10 at position 24.
More precisely, the LGI1 gene is located from base pair 95,517,565 to base pair 95,557,915 on chromosome 10.
See How do geneticists indicate the location of a gene? in the Handbook.
Where can I find additional information about LGI1?
You and your healthcare professional may find the following resources about LGI1 helpful.
You may also be interested in these resources, which are designed for genetics professionals and researchers.
What other names do people use for the LGI1 gene or gene products?
See How are genetic conditions and genes named? in the Handbook.
Where can I find general information about genes?
The Handbook provides basic information about genetics in clear language.
These links provide additional genetics resources that may be useful.
What glossary definitions help with understanding LGI1?
You may find definitions for these and many other terms in the Genetics Home Reference Glossary.
See also Understanding Medical Terminology.
References (13 links)
The resources on this site should not be used as a substitute for professional medical care or advice. Users seeking information about a personal genetic disease, syndrome, or condition should consult with a qualified healthcare professional. See How can I find a genetics professional in my area? in the Handbook.
|
<urn:uuid:53bf5c48-362e-44eb-a01b-38fadf21f176>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.ghr.nlm.nih.gov/gene/LGI1
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.913651
| 739
| 3.0625
| 3
|
President Obama's long-awaited business tax plan would lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 28% while slashing popular tax breaks enjoyed from Wall Street to Main Street, making it unlikely to get far in Congress in this election year.
The plan would make up lost revenue as a result of lower rates by eliminating popular tax loopholes and simplifying a business tax system that an administration statement called "uncompetitive, unfair, and inefficient."
"It provides tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas and hits companies that choose to stay in America with one of the highest tax rates in the world," Obama said in a prepared statement. "It is unnecessarily complicated and forces America's small businesses to spend countless hours and dollars filing their taxes. It's not right, and it needs to change."
Among the endangered loopholes from what the Obama administration calls a "menu of options" is the current accelerated depreciation schedule that encourages business investment. "It comes at the cost of higher tax rates for a given amount of revenue," the plan states.
The goal of the plan is to reduce the effective corporate tax rate in the U.S. to the average of those in major industrialized nations, thereby making U.S. companies more competitive.
To get there, the plan proposes to eliminate all tax breaks for specific industries, with few exceptions deemed "critical to broader growth or fairness." Preference was retained for three types of breaks: for manufacturing, research, and clean energy.
"We want to restore a system in which American businesses succeed or fail based on the products they make and the services they provide, not on the creativity of their tax engineers or the lobbyists they hire," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in unveiling the plan to reporters Wednesday.
"By getting rid of special preferences for special types of activity and specific industries, we can reduce distortions that hurt productivity and economic growth, permitting us to lower corporate tax rates in a fiscally responsible way," Geithner said.
The Obama plan would retain and make permanent one popular break: the tax credit for research and experimentation. But it would require that any corporate tax breaks retained by Congress be paid for. Currently, those breaks add about $25 billion a year to the deficit.
The plan calls for lowering the tax on manufacturing to 25%, even lower for "advanced" manufacturing activities. It would require companies to pay a minimum tax on overseas profits. And it would allow small businesses to expense up to $1 million in investments.
Some Republicans denounced the proposed corporate tax cut as nothing more than an election-year ploy.
"Time and again, President Obama shows us his every move is determined by his re-election campaign and has nothing to do with principle," said Kirsten Kukowski, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. "How else can you explain his sudden desire to talk corporate taxes after three years of failed economic policies?"
Manufacturers applauded the goal but not the specifics. "The president suggests some changes that will help, but many of the proposals completely miss the mark and would make U.S. businesses less competitive," said Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers. "In addition, the two-thirds of manufacturers who file as individuals will receive no relief from the current burdensome tax system."
The Treasury Department has been working on corporate tax reform for two years, and the decision to roll it out now -- but with Geithner, not Obama, doing the talking -- indicates a desire to take on a difficult issue without being overly specific.
Geithner acknowledged that the corporate tax code may have to wait for overall tax reform, including individuals, but said that would take much longer to negotiate with Congress. The last time the tax code was overhauled was in 1986 -- "before the Internet," he said.
Very few tax loopholes were singled out for elimination, including some Obama has cited before, such as tax breaks for oil and gas companies, hedge fund managers and owners of corporate aircraft.
More expensive and widely used tax breaks, such as accelerated depreciation and reducing the deductibility of interest for corporations, are mentioned only as options. However, the plan notes several of the costlier breaks would have to be wiped out to get the rate down to 28% without raising the deficit.
"The president's proposal is designed to start the process," Geithner said. "This process is going to take time. It will be politically contentious. Some are going to say these proposals are too tough on business, and others will say they're not tough enough."
Not tough enough, said the liberal Campaign for America's Future, which noted that lobbyists work to restore tax breaks or get new ones after reforms are made.
"The entire proposition of lowering rates in exchange for closing loopholes is, as we learned with the Reagan tax reforms, something of a put-on," said co-director Robert Borosage. "The loopholes are closed, but the corporate lobbies stay in place. In time, the rates have come down, but the loopholes have returned."
Officials said they didn't go further -- say, to 25%, as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has proposed -- because they could not save enough in loopholes to pay for it within the corporate tax system. Newt Gingrich has proposed a 12.5% rate. Rick Santorum wants to exempt domestic manufacturers and cut the top rate in half for others.
1. Eliminate dozens of tax loopholes and subsidies, broaden the base and cut the corporate tax rate to spur growth in America: The framework eliminates dozens of different tax expenditures and fundamentally reforms the business tax base to reduce distortions that hurt productivity and growth. It reinvests these savings to lower the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, putting the United States in line with major competitor countries and encouraging greater investment.
2. Strengthen American manufacturing and innovation: The framework would refocus the manufacturing deduction and use the savings to reduce the effective rate on manufacturing to no more than 25 percent, while encouraging greater research and development and the production of clean energy.
3. Strengthen the international tax system, including establishing a new minimum tax on foreign earnings, to encourage domestic investment: Our tax system should not give companies an incentive to locate production overseas or engage in accounting games to shift profits abroad, eroding the U.S. tax base. Introducing the principle of a minimum tax on foreign earnings would help address these problems and discourage a global race to the bottom in tax rates.
4. Simplify and cut taxes for America's small businesses: Tax reform should make tax filing simpler for small businesses and entrepreneurs so that they can focus on growing their businesses rather than filling out tax returns.
5. Restore fiscal responsibility and not add a dime to the deficit: Business tax reform should be fully paid for and lead to greater fiscal responsibility than our current business tax system by either eliminating or making permanent and fully paying for temporary tax provisions now in the tax code.
Contributing: David Jackson
David's journalism career spans three decades, including coverage of five presidential elections, the Oklahoma City bombing, the 2000 Florida presidential recount and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He has covered the White House for USA TODAY since 2005. His interests include history, politics, books, movies and college football -- not necessarily in that order. More about David
|
<urn:uuid:24095925-5a52-43d6-a4fc-377ef698cf3f>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2012/02/obama-team-to-propose-corporate-tax-cut/1
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.969658
| 1,486
| 1.820313
| 2
|
41 After two whole years, Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile, 2 and behold, there came up out of the Nile seven cows attractive and plump, and they fed in the reed grass. 3 And behold, seven other cows, ugly and thin, came up out of the Nile after them, and stood by the other cows on the bank of the Nile. 4 And the ugly, thin cows ate up the seven attractive, plump cows. And Pharaoh awoke. 5 And he fell asleep and dreamed a second time. And behold, seven ears of grain, plump and good, were growing on one stalk. 6 And behold, after them sprouted seven ears, thin and wblighted by the east wind. 7 And the thin ears swallowed up the seven plump, full ears. And Pharaoh awoke, and behold, it was a dream. 8 So in the morning xhis spirit was troubled, and he sent and called for all the ymagicians of Egypt and all its wise men. Pharaoh told them his dreams, but there was none who could interpret them to Pharaoh.
9 Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, “I remember my offenses today. 10 When Pharaoh was zangry with his servants aand put me and the chief baker in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, 11 bwe dreamed on the same night, he and I, each having a dream with its own interpretation. 12 A young Hebrew was there with us, a servant of the captain of the guard. When we told him, che interpreted our dreams to us, giving an interpretation to each man according to his dream. 13 And das he interpreted to us, so it came about. I was restored to my office, and the baker was hanged.”
14 eThen Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they fquickly brought him gout of the pit. And when he had shaved himself and changed his clothes, he came in before Pharaoh. 15 And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I have had a dream, and there is no one who can interpret it. hI have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.” 16 Joseph answered Pharaoh, i“It is not in me; jGod will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.”1 17 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Behold, kin my dream I was standing on the banks of the Nile. 18 Seven cows, plump and attractive, came up out of the Nile and fed in the reed grass. 19 Seven other cows came up after them, poor and very ugly and thin, such as I had never seen in all the land of Egypt. 20 And the thin, ugly cows ate up the first seven plump cows, 21 but when they had eaten them no one would have known that they had eaten them, for they were still as ugly as at the beginning. Then I awoke. 22 I also saw in my dream seven ears growing on one stalk, full and good. 23 Seven ears, withered, thin, and blighted by the east wind, sprouted after them, 24 and the thin ears swallowed up the seven good ears. And lI told it to the magicians, but there was no one who could explain it to me.”
25 Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, “The dreams of Pharaoh are one; mGod has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. 26 The seven good cows are seven years, and the seven good ears are seven years; the dreams are one. 27 The seven lean and ugly cows that came up after them are seven years, and the seven empty ears blighted by the east wind are also nseven years of famine. 28 It is as I told Pharaoh; oGod has shown to Pharaoh what he is about to do. 29 There will come pseven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt, 30 but after them there will arise qseven years of famine, and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt. rThe famine will consume the land, 31 and the plenty will be unknown in the land by reason of the famine that will follow, for it will be very severe. 32 And the doubling of Pharaoh’s dream means that the sthing is fixed by God, and God will shortly bring it about. 33 Now therefore let Pharaoh select a discerning and wise man, and set him over the land of Egypt. 34 Let Pharaoh proceed to appoint overseers over the land and take one-fifth of the produce of the land2 of Egypt during the seven plentiful years. 35 And tlet them gather all the food of these good years that are coming and store up grain under the authority of Pharaoh for food in the cities, and let them keep it. 36 That food shall be a reserve for the land against the seven years of famine that are to occur in the land of Egypt, so that the land may not perish through the famine.”
37 This proposal pleased Pharaoh and all his servants. 38 And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find a man like this, uin whom is the Spirit of God?”3 39 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has shown you all this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are. 40 vYou shall be over my house, and all my people shall order themselves as you command.4 Only as regards the throne will I be greater than you.” 41 And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “See, wI have set you over all the land of Egypt.” 42 Then Pharaoh xtook his signet ring from his hand and put it on Joseph’s hand, and yclothed him in garments of fine linen zand put a gold chain about his neck. 43 And he made him ride in his second chariot. aAnd they called out before him, “Bow the knee!”5 Thus he set him bover all the land of Egypt. 44 Moreover, Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I am Pharaoh, and cwithout your consent no one shall lift up hand or foot in all the land of Egypt.” 45 And Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphenath-paneah. And he gave him in marriage Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On. So Joseph went out over the land of Egypt.
46 Joseph was thirty years old when he dentered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh and went through all the land of Egypt. 47 During the seven plentiful years the earth produced abundantly, 48 and he gathered up all the food of these seven years, which occurred in the land of Egypt, and put the food in the cities. He put in every city the food from the fields around it. 49 And Joseph stored up grain in great abundance, elike the sand of the sea, until he ceased to measure it, for it could not be measured.
50 Before the year of famine came, ftwo sons were born to Joseph. Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On, bore them to him. 51 Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh. “For,” he said, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house.”6 52 The name of the second he called Ephraim, “For God has gmade me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”7
53 The seven years of plenty that occurred in the land of Egypt came to an end, 54 and hthe seven years of famine began to come, ias Joseph had said. There was famine in all lands, but in all the land of Egypt there was bread. 55 When all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread. Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, “Go to Joseph. What he says to you, do.”
56 So when the famine had spread over all the land, Joseph opened all the storehouses8 and jsold to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe in the land of Egypt. 57 Moreover, all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe kover all the earth.
About English Standard Version
The English Standard Version™ is founded on the conviction that the words of the Bible are the very words of God. And because the words themselves—not just the thoughts or ideas—are inspired by God, each word must be translated with the greatest precision and accuracy. As Jesus Himself stressed, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4).
This passion for God’s Word is the driving force behind the translation of the ESV™ Bible. The English Standard Version™ does not try to “improve” on the original in light of today’s culture or by using trendy language. Instead, the utmost care has been taken to express God’s Word in English that most closely captures the meaning of the original, with understandability, beauty, and impact.
The Classic Reference Edition, English Standard Version® (ESV®)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
ESV Text Edition: 2011
Book Introductions and Center-Column Cross-Reference System (as adapted) copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. The ESV Cross-Reference System is adapted from the original English Revised Version cross-reference system.
The ESV text may be quoted (in written, visual, or electronic form) up to and inclusive of one thousand (1,000) verses without express written permission of the publisher, providing that the verses quoted do not amount to a complete book of the Bible nor do the verses quoted account for 50 percent or more of the total text of the work in which they are quoted.
The ESV text may be quoted for audio use (audio cassettes, CD's, audio television) up to two hundred fifty (250) verses without express written permission of the publisher providing that the verses quoted do not amount to a complete book of the Bible nor do the verses quoted account for 50 percent or more of the total text of the work in which they are quoted.
Notice of copyright must appear as follows on the title page or copyright page of printed works quoting from the ESV, or in a corresponding location when the ESV is quoted in other media:
“Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.”
When more than one translation is quoted in printed works or other media, the foregoing notice of copyright should begin as follows:
“Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from . . . [etc.]”; or,
“Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from . . . [etc.].”
The “ESV” and “English Standard Version” are trademarks of Good News Publishers. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Good News Publishers.
When quotations from the ESV text are used in non-saleable media, such as church bulletins, orders of service, posters, transparencies, or similar media, a complete copyright notice is not required, but the initials (ESV) must appear at the end of the quotation.
Publication of any commentary or other Bible reference work produced for commercial sale that uses the English Standard Version must include written permission for use of the ESV text.
Permission requests that exceed the above guidelines must be directed to Good News Publishers, Attn: Bible Rights, 1300 Crescent Street, Wheaton, IL 60187, USA.
Permission requests for use within the UK and EU that exceed the above guidelines must be directed to: HarperCollins Religious, 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB, England.
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV) is adapted from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. All rights reserved.
Published by Good News Publishers
Good News Publishers (including Crossway Bibles) is a not-for-profit organization that exists solely for the purpose of publishing the good news of the gospel and the truth of God's Word, the Bible.
|
<urn:uuid:bfb07a4d-ff4f-467e-bc74-066b4f19be35>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://biblia.com/reference/Ge41.42
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.963138
| 2,590
| 1.507813
| 2
|
Daisho from Japan, Asia. Collected by Robert Walter Campbell Shelford. Given to the Museum by Mrs. Shelford in 1929.
A samurai always wore his bladed weapons in pairs. The traditional military custom was to wear a longsword, known as a tachi, with a tanto, a small, armour-piercing dagger. However, from the 16th century, as infantry tactics took over from mounted combat and the samurai became engaged in administrative and parade duties more than warfare, the fashion changed to favour the daisho.
The daisho comprised the long katana and the shorter wakizashi and the two swords were nearly always mounted in an identical manner. These examples have black lacquered scabbards with grey crayfish decoration. The blades were made in the early 17th century by the Echizen smith, Kanenori, the metal fittings are at least 100 years younger and are of shibuichi, a copper-silver alloy virtually exclusive to Japan that can produce unusual patinas of green, brown and grey.
This is an example of the civilian form of daisho, which was worn in peacetime with normal dress. The katana was carried blade upwards through the sash-belt, on the left hip. The shorter wakizashi was carried through the same belt, blade upwards, across the belly, with the hilt to the right. In the military form of daisho, swords were worn with armour and secured to the body with sword-belts and metal fittings on the blade and scabbard.
Only the samurai class were allowed to wear the daisho. However, prior to 1588, they had no exclusive access to warriorship. In that year, the powerful samurai general Toyotoma Hideyoshi passed the Sword Collection Edict, making it illegal for members of the agricultural and artisan classes to possess weapons. The samurai rigidly maintained their exclusive privilege to bear arms thereafter, and the daisho became the primary insignia of the samurai warrior for almost 300 years.
The wearing of daisho was highly formalised. Samurai learned to walk, stand and sit with daisho in a non-threatening manner, and remain constantly aware of the location of their swords. To clatter a sword when passing another armed man was paramount to drawing it or a verbal insult, and often resulted in bloodshed. When a samurai paid a house call, he was expected to hand over his blades at the door, which were stored in clear view until he left. If he was permitted to keep his daisho, the side at which he placed them beside himself when he sat, and the direction their blades faced, was viewed as a silent signal of his intent, and responded to accordingly. It was through this life-and-death necessity of correct sword-protocol that Iaido developed - a formalised art of donning, wearing, removing, drawing and using swords, which is still practised in martial arts today.
The Boshin War of 1867-9 resulted in the Meiji Restoration of the Emperor's direct rule, after centuries of rule by the Tokugawa Shogunate - a powerful samurai dynasty. The Emperor abolished the samurai class entirely and made it illegal to wear or own daisho. Japan underwent rapid military Westernisation during the last third of the 19th century and the nation's army was transformed, modelled on the most modern German armies of the time.
|
<urn:uuid:c0130b3c-de41-4f5a-aefa-bc3f3f70d819>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/weapons/index.php/tour-by-region/asia/asia/arms-and-armour-asia-116/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.979119
| 714
| 3.671875
| 4
|
Riboflavin for Migraines
Correcting dietary insufficiencies may help reduce headache frequency for migraineurs. Many migraineurs find relief by adding vitamin supplements to their daily regimen.
Taking vitamin B2, also known as riboflavin, has been shown in numerous studies to help reduce the number of migraine attacks people suffer from. Initial studies involved a high dosage of 400mg. This is two hundred times the amount of B2 in a typical diet. The high dosage involved caused a rare side effect of vitamin B2 supplementation to show itself; diarrhea.
In 2005, a new study measured the effectiveness of B2 at much lower doses, only 25mg a day. This lower dose was just as effective at reducing migraine frequency as the higher dose used in earlier studies.
Riboflavin has the potential to enhance energy production in brain cells. Migraine sufferers tend to have impaired energy production in cells in their brains and supplementing with riboflavin may help.
Magnesium, another nutrient important to energy production, is also proven to reduce migraine frequency among sufferers. Diuretics, alcohol, and chronic medical conditions all deplete magnesium in the body. Adding magnesium-rich foods to their diet, things like spinach, bananas, nuts, and whole-grain cereals, helps many migraineurs restore this vital mineral to their system.
If dietary changes donít help, a dose of up to 400mg of magnesium per day may help. Migraineurs should be careful not to overdo it with both dietary changes and supplementation. Signs of magnesium overdosing include drowsiness, lethargy, and diarrhea.
Another potentially helpful supplement is vitamin E. Vitamin E aids in circulation and 400 IU (international units) daily helps many migraineurs reduce the frequency of their headaches. Fish oil pills with the right balance of omega-3 fatty acids are believed to lessen the intensity of an existing migraine and help stave them off.
Consult with a doctor before adding any supplements to your regular treatment plan.
|
<urn:uuid:cecad9f1-2f8e-448e-b3ae-a28c81eb9b2e>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.1-milliondollarhomepage.com/Migraines/Riboflavin-for-Migraines.php
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.916945
| 417
| 2.15625
| 2
|
From Brainstorms to Boards: Using The Game Crafter to Polish Ideas
- 7:00 AM
The Indie Market
This week, Kickstarter released a year-in-review report that demonstrated the viability of the independent game market. Over 2.2 million people around the world used the site in 2012 to fund crowdsourced projects, from films to tech, and contributed almost $320 million ($17,659 per project and $607 per minute). A handful were wildly successful — 17 projects raised more than $1 million each. Among the categories, games led the way with $83 million pledged. A half million people backed the 2,796 game projects, a third of which were ultimately funded. Cards Against Humanity was singled out in the report as a success story by topping the Amazon charts, selling 100,000 copies.
“We are on both sides of the transaction,” says Smith of Kickstarter. “We run the prototypes they do before they run the campaign, and we produce the rewards or the games themselves after the campaign is over.”
A board game called Boss Monster made over $200,000 with Kickstarter in November on a $12,000 ask. Prior to the campaign, the Brotherwise Games prototypes had been produced through The Game Crafter. In addition, one of the rewards the campaign offered was a chance to get an early playtest copy and help influence the end version of the game.
“These are games that would not get funded by [traditional] publishers,” claims Smith.
The success of Kickstarter as a channel for independent game development is one of many signs that the industry has shifted. Minecraft is the biggest success story for independent video games, with Christmas Day sales topping 450,000 licenses. As of December 13, the franchise had sold over 17.5 million copies, including 5 million of the mobile apps. Smith is quick to point out that Angry Birds also came from an independent studio, and at one point, Zynga was an indie. When IGN announced their end-of-year best games countdown, five of the ten nominees were made by small studios, including the winner.
“It’s not Activision or EA building those games,” observes Smith.
The social mechanics and mobility of gaming constantly alter the landscape for designers, affording new opportunities to find players but making it risky to rely too much on any one platform. “A few years ago, everything was on Facebook,” says Pottmeyer. “Now, Zynga just shut down about 11 of their games. You have more hard core games with a smaller audience, but they are finding that audience.”
TGC is helping, too, by increasing the speed to publication for niche game designers. That is something that threatened the established order the moment The Game Crafter robots began printing pawns and cards.
“When we first started, in the industry we were looked at as heretics,” says Smith. “There was a meeting that happened between industry people at GenCon the first year we showed up. It was a closed-door meeting; we were not invited. What they were talking about I’m not sure, but the title of the meeting was, ‘The Game Crafter.’ We got a memo that somebody handed to us telling us that the meeting was happening.”
Last year, however, Smith noticed a reversal of fortune. A number of games in their shop began to have success elsewhere. One of them — Jump Gate — won GAMES Magazine board game of the year, and three more games produced by TGC were in their top ten this year.
“Now these traditional studios are looking at us as their prototyping department,” says Smith, “and also as a place to scout talent for their next game.”
Kevin is finishing up a Ph.D. at the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing while working on @SociaLens, a Midwest startup. His new book is Digital Fluency: Building Success in the Digital Age.
|
<urn:uuid:5526af58-0c46-4f6e-a2ec-c0ef5d1b3e39>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2013/01/from-brainstorms-to-boards-using-the-game-crafter-to-polish-ideas/4/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.978158
| 838
| 1.726563
| 2
|
I spend a lot of time wondering about things I find at Roundrock, which seems like a good use for the land. Sometimes I am tantalized by having some facts before me, and I create possible fictions to fill in the spaces between the facts. Take this old snag for example:
This is a relic from the pre-ranching days. It stands on the edge of the Mighty Pole Forest, up the slope not too far from the south end of the dam. Likely it was one of the dozens of trees killed by the long-ago, death-from-above application of herbicides from helicopters. The tree died where it stood, and remained standing. In the ensuing years, it lost its upper branches as they rotted and fell off. Then, clearly, a ground fire passed through. Yet when the fire reached this snag, it must have flared much higher. Note the scorched patches up the side of the snag where the flames reached. Why is it burned there, yet the surrounding wood appears untouched? Maybe the fallen limbs below the tree provided fuel for the fire. Maybe enuf rotting bark still clung to the tree to feed the flames. Maybe some vine covered the old snag and directed the flames. Perhaps the fire roared up the hollow trunk and found an outlet there. Or maybe there is some other explanation that was consumed by the flames.
This snag stands about 15 feet tall. This shot is looking to the west. You can see that the base is largely gone, but for some reason, the snag has remained standing despite the wind and weather that have taken down other large, dead trees at Roundrock. It could be that the carbonized places where the fire kissed the wood are now harder than they would have been had they not been burned. So the base might actually be stronger though it is slighter.
The critters at Roundrock can be selective about their den trees since we have so many old snags. (I’ve estimated we have about five per acre.) No critters have made a home in this snag, and perhaps some day I will visit it to find it has finally fallen to the forest floor where it can be a different kind of fuel as it returns to the soil.
I love all of this kind of speculation. It’s probably much more interesting than whatever the true tale would be.
|
<urn:uuid:86c3cf57-e4ab-49f2-830b-1081cc45f739>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.roundrockjournal.com/?p=105
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.975376
| 480
| 1.78125
| 2
|
You might not know it, but this is a precarious time in the Chinese-restaurant world—at least according to Xiaotu (John) Zhang, the force behind the proliferating Grand Sichuan empire (he owns or co-owns five out of eight branches, including a new one in Jersey City and a snazzy Greenwich Village outpost opening later this month). Part businessman, part culinary scholar, Zhang expounds on his plans to yank one of the world’s great cuisines into this century—beginning with the beef with broccoli.
You’re from Shanghai. How did you become a Sichuan expert?
When Wu Liang Ye came to New York in 1993, they offered me a job, so I started learning Sichuan and Hunan food. Personally, I don’t eat too much spicy.
How dire is the Chinese-food “crisis”?
Since 2002, Restaurant magazine has put out a list of the best 50 restaurants in the world, but not many Chinese restaurants are included. Chinese cooking is lagging behind.
What’s wrong with it?
The “three steps of cooking” applied by most Chinese restaurants in America, and even in mainland China, are wrong: marinating and “beating water” into meats, frying meats through oil, and “wrapping” sauces over meats in a wok. In this way, chefs can cook very fast, but the cooking is the same, which is why there are so many dishes.
Why is there no such thing as a Chinese celebrity chef?
Chinese menus are more or less the same; the chefs can be replaced easily and the owners control restaurants. In Western countries, the best restaurants are always small, but in China, the best restaurants are huge (usually more than 1,000 seats). The best chefs have no chance to cook, just manage, and the chef’s function and role have been distorted and delimited.
How do you find chefs who meet your standards?
I don’t cook, but I watch chefs cook a lot, and read cookbooks to understand Eastern and Western cooking. I think a lot to find new ideas and methods, and then ask chefs to test them. In China, using MSG has been written into textbooks; now I ask them to abandon MSG and use broth.
Why can’t there be a great, multi-star Chinese restaurant in New York?
As Obama said, we do need a change. Since Chinese cooking originated from the agricultural society, it is “undeveloped.” We need a “reform and opening” policy, like the Chinese economy, to introduce new techniques and ingredients.
But if it’s not traditional, can it be authentic?
Authentic does not mean good. Some authentic is bad. Too salty, too oily, too spicy. Healthy—that’s good.
What are some examples of the “new Sichuan cuisine?”
Beef with broccoli is an old dish, but we prepare it differently—first boiling the beef, then cutting and cooking it. We will have a pumpkin-seed-and-goji soup; both ingredients are on the top-ten list of health foods in America.
Which Chinatown has the best food?
Flushing, where people from northern China and Taiwan are dominant. Cantonese are dominant in Manhattan, which is declining due to limited space. Fujianese are dominant in Brooklyn Chinatown, but their food is simple.
What do you think of New York’s “fancy” Chinese restaurants?
I really loved 66, and I love Buddakan. They pointed out the future development of Chinese cooking.
What’s your favorite kind of food?
French and Italian. In China, I really love Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is almost totally different from those in America.
Do you ever order delivery?
|
<urn:uuid:136d8192-6abe-47bf-900a-f5258f0da29b>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://nymag.com/restaurants/features/46808/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.942771
| 826
| 1.570313
| 2
|
|Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 2000. 38:
Copyright © 2000 by . All rights reserved
5.3. Elliptical galaxies
The simple picture of the passively evolving elliptical galaxy, formed at high redshift in a single rapid collapse and starburst, has held sway since the scenario was postulated by [Eggen et al. 1962] and its photometric consequences were modeled by [Larson1974] and [Tinsley & Gunn 1976]. This hypothesis is supported by the broad homogeneity of giant elliptical (gE) galaxy photometric and structural properties in the nearby universe, and by the relatively tight correlations between elliptical galaxy chemical abundances and mass or luminosity. Observations in the past decade have pushed toward ever higher redshifts, offering the opportunity to directly watch the evolutionary history of elliptical galaxies. Most of this work has concentrated on rich cluster environments, and is not reviewed here except to note that most observers have favored the broad interpretation of quiescent, nearly passive evolution among cluster ellipticals out to z 1 (e.g. [Aragón-Salamanca et al. 1993]; [Stanford et al. 1995, Stanford et al. 1998]; [Ellis et al. 1997]; [van Dokkum et al. 1998, De Propris et al. 1999]).
The "monolithic" formation scenario serves as a rare example of a clearly stated hypothesis for galaxy evolution against which to compare detailed measurements and computations. The alternative "hierarchical" hypothesis is that elliptical galaxies formed mostly via mergers of comparable-mass galaxies that had at the time of merging already converted at least some of their gas into stars (e.g. [Kauffmann et al. 1993]). The argument between the monolithic and the hierarchical camps is not about the origin of galaxies from gravitational instability within a hierarchy of structure, but rather about when gEs assemble most of their mass and whether they form their stars mostly in situ or in smaller galaxies that subsequently merge. At least one observational distinction is clear: In the hierarchical model the number density of elliptical galaxies should decrease with redshift. In the monolithic model the number density should remain constant and the bolometric luminosities should increase out to the epoch of formation.
Measuring the density and luminosity evolution of the field elliptical population, however, has proven difficult, and many different approaches, perhaps complementary but not necessarily concordant, have been used to define suitable galaxy samples. Recent debate has focused on estimates of the evolution the co-moving density of passively-evolving elliptical galaxies in the Canada-France Redshift Survey [Lilly et al. 1995b]. Applying different photometric selection criteria and different statistical tests, two groups [Lilly et al. 1995a, Totani & Yoshii 1998] found no evidence for density evolution out to z = 0.8, whereas another group [Kauffmann et al. 1996], found evidence for substantial evolution. This debate highlights the difficulties inherent to defining samples based on a color cut in the margins of a distribution, where small changes in the boundary, as well as systematic and even random photometric errors in the data, can have substantial consequences for the conclusions.
HST, makes it possible to define samples of distant galaxies morphologically. The multicolor HDF images provide an attractive place to study distant ellipticals, but because of its very small volume and the inherently strong clustering of elliptical galaxies, one must be careful in drawing sweeping conclusions from HDF data alone. Thus, although we focus our attention primarily on the HDF results, they should be considered in context with results from other surveys (e.g. [Driver et al. 1995, Glazebrook et al. 1995, Driver et al. 1998, Treu et al. 1999, Treu & Stiavelli 1999]).
The interpretation of the high-redshift elliptical galaxy counts depends in large measure on a comparison to the local luminosity function (LF) of elliptical galaxies. The basic parameters of published LFs for local elliptical galaxies (or what are sometimes assumed to be elliptical galaxies) 3 span a very wide range in normalization, characteristic luminosity, and faint end behavior. Early HST studies such as that by [Im et al. 1996] concluded that NE or PLE models were consistent with elliptical-galaxy number counts predicted using the local LF of [Marzke et al. 1994].
Searches for distant elliptical galaxies in the HDFs have relied on either color or morphology. In the HDF-N, [Fasano et al. 1998] and [Fasano & Filippi 1998], along with [Schade et al. 1999] for the CFRS and LDSS surveys, all examined the size-luminosity relation for morphologically-selected ellipticals, finding evolution out to z ~ 1 consistent with PLE models. [Kodama et al. 1999] found a well-defined color-magnitude sequence at <z> ~ 0.9, consistent with passive evolution for approximately half the galaxies, but they also noted a substantial "tail" of bluer objects. Similarly, in the [Schade et al. 1999] study, about one third of the sample at z > 0.5 had [OII] line emission and colors significantly bluer than PLE models.
Ir imaging has made it attractive to pursue gEs at redshifts z > 1. In the HDF-N, [Zepf 1997] and [Franceschini et al. 1998] used ground-based K-band data, selecting samples by color and morphology, respectively, and concluded that there was an absence of the very red galaxies that would be expected if the elliptical population as a whole formed at very large redshift and evolved passively. In particular, Franceschini et al. highlighted the apparently sudden disappearance of HDF ellipticals beyond z > 1.3, which suggests that either dust obscuration during early star formation, or morphological perturbation during early mergers, was responsible. [Barger et al. 1999] made an IR study of the HDF-N flanking fields, selecting objects by color without reference to morphology. To K 20, they found few galaxies with I - K > 4, the expected color threshold for old ellipticals at z 1. However, other comparably deep and wide IR surveys have reported substantially larger surface densities of I - K > 4 galaxies ([Eisenhardt et al. 1998, McCracken et al. 2000]), raising concerns about field-to-field variations. [Menanteau et al. 1999] studied the optical-to-IR color distribution for a sample of ~ 300 morphologically early-type galaxies selected from 48 WFPC2 fields, including the HDF-N and flanking fields. They too find an absence of very red objects and a generally poor agreement with predictions from purely passive models with high formation redshifts, although the sky surface density agrees reasonably well with the sorts of models that matched the older MDS and HDF counts, i.e., those with a suitably tuned local LF.
On HST, NICMOS has provided new opportunities to identify and study ellipticals at z 1. Its small field of view, however, has limited the solid angle surveyed. Spectroscopic confirmation of the very faint, very red elliptical candidates identified so far will be exceedingly difficult, but would be well worth the effort. [Treu et al. 1998], [Stiavelli et al. 1999] and [Benítez et al. 1999] noted several very red, R1/4-law galaxies in the HDF-S NICMOS field, identifying them as ellipticals at 1.4 zphot 2. Given the small solid angle of that image, this suggests a large space density, and Benítez et al. have proposed that most early type galaxies have therefore evolved only passively since z ~ 2. Comparably red, spheroidal galaxies are found in the NICMOS map of the HDF-N ([Dickinson et al. 2000a]), with photometric redshifts in the range 1.2 z 1.9. Their space density appears to be well below that of HDF ellipticals with similar luminosity at z < 1.1, in broad agreement with [Zepf 1997] and [Franceschini et al. 1998], although the comparison to z = 0 is again limited primarily by uncertainties in the local gE LF. Curiously, few fainter objects with similar colors are found in the HDF-N, although the depth of the NICMOS images is adequate to detect red ellipticals with L ~ 0.1L* out to z 2. [Treu & Stiavelli 1999] find that PLE models with high (z ~ 5) and low (z ~ 2) formation redshifts over- and under-predict the observed counts, respectively, of red elliptical-like objects in 23 other NICMOS fields.
The HDF-N NICMOS images from [Dickinson et al. 2000a] and [Thompson et al. 1999] are deep enough to have detected red, evolved elliptical galaxies out to at least z ~ 3 if they were present, eliminating concerns about invisibility because of k-corrections (e.g., [Maoz 1997]). The only plausible z > 2 candidate is an HDF-N "J-dropout" object, whose colors resemble those of a maximally old gE at z ~ 3 [Lanzetta et al. 1998, Dickinson et al. 2000b, Lanzetta et al. 1999]. Other z > 2 HDF objects which some authors have morphologically classified as ellipticals (cf. [Fasano et al. 1998]) are blue, mostly very small, manifestly star forming "Lyman break" objects. Few if any appear to be passively evolving objects that have ceased forming stars, so the connection to present-day ellipticals is more speculative.
The collective evidence surveyed above suggests that mature, gE galaxies have been present in the field since z ~ 1 with space densities comparable to that at the present era. At 0.4 < z < 1, however, they exhibit an increasingly broad range of colors and spectral properties, which suggests a variety of star formation histories over the proceeding few billion years (or alternatively errors in classification). The statistics seem to favor a substantial decline in their space density at z >> 1, although the well-surveyed sightlines are small and few, and clustering might (and in fact, apparently does) cause large variations from field to field. Therefore, the conclusion has not been firmly established. Moreover, it is very difficult to achieve uniform selection at all redshifts, regardless of the criteria used (photometric, morphological, or both), and the existing samples of objects with spectroscopic (or at least well-calibrated photometric) redshifts are still small. Thus even the deceptively simple task of comparing elliptical galaxy evolution to the simple PLE hypothesis remains a stubborn challenge.
3 even locally, classification uncertainties may be partly responsible for the widely diverse measurements of the elliptical galaxy LF (see [Loveday et al. 1992, Marzke et al. 1994, Marzke et al. 1998, Zucca et al. 1994, 2000]). Back.
|
<urn:uuid:fe2f9acc-e48a-44c4-bc40-708abf66a17d>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March05/Ferguson/Ferguson5_3.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.924232
| 2,382
| 2.40625
| 2
|
Congestion Charges: easy questions
Show the name and address of the keeper of vehicle SO 02 PSP.
Show the number of cameras that take images for incoming vehicles.
List the image details taken by Camera 10 before 26 Feb 2007.
List the number of images taken by each camera. Your answer should show how many images have been taken by camera 1, camera 2 etc. The list must NOT include the images taken by camera 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19.
A number of vehicles have permits that start on 30th Jan 2007. List the name and address for each keeper in alphabetical order without duplication.
|
<urn:uuid:f3be343e-426e-4145-a11e-015dcf2b543f>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://sqlzoo.net/w/index.php?title=Congestion_Easy&redirect=no
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.938406
| 128
| 1.679688
| 2
|
Chrysalis work involves the creation of safe, sacred “containers” in which individuals, groups and systems can transform themselves and the systems they inhabit. The nature of these “containers” varies as needed to best fit the players and the situation. Chrysalis work is not new. AA’s 12-step program, spiritual retreats, on-going therapy sessions, etc., can be seen as forms of chrysalis work.
Chrysalis work varies dramatically as a function of the size, complexity and nature of the social form involved. Well-designed and executed chrysalis work is best measured by examining the generative nature and duration of its ripple effects — through time and across boundaries. Chrysalis work —
- Creates constructive ripples that endure and spread
- Is life-giving and life-evolving — a “fusion energy” generator
- Evokes Spirit and feeds the Soul — is grounded in Nature — feeds on spaciousness and beauty — involves healing and “wholing”
- Provides ample opportunity for all voices to be heard — feels spacious and unrushed
- Challenges participants to step into their special genius — to quest for and to experiment with discovering the work that is theirs to do.
- Tends to be recursive and cumulative — involves ongoing learning and action in a way that is organic rather than mechanistic
- Serves as hospice for what’s needing to die and midwife to what’s ready to be born — supports individuals and systems in shedding old patterns/structures/beliefs that no longer serve, and create openings for the new to emerge
- Involves telling our evolving stories — again and again
- Produces magical irreversible shifts at one or more levels of system
- Does not replace existing systems — it enlivens and evolves them.
Social metamorphosis, like nature’s metamorphosis, takes the time it takes. Thus trying to force chrysalis work into today’s frenetic A-work
time/space frames is a recipe for failure.
In undertaking organizational or regional metamorphosis we are pioneering new chrysalis work territory. The GALE Approach
offers a high level vision that begins to describe some of the added challenges and opportunities involved in more complex chrysalis work.
|
<urn:uuid:72ae7d3d-6b36-4da4-9cea-b6153d87ec5f>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://globalgea.net/carousel/chrysalis-work-lens/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.920904
| 483
| 1.726563
| 2
|
02-22-2012, 10:20 AM
| || |
As I add to my rambling on here, I'll point out that my objective is dramatically reduced nitrates. In addition to this DIY filter, I'll have floating plants, monitor feeding closely to prevent over feeding and will maintain a high level of tank, filter, substrate cleaning to minimize nitrate creation. I've also been using external water sourdes for water changes to get the nitrate lower.
It would be nice to have a nitrate filter so efficient that no matter how much nitrate there is in the system, it's just converted to N2 in a flash. That's a long way off and perhaps just a dream.
Also, it may take some time for this new filter to cycle and stablize. It will have the advantage of the existing Matrix that's been in the AC70 filter for months AND I will be further seeding the system with Seachem Stability to 'kick it up a notch'... but time and test results will determine effectiveness.
Finally, it's my understanding that the anaerobic bacteria processes the nitrate to obtain the O2 it needs, but this is not food. The Aquaripure system adds alcohol or sugar water to feed the bacteria. Not sure how I 'feed' new friends in this filter???
|
<urn:uuid:46c50ccb-2fd9-46e9-86e1-0becda9ba400>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/diy-aquarium/diy-nitrate-filter-93828/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.947484
| 275
| 2.171875
| 2
|
Volume 48, Issue 2 - March/April 2009
A Manager's View
The Dinner Table
Don’t Be Afraid to Try Something New
by Keith Castleman, manager of 84 Lumber in Blue Springs, Mo. Mr. Castleman’s opinions are solely his own and do not necessarily reflect those of this magazine. You can e-mail him at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Growing up my family always ate dinner together. When I say we ate dinner together, I mean that we all cleaned our plate every night. My mom is an excellent cook but that fact in itself has nothing to do with why my brother, sister and I cleaned our plates every night. We cleaned our plates because before we could leave the table, our plates were inspected by my dad so that he could make sure we weren’t wasting any
Dinner time at my house was usually very interesting. My mom worked full-time while I was a kid, but she still managed to muster up enough energy to cook a hot meal every night and the five of us usually sat down together to eat it—all of it.
My dad usually dominated the dinner conversation. In the 18 years I lived at home, my dad held all of the following jobs: basketball coach, sporting goods store manager, real estate agent, homebuilder, lumberyard manager, cattle farmer and school teacher. That’s seven jobs in 18 years for those who are scoring at home. We also moved eight times in that same span, and I never even changed school districts. I remember a few specific dinners when my dad would talk about how he was going to become a millionaire. This list includes such ideas as parakeet farming (is this even a profession?); buying the minerals underneath people’s land (he made a bunch of money doing this); feeding chicken litter to his cattle to save money on feed (believe it or not the cows wouldn’t eat it); converting a church into a duplex (he made money on this too—hallelujah); and converting an abandoned church into a lumberyard (he was going to call it Holy Wood).
As you can imagine, there was always something for the five of us to talk about at the dinner table. The really cool thing is that every time my dad brought up a new idea at dinner, I believed we were on the edge of becoming filthy rich. Every single time, every idea, no matter what, I was a believer. I can still hear him telling us about the parakeets, and I guarantee you if I had it on tape, you would be doing research on the bird business right now.
Try Something Different
I’m constantly amazed at people who do the same things over and over again and expect to achieve a different result. Businesses today are full of employees and salespeople who haven’t been successful since the economy turned south, yet they keep doing the same things day after day and month after month. Business owners and managers keep saying the same things to their staff and then somehow expect the sales and profits to miraculously reverse course. Today, my dad is a millionaire and restaurant owner. No, you won’t find that on any of the lists above, but somehow, some way, he figured it out. I was sold on all of my father’s crazy and different ideas because of the passion he had for whatever idea was in his head at the time—in much the same way as your employees are begging you to come up with a new idea, a different process, a new program, something … anything.
Our jobs and lives these days are very difficult and full of stress. The same is true of the lives of your employees and your customers. They (your employees, families and customers) are looking for that new idea that everybody can get excited about. They want you to give them a reason to get out of bed every day. They get frustrated because you keep trying the same old stuff that works to a point, but won’t take them to the next level. When is the last time you sat down to dinner with your family and spent the entire time talking about your new idea at work? Believe it or not, your family wants to hear that passion in your voice that went away with the stock market. They NEED to feel like you are excited and doing well in your job. They will eat it up—every bite—and you don’t even have to be a good cook.
© Copyright 2009 Key Communications Inc. All rights reserved. No reproduction of any type without expressed written permission.
|
<urn:uuid:afa0752b-426f-45ab-9e1b-4970a16b17c0>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.usglassmag.com/Shelter/Backissues/2009/MarchApril/managersview.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.979277
| 950
| 1.515625
| 2
|
Mining companies to invest $51.4bln in Peru
Lima, October 16, 2011.
Mining companies in Peru will invest $51.49 billion in new mines and expansion projects, and the trend to undertake more projects will continue in the coming years, the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) said Sunday.
According to the latest monthly bulletin, there are mine expansion projects being pursued by eight companies, with an investment of $9.05 billion dollars.
Southern Peru Copper Corporation (SPCC) invests $1.6 billion in four of these projects, including the Cuajone and Toquepala mines and the Ilo refinery in the south of the country.
Other big projects include Xstrata PLC's $4.2 billion Las Bambas copper project in Apurimac region and Newmont Mining Corp's 51.35%-owned Minas Conga gold project in Cajamarca. Conga has an estimated capital cost of $ 4.0 billion to $4.8 billion.
Peru's Compania de Minas Buenaventura SAA has a 43.65% stake in Conga, while the World Bank's International Finance Corporation holds the remainder.
Peru is the world's second biggest producer of copper and silver and a major producer of gold, zinc, lead and other minerals.
|
<urn:uuid:c0a3748e-c3a9-468d-ac98-5befbb113dc3>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://gogeometry.com/mining/peru-mining-investment-expansion-october-2011-southern-xstrata-newmont-buenaventura.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.927407
| 282
| 1.625
| 2
|
Upscale shopping mall cancels the lease of a down-market store to make way for something more exclusive. Mass versus class – an old story, except that in this case, it involves the politics of global capitalism, an agile turnabout by a clever marketer, and the brio of Italy. There’s a lesson here for anyone interested in how capitalism sells itself to a mass audience even during a recession.
The mall is the granddaddy of all upscale malls – Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. The tenant that lost its lease is the international symbol of American capitalism and globalization – McDonald’s.
Milan’s Galleria is the original Galleria, which has inspired imitators from Burbank to Buffalo. The original is breathtaking, especially after seeing the concrete-and-plastic clones. Milan’s Galleria was built in the 19th-century in the neo-classical style. It is a four-story, double arcade with a glass-and-cast-iron vaulted roof. There are inlaid mosaic floors, a glass dome in the center, and, at one end, a triumphal arch. It connects two of Italy’s great symbols of culture, the Milan Cathedral and La Scala Opera House, but the elegant Galleria is an icon on its own.
Milan’s Galleria boasts historic cafés and bars, high-end shops selling jewelry, paintings, silverware, and fashions. And for 20 years, McDonald’s. No more. The city of Milan, which owns the Galleria, sent the store packing. On Oct. 16, McDonald’s Galleria sold its last hamburger.
But McDonald’s did not go quietly. Instead, it went out with gusto and defiance. It celebrated its last day with a “democratic lunch.” As it posted on its Facebook page eforehand, “We’re waiting for you at McDonald’s in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele for a Democratic Lunch: hamburger, regular fries and a quarter-liter beverage – and it’s on us! Our historic restaurant in the Galleria is closing and we want to spend the last moments with you ☺”
McDonald’s has faced a storm of criticism over the years, both in the United States and abroad, and particularly in Italy. In fact, the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome spurred not only protests but also the creation in Italy of the International Slow Food movement, which promotes traditional cuisine and ecological responsibility. McDonald’s has been accused, among other things, of unfair labor practices, of promoting obesity, of targeting children in its advertising, of practicing cruelty to animals, and of destroying the Amazon rain forest.
And McDonald’s has fought back. In the United States it withdrew its super-sized products and added salads to the menu. Overseas, it makes a point of trying to fit into local food trends and surroundings. In 2008, for example, McDonald’s added two vegetarian restaurants in India. In Italy it received a seal of approval from the Ministry of Agriculture for its all-Italian-ingredient McItaly Burger. The democratic lunch was a natural for McDonald’s.
And, the results? Maybe it was because it was a happening. Maybe it’s because Italian unemployment is about 21 percent (34 percent for youth). Maybe it’s because they like Big Macs. Maybe it’s because they bought McDonald’s argument about democracy. Maybe it’s a matter of class consciousness. As one person wrote on MacDonald’s Italia Facebook page, “Without MC in the Galleria, we’ll no longer be able to tease those conceited people at Savini [a celebrity restaurant].”
Whatever the reason, 5,000 people lined up for McDonald’s free lunch. Most of them were young people.
McDonald’s Italia has posted photos of the event on its Facebook page, including a memory wall where people wrote comments. “I learned so many things inside here,” wrote one. “My stomach thanks you,” wrote another. “Beautiful McDonalds,” and “I <3 MC,” seemed to sum it up.
Meanwhile, McDonald’s Italia does not love Milan. They claim the closing has cost them 24 million Euros and they are threatening to sue. This is not surprising because the stakes are high.
In 2009 – the most recent year for which figures are available – the fast food industry in Italy was worth approximately $5 billion, according to Mintel, a leading market research company. McDonald’s had 22 percent of the market share by value. McDonald’s Galleria was the third busiest McDonald’s restaurant in Italy.
Mintel estimates that in today’s economy, the market is relatively flat. That makes the closing of a store in a high-traffic location like Milan’s Galleria hurt all the more.
Roberto Masi, Managing Director of McDonald’s Italia, noted that McDonald’s Galleria is being replaced by “a big firm of Italian fashion: one more place for luxury, one less for socializing within everybody’s means.”
And who is replacing McDonald’s at the Galleria? It’s Prada, one of Italy’s best-known luxury fashion brands, and beloved of celebrities. I wonder how many of them also eat at McDonald’s?
|
<urn:uuid:c2f954d5-dadf-4f9d-b763-a3f671ae43b5>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.realclearhistory.com/articles/2012/10/22/mcdonalds_class_war_with_milan_38.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948137
| 1,179
| 1.96875
| 2
|
Genetic Programming is a technique for the automatic generation of programs based on the ideas of evolution and survival of the fittest. It is the topic I chose for my MSc thesis at Edinburgh University.
The abstract is:
This dissertation presents and investigates a new technique for using sub-routines in genetic programming. The technique differs from previous ideas by having separate populations for programs and functions and evolving the members of each concurrently. It was hoped that this technique will solve problems as successfully as existing methods with the additional advantage of having less structure determined in advance by the experimenter. It was also hoped that the technique would be superior to existing methods at finding generally useful sub-routines. The initial algorithm was found to be better than genetic programming techniques that don't use sub-routines but inferior to Koza's automatically defined functions (ADFs). The reasons behind the performance are analysed and three refinements are investigated. One of these improved the performance but remained inferior to ADFs. The system was found to discover generally useful sub-routines on successful runs.
The final dissertation is available.
I also have the source code for the Lisp Genetic Programming system I wrote to do the investigations. If you want to have it then drop me a line, however be warned that the code ended up as a bit of a mess. As such I am in the process of rewriting in a much more powerful and better designed version that will additional functionality. More news here soon(ish).
About the simplest form of Neural Network is a multilayer perceptron network. However they are extraordinarily powerful as they can approximate almost any well behaved mathematical function. Here is a proof for the approximation of continuous functions.
|
<urn:uuid:f1747110-634b-43f4-b0be-b361420b026b>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.manicai.net/ai/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.963356
| 346
| 2.265625
| 2
|
9:09am Monday 4th February 2013
By Omar Oakes
A multibillion plan to bring Crossrail to south-west London is being drawn up and will be discussed this week.
A second phase of the rail network would connect Wimbledon to Seven Sisters, in north-east London, via Tooting, Clapham Junction, and a number of central London stops.
It is understood Transport for London and Network Rail have been actively considering the plans – named Crossrail 2 - which will be unveiled tomorrow night (Tuesday) by London First, an organisation which lobbies the Government on behalf of the capital.
The scheme, expected to cost at least £15bn, is based on plans first drawn up in the 1970s to build a cross-London line from Chelsea to Hackney.
From Wimbledon, the train would travel through an underground tunnel to Tooting Broadway, Clapham Junction, Chelsea, Victoria, Tottenham Court Road, Euston, Angel, Dalston Junction, Seven Sisters and Epping.
It is understood Wimbledon not to be the terminus, and the line would extend overground further into south-west London or Surrey.
Richard Tracey, assembly member for Merton and Wandsworth, said Crossrail 2 would be “a further great step forward in transport connectivity for south London.”
He added: “Wandsworth Council in particular have been pushing for this new line to pass through Clapham Junction, in addition to the Northern Line Nine Elms extension.
“There have been a number of alternatives to provide new trains south of the river.
“With the recent announcement that the [First Capital Connect] Wimbledon loop line will remain as it is, and with new air-conditioned trains on the District Lines, Wimbledon is benefitting from significant investment over the next few years.”
A source at Merton Council said Crossrail 2 coming to Wimbledon has ended any hopes of a new primary school being built in a council-owned car park in Queen’s Road.
The source said: “The Department of Transport have told the council they need the site when the tunnel is built.
“In the next decade Wimbledon is going to be a massive commercial centre but I’m afraid it will also be a massive building side while the new tunnel and station are built.”
It is believed construction work would have to begin after 2018, when the first Crossrail project is completed.
Crossrail 1, which costs a total of £14.8bn, passes through 37 stations across 73 miles from Heathrow and Maidenhead in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.
© Copyright 2001-2013 Newsquest Media Group
|
<urn:uuid:b6f7a387-9b0d-4301-9402-da678dd645e6>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.surreycomet.co.uk/news/10203978.print/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.945861
| 568
| 1.59375
| 2
|
A Nobel Pursuit
SSP education programs have served as early milestones in the careers of many outstanding scientists, including seven Nobel Prize winners. These alumni often give back to the same education programs that marked their first success in science, helping the next generation to realize their own potential to do Nobelworthy research. For example, four Nobel Laureates offered advice to Intel ISEF 2010 attendees on a panel where they answered questions which ranged from the genetic engineering of food to involvement in politics to the internationalization of scientific research. Panelists included Dudley Herschbach (Chemistry, 1986), Douglas Osheroff (Physics, 1996), Richard Roberts (Physiology or Medicine, 1993), and Kurt Wüthrich (Chemistry, 2002).
Students were predictably curious about how these successful scientists handled setbacks, mistakes, and unexpected results. In response, Roberts told a story of a postdoctoral researcher who consistently got the “wrong” result until Roberts agreed to do the experiment himself to show the young researcher how it’s done. Of course, Roberts got the same result. “This is one of the joys of science,” he told the Finalists, “when you think you are headed in one direction and all the observations and data send you somewhere else. It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.”
Roger Tsien (STS 1968), 2008 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, also offered wise advice to Intel STS 2010 Finalists. He emphasized that Finalists should not do science for the purpose of winning prizes and recognition. Instead, he advised that they find things about which they are passionate, and persevere.
“He talked about how important it was to enjoy what you were doing; to have passion about the study because science requires an immense amount of dedication, and this level of concentration can only be given if the experimenter is truly passionate about something,” reported Lori Ying (Intel STS 2010) of Tsien’s address to students. “For me, his speech really conveyed how work isn’t work if you enjoy it.”
Tsien also encouraged students to expand their minds by taking as many non-science courses as possible in college: he took classes in photography and music because, “science isn’t everything.”
Wally Gilbert (STS 1949), who won the Lasker Award in 1979 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980, echoed that thought when he recently shared his views in Science News for Kids. As a photographer, he encouraged kids interested in both science and art to pursue both. “In science, what we’re most interested in is a new solution to new problems. And it’s amazing, the speed of discovery. The real thrust in art is also, ‘What is really new and different?’” he said. “The creative impulse is very similar.”
Seven SSP Alumni Have Won the Nobel Prize
|
<urn:uuid:da2e46b0-2de9-4999-9d4e-caa9989cd950>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://societyforscience.typepad.com/ssp/2010/10/a-nobel-pursuit.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.957849
| 613
| 2.578125
| 3
|
I will try to insert "Christmas" into everything I write for a while. It's a difficult word to type for some reason, at least for me. I wonder why?
In any case, the New York Times has a very good editorial about the rotten state of the American election machinery. Some snippets:
In San Diego, the No. 2 choice of the voters for the mayor's job may be headed to City Hall. Donna Frye, a write-in candidate, came within 2,108 votes of defeating Mayor Dick Murphy. But Ms. Frye's vote total does not include more than 5,500 ballots on which voters wrote her name, but failed to darken a bubble next to it. There can be no doubt that those voters, who would easily give Ms. Frye a majority, tried to vote for her, but were tripped up by poor ballot design. The voters' intent should be recognized.
In Ohio, where a recount of the presidential election is under way, it is becoming clear that as important as recounts are, they are not enough to ensure the integrity of our elections. Representative John Conyers Jr., a Democrat from Michigan, has charged that an employee of a company that makes vote-counting software used across the state may have tampered with one county's vote tabulator after the election to make the recount come out right. If people other than election officials have free access to the tabulation software, it can make a recount an empty gesture.
Thus, what we have is the wrong person for San Diego's mayor and an Ohio recount which is a total farce. This needs much more attention and discussion than it has received so far. In fact, this issue is the very lifeline of all democracy. Just ask yourself this question: Suppose that ATMs were created so that you could cheat on how much money you're taking out of your account. Would you really expect that not a single person will take advantage of the design flaw that allows stealing?
Yet this is the current situation in the United States election practices. Anyone with good computing skills and a couple of good connections could turn the elections. Maybe this anyone already has? Why are most politicians treating this issue with total nonchalance?
The best thing that might happen is for a real hacker to hack the 2006 elections so that Donald Duck wins every single one by a vast majority. Maybe then we'd get some change.
|
<urn:uuid:0fb8b393-8fe9-49a3-9132-94dd4ae4cb7c>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2004/12/christmas-update-on-elections.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.97877
| 493
| 1.695313
| 2
|
The purpose of this policy is to establish appropriate use of client accounts and the College’s computing equipment. The College of New Jersey computer systems and network are provided to support the mission of the College. As a provider of network and computing services to the campus, the College has an obligation to establish regulations for its use in order to benefit the entire community. Computer clients do not own accounts on College computers, but are granted the privilege of exclusive use of an account. At all times, clients using the College’s network and accounts must adhere to legal standards and the ethical and moral standards of the College. Failure to comply with acceptable standards may result in a suspension or revocation of privileges.
For the purposes of this document, the following definitions will apply:
Access – includes wired, wireless, VPN, dial-up, or mobile electronic connection methods [for the purposes of accessing resources] on or off campus.
Account – includes accounts issued via the HR or Student system, or any account issued for access to a third party system
Client – An individual who interacts with a computer to perform processes that yield results, commonly referred to as “client” or “end user”. This includes faculty, staff, students, TCNJ affiliates and authorized guests of the College
Malware – Short for malicious software. Common examples include viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, adware or rootkits. Category of applications that operate usually invisibly on a computer without informed client consent, to:
- gather, modify, or destroy information
- purposefully cause a denial of access to services
- permit unauthorized clients to access the computer or network
- send unsolicited email
- perform other hostile, intrusive, or annoying functions
- or any combination of the preceding
Network access – Access to electronic resources hosted or provided by TCNJ or using TCNJ resources as a transport for access to other networks.
Network Access Device: Device used to connect a computer to a network. Common types include wireless access points and wired switches or hubs.
Status – may include active, inactive and emerti
Eligibility for Accounts and Network Access
Clients may use the College computer systems and networks to which they have been granted access for purposes of research, education or College administration. Accounts and access are granted based on each individual’s status and role at the College.
Privacy of Computer and Network Client Information
Information Technology will do its due diligence in taking every precaution possible to protect and secure data. Data security is a partnership between the client and Information Technology. The same security standards that apply to paper files should be applied to electronic files. Each client is responsible for maintaining a level of confidentiality in accordance with their role at the College. It should be noted that there are no facilities provided by the College systems for sending and receiving confidential messages and/or files and there should be no expectation of data privacy when using the College’s network.
The College does not monitor transmissions for the purpose of censorship, but may monitor transmissions should a violation of these regulations be alleged. Authorized personnel within Information Technology may also monitor transmissions in the course of performing routine maintenance or troubleshooting network or account problems.
System administrators may examine or make copies of files that are suspected of misuse or that have been corrupted or damaged. Client files may be subject to search by law enforcement agencies under court order if such files contain information which may be used as evidence in a court of law. Information Technology professional staff may access college-owned computers to perform system maintenance either on-site or using remote tools as necessary without prior notification.
All existing policies and regulations of The College which govern student, faculty and staff conduct, including but not limited to the Student and Employee Handbooks, are hereby incorporated into this Client Computing Usage Policy and shall govern the conduct of students, faculty and staff who use The College’s network and computing services.
Following is a list of unacceptable conduct. This list includes, but is not limited to:
- illegal use or misconduct of any kind (including, but not limited to copyright infringement)
- violation of local, state or federal laws or violation of any College rule or policy
- harassment or violation of the rights of others
- using peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing unless specific instances are authorized by the College
Network and Internet Access:
- connecting unauthorized devices to the campus network. No network access device, including but not limited to wireless access points, switches, routers, hubs, network based storage, pico cell technology or personal DHCP servers, may be connected to the College network without authorization from Information Technology.
- modifying or extending network services and network wiring without prior written consent from the College
- reselling Internet service
- unauthorized access
- using unauthorized resources
- use that disrupts the work of others either locally or on the Internet including initiating “spam” email or use that results in technical difficulties. In either case, Information Technology will take all steps necessary to protect the network.
- using TCNJ resources to send mass emails without administrative approval will be considered “spam” and will be considered a violation of this policy
- masquerading your identity, impersonating other community members, or misrepresenting the College via email, instant message, or other Internet presence will be considered a violation of this policy.
- installing software that may compromise the security of college owned equipment
- providing access to anyone outside of the College community for any purpose other than those that are in direct support of the mission of the College
- forging the identity of a client or a machine in an electronic communication. Prosecution under state and federal laws may apply
- use of College owned computer facilities by unauthorized personnel
- unauthorized attempts to circumvent data protection schemes or uncover security flaws. This includes creating and/or running programs that are designed to identify security loopholes and/or decrypt intentionally secure data.
- attempting to monitor or tamper with another client’s electronic communications, or reading, copying, changing, or deleting another client’s files or software without the explicit agreement of the owner.
- use of a computer account that was not assigned to you by Information Technology, unless multiple access has been authorized for the account and/or the owner of the account has explicitly given you access.
It is essential for each client of the network to recognize the responsibilities that accompany the privilege of having access to a vast array of resources. Clients are ultimately responsible for their own actions in accessing network services. The use of the network is a privilege which can be revoked at any time for abusive conduct without prior notice. Violators are subject to criminal prosecution and/or disciplinary action through the College student conduct structure or personnel hearing process.
Information Technology, Human Resources, Campus Police and Student Affairs enforce these policies as they relate to their areas of responsibility. Campus Police may involve other law enforcement agencies as necessary. In addition, the College department in which the violator is employed may be involved. Harassment or threats should be reported to Campus Police immediately. Other issues involving student violations of these guidelines should be reported to the Vice President of Student Affairs office. Any remaining issue should be directed to Information Technology and Human Resources. The College reserves the right to disable a computer account to preserve evidence under investigation without prior notice. The College also reserves the right to view files in client accounts, on backup tapes or in transit on the network as is necessary to complete an investigation.
- Users are responsible for ascertaining, understanding and complying with the laws, rules, policies, contracts, and licenses applicable to their particular use. Violation of any federal, state or local law or any college policy will result in account suspension. These include but are not limited to copyright violation, illegal file sharing via peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, software piracy, or violations of FERPA, HEOA or DMCA.
- Adherence to the College’s Web Policy found at http://www.tcnj.edu/~academic/policy/webpolicy.html
- When using a personal computer on the College’s network, either on campus or remotely via Virtual Private Network (VPN), individuals must comply with the standards set for college computers. Information Technology assumes no responsibility for supporting personal computers on the College’s network.
- If you create or maintain electronically-stored information which is important to your work or to the College in general, you are ultimately responsible for making frequent backups of the information. Information Technology makes a reasonable attempt to ensure the data and software on College servers are backed up regularly.
- When using a shared or open machine such as a computer lab machine, a department machine or a kiosk any data stored to the local hard drive will be lost and unrecoverable when you log off. It is your responsibility to store your data appropriately, either on a network drive or on removable media.
- Messages, sentiments, and declarations sent as electronic mail or sent as electronic postings or provided as electronic documents (web pages for example) must meet the same standards for distribution or display as if they were tangible documents. They should be identified as coming from you, or, if you are acting as the authorized agent of a group recognized by the College, as coming from the group you are authorized to represent. Attempts to alter the “From” line or other attribution of origin of electronic mail, messages, or postings, will be considered transgressions of College rules.
- Clients must make a reasonable attempt to protect their account from being accessed by others. This includes having a secure password and maintaining proper access permissions on sensitive files you may have in your account.
- It is your responsibility to use strong passwords and to change those passwords often. Do not share your password with anyone. Passwords should not be written down or displayed publicly. Choose a good password at least 8 characters long consisting of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, symbols. An abbreviated phrase or sentence with substituted numbers and symbols is a good idea. Information Technology will never ask for your password via email or a web form and by providing such information in either of these formats, the client may put the College’s data resources at risk.
- The College is not responsible for personal data stored on college-owned equipment including but not limited to photos, movies, music and personally installed software. Any scholarly work should be identified prior to computer upgrades or maintenance to insure that the appropriate data is transferred.
- Practice good digital citizenship. For more information, refer to http://www.tcnj.edu/~it/security/
- The College assumes no responsibility for the accuracy of information obtained from sources outside the control of the College. This includes, but is not limited to areas such as the Internet, unofficial web pages, personal web pages and personal e-mail.
- The College assumes no responsibility for the loss of data on an individual’s workstation due to computer malware, other willfully destructive software or as a result of flaws in the application or operating software on the workstation.
It is your responsibility to periodically review this document for changes and comply with the changes.
Copyright © 1996-2000, 2010 The College of New Jersey
|
<urn:uuid:3fa5d16d-ae52-4dfd-9474-7b4805622338>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://it.pages.tcnj.edu/procedures/computer-access-agreement/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.924427
| 2,302
| 1.726563
| 2
|
April 8, 2012 |
India has taken up with Sri Lanka the issue of vandalism of a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the eastern town of Batticaloa and offered assistance in rebuilding it. The statue of Mahatma Gandhi along with those of Lord Baden Powell and two Tamil scholars had been found damaged on Thursday, prompting the Sri Lankan government to order an investigation. Diplomatic sources said the Indian High Commission here has protested and expressed concern over the act of vandalism by an unknown group on Thursday.
April 2, 2012 |
LONDON: A pair of Mahatma Gandhi's round- rimmed glasses, 'charkha' and a pinch of soil and blades of grass from the place where he was assassinated in 1948 are among several rare items to be put up for auction in Shropshire on April 17. The action, to be conducted by Mullock's, is expected to fetch nearly 100,000 pounds. The guide price for the items set by the auctioneer - 10,000 pounds to 15,000 pounds - is the highest for three items in the collection: the pair of glasses, 'charkha' (spinning wheel)
March 25, 2012 |
JALGAON: President Pratibha Patil today said that Mahatma Gandhi was not just a person, but a "power" whose teachings can give the youth new strength and vision. Speaking at a gathering after inaugurating Gandhi Research Foundation here, Patil said she was happy that memorabilia and writings of the father of the nation would be housed in this institute in her hometown. "Gandhiji had visited Jalgaon in 1927," she said. "It is necessary not only to know Gandhiji, but also to understand his thoughts.
March 19, 2012 |
In my last column, I mentioned how it was a pity that goat's milk was not generally available by itself, instead of being blended into the larger milk system. But just a few days later, I went to Godrej's Nature's Basket store and found packets of goat milk in the chiller cabinet. Packed under the 'Nannies Goat Milk' label, a half litre packet was 45 and the pasteurised and homogenised milk did have a subtle savoury undertaste, though I'm not sure I'd be able to distinguish it blind.
March 16, 2012 |
Seventy six-year old Gary Player has 165 championship victories to his name including nine major championships. In a conversation with ET Now's Shaili Chopra, the South African great discusses how he came to love the 'sissy game'. How do you keep so fit at 76? I have exercised now for 65 years, and I keep my body moving. You have to keep your body in shape. Indians traditionally have had the best diets; just stick to it. You started playing for money because there were not enough jobs then When I won the Masters three times, my total prize was $80,000 but today the first prize is $1.4 million.
February 9, 2012 |
KOTTAYAM: Mahatma Gandhi University has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Mara University of Technology , Malaysia for academic cooperation. The MoU would facilitate institutional exchanges between students, faculty and staff from each partner institution.This would help in academic exchange of graduate and undergraduate students of each institution for specified periods of study and research, collaborative conferences, short courses and student development activities, a university release said.
January 29, 2012 |
KOLKATA: Sixty four years after his death, Mahatma Gandhi's name today created a fresh world record in the Guinness Book as 485 underprivileged boys brought out a peace march dressed as 'Bapu'. Flaunting khadi attire and Gandhi caps, the group of boys wore round-framed spectacles and walked with sticks as they brought alive memories of Gandhi's historic Dandi march . Aged between ten and sixteen, the kids, most of whom are from single mothers, walked for half a kilometre distance at Mayo Road in central Kolkata during the peace march.
January 4, 2012 |
BODH GAYA: Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama was today presented the Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation on the fourth day of the ten-day Kalachakra initiations here. The grand daughter of Mahatma Gandhi, Ila Gandhi, presented the award, instituted in 2003, to the Dalai Lama at the Kalachakra ground here. Ila Gandhi, who is based in South Africa, is chairman of the Gandhi Development Trust , which gives the award. In his acceptance speech, the spiritual leader said it was a happy moment for him to recall Mahatama Gandhi who had experimented with non-violence to gain freedom for India.
December 26, 2011 |
rupee Reserve Bank of India D Subbarao Mahatma Gandhi rupee Reserve Bank of India D Subbarao
December 24, 2011 |
Gandhi is the most misused political icon in India. Do anything un-Gandhian and you can get away with it just by proclaiming yourself to be a follower of the Mahatma. When we talk of Anna Hazare, it must be said that he is, at best, selective in using Gandhi's name. If Anna has to raise a battle cry against corruption, he becomes a Gandhian; but when it comes to enforcing prohibition, he goes against all tenets of the Mahatma. Anna has proclaimed with a sense of pride that he had turned his village Ralegaon Siddhi into a liquor-free zone.
|
<urn:uuid:912134d6-a3d0-4e36-9ece-f45a4a2707f9>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/keyword/mahatma-gandhi/recent/5
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.969627
| 1,164
| 1.757813
| 2
|
You can define poetry in many ways. You can focus its form, its content, its language, its purposes or its differences from prose. Or you can define it as John Updike — the poet, novelist and critic — did in Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism. He said that poetry is “the exercise of language at its highest pitch.”
April 4, 2012
What Is Poetry? Quote of the Day / John Updike
Leave a Comment »
No comments yet.
|
<urn:uuid:82eb88bb-ec77-4d94-87c8-e1a59e6db3c8>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/what-is-poetry-quote-of-the-day-john-updike/?like=1&_wpnonce=90624772bb
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.98218
| 106
| 2.140625
| 2
|
FAITH LAPIDUS: This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Faith Lapidus.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: And I'm Christopher Cruise. Today, we talk about fibromyalgia syndrome. American officials say fibromyalgia affects up to six million people in the United States each year. In some countries, the disease is said to affect more than three and a half percent of adult women and one-half percent of all adult men.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Fibromyalgia can have many symptoms, including depression and low energy levels. But pain -- often throughout the body -- is the main problem. Patients often have pain in their muscles and joints. And they always feel tired.
Many people with fibromyalgia have trouble persuading doctors that their pain is real. Some of the most common symptoms of fibromyalgia are the same as those of other diseases. As a result, doctors often have trouble recognizing and confirming the presence of the disease.
A woman with fibromyalgia and high blood pressure, shown with her medicines
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Treating fibromyalgia can be difficult. Since there is no cure, doctors may experiment with different treatments and medicines. Some drugs work with some patients, but do not work with others. Patients with mild fibromyalgia often do not need any drugs. Their condition can improve with a combination of low-impact exercises, a good diet, getting enough rest and patient education.
Treatment of fibromyalgia patients can be costly and difficult for doctors, because the pain only lessens. It never goes away completely.
America’s Food and Drug Administration has approved three drugs for fibromyalgia – Lyrica, Cymbalta and Savella. These medicines have been shown to reduce pain for about half of patients.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Doctor Russell Rothenberg is a leading expert on fibromyalgia. For many patients, he says, a thirty percent reduction in pain is enough so they can work and take care of their family. Once fibromyalgia is treated, patients can be stable for many years -- not getting better, but not getting worse, either.
Some patients have described fibromyalgia as taking control of their lives and making them a prisoner of their own body. Plenty of physical activity in one day can make muscles sore for days afterwards. Foot pain can be so intense that wearing shoes is impossible. Even after getting eight hours of sleep, some sufferers wake up feeling tired. Normal activities like socializing with friends can be impossible.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: The drug manufacturer Pfizer makes the drug Lyrica, which has been advertised as a treatment for fibromyalgia. In two thousand seven, the Food and Drug Administration approved Lyrica as the first drug specifically for the disease. Studies involving one thousand eight hundred patients showed that some patients have less pain after taking the drug.
The FDA called Lyrica an important development in the fight against the disease and a reason for hope in patients. At the same time, the agency said it is not known why Lyrica works. It also said that not everyone who took the drug was helped. Lyrica causes side-effects in some patients, including problems with mental concentration and attention.
The FDA has also approved the drugs Cymbalta and Savella to treat fibromyalgia in individuals over age eighteen.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Gail Cawkwell is a rheumatologist who treats children and young people with arthritis and fibromyalgia. She is also a Vice President at Pfizer.
Doctor Cawkwell told VOA that fibromyalgia is a very mysterious disease that has proved difficult to diagnose and treat. She says Pfizer believes Lyrica helps doctors ease their patients’ pain and other symptoms.
DOCTOR GAIL CAWKWELL: “Lyrica’s primary effect we believe is on pain, we believe is on calming down excited nerves, and its impact on fibromyalgia overall is there beyond just the pain of fibromyalgia.”
FAITH LAPIDUS: Doctor Cawkwell says she has treated thousands of fibromyalgia patients in the past fifteen years. She says that, with good medicines, doctors can make a real difference in the lives of people with fibromyalgia. She says patients make an effort to find out what is happening in the body and how to get better.
But she notes that people can be healthy one day and the next day wake up feeling tired and everything hurts. And, she adds, the disease can last many years, even a lifetime.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Lyrica is an important product for Pfizer. In two thousand ten, the drug produced three billion dollars in sales worldwide.
Doctor Cawkwell says Pfizer is studying patients with fibromyalgia in China and Japan. And she says the company is looking at what she calls “bio-markers” in people with fibromyalgia. Bio-markers help researchers know what is happening in the bodies of people with a disease or medical condition. Doctor Cawkwell says it is important to find bio-markers for fibromyalgia.
DOCTOR GAIL CAWKWELL: “One of the really frustrating things for patients with fibromyalgia is that there’s nothing to measure in labs or in X-rays. And sometimes people think if you can’t measure something then maybe it’s not real. So we are looking at bio-markers, we’re doing sophisticated X-rays, like functional MRI and spec-scanning to understand what happens in the brains of patients with fibromyalgia when they have pain, what happens to their brains when we treat that pain.”
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Doctor Cawkwell says people are rarely hospitalized because of fibromyalgia, and most patients do not die from it. She says this is why it can be difficult to know how many people suffer from the disease.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Researcher Brian Walitt believes that all of the advertising for Lyrica may be bad for people with fibromyalgia. Doctor Walitt is the director of the Fibromyalgia Research Center at Georgetown Hospital Center in Washington, DC. He is studying sixty-seven patients with the disease. He is critical of doctors who look to drugs first to help their fibromyalgia patients.
BRIAN WALLIT: “Much of what I do is actually remove people from their medications so they can remember what they were like.”
FAITH LAPIDUS: Doctor Walitt says the heavy advertising of a drug to treat fibromyalgia may give some people the idea that it can be cured. He says that is not reality. And he says studies of fibromyalgia patients have shown that very few get much better, and some get much worse, even with treatment. He says it is wrong to expect that patients will take a drug and all of their symptoms will go away.
BRIAN WALLIT: “One can pursue one’s health and try to get better, but to expect a cure is unlikely and the best thing that one can do is stop chasing cures and deal with the reality of one’s situation.”
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Doctor Walitt says drug manufacturers market their treatments because they are concerned about making a profit. He says fibromyalgia drugs available today are very limited, and drug makers should not be selling a cure. He says that a return to a happy and pain-free life because of modern medicine does not match the reality of fibromyalgia.
Doctor Walitt says he helps patients understand that they are not alone in their suffering. He gives them a better understanding of the disease and shows them how others have found ways to live with it.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Fibromyalgia sufferers have learned to enjoy the good days and control the pain on the bad days. They have come to accept the fact that a life without pain is probably not possible. However, there are more treatment choices available now than in the past. As a result, an improvement in the quality of their life is possible. Patients know they may be able to regain control of their life with the right medicine and by setting aside time each day to rest.
Exercise like walking helps. So does gently stretching muscles and physical therapy, including water therapy. Help could also come from acupuncture, yoga, a healthy diet, counseling and emotional support.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: People with fibromyalgia syndrome can lead healthy and productive lives. And they can have long and successful careers. Experience and better science have made fibromyalgia easier to control for many, even if there is not a cure.
In the twenty years since fibromyalgia was identified and given a name, much has been written about the disease. Much free and well-documented information about the disease is available. And groups have been created to help doctors who treat the disease and patients who suffer from it.
Doctor Russell Rothenberg says the future is looking brighter for those who suffer from fibromyalgia.
RUSSELL ROTHENBERG: “I don’t know if I believe that the disease will be cured in my lifetime, but I hope it will. But I am definitely optimistic about how my patients are doing and how they will do in the future, because the science of fibromyalgia is growing, so as the science grows we’re going to be better able to take care of these patients. There’s a little bit less guesswork for me at this point. That’s what experience and science bring to the table. And so, yes I’m excited about the future of fibromyalgia. We know a lot more about it than we did when it didn’t have a diagnosis name.”
FAITH LAPIDUS: This program was written by Christopher Cruise. Our producer was June Simms. I'm Faith Lapidus.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: And I'm Christopher Cruise. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.
|
<urn:uuid:aaabee91-b131-49ba-858b-e2924a80aef8>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/fibromyalgia-affects-millions-of-people-around-the-world---126529413/115292.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.96218
| 2,127
| 2.78125
| 3
|
In people who have cirrhosis, the cells of the liver are damaged and can’t repair themselves. As liver cells die, scar tissue forms. When this scar tissue builds up, blood can’t flow through the liver properly.
Normally, poisons and wastes in the blood get filtered out as blood passes through the liver. If scar tissue keeps blood from flowing normally through the liver, the blood doesn’t get filtered. Poisons and wastes can build up in the body. In serious cases, cirrhosis can even lead to coma and death.
Normally, blood is carried to the liver by a major blood vessel called the portal vein. If blood can’t flow easily through the liver because of cirrhosis, the blood in this vein slows down and the pressure inside the vein increases. This higher blood pressure in the portal vein is called portal hypertension.
Your doctor will ask if you have any of the following symptoms:
Cirrhosis is sometimes caused by hepatitis (an infection of the liver) or by eating or drinking harmful chemicals. The most common cause of cirrhosis is drinking too much alcohol. This is called alcoholic cirrhosis.
Women who drink too much alcohol may be at greater risk of developing alcoholic cirrhosis than men who drink too much. If you drink alcohol, you need to tell your family doctor so he or she can check for signs of cirrhosis, especially if you have any of the symptoms listed below. Both regular, long-term alcohol use and binge drinking (drinking large amounts of alcohol in a short time period) can contribute to cirrhosis.
If blood can’t flow normally through the portal vein, it must return to the heart using other blood vessels, most often those found in the stomach, esophagus and intestines. These vessels become swollen because of the increased amount of blood flowing through them. They are called varices. Varices have thin walls and can easily break open because they aren’t meant to handle such high-pressure blood flow. Bleeding from a broken blood vessel is serious and can even be fatal. Also, because the portal vein is blocked, toxins in the blood are not cleaned by the liver and therefore remain in the body.
Your doctor will examine you and may order tests to see how your liver is working. Your doctor may also arrange for a biopsy of your liver. In a biopsy, a very thin needle is put into your liver to take out a small bit of tissue for testing. Your doctor may also use an ultrasound (sound waves used to make a picture) to look at your liver.
Once liver cells have been damaged, nothing can be done to repair the liver or cure cirrhosis. Treatment is aimed at avoiding further damage to the liver and preventing and treating complications (such as bleeding from broken blood vessels). Your doctor may prescribe a medicine to help prevent your blood vessels from breaking open. Drugs that prevent broken blood vessels have some side effects. Not everyone can take them. Your doctor may also prescribe medicine to lower blood pressure if you have portal hypertension.
If medicine isn’t enough, surgery may help stop bleeding from broken blood vessels. One option is to interrupt the flow of blood to swollen varices in the area where the esophagus (the tube leading to the stomach) attaches to the stomach. A long lighted tube is passed through the mouth to the stomach. Then, rubber bands or hardening chemicals are placed on the swollen blood vessels to block them off.
If this procedure isn’t successful, a person with portal hypertension may need to have a surgeon connect the blood vessels in such a way that the blood doesn’t flow through the liver. Another kind of procedure, called TIPS (transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt), may be done in some cases.
If you drink alcohol, the most important thing you can do is stop. Alcohol just keeps damaging your liver. Some medicines, vitamins and herbal remedies can also damage your liver. Talk with your doctor before you take any medicines, including antibiotics, birth control pills and even over-the-counter drugs such as acetaminophen (one brand name: Tylenol).
It’s also important for you to take good care of yourself. When resting, be sure to prop up your feet and legs, especially if they are swollen. Eat a balanced diet. You may need to watch how much protein and sugar you eat. Avoiding salt may also help with fluid retention and swelling. Ask your doctor if you should follow a special diet.
Written by familydoctor.org editorial staff
|
<urn:uuid:5bc99e4d-9671-4b55-8469-38d37c0fe470>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://familydoctor.org/familydoctor/en/diseases-conditions/cirrhosis-and-portal-hypertension/diagnosis-tests.printerview.all.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.935172
| 952
| 3.265625
| 3
|
Conservative legal theorists spend a lot of time talking about how the text of the Constitution should be construed only as it was understood at the time of the Founding and Ratification. Building on this idea, they rail against “judicial activism” and the “creation of new rights” that are not “found in the text” of the Constitution. This provides a theoretical basis for conservative claims that there is no Constitutionally protected right to many things they despise: gay marriage, abortion, health care, housing, food, etc.
As I will describe below, this textual originalism is bad history and bad law. Furthermore, this theory only has any jurisprudential legs at all because of an unfortunate happenstance of 20th Century Supreme Court jurisprudence.
(This is a repost of a guest-post I wrote at Home of the Brave, a
great deleted blog on constitutional issues in contemporary politics.)
The fundamental problem with textual originalism is that it considers individual rights to be things that are created by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Once you accept this, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that any rights not explicitly enumerated in the text of the Constitution and Bill of Rights do not exist. But this interpretation of the origin of individual rights is total nonsense.
The Founders were children of the Enlightenment, disciples of Locke, who manifestly believed in a natural law origin for individual rights. They considered individual rights arising out of natural law to be prior to, and independent of, any government. Indeed, they considered any government that did not respect and defer to the natural rights of individuals to be illegitimate.
This conception of natural rights is embodied in the most famous line of the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Unalienable rights are those rights that exist independently of any government, and that must be respected by any government, or that government is illegitimate and deserves to be overthrown.
This line also foreshadows the arguments over the drafting and ratification of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, where it prepends “among these” to the enumerated unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. While the existence or non-existence of any particular unalienable natural right does not depend on enumeration, or lack of enumeration, in any founding document, the addition of “among these” was meant to clearly and explicitly emphasize that there may be other unalienable rights besides those mentioned, and the list was not meant to be exhaustive, only illustrative.
Madison argued strenuously in the Convention against the inclusion of any Bill of Rights in the Constitution. His concern was exactly that illustrative enumeration of particular individual rights would be misconstrued as being exhaustive, and thus allow illegitimate incursions by the Federal Government on the unalienable natural rights of the individual. He believed that there was no need to specifically address the existence of natural rights of the individual, precisely because they are prior to any government, and any government that didn’t respect them automatically rendered itself illegitimate. And there was, of course, no Bill of Rights in the Constitution as presented for ratification.
However, during the ratification debates, it quickly became apparent that getting enough votes in favor was going to require assuaging the fears of those who (presciently) were afraid that the absence of enumeration of particular individual rights would be misconstrued as implying that the Federal Government was not obliged to respect those rights. Prominent supporters of ratification–many of whom were perceived as shoo-ins for Senate and House seats–promised to present Bill of Rights amendments for ratification as one of their first actions in the newly constituted legislature.
Keeping their promise, the first Congress went right to work, both illustratively enumerating some natural rights, but also–not surprisingly, at the insistence of Madison–making it abundantly clear in the Ninth Amendment (just like “among these” in the Declaration) that any enumeration does not invalidate or deny any rights that are not enumerated:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
In fact, the Founders’ theory of natural law included the idea that as human beings become more and more enlightened over historical time, they would develop a richer and deeper appreciation of true scope of natural law. It was thus totally expected that there would be natural rights that were not even known to the Founders at the time of the founding, but were nontheless unalienable and could not be infringed by any legitimate government.
So it sounds like the natural rights principle embodied in the Ninth Amendment is a good, simple basis for individual rights jurisprudence. As we as a society develop a richer view of the scope of our unalienable rights, they become enforceable against the government in the fullness of that evolving view. This is because these unalienable rights are independent of the text of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, independent of the specific views of any people at any point in the course of history, and dependent only on the best contemporaneous good-faith understanding of natural rights at the time of enforcement.
Unfortunately for political progressives, Ninth Amendment natural law origin for unenumerated individual rights never developed in Supreme Court jurisprudence. Instead, unenumerated individual rights were justified as being implied by one or another enumerated right, or arising as a penumbrae of enumerated rights. As you might imagine, this has lead to a great deal of confusion and inconsistency in the jurisprudence of unenumerated individual rights, and has clearly hindered their full enforcement in ways desired by progressives.
Conservative legal theorists have exploited this confusion and inconsistency, driving wedges of “making up rights”, “legislating from the bench”, and “judicial activism” into the cracks in this cobbled-together Rube Goldberg unenumerated rights jurisprudence. This creates fertile soil for arguing that the only individual rights enforceable against the government are the enumerated ones, which are to be interpreted according the understanding of those rights that held sway the time of ratification.
This theory is, of course, very convenient for furthering the conservative goal of greater power of the government over the affairs of individuals (but not over corporations), as in application it hampers the full enforcement of our naturally endowed individual rights against government action. But it is contrary to both history and law, and represents a willful misunderstanding of the clearly written text of the Constitution and Bill of Rights and the intent of both the drafters and ratifiers.
|
<urn:uuid:304cb395-cadd-4f12-8490-bd04561cd955>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://freethoughtblogs.com/physioprof/2012/07/20/repost-constitutional-originalism-natural-law-and-the-ninth-amendment-2/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.959839
| 1,408
| 2.3125
| 2
|
Forum 4 - Of Two Minds ...
(Thoughts After Day 2)
Name: Paul Grobstein
Subject: Of two minds ...
Date: 2003-07-09 07:08:12
Message Id: 5870
What thoughts/ideas/questions did our morning session yesterday raise in your mind? You can write about anything, but if you need a reminder/trigger, how about the following:
The Christopher Reeves observations we talked about yesterday suggest that the nervous system is organized so that one can sense inputs and generate outputs without being "aware" of either. What do you think of this "summary/story"? Are there other situations where this occurs (without major damage to the nervous system like a broken neck)? Is it relevant for thinking about education/classrooms?
Name: Miss Geneva E. Tolliferreo, M.
Subject: Two minds?
Date: 2003-07-09 09:21:48
Message Id: 5871
I am still not sold on this idea as we have identified it. However, I believe that actions/reactions occur independent of the brain realizing it. Or, does it recognize ways we have yet to identify? Nevertheless, I must recognize that there is a logical explanantion. We need not overlook the realm of The Highest Universal Force as a reason to be reckoned with.
Subject: on chris reeve
Date: 2003-07-09 09:25:01
Message Id: 5872
no comment today
Name: W. Keith Sgrillo
Date: 2003-07-09 09:25:29
Message Id: 5873
This concept brings to mind involuntary muscle movements. The heart is a muscle that reacts without any conscious decisions. This also brings to mind the occasional muscle spasm in which the muscle is moving or convulsing and one can not stop it with conscious thought.
I find this facinating yet I am quite unsure as to how this understanding can be applied to the classroom.
Subject: Day 2
Date: 2003-07-09 09:34:15
Message Id: 5874
Thoughts,ideas.questions---I was really impressed about the changes in technology from last year to this year. It is amazing how science progresses. What does this mean for education? One thing for sure--teachers need to be up on the lastest and need to keep coming to this workshop, need to get professional training(that is appropriate), abd need to keep learning themselves.
Now getting to Chris, I am thinking of other activities that we are not aware of. Here are some--sleep walking, dreaming, and more.
What does this have to do with education --well, [getting this less wrong] children may be able to learn without conscious participation. I'm not sure how this plays out. I guess I should make it a question.
Subject: July, 8 2003
Date: 2003-07-09 09:35:40
Message Id: 5875
The 2 Brain thoery reminds me of the 3 brin theory of Frued's Id, Ego, and SuperEgo. There are things that we do automatically, over which we have have no control: ie perspiring when we get over heated, or beginning to shiver when too cold.
The concept that Christopher Reeves is in the rostal part of his brian that explians why a person who is an amputee (sp?) is still the same person they were before the diseased limb or limbs were removed. No one would say, or even believe that a person missing a limb was some how mentally impared, only because the limb was missing. Many times that person's self concept has to be adjusted.
I think about physical learning...How to ride a bike, type, play a sport, or sometimes even dialing a phone number...these at least for me are often happening without consciencely being aware of them. Unfortunatley, some times when I go to dial one number (mentally) I physically end up dialing another number. For a person just learing how to do these things, they have to consentrate on the process. Right now for me designiing a web page is something that takes a very conscious effort, maybe a month from now it will feel as natural as surfing the web.
Name: Sheila Michael
Subject: The Brain
Date: 2003-07-09 09:36:10
Message Id: 5876
Christopher Reeve exhibits a tenacity that parellels only to divine will. His determination to walk again is inspiration to all rehabilitation patients everywhere. I have a cousin who through a drug overdose died and was resuscitated to live in a coma--regained consciousness--within a month--only to have the life of a 10-13 year old. She has brain damage, and had to learn to walk and speak, feed herself, etc. much like a person who had suffered a stoke. It has been over ten years now and she can talk, walk and take care of herself with guidance and supervision.
? What state is the patient in--during a coma? Many patients can remember situations when they were comatose. Is the brain activity dormant or regenerating? Or a miracle?
P.S. In the N-E-W-s. . . .
A man has come-out of a coma after 19 years.
Subject: Two Minds?
Date: 2003-07-09 09:37:21
Message Id: 5877
Involuntary responses of the nervous system are necessary to keep systems alive. We don't "tell" the heart to beat, we don't "tell" the lungs to take in air. However when they are not able to perform their function, our brain strugles to command them to work.
Sometimes students perform functions in the classroom as if they are on "automatic", such as writing worksheets or taking notes from the board. Students are not mentally engaged in this type of activity. Actually students LIKE this type of activity because they can remain brain-dead and it's EASIER for them than thinking. When I require them to be in groups and to question, explore, discuss and write an explanation; the students initially complain "What do you want us to say?" "Are we getting a grade for this?" You never said what we're supposed to write!"
By the middle of the year my students are comfortable with the process. They have stopped copying from each other because the "originator" knows that s/he will receive a zero with the rest of the copies. The students also know that they will get points for writing what they THINK, especially if it is backed up with the evidence from their explorations. I don't grade for spelling or style. As a final result, I am able to get an excellent sense my students depth of understaning from their logs.
Subject: Yesterday's Stuff
Date: 2003-07-09 09:37:50
Message Id: 5878
Are there other situations where this occurs (without major damage to the nervous system like a broken neck)? Is it relevant for thinking about education/classrooms?
Absolutely! It seems that every day school imputs information to kids. Do we get corresponding output? I think not! Sometimes "stuff goes in but doesn't come out". Likewise, kids' responses to stimuli sometimes far outweighs the stimuli- one kid nudges another accidentally -of course- and the other kid decks him/her.
Date: 2003-07-09 09:38:09
Message Id: 5879
The incident which effected Christopher Reeves has sparked a national debate over fatal tissue used for research purposes. My verdict is still pending on this matter. The concept of two brains dealing with neuron input and output impluses was comprehensible after reflecting on people who have been subjected to an immobile state. At frist, the theory of two minds automatically lead my to think of the conflicts between the id,ego, and superego. Wrong!
However, I can think of situations when completing a task felt robotic without any intellectual stimuli.
Name: Regina Toscani
Subject: 2 minds ?
Date: 2003-07-09 09:38:53
Message Id: 5880
Another possible example of having "2 minds" is when a person performs an activity without thinking about it. If an activity is routine, a person does not have to be conscious of doing the activity. Disassociation occurs and the mind is not processing sensory inputs, nor directing outputs.
In a more sever form of disassociation a person may not remember doing and saying things. For that person, the "I" Function is not engaged when the person is in a disassociated state.
A second possible example of "2 minds" is Tourette syndrome ( or other neurological disorder). The person does not want to tic yet is unable to stop it.
Subject: Nervous System
Date: 2003-07-09 09:39:21
Message Id: 5882
One example that comes to mind when mentioning Chris Reeves would be stroke victims. My dad is a diabetic. He had two minor strokes with damage to his nervous system. Currently he complains of no feeling in the bottom of his feet and has poor management of bodily functions. He doesn't like to stand because his feet slide from under him. When it is time to use the potty he says it just came out. He is not a quadriplegic and has been seen by a nuerologist. It seems as if some days he is very coherent and other days he is out of it. The doctor confirms that he has some damage to his nervous system. Can it get better or do I clean poop forever!
Name: John Dalton
Date: 2003-07-09 09:39:34
Message Id: 5883
Yesterday's discussion lead me to consider the question of where do you place your focus. We have spent a lot of time focusing upon diversity as a consequence of the extent to which each organism is individually different and unique. It's all in the wiring, the distictive organization of neurons. While this divergence is inescapably true, what I find even more remarkable is how much convergence operates. Humans are remarkably similar. It's all about one's point of view.
With regard to the issue of two minds, it's clear that we possess both a conscious and an unconscious mind. In fact, I would argue that our conscious processing represents just a small portion of our overall functioning. Most of what our organism does goes by without being noticed by what I think of as "me". It's not unlike the old distinction between body and soul. What Christopher Reeve's injury establishes is that our soul is located above the neck. There's a little "homunculus" that engages in reflection. The question that begs answering is whether this "soul", individuality persisting over time can be nailed down to a specific area, say the neocortex, our language center.
Date: 2003-07-09 09:40:17
Message Id: 5884
How this relates to teaching is that we need to help students develop multiple pathways to learn and demonstrate learning. Book reports for a student who has difficultly writing may not be the most appropriate way to demonstrate learning...maybe a student created puppet show is a "better" way, which allows physical learning to be demonstrated.
Name: Linda M
Subject: linda m / wed AM
Date: 2003-07-09 09:40:36
Message Id: 5885
When your hand accidentally touches something hot, it automatically withdraws itself without bothering to consult with the main brain. Perhaps it's akin to the second nerve mass that some dinosaurs had to manage their back ends which were so far from their front ends.
Re implications in educational settings--I often see students do things that appear not to have originated from their upper brain. Actually I don't see the independent actions of the lower body/spinal cord as being a second mind. Rather I see the upper brain as the seat of our multiple minds. I observe students doing and saying things that show forethought and insight and then I see them do something that seems like the mental equivalent of a knee jerk reaction.
Subject: spelling error
Date: 2003-07-09 09:42:18
Message Id: 5886
Spelling correction: fetal
Subject: Response to yesterday's discussion
Date: 2003-07-09 09:44:11
Message Id: 5887
Yesterday,s day session was very interesting. I find that each session has only open the door to entertain that of more questions.
The Chistopher Reeves observations in relation to the nervous system was a very interesting story. And although I personally am unable to recall any incidence where something of this nature has occur to someone personally that I know, I am more then certain that I have heard this subject address at sometime or another.
I do believe this that some of this need to be address in our classrooms. Our children have the tendency to ruff play in their no harm type games.
Name: Randal Holly
Date: 2003-07-09 10:04:41
Message Id: 5888
There is far too much available stimuli in the world for a human to be consciously aware of it all. Perhaps an organism seeks to be pragmatic about selecting which available stimuli it chooses to acknowledge. Perhaps there exists a genetic predisposition that requires this selection process to be done to the specific benefit of the organism. It may be that learning represents a continual improvement upon this selection process.
Subject: Today, before lunch.
Date: 2003-07-09 12:11:00
Message Id: 5889
Why do children, who are victims of alcohol and/or drugs during conception, and gestation, act out in negative ways as oppossed to positive? Does this have anything to do , in part, with the school of thought that alcohol and drugs are a bad influence? If not, then what is the explanation and how/why does the brain always process/manifest the negative and not the positive?
Subject: July 9, am
Date: 2003-07-09 12:29:59
Message Id: 5890
The discussion of the morning was and remains stimulating. Why, as educators who are seemingly open to accept the Nuerobiological explaination so "afraid" of the exsistance and workings of GOD?
Sometimems as people present thier points of view from the scientific perspective, they treat people who beileve in GOD as if the witches in Salem, MA, back in the 1600's.
If it is better teaching practices that we want, why not accept that could be some things for which we may never be able to fully understand?
And others still that we may only have a limited understanding of...or the stories we currently tell.
Name: Paul Grobstein
Subject: for Antoinette
Date: 2003-07-09 19:07:50
Message Id: 5892
Nobody should EVER dismiss people as defective for ANY reason (as per Culture and Disability). At the same time, it is worth noting that in this particular case the disabling has historically gone in both directions, and still does (cf. On Being a Lonely Atheist).
That said, let's agree that what HAS been does not forever HAVE to be. Serendip has a section for people who feel they have been discouraged from telling stories that include concepts like God, so their stories can be clearly heard by others (Science and Spirit). And I personally am more than willing to agree that "there are some things we have only a limited understanding of" (indeed, I'm SURE of it; its fundamental to the "getting it less" wrong principle). And I'm also more than willing to believe I can learn from other people's stories, whether they include the word God or not (cf. How to Get Through the Veil).
Where there may be an interesting difference in our stories (perhaps useful to both of us to see in getting it less wrong?) is the idea that there may be some things "which we may never be able to fully understand". I'm fully prepared to admit that as a "possibility" but very much disinclined to accept it as a starting point ... and even more disinclined to have people specify for others (or themselves) particular things that should not even be examined to see if they can be "understood". Is that a meaningful difference between us, one that would incline us to make different choices in education (or in life)? If so, we have some more things to talk about. If not, we're pretty much in the same place, the words we use notwithstanding.
Send us your comments at Serendip
| BBI 2003 Home Page
| Summer Institutes
| Serendip Home |
© by Serendip 1994-
- Last Modified:
Thursday, 10-Jul-2003 08:22:21 EDT
|
<urn:uuid:9497644a-2baa-4225-903d-2d8a0c1a903a>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/local/suminst/bbi03/forum4.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948983
| 3,541
| 1.96875
| 2
|
WASHINGTON (June 1, 2005)—Goodness Works Quietly is the theme for this year's Peter's Pence Collection.
The Peter's Pence Collection enables the Holy Father to respond with emergency financial assistance to the needy throughout the world—those who suffer as a result of war, oppression, and natural disasters.
Scheduled for the Sunday nearest the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, this year's collection will be held in most parishes throughout the United States on the weekend of June 25-26.
In a letter to diocesan directors of communication, Archbishop John G. Vlazny, Chairman of the USCCB Ad Hoc Committee on the Economic Concerns of the Holy See, explained the origin of the theme for this year's collection.
Archbishop Vlazny recalled that last year, at a Mass for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, "Pope John Paul II urged us to follow Mary's example, calling us to serve with trust and joy." Our new Pope Benedict XVI continues the work of his predecessors.
"The power of love is expressed in the unassuming quietness of daily service," the Archbishop said. "Through works of charity, Catholics provide a quiet but powerful witness of love and deeds to empower the weak, the defenseless, and the voiceless, and to sustain those who suffer."
Archbishop Vlazny thanked the diocesan communication directors for their efforts to promote and support the works of the Holy Father through the Peter's Pence Collection.
He informed them that press kit materials (press release, fact sheet, press photos, and camera-ready ads) for the collection and a wealth of additional information are available at the Peter's Pence website at www.usccb.org/ppc.
|
<urn:uuid:ffeee6f6-d238-4cf2-a40c-49c244c00370>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://old.usccb.org/comm/archives/2005/05-135.shtml
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.943656
| 364
| 1.609375
| 2
|
The Life Cycle
This is one of a series of small images that were carved (and then carefully outlined in this red color) on an exterior wall of a temple in the town of Almora. Sexuality is an important part of life, and part of Hindu culture has always affirmed this (as is plain in the Kama Sutra). Since Hindus consider the family to be the foundation of society, marital sexuality is an important element in the pursuit of dharma or religious duty. Yet Hindus have also affirmed kama ("desire," and espeically sexual desire) as a legitimate human goal, which is to be pursued and enjoyed in its own right., as this picture clearly shows..
|This is my landlord's daughter, Vasudha (picture taken in 1990). She had recently had her head completely shaved in the ceremony called mundan, which is the last of the Hindu life-cycle ceremonies connected with childbirth. For Hindus all bodily fluids are considered impure (which does not connote any moral lapse, but merely contamination). Since most Indian babies are born with hair, and since hair is believed to trap impurity, the infant's hair is seen as retaining the residual impurity from childbirth, which the mundan ceremony removes. Since this hair is connected with the birth of the child, it is also popularly believed to have a very strong bond with the infant even after being cut off, and some people believe that it can be used for black magic to harm the child. Thus, although my landlord and landlady said that they didn't put much stock in such ideas, the hair that was cut off was nevertheless gathered up and disposed of very carefully.|
|Of course, all young children get bigger. Here's the most recent picture of Vasudha (in Jan. 2003), shown here with her cousin Prashant. As you can see, she is becoming a gorgeous young woman. One of the great delights of doing fieldwork is to be able to know people almost all of their lives!|
|This is a barat, that procession of a groom's
(male) friends and
relatives that brings him up to the place where the wedding will be
celebrated. There is usually a brass band, and a great deal of frenzied
dancing in the streets--a very public celebration of their joy.
This was shot in Hardwar in 1998.
|Here's another shot from the same barat. All the important male relatives were wearing these pinkish-purple turbans, and because of his garland and his proximity to the car carrying the groom (behind) I've always assumed that it was his father.|
|This shows the decorations in the street leading to one of Haridwar's "wedding palaces," large halls that are often rented for weddings. Such rented spaces are necessary because congregational worship is an uncommon feature in traditional Hindu life, and thus one doesn't find the large structures (such as churches) that make this possible. The primary function of a Hindu temple is to serve as the home for its presiding deity, and temple worship is usually a matter of small groups of people coming and paying their homage to the deity. Furthermore, much of Hindu religious life is centered on the home, and thus such rented halls become necessary for large "functions." For most Hindus their marriage is the most important event in their lives, since the family is considered the bedrock of society, and this sort of decoration is only one way of indicating this.|
The Life Cycle, Page 2
Back to the Picture Index Page
These pages are in progress.
Page maintained by James G. Lochtefeld.
Last modified 23 December 2003
|
<urn:uuid:1a0f5907-a349-4c35-9d75-e42ebbe7258c>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://personal.carthage.edu/jlochtefeld/picturepages/lifecycle.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.981378
| 761
| 2.46875
| 2
|
One appears to be a Minie ball
Charge of the 2nd Maryland Infantry, CSA into the “slaughterpen” at Culp’s Hill, Battle of Gettysburg, July 3, 1863. So severe were the casualties among the Marylanders that General Steuart is said to have broken down and wept, wringing his hands and crying “my poor boys”.
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — Civil War buffs looking to find new items for their collections are likely jealous of some folks in Gettysburg who had them fall right into their path.
Workers cutting up a fallen tree at Gettysburg National Military Park came across some Civil War artifacts when their chain saw struck bullets buried in the tree trunk.
The bullets were discovered last week while a crew was cutting through the oak tree on Culp’s Hill, the site of intense fighting on July 2-3, 1863, Park Superintendent Bob Kirby said Aug. 9.
During the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1–3, 1863, Culp’s Hill was a critical part of the Union army defensive line, the right flank, or “barbed” portion of what is described as the “fish-hook” line. Holding the hill was by itself unimportant because its heavily wooded sides made it unsuitable for artillery placement, but its loss would have been catastrophic to the Union army. It dominated Cemetery Hill and the Baltimore Pike, the latter being critical for keeping the Union army supplied and for blocking any Confederate advance on Baltimore or Washington, D.C.
It was common to find bullets there 100 years ago, but such discoveries are a rarity these days, Kirby said.
Two sections of the tree’s trunk were removed and will be treated to clean out insects and mold before they will be added to the park’s museum collection, officials said.
The tree was estimated to have been about a century old at the time of the battle, meaning it was about 250 years old when it fell recently, park spokeswoman Katie Lawhon said.
She said there are at least two visible bullets. One appears to be a Minie ball, a type of ammunition used extensively during the Civil War.
YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN:
MORE RESOURCES FOR COLLECTORS
|
<urn:uuid:c8a5a93d-561f-4220-8b2a-8e050dcb09cf>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.militarytrader.com/military-trader-news/gettysburg-tree-yields-civil-war-bullets
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.972552
| 479
| 2.390625
| 2
|
London, Nov 22 (IANS) Pet dogs can transform the lives of the disabled, including autistic children, researchers say.
There is a growing awareness that dogs can play a key role in ending tantrums in children, reports the Telegraph.
Experts site the case of five-year-old Jude, an autistic.
Kristina Hughes, his mother, has seen his explosive and distressing tantrums many times - both at home and outside.
Kristina, 40, says her marriage was 'at breaking point' because of the strain of providing 24-hour care for a child whose relationship with the world is different from most other children's.
She has now acquired a new ally in the struggle - Claude, the family dog. She presses a yellow 'clicker' box and Claude, a black labrador, responds by going up to Jude and nuzzling into his hand. Amazingly, the boy's anxiety subsides.
A joint research project has been launched by a charity called Dogs for the Disabled, University of Lincoln, UK, and the National Autistic Society to find out more about this extraordinary connection.
Professor Daniel Mills, who is leading the research project, said: 'There is an enormous amount of anecdotal information to suggest that dogs can help children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), and help alleviate stress within the family.
'We hope to be able to pinpoint and quantify specific benefits for carers so they can have realistic expectations and get the most from their relationship with a dog.'
|
<urn:uuid:b5a76b90-7ce1-4816-a369-6d673475ae6f>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.sify.com/news/pet-dogs-can-transform-lives-of-the-disabled-news-international-klwouqdgehc.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.960201
| 308
| 2.578125
| 3
|
I am curious as to what your instructor was doing when you encountered your strong uke, and how much actual instruction you receive on how to attack.
I regularly instruct in Holland, where some of the younger men are very tall and very strong. I can tell you it is quite a change from what I am used to here in Japan, and a welcome change, I might add. At my last seminar the technical level ranged from 5th dan to complete beginners and we spent an entire day on ushiro waza. As usual, there was a wide spectrum of attitudes, from the 2nd dan who felt that aikido should be practised 'softly', to a couple of 1st kyu and shodans, for whom the technique had to work, no matter what.
It is not my practice to use one particular uke unless there is a special reason for it, so for me there is one solution for beginners who think that the techniques do not work: use them as uke and show that they really do work.
I agree with Chris Li that the overall responsibility for making the technique work lies with tori / nage. That said, you should expect to find a difference in being atacked by a strong beginner and a 4th dan, for example (and the 4th dan should be harder to throw). I also agree with Robert Cronin that the senior students set the tone for the dojo, so to speak, and you might look at how they deal with your strong 6th kyu. But I also have separate classes for yudansha and instructors, and have come to believe in the importance of this. I wonder if this is common practice.
Oh, and I do not believe in moving before the second hand has been grasped in ushiro ryote-dori. Of course you might well do this, but the technique should also work from a static position, with both hands grasped strongly. If it does not, there is something wrong.
|
<urn:uuid:6ed52932-eeb4-4fbb-b232-b2a236672271>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showpost.php?p=18003&postcount=16
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.972255
| 407
| 1.53125
| 2
|
Marketing, when done properly, is not a management ‘science’ or even a ‘discipline’. Marketing was never intended to be a ‘function’ – it was originally intended as an internal, collaborative activity that would help focus efforts on the one thing that matters to every organisation – its customers.
For a third sector organisations, we might replace the word “customer” by donors, supporters, recipients or volunteers, but the central argument remains – if you don’t keep these people happy, you don’t survive.
As important as they are, marketing is about more than the 7Ps. If you are serious about succeeding in marketing for your organisation, you need to understand that:
Marketing is about empathy (with your audience) and being able to think, feel and react as they do. Your only reason for existing is to constantly meet your ‘customers’ changing needs so you must appreciate how everything that your organisation does translates into customer benefit - and then help your colleagues to focus their efforts accordingly.
Marketing is about listening (and hearing) what your existing and future audience want from you. This is much more difficult than it sounds and needs to be developed as an organisational skill. The things that can (and do) get in the way include hearing demand for what we are good at making, knowing better than them what they want, knowing what they should want, knowing what “I” would want if I were them – one set of ears isn’t enough, you need your colleagues’ ears too!
Marketing is about intuition and filling in the gaps. Audiences are notoriously bad at knowing what they want now, what they might want in the future – or explaining either. Whatever the situation with yours, you will have to use educated guesswork to fill in the gaps - and then convince your colleagues to believe and act on the results.
Marketing is about thinking for yourself. It is one of the areas where books, gurus and consultants really can’t give you a blueprint for success. Every organisation is unique and so-called “best practice” is usually out of date before it’s written up. Marketing theory can only take you so far; the rest is up to you – and your ability to engage your colleagues in the process.
Marketing is about being different. Marketing is all about “preference” – and how you can get your customers to prefer you over the competition. You absolutely won’t do that by being the same as everybody else. But, being different doesn’t happen just because we plan it – it only happens when you and your colleagues are seen to behave differently.
Marketing is fun and hugely effective, but it isn’t easy. Beware the seductively simple techniques and jargon. If you want to make it work, always focus on the people behind the buzzwords.
Paul Fifield (www.fifield.co.uk)
Dr Fifield holds a degree in Business Studies as well as an MBA and a PhD in Marketing Strategy, both from Cranfield University. Over thirty years of listening, watching, learning and applying academic and strategic thought to marketing has created a fertile mind which he brings to his customers, his writing and his teaching. He is currently President of the CIM Southern Region and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce (FRSA).
|
<urn:uuid:469266d5-864d-46ae-9c1f-ebe825610c05>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://resources.mediatrust.org/marketing-is-a-people-business/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.972299
| 717
| 1.898438
| 2
|
Print version ISSN 0103-6513
CORREIA, Teresa Cristina Vilardo Domingues; MELLO, João Carlos Correia Baptista Soares de and MEZA, Lidia Angulo. Assessment of Brazilian airlines technical efficiency: a study using data envelopment analysis and fuzzy sets. Prod. [online]. 2011, vol.21, n.4, pp. 676-683. Epub Oct 07, 2011. ISSN 0103-6513. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0103-65132011005000049.
The deregulation of the Brazilian aviation industry started in the early 1990s. It created a new scenario of competition for the existing carriers, forcing them to change their way of dealing with this type of market. This led to a new flying concept - the Low Cost Carriers (LCCs). Before the beginning of the LCCs operation, there were only Full Service Carriers (FSCs). In order to ensure their competitiveness, other companies were forced to seek a better use of its resources. This paper analyses - through the Fuzzy DEA model, which takes into account the poor quality of the available data - the performance of the Brazilian airlines from 2001 to 2005. Moreover, since there are many DMUs tied in this approach, a model to increase discrimination for Fuzzy DEA models was suggested. The temporal data to assess the evolution of airlines facing the new competitive scenario in the market was analysed.
Keywords : Air transport; Efficiency; Data Envelopment Analysis; Fuzzy sets.
|
<urn:uuid:ebc36457-4f73-4d6f-abdb-f8700bce8460>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0103-65132011000400011&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.905992
| 331
| 1.796875
| 2
|
(CWNews.com) - The prefect of the Congregation for Religious has lamented that many Catholic priests are neglecting their duties under the pressure of conforming to secular culture.
In a February 14 interview with the Italian ANSA news agency, Cardinal Franc Rode said that priests today tend to be less obedient to the Church and more responsive to the world. He cited reluctance to wear clerical dress as a symptom of this trend.
“A drift towards bourgeois values and moral relativism are the two great dangers that weaken religious life," said the Slovenian cardinal. "The biggest problem today is the climate of secularization-- present not only in Western society but also within the Church itself.”
Cardinal Rode said that young people continue to hear God's call to a vocation in the priesthood or religious life. But he suggested that a lax model of priestly or religious life is not likely to encourage vocations. As evidence the cardinal pointed to the young Catholics who are attracted to contemplative life in highly disciplined religious orders. "They are attracted because it is a radical life choice," he said.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Priests becoming too bourgeois, Vatican prelate says
Posted by Fr Ray Blake
|
<urn:uuid:e376fefa-ade9-4884-8683-ee522d1425d7>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2008/02/priests-becoming-too-bourgeois-vatican.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.969685
| 252
| 1.953125
| 2
|
Adventure in Mount Kosciuszko
At 2,228 metres above sea level this is Australia's highest mountain. You'll find amazing vistas to the horizon.
About Mount Kosciuszko
There's a certain sense of achievement in climbing the peak of Australia's tallest mountain and it's far easier than attaining similar feats in other parts of the world. The best way of getting to the peak is via the year-round chairlift from Thredbo followed by an easy six km walk. Mount Kosciuszko is located above Thredbo village where you'll find a variety of amenities, restaurants, accommodation and hotels. Be sure to discover much more about the 675,000 hectare Kosciuszko National Park.
|
<urn:uuid:6f78efa8-144e-4e54-9527-cfea04fbba38>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.visitnsw.com/destinations/snowy-mountains/kosciuszko-national-park/kosciuszko
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.923955
| 150
| 1.609375
| 2
|
Tune in here every Friday for a weekly 30-minute analysis of news and public affairs in Latin America, brought to you via podcast in cooperation with American University School of Communication and Link TV.
For four years Link TV produced a video series that provided in-depth analysis of issues in Latin America. Although that video series is now on hiatus, this podcast of the same name is produced in the spirit of that original program.
(May 17, 2013) Human rights in Central America, both past and present, take center stage this week on Latin Pulse. The program looks at the fallout from the guilty verdict in Guatemala that has sent former dictator Efrain Rios Montt to prison for genocide and crimes against humanity. Also, the program looks at the return of death squads in Honduras and the lack of human rights there in an election year.
Watch archived video episodes of Latin Pulse, a half-hour news magazine examining Latin American issues relevant to the American public, as presented by newscasts and reports from different Latin American countries. Latin Pulse fills the journalistic vacuum of Latin American news for English speakers, with programs featuring critical current affairs coverage of the region, including exclusive interviews, news, and cultural content.
Latin Pulse is supported by grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Chicago Tribune Foundation, and viewers like you.
Colombia: Free and Fair Elections?
(Latin Pulse: May 28, 2010) Colombia's 2010 presidential elections, taking place on May 30th, are a watershed moment. This film short presents a mosaic of viewpoints on whether conditions for equitable and coercion-free elections exist in Colombia. These voices include a state governor, a mayor of a large city, a presidential candidate, neighborhood youth, a protected witness, and the President of the National Electoral Commission.
In February, 2010, an international pre-electoral observations mission, organized by the non-governmental organization Global Exchange and hosted by the Colombian Electoral Observation Mission (MOE), worked to collect and analyze the perspectives of civil society organizations, political parties, government and administrative functionaries, and concerned citizens prior to Colombia's March 14 Congressional elections. Visit this webpage to see a full report of findings from that investigation.
Produced by Rob Davenport / CounterCamera Films, in association with Global Exchange. Marlene Velasco-Begue is the executive producer for Global Exchange media covering the Colombian elections.
(Latin Pulse: May 28, 2010) Colombia's 2010 presidential elections, taking place on May 30th, are a watershed moment. This film short presents a...
(Latin Pulse: October 27, 2009) Thousands of people representing Ecuador's indigenous tribes are suing Chevron-Texaco over the pools of toxic...
(Latin Pulse: October 12, 2009) Latin Pulse brings you a special investigative report from Telesur on the epidemic of Chagas in Argentina's rural...
|
<urn:uuid:c78b68c5-8497-4ed5-9797-9f3d7b9b4e4b>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.linktv.org/latinpulse
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.934904
| 599
| 1.867188
| 2
|
Why do millions of Indians, sometimes entire villages, brave the crowds to attend the Kumbh Mela? India Ink interviewed some of the estimated 100 million pilgrims who traveled to this year’s Kumbh Mela at Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, a 55-day pilgrimage during which Hindus take a holy dip in the Ganges River to wash away their sins.
Kalyan Anand, 46, a sadhu from Chitrakoot town of Madhya Pradesh was one among them. This is what he had to say.
Why did you come to the Kumbh Mela this year? Is this your first time?
Voices From the Kumbh Mela
I have been coming to the Kumbh for 20 years now. I have gone everywhere there is a Kumbh – Ujjain, Nashik, Haridwar and Allahabad. The purity of River Ganges never ceases to fascinate me. I come to each Kumbh to try and make myself as pure as Mother Ganges.
How have you found it so far?
This one is particularly crowded. They have significantly restricted the bathing area for the sadhus to accommodate the common folk. That is a disappointment. But otherwise, the energy in a Kumbh is always infectious.
Describe your journey to the Kumbh. Did you travel alone? How long did it take?
I travel with my ashram wherever I go.
What does religion mean to you? Do you consider yourself a religious person?
Internal cleansing – that is the basis of religion. Our ancestors strived for it. We should all too. It becomes our inherent responsibility. When everyone on this earth is conscious of his sins, imagine how pure the world will become? Just the mere knowledge will ensure you don’t err in the future.
Who do you think is going to win the 2014 election? Have you ever cast a vote?
We are people who are beyond these things. I haven’t cast a vote all my life.
(The interview was translated from Hindi.)
|
<urn:uuid:02f6552c-062e-41e2-8acb-c508a46d159f>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/kalyan-anand-the-sadhu-from-madhya-pradesh-who-traveled-to-the-kumbh-mela/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.969554
| 429
| 1.5625
| 2
|
On top of the Russian wheat crop failure, this year's US corn crop is also crashing.
(image compares food prices in South Africa, not US)
Yes, but, does Putin believe in global warming?
Putin believes in Putin, period, end of discussion.
Between the forest fires they've endured and this food crisis, I suspect belief in Climate Change is rising in the Soviet Union.
Some of Texas is in the drought area - I did hear that food prices would be going up toward the end of the year.
I have always been frugal, and will have to be more so in the future obviously! I do try and get an extra shampoo, can of whatever, when it's on-sale. I don't 'hoard' at all, but I do like to always have back-ups on-hand, and why not buy it when it's at a good price. Scary for people who have no resources to stretch!
BTW, as food prices are taking off House Republicans are working to further eliminate food stamps.
And their food stamps aren't getting them as much as they need. It is sad. Here in IL you can just see the fields of corn and a LOT of the corn is really small and just not useable.
You see the problem with the corn crop first hand.
Yep, being in Illinois, we are surrounded with corn and soybean fields!
Ohio farmer Bryn Bird says it's not just the drought impacting crops.
"Also, the heat. That's something people are not talking about. We talk about the drought, the lack of water, but the heat, we're in extreme heat. 105, 107 [degree] days—that doesn't happen in our area of Ohio. And corn, and all produce, can only grow during certain temperature ranges."
From Up with Chris Hayes:
"As climate change worsens, the consequences for global food prices could be staggering; and that would have wide-ranging and unpredictable consequences. "A world of food volatility is a world of political volatility," Hayes said.
|
<urn:uuid:7f355ef0-085b-4158-857d-82f1223edbf2>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/hangwithfriends/forum/topics/rising-food-prices?commentId=2182797%3AComment%3A2008538&xg_source=activity&groupId=2182797%3AGroup%3A1248185
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.971663
| 430
| 1.9375
| 2
|
SEATTLE — June 9, 2008 — A multicenter team of researchers has identified a panel of proteins linked to early development of pancreatic cancer in mice that applies also to early stages of the disease in humans — a breakthrough that brings scientists a significant step closer to developing a blood test to detect the disease early, when cure rates are highest.
The findings, by senior author Samir "Sam" Hanash, M.D., Ph.D., of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, will be published in the June 10 issue of PLoS Medicine, a freely available, open-access online journal. Investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Michigan and Belfer Institute for Innovative Cancer Science at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute collaborated on the research.
"Our team identified, for the first time, protein changes associated with early-stage pancreatic-tumor development in genetically engineered mice that were also found to be associated with the presence of the disease in humans at an early, pre-symptomatic stage," said Hanash, head of the Hutchinson Center's Molecular Diagnostics Program. Hanash is an international leader in the field of proteomics, which seeks to identify clinically relevant trace proteins, or biomarkers, that are leaked by tumors into the blood. Scientists believe that such proteins could be used in screening blood tests for early and more accurate detection of cancer and other diseases.
"Our findings represent a breakthrough in the application of advanced proteomic technologies and mouse models to cancer-biomarker discovery," said Hanash, also a member of the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division.
The five-biomarker panel, if developed into a commercial screening test, may be particularly useful when combined with a currently available test that measures a pancreatic-cancer biomarker called CA19.9, which is elevated in 80 percent of newly diagnosed patients but is not linked to asymptomatic, early-stage disease. Together, the biomarker panel and CA19.9 may significantly improve the detection of early-stage disease prior to the onset of symptoms and may also help better distinguish between cancer and pancreatitis, a noncancerous, inflammatory condition.
Early detection of cancer is crucial for long-term survival. Most solid tumors can be cured 90 percent of the time if they're detected and treated early, whereas cure rates for late-stage cancer are about 10 percent. Early detection is particularly relevant to pancreatic cancer, which is the fourth-leading cause of cancer death in the United States, with a five-year survival rate of only 3 percent. Because the disease is asymptomatic in the early stages, most patients are not diagnosed until the cancer has spread beyond the pancreas, which contributes significantly to the poor long-term survival rate.
"There is a substantial challenge in studying the early molecular changes in pancreatic cancer because most patients are diagnosed with advanced-stage disease and so there is a lack of suitable specimens for biomarker discovery," said paper co-author Nabeel Bardeesy, Ph.D., of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center.
Finding telltale proteins that can signal the earliest stages of cancer development can be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, as blood contains a complex mixture of thousands of proteins. In addition, any two proteins may exist in concentrations more than a million-fold different from one another. "The ones that are likely to be useful for diagnosing cancer are probably the ones that exist at the lower end of the range, which makes them very hard to find with standard methods," Hanash said.
To guide their quest, Hanash and colleagues employed a variety of technologies to identify, measure and analyze blood proteins in mice and man. Since every protein is different, each has the equivalent of a distinguishing molecular "bar code." The goal is to identify protein signatures that are only present in cancer, which may then serve as biomarkers to detect early disease.
A significant boon to biomarker research — and one of the great scientific advances in the past century, according to paper co-author Ronald DePinho, M.D. — has been the incorporation of mouse models into many disciplines of science, including cancer research. "Our ability to now engineer mice with the same mutations that drive specific cancers in humans has provided powerful and accurate model systems to study virtually all aspects of the disease and then translate these new insights into improved prevention, detection and treatment strategies for cancer," said DePinho, director of the Belfer Institute at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
For this study, the researchers first analyzed blood samples from genetically engineered mouse models of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma at both early and late stages of tumor development. Of nearly 1,500 proteins identified in these mice, five were associated consistently with a precancerous condition known as pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia, or PanIN, which, if left untreated, eventually progresses to full-blown pancreatic cancer.
The researchers then sought to determine whether the same biomarkers turned up in blood samples obtained from 30 recently diagnosed pancreatic-cancer patients. They also looked for the biomarkers in 13 people with asymptomatic, early-stage pancreatic cancer who had donated blood for another, unrelated study within a year of their cancer diagnosis. For comparison purposes, the researchers analyzed blood from 20 healthy subjects and 15 people diagnosed with chronic pancreatitis.
Next steps in the research will include validating additional candidate biomarkers and further testing of the biomarker panel they have assembled to see how well it distinguishes between pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. The researchers also want to continue testing the value of a biomarker-panel approach for early detection of pancreatic cancer among those at increased risk, such as people with a strong family history of the disease.
The National Cancer Institute Mouse Models of Human Cancer Program, NCI Early Detection Research Network, National Institutes of Health, Canary Foundation, Paul Allen Foundation, Waxman Foundation, Verville Family Foundation and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft funded the research.
Note for media only:
To arrange an interview with Hanash please contact Kristen Woodward, Hutchinson Center Media Relations, at (206) 667-5095 or email@example.com. A copy of the PLoS Medicine paper, "A mouse to human search for plasma proteome changes associated with pancreatic tumor development," can be found at http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050123.
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
# # #
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
At Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, our interdisciplinary teams of world-renowned scientists and humanitarians work together to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer, HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Our researchers, including three Nobel laureates, bring a relentless pursuit and passion for health, knowledge and hope to their work and to the world. For more information, please visit www.fhcrc.org.
|
<urn:uuid:72cccb69-8ca0-4691-8da2-14237095cc24>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://fhcrc.org/en/news/releases/2008/06/pancreatic_biomarkers.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.937658
| 1,447
| 2.515625
| 3
|
New Product Showcase
Place a Classified Ad
Request a Quote
Add a Link
Recycled Construction Materials Appear in New Projects
When Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport unveiled a renovated runway in 2002, civic and aviation leaders gathered to dedicate the project, which represented 300,000 cubic yards of pavement. As the ribbon-cutting festivities took place atop the polished surface, most celebrants probably didn’t realize that the $81.5 million project was not entirely new.
In fact, much of the old runway is still present—in a different form. Rather than demolish the old runway and carry the debris to a landfill, crews ground up the pavement, made new aggregate, and used the recycled blend in both the base and top layers of the runway, which was lengthened from 6,000 to 10,000 feet. Reusing materials and doing reclamation on the job site saved money.
The following year, the same strategy was applied to construction of a 9,000-foot-long runway. Again, recycling trimmed costs. According to construction officials, building both projects with recycled—rather than virgin—materials recouped $300,000. But the bulk of savings—$2 million—came by avoiding the costly removal of 200,000 tons of demolished concrete to landfills and the associated disposal fees.
The airport projects are examples of a trend in which recovered construction and demolition materials are incorporated into new projects, thereby saving money and reducing demands on natural resources and landfills.
State government has helped fuel the recycling movement. Last year, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) spent about $677 million on recycled materials-purchases that ranged from fly ash to crushed concrete and recycled steel. Doing so diverted 2.5 million tons of refuse from landfills across the state. The crushed concrete alone saved the agency more than $1.2 million.
Private industry also sees advantages in reusing materials. Manufacturers, power generators, and demolition companies search for opportunities to reuse their byproducts and salvaged materials to reduce disposal costs. Also, putting these materials to use saves on hauling costs, particularly when new materials would have to be transported from long distances. Air quality benefits, too, because diesel trucks make fewer trips.
European countries pioneered the movement. In the aftermath of World War II, crude forms of aggregate crushers were used to recycle rubble from buildings and roads ruined by bombs. But the real credit, Turley insists, should go to the Romans-renowned road builders who established the practice of reusing stones from older roadways.
Today, waste from construction and demolition represents about one-fourth of the waste stream in North America, Turley said.
TCEQ records show a total of 6.4 million tons of this kind of waste, or 22 percent of the contents disposed of in Texas landfills in 2002.
“The importance of recycling construction waste and demolition debris is recognized more and more because it conserves many of the world’s resources, such as wood, stone, and petroleum,” said Turley. “Also, construction activity generates millions of tons of materials every day from building roads, bridges, and houses. It’s much more than the household waste stream of tin cans, plastics, and newspapers.
“Just think about a single hail storm inundating a community. When homeowners get new roofs, what happens to all those discarded asphalt shingles?”
In Texas, recycling practices vary by region, usually as a consequence of economics. Recycling occurs most often when it generates a savings.
Houston, for example, has little natural aggregate-the crushed stone, sand, and gravel essential to making concrete. For decades, local contractors paid high costs to have mountains of aggregate trucked in from Central Texas or barged in from the Yucatan region of Mexico.
“In the early 1990s, the idea of using crushed concrete really started coming together in this area,” said Mark Briggs of HPP Corp. in Houston. The former consultant participated in early TxDOT studies on materials with the potential for reuse. “We found that, by far, recycled base materials held the most promise. In the past, these materials had been abandoned or disposed of in landfills, but all of a sudden we were talking about millions of tons that could be reused, put back into building projects.”
TxDOT conducted rounds of performance tests until the agency was satisfied that recycled concrete would not compromise the structural integrity of newly built projects. Then, construction and maintenance specifications were revamped to eliminate the requirement for all-new materials. The TCEQ helped by approving regulations to promote recycling and, as a member of the Texas Recycling Market Development Board, encouraged state agencies and local governments to purchase recycled materials and recycled-content products.
Still, there was the matter of educating the construction industry “because people weren’t used to buying recycled base materials,” Briggs recalled. “When companies learned they could purchase material of comparable quality for less money than the native materials, economics became the driver.”
He noted that crushed concrete has not found a market in areas such as Central Texas and San Antonio, where natural aggregate such as limestone is plentiful. Houston was a ready market because the region lacked the natural resource.
In Fort Worth, one of the city’s largest recycling projects is under way, as RadioShack builds a new corporate headquarters downtown. Construction began last year on three six-story buildings.
“We have big containers out there designated for trash and for recycling,” explained John Vick of IESI, the waste services company hired to handle debris. “Everything is color coded, so that Sheetrock goes into one container; concrete and wood go into another; cardboard is separated and baled. The biggest challenge is keeping the materials separated. If not, you end up paying us to double handle the materials. If you pick what you want to recycle and segregate it from everything else, then there is the potential for savings.”
Room to Grow
With the rapid rate of residential, commercial, and industrial building in Texas, there is great potential for recycling. Otherwise, the bulk of those materials end up in a municipal landfill or a landfill designated for construction and demolition debris.
Diverting building materials from landfills not only helps municipalities with the responsibility of providing landfill space, but also lowers disposal expenses for road construction and building contractors.
The environment benefits, too. Large chunks of used concrete are commonly used in erosion control and shoreline protection, and recycling eases the demand on natural resources. Reclaiming steel, for example, saves on the amount of ore, coal, and limestone required to make the new product.
Also, on-site recycling reduces the number of trucks making long hauls to the landfill—a factor that can help air quality.
Through research and testing, recycled products are now found in highways, bridges, guardrails, landscaping material, and signs. In some cases, the recycled materials actually improve the performance of the final product. For example, fly ash recovered from coal-burning power plants adds strength and durability to concrete, yet costs half of the cement it replaces. Whether providing a higher quality product or saving money, recycling has found a niche that appears secure and ready to grow.
Crushed concrete. Concrete from existing roadways, pavements, airfields, and buildings can be reused. After the material is crushed, magnets remove the steel rebar, and the remaining aggregate is screened to produce the desired consistency, ranging from coarse to fine. In the 1990s, the reconstruction of Houston’s Interstate 10 (from Loop 610 to I-45) was the first project in the state in which all recycled aggregate was used for pavement concrete, according to TxDOT. Today, crushed concrete is used extensively in state projects in the Houston area and is fairly common in Dallas as well.
Reclaimed asphalt pavement. Interest in recycling hot-mix asphalt began when OPEC’s oil embargo of the mid-1970s sent construction costs soaring. Since then, contractors have proved that hot-mix asphalt can be recycled on roadways multiple times. In fact, recycled pavement has been shown to have the same durability as pavements built with virgin materials. The material has widespread use in construction and maintenance, such as road base aggregate and shoulder surfacing and widening.
Tires and crumb rubber
—Printed with permission from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
|
<urn:uuid:21c18df0-80bb-4e5c-befc-0bd8538e06c2>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.americanrecycler.com/0404recycled.shtml
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.941047
| 1,770
| 2.875
| 3
|
The oath referred to is that swearing fealty to Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Abu Jandal, who served as the leader's bodyguard from 1996 to 2000, took the oath. His brother-in-law Salim Hamdan, who worked as a paid driver and mechanic for the group, didn't. Hamdan ended up in Gitmo; Jandal ended up on TV, giving interviews to 60 Minutes and Al-Arabiya about his days with OBL.
You might recognize Hamdan's name from the landmark 2006 Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which declared unconstitutional the Bush administration's high-handed approach to trying accused terrorists. Laura Poitras's complex documentary takes up the story as Hamdan is hauled before a military tribunal on new laws drummed up by Congress especially for his case.
The film intercuts that trial with Jandal's guilt-ridden reflections while he drives a cab in Yemen; the result is compelling both as drama and as an indictment of the eight years of folly known as the War on Terror.
|
<urn:uuid:c58fe43f-5b47-4e39-bfc8-1f76489a6b97>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://thephoenix.com/boston/movies/103446-oath/?rel=inf
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.97471
| 217
| 1.664063
| 2
|
Morris (right), chief architect at NASA’s Glenn Research Center,
describes elements of the center’s 20-year master plan to reporters
Monday. (West Life photo by Kevin Kelley)
approves Glenn’s master plan
By Kevin Kelley
Published Sept. 12, 2007
headquarters in Washington has approved a master plan that promises
an estimated $150 million worth of capital improvements to the Glenn
Research Center and its Plum Brook Station near Sandusky.
“We look at the horizon and see a very promising future
with exciting work here at NASA Glenn, and we want to prepare our
facilities for the future challenges,” Joe Morris, Glenn’s chief
Glenn officials who announced the approval Monday
stressed that the center’s master plan was formed in union with
the space agency’s overall mission — to pioneer the future in space
exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautical research.
Just a few years ago, Glenn had more employees than
work for them to do and faced the prospect of more job losses. But
the center’s role was strengthened in June 2006 when it was awarded
the responsibility of developing the service module of the Orion
spacecraft, which will replace the space shuttle. Glenn was also
given lead responsibilities for the upper stage of the Ares I rocket
that will launch the Orion capsule.
Bill Wessel, associate director at Glenn, said the
center has carved out its place in the space agency in terms of
expertise in power, propulsion and communication.
“We have a great future not only in regard to work
we have on our plate now but looking into the future,” Wessel said.
Projects that make up the master plan will be implemented
incrementally over 20 years, officials said. Funding for each project
will require authorization through the agency’s budgeting process.
“This master plan is meant to be a framework for the
capital investment planning over the next 20 years,” Morris said.
Certain projects may be funded by NASA partners with
non-NASA funds, officials said.
A new campus center at Glenn, where various project
teams will be located to promote coordination, marks the cornerstone
of the master plan. A Space Flight Collaboration office building
and conferencing center are scheduled to be built in 2010 at the
The part of the Glenn campus north of Brookpark Road,
known as the North Area, is expected to house an office park for
This area is located within the boundaries of Fairview
Park. The announcement in January 2006 that two office buildings
on Brookpark Road would be closed led to a financial crisis in that
suburb. Fairview Park Mayor Eileen Patton said her city would have
lost $631,000 in income tax if those buildings were closed.
But the plan now is for those buildings to remain
open until 2010. The likely scenario is that the buildings will
then be demolished to make room for new office buildings.
But Morris did not rule out leaving those buildings
up, at least temporarily. However, he said real estate experts Glenn
has consulted with have said those facilities, built in the 1960s,
are “Class C” office buildings. The optimal use of that space would
be involve the construction of modern office buildings, he said.
Glenn’s Visitor Center would be relocated to the North
Area and expanded to include a new aerospace education center that
would promote NASA’s education mission.
According to a NASA document, the aerospace education
center is in phase two of four phases of the master plan implementation,
with funding expected to come from state and/or other sources.
The plan also calls for the consolidation of facilities.
That means that two decades from now, the Glenn campus will have
fewer but more efficient and environmentally sustainable structures,
A new entrance at Glenn that will improve campus security
is scheduled to be built in 2008.
Enhancements to the Space Power Facility, where NASA’s
Orion vehicle will undergo testing, are the main elements of the
Plum Brook Station master plan. NASA has also expressed interest
in leasing property at that facility as well as establishing some
type of space-themed tourist attraction.
Plum Brook officials would also like to see a general
aviation airport built near the site so space flight hardware could
be more easily transported there for testing. However, no funding
for an airport has yet been secured or identified.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who has worked in recent years
to save and obtain funding for Glenn, said the master plan ensures
that the center will be part of the space agency’s long-term plans.
“This master plan paves the way for a strong and stable
NASA workforce,” Kucinich said in a statement. “The upgrades to
facilities as well as the new buildings will create opportunities
to bring still more jobs to Northeast Ohio.”
|
<urn:uuid:a0f28218-9ac9-4664-b751-fff5dfe13659>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.westlifenews.com/2007/09-12/glennplan.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.950462
| 1,058
| 2.046875
| 2
|
Do we allow our feelings for someone to create a relationship that doesn’t exist, or do we allow our feelings to create a reality within a relationship that doesn’t exist? A relationship is defined as an emotional connection, association, or involvement between two people that have mutually decided to commit to each other based on feelings they have for each other. Feelings are an effective state of psychological consciousness in which joy, fear, hate, sorrow, love, etc. are experienced and expressed. They are also spontaneous efforts that are accompanied by physiological changes that drive a number of actions and reactions.
Most relationships begin with a feeling. They initially start with physical attraction accompanied with the desire to learn more about a person which leads to the desire to spend more time with them. After the initial physical attraction, people then move forward to the courting stage, getting to know someone on a more personal level, then being drawn to them mentally, emotionally and spiritually. After taking these steps, a couple may then mutually decide to have and develop a monogamous relationship based on more than the initial feelings they felt for each other. In today’s relationships, many couples skip the step of mutually deciding to have a relationship. They skip, or overlook this step because they are primarily focused on the way the other person makes them feel, and allow their feelings to cloud their common sense and better judgment. Instead of establishing and agreeing upon having a monogamous relationship, they settle for engaging in relationship-like activities without the commitment of a relationship.
Our feelings can often create relationships we think we want because the focus is on self-gratification, rather than building a relationship with a purpose and meeting the other person’s needs. When two people are involved with each other, and things are going well, at some point one person will have the desire to take the courting stage to the next level, but the other person may not. So rather than stepping away from the situation, they settle for less and continue to pretend to be involved in a committed relationship. This happens more often than not because of fear of being alone, the strong desire to be with a certain person, or a lack of self-confidence within.
When reality sets in to the fact that they are not in a relationship, the same feelings that led the desires for a relationship are now crushed. Learning to mask your feelings for someone is a difficult thing to do, especially after spending quality time with them and getting to know them on a personal and/or intimate level. However, what people must do is set and maintain standards and boundaries for their relationships together from the start to avoid confusion. Even if you are starting as friends, both parties must be clear on the expectations of each other and the relationship.
One of the most common mistakes often made is the conscious or subconscious decision to be sexually intimate with someone you are not in a relationship with. This is a mistake because when you are sexually intimate with someone you give them a part of you and you take a part of them which can bring you closer which makes the relationship more personal and deeper feelings begin to develop. That’s why it is important to set boundaries for the relationship that you both agree on to avoid getting trapped in the reality of a relationship that does not exist. Doing this will spare feelings, avoid confusion and potential drama. When making the decision to become involved with someone, you must be mindful of your intentions and honestly discuss the expectations of both parties. It takes two people to initiate, develop and maintain any type of relationship, and both people must be willing to commit and carry the load.
Liz Lampkin is the Author of Are You a Reflection of the Man You Pray For? Follow her on Twitter @Liz_Lampkin.
More on Madame Noire!
- That’s That Ish I Don’t Like: Why I Can’t Stand When Parents Talk to Kids Like Adults
- “Ho*s Be Winning!” 8 People Who Became Overnight Celebrities For Being Scandalous
- Call Me Prejudiced, But I Only Let Black Women Do My Hair
- Noire Naturals, Episode 2: Maintaining Your Twist-Out Style
- “The Decision,” Fake Marriages & Crispy Chicken: 9 Moments Celebs Can’t Seem to Live Down
- Bet You Didn’t Know: Secrets Behind The Making of School Daze
- Ask a Very Smart Brotha: Why Did He Just Disappear?
|
<urn:uuid:44760eca-a300-4376-8328-249a03afab43>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://madamenoire.com/191921/is-this-real-love-how-to-avoid-getting-into-a-relationship-that-does-not-exist/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.960346
| 927
| 2.4375
| 2
|
You know the amazing moment when you see one of your school’s basketball players in your classroom, walking by you in a building, or on the bus on the way to class? Imagine how much cooler that will feel when they get drafted into the NBA! Well, lots of current players—some among our favorites—went to college just like the rest of us, and some of them had surprising majors.
1. Jeremy Lin
Even if you don’t like the Knicks, you’ve surely heard of a little something called Linsanity! Lin is my personal favorite NBA player, and this 23 year-old just so happens to be a Harvard graduate. The star-on-the-rise graduated with a degree in economics—which should be helpful as his salary goes on the rise like his fame.
2. Steve Nash
The Phoenix Suns’ point guard has played professionally for 15 years. Before he made it to the big time, he earned a scholarship to play at Santa Clara University. Nash earned his degree in sociology. Is that why he’s so likeable?
3. Chris Bosh
Power forward for the Miami Heat, Bosh’s talent didn’t keep him in college for long. He spent one season on the basketball team for Georgia Tech before entering the 2003 NBA draft. But in his short time at school, Bosh was part of an interesting major: graphic design and computer imaging.
4. Andre Iguodala
The #9 forward guard for the Philadelphia 76ers attended the University of Arizona for two years, entering the NBA draft in 2004, though he initially intended to play at the University of Arkansas. While he quickly established himself as a top player in college, he also studied hard with his major of education.
5. Roy Hibbert
Center for the Indiana Pacers, he was elected to his first NBA All-Star game this year. He graduated from Georgetown University in 2008 with a major of governmental studies. His high performance in leading the Hoyas to the Final Four in 2007, however, almost took him out of school; but being a good student, he returned for his senior year to finish what he started.
Though recently retired, Shaq will likely be forever a household name. The basketball player/rapper/movie star attended Louisiana State University where he studied business. Though he left college early, he still continued his education, even attending a broadcast journalism“bootcamp” at Syracuse University’s prestigious S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in 2009.
7. Kyrie Irving
Point guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Irving is only 20 years old. Making a star debut for Duke University, he was the first overall pick in the 2011 NBA draft. Though he left college and his intended journalism degree early, the NBA star made a pact with his father to finish college in the next five years.
8. Carlos Boozer
The power forward for the Chicago Bulls has seen plenty of basketball success, contributing to an Olympic Gold Medal in 2008 as a member of Team USA. But before the Olympics, he played for Duke University and studied sociology. He helped the team win the 2001 NCAA Championship.
9. Deron Williams
The current point guard for the New Jersey Nets was drafted third in 2005 after playing for the University of Illinois for three years. Fittingly, Williams was majoring in sports management while he rose to college basketball fame, even leading the team to the NCAA championships in his junior year.
10. Tim Duncan
Power forward for the San Antonio Spurs, Duncan began his career playing at Wake Forest University. He graduated in 1997 with a degree in psychology, and was drafted as the first pick that same year. The four-time NBA champion is a true star!
I’m reading Sexuality Now: Embracing Diversity
|
<urn:uuid:f86256fe-9e37-409b-813b-45ceba69bdc7>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://ecampusblog.com/2012/03/college-majors-favorite-nba-players/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.975928
| 787
| 1.742188
| 2
|
by Christopher Brauchli
A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
– Samuel Johnson
Mr. Bush is not disappointed in them. Quite the contrary. He’s envious. Although sharing their goals, he is far less successful than they. They have shown how democracy works in an ideal world. Mr. Bush, of course, has the misfortune to be the President of the United States that is not an ideal democracy notwithstanding his efforts to make it so.
On November 21 Mr. Bush gave ABC news an interview during the course of which Perez Musharraf’s name came up. Describing Mr. Musharraf, Mr. Bush said that he “truly is somebody who believes in democracy.” According to reports, the reporter interviewing Mr. Bush asked if there was any line Mr. Musharraf should not cross to which Mr. Bush said: “He hasn’t crossed the line. As a matter of fact, I don’t think that he will cross any lines.” Mr. Bush went on to say that it was a good sign that on the same day he was being interviewed Mr. Musharraf had released thousands of people from jail. (The reporter could have asked Mr. Bush if it was so good for Mr. Musharraf. to release people from jail why Mr. Bush didn’t follow his lead and let some folks out of Guantanamo who have no business being there. He might have gone so far as to point out to Mr. Bush that releasing people from jail who should not be in jail was not half as good for democracy as the act of putting them in jail was bad for democracy.
|
<urn:uuid:b182b4c9-7050-4f26-83ee-b816c049ebb4>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://nasir-khan.blogspot.com/2007/12/bush-and-despots-he-admires.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.986375
| 348
| 1.789063
| 2
|
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on Tuesday declared the XML Schema as a candidate for recommendation to become a standard. The standards body is, in effect, asking other working groups, member companies, and developers to implement the XML Schema and run the code and then provide feedback. This is a fine dance, however, as the code is not final and has not been tested in implementations. "The schema is ready to implement, and we are looking for feedback," said Michael McQueen, co-chair of the XML Schema working group. "It is stable, and the only changes that would be introduced now are the result of implementation feedback." McQueen continued that only changes that are absolutely necessary will be made. New features, for instance, will be saved for the next version. The schema is a next-generation means of describing XML documents that follow DTDs (Document Type Definitions), although DTDs will not disappear anytime soon. "XML Schema is an attempt to define documents and have some of the same rules as DTDs but are a little stronger than DTDs," McQueen added. The W3C claims that the schema has a number of advantages over DTDs. Schemas enable XML and XML software packages to describe data types, use XML name spaces, allow developers to take advantage of inheritance, and are actual XML documents, unlike DTDs. McQueen said the next step after candidate recommendation is to publish a proposal recommendation and then finally to recommend it to be ratified as a standard by the W3C. The internal target for publishing the proposal recommendation is December 15, according to McQueen, although he stressed that is not a rigid deadline, and the XML Schema working group is placing more emphasis on ensuring that all testers believe the code is sound.
|
<urn:uuid:117d8436-76c6-44b3-b542-cb0f90ad756a>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/creative-lifestyle/xml-schema-closer-reality/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.950159
| 368
| 1.914063
| 2
|