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The environmental values of North Carolina's legislators sank to a 12-year low in 2011, the N.C. League of Conservation Voters said today in an annual ranking.
Bills that aimed to limit regulations, cut spending by environmental agencies and expand drilling for oil and gas made it "clear this new legislature had environmental protections in their cross hairs," the advocacy group said in releasing its Conservation Scorecard.
Green-friendly scores plummeted as Republicans took control of both bodies for the first time in a century. The average score for the N.C. House in 2011 was 43 percent, the League said, compared to 67 percent in the previous session. The Senate averaged 27 percent, down from 69 percent in the 2009-10 session.
Incoming freshmen showed even starker differences with legislators they replaced. New House members averaged a score of 35 percent, compared to the 73 percent lifetime average of outgoing legislators. Senate freshmen averaged 18 percent, their predecessors 70 percent.
Legislators reconvene for this year's "short session," which is limited to measures that affect the state budget or passed one body the previous year, in May.
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<urn:uuid:e1166ae5-c3aa-43eb-bb8e-9e072ec5127d>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://obsearthenergy.blogspot.com/2012/01/conservation-scorecard-flunks-gop.html
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en
| 0.962502
| 230
| 1.960938
| 2
|
Comparing Mercury’s Exosphere between Two Flybys
October 30, 2008
- Date Acquired: January 14 and October 6, 2008
- Instrument: Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer (MASCS)
Of Interest: This figure shows a comparison of images of the sodium emission in the tail region of Mercury during MESSENGER's first and second Mercury flybys. The sodium emission was less symmetric during flyby 1, with a larger region of emission in the north relative to the south, in contrast to the pattern of sodium emission observed during flyby 2. During the orbital phase of the mission, the MASCS instrument will regularly measure emissions from atoms and molecules. Mapping the distributions of species on a daily basis, in conjunction with the information provided by the other instruments on MESSENGER, will constrain the processes that generate and maintain the exosphere as well as provide information on the composition of the surface from which the exospheric species originate.
Topics: Environment, Discovery program, Mercury spacecraft, Spaceflight, Sodium, Atmosphere, MESSENGER, Mercury, Io
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<urn:uuid:aabeec8a-a8cc-42de-aaf1-7dcf8e6b4643>
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http://www.redorbit.com/images/pic/20633/comparing-mercuryae%E2%84%A2s-exosphere-between-two-flybys/
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en
| 0.918819
| 229
| 3.140625
| 3
|
Japan Demonstrates Incredible Hypocrisy in Okinawa
A 34-year old dolphin named Fuji is a prisoner being held in the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium.
This unfortunate dolphin suffered from a disease in 2002 that resulted in three-quarters of her tail being amputated. The Aquarium requested assistance from the Bridgestone Tyre Company to manufacture a prosthetic tail for Fuji at a cost of $95,000.
Fuji only wears the device for about twenty minutes a day. Not long enough to be practical, but long enough to provide a positive media image for the Aquarium. The Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium is now boasting of how concerned it is for the dolphins and that expense is no object in providing care for unfortunate dolphins.
Of course, it is all public relations meant to present the lie that the people of Japan are sensitive to the welfare of dolphins. Yet this same nation cruelly and horrifically slaughters some 23,000 dolphins each year in Southern Japan. The killing is taking place now in Taiji and in Futo.
Dolphins are being speared, slashed, knifed, tortured, drowned, stoned and kicked by cruel and heartless Japanese fishermen. This happens with the full support of the Japanese government and the complicity of the Japanese media and people.
While this program of specicide is under way, the Japanese have the audacity to issue a media release about the expense they went to in manufacturing an artificial tail fin for a single captive dolphin. What they don't say is that these dolphins are selected and separated from the pods that are routinely rounded-up for slaughter in mass killing sprees in Japanese bays; they are pulled out of the water by their tails, put into holding cages and sold to the captivity industry. This media release is a gross and blatantly hypocritical attempt to distract attention away from the cruelty and the horror of the mass dolphin slaughters in Japan.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is urging all visitors to Japan to not visit Japanese marine aquariums.
Captain Paul Watson is in San Francisco and will be attending the demonstration at the Japanese Consulate on Friday, November 19th at noon, as part of the Sea Shepherd Worldwide Protest Against the Slaughter of Dolphins in Japan.
From San Francisco, Captain Watson commented on the Fuji story, "I would urge people who care about dolphins to not support Japanese marine aquariums. Walking into the door of such a facility and giving them admission money automatically makes a person complicit in this slaughter. The horror being perpetuated on the beaches of Japan is unacceptable under all standards of decency and humanity. These killers are cruelly insensitive, merciless bastards and a disgrace to the entire nation, culture and history of Japan."
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<urn:uuid:616e83d3-73d0-4cf8-a356-d697685daf00>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/2004/11/18/japan-demonstrates-incredible-hypocrisy-in-okinawa-1080
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en
| 0.95187
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| 2
|
Here’s a product that looks awesome on paper but in real life, using it is probably going to turn your brain to fudge. The reason why we say this is because though this nice mouse claims to make gaming and computing simpler by allowing users to use intuitive wrist and hand movements to make PC gaming a breeze. And even though the glove mouse comes with a pause button, the company hasn’t unveiled any features that assure us that the glove mouse wont register inputs when you accidentally use your predominant hand for common unmindful bodily responses like holding your hand up to your face when you sneeze or bringing your hand up to your eye when something suddenly falls in your eye or even when someone standing behind hands you something and you immediately reach out with your predominant hand to accept it.
Anyhow, since you’re going to be practicing how to control an on-screen cursor with simple wrist and finger movements, we’re guessing you’re also going to spend some time practicing ninja-like self control to use your non-predominant hand to react to involuntary physical actions or make sure you hit pause every time you feel your gloved predominant hand responding to being poked in the eye unexpectedly by a mischievous fly.
The mouse replacement lets your wrist, fingers and hand control all the functions of the mouse including scrolling, right and left clicks and has a USB-free wireless range of 35 feet so you can hit pause and safely eave your desk without having to take the glove off every time. The Ion Air Mouse Glove costs $79.99 though you might have to pay a little extra for ninja self-control classes.
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<urn:uuid:80aa446c-81d2-4b74-a827-da53c82b6026>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.designbuzz.com/ion-wireless-air-mouse-glove-substitutes-mouse-ninja-pc-gamer/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.930114
| 338
| 1.617188
| 2
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a1 School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia (email: firstname.lastname@example.org)
The minimal faithful permutation degree μ(G) of a finite group G is the least non-negative integer n such that G embeds in the symmetric group Sym(n). Work of Johnson and Wright in the 1970s established conditions for when μ(H×K)=μ(H)+μ(K), for finite groups H and K. Wright asked whether this is true for all finite groups. A counter-example of degree 15 was provided by the referee and was added as an addendum in Wright’s paper. Here we provide two counter-examples; one of degree 12 and the other of degree 10.
(Received March 17 2008)
2000 Mathematics subject classification
Keywords and phrases
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=4628624
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Self-defense is defensible
Everyone with any normal sense of empathy feels terrible about the recent shootings in Aurora, Colo. Amy Goodman rants about how to limit the public’s access to particular firearms as a possible preventative measure to avoid future similar episodes. All the measures she cites have been tried, to no avail. Many of us recognize that, just as in every other circumstance, you are your own best advocate. This is why we believe in defending ourselves.
While it remains impossible to predict human behavior in all instances, I believe it’s time to accept that control of others is beyond even government and to encourage self-reliance. This is not vigilantism, it is prudence, and what many of us believe is the only practical protection.
If government wants to help, a campaign should be started to support training of individuals in self-defense skills instead of making another attempt to ensure law-abiding citizens will abide by even more laws. We aren’t the problem. In this way, we can take the very best approach to minimizing the damage when another wacko tries to destroy innocent people.
Nine Mile Falls
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<urn:uuid:73ff08cd-5267-435b-8a9c-619423de36a8>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2012/aug/08/self-defense-is-defensible/
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GIVEN THE CIVIL WAR in
serial massacres of opposition demonstrators in Syria
, it’s not surprising that another ugly campaign of repression, in the Persian Gulf emirate of Bahrain, hasn’t gotten much attention. In its own way, however, Bahrain could prove crucial to the outcome of this year’s Arab uprisings — and to whether it advances or damages the strategic interests of the United States.
Bahrain is host to the U.S. 5th Fleet, which patrols the Persian Gulf and is vital to the containment of Iran. But the island’s ruling al-Khalifa family, which has long been closely allied with the United States, is ignoring the objections of the Obama administration by systematically persecuting those who joined a pro-democracy movement earlier this year. Since the crackdown began March 14 more than 800 people have been arrested, mostly from the majority Shiite community; many have been tortured and four have died in custody. More than 1,000 people have been fired from their jobs in a country of 700,000. Government employeees are being pressured to sign oaths of loyalty to the Sunni regime.
On Sunday authorities began a trial for 21 leading activists accused of plotting to overthrow the government. The unlikely conspirators range from the leader of Bahrain’s most militant Shiite organization, who returned from exile in London during the protests, to the head of a secular and liberal Sunni party, whose headquarters were recently burned down. Others hauled before the court include prominent human rights activists, Shiite clerics and bloggers. The accused have not been allowed contact with their lawyers and were granted a single phone call with their families. Most say they have been tortured and some have been seriously injured.
The regime’s crude political strategy is to claim that its opposition is inspired and controlled by Iran — though there is no evidence that Tehran had anything to do with the mass protests or their secular, pro-democracy agenda. Those on trial are accused, implausibly, of having ties to “a terrorist organization abroad working for a foreign country.” In the end, Iran is likely to be the beneficiary of the repression, which has had the effect of polarizing the country along sectarian lines and eliminating proponents of moderate political reform.
The Obama administration encouraged the reform route, which was briefly pursued by the regime’s most liberal member, Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa. But since Saudi Arabia sent troops to the island on March 14,the regime has practiced unrelenting sectarian repression, with Riyadh’s backing. Reluctant to criticize massacres even by U.S. adversary Syria, the administration has been especially circumspect about Bahrain. Its mild message, reiterated last week by the State Department, is that “there is no security solution to resolve the challenges Bahrain faces.”
The administration clearly is trying to protect the strategic relationship with Bahrain. But by tolerating the repression it is endangering long-term U.S. interests, since the crackdown is likely to boomerang, sooner or later, against both the Bahraini and Saudi ruling families. The best way to protect American interests is to tell both regimes that a continued security relationship with the United States depends on an end to policies of sectarian repression and on the implementation of moderate reforms. Meanwhile, it’s time to start looking for a new home for the 5th Fleet.
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<urn:uuid:5835a42d-9008-4170-9f6d-34b79f43410c>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/applying-pressure-on-bahrain/2011/05/09/AF3sV6bG_story.html
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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| 0.971374
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ADMINISTRATION OF THE GOVERNMENT (Chapters 1 through 182)
REGISTRATION OF CERTAIN PROFESSIONS AND OCCUPATIONS
Section 12V1/2. (a) As used in this section, the following words, shall, unless the context requires otherwise, have the following meanings:—
“AED”, a semi-automatic or automatic external defibrillator.
“AED agency”, a person that (i) possesses an AED that is maintained and tested in accordance with its manufacturer’s guidelines, (ii) permits an AED provider to use an AED in its possession, (iii) requires that each AED provider, in each instance of responding to a request for emergency care or treatment, contacts the police or emergency medical services in the city or town in which they are located and provides a report to its AED medical director, (iv) prior to implementation of its public access defibrillation program, notifies the local police and the emergency medical services provider of the number, type and location of the AED in its possession, and (v) contracts with an AED medical director, who shall be responsible for ensuring that the AED agency complies with AED maintenance, AED provider training and notice requirements.
“AED medical director”, a physician practicing in or adjacent to the regional emergency medical service region of the city or town in which the AED agency with which he contracts is located, who (i) is an emergency physician or cardiologist or a physician having specialized training and knowledge concerning public access defibrillation, (ii) is knowledgeable about emergency medical services protocols established pursuant to chapter 111C, (iii) is familiar with cardiopulmonary resuscitation and AED action sequences, (iv) coordinates the activities of the AED agency with which he contracts and its AED providers, with the protocols described and the action sequences described in this section, and (v) evaluates the activities of the AED agency with which he contracts.
“AED provider”, a person (i) who has successfully completed a course in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and in the use of an AED that meets or exceeds the standards established by the American Heart Association or the American National Red Cross and (ii) whose evidence of successful course completion has not expired.
“Public access defibrillation program”, a program sponsored by an AED agency, using AED providers and an AED medical director, which makes automatic external defibrillation and AED providers available to the public.
(b) Any AED provider who in good faith renders emergency cardiopulmonary resuscitation or automatic external defibrillation, in accordance with his training through a public access defibrillation program, to any person who apparently requires cardiopulmonary resuscitation or defibrillation, shall not be liable for acts or omissions, other than gross negligence or willful or wanton misconduct, resulting from the rendering of emergency cardiopulmonary resuscitation or defibrillation.
(c) An AED medical director and an AED agency who in good faith participates in a public access defibrillator program shall not be liable for acts or omissions, other than gross negligence or willful or wanton misconduct, resulting from such participation.
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<urn:uuid:cfff4861-5c50-4c3b-969c-43282457aee1>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXVI/Chapter112/Section12V1~2/Print
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This is a guest post by Symone Baskerville, a student at Kenwood Academy High School.
Summer is among us! But that doesn’t mean that we can recycle our green living strategies from other seasons. If anything, this is the time to jumpstart your green living, because we generally have more time to devote to giving back to our beautiful planet.
So you might ask what are some simple steps you can take during the summer to gain some green living points (Let’s call those GLPs) and to reduce your carbon footprint.
And this is how I came up with my extra GLP plan:
First, I started thinking about some of the things that go along with summer.
Next, I researched how I could make them more energy efficient.
My top three:
The air conditioner: During these hot summer days, the AC becomes our best friend (meaning we have it on 24/7) but it also uses a ton of power! To save energy while it’s on make sure your doors and windows are closed, close the vents and doors to rooms you’re not using and pull the shades when the sun is out. (it will save energy and keep you much cooler!) Try not to use the washer or dryer while AC is going nonstop if possible. If there’s no good time to run the washer and dryer instead of the AC, at least try making the most of that heat by skipping the dryer and hanging your clothes to dry in the sunlight.
Vacationing: It’s often hard to stay green while you’re heading out to vacation, but you can make better choices with a little bit of research.
The beach: One of my favorite summer activities is to go to the beach. When I go, I can be saving the planet too. To get there, carpooling is a good way to cut down your carbon footprint and can make a fun day at the beach with your friends. To stay cool when it’s hot, bring your own reusable water bottle instead of buying tons of plastic bottles.
Being green in the summer doesn’t have to be a hassle. It can actually be fun. Grab a friend and come up with ways you can earn some GLPs and save the planet together!
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<urn:uuid:974ab21a-6d7f-4a16-af4e-adfe75f4540b>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.acespace.org/blog/2012/08/staying-green-in-the-summer/
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en
| 0.939303
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There is no clear evidence that radiation from mobile phones can damage public health, despite a surge in scientific studies, according to the largest review yet of published research.
Scientists found no convincing proof that radio waves from mobile phones cause brain tumours or any other type of cancer, but cautioned that they had too little information to assess the risk beyond 15 years of usage.
The report by the Health Protection Agency's independent advisory group on non-ionising radiation (AGNIR) said it was "important" to watch for signs of rising cancer cases, including monitoring national brain tumour trends, which so far show "no indication" of increased risk.
In the review, "Health Effects from Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields" the advisory group considered hundreds of peer reviewed scientific studies that looked at the effects of mobile phone radiation on cells, animals and people.
"There are still limitations to the published research that preclude a definitive judgement, but the evidence overall has not demonstrated any adverse effects on human health from exposure to radiofrequency fields below internationally accepted guideline levels," said Professor Anthony Swerdlow, chairman of the AGNIR and an epidemiologist at the Institute of Cancer Research.
The advisory group last reviewed the health effects of mobile phones in 2003. Since then, Swerdlow said there was "enormously more" scientific information available and that studies were often better quality than the studies around then.
Some research reviewed by the group found that mobile phone radiation might cause subtle changes to low frequency brain waves that could be picked up by electroencephalograms (EEGs), but it was unclear whether the effects were consistent and had any health implications.
Simon Mann of the HPA said that while the agency was not changing its long-held, precautionary stance that children should refrain from "excessive use" of mobile phones, "the reassurance that can be provided that there are no effects is much stronger than it was 10 years ago".
In making recommendations for future research, the report emphasised a need to focus on new and emerging devices that emit radiofrequency radiation, and to gather more data on cancer risk among those who have used phones for more than 15 years.
"There is no convincing evidence that radiofrequency exposure causes health effects in adults or in children but beyond 15 years for mobile phones, we have to say we have little or no information," Swerdlow said. "I think it is important therefore, to some extent, to keep an eye out on this, which we will do into the future."
"Remember this is an exposure that 20 years ago nobody had and now practically everybody has so you might expect that if there were appreciable effects that you would see them in the tumour rates," he said. "But if this is something that takes 15, 20 years or more to show up – we have no reason to think there is an effect – if it takes a long time to show up, we need to keep watching the rates just in case."
Professor Patricia McKinney at the centre for epidemiology and biostatistics at Leeds University said: "The general public should be reassured by the conclusions on mobile phone use as the current evidence does not support any causal link to brain tumours or other cancers. However, the conclusions relate to mobile phone exposures of up to 15 years and further monitoring of possible risks is needed."
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<urn:uuid:ee37e0fa-21d4-4bbb-94cb-cbf2fdb37a43>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/apr/26/mobile-phone-radiation-health?cat=society&type=article
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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How To Bluntslide Snowboarding
Every snowboarder needs to learn how to bluntslide snowboard. A bluntslide is one of the coolest looking slides that can be performed on a snowboard. While this slide is a little difficult, it's well worth learning. The following guide will help you learn how to bluntslide.
To bluntslide snowboard, you will need:
- A snowboard
- A rail
- Protective gear
- First, you need to wear protective gear when learning a new snowboarding trick. A helmet is especially important when attempting rail tricks. You do not want to hit your head on the rail or fall back and hit your head on the ground. Additionally, it is not recommended that you attempt the bluntslide if you cannot already perform the tail slide.
The first step in performing a bluntslide while snowboarding is to pick up enough speed that you can make the slide.
- When you have picked up enough speed, jump onto the rail so that the tail of the snowboard is receiving all of your weight. You will need to adjust your body in a particular way so that you do not fall. The way to arrange your body varies by individual and has to do with your height and weight. Getting the proper balance on a rail will take some practice.
- Lift the nose of your snowboard into the air while performing the bluntslide. This is what makes the bluntslide different from the tail slide.
- Land the bluntslide firmly on the ground and keep snowboarding. This slide will look really cool and increase your credibility as a skateboarder.
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<urn:uuid:ac28743b-24fa-4253-81dc-537c6fd486d0>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.mademan.com/mm/how-bluntslide-snowboarding--0.html
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en
| 0.929767
| 346
| 1.9375
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Try lots of fun and humorous things. Songs, animal noises, sounds, Japanese loan words as compared to their US pronunciations, and so on. If she feels at ease, and has fun, she may talk. Don't forget to make a bit of a fool of yourself with your sounds and activities, then she'll feel no worse.
- For Teachers
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<urn:uuid:c8064d3e-4e27-446a-b46d-ee8b549045d5>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/teaching-english/150979-esl-curriculum-ideas-shy-high-school-student.html
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What is cervicitis?
Cervicitis is inflammation of the cervix, the lower portion of the uterus that protrudes into the vagina. Cervicitis is most commonly due to sexually transmitted infections, or STIs, although it may be due to other types of infections, irritation or allergy. Cervicitis is a common condition; more than half of all women develop it at some point (Source: PubMed).
Cervical Problems Spotlight
Sexually transmitted infections that can cause cervicitis include Chlamydia, gonorrhea, Trichomonas, herpes, and the human papilloma virus, or HPV, the virus that causes genital warts. These infections may be present without symptoms, or they may cause problems, such as vaginal discharge, itching, pain during intercourse, pelvic pain, vaginal bleeding, or a sensation of pelvic pressure or fullness. Several of these conditions can be cured with antibiotics. Herpes and genital warts cannot be cured; however, management of their symptoms may be possible.
Chemicals, spermicides, lubricants and condoms can cause cervicitis due to irritation or allergy, depending upon their composition. Vaginal devices that rest against the cervix, such as cervical caps, diaphragms, and pelvic support devices (pessaries), can also cause cervicitis, as can certain bacteria or bacterial imbalances. Symptoms may mimic those seen with sexually transmitted infections. Treatment depends upon the cause, but may include antibiotics, estrogen therapy in postmenopausal women, or avoidance of products that cause irritation or allergy.
The risk of cervicitis can be reduced by observing safe sexual practices and avoiding known irritants or allergens.
Left untreated, some cervical infections can develop into pelvic inflammatory disease (PID, an infection of a woman’s reproductive organs) and result in pelvic abscesses, generalized inflammation of the pelvic tissues, and inflammation of the area around the liver. Seek immediate medical care (call 911) for serious symptoms, such as high fever (higher than 101 degrees Fahrenheit) or severe pain in the pelvis or abdomen, or if you develop symptoms of cervicitis during pregnancy.
Some types of cervicitis require treatment to avoid long-term complications. If you have symptoms of cervicitis or if you have been exposed to a sexually transmitted infection, seek prompt medical care. Also seek prompt medical care if you are being treated for cervicitis but symptoms recur or are persistent.
What are the symptoms of cervicitis?
Symptoms of cervicitis can include vaginal discharge, itching, pain during intercourse, pelvic pain, vaginal bleeding, or a sensation of pelvic pressure or fullness. If it progresses into pelvic inflammatory disease, fever, pain in the right upper abdomen, and malaise may develop.... Read more about cervicitis symptoms
What causes cervicitis?
Sexually transmitted infections, such as Chlamydia, gonorrhea, Trichomonas, herpes, and the human papilloma virus (HPV, the virus that causes genital warts), are the most common cause of cervicitis. It can also be caused by bacterial infections with Streptococcus or Staphylococcus or by an overgrowth of the bacteria normally found in the vagina.... Read more about cervicitis causes
How is cervicitis treated?
Treatment of cervicitis depends upon its cause. Infections with Streptococcus or Staphylococcus and bacterial imbalances can be treated with antibiotics, as can sexually transmitted infections, such as Chlamydia, gonorrhea and Trichomonas. With sexually transmitted infections, it is important that your partner be treated at the same time to avoid reinfection. Although herpes infections are not curable, antiviral medications can help minimize symptoms and reduce the frequency of outbreaks. Human papilloma virus (HPV) infections are also not curable, but cervical changes due to HPV can be treated with cryotherapy (freezing), electrocautery, or laser surgery.... Read more about cervicitis treatments
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<urn:uuid:3aa9af1f-7edb-4466-b68a-de474b90bcc0>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.localhealth.com/article/cervicitis-1
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HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN TOWN GOVERNMENT
HOW TO REGISTER TO VOTE
You must register to vote in Massachusetts. To qualify for registration you must be: a U.S. citizen, at least 18 years of age by election day, and a resident of the district in which you register.
The town clerk in each town is responsible for registering voters (check the town listing for town hall office hours). Town clerks also hold special registration hours in the evenings before annual elections.
TOWN MEETINGS AND ELECTIONS
On Martha’s Vineyard, voters participate directly in the major decisions and money allocations voted on at town meetings. The agenda for the town meeting is called the warrant, and the issues to be voted on are the articles. Only 10 signatures are required on a petition if a citizen wishes to bring an issue before the voters for their consideration. However, most of the articles on the warrant are prepared by the selectmen or various town departments. Information on warrant deadlines is available at the
town clerk’s office.
All six Island towns hold annual town meetings in the late winter or early spring. Special town meetings can be called at other times of the year. The voter can call a town meeting by petition by gathering 100 signatures of registered voters, but generally, special town meetings are called by the selectmen.
In order to participate in a town meeting, you must be a registered voter in that town. Observers are welcome at town meeting, but are usually required to sit in a separate visitors’ section. The warrants for town meetings appear in the local papers and the warrant for the annual town meeting is published in the annual town report. These are available at the town hall and at the annual town meeting.
Town elections take place each spring and anyone interested in running for an elected office should obtain information from the town clerk early in the year. There is a deadline for declaring yourself a candidate for office. The procedure is precise and must be carried out according to state statute. The town clerk is the authority on this matter and must be consulted for the correct procedure. (Specifics vary from town to town.) Write-in candidates and sticker votes are legal if the correct name and address
of the candidate is used.
Absentee voting in elections is permissible. Again your town clerk should be consulted for the correct procedure. There is no absentee voting on issues brought before the town meeting. Election of officials is held on or after the date of the annual town meeting.
TOWN BOARDS - BOARD OF ASSESSORS
The six towns, through a series of votes beginning at their annual town meetings and continuing with special meetings and possibly an override of Proposition 2 1/2, must decide how much to spend for providing town services. The town assessors must, with the approval of the state, establish a tax rate sufficient to cover the amount to be spent. Assessors and other town officials go through a lengthy procedure of reporting to the State Department of Revenue before the tax rates can be certified. Sometimes the votes
establishing spending amounts come late in the fiscal year, delaying the procedures for obtaining state certification; because of this, delays in timely issuance of tax bills can occur.
Assessors are elected to three-year terms and are required to take at least one course given by the state, usually at UMASS Amherst.
The Towns’ Tax Base
The taxes on land, buildings, and personal property plus excise taxes on cars and boats provide by far the largest percentage of the money required to run the towns and schools. Local taxes from summer homes on the Island are an important part of town revenues. The tax rate is expressed in dollars per $1000 of assessed valuation. Fiscal years run from July 1 to June 30, and final tax bills are mailed when all information and procedures are completed; however it is possible, with state approval, for towns to send
In addition to the money paid in local taxes, the towns receive income from certain state and federal subsidies, plus some federal revenue-sharing funds, a refund of state tax money, and a portion of lottery proceeds. These are computed annually for each city and town in the commonwealth. State reimbursements are listed for each town on the “cherry sheet,” so called because of the color.
State law requires that all real estate be assessed at full market value and all properties be reappraised at least every three years. Generally, professionals are employed to make these appraisals, basing assessments on actual sales in the preceding year to establish values as of January 1 of the reappraisal year. The assessors hold hearings for taxpayers who feel their assessments are incorrect. Appeal from the assessors’ rulings at these hearings may be made to the State Appellate Tax Board.
On revaluation years, state officials will visit the town to ascertain the correctness of procedures in determining the new valuations, which may further delay certification.
BOARD OF HEALTH
A wide range of tasks and the broadest powers among municipal boards lie with the boards of health. In general, boards of health are charged with safeguarding the health of the town’s residents.
Specific duties vary from town to town, but major among their duties is that of safeguarding drinking water. This includes inspecting and issuing permits for septic systems, dealing with the safe disposal of night soil, monitoring groundwater for possible contamination from leaking pollutants, monitoring leaching from local landfills, and regulating the use of underground fuel storage tanks. Overseeing safe and efficient operation of the town landfills, planning ahead for the regional disposal of solid and hazardous
wastes, and appointing the membership of and working with the Martha’s Vineyard Refuse Disposal and Resource Recovery District (MVRDRRD) fall to the boards of health in the towns that are members of the MVRDRRD.
The boards inspect and license all food establishments; monitor the quality of pond and lake water and work to secure safe shellfisheries; appoint a nursing care agency to provide home visits to newborns and the infirm and to provide various health care clinics; issue tent permits; inspect and test for lead paint; provide public information and education on common health hazards; relocate displaced families; and investigate any reported hazards or violations.
Boards of health have three elected members, each serving a three-year term. Most boards meet on a weekly basis. Meetings are open to the public. Boards of health are the only boards in town government that may pass a regulation without a public hearing.
In order to facilitate communication between boards of health, standardize regulations, and share ideas, an All-Island Board of Health has been established. This board is advisory and has no power to regulate.
Funded by town taxes, local conservation commissions regulate and advise town policy on environmental matters. They may accept gifts of land and money for the acquisition of land for their towns with the approval of the selectmen.
Members are appointed by the selectmen. Their functions include the following: planning of open spaces for recreation; acquisition of land for protection of water recharge areas; regulation of flood plains; regulation of wetlands; protection of agriculture, forestry, and fishing that affect the economic health of the town; coordination of all town bodies whose activities have an effect on the environment.
Be sure to check with your town’s conservation commission if you have plans that involve waterfront, a pier, a groin, a beach house, etc. Swamps are also protected. It is necessary to follow the procedure that includes a written notice of intent, followed by a public hearing and an “order of conditions” from the conservation commission.
Several privately funded organizations work closely with the commissions on matters of mutual concern. These include: Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club, Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, The Trustees of Reservations, Vineyard Conservation Society, Vineyard Open Land Foundation, and Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary.
All personnel boards consist of five appointed members. They act in cooperation with town officials and the finance committee on all matters relating to non-elected employees, except those under the jurisdiction of the school committee. The job of the personnel board is to administer, review, and amend salary schedules and to establish personnel policies, vacations, and fringe benefits. In addition, the board functions as a personnel relations review board and is empowered to adjust grievances of town employees.
PLANNING AND ZONING BOARDS
Each town has a planning board consisting of from five to seven elected members. Planning boards have three major functions:
Zoning: The board proposes changes or additions to zoning bylaws, holds public hearings, and submits them as proposed warrant articles to be voted on at town meeting.
Administration of the Subdivision Control Law: The planning board reviews all applications for the division of land into lots, and bases approval on town zoning bylaws, its own rules and regulations, and applicable state statutes.
Master planning: After special studies of the town’s assets and problems, the board prepares a master plan for the town, establishing the town’s policies for the ways in which land or water may or may not be used.
There are special laws pertaining to a subdivision, which is defined as a development where new roads are necessary and where a tract of land is to be divided into two or more lots and possibly divided again. If every lot in a development has frontage on an existing way in public use, there is no subdivision.
Most towns on the Island and the Martha’s Vineyard Commission have adopted regulations that limit the number of houses that may be built in one year on a piece of property being divided. Exceptions may be allowed under certain circumstances.
A master plan is a guide to the future growth of a town. After consultation with citizens and town agencies as well as professional planners, the planning board may create a master plan with recommendations for conservation, recreation, residential protection, neighborhood improvement, etc. It must then be approved by a two-thirds vote at a town meeting. The master plan is an advisory tool designed to help a town develop clear and workable goals.
The purpose of the historic preservation commission is to preserve the cultural heritage of the towns. The commission compiles an inventory of town properties of historic, archeological, or architectural significance. The inventory is then submitted to the state, which assumes a protective function if historic properties are threatened. The inventory also helps the state evaluate properties when they are submitted to the National Register of Historic Places.
National registry property owners are eligible to apply for grants-in-aid for historic preservation. When an area containing several structures of historic value is identified, the commission may set up a historic district study committee, its members appointed by the selectmen. Following a poll of residents in the proposed district and a public hearing, a historic district is established by a two-thirds vote of town meeting. From that time forward, any changes in the exterior design of the buildings within the
district must be considered and approved by a district commission. Its jurisdiction may extend to cover the following: terraces, walks, driveways, sidewalks, walls or fences, paint color other than white, color of roof material, size of signs, demolition of buildings, reconstruction, new structures and additions. Property owners have the right of appeal.
ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS
A zoning board of appeals in each town may grant special permits and variances to individuals pleading hardship or special circumstances. Approval may be given, subject to conditions or restrictions. Beginning in 1972, Island towns adopted comprehensive zoning bylaws, which are presently in place in all towns. Although zoning bylaws differ in each town, they all state the types and locations of the various districts—residential, business, industrial, and agricultural—and and describe the permitted
uses for each. They regulate the size of lots and the density permitted, the citing and the height of the structures. The selectmen or building and zoning officers of the towns administer the bylaws, issuing permits for all construction. Cases involving Developments of Regional Impact are referred to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.
TOWN OFFICIALS - EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
The job of the executive secretary is to provide coordination among all the town offices and departments and to act frequently as secretary to the selectmen. Many of the executive secretaries look for and apply for grants to aid in the efficient operation of their towns. The secretaries are appointed by the selectmen. All six towns on the Vineyard have this position.
The moderator is an elected town official who presides at the town meetings, regulating the proceedings, deciding all questions of order and making public declaration of all votes. No person addresses the meeting without permission from the moderator. The people may vote to request the moderator appoint committees. Rules for conducting each town’s town meeting are found in its bylaws.
The office of selectman in Massachusetts has existed for more than 300 years, and the power of the board, as stipulated by general statute and town bylaws, has changed little.
The board of selectmen of each town is mandated to carry out the measures voted at town meeting. Five of the six towns have three selectmen, elected at large for staggered three year-terms. Oak Bluffs has enlarged its board of selectmen to five members.
TThe selectmen share political power with a host of other elected officers and boards. The All-Island Selectmen’s Association, which meets monthly, serves to coordinate action on mutual town problems.
The tax collector, an elected official, is responsible for all the billing and collecting of local real and personal property taxes and also collects state motor vehicle excise taxes payable to the towns.
The town accountant is appointed by the selectmen for a three-year term. This officer is responsible for keeping all department accounts and approving vouchers signed by department heads. He/she approves payments to be made by the treasurer and prepares a periodic list of town expenditures for the selectmen’s approval. The accountant provides a detailed record of the town’s financial transactions; this record is published annually in the town report and is audited at prescribed intervals.
The town clerk’s office is the place to obtain petition forms and nomination papers. This office issues marriage licenses and copies of birth, marriage, and death certificates, as well as hunting, fishing, and dog licenses. The clerk, an elected official, records the proceedings of all town meetings and keeps official records of all town events, including its vital statistics. Other duties include voter registration, preparing voter lists, and swearing in all of the town officials. The clerk is chairman
of the town’s board of registrars of voters.
The town treasurer, usually an elected official, is the custodian of all town funds. All payments are made by the treasurer in accordance with the town warrants. This officer negotiates, awards, and prepares all notes issued by the town for borrowing; these are countersigned by the selectmen. The treasurer invests surplus funds of the town and is responsible for management of the interest and debt schedules.
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Nov. 2, 2001 ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Just as a movie theater’s “coming attractions” help viewers choose movies they may want to see, preview images — computer -generated — of possible micromachines help designers choose the device they want fully fabricated.
The need for previewing is particularly important because microdesigns for telecommunications, inkjet printing, and medical and auto safety devices — to name just a few — are fighting for dominance in new, still unestablished fields.
So it is disheartening for designers to learn — after months of work designing a prototype, followed by the time and cost of fabricating it —that a brainchild needs further modifications before it can be marketed as a workable device.
To make life easier for designers, Sandia National Laboratories researchers Vic Yarberry and Craig Jorgensen have crafted 2-D and 3-D modeling programs. Two-dimensional modeling shows the flat-plane cross sections of devices as they would look if fabricated.
The 3-D version allows designers to twirl their virtual microdevices like airplane parts modeled in the macroworld, the still-imaginary part viewed from any perspective. Unworkable portions of the design can be modified or eliminated before not after — fabrication work is paid for at the foundry. Sandia is a US Department of Energy laboratory.
“It’s not intuitive how the layers interact,” says Jorgensen. “MEMS [microelectromechanical systems] are wonderful in that they come out thousands at a time, all in one piece with no assembly necessary, but there’s nothing about fabricating them that is simple. You’re building patterned layers on top of other patterned layers, which can create a complex 3-D geometry.”
“It’s not easy for former macro–world designers to combine 2–D mask geometry with newly learned information about the MEMS fabrication process itself,” says Yarberry, “and, on the first try, to create functional 3–D structures.” Glitches occur because most researchers who design multilayered microdevices find it difficult to visualize how the micron–sized features of the etched layers fit together.
The simulation process does take time. A simple microdevice can be simulated in seconds; a complicated one can take hours. Still, waiting for a computer to complete its complex modeling beats waiting months to find out what modifications one should have made.
Sandia’s Marc Polosky, who designs safety components in weapons systems, says the 2-D cross-sectioner enables him to visualize the effect of cuts in different thin film layers.
Put simply, he says, “If you’re makng a gear on a pin joint, the program helps make sure you’re not designing a gear that’s rigidily fixed to the substrate and can’t move.”
While the 2-D program is a valuable design tool that should help new designers get up to speed faster, Polosky says, the 3-D modeler has potential of going to the next step — kinematic modeling — that will demonstrate these devices performing in environments.
Two papers by Yarberry and Jorgensen on their modeling work were selected for presentation at the Fourth International Conference on Modeling and Simulation of Microsystems, held this past spring at Hilton Head Island. The conference is probably the largest and most prestigious in providing an interdisciplinary forum for modeling, simulation, and scientific computing in the microelectronic, semiconductor, sensors, materials, and biotechnology fields.
Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major research and development responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness.
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Sandia National Laboratories.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
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The first thing many new mothers ask, even before seeing their newborns, is: "Are there 10 fingers (and toes)?" Of course, the answer is almost always "yes." Fingers can, though, be lost – amputated – later in life and when that happens it’s usually due to an accident with a lawnmower or a power saw. And then the lawsuits follow.
As usual, we focus here on how pain and suffering is evaluated by juries and judges in New York injury cases. And as you might have guessed already, this post will discuss recent finger amputation cases. While that seems like a narrow topic, and one that might result in a small range of monetary recoveries, the opposite is the fact. That’s because some cases involve amputations of just one (or just part of one) finger; while others involve two, three or more fingers. Then, there’s the issue of which finger – we all know that thumbs, for example, are much more important to function than pinky fingers.
For a review of hand and finger anatomy, see our post on hand injury pain and suffering verdicts here which includes diagrams of the phalanges (the finger bones).
The most recent case, Nisanov v. Black & Decker (U.S.), Inc. involved a 31 year old man who was using an old electric corded lawn mower. After mowing the lawn one day, Mr. Nisanov turned the mower upside down and began to remove grass clippings that had accumulated. Despite a warning on the machine of which he was aware, he did not unplug the mower and its blades restarted while he was removing the clippings. He suffered total amputations of his left hand’s index, middle and right fingers, his left pinky was partially severed and his left thumb was lacerated. The jury found that Mr. Nisanov’s pain and suffering damages totaled $2,000,000 ($600,000 past, $1,400,000 future) but it also found that Black & Decker was negligent in its design of the mower but it also found that Mr. Nisanov was 90% at fault for his own injury. Therefore, his net recovery was $200,000 (10% of the pain and suffering sum).
Do not stick your hand into a lawnmower or you may come out missing fingers:
Nisanov made a post-trial motion challenging the 90% comparative negligence finding against him as well as the jury’s $600,000 past pain and suffering verdict. He contended that $600,000 was too low for his pain and suffering for the five year period from the date of the accident to the date of the verdict. He did challenge the future pain and suffering figure.
On April 9, 2009, the trial judge issued a decision on the motion in the Nisanov case finding that the $600,000 past pain and suffering award was within the range of reasonableness and would not be modified. Also, the judge declined to disturb the jury’s finding that plaintiff was 90% at fault. There will be no appeal.
In McKeon v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., a carpenter had four fingers of his dominant hand fully amputated and reattached. There, the jury verdict of $1,350,000 ($810,000 past, $540,000 future) was upheld by the appellate court. That decision was relied upon by the plaintiff in the Nisanov post-trial motion for the proposition that $600,000 was unreasonable for five years of pain and suffering. While the injuries appear to have been similar, the $210,000 difference between the two past pain and suffering awards was not significant enough for a trial judge or an appellate court to step in and modify upward. The courts will modify upward or downward only when the jury verdict is not in a range of figures that is reasonable.
Here are the other important finger amputation cases insofar as pain and suffering damages is concerned:
- Hudson v. Lansingburgh Central School District – $240,000 Rensselear County jury verdict for pain and suffering ($90,000 past, $150,000 future) affirmed for a 14 year old boy who cut off a portion of the middle finger of his nondominant hand while operating a jointer-planer in technology class. He underwent surgery to amputate the finger at the proximal interphalangeal joint, which separates the lower and upper halves of the finger. Plaintiff was found to be 35% at fault so the his actual recovery was reduced to $156,000.
- Bradshaw v. 845 U.N. Limited Partnership – $85,000 ($50,000 past, $35,000 future) upward modification by appellate court for pain and suffering involving the amputation of the distal portion of plaintiff’s ring finger following a workplace accident in which a rebar caught on and partially severed the finger. The Manhattan jury had returned a verdict of $50,000 for past pain and suffering but nothing at all for for the future. The appeals court fond $35,000 should be added because the plaintiff would experience hypersensitivity in the remaining portion of the finger for the balance of her life.
- Leon v. J&M Peppe Realty Corp. – $850,000 pain and suffering verdict ($100,000 past, $750,000 future) affirmed by appeals court for a 26 year old carpenter who suffered a partial amputation of his three middle fingers while working on a circular saw like this:
The Bronx County jury had awarded plaintiff $100,000 for his four years of past pain and suffering plus $1,500,000 for 40 years in the future. The trial judge, though, reduced the future award to $750,000 and it’s the trial judge’s $850,000 total that was affirmed by the higher court.
- Huang v. Cherry Avenue Corp. (Index # 12201/05; Supreme Court, Queens County; 12/5/08) – $467,700 pain and suffering verdict ($200,000 past, $267,700 future) for a 42 year old mason in a construction site accident in which the tip of his left, nondominant hand’s index finger was detached after it became caught between a hoist’s hook and the hoisted material. Doctors were not able to reattach the detached portion of plaintiff’s finger and they shaved a portion of the exposed bone and sewed skin into the open wound.
Inside Info: Plaintiff was willing to settle before trial for $325,000 but defendants’ offer was only $75,000.
- James v. Queens Long Island Medical Group (Index # 17741/03; Supreme Court, Queens County; 3/8/07) – $950,000 pain and suffering verdict ($350,000 past, $600,000 future – 19 years) for a 7 year old girl who fell at school and sustained a chip fracture of the proximal phalanx of the ring finger of her left, nondominant hand. Doctors splinted and wrapped her hand but when she returned for follow-up medical treatment two weeks later her finger was necrotic and she had to undergo a surgical amputation of the distal phalanx followed by several months of physical therapy. The jury found that the doctors had committed medical malpractice. The defense contended that the $950,000 verdict was excessive and made a post-trial motion to it set aside . During the pendency of that motion, the parties settled the case for $700,000.
- Silverman v. State of New York – $650,000 judge’s decision for pain and suffering ($250,000 past, $400,000 future) for a 44 year old prison inmate injured in a carpentry class while working with a table saw that did not have a safety guard. Plaintiff sustained amputations of the digits of his thumb, index, middle and ring fingers of his left, nondominant hand. The award was reduced by one-half due to plaintiff’s contributory negligence.
Finger amputation accidents are typically quite gruesome and can result in very significant pain and suffering verdicts that are sustainable. On the other hand (pun not intended), these cases often involve accidents in which there is a very significant amount of culpability on the plaintiff’s part and then the award will be reduced accordingly. We will continue to follow new finger amputation cases as they arise.
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- Special Sections
- Real Estate
Half Dome cables day use permits for the 2013 hiking season will be available for reservation starting today, March 1, through Sunday, March 31, Yosemite National Park officials announced.
Permits to hike to the top of Half Dome are required. Reservations will be distributed via a lottery system. Successful parties will be notified in early April.
A maximum of 300 hikers will be allowed on the Half Dome cables per day.
Reservations for the permits can be made online at www.recreation.govor by calling 1-877-444-6777.
Approximately 50 subsequent daily permits will be available each day by lottery during the hiking season. These permits are made available based on the average number of no-shows and cancellations from the pre-season lottery.
The permits must be applied for two days in advance of the desired hiking date. Reservations for the two-day in advance permits can also be made through www.recreation.gov.
Hiking to the top of Half Dome is one of the most popular hikes in Yosemite National Park. The iconic granite monolith, at 8,842 feet above sea level, attracts people from all over the world who attempt to climb to the summit.
Most visitors ascend Half Dome via the cables, which are typically in place from mid-May through mid-October. Most visitors begin and end their hike at Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley.
It is an approximately 17-mile, round-trip journey.
June Lake Loop prescribed burning
The Mono Lake Ranger District of the Inyo National Forest is planning to implement a prescribed fire project for habitat improvement and hazardous fuels reduction over the next several weeks, west of U.S. Hwy 395 and east of Grant Lake.
The burn patches will be located in the more remote areas of the June Lake Loop, away from structures.
The project is expected to last several days, weather permitting.
Smoke may be visible from June Lake and Lee Vining but is expected to drift away.
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Regina Brett questions the wisdom of the Vatican's investigation of current women's religious congregations' decline from 180,000 members in 1965 to 50,000 today ("Rome investigates American nuns," July 12). If The Plain Dealer lost two-thirds of its readers over 45 years, it certainly also would be doing some investigating.
Brett's column omitted the vitality and explosive growth of new and traditional religious orders that are enjoying a Holy Spirit-driven Pentecost of new vocations resulting in congregation median ages in the 20s and 30s. Ann Carey, in her book "Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women's Religious Communities," describes viable institutes as having common "corporate identity, common apostolate, community living, common prayer, religious garb, traditional practice of vows, outspoken fidelity to the Pope and Magisterium . . .."
As grandparents of 23 children, none having had our good fortune of nuns (Ursuline) in their classrooms, we find hope in the institutes that have responded to Pope John Paul II: "I warmly invite members of institutes devoted to education to be faithful to their founding charism and to traditions, . . . preferential love for the poor finds a special application in . . . freeing people from that grave form of poverty which is lack of cultural and religious training" ("Consecrated Life").
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I found this on the Internet and I thought it was interesting sense I had hellp syndrome and have O- blood
e.Arch Gynecol Obstet. 2002 Nov;267(1):33-6.
Distribution of ABO and Rh blood groups in patients with HELLP syndrome.
Sezik M, Toyran H, Yapar EG.
Zekai Tahir Burak Women's Hospital,78. sok. 9/2 06510 Emek, Ankara, Turkey. firstname.lastname@example.org
The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the relationship between HELLP (hemolysis, elevated liver enzymes, low platelets) syndrome and the maternal blood groups. Five hundred and forty-seven women with severe preeclampsia were included and divided into eight groups according to their blood groups: A Rh-positive (n=203), A Rh-negative (n=38), B Rh-positive (n=83), B Rh-negative (n=10), 0 Rh-positive (n=148), 0 Rh-negative (n=21), AB Rh-positive (n=39), and AB Rh-negative (n=5). The groups were controlled by analysis of variance and found to be homogeneous with respect to parity, gestational age, blood pressure, hemoglobin, hematocrit, platelet values, prothrombin time, partial thromboplastin time, fibrinogen, creatinine, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, bilirubin, uric acid, and proteinuria. Incidence of HELLP syndrome was 24% in the overall study population whereas 48% of the patients with the blood group O Rh-negative had HELLP syndrome associated with an increase in risk by a factor of 3.1. To our knowledge this is the first report of such an association.
Ryleigh Marie was born on January 30, 2011... and passed shortly after. She was 40 weeks and 1 day when she was born.. weighing at 6lbs and 2 oz. and 20 inches long.
I was induced.. and during labor found out I had HELLP.
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Competing reports on cost of Voter ID reflect two viewsPublished 9:39am Thursday, September 13, 2012
By Tim Pugmire
Minnesota Public Radio News
If Minnesotans approve a proposed constitutional amendment that would require voters to present identification at the polls, many government officials, say it will come with a multimillion dollar price tag that will ultimately fall to taxpayers.
State Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a Democrat, has warned for months that the costs could be at least $50 million.
A Minneapolis-based advocacy group that opposes voter ID suggests even higher costs. The group Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota estimates combined state and local costs of from $36 million to $78 million.
But another new report downplays the financial effect of voter ID and suggests possible long-term savings. The different assessments reflect deep disagreement between amendment supporters and opponents about every aspect of the proposed requirement.
Ritchie, an outspoken critic of the amendment, has discussed its potential costs with local officials throughout the state.
“Some of the costs are short term,” he said. “They’re immediate; they require cash. Some of the costs are long term, so they can just require tax increases or some other revenue source. But in both instances, there are very significant costs to the implementation of the proposed constitutional amendment.”
Ritchie has largely relied on a 2011 estimate state Minnesota Management and Budget officials prepared for a voter ID bill that Gov. Mark Dayton later vetoed. It showed roughly $32 million in start-up costs for the state, and another $24 million for counties.
The up to $78 million in costs projected by Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota include the production and distribution of ID cards, a public education campaign and the equipment needed for a new provisional balloting system, which would accommodate voters who show up without the proper identification.
The group’s report also estimates costs to individuals in the range of $16 million to $72 million, Executive Director Kathy Bonnifield said. She said those costs are primarily related to securing the documents needed for people to obtain an ID.
“Not everyone has easy access to their birth certificate or their marriage certificate,” Bonnifield said. “And not everyone is close to a location to get access to their birth certificate or their marriage certificate, or even to have their photograph taken.”
The author of a competing study for a pro-amendment organization rejects those numbers. Peter Nelson, director of public policy at the Center of the American Experiment, said he thinks Bonnifield’s analysis misinterprets the amendment language and overstates the number of voters who would need provisional ballots.
“In places where they have same-day registration, it’s about .1 percent of the voting population that uses provisional balloting,” Nelson said. “That’s a very small number. In Minnesota, if it was .1 percent, that’s less than 3,000 voters. That’s less than one voter per precinct. So, we don’t believe that provisional balloting is going to be a serious cost to the system.”
Nelson estimated the first-year implementation costs at just $2.9 million.
Under his analysis, each expense category is significantly less than the estimates by amendment opponents and state officials.
Nelson contends Minnesota could save money over time because a streamlined system for registration and identification would require fewer election judges. He said counties would also save money if there is less voter fraud to investigate and prosecute.
Still, Nelson said his estimates might not hold up once lawmakers begin crafting the enabling legislation needed to put the voter ID requirement in place.
“It’s certainly possible that the Legislature will come back next year and put into place laws that cost more than we’ve estimated, because we’ve basically laid out the low-cost path,” he said. “But the truth is, the cost will depend on how lawmakers decide to implement this.”
Nelson’s analysis has faced strong criticism. Officials with the anti-amendment campaign Our Vote Our Future responded with a statement that said his estimates “defy common sense.”
Ritchie said he likes the idea of potential savings, but he warned that counties might face a new expense in dealing with legal challenges from voters who are wrongly turned away at the polls.
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The life of Samuel Crompton 1753 – 1827
A short biography of Samuel Crompton telling the story of how he invented the Spinning Mule. This machine helped to revolutionise the cotton industry but Crompton was never credited in his lifetime:
- Crompton's early life
- The problem of spinning fine cotton
- The invention of the Spinning Mule
- Crompton fails to make money on his invention
- The mule's contribution to the economy
- Crompton's bad luck
- Crompton is celebrated after his death
Samuel Crompton was born in Firwood Fold on 3rd December 1753 to a family that had been smallholders and weavers in the area for several generations. Traditionally, weavers in Lancashire were some of the wealthiest small-holders in Britain. However, by the mid 17th century, their occupation and way of life was in decline and Samuel’s Grandfather had already lost the family farm through debt. In 1758 the Crompton family moved out of Firwood Fold and eventually settled at Hall i’ th’ Wood.
Samuel’s father died shortly afterwards aged only thirty-two, leaving his Mother Betty to fend for the family. She did this by doing what she knew. She continued the family trade of spinning and weaving and in 1764 she leased some land for small-scale farming. Cottage industry is an all-family affair, and Samuel would have started spinning yarn as early as five years of age so as to help the family to make ends meet and he was working at the loom by the age of 10. Despite times being hard the Cromptons experienced a period of financial stability under Betty’s direction.
The problem of spinning fine cotton
Mechanisation of spinning had already begun, but no one had yet developed a machine that solved the problem of producing strong fine yarns in quantities large enough to satisfy the demands of the mechanised looms.
Crompton worked on a jenny from 1769, a machine invented by James Hargreaves in 1767 to spin cotton. Samuel was well aware of the machine’s limitations. He set himself the task of working out how to mass-produce fine strong cotton yarn. The market was hungry for fine cottons, if only the English looms could weave them a fortune was there to be made.
Above the porch at Hall i’th’ Wood is a small study that Crompton called the “conjuring room”. It was here that he spent many hours thinking about how to solve this problem. His solution was to create a machine that would simulate the motions of a hand spinner’s fingers.
The invention of the Mule
His resulting invention, the spinning mule, existed as a prototype by 1779.
The spinning mule combined features of two earlier inventions in one design: rollers that squashed and stretched the yarn similar to Arkwright’s Water Frame, and spindles on a moving carriage that drew out and twisted the yarn like Hargreaves’ Jenny.
Unfortunately for Samuel, Richard Arkwright had already patented the water frame, and protected copying of the invention vigorously. As a result Samuel was persuaded not to try to apply for a patent himself.
No Financial Reward
Samuel did not get immediate practical benefit from the mule. Just as he finished it there was an outbreak machine-breaking at Richard Arkwright’s factory in Chorley and Mr Kay’s carding mill at the Folds in Bolton. Locally it was known that Samuel had been developing a new machine. As a precaution he dismantled the mule and hid it in the loft at Hall i’th’ Wood until things calmed down.
In 1780 Samuel married Mary Pimlot and the pair worked the mule to produce their own yarns at the Hall. As the Crompton’s finer cotton began to appear local competitors and capitalists were increasingly curious as to how it was being produced. Stories abound of spies climbing ladders to peek into the first floor window at the mule. Samuel and his wife even resorted to spinning behind screens to protect his secret.
It was clear that Samuel’s invention had great potential beyond his small scale spinning at the Hall.
Samuel decided to seek advice about the situation and consulted John Pilkington, a respected local merchant. Pilkington was a member of the Manchester Council of Manufacturers, a group that was opposed to patents and the monopolies that these created. He offered Samuel the opportunity to display his machine to other Council members at the Exchange in Manchester.
A fee of £200 raised by subscription was customarily awarded to any inventor displaying models of their machines on the Exchange floor. Unfortunately few were impressed by Crompton’s humble looking machine and many refused to pay. They were also mindful of the patent issue and even if they wanted to install a mule they would not do so until Arkwright’s patent expired in 1785. Samuel only earned £60 from the showing.
Instead of investing this money in building more or better mules, Samuel took his wife and new son to a new home at the Oldhams in Sharples. They took up residence there in 1782, where he farmed and wove in the traditional manner of the cottage weaver. He installed two mules in the farmhouse but found it difficult to keep staff working for him. Every time he trained a new mule spinner they were lured by higher paid work.
Unable to compete with the new factories, Samuel’s fortunes continued to slide. He also passed on offers of employment and partnership by Sir Robert Peel of Bury in 1780 and a similar offer from Mr. W. McAlpine in 1785. Samuel was committed to being self-employed though the steady pace of industrialisation was quickly making his independent cottage weaver ideal irrelevant and unviable.
Crompton moved into Bolton in 1790 and resided in King Street in 1791. He and his family were struggling to make ends meet. He had five sons and a daughter to support on a low income. Worse still, in 1796 Samuel suffered an emotional blow when Mary his wife died. Crompton retreated into his religion, a non-conformist group known as the Swedenbourgians. Meanwhile the cotton boom was in full swing with machine builders such as Isaac Dobson, founder of the Bolton firm Dobson and Barlow, trading on Samuel’s invention.
In 1802 a group of manufacturers who had profited on the back of Crompton’s invention decided to raise a further subscription for him. Perhaps their consciences had got the better of them. Even this gesture appeared half hearted as they only managed to raise £444 of the £872 they had promised. Not one payment came from Bolton manufacturers.
Even so, Crompton rallied and invested this money in his workshop to increase capacity and to start selling high quality cloth. The mule in Bolton Museum’s collection comes from this workshop.
The Mule's contribution to the economy
In 1809 Parliament awarded Edmund Cartwright the inventor of the power loom a £10,000 reward for his invention. Crompton decided it was about time that his efforts were similarly rewarded. In 1811 he toured the 650 cotton mills working within the 60 mile radius of Bolton gathering evidence of how widely the spinning mule had been adopted. He would use this to petition parliament for compensation.
He found that:
- Of the spindles in use 155,880 were on Hargreave’s jenny, 310,516 were on Arwright’s water-frame, and 4,600,000 were on Crompton’s mule
- The capital invested in the cotton industry was worth nearly four million pounds
- 40 million pounds of cotton wool was spun annually
- Duty paid to H.M. Government was £350,000 per annum
- Around 80% of the cotton goods bleached in Lancashire were woven on Mule-spun cotton
- He concluded that around 700,000 people were directly or indirectly dependent on mule-spun yarn for their livelihood
In support, James Watt testified that two thirds of all the steam engines installed in spinning mills by his company were for running mules. The spinning mule, Crompton concluded, had become the mainstay of cotton spinning in Britain.
Samuel took his evidence to parliament in 1812 expecting £50,000 compensation. Again timing was against him, the national economy was funding the Napoleonic wars. Samuel’s supporters convinced him to ask for £10,000 to £20,000. Another stroke of bad luck occurred when Spencer Percival the prime Minister was assassinated. Legend has it that he was on his way to recommend that Crompton be granted the sum he requested. In the end the new chair of the committee overseeing Samuel’s claim only awarded him £5,000.
Crompton dogged by bad luck
Crompton invested again and went into partnership with two of his sons, George and James. They set up a bleach works and a cotton trading business. Fate dealt him a double blow: the spring that supplied the bleach works in Darwen was pumped dry, and the warehouse in Delph where the successful cotton business was based was washed away by flood.
Once again Samuel was in debt and working from home as cottage producer. He wove intricate cloths that were too expensive to be commercially viable and again, his designs were stolen and lesser quality versions were made at more competitive prices.
In 1823 a local group took pity on him. The Black Horse Prosecution Club set up an annuity of £63, 15 shillings for him. He was cared for in his old age by his daughter and died with debts that exceeded his paltry assets valued at only £25.
30 years after he had died Gilbert French published a biography of Samuel Crompton that eulogised his achievements. French persuaded the people of Bolton of the significance of Samuel’s contribution to local prosperity. His tragic story appealed to the local population and his life story took on a local cultural importance that lasted until the end of the cotton industry in the town a century or more later.
The statue erected to commemorate his achievements was the first civic statue in Bolton. Although only begrudgingly acknowledged in his lifetime, Crompton was finally treated to the recognition he deserved.
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WHIDBEY ISLAND, WASHINGTON: “Every two weeks, we get another Growler,” Cmdr. Christopher Middleton said at the Navy’s electronic warfare hub here. The Navy target is to buy 114 EA-18G Growler aircraft. And it’s those Growler aircraft that will be the cutting edge of future Naval strikes against future “anti-access area denial” defenses like those being built by China.
To break through such defenses, the Navy is very publicly working on a joint “AirSea Battle” concept with the Air Force, but the two services have taken starkly different approaches to defeating enemy radar.
The Air Force retired its last radar-jamming aircraft in 1998 and placed its bets on radar-evading stealth aircraft: the twin-engine F-22 Raptor and its single-engine cousin the F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter, both built by Lockheed Martin. The Navy has taken the exactly opposite path. While it will eventually (and somewhat reluctantly) acquire its version of the F-35, the Navy continues to buy both non-stealthy attack planes and powerful jamming aircraft to blind enemy radars: the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and its electronic warfare variant the EA-18G Growler, both built by Boeing.
Navy leaders have long been skeptical of stealth, and for good reason. Stealth certainly shrinks an aircraft’s radar return, but it cannot eliminate it. And because Moore’s Law doubles available computing power every 18 months, radar systems just keep getting ever better at detecting the subtle clues of a stealth plane’s presence. From a Navy perspective, the only sure way to keep a radar from seeing you is to jam it — and then, ideally, to blow it up.
To preserve that jamming capability, the Navy is investing in a “Next Generation Jammer,” and it is now more than two-thirds through its transition from the venerable EA-6B Prowler to the newer, sleeker much more capable Growler.
At last count, Middleton told reporters Wednesday, Whidbey Island has 79 EA-18Gs. 41 of those Growlers are in Middleton’s training squadron, VAQ-129, which trains electronic warfare aircrew and maintainers for the entire fleet. The rest are in six operational squadrons of five planes each, with a seventh squadron now in mid-transition from the old Prowler.
Six Navy EA-6B squadrons remain, but they’re all slated to move to the EA-18G as well. Meanwhile, Middleton’s unit has already retired all but 10 of the EA-6Bs it used for training, and it expects to graduate its last Prowler pilot in April 2014. (The Marine Corps, by contrast, will keep its Prowlers and replace them, eventually, not with Growlers but with its version of the F-35).
At this point, Middleton said, the real limiting factor for Navy electronic warfare is not aircraft but personnel — and the people he’s most short of are not the pilots to fly the planes but the maintainers to keep them flight-worthy. The personnel shortfall is “90 percent support,” not pilots, he told Breaking Defense. In fact, the fleet is so feverishly retraining Prowler mechanics to work on the Growler that Middleton’s unit has hired 202 contractors from L-3 to work on its remaining Prowlers.
So what’s so great about the new airplane? To start with, the Growler is a lot faster — it can even break the sound barrier, which the Prowler never could — and is more capable of defending itself against enemy aircraft. The Growler’s also a brand-new aircraft, which makes it much more reliable than the Prowler, which entered service in 1968. “These jets work all the time,” Middleton said.
Finally, the new plane is built to accommodate the latest electronic warfare equipment. Like most electronic-warfare officers, Middleton was maddeningly unspecific about these highly classified systems, but he would say that the new technology provides much more “fidelity”:
“I trust what it tells me it found,” Middleton said. On the old electronic warfare gear, “the operator had to sort through a larger set of ambiguities,” he explained. “You had to sort through signals of interest and ambiguous noise.” The more sophisticated computers on the Growler do much more of the work, allowing the new plane to get by with two crew instead of the Prowler’s four.
For all the futuristic technology, however, in many ways Navy electronic warfare is returning to its past. Historically, electronic warfare’s main mission was to jam a path through enemy radar to let the attack planes through. Since 9/11, however, both Prowlers and Growlers were heavily used as high-powered electronic surveillance platforms over Afghanistan and Iraq, hunting not anti-aircraft radars but insurgents with cellphones and radio-detonated roadside bombs.
“For a while there we got really good at ground support because that was what the nation needed,” said Middleton. (The commander wears a patch from his 2005 tour over Fallujah that reads: “we didn’t drop anything, and neither did you” — a reference to how rarely the aircraft actually dropped bombs during the guerrilla war.) “But we never gave up” training for the traditional missions, he emphasized. As the nation reorients towards the Pacific and the Navy in particular emphasizes AirSea Battle, the crucial factor is increasingly that high-tech, high-intensity, high-stakes electronic fight.
(Full disclosure: Boeing paid for Sydney’s travel, accommodations, and meals but they didn’t try to lecture him about the limits of stealth).
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Special Collections Department
Historic Map Collection
1561 - 1995
Extent: 993 items
Content: Map and atlases
Access: The collection is open for research.
Processed: 2001-2002 by Laura Cochrane and Theresa Hessey
Special Collections, University of Delaware Library
Newark, Delaware 19717-5267
Table of Contents
- Introductory Notes
- Note on Arrangement and Map Location
- Note on Collections
Table of Contents of Historic Map Collection
Many maps of Delaware and the Mid-Atlantic Region are viewable in the University of Delaware Library Digital Collections.
Among the important Delaware and regional maps from this collection are John Senex's A New Map of Virginia, Maryland & the Improved Parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey (ca. 1719), Joshua Fisher's A Chart of Delaware Bay and River (1776), Lewis Evans’s Map of the Middle British Colonies (1776), and an anonymously produced Plan of Wilmington and Its Environs (ca. 1798). The collection also contains an anonymous manuscript map of Delaware (ca. 1715), a bird’s-eye view map of Wilmington (1784), early twentieth-century Sanborn maps of Seaford and New Castle, and numerous road maps of Delaware dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The maps are arranged by geographical region. In most cases they are listed by continent and then country, except for United States maps, which are arranged by state. Under Delaware, the maps have been further subdivided into counties and towns. Under each geographical heading the maps are ordered by their date of publication. In the finding aid, each map's location (map case, drawer, and folder number) is noted to the left of the map title. Under the location is the accession number, which is the map's unique identifier, which is necessary, as there are multiple maps in each folder. There are also maps in the vault, in Hollinger boxes, and hung in frames. The abbreviations below appear in the finding aid after the accession number and identify the location of each map.
f Framed map (hanging) gr Green map case h Hollinger boxes (above the green map case) mc2 Map case 2 (Pearl Herlihy Daniels map collection) new New map case ovr Oversized map drawers rol Rolled map v Vault vf Framed in vault (hanging)
The Historic Map Collection comprises a core group of maps that were collected by the curators of Special Collections during the past forty years. This part of the collection is comprehensive and includes maps from around the world dating from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, although a bulk of the collection comprises nineteenth- and twentieth-century maps of the Delaware area.
In addition to this core group, the collection also contains three other collections that were either given to or purchased by the Library. The most significant of these is the Pearl Herlihy Daniels Collection, which includes about 150 maps, books, atlases, and visual materials, mainly related to the history of Delaware and the surrounding regions. The two other collections included are the Robert D. Fleck Collection, which comprises a group of over 250 maps of Delaware, mainly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the Dunlap Collection, a group of fifteen maps of the Newark area.
Although these collections remain together as discrete entities, for the purposes of this finding aid, the maps are organized by their geographic locations rather than their respective collection. However, the accession number that appears next to the map’s title identifies the collection: maps that were collected by the curators of Special Collections have accession numbers ranging from 01800- 03099; maps from the Dunlap Collection have accessioning numbers ranging from 03101-03107; the Fleck Collection number range from 03201-03252; and the Herlihy Daniels Collection maps range from 04001-04121.
In addition to the Historic Map Collection, maps can also be found in the several of the University of Delaware Library’s manuscript collections. Because they are part of larger collections, they are not housed or indexed with the Historic Map Collection. Collections that have map components include the Christopher Ward Papers (ms 107), which contains maps relating to Ward's literary and historical works on the American Revolution and Delaware history; the World War II Maps and Radio Broadcasts Collection (ms 325), a group of briefing notebooks of maps and newspaper clippings which tracked military progress of Allied and Axis powers throughout World War II on an almost daily basis; and the Wilbur T. Wilson Map Collection , papers created by the town engineer of Newark, Delaware, during the early twentieth century. The Pearl Herlihy Daniels Map Collection Papers documents Mrs. Daniels's creation of her map collection and her interest in maps.
The Historic Map Collection contains four atlases, but most of the historic atlases in the University of Delaware's collection can be found by searching DELCAT , the library’s on-line catalog. Important atlases that are listed in DELCAT include Mercator’s Atlas Novus (1638), Ortelius’s Epitome Theatri Orteliani (1589), Mathew Carey’s American Pocket Atlas (1805), D. G. Beers’s Atlas of the State of Delaware (1868), and Baist's Property Atlas of the City of Wilmington, Delaware (1901).
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1975: an important year.
The fall of Saigon signaled the end of the Vietnam War. A pilot episode of "Starsky and Hutch" featured actor Richard Ward as an African-American boss of white Americans for the first time on TV.
But for then-Penn State undergraduate student John Breen, it was President Gerald Ford's signing of a law ensuring "free and appropriate" education for children with disabilities that made 1975 remarkable.
"It was a juncture of how society cared for its most vulnerable people," said Breen, a licensed psychologist with a doctorate degree who serves as a school psychologist for Appalachia Intermediate Unit 8.
The law, known today as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, enabled children nationwide to return to their home communities from institutions. Children in state hospitals such as the ones in Ebensburg, Cresson and Somerset began attending public schools.
Over time, individualized special education plans were available to a broad range of children as psychologists and educators became increasingly aware of previously unobvious learning disabilities.
Special education students
The 2010-11 school year enrollments and percent of those in special education programs:
SchoolSpecial education students
Altoona Area1,523 (19.1 percent)
Hollidaysburg Area421 (12 percent)
Tyrone Area323 (16.6 percent)
Spring Cove299 (16.4 percent)
School District131 (24 percent)
Claysburg-Kimmel120 (13.7 percent)
Bellwood-Antis98 (7.8 percent)
Source: Bureau of Special Education,
Pennsylvania Department of Education
Nearly four decades after IDEIA was passed, less than 19 percent of Altoona Area School District's enrollment is for special education. And it's a struggle to keep special education students in school.
State: Reduce the rate
The state Bureau of Special Education audited the district last year. The result: District administrators were advised to take steps to reduce the dropout rate for students with disabilities enrolled in special education.
The dropout rate has been rising since the 2009-10 school year, when 29 students with special education plans were reported to have dropped out for a 23 percent dropout rate among special education students.
"It's a big deal to me if one student drops out," special education advocate Debbie Detrich said. She is the chairwoman of the Right to Education Task Force No. 8, serving special education students in Blair, Cambria, Bedford and Somerset counties.
In 2010-11, the latest state data available, the dropout rate for special education students ages 14 to 21 increased to 29 percent at Altoona. The state's average for that school year: 10.9 percent. Altoona's overall dropout rate is 2.12 percent or 76 of 3,585 students in grades 7 through 12.
Aside from Altoona, special education enrollment in Blair County school districts is no greater than Hollidaysburg Area's 421 students and dropouts so few that the state does not list the number to protect the children's identities in their communities.
Altoona Area's special education dropout rate, coupled with a higher-than-state-average population of students with disabilities recorded by the bureau, sets Altoona apart from other districts in the county and the state.
Altoona, with about 8,000 students, has a students-with-disabilities population just shy of 19 percent, or 1,484 students, compared with the state average of 15.2 percent.
The bureau has required the district to improve its evaluation process to ensure children are accurately diagnosed for special education.
"Since Altoona school district's figures are higher than the state average, the adviser required the district to review its pre-referral procedures and assessment practices to ensure accurate evaluation practices," state Education Department spokesman Tim Eller said.
Students 'properly placed'
While district spokeswoman Paula Foreman said there is always room for improvement, administrators believe their evaluation process is accurate.
"Without a doubt, all students are properly placed," Assistant Superintendent Mary Lou Ray said. "The first level of the screening process is the teacher and principal who try ways to change academic or behavioral problems before they are put into special education. If the strategies don't work, we do testing with a psychologist. Then a definitive determination is made by the psychologist after observance in the classroom."
For the 2010-11 school year, a majority of Altoona students enrolled in special education were students with a specific learning disability (42 percent), but 10 percent of the district's special education enrollment are students with chronic emotional disorders that disrupt their learning, 9 percent of students were enrolled for speech and language impairment, 8 percent are enrolled for autism and 15 percent are enrolled for mental retardation.
In 2010-11, special education enrollment at Altoona was higher: 1,523, according to state figures. The decrease, administrators believe, reflects the fluctuating nature of enrollment, not tighter disability screening, Foreman said.
Screening is the same at all districts, Detrich said.
Anti-dropout plan developed
Altoona administrators said they are unsure of reasons for the dropout rate, but an improvement plan is on record with the state, Eller said.
"The department encourages the district to address the dropout rate through transition planning, transition activities and community based activities. However, the school district does develop the plan, not the department," he said.
The district's special education parental advisory committee and special education department held an agency fair earlier this month to introduce families to services assisting students with disabilities transition from high school to the local workforce and college.
The Arc of Blair County has implemented an after-school reading program to diminish dropouts among special education students, said Executive Director Maria Brandt.
"When children have trouble reading, everything else crumbles," Brandt said. "A majority of the students who come to us are from Altoona."
In the 1970s, Breen was a houseparent at a community living arrangement operated by a chapter of the state's Mental Health and Mental Retardation agency. It was a home in Lewistown for children, who were once required to be institutionalized for life in state hospitals with large unsterile day rooms.
"There were dozens and dozens of kids all mixed together in institutions. It wasn't a wholesome place," Breen said.
Breen said not all institutionalized children had severe disabilities. He was surprised to see some children in institutions who were high-functioning.
Children statewide transitioned from institutions to small group homes in their families' neighborhoods, such as the one where Breen worked, and eventually moved back into their families' homes.
"At small group homes, we did things like eat dinner together. The goal was to get them back with their families," Breen said.
When special education law was passed in the 1970s, America's societal backdrop included an acceleration in divorce rates, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
'Dysfunction' at home
In general, Altoona administrators believe part of the district's special education dropout rate is for lack of family support.
"We encourage the student from many different levels - counselor, principal, teacher - to stick it out and earn their high school diploma," Ray said. "But unfortunately, those efforts don't always work.
"Many students do not have the family support component encouraging them to stay in school. In fact, for some students, it is quite the opposite, where they are encouraged by parents to sign out when they turn 17."
Dysfunctional home life can lead children with mental and emotional disorders to the juvenile system, Blair County Juvenile Probation Office Supervisor Jon Frank said.
"Anymore, there are a lot of children receiving behavior-based services who trickle into our system. If things aren't working out in home, then we check out foster homes, relatives, anything to keep children out of the juvenile facility," he said.
There is most likely no specific factor to blame for the district's dropout rate for special education students with disabilities, Detrich said.
"The problem is not all on the students. It's not all the district, and it's not all the parents," she said.
As Altoona continues efforts to improve its disabilities evaluation process for students, Detrich said the district's focus should be serving those with special needs.
"I don't care what the state average is," Detrich said. "If state numbers say we should have eight students with disabilities and we have 10 students with disabilities, then those 10 are going to get the services. That is how I look at it."
Mirror Staff Writer Russ O'Reilly is at 946-7435.
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- Number 357 |
- February 27, 2012
Working with an international team, three physicists from DOE's Brookhaven Lab have helped to demonstrate the feasibility of a new kind of particle accelerator that may be used in future physics research, medical applications, and power-generating reactors. The team reported the first successful acceleration of particles in a small-scale model of the accelerator in a paper published in Nature Physics.
The device, named EMMA and constructed at the Daresbury Laboratory in the UK, is the first non-scaling fixed field alternating gradient accelerator, or non-scaling FFAG, ever built. It combines features of several other accelerator types to achieve rapid acceleration of subatomic particles while keeping the scale — and therefore, the cost — of the accelerator relatively low.
Nanorods – rod-shaped crystals of semiconductor materials whose dimensions are measured in mere billionths of a meter – are central to many schemes for solar cells, magnetic storage devices, and sensors that depend on arrays of these crystals in composite with polymers. Only nanorods that can assemble themselves into complex structures and hierarchical patterns can fully realize this technological promise, however.
A new technique developed by researchers at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) delivers self-assembling arrays of nanorods with improved mechanical and electrical properties, which can be grown relatively quickly, easily, and inexpensively when combined with polymers.
Using models similar to those used in weapons research, Lawrence Livermore scientists may soon know more about exoplanets, those objects beyond the realm of our solar system.
In a new study, scientists at DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and collaborators came up with new methods for deriving and testing the equation of state (EOS) of matter in exoplanets and figured out the mass-radius and mass-pressure relations for materials relevant to planetary interiors.
While retaining their speed, catalysts have lost some of their secrets, thanks to a new probe built by scientists at DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to help clarify the steps catalysts take in promoting reactions. The new device is called a large-sample-volume constant-flow magic angle spinning probe for use in a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer. With it, scientists can flow a gaseous reaction mixture through a solid catalyst and collect NMR data on the intermediates and products generated during the reaction. In addition, using NMR can provide structural information about the catalyst itself during the reaction.
"Scientists have been trying for a long time to get something closer to a realistic environment with NMR data. This is the newest approach to doing that," said Dr. Charles Peden, a catalysis researcher in the Institute for Integrated Catalysis at PNNL who worked on the study.
A team of researchers has found a way to ensure that your evening glass of wine will continue to be available, despite the potential attack of Xylella fastidiosa (Xf), a bacterium that causes Pierce's Disease and poses a significant threat to the California wine industry's valuable grapevines.
Researchers from DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California at Davis, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service have created specially engineered grapevines that produce a hybrid antimicrobial protein that can block Xf Infection.
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The Fire of 1999 : the facts
24 March 1999 : a duty to remember a fire of unprecedented scale in this type of structure
On the 24 March 1999, a heavy goods vehicle carrying flour and margarine came to a stop in the Mont Blanc Tunnel. The lorry was on fire – a fire that then spread to the vehicles behind. It took two days to bring it under control. The fire was on an unprecedented scale, claiming 39 lives (37 customers, an employee of the Italian company and a fireman from Chamonix).
A compensation fund for families of 27 million euros
A memorandum of understanding was signed by all parties, including ATMB, to enable all those with a claim to receive fair compensation. A fund of 27 million euros was set up.
Criminal proceedings: ATMB accepts its responsibility, it did not ask for charges to be dropped nor appeal the verdict
Following the criminal investigation, 13 individuals and 4 companies including ATMB and SGTMB appeared in court. The trial took place between 31 January and 29 April 2005 at the High Court in Bonneville. Seven ATMB and SITMB employees , the driver of the HGV, Volvo, the mayor of Chamonix and a senior official of the Ministry of Public Works were also found guilty. ATMB did not appeal the verdict.
“ATMB has a duty to the families of the victims to accept its responsibility. It also owes it to the 600 members of staff that are employed today on motorway and tunnel safety”, Jean-Paul Chaumont, Managing Director of ATMB, explains.
The New Mont Blanc Tunnel : a rebuilt structure, and personnel working with one aim constantly in mind: safety
“All the work undertaken by ATMB and its staff is guided by one constant concern: safety. Bringing the tunnel under the guardianship of a single French-Italian entity, appointing a new management team… all these changes have been brought about through learning the lessons of the past. As well as restructuring the company, safety standards in the tunnel have been completely overhauled. Today, putting safety top of the agenda means constant reassessment and constant vigilance at every level of ATMB”, Jean-Paul Chaumont adds.
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Not everyone is pleased with New York City’s ban on smoking in public parks and other recreation areas — a group advocating smokers’ rights says outdoor no-smoking signs in state parks, beaches, pools and historic sites subject smokers to hostile confrontations. The group is suing the New York Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation to get them to remove the signs.
NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment says the signs are misleading, reports the Associated Press, since Governor Cuomo’s administration decided against restrictions that would be enforced with a potential disorderly conduct ticket.
Instead, park officials will take part in a formal rule-making to designate which areas will be smoke-free in limited outdoor settings within the state’s 178 parks and 35 historic sites. The idea is to ban smoking where there are likely going to be people congregating, like on playgrounds and at pools in New York City.
The signs are still up, with voluntary compliance. The group’s lawsuit also opposes new regulations to limit outdoor smoking.
Group Sues to Remove No-Smoking Signs in Parks [Associated Press]
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The Bill of Rights in the Early State Courts
University of Illinois College of Law
June 25, 2007
Brooklyn Law School, Legal Studies Paper No. 82
Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 92, p. 1, 2007
The Bill of Rights originated as a constraint only on the federal government. As every law student learns, therefore, in the 1833 case of Barron v. Baltimore, the Supreme Court dismissed a Fifth Amendment takings claim against a state. This Article shows, however, that early state courts regularly invoked and applied the provisions of the Bill of Rights in reviewing state law and state executive action. Barron meant only that the federal courts would not apply the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states. State courts could decide independently to apply those provisions against their own state governments, and the jurisdictional limits of the 1789 Judiciary Act shielded those state court decisions from Supreme Court review. Largely forgotten today, state court applications of the Federal Bill of Rights against state government represented a vibrant body of constitutional law in the early Republic. Restoring this history challenges the conventional account that states were mostly unconstrained until ratification of the Reconstruction-era amendments, and that only in the mid-twentieth century did courts begin to protect adequately the rights of individuals. Instead, early constitutional law was multifaceted, sophisticated, and innovative, with a diverse set of jurists invoking and applying an array of constitutional rules to keep government at all levels in check.
The history of the Federal Bill of Rights in the early state courts points also to some deficiencies of modern constitutional law. Compared to the antebellum era, constitutional law today is radically consolidated. Among other things, state courts cannot extend federal constitutional protections beyond the limits the Supreme Court itself sets; this leaves individuals with fewer places to turn to protect their rights. Consolidation is also inconsistent with federalism. The historical practice of allowing state courts leeway to interpret independently the Federal Constitution reflected the importance of state courts in our constitutional design and the benefits that accrue to the system as a whole when individual state courts are able to make different choices. In addition, consolidation has weakened state constitutional law, as developed and applied by the state courts. Incorporation of federal constitutional protections, as defined by the Supreme Court, has displaced state constitutional law as the principal source of individual rights. Rather than decide independently what provisions of their own state constitutions mean, state courts have tended to hew to the Supreme Court's understandings of analogous provisions in the Federal Constitution. State courts have lost their voices under the Federal Constitution and they have fallen out of practice speaking under their state constitutions. Finally, consolidation helps account for the enormous tension that is characteristic of our current regime when federal constitutional rights are, ultimately, dependent upon the decisions of the Supreme Court.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 82
Keywords: Bill of Rights, incorporation, federalism, judicial federalism, parity, state courts, federal jurisdiction, antebellum courtsAccepted Paper Series
Date posted: June 25, 2007 ; Last revised: January 15, 2008
© 2013 Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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COBWEB CORNERS: Up front about cabooses
By Mel McFarland
A caboose was the main office on freight trains. There are no cabooses on modern freight trains, but the local trains sometimes use them. It has been almost 20 years since there was a train to Colorado City, but the town used to have several retired cabooses sitting around. My favorite was a Colorado Midland caboose that was brought down from Divide some 50 years ago. It sat in a couple of different places and was finally dismantled behind Ghost Town. Another Rock Island caboose can still create quite interesting stories too. There were others; in fact, there are about five in Colorado Springs, if you know where to look.
I have one of those cabooses, as some of you may know. I bought mine in 1983 from a freight car dealer. I was on TV some 10 years ago when I had to move from my old home. My new neighbors thought it would ruin the neighborhood. It did not, and many drive right past it and hardly even notice it. I use mine as an office and studio to do artwork. In my old location, I used to be able to see the railroad from my caboose. It was fun to wave at passing trains from the cupola.
I miss seeing trains that have cabooses. The caboose was replaced by a little computer box with a light on it. The conductor sits up with the engineer now. A hundred years ago, they were the train crew's home away from home. The conductor had his office in the caboose. He could watch the movement of the train from his high cupola. Because brakemen would sometimes have to climb up on the cars and set the brakes by hand, one or more stayed in the caboose until needed. The caboose was also a place for the crew to take shelter if the train was stuck in bad weather.
My caboose was built to use in North Dakota, so it had space to sleep four or more in an emergency. It did not have a kitchen, but that did not stop the crew from cooking. Many a pot of chili or coffee was brewed on the stove in my caboose. On a cold winter night, I still crank mine up and write or draw at a desk inside. In my old neighborhood, a couple of neighbors would even drop in with cake or pie to go with the coffee. Where my caboose sits now, the trains are a mile away, but I still hear them.
Many of the railroaders today missed out on the experience.
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5 Questions: Peaceful Rest
More than 40 million Americans suffer from chronic, long-term sleep disorders each year, and an additional 20 million experience occasional sleeping problems. To get the lowdown on sleep disorders and sleeping problems, we turned to the Sleep Disorder Program at St. Luke’s South in Overland Park and its medical director, Dr. Ann Romaker.
Q: What kinds of sleep disorders are there?
A: There are more than 150 recognized types of sleep disorders today. These range from teeth grinding to snoring to sleepwalking.
Q: I seem to be tired all the time. Should I just chalk it up to insomnia?
A: While insomnia can occur due to stress, anxiety or depression, being tired all the time is not normal and could be a sign of a sleep disorder.
Q: What effects can lack of sleep or interrupted sleep cause?
A: According to the American Sleep Association, concentration, memory, physical performance, social interactions, mood stability and even appearance can be impacted by the amount and quality of sleep a person gets each night.
Q: Aren’t sleep disorders overblown?
A: Undiagnosed sleep disorders can worsen and/or partially trigger conditions such as diabetes, stroke, cancer, heart failure, emphysema, depression and arthritis.
Q: Can sleep disorders be life-threatening?
A: Sleep apnea can cut life expectancy in half for middle-aged individuals as well as older adults. It increases the risk of stroke, heart attack, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, congestive heart failure and rhythm problems.
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Tens of millions breathed an enormous sigh of relief upon hearing that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan wouldn't be entering the White House. Union members, women, African-Americans, Latinos and the LGBT community correctly saw the Republican agenda as a vicious and real threat.
The right wing tried to steal the election with voter intimidation, suppression and fake-populist posturing on the economy in the final weeks, putting over one billion dollars in campaign cash into trying to disenfranchise the poor, young people and people of color.
Obama's vote was nothing like the excited and energetic campaign of 2008. This year, voter turnout was down by 12 million compared to four years ago. Most people voted for Obama as a “lesser evil” rather than as the savior they saw in 2008, who would bring “hope” and “change.”
Last year's Occupy Wall Street movement made an impact on this election by bringing a discussion about economic inequality between “the 99% and the 1%” to the forefront. A brighter spotlight shone down on the record $6 billion spent on federal races, to the outrage of millions. Occupy's message against corporate domination also fueled a healthy hatred for Mr. 1% himself, Mitt Willard Romney.
Obama won this election in spite of his pro-corporate record. Banks received trillions in handouts while social services were cut and millions of families lost their homes. Many antiwar voters supported Obama, despite continued bombing of civilians in country after country, expanding Bush's model of an unaccountable imperial Presidency, waging war in Libya, and drone strikes around the world without discussion in Congress.
Many of Obama's voters were deeply disappointed in his performance over the past four years, correctly seeing him as a puppet of Wall Street and the 1%. The Obama administration begins its second term without any real mandate. The Democratic Party “base” among the unions, people of color, women and the LGBT community, swallowed their anger at Obama during the elections, holding their nose to vote for the “lesser evil.” Now, with the elections behind them, all the pent-up anger and frustration is set to boil over.
Demands for jobs, clean energy investments, education funding, housing rights, and solutions to an endless list of injustices will again come to the surface. And again, Obama will put the interests of Wall Street and big business first, provoking fresh outrage and opposition. The time is ripe for building new movements of workers and oppressed, politically independent of both corporate parties.
Changed Situation and Attitudes
For the first time nationally, voters in Washington, Minnesota, Maine and Maryland voted in favor of same-sex marriage rights, marking a historic turning point in the struggle for LGBT equality. Many other progressive ballot questions won across the country, from minimum wage increases to defense of union rights to measures against the racist “war on drugs.” Minnesota voters narrowly rejected an attempt enshrine the harshest voter restriction laws in the country into their constitution. This shows a shift in demographics and a shift in attitudes among young people and workers. Combined with massive working-class anger, this is the basis for explosive movements in the next year.
Romney based his strategy largely on a solid white male vote (especially in the South) and hopes of a (rigged) low voter turnout. The Republican tactics ever since the 1960s have been to win elections by whipping up fear and hatred among white voters. This strategy will be more difficult to be implemented in national elections, a reality that will become even more clear with coming elections, as the rising generation reaches voting age. This election defeat will deepen this brewing crisis in the Republican Party, which will be forced to redefine its identity or face being reduced into a permanent minority party.
While there wasn't a big shift in the composition of Congress along party lines, the changes in the Republican legislators are worth noting. The “moderate” Maine Republicans and “centrist” Dick Lugar are out of office as are several of the most crazed Tea Partiers. Despite many Tea Party defeats, the over-all balance of power within the Republican congressional delegation has shifted even further right, setting the stage for more bipartisan gridlock.
Yet in Obama's victory speech, he repeated his stale pledge to “reach across the aisle” to the Republicans. In reality, Obama's bipartisanship is cynically designed to provide cover for his nakedly pro-corporate policies, which will soon be on display. Both parties are preparing historic cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other vital programs before the end of 2012. This could provoke radicalization, street protests and further struggles. In this context, there will be opportunities to build mass united working-class resistance, anti-corporate electoral campaigns, and a political party of the 99%.
Building the Socialist Movement in a New Environment
The historic result for Socialist Alternative candidate Kshama Sawant in Washington State shows the potential to build the movement against capitalism. Running openly as a Socialist, Sawant got more votes than any Republican has ever received against Frank Chopp in this powerful Democratic politician's 18-year career.
Running against budget cuts and corporate tax evasion, and calling for public ownership of Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon, Socialist Alternative's electoral challenge helped popularize the ideas of democratic socialism, winning over 11,906 working-class votes which is projected to grow to over 20,000 votes once counting is finished. This result is the biggest highlight for local independent left candidates in 2012 and needs to be built upon.
To take advantage of this situation, we need to boldly call for organized resistance against cuts involving hundreds of thousands of union members, Occupy activists, community campaigners and young people. These coalitions will need to prepare for strikes and mass direct action to defend living standards against the corporate assault. Out of these struggles, we can lay the basis for what is needed—a mass party of working people with a democratic socialist program.
In other news outside the two main establishment parties, we saw the threat of right-wing populism. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate, got over one million votes, three times the votes won by the most prominent left presidential candidate, Jill Stein from the Green Party. Like the Tea Party victories in 2010, this provides a glimpse of the potential for right-wing populist ideas to grow if the left and workers movement fail to build a mass political alternative to the hated corporate establishment.
These elections, taking place in the fifth year of a grinding economic crisis, showed the deepening polarization in U.S. society. At root the political and social polarization flows from the sharpening class divide, and the growing desperation of tens of millions of workers. Lacking a clear working-class political voice in the elections, the contests between corporate politicians gave distorted expression to the class anger. In this situation, right-wing ideas could gather support, and the last four years have seen the rapid growth of hate groups.
On the other side, where a bold lead from the left is given, the class polarization can also provoke people to consider far-reaching left-wing solutions. There is a widespread search for ideas that can offer a way out of the capitalist misery overseen by both parties of big business. As the Socialist Alternative campaign for Kshama Sawant in Seattle illustrates, U.S. society is becoming increasingly fertile for the rise of socialist ideas.
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For those who wonder how seriously the government plans to counter possible alien attacks, the ABC News report in the video below is a real eye opener. An entire chapter of a new firefighter emergency response manual covers what to do in the event of an attack by unidentified flying objects and aliens from another planet.
Taking the possibility of alien attack very seriously, chapter 13 of FEMA's "Fire Officer's Guide To Disaster Control," titled "Enemy Attack And UFO Potential," outlines what first responders may encounter in the event Earth's first contact is of the unfriendly kind.
Discussing radio meltdowns, overwhelming technological advantages, and the current state of planetary defense, this is not being treated as a joke any more.
The ABC News report below consults with firefighters in the field and an investigator with the Mutual UFO Network, an organization which documents the ever-increasing rise in sightings all around the world.
The thinking is, if it does happen, why not be prepared?
Makes perfect sense.
Here's the video:
What do you think?
Please leave a comment below.
Image courtesy of Blogger
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Federal court upholds Arizona voter ID requirement Jaime Jansen at 12:53 PM ET
[JURIST] The US District Court for the District of Arizona [official website] has rejected a bid by Latino and voter-advocacy groups to temporarily halt a requirement that voters show government-issued identification to prove that they are US citizens when they register to vote. The measure, which was approved in 2004 [JURIST report] in an effort to stop voter fraud, is part of Arizona's Proposition 200 [PDF text], which also denies some state public benefits to illegal immigrants and makes it a crime for public employees to fail to report undocumented immigrants who seek benefits outlined in the legislation. Judge Roslyn Silver sided with the government, writing that "determining whether an individual is a United States citizen is of paramount importance when determining his or her eligibility to vote." Several advocacy groups, including the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and Valle Del Sol [advocacy websites], had argued [press release] that requiring identification effectively creates a poll tax on Arizona residents that cannot afford proper identification.
Paper Chase is JURIST's real-time legal news service, powered by a team of 30 law student reporters and editors led by law professor Bernard Hibbitts at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. As an educational service, Paper Chase is dedicated to presenting important legal news and materials rapidly, objectively and intelligibly in an accessible, ad-free format.
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(Honeymoon Capital of the World)
This Canadian city is in the Municipality of Niagara on the Niagara Peninsula in the southeastern part of the Province of Ontario, Canada. The city overlooks the Horseshoe Falls and is across from the American Falls in the U.S.A. The crescent-shaped cataract is 54 meters (177ft) high and carries 9 times more water than its United States counterpart. Niagara Falls is a very popular tourist attraction, and it is a major source of electricity in Ontario.
The city is connected to the U.S. side of the Niagara River by several bridges: from the north is the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge, the Whirlpool or Lower Bridge, and the Rainbow Bridge.
Niagara Falls is about 12,000 years old, originally called Elgin it merged with Clifton in 1856 and was known by that name until 1881, when the named changed to Niagara Falls it was incorporated as a city in 1904. In 1963 the city’s boundaries greatly expanded to include Stamford Township and the town of Chippawa.
Niagara Falls covers a land area of 212 square km. (81.9 sq. miles), with a population of 82,184 in 2006.
Most people who visit Niagara Falls do so by car and the vehicle should be parked in the parking lot for the People Mover in Chippawa. In the summers at minimal cost, this narrated on-off bus system will take you along the Niagara River Parkway heading north toward the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake and Lake Ontario. This saves a lot in parking fees and allows even the driver of your car to see all the sights. There is usually a package deal offered for some of the attractions that comes along with the bus passes, this is your best value.
Not far from the Horseshoe Falls, you can visit the Niagara Parks Greenhouse, there is no entrance fee and is a nice walk from the falls.
The Maid of the Mist is a boat tour that takes you to the base of the falls. You truly feel the power of the falls and it’s not to be missed. After you see the falls from this perspective you can check out behind the falls in the Scenic Tunnels at Tablerock complex. If you have children you can also check out the new simulated movie “The Fury”. There is also a candy store in this complex called Lolly N Pops and watch them make candy.
There is a street of entertainment called Clifton Hill, filled with a variety of wax museums, ride simulators, and site seeing rides.
Some more of the free things along your People Mover Route are the Floral Clock, the trail that takes you to the Niagara Glen (this starts at the Feather and Glen gift shop) the Niagara Botanical Gardens School of Horticulture and a tour of Sir Adam Beck Generating Station.
At the Feather and the Glen stop along your route you can also take a cable car across the rapids called the Whirlpool Aero Car and The White Water Walk (an elevator takes you down the gorge where you can walk a pathway next to the rapids)
At the Niagara Botanical Gardens, you can find one of the largest butterfly conservatories in North America.
Before you end your trip to Niagara Falls, you have to see the falls at night. Every night the falls are illuminated in different colours.
Other activities to do in Niagara Falls are: Horse drawn carriage rides passed the falls area (this area is called Queen Victoria Park), the 2 casinos (Casino Niagara & Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort), Imax Theatre, Marineland, and you can get a great view of the falls from the top of the Skylon Tower, where you ride a yellow external elevator and watch your ascent to the top.
Another great thing to do for next to nothing is a ride up the incline railway, near Tablerock Restaurant(not during the winter months though), This gives you a great photo op of the falls.
For the adventurer in you, you can also get Helicopter Rides over the falls and Whitewater Jet Boats that travel in the whirlpool rapids.
Close to Niagara Falls towards Lake Ontario there is a quaint little town called Niagara-On-The-Lake. Niagara-on-The-Lake houses Shaw Festival Theatre and many quaint stores, very picturesque. High end meals and spas. There are also many wineries that offer tours and tastings. For the kids, you can visit Fort George.
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"The Story of Our Lives from Year to Year"--Shakespeare.
lthough All the Year Round (1859-93) -- whose full title was All the Year Round. A Weekly Journal. Conducted by Charles Dickens. With Which is Incorporated Household Words --in many respects continued where Household Words (1850-59) left off, its emphasis on serial fiction by leading authors was a pronounced departure. So much about it must have seemed familiar to the subscribers of the earlier journal: the bannerhead and title drawn from Shakespeare (specifically, the subtitle paraphrases Othello, Act One, Scene Three, Lines 128-29); its 24-page, double-columned format; its tuppenny price and lack of illustration; and even the periodical's Wellington Street North address (although the offices were now at No. 26 rather than at No. 16).
The extra Christmas issue of All the Year Round (1859), which opened with Dickens's The Haunted House.
Click on image for larger picture.The "property" whose value Charles Dickens and his subeditor (now also his general manager) had so carefully safeguarded in the 1850s became even more valuable as the various charges on periodical publication (stamp duty, paper, and even advertising taxes) were reduced or abolished. But competition for the new, unillustrated weekly proved fierce: 114 new magazines (many of them paying their contributors better) appeared in the same year as All the Year Round, and in the next few years a number of high-quality illustrated literary monthlies such as the Cornhill Magazine (founded in 1860). Dickens took the helm financially after winning his freedom in the court of Chancery from Bradbury and Evans, the publishers of Household Words: henceforth, he and W. H. Wills (owning seventy-five per cent and twenty-five per cent of the venture respectively) would cover all expenses (including the printing costs charged by Chapman and Hall) in order to reap the maximum profit, which, with a circulation running as high as 300,000 for the Extra Christmas Numbers (1860-67) and averaging 100,000 the rest of the year, were immense (£2,750 per annum) compared to those of Household Words, which had enjoyed a normal weekly circulation of only 38,500.
Instalments of serial novels occupied the space of two or three self-contained articles or essays, with the result that the average number of All the Year Round offered fewer items (five to seven) than a typical number of Household Words (eight to ten), particularly when the former contained two serials running concurrently. In addition, there was a marked increase of emphasis on foreign affairs in All the Year Round, partly due to Dickens's desire to support the cause of Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-72) and Joseph Mazzini (1805-72) in the wars of Italian unification. Over a representative sample of seven volumes of each periodical, nearly 11 per cent of the non-fiction articles in All the Year Round dealt with some aspect of international affairs or cultures [discounting the American Civil War, which Dickens instructed his staff to avoid unless they had specifically cleared a topic with him first ], as opposed to 4 per cent in Household Words. In most other popular subject areas -- education, industry, emigration or science, for example -- the trend is reversed. [Drew 10]
First page (left) and contents page (right) All the Year Round for April 30, 1859, which opened with Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. Click on image for larger picture.
Even Dickens's most admiring readers, however, must have detected the differences, for whereas pride of place had usually been accorded to articles of social import in the former journal, in All the Year Round the opening page always contained one of the two serial instalments of novels then running, the first such novel being Dickens's own A Tale of Two Cities (30 April 1859), specifically designed to give initial sales a boost. In fact, with Wills's astute advertising campaign through W. H. Smith outlets throughout the United Kingdom, distributing 300,000 handbills and "double demy" posters, the opening number sold 125,000 copies. And, whereas Dickens had serialized only one novel in his nine years as editor of Household Words (Hard Times, 1 April through 12 August 1854), within the first twenty-seven months of publication of All the Year Round he serialised two (the other being Great Expectations, 1 December 1860 through 3 August 1861), as well Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (26 November 1859 through 25 August 1860). On the first of December in 1860, for example, the two current serials and the essay "Inconveniences of Being a Cornish Man" filled thirty of the issue's forty-eight columns, leaving only eighteen columns for the remaining four items. Sometimes novel instalments made up as much as two-thirds of a number, leaving little room for the kinds of social and political commentary that had rendered Dickens such a powerful force on the British scene in the halcyon days of Household Words. According to Edgar Rosenberg,
Dickens himself contributed barely one third of the essays he had contributed to Household Words, largely because he spent more and more time on the road and his public readings brought him into much closer contact -- so essential to him -- with his public than his columns did. [Rosenberg 393]Whereas Household Words had primarily been a vehicle for journalists, All the Year Round proved a vehicle for novelists: apart from Dickens and Wilkie Collins, within its pages there appeared the works of numerous second-rate and a few first-rate novelists, including Charles Lever, Charles Reade, Sir Edward G. D. Bulwer-Lytton, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Henry Spicer, Rosa Mulholland, Amelia Edwards, Frances T. Trollope, Edmund Yates, Augustus Sala, and Percy Fitzgerald. In addition to A Tale of Two Cities (30 April through 26 November 1859), Great Expectations, and The Woman in White, novels that first appeared as All the Year Round serialisations include Collins's No Name (15 March 1862 through 17 January 1863) and The Moonstone (4 January through 8 August 1868), Lever's A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance (18 August 1860 through 23 March 1861), Bulwer-Lytton's A Strange Story (10 August 1861 through 8 March 1862), Gaskell's The Grey Woman (January 1861), Reade's Very Hard Cash (28 March through 26 December 1863; retitled Hard Cash for volume publication), Sala's Quite Alone (February through November 1864), Anthony Trollope's Is He Popenjoy? (13 October through 13 July 1878) and The Duke's Children (4 October 1879 through 24 July 1880).
Although he continued to insist that all contributors be paid at least the minimum rate, Dickens unfortunately played favourites in remunerating novelists, giving Elizabeth Gaskell only £400 for an eight-month serial, for instance, but his friend Bulwer £1500 for a work (in the judgment of posterity) of lesser quality, and giving Collins for what proved a best-seller (The Moonstone) exactly what he had given Lever for what had been a disaster (A Day's Ride): £750. Meantime, rival publishers such as Smith, Elder (responsible for the Cornhill) were offering much more, up to £26 14s 4d per page for a top-notch writer's work, such as Romola by George Eliot.
Of the twenty-seven novels to appear in All the Year Round in the eleven years Dickens lived to edit it, six have so far escaped being bitten to death by the tooth of time: the two novels by Dickens, the three Collins contributed . . . and (arguably) Charles Reade's Hard Cash. A few more are apt to sneak their way into Companions to English Literature because the authors are still known to a handful of specialists or amateur buffs, even where the books have been long out of print: Charles Lever's A Day's Ride, Bulwer-Lytton's A Strange Story, and an interesting minor work of Mrs. Gaskell's, A Dark Night's Work. (Mrs. Gaskell would have been glad to call the novel A Night's Work, but Dickens persuaded her that the insertion of the modifier would act as a potent aphrodisiac.) [Rosenberg 394]
Probably because Dickens continued to micromanage the editorial department, scrupulously revising copy, his own contributions fell off considerably after 1863, by which time he had already contributed seventy per cent of the material published over his eleven-year reign, including the first two series of The Uncommercial Traveller (January 1860 through October 1863) and five of the eight "framed-tale," multi-authored Christmas Stories (The Haunted House, 1859; the Dickens-Collins collaboration A Message from the Sea, 1860; Tom Tiddler's Ground, 1861; Somebody's Luggage, 1862; Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings, 1863; Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy, 1864; Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions, 1865; Mugby Junction, 1866, which includes a masterpiece of short fiction, "The Haunted Signalman," and the last of the series, No Thoroughfare with Wilkie Collins in 1867).
Even though All the Year Round continued to pay prose writers at the Household Words rate of a guinea per page, competitors wooed novelists away from the grasp of the Dickenses (Charles Dickens, Jr., assuming the editor's mantle as well as the business manager's upon his father's death in 1870):
He inherited his father's 75 per-cent stake in the business, and in January 1871 bought out Wills's 25 per-cent share, following the latter's understandable objection to Charley's decision to award himself both the editor's and sub-editor's salary. The journal continued under Charles Dickens Jr.'s editorship until 1888, and finally ceased publication in 1893. [Drew 12]
In 1973 the tireless Ann Lohrli provided scholars with a complete key to who wrote what and for how much in Household Words thanks to her scrupulous analysis of the office account book maintained by Wills. Unfortunately, the account book for All the Year Round has not survived. As John Drew explains,
An 'office set' of the journal, in which authors' names and other details were recorded, was available to editor B. W. Matz at the turn of the century, but has since been lost sight of; aside from this, only a highly incomplete and illegible file of correspondence, known as the 'AYR Letter Book' (profiled by Collins 1970), exists to assist researchers. [Drew 11]
However, Ella Ann Oppenlander in a work not easily procured, Dickens's "All the Year Round": Descriptive Index and Contributor List (1984), has attempted to provide something comparable to Lohrli's work on Household Words.
Some All the Year Round Authors
- Robert Buchanan
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
- Wilkie Collins
- Charles Dickens
- Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
- Charles Lever
- Charles Reade
- Anthony Trollope
- Frances Trollope
Bentley, Nicholas; Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1990.
Collins, Philip. "The AYR Letter Book." Victorian Periodicals Review, 10, 1970.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.
Drew, John. "All the Year Round" in the Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens, ed. Paul Schlicke. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1999. Pp. 8-12.
Fido, Martin. The World of Charles Dickens. Vancouver: Raincoast, 1997.
Rosenberg, Edgar. "Launching Great Expectations." Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Pp. 389-423.
Schlicke, Paul. Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1999.
Last modified 30 November 2004;
Thanks to Chris Hapka for correcting a mispelled name.
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Doctors. D-O-C-T-O-R-S. Doctors.
What do spelling-bee winners do when they grow up?
National Spelling Bee winner Snigdha Nandipati will likely have a nice career when she grows up
Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images.
Snigdha Nandipati won the 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday. The 14-year-old is the fifth consecutive Indian-American winner and wants to become a psychiatrist or a neurosurgeon. How do spelling bee champions fare later in life?
They’re well above average. None among the 88 winners of the Scripps competition are Nobel Prize winners or MacArthur geniuses, but spelling champions do have an impressive record. The last six to graduate from high school have attended college at Harvard, Cornell, MIT, Yale, Tufts, and Duke. They tend to collect graduate degrees and pick prestigious professions like doctor, engineer, or lawyer. If Nandipati becomes a psychiatrist or neurosurgeon, she’ll join a host of her peers who probe the human mind. Nupur Lala, who won the 1999 spelling bee and was featured in the film documentary Spellbound, went on to study cognitive science and language processing. 1978 champion Peg McCarthy is a clinical psychologist, and Irving Belz, who won in 1951, is a psychiatrist.
Several winners have gone on to careers in writing and journalism, perhaps because local newspapers like to sponsor participants and then offer them internships after they win. The best-known spelling-bee journalist was Susan Yoachum, who won the competition in 1969. She was part of the San Jose Mercury News team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 1989 Bay Area earthquake, and then covered politics at the San Francisco Chronicle for eight years before dying of breast cancer in 1998.
Some winners develop an obsession with conquering games of wit. Amanda Goad followed her 1992 spelling bee win with a successful run on Teen Jeopardy! in 1996. Ned Andrews ('94) was the longest-running contestant on the NBC quiz show 1 vs. 100. Pratyush Buddiga, who won in 2002, is currently playing on the international poker circuit. Others hang around the spelling bee for decades. The current director of the competition, Paige Pipkin Kimble, was the 1981 champion. Jacques Bailly ('80) and Blake Giddens ('83) both work for the bee as pronouncers. A couple of winners parleyed their F-I-F-T-E-E-N minutes of fame into writing training books for aspiring champions: A Champion's Guide to Success in Spelling Bees and How to Spell Like a Champ.
Rebecca Sealfon, who famously shouted the spelling of euonym to win the 1997 championship, is now a computer scientist and entrepreneur, with a business that matches professors with students who are interested in their research. (She still has a unique speaking style.) Daniel Greenblatt ('84) does freelance voice-acting in commercials and video games. Gamers who own a copy of Big Game Hunter 2012 can hear Greenblatt pronounce phrases such as “Top of the food chain, baby!” and “Top-notch shooting!”
Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.
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Those who take part in Chandler Public Library summer-reading programs can win such prizes as Arizona Diamondbacks tickets, food and membership at the Desert Botanical Garden and Phoenix Art Museum.
All four branches of the library — Basha, Downtown, Hamilton and Sunset — have summer-reading programs open to readers of all ages. the programs are designed to help school-age children maintain their reading skills during the summer break and provide entertainment for adults in addition to modeling good learning habits for children.
Read, Play, Win! is the program for children co-sponsored by the Arizona Diamondbacks and The Arizona Republic. Children earn prizes by reading 50 pages or, for preschoolers, listening to a book being read for 15 minutes. all who enroll will receive a voucher for a ticket to a Diamondbacks baseball game.
“We will be giving out the vouchers for the Diamondbacks game when the children sign up for the program, rather than at the end,” librarian Mary Sagar said. “It’s an incentive for people to participate in the program, but it’s just one of the prizes they can earn along the way, so we decided to do it at the beginning.”
To enroll in Read, Play, Win! visit any library branch or summer readingaz.org.
Food is a big incentive in the teen reading program. all kids ages 12-18 who finish earn vouchers for burritos and will be entered in drawings for prizes, such as movie passes, gift cards and Kindle fire tablet computers.
To take part in the teen program pick up a “Cultivate your Mind” reading log at any Chandler library.
“Reading Never Gets Old, Celebrate Arizona” is the adult summer program.
Those who complete five books before July 28 will be entered in a drawing for an annual membership to the Phoenix Art Museum or the Desert Botanical Garden.
“We always encourage people to come into the library,” Sagar said. “There are lots of interesting programs, not just the reading programs. there is lots of fun stuff for all ages.”
Information on Chandler libraries: 480-782-2800, chandlerlibrary.org.
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Understanding China's climate change mitigation policy development: Structures, processes and outcomes
Climate change is one of the most important and urgent issues of our time. Since 2006, China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter. China’s role in an international climate change solution has gained increased attention. Although much literature has addressed the functioning, performance, and implications of existing climate change mitigation policies and actions in China, there is insufficient literature that illuminates how the national climate change mitigation policies have been formulated and shaped. This research utilizes the policy network approach to explore China’s climate change mitigation policy making by examining how a variety of government, business, and civil society actors have formed networks to address environmental contexts and influence the policy outcomes and changes. ^ The study is qualitative in nature. Three cases are selected to illustrate structural and interactive features of the specific policy network settings in shaping different policy arrangements and influencing the outcomes in the Chinese context. The three cases include the regulatory evolution of China’s climate change policy making; the country’s involvement in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) activity, and China’s exploration of voluntary agreement through adopting the Top-1000 Industrial Energy Conservation Program. The historical analysis of the policy process uses both primary data from interviews and fieldwork, and secondary data from relevant literature. ^ The study finds that the Chinese central government dominates domestic climate change policy making; however, expanded action networks that involve actors at all levels have emerged in correspondence to diverse climate mitigation policy arrangements. The improved openness and accessibility of climate change policy network have contributed to its proactive engagement in promoting mitigation outcomes. ^ In conclusion, the research suggests that the policy network approach provides a useful tool for studying China’s climate change policy making process. The involvement of various types of state and non-state actors has shaped new relations and affected the policy outcomes and changes. In addition, through the cross-case analysis, the study challenges the “fragmented authoritarianism” model and argues that this once-influential model is not appropriate in explaining new development and changes of policy making processes in contemporary China.^
Climate Change|Political Science, Public Administration
"Understanding China's climate change mitigation policy development: Structures, processes and outcomes"
(January 1, 2011).
ProQuest ETD Collection for FIU.
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June 20, 2009 - June 26, 2009
The Benedum Center
“Two thirds rhythm and one third soul.” That’s how Fat Waller defined the uniquely American form of popular music and dance known as “swing.” Requiring only joyful enthusiasm and a ready partner, swing exploded out of pre-war Harlem’s hotbed of youth culture and swept the world. It shattered ethnic and cultural barriers, generating specialty styles such as Jive, Swing, Lindy Hop, West Coast Swing and Hip-Hop Swing. Swing! celebrates this remarkable diversity to the beat of the most exhilarating songs of the period. But as this enthralling song-and-dance show makes abundantly clear, swing was never a time or place—it has always been a state of mind!
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Update: It looks like the votes are clearly in favor of Lilypond. While Sibelius and Finale appear to be the "canonical" solutions, and MuseScore has a nice showing (albeit using a "development" version).
I'd like to produce my own edition of Paganini's Caprice No. 6, with guitar fingerings and ossias. I've tried muscript, and while it generally looks good, it can't handle the complex beaming. I've tried homebrewing my own typesetting system, but that's just going to take forever. So what can I use to reproduce this piece with 64-th note dodecatuplets and sixteenth-note tremolos?
Image borrowed from from http://www.everynote.com/violin.show/3828.music
This is the output I've been able to get with my homebrewed code:
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The Story: Some technologies always seem to be “just around the corner.” Seven years ago, there was a big flurry of interest in end-to-end Ethernet (aka metro Ethernet) as a brace of new ventures promised to cut through the complexities of wide area networking.
[ Slideshow: 2007's top underreported tech stories ]
They didn’t deliver. One big reason: building a new network that will reach into offices and homes costs beaucoup bucks. As IDC analyst Boyd Chastant puts it, “Digging a hole in the ground never gets cheaper.”
Laying fiber is still expensive, but now telcos — including AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest — plus cable companies such as Optimum LightPath, Cox, and Time Warner that already have fiber in the ground are offering Ethernet services. LightPath, for example, boasts of 2,500 miles of fiber in the ground and says it has lit more than 2,000 buildings in its service area in the northeast.
End-to-end Ethernet offers a very affordable way to connect LANs to a wide area network. After all, every router has an Ethernet interface, you don’t need much special hardware, and the technology is very familiar. So most IT staffers will have little trouble adapting, says Burton Group analyst Jeff Young. That is, if you can get it: Pricing depends on your need for speed, and not all of the providers offer it throughout their service areas.
Raw bandwidth isn’t Ethernet’s big advantage. It’s not necessarily much faster than private lines. However, says Chastant, it is more scalable. Conventional private-line services offer speeds near the bottom (around 10Mbps) and the near top (around 10Gbps), but not much in the middle. End-to-end Ethernet solves that. And it can be tied to Internet access, bumping up access speeds appreciably.
Availability is on the upswing too, says Boyd. In the past, carriers worried that end-to-end Ethernet service would cannibalize other data services. But now that demand has reached critical mass, that concern appears to have faded. Meanwhile, providers and equipment manufacturers are ironing out incompatibles and clarifying service definitions in the Metro Ethernet Forum, Chastant says.
It looks like we’ve turned the corner and end-to-end Ethernet is right in front of us.
The Bottom Line: If your carrier doesn’t provide end-to-end Ethernet, another provider likely does. It’s worth the trouble to look: End-to-end Ethernet will give you the performance you need and because it’s a familiar technology you won’t have to retrain or replace your IT staff.
Complete list of 2007 underreported stories:
1. Java is becoming the new Cobol
2. Sun Microsystems is back in the game
3. Hackers take aim at Mac OS X
4. There are some threats you can worry less about
5. Companies may have found a way around H-1B visa limits
6. Open source’s new commercial strategy
7. End-to-end Ethernet finally arrives
8. Blade servers arrive for the masses
9. BI is dead; long live BI
10. Balance of power shifts to software buyers
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NEW YORK — A staff writer for The New Yorker has resigned and his best-selling book has been halted after he acknowledged inventing quotes by Bob Dylan.
Jonah Lehrer released a statement Monday through his publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, saying that some Dylan quotes appearing in "Imagine: How Creativity Works" did "not exist." Others were "unintentional misquotations, or represented improper combinations of previously existing quotes."
Lehrer said he acknowledged his actions after being contacted by Michael Moynihan of the online publication Tablet Magazine, which earlier Monday released an in-depth story on the Dylan passages in "Imagine"
"I told Mr. Moynihan that they (the quotes in question) were from archival interview footage provided to me by Dylan's representatives. This was a lie spoken in a moment of panic. When Mr. Moynihan followed up, I continued to lie, and say things I should not have said," Lehrer wrote in his statement.
"The lies are over now. I understand the gravity of my position. I want to apologize to everyone I have let down, especially my editors and readers."
Houghton Mifflin said in a statement that Lehrer had committed a "serious misuse." Listings for the e-book edition of "Imagine" will be removed and shipments of the physical book have been stopped. "Imagine," published in March, has sold more than 200,000 copies, according to Houghton Mifflin. It has spent 16 weeks on The New York Times' hardcover nonfiction bestseller list and ranked No. 105 on Amazon.com as of midday Monday. Amazon had cited the book as among the best March releases.
A spokesman for Dylan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Over the past decade, numerous books have been pulled, whether because of lifting material from other sources (Q.R. Markham's "Assassin of Secrets") or fabricating events (James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces"). Canceled books inevitably lead to calls for publishers to fact check releases. But publishers say the time and expense of reviewing thousands of texts, on a vast range of subjects, makes the process impractical.
"Publishing books is fundamentally different from publishing a newspaper or magazine," Bruce Nichols, Houghton Mifflin's senior vice president and publisher of adult trade books, said in a statement. "We rely on the authors' contractual warranties that the work is original and, for non-fiction, accurate.
"Nonetheless we consider accuracy and originality to be essential standards, and whenever any of our authors transgresses these standards we take it very seriously."
The 31-year-old Lehrer had been a rising star at The New Yorker, which is famous for its thorough fact checking. But he was already in trouble with the magazine after he acknowledged last month that he had recycled passages he had written for previous publications. Some recycled passages also appeared in "Imagine," the latest of three books by Lehrer, who is known for his explorations of science and literature and how the mind works.
"This is a terrifically sad situation, but, in the end, what is most important is the integrity of what we publish and what we stand for," said New Yorker Editor David Remnick.
Among Lehrer's inventions was a quote that first appeared in the famous documentary from the mid-1960s, "Don't Look Back," in which Dylan tells a reporter about his songs that "I just write them. There's no great message." In "Imagine," Lehrer adds a third sentence — "Stop asking me to explain" — that does not appear in the film.
According to Tablet, Lehrer also invented quotes on how Dylan wrote "Like a Rolling Stone" and, when confronted about them, alleged that he had been granted access to an uncut version of "No Direction Home," a Dylan documentary made by Martin Scorsese. Lehrer now says he never saw such footage.
Dylan himself has been challenged about his use of material. His album "Modern Times" included lines lifted from blues songs and from the Civil War poet Henry Timrod. An exhibit of paintings by the rock star turned out to contain images from other sources.
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Hi Guys, I'm new to this forum , and Really need some help
I'm working under BlueJ as this is how the university is teaching us
I have a program that when you type "Circle" to the Console , the Circle will appear (See Below)
This is done because I have a method that makes the circle visible and a execute to call it
Now I want to be able to use a HashMap (as required for the task) and be able to add more Options such as "move.Left" or "move.Right" when I type Circle move left or Circle move right into the console
I tried so many things!
Really need advice.
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19/09/2009 - MRSA Action UK: National Quality Board sub-group meeting to discuss the development of the new MRSA objective
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
National Quality Board sub-group
Meeting to discuss the development of the new MRSA objective
The Department of Health is developing a new goal for reductions in MRSA bacteraemia. This is set out in the NHS Operating Framework for 2009/10, following the achievement of the 50% national target reduction. As High Quality Care for All set out, once national targets are achieved they will become national minimum standards for all NHS organisations and a national standard for all patients. The stakeholder engagement exercise to consult on the new objective ended on the 24th July.
Derek Butler will attend the National Quality Board sub-group to evaluate the issues raised in responses from healthcare professionals. The sub-group are keen to understand the issues involved and make the right choice to drive improvement in MRSA without de-motivating staff. The sub-group will make recommendations to the National Quality Board following the evaluation of the stakeholder responses.
We believe the MRSA Objective should be zero tolerance to avoidable infections; the targets for improvement therefore need to be local and deliverable. To read our response to the National Quality Board click here.
Disclaimer: Press releases published on this page are from key opinion formers
who promote their organisation's activities by subscribing to a campaign site within
politics.co.uk. politics.co.uk does not endorse, edit, or attempt to balance the
opinions expressed on this page. The content of press releases are wholly the responsibility
of the originating company or organisation.
A British researcher has developed a new test that should help doctors identify the presence of the MRSA "superbug" more quickly.
According to new official figures the rates of the antibiotic-resistant MRSA infection in England are at their lowest level since mandatory records began in 2001.
Deaths resulting from the MRSA superbug have doubled over the past four years, new figures have revealed.
Health Secretary John Reid has pledged to halve MRSA bloodstream infections by 2008.
The Conservative Party leader has claimed that Government policies have actually made the problems of MRSA in the UK worse.
Matrons would be put in charge of hospital cleanliness as part of a new £52 million Conservative initiative to help combat MRSA.
Michael Howard has said that the Conservatives would introduce a state-of-the-art testing system to quickly identify patients infected with MRSA is they win the general election.
The Conservative's NHS policies would tackle the problem of the superbug MRSA, according to its party's leader.
The Conservatives have criticised the Government's policies on health for the recent rise in MRSA cases in hospitals.
Cases of the "superbug" in under-15s rose from just 4 in 1990 to 77 in 2001.
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This weekend was “Manhattanhenge,” a term popularized by Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium, to describe the solar event where the sunset is lined up with the east-west streets on Manhattan’s grid.
Mr. Tyson argues that this is perhaps a unique urban phenomenon in the world, if not the universe.
The biannual event has become an urban photographer’s dream, allowing towering edifices to bask in a warm soft glow in the last 15 minutes of daylight as the sun sets right down the middle of the city’s streets.
The best views, predictably, are the major cross streets in Manhattan: 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 57th, among others. Crowds, armed with cameras, gather on the eastern avenues in Manhattan — First and Third are particularly popular. This year, security surrounding the Obamas’ date night on Saturday briefly disrupted the photographers. The pictures above were all taken this weekend.
Manhattan’s grid, adopted by the city in 1811, is set 28.9 degrees east from due north. If it had been aligned due north, the effect would be seen on the spring and autumn equinoxes, when the sun sets on the east-west line. Instead, because of Manhattan’s tilt, those now take place about three weeks before and about three weeks after June 21, the summer solstice, the official beginning of summer.
On Saturday, May 30, around 8:17 p.m, the sun was half above the horizon, half below. At the same time on Sunday, May 31, the full sun was visible just above the horizon.
Lest you missed this one, never fear. The next one is just weeks away — on July 11 and 12.
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Useful links for water procurement and treatment including rainwater harvesting, use of greywater, water filters, how to find water, and more…
Note: Freely suggest your own links! Scroll down to the bottom of this page for the link suggestion form.
DISCLAIMER: Some of this information can potentially be dangerous, even deadly… attempt at your own risk! As such, you should always seek appropriate medical/legal/professional/expert advice whenever possible. Therefore, I accept NO liability whatsoever for your use or misuse of this information.
Rainwater Harvesting – Read about how a couple created a system to collect rainwater from their roof. To aid with your preps, consider using this Water Conservation Calculator to get a quick idea of how much water you can expect to collect annually; to use it you need to know the footprint of your rooftop (in square feet) and annual rainfall in your area.
Texas Manual on Rainwater Harvesting [PDF File] – A rather large discussion on collecting rainwater. Some information is provided for household use as well an up-scaling the idea.
How to Drill a Well – Information and equipments needed to drill a well in your own backyard! This can be a good backup (or even primary) solution to a rainwater catchement. Here is more information on drilling your own well for the real DIY individuals. This Flojack hand well pump might come in handy during an emergency for those with a well system.
Zen Water Purification, Filtration, and Treatment – A VERY complete resource discussing the types of water contamination as well as the MANY methods to treat water for consumption. I highly recommend you spend some time reading this page.
Find Water and Make it Safe to Drink - A good resource about the many ways to find and trap water during an emergency as well as various methods to clean it. Also discusses the few available water filters appropriate for long term use.
Water Filtration Facts (Part 1 of 2) and Understanding the Nines – Two very useful articles discussing the science behind water filtraiton, what the numbers mean, and why it may be critical to your well-being.
Water Storage Series FAQ – Links to several well written posts regarding a wide range of water-related topics, including storage options (containers, barrels, towers), all about rotation, an assortment of treatment options, and plenty more. These posts are well worth the read.
6 Dangerous Myths About Water – A brief article regarding six potentially dangerous myths your should understand.
US Drought Monitor – An easy to read color chart of the USA that indicates how dry a geographic region may be. This can prove useful for gardening and water procurement concerns.
Waterborne Illness Prevention Factsheet [PDF File] – A concise document briefly detailing the most common waterborne illnesses. Includes a table summarizing the diseases including most likely sources and symptoms.
Using Greywater- Interesting information about the use of greywater including common mistakes people make, FAQ, and examples.
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Many people classify themselves as cooks or bakers. Some of us enjoy taking on both arts, however, today, I’d like to look at the necessary utensils and tools a successful cook’s kitchen should contain. Below are a list of what works for me. Feel free to add on. I’d love to hear about what works for you.
1. Good quality cookware such as All-Clad, Le Creuset and Cuisinart.
Investing in the tools you use to cook will help cook foods more evenly and in this case, speed up the cleaning process. (small & medium saucepans, a large soup pot/Dutch oven, a small and large skillet with a lid and a tall pot for boiling pasta water)
2. Sharp quality knives
Barefoot Contessa uses WÜSTHOF knives. And always keep in mind that sharp knives are safe knives. Amazingly enough, a dull knife can be more dangerous. I like to use Smith’s knife sharpeners – inexpensive, yet effective.
3. The Less Gadgets, the Better
For cooking purposes (for baking I would use a few other gadgets), a food processor - a time saver, shortening lengthy prep time into seconds, a micro plane or box grater, a simple handheld lemon press, a blender.
4. Necessary Tools Within Reach
Rubber spatulas (heat-proof), measuring cups – liquid & dry ingredients, measuring spoons, tongs with rubber bottoms, a whisk, a sifter, a fine-mesh strainer, kitchen shears, wooden spoons, a colander, a large pasta fork/tong, a basting brush, a mini whisk
5. A Beautiful Set of Ceramic Mixing Bowls
6. A Stack of Half Sheet Pans
7. Aluminum Foil
To cover the meat and fish that come out of the oven or off the grill, allowing it to rest as to retain the juices and thus, the flavor.
An oven thermometer to make sure your oven really is at the correct temperature (makes an amazing difference) and an instant thermometer to test meats.
Now to complete your kitchen supply list, click here to view the list of supplies for a baker’s kitchen.
Some of my favorite recipes to cook:
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NEWTON, JAMES OSCAR
NEWTON, JAMES OSCAR (1875–1942). James Oscar Newton, Texas adjutant general, was born near Milano in Milam County, Texas, on October 16, 1875, the oldest of fourteen children of James Benjamin and Ophelia Jane (Evard) Newton. He attended public school at Milano and the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University). He became a second lieutenant in Company I, Third Texas Infantry, in 1893 and advanced through the ranks of the state militia to lieutenant colonel of the Second Infantry in 1903. He served as lieutenant colonel until January 23, 1907, when he was appointed Texas adjutant general with the rank of brigadier general. He organized the Tom Campbell Rifles of Milano and during his term as adjutant established rifle ranges over the state and had Texas National Guard teams compete in the national rifle matches. He retired from office on December 15, 1910.
Newton married Annie Rumpel of Austin in 1908. They had three sons. Newton taught school, was assistant postal clerk of the Twenty-sixth Texas Legislature, was deputy tax collector of Milam County, and was a merchant at Milano. He was also director of banks at Milano, Gause, Thorndale, and Rockdale and with his sons was owner of the firm of Scarborough and Hicks at Rockdale. He died at Rockdale on January 31, 1942.
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article."NEWTON, JAMES OSCAR," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fne24), accessed May 26, 2013. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
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Monday, October 26, 2009
The Eternal Student
ROBERTA: I have to admit I'm a writing book junkie. I have dozens of them and I'm always looking for tips that will catch my imagination and improve my writing. Just before the mystery convention Bouchercon began, I was fortunate to attend Donald Maass's seminar on writing the breakout novel, sponsored by Sisters in Crime. Who wouldn't want to write the breakout novel, if you're going to all the trouble of writing one anyway? I was quite relieved when he talked mostly about developing complicated characters, rather than outlandish plots. Now I'm going through my novel draft, looking for ways to make the readers care more about my protagonist, to make her human, to make her multidimensional, to bring forth more drama, more conflict, more contradictions. A lot of what he discussed can be found in his excellent new book, THE FIRE IN FICTION. Though sometimes it takes hearing the ideas out loud for them to sink in. Have you heard any tips on writing lately that have caught your imagination and maybe made a difference in what you're writing? Or maybe an oldie but goodie that you tend to fall back on?
HALLIE: When I was at Bouchercon I was on a panel with James Scott Bell who wrote the excellent book, PLOT AND STRUCTURE. He talked about the "doorways of no return." At the end of Act 1 of a novel, for instance, there's a point when the protagonist must have no alternative but to move forward (and do something that character is profoundly uncomfortable doing) -- and once through cannot turn back. Moving through that doorway of no return propels the character into Act 2. It's a much more useful notion than "plot twist."
JAN: I took an online class in screenwritng last fall that was amazingly helpful. I needed it to remind myself how to write a screenplay, but it's also a way to look at novel writing from the point of pure structure. Along the novel writing way, I've developed a system I use for revision -- after the first draft. I was thrilled to find that it worked equally well in revising a screenplay.
On the other hand, I just wrote an essay for an essay collection thats coming out on how crazy parents make themselves over college admissions. And I can tell you, after all these years, an essay is hard every time.
HANK: Writing tips. Yeah. Why are they so provocative? It always seems like there's the perfect one, just the one you need, just around the corner. I'm so bummed I didn't get to hear Donald Maass, and Hallie's class was wonderful and inspirational, as usual. I'm starting a new project and of course, now in my head I'm going through all the "tips" I've ever heard.
And I guess the one I'm stickin' with is: Sit down at the desk. Write the book.
RO: I like Hank's tip. I've taken two classes that I thought were enormously helpful - Hallie's workshop at Crimebake three years ago, and Nancy Pickard's class for SINCNew England a couple of years back.
I bought a lot of books when I first started writing and I leaf through them every time I start a new book. Time to start leafing again.
ROBERTA: Jan, do spill the name of your screenwriter teacher when you get a chance. And please chime in with your favorite writing tips. And come back often this week--tomorrow we'll feature suspense writer Libby Hellmann, then James Benn on Wednesday, and on Friday--stay tuned for the Hallopolooza!
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Virgo wrote:I disagree.
I know you disagree. We've been down this road at least once before.
Virgo wrote:What the "Theravada" school is is precisely defined by it's commentarial literature.
The Theravāda is a diverse living tradition, with far more variations than you are willing to accept. The only common ground is the Tipiṭaka. By your criteria, most of the learned Theravāda monks who I've listened to and read would not be "Theravāda." It should be quite obvious that I consider your criteria too limited to be taken seriously (and I think that monks as diverse as Ven. Bodhi, Ven. Ñāṇananda, Ven. Sumedho, & Ven. Ṭhānissaro would agree with me).
Virgo wrote:Following your line of logic, Mahayana schools cannot be understood or defined by their specific Commentaries either. So your thinking just doesn't add up.
Most of the Mahāyāna schools are every bit as diverse as the living Theravāda tradition.
Jnana wrote:aren't you the fellow who insists that a Theravādin cannot be a mahāyānika, i.e. cannot accept, study, or practice in accord with any bodhisattvapiṭaka sūtras?
Yes (that would put then outside of the realm of how things are explained in the Theravada Abhidhamma and commentaries to the three baskets).
By your criteria no Sarvāstivādin (or Mūlasarvāstivādin) would be able to be a mahāyānika either.
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Depleted uranium gets more and more hazardous for at least 1 million years. In contrast, most of the Class A waste at the Utah site is supposed to pose virtually no radiation risk after 100 years………..
Public largely critical of depleted uranium disposal - State has already borne a heavy burden from the nuclear industry, one Utahn says. By Judy FahysThe Salt Lake Tribune: 01/26/2010 Utah’s depleted uranium regulations should ensure no harm will come to the public or the environment as long as the waste remains dangerous — and that, said some Utahns on Tuesday, means the radioactive waste does not belong in a shallow disposal site in western Utah. (more…)
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Posture Help in Monmouth County New Jersey
Ideal Spine Model
Doctor D.D. Palmer founded chiropractic in 1895 after adjusting a janitor whose hearing was immediately restored. Dr. Palmer found what he called a “vertebrae racked from its normal position.” He described this misalignment as a Subluxation.
A Subluxation is a misalignment of the spine. The posture is the window to the spine. If one’s posture is distorted, then the spine is out of alignment. If the spine is out of alignment then the body is in a state of stress, it will wear down. Each individual wears down differently based on a combination of genetics, history of trauma, spinal distortion, and many other factors. About 85% of all disease is caused by stress. Mechanical stress from postural and spinal distortion is one major component of stress.
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The use of lasers in periodontal therapy has been widely publicized as an effective means of treating periodontal disease. According to a review of the research by the American Academy of Periodontology, there is insufficient research to support claims of successful treatment. It appears that the research does support that, in some cases laser therapy is as effective as scaling and root planing. Visit the American Academy of Periodontology's web site, perio.org and type in “laser” in the search box for up to date information on periodontal laser therapy.
The following papers reflect the findings and opinions of The American Dental Association and The American Academy of Periodontology regarding the use of lasers in treating periodontal disease.
You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view these papers. Please download the free Acrobat Reader from Adobe's web site if it is not already installed on your system.
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FRANKFORT, Ky. -- Marshall County has been added to counties in Kentucky eligible for assistance provided to cities, counties and certain private non-profit agencies by the U. S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). That boosts the number to 28 Kentucky counties eligible for Public Assistance funds.
Eligibility for agencies in Lyon County was expanded so both Marshall and Lyon counties have 30 days to submit Requests for Public Assistance (RPA). Agencies in both counties may apply for funds needed to offset costs of snow removal from the severe storm that struck Kentucky in December. The deadline to submit RPAs in those two counties is April 5, 2005.
Thursday, March 10, 2005, is the filing deadline for RPAs in the original 27 counties included in the Presidential declaration for a major disaster in Kentucky. The deadline had earlier been announced as today, March 8, 2005, disaster officials said.
The disaster recovery operation is being managed by FEMA and the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s Division of Emergency Management.
Eligible governments and nonprofit agencies can get federal reimbursement for up to 75 percent of approved costs involving emergency work and restoration of damaged facilities resulting from that storm. Additional state disaster funds to help with eligible costs also are available.
The 28 designated counties now are: Ballard, Bracken, Breckinridge, Caldwell, Carlisle, Crittenden, Franklin, Fulton, Grant, Grayson, Hancock, Harrison, Hart, Hickman, Hopkins, Larue, Livingston, Lyon, Marshall, McLean, Muhlenberg, Nelson, Owen, Pendleton, Robertson, Shelby, Union and Webster.
Now 16 counties are eligible for help with approved costs associated with emergency protective measures, including costs of equipment, contracts and personnel overtime for counties that dealt with snow removal over the 48-hour period of the storm. Related emergency protective measures such as sanding and salting also may be eligible for reimbursement.
The 16 counties include Ballard, Breckinridge, Caldwell, Carlisle, Crittenden, Fulton, Hancock, Hickman, Hopkins, Livingston, Lyon, Marshall, McLean, Muhlenberg, Union and Webster.
All 120 counties in Kentucky are eligible for FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. The state operates the program in which FEMA funding is used to help pay costs of making structures safer, stronger and more disaster-resistant.
FEMA prepares the nation for all hazards and manages federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates mitigation activities, trains first responders, works with state and local emergency managers, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration. FEMA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2003.
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VERONA, Wis. – From heat and drought to resulting high feed prices, challenges abounded for the dairy industry in 2012. Summarized data from AgSource herds in 2012 compared to 2011 show that despite these challenges, improvements in herd management were achieved in almost all areas.
According to Robert Fourdraine, AgSource Vice President of Product Services & Development, “When times are tough, DHI management information becomes more valuable than ever. Dairy producers can rely on AgSource to provide the necessary information to monitor key areas of herd management and pinpoint areas of opportunity. Easy to read reports allow producers to make adjustments and focus their energy on practices that enhance performance.”
Each January, AgSource calculates benchmark values for the 80th, average and 20th percentile herds based on various criteria, including breed, herd size and production level. Analysis of over 3,300 AgSource Holstein herds shows that improvements from 2011 to 2012 were significant.
Production: Average daily milk production per cow for Holstein herds was up by 2 pounds. Average ME, 305 day milk production for 1st, 2nd and 3rd and greater lactation cows was up 378, 428, and 511 pounds, and peak milk production was up 1.1, 1.4, and 1.7 pounds respectively.
Average days in milk decreased by 6.8 days to 179.8 days. Most notably, the number of Holstein herds producing over 30,000 lbs. RHA milk increased from 64 to 87 (a 30% increase), and herds producing between 25,000 and 30,000 lbs. of milk increased from 727 to 778.
Udder Health: Weighted average SCC was down 26,000 cells to 237,000. The percent of cows above 200,000 SCC decreased by 1.8% to 22.5%, the percent of cows less than 100,000 SCC increased by 1.9% to 62%. Fresh cow new infection rates were down by 1.5% to 20.9% and dry cow cure rates were up by 2.4% to 65.8%.
Transition Cow Management: AgSource’s patented Transition Cow Index® (TCI) values saw a big improvement. Herd average TCI values were up 214 points to 197. Research has shown that a 1,000 point improvement in TCI translates to $250 of additional revenue, due to higher production and reduced early lactation culling. The AgSource Fresh Cow Report, which includes TCI values, was updated in 2012 and allows the producer to better analyze transition and fresh cow management.
Reproduction: Even with the hot temperatures last summer, reproductive numbers also showed significant improvement in 2012. Average pregnancy rates improved by 1.8% to 14.3%, average days to first breeding decreased by 5.3 to 84.7, and average days open was reduced by 5.4 days to 139.1 days.
Genetics: Genetic values, based on Net Merit Dollars (NM$), were significantly higher. Average NM$ for cow’s sires was $376 which is an increase of $27. The increase for heifers’ sires’ NM$ was $34.
Fourdraine notes, “2012 offered less than ideal conditions for dairy herd management, but even so, AgSource members gained ground thanks to sound information and sound decision making.”
To learn more about the Profit Opportunity Analyzer and other AgSource management reports, visit www.agsource.com. To see additional benchmark values for herds broken out by breed, herd size and production level; select “Benchmarks” under the Highlights section of AgSource’s home page.
Source: AgSource Cooperative Services
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ABOUT HERMES TRISMEGISTUS
Thoth-the-Atlantean (Hermes Trismegistus in His
next incarnation) is a Divine Teacher known from the time of
The history of His life is described in the
Emerald Tablets of Thoth-the-Atlantean, which were discovered by
M.Doreal in the pyramids of South America.
In the Tablets Thoth tells about Atlantis — an
archipelago consisting of two large islands which existed in the
Atlantic Ocean a long time ago, also about the highly developed
civilization of the Atlanteans.
The most important point about this
civilization is that it possessed a true religious-philosophical
knowledge, which allowed many people to advance quickly in their
development to the Divine level and accomplish thus their
personal human evolution.
In the Emerald Tablets, Thoth-the-Atlantean
explains also the reason for the destruction of Atlantis:
confidential knowledge was imparted to unworthy people and the
latter began using it for evil purposes. They adopted bloody
sacrifices — and this resulted in numerous incarnations of
hellish beings among people. This led to quick degradation of
incarnated people in Atlantis.
When the destruction of Atlantis happened (two
islands submerged into the ocean one after another according to
the Divine Will), Thoth-the-Atlantean moved to Egypt (Khem) with
a group of other Divine Atlanteans.
Thanks to this, the higher spiritual knowledge
of Atlantis was brought to Egypt and to other countries.
In the Egyptian mythology, Thoth is worshipped
as a God of wisdom and writing, as a patron of sciences,
scribes, holy scriptures, as a creator of the calendar.
According to Plato, He revealed to the Egyptians counting,
geometry, astronomy, and writing.
Apart from The Emerald Tablets of
Thoth-The-Atlantean, there is another text by Thoth — the famous
Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus.
Hermes Trismegistus is the name of Thoth in His
next incarnation in Egypt.
Online book by Dr.Vladimir
ATLANTIS AND THE ATLANTEANS
(THE EMERALD TABLETS AND OTHER TEXTS)
This book is available in
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Myanmar's Suu Kyi to take Parliament seat April 23
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will take her seat in Parliament for the first time on April 23, following her historic election victory earlier this month.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won 43 seats in an April 1 by-election and will become the main opposition presence in Myanmar's Parliament, which is dominated by allies of the former military regime.
Party spokesman Nyan Win said Monday that Suu Kyi received her official invitation to take her lower house seat when the next parliamentary session starts later this month.
The polls were viewed as a milestone for Myanmar, as it emerges from a half-century of military rule, and an astonishing reversal of fortune for the former political prisoner.
(Copyright (c) 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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Discovered I had not incorporated the 1896 data into the database, so did that.
Extracted text from .rtf file provided by JL.
Ran it through the process described in HowToProcessColonistFiles.txt on my Mac, with particular attention to normalizing the contractions Leona uses a lot in the transcripts, and to assigning the correct topic numbers in place of the topic codes she uses.
To import into the database, noticed that the transcript and cemetary fields were not in the order the db expected and also that the current version of mySQL requires a carriage return at the end of the last line (the previous one did not), so had to redo the upload after sorting those issues out. Settings for upload are found in sql_for_load_data.txt file on my Mac.
Tidied up the file topics.txt which contains all the topic codes and numerical ids
Created the contractions.txt file which contains all Leona's contractions and standardarized plain english substitutions.
No Pingbacks for this post yet...
The goal of this project is to take a collection of transcripts of new stories from early editions of the Times Colonist newspaper which are currently in text files containing special codes for various bits of information, normalize the records, put them into an SQL database and then write a querying front-end.
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Using this Report
The graphs in this report use data reported by institutions directly to the NCAA.
Median values are used in some grants to represent the typical experience or value within each grouping. However, in some cases, the figures use the average values in order to accurately represent several expense or revenue subcategories within an overall total.
The years noted in the graphs are fiscal years. For example, the reference to 2007 in many graphs represents Fiscal Year 2007, which would be the 2006-7 academic year
Unless otherwise noted, the dollar values presented in graphs showing trends over time represent nominal dollars, meaning that they are not adjusted for inflation.
Operating expenses are used to separate the 119 FBS institutions in 2007 into 10 groups (deciles), with approximately 12 institutions in each group. Debt service is not considered a part of operating expenses and is noted separately in Figure 4a.
In some of the graphs, there are zero values for the medians. This means that the schools in at least the bottom half of the grouping reported zero values for that particular category.
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HUDSON — Thirty folks enjoyed a Civil War Era dinner at Rumors in Hudson on Sept. 16. The dinner was a fundraiser for the William G. Thompson House Museum, which is raising funds to replace the aged boiler of the 1890's Queen Anne style home.
Rumor's kitchen produced a cornucopia of 1860's food, including roast beef, turkey with cornbread stuffing, oyster stew, corn on the cob, butternut squash, mincemeat and pumpkin pies to name just a few of the many dishes.
"The idea came from discussions with Dennis Smoke about some of the interesting food stuffs of the American Civil War and how I thought it would make a good program for the public. Dennis offered up Rumor's and ball started rolling!" said Thompson Museum curator Ray Lennard.
Civil War tunes played by Pam Meinke on a hammered dulcimer greeted guests who gathered in the patio area of Rumors. A short talk about the typical rations of a Civil War solider kicked the event off.
Guests were able to sample the staples of average solider in the 1860's — hardtack and dried beef, and with that, the buffet opened.
The fundraiser brought in nearly $500 for the Thompson Museum's boiler fund. Nearly half of the needed funds have now been raised through the support of the greater Hudson community.
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AUSTIN — Before Texas executed Marvin Wilson last year for the 1992 murder of Jerry Robert Williams in Beaumont, his case generated headlines, reminding the nation of a rather unique corner of death penalty law here.
The standards used to determine whether a Texan convicted of murder is mentally fit to be executed are based in part on the fictional character Lennie from John Steinbeck’s classic novel Of Mice and Men, a fact that enraged the author’s son.
"I find the whole premise to be insulting, outrageous, ridiculous and profoundly tragic,” Thomas Steinbeck said, calling for a halt to Wilson’s execution. “I am certain that if my father, John Steinbeck, were here, he would be deeply angry and ashamed to see his work used in this way."
State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said Wilson’s execution and other cases left him feeling embarrassed for his home state. “It’s junk science. Its not a credible way of making a decision,” he said.
So Ellis filed Senate Bill 750, which would establish new — and, he argues, more scientific — standards to determine when a convicted Texan is too intellectually disabled to face the death penalty. The bill revives a decade-old fight with prosecutors, who argue that the current standards are adequate and that Ellis’ proposal would make it too easy for defendants to make a case that they are mentally retarded and exempt from the death penalty.
“Sen. Ellis’ proposal creates two or three additional bites at the apple for a defendant to show he is mentally retarded, and it skews the process,” said Shannon Edmonds, spokesman for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.
In 2001, Texas lawmakers approved a bill by then-state Rep. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, D-McAllen, now a state senator, that would have implemented new requirements for courts to have independent experts evaluate defendants to determine whether they were mentally retarded. Gov. Rick Perry vetoed the bill. In a proclamation with his veto, he argued that existing safeguards were effective in preventing the execution of the mentally disabled.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that states could not execute the mentally disabled because it violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. But it allowed states to develop their own criteria for mental disabilities.
Texas lawmakers, though, were unable to agree on criteria. Prosecutors wanted a standard in which jurors would decide during the penalty phase of a capital murder trial whether a defendant was too intellectually disabled to face execution, allowing them to consider the person’s past crimes in the decision-making. Defense lawyers supported creating a process that allowed a judge to evaluate the defendant’s mental fitness.
“A legislative fix is always preferable to a judicial fix when the parties can come together and agree on a solution,” Edmonds said. “The problem is that prosecutors and anti-death penalty advocates have never been able to agree on how to address this legislatively.”
In 2004, when Jose Garcia Briseño’s case came before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the nine judges were without legislative guidance and developed their own standards. Lawyers for Briseño, who is still on death row, argued that he was mentally retarded and should not face execution for the 1991 murder of a Dimmit County sheriff’s deputy. The court rejected those arguments and in the process developed the so-called Briseño factors that are used now to determine whether Texas defendants are eligible for the death penalty.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals invoked, in part, an evaluation of Lennie from Steinbeck's book, writing that "most Texas citizens would agree that Steinbeck's Lennie should, by virtue of his lack of reasoning ability and adaptive skills, be exempt from execution. But does a consensus of Texas citizens agree that all persons who might legitimately qualify for assistance under the social services definition of mental retardation be exempt from an otherwise constitutional penalty?"
The court’s three-part definition requires the convicted inmate to have below average intellectual function, to lack adaptive behavior skills and to have had those problems prior to age 18.
Lawyers for at least 90 Texas death row inmates have brought so-called Atkins claims before the courts, arguing that their clients’ limited cognitive functioning exempted them from execution. Of those, 14 have been deemed mentally retarded and their sentences commuted to life in prison.
Prosecutors stopped asking legislators to approve standards after the court adopted the Briseño standards, Edmonds said, because they wearied of the fight with defense lawyers and because they were mostly satisfied with court’s solution.
“I think Texas can continue under the current standard and remain in compliance with Supreme Court case law,” Edmonds said.
But defense lawyers say that Texas still puts mentally retarded defendants to death, flouting the Supreme Court’s prohibition. They argue that Ellis’ bill is a critical step to ensure that the courts rely on scientific evaluations of mental capacity and that the state doesn’t violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
“Reliance on the Briseño factors is frankly something that has made the state the butt of much scientific criticism,” said Kathryn Kase, director of the Texas Defender Service, which represents death row inmates.
Ellis’ bill would use the definition developed by the American Association on Intellectual Developmental Disabilities to determine whether a defendant is eligible for the death penalty. A key part of the standard set out in the proposal is that the defendant must have an IQ of 75 or below to be exempt from execution. Delaware, Idaho, Kentucky, Maryland, New Mexico, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Washington use similar standards, but require an IQ of 70 or below for exemption.
“The most appropriate thing for state statute is to be parallel to existing definitions that are existing professionally within the field,” said Ed Polloway, dean of graduate studies at Virginia's Lynchburg College and a member of the AAIDD’s death penalty task force. The task force is developing a guide for states to use to evaluate defendants for intellectual disabilities.
“Our attempt is to stay as close to the science as possible,” Polloway said.
The AAIDD’s definition of intellectual disability, he said, is used to determine state and federal aid for programs like Medicaid and special education placement in schools. The existing Texas death penalty standard, Polloway said, would allow for the execution of individuals who are considered intellectually disabled for the purposes of government programs.
Ellis said basing decisions about who is fit for execution on established scientific research would save Texas money it would otherwise spend fighting inmates’ appeals.
“It will protect the rule of law and the integrity of our judicial system,” he said.
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February 25th, 2009 by BugGuy
Have you ever had a large swarm of small moths coming out of your kitchen cabinets or flying around your home?
Generally these are going to be the Indian Meal Moth.
The adults of this moth have a wing spread of about ¾”. The front wings are tan on the front third and reddish/brown with a coppery luster on the back two-thirds of the wings. Their larva is about ½” long, and usually a dirty white color, sometimes with a yellowish, greenish or even pinkish hue.
This moth is most often found in products in the home. The Indian Meal Moth larva (pdf) feeds on all types of grains and grain based products. They also love seeds, pet foods and treats, crackers, powdered milk, bread crumbs, nuts and almost any other dried foods. Having these moths in your home isn’t usually a cleanliness issue because they are normally packaged in the food when it was purchased. It only becomes a cleanliness issue if you don’t take measures to get rid of the insects.
Eradicating the infested food source is 75% of the battle, followed by a crack and crevice treatment to eliminate the stragglers. It’s important to note that there are other moths that look similar but may have different habits, and this is why a professional technician should be called out to properly identify the problem.
Posted in Pest Control Orange County, Pest ID, Profiles of Common Pests | No Comments »
February 19th, 2009 by BugGuy
Centipedes are common house pests that are often misidentified by a homeowner. The most common homeowner description of a centipede is a big spider with lots of legs.
The body of a house centipede is usually about 1″ to 1- ½” long and has 15 pairs of very long legs, which is why it’s often confused with a spider. The body of a house centipede is grayish yellow with three dark stripes extending along the full length of the back; which also makes the insect look larger than it really is.
One major difference between the house centipede and other species of centipedes is that the house centipede generally lives its entire life inside a building, where most other species will live primarily outside.
In homes and other buildings, the house centipede prefers damp areas such as closets, cellars, bathrooms and unexcavated areas under the house. House centipedes will lay their eggs behind baseboards and the bark of firewood stored inside the building.
Aside from their creepy appearance, house centipedes are considered to be a beneficial insect since the bug hunts at night for spiders, smaller insects and their larvae. House centipedes typically leave humans alone but on occasion, a house centipede will bite which could cause swelling and redness.
Treatments by a professional pest control company are all a homeowner needs to keep house centipedes at bay.
Posted in Pest Control Orange County, Pest ID, Profiles of Common Pests | 5 Comments »
February 4th, 2009 by BugGuy
The pest in the picture to the left is a glassy-winged sharpshooter. The name is not made up but the insect is considered both exotic and invasive to the state of California, this pest has is even been seen in Orange County.
A pest that is exotic and invasive is a pest that is not a native species (insect, plant, etc…) and has rapidly spread throughout the region. Exotic and invasive pests can be intentionally or accidentally introduced. But many times it is very difficult to eradicate the species and can often cause environmental problems within its new home.
According to invasivespeciesinfo.gov, almost half of endangered and threaten species in the United States are impacted by invasive species. The same site mentions that one study estimates that invasive species cost more than $100 billion for the United States every year.
It’s interesting to note that species that are staples in our country such as rice, corn and cattle were once introduced and could be considered invasive and exotic. So it’s possible to say that there are pros and cons. But more often than not, the introduction of invasive and exotic pests should be avoided.
Here are a few easy steps to prevent a non-native species from becoming invasive:
- Avoid dumping anything from an aquarium into local ponds, streams, etc… This include plants, fish and invertebrate
- Burn firewood where you buy it…transporting firewood can move insects and other pests from one region to another
- When possible, use native plants in your landscaping
- Think twice when buying exotic pests such as pythons, parrots, etc… these animals can cause numerous problems including threats to safety and human health
Here’s a great resource for invasive and exotic pests. This site includes information and pictures for exotic insects, plants, weeds and other species. Invasive.org is also a great place to find related links and publications dedicated to invasive and exotic pests.
Posted in Exotic and Invasive Pests, Pest Control FAQ, Pest Control Orange County | No Comments »
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I am currently in Israel leading a birthright trip, during which the consumption
of alcohol is largely discouraged.
It’s a policy that the country should
perhaps enforce among its MKs, because whatever Labor MK Binyamin Ben-Eliezer
has been drinking lately, it’s got to be some pretty powerful stuff.
the Arab world applauds the spectacle of Egyptian tyrant Hosni Mubarak being
tried for crimes against his people, including mowing down peaceful
demonstrators, Ben-Eliezer seems to be shedding tears for his buddy
In a bizarre interview with The Jerusalem Post, Ben-Eliezer said:
“It really pained me to see him the way he was today. He was the leader of the
Arab world. The Middle East after Mubarak is a different Middle East, a worse
region. His people, who he fought for, showed him their back. He loves his
people. I think he is a great Egyptian patriot. I hope he comes out of the trial
alive. He is facing the pressure of the masses seeking revenge. But such a great
leader deserves to be treated respectfully, and not as the lowest criminal in a
Are we talking about the same guy who ruled Egypt with
an iron fist, using secret police and the military to quash all democratic
movements and stay in power for four decades? When Ben-Eliezer calls Mubarak a
great patriot, is he perhaps conflating the term with “despot”? We invite Mr.
Ben-Eliezer to please explain how he, as an elected representative of a
flourishing democracy, committed to the highest ideals of human rights, can
praise a man who brutalized his people and robbed them of their freedom – not to
mention their money – for four decades.
A short history lesson for Mr.
Ben Eliezer’s edification: is in order.
It was George Washington who was
the patriot and George III who was the tyrant.
It was Martin Luther King,
Jr., who was the patriot and Bull Connor who was the persecutor.
Nelson Mandela who was the patriot and P. W. Botha, “the big crocodile,” who was
What Ben-Eliezer and other misguided Israelis who are
lamenting the fall of Mubarak misunderstand is that the Egyptian leader loved
power rather than his people. Washington, who in 1783 resigned as the most
powerful man in the newly formed United States, was motivated by principle
rather than ego. Mandela, who refused to run for reelection as South Africa’s
president and risk becoming another Robert Mugabe, loved his people more than
power. But Mubarak took his people to the cleaners to make himself and his
THAT A former deputy prime minister of Israel can praise a
tyrant like Mubarak is embarrassing, and points to the incredible error that
Israel is currently making in these unprecedented Arab
Israel’s voice has largely failed to be heard during the ‘Arab
spring.’ As Mubarak shot protesters, Muammar Gaddafi bombed cities, and Bashar
Assad flattened his people with tanks, Israel’s protests have been missing. Like
US President Barack Obama, who has a curious relationship with other people’s
freedom, Israel has kept a low profile throughout the Arab protests.
no secret why. Israel is banking on the belief that the devil you know is better
than the devil you don’t. And this fear that something worse, like the Muslim
Brotherhood, is going to come after Mubarak or Assad is causing Israel to
violate all its most deeply cherished beliefs.
For decades, its argument
has been that it is the sole democracy in a sea of Arab tyranny.
claimed the principal cause of Middle East war is that tyrants scapegoat Israel
in order to distract people from their ongoing suppression, of their citizens’
rights and that good times would come to all parties if these countries finally
I heard Binyamin Netanyahu make this argument
passionately and eloquently when he delivered a lecture at Oxford University in
1992, while he was serving as deputy foreign minister. Bibi argued that in the
history of the world, no two democracies had ever gone to war against each
other, and he challenged his audience to name a single instance. The Arabs have
to taste the economic and political benefits of freedom if there is to be
Yet now, as prime minister, Netanyahu, the country’s most
persuasive spokesman, has seemingly chosen not to openly champion Arab freedom,
partly out of fear of what comes next and partly out of trepidation that he will
just give credibility to those Arab enemies of Israel who argue that the Jewish
state is the secret instigator of the unrest.
But there is an equal fear
that Israel, in its silence – or worse, in the open encouragement given to Arab
autocrats by people like Ben-Eliezer – will be seen as sympathizing with
Indeed, few if any of these people are friends of Israel,
especially Mubarak. It was Anwar Sadat who signed a treaty with Israel, which
Mubarak inherited, transforming it into an ice-cold peace. For many years the
Egyptian ambassador to the Jewish state remained in Cairo while state-sponsored
media became some of the foremost purveyors of anti-Semitic propaganda –
including an infamous TV miniseries arguimg for the validity of The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion that was broadcast throughout the Arab world.
THOSE who argue that at least Mubarak kept the peace, what choice did he have,
dependent as he was on $2.5 billion in annual American aid, and risking losing
the Sinai peninsula – with its considerable oil and natural gas fields – had he
gone back to war? But regardless, the unseemly spectacle of the Middle East’s
sole democracy failing to support a revolutionary freedom movement in Arab
countries is a stark omission that the Arabs are not likely to
The ancient Jewish toast of “L’haim,” to life, connotes a
universal Jewish commitment to every human life. Rather than elected officials
like Ben-Eliezer getting drunk on their own rhetoric, Israel’s voice should be
loud and clear in denouncing tyranny in every form.
The writer, founder
of This World: The Values Network, will be publishing his newest books,
Conversations You Need to Have with Yourself and Kosher Jesus in October and
December respectively. On Twitter: @RabbiShmuley.
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We find trees through a variety of sources: people contacting us to donate their trees, word of mouth, and through spotting and identifying trees from our daily wanderings around Atlanta. Finding new trees really gets under way in late March as plants start flowering and gets easier throughout the year as fruits start to appear and tree branches become bright and heavy.
Once a tree is found, it gets added to our database. It is cataloged according to its public/private status, and basic information is recorded about it: latitude, longitude, type of fruit, and notes about the property (tastiness, owner contact information, harvesting requirements, etc.).
Once we successfully harvest from a tree, we record the date of harvest, amount collected, and if our harvest was early, on-time or late. This lets us build up a profile of trees and helps us predict when the tree will be ripe in the coming years.
Scouting is the most logistically-intense part of Concrete Jungle, and the one with which we need the most help.
It basically involves matching the schedules of people and plants. Scouting is the planning necessary for orchestrating each group pick, and we have to find what trees are ready to be harvested and line up permission for each one. We consult our database for when certain trees were picked in previous years, and check on newer trees to decide the best date to get them. This is generally limited to a small area of the city to minimize driving. Plant schedules can make things pretty hectic, as some will ripen and drop their fruit off-schedule from other trees nearby.
The business end of Concrete Jungle. We pick fruit from May through October, and from July onward we pick at least every weekend. We generally meet Sunday morning at a predetermined spot and pick from several different locations. Generally picks last 2-3 hours and may involve climbing trees, relaxing in the sun, and getting hit with the occasional falling apple.
Sorting and cleaning can be a simple wash and once-over, or it can be some real TLC and scrubbing. We will at the very least wash the harvest and remove twigs, leaves and unacceptable fruit. At the most, we will polish each piece by hand. We have dreams of a a large, bristle-lined rotating drum that will automate much of this for us, but for now we do it the old-fashioned way. We bag up our good stuff, weigh it and record it. We discard/freeze the rest.
Sorting/Cleaning is an area in which Concrete Jungle actively needs help. We are looking for a kitchen space (Department of Agriculture certified is a plus) within the city as a meeting point for sorting/cleaning after harvesting.
After sorting, we send it off to one of our partner organizations. It’s pretty nice to have a bunch of people shout “hey, it’s the fruit man!” upon showing up with the week’s donations.
Rinse and repeat. If you’re interested in working with Concrete Jungle, most people go for the picking, but it can be said with no uncertainty that we need folks every step of the way. Get in touch! We’d love to hear from you.
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King of Albania
|King of Albania
Mbret i Shqipërisë
Mbret i Shqiptarëve
Royal coat of arms of Albania
Pretender Leka II
|Heir apparent:||Skënder Zogu|
|First monarch:||William of Albania (1914)
Zog I (1928)
|Formation:||7 March 1914
1 September 1928
|Residence:||Royal Palace of Tirana (not in use)|
|Website:||The Albanian Monarchy|
|This article is part of the series:
Politics and government of
While the medieval Angevin Kingdom of Albania was a monarchy, it did not encompass the entirety of the modern state of Albania. The latter has been a kingdom on two occasions. The first time was after it was declared independent in 1912. Under the independence settlement imposed by the Great Powers, the country was styled a principality, and its ruler, William of Wied (Wilhelm zu Wied in German), was given the title of sovereign prince. However, these styles were only used outside the country. In Albanian, William was referred to by the title mbret, or king. This was because many local nobles already had the title of prince (princ, prinq, or prenk in various Albanian dialects), and because domestically the Albanian sovereign could not be seen as holding a title inferior to that of the King of Montenegro. Prince William's full style was:
By the grace of the powers and the will of the people the Prince of Albania.
William was forced into exile by internal disorder just after the outbreak of World War I, and Albania was to be occupied by various foreign powers for most the war. In the confusing aftermath of the war, some of the several different regimes competing for power officially styled themselves as regencies for William. Albania's first monarchy ended definitively when the restored central government declared the country a republic in 1924.
Four years later, on September 1, 1928, President Ahmed Bey Zogu proclaimed himself King of the Albanians (Mbret i Shqiptarëve in Albanian) as Zog I. Zog sought to- establish a constitutional monarchy. Under the royal constitution, the Albanian King, like the King of the Belgians, had to swear an oath before parliament before entering into his royal powers. The text of the oath was as follows:
- I, name, King of the Albanians, on ascending the Throne of the Albanian Kingdom and assuming the Royal powers, swear in the presence of God Almighty that I will maintain national unity, the independence of the state, and its territorial integrity, and I will maintain and conform to the statute and laws in force, having the good of the people always in mind. So help me God!
Zog's Kingdom came to be tied more and more closely to King Vittorio Emanuele III's Italy, until the latter occupied it on April 7, 1939. Zog fled the country, and five days later, the Albanian Parliament proclaimed Vittorio Emanuele III of Italy as the new King. He took the title King of Albania, which title he formally retained until he abdicated as Albanian monarch in 1943. Zog I was then reinstated as King (though he never returned to Albania), serving until the socialist People's Republic of Albania was established in 1946.
During and after World War II, some Albanians worked for the return of King Zog; however, they were not successful. Neither Zog nor Vittorio Emanuele III had their Albanian royal titles widely acknowledged by the international community. Zog's son, the late Crown Prince Leka (1939-2011), was the main pretender to the Albanian Crown. As he himself stated, his title was not King of Albania but King of the Albanians, which includes the irredentistic claim to Kosovo and part of Macedonia. Since Crown Prince Leka's death in late November, 2011, the main pretender to the Albanian Throne is H.R.H. The Prince Leka of Albania. Prince Leka is the eldest son of the late Crown Prince and is sometimes styled as Crown Prince Leka II.
See also
- History of Albania
- List of Albanian monarchs
- List of Albanian consorts
- Line of succession to the former Albanian throne
- House of Wied-Neuwied
- House of Zogu
- Otto Witte, a German circus acrobat who claimed to have been crowned king for a few days.
- "Albania Holds Funeral for Self-Styled King Leka I". FOX News. Retrieved 11 February 2013.
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Locals who still remember World War II would tell visitors that back in 1944-145 Morotai was a hive of military activities with tens of sorties roaring daily from aircrafts taking off and landing at airstrips along Daruba Bay,endless stamping of thousands of military boots marching across the island, and navy ships anchoring daily carrying supplies and reinforcement. For Morotai back then, was the strategic base of the Allied Forces from which they attacked posts in the Philippines and Borneo in their fight against Japanese forces during World War II.
On 15 September 1944, Allied Forces from the USA and Australia under leadership of Supreme Commander for the West Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur, landed on Morotai’s south west corner, where some time before, the Japanese had constructed an airstrip but abandoned it in favor of the island of Halmahera to its south. In Morotai the Japanese command left only some 500 soldiers to guard the island. With such overwhelming odds, the advancing Allied Forces were no match for the small number of Japanese troops. The Japanese Navy later tried to recapture the island but also to no avail.
When the Japanese abandoned Morotai, Gen. MacArthur saw this as the golden window of opportunity to take the island which he considered was at the most strategic location for a counter invasion to recapture the Philipppines from the Japanese. With over 50,000 troops the Allied Forces settled on Morotai. Losing no time, Mac Arthur immediately constructed a number of airstrips over the rough coral ground. At one point, Morotai was said to house no less than 60,000 soliders, and had a large hospital with 1,900 beds. There was also a busy naval base nearby.
Later, Australian Forces also sortied from Morotai to stage attacks on North Borneo. This hive of activities continued until the end of World War II at the surrender of the Japanese in 1945. Before leaving the island, Allied Forces are said to have burnt down all constructions on Morotai.
In 1974 a lone Japanese soldier called Taruo Nakamura emerged from the jungles of Morotai having hidden there for decades unaware that the War was long over.
Today, Morotai has become a vague memory in the annals of World War II military operations in the Pacific Theater, and its role in the fight for freedom of the Philippines almost forgotten.
The island itself with a total population of 53,000 people is now back to its routine as sleepy tropical paradise. Nevertheless, its decisive role in World War II is forever etched in history books.
Located north of the larger island of Halmahera in the province of North Maluku, the island of Morotai has a number of great beaches and interesting diving spots. The largest town here is Daruba in the south. To Morotai’s north are the Philippines, to its east the Pacific Ocean. Not much remains to be seen from those hectic World War II days, except for a number of interesting wrecks to be explored underwater.
A lone statue of General Douglas MacArthur on the island of SumSum near Daruba serves to remind following generations that this famous general, best known for his words “I will return”, once made Morotai his military base.
Nearby at Kao Bay in Halmahera a half submerged Japanese wreck named the Tosimaru can still be seen from shore.
A shack filled with memorabilia of World War II collected by a private citizen and known as the Morotai Museum can be visited to remind visitors of those terrible war days, which will hopefully never occur again on this planet.
Besides serving as US and Australian military base in WW II, the island of Morotai later also served as base for Indonesian forces in the liberation of West New Guinea from Dutch colonization.
Today the government plans to make Morotai into an economic hub and gateway into Indonesia from the Pacific Ocean. Morotai will be developed as a fishery, tourist, trade and services center.
For this reason Sail Morotai 2012 will be staged here with pinnacle ceremony on 14 September 2012 to be attended by President Bambang Soesilo Yudhoyono.
For more information on best dive locations around Morotai , check diving-indonesia.net, click: http://diving-indonesia.net/main/island.php?island=72&lang=id
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- Events, Contingents & Contingent Leaders
- Other Opportunities
- Australian Scout Events and Visiting Australia
- International Scouting in Australia
- Pen-Pal Program
- SISEP - International Exchange Program
- International Competitions
- Fundraising, Grants & Scholarships
- Resources, Forms & Links
- Contacts in Australia
- Scouts Australia National website
International Scouting in Australia
Being part of a world-wide brother and sisterhood is really exciting. You don’t have to leave Australia to feel part of it. You can participate in international Scouting right here at home! There are plenty of options, and here are just a few ideas:
- The 2012 Scouts in Action Week theme is International Scouting! This is an exciting opportunity to join together with Scouts from around Australia and celebrate International Scouting in your local Group. Scouts in Action Week will provide a database of great ways to educate and inspire Scouts around Australia about the Scouting world beyond our shores. Visit to website to register and find out more.
- SISEP (Scout International Student Exchange Program) – Why not host a Scout from overseas? Contact your local SISEP Co-ordinator
- JOTA & JOTI – Meet and talk to Scouts from all over the world, either over the internet or using radios. Click here to go to the JOTA/JOTI page
- Have an 'Around the World Night'. “Visit” lots of countries and find out about Scouting in that country. You can do some activities or even try some food. You can find out about National Scout Organisations from around the world on the website of the World Organisation of the Scout Movement: http://scout.org/en/around_the_world/countries . You can also find out all about the regions of the World: http://scout.org/en/around_the_world/
- Have an 'International Cooking Night'. Cook up a storm and try out some famous international recipes! Each Six or Patrol could cook a different dish. Google has many great recipe ideas.
- When you next run an international Scouting activity, make sure you go to www.scout.org to check out the terrific resources that are available. There are videos, books and other information about how Scouts are making a real difference around the world. Let our Scouts understand how service occurs in some countries and that we really are the peace movement that Baden-Powell desired.
- Check out the International Resources page on this site
Want to do International Scouting and do some badgework?
We are in process of identifying some activities that Joeys, Cubs, Scouts, Venturers and Rovers can do.
Have some more ideas on International activities?
Got a great activity that you ran at your Group/Mob/Pack/Troop/Unit/Crew? Have you already mapped some international activities against your Section Award Scheme? Please email them to us so we can include them here for everyone else to use!
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(Inspired by Julia
Over the last few years the aromatherapy
of one's surroundings has become something to be taken into
consideration by companies in terms of work psychology, the
prevention of work-related illnesses and activity.
Essential oils do not only protect us from
infectious diseases; it has been shown that they can also affect
the efficiency of workers. They not only feel better in general,
but are able to think more clearly and positively and even react
with more intuition (Dr. Barron, Perdue Univ. Indiana). In Japan,
Shimizu, the third biggest construction company in the country,
places diffusers in the air conditioning ducts of the buildings
that it constructs. It also suggests which essences to use according
to the type of building. For example anti-stress for offices,
anti-bacteria for hospitals, relaxing essences for train and metro stations, etc.
Shimizu's faith in the perfuming of the workplace
with aromatherapy essential oils is justified by the results
of research carried out by Takasago, Japan's biggest producer
of fragrances. The research shows that people working with computers
made 54% fewer typing errors when the workplace was perfumed
with lemon; 33% fewer with jasmine; and lavender.
Another aspect of perfuming our surroundings
is that of the purifying effect of certain essential oils. The
anti-bacterial, antiviral, fungicidal effects help to reduce
the negative effects caused by air-conditioning systems such
as allergies, respiratory diseases. They also reduce the possibility
of being infected by contagious diseases which are propagated
by close contact in offices, schools, shops, etc.
Some essences even have an ionising effect,
reducing the ever growing problem of static electricity caused
by the increase in the number of computers and other office
equipment. The overcharged air created by these appliances can
lead to tension, aggressiveness, stress or the psychosomatic
symptoms familiar to VDU operators. With regard to this consult
"VDU Hazard Handbook" from the Londoner Trust.
Perfuming the workplace leads to an improvement
in the "psychological surroundings, having a positive effect
on both workers and customers. Indeed, it is capable of improving
both productivity and sales. Aromatherapy in the workplace is
an investment in the human resources of a company, protecting
the workforce both physically and psychologically. Perfuming
the workplace effectively makes it more human and it shouldn't
surprise us that the essences which help to protect us from
infections, ionise (negatively) and reduce stress are those
obtained fro trees (cypress, pine, rosewood). Their fragrances
bring into the workplace the well-known benefits forests.
The future of aromatherapy in the workplace
is closely linked to the way in which our attitudes to work
are changing. Good working conditions are no longer seen as
something desired by the workers but as an essential condition
for the company.
Via del Profumo" offers a range of
aromatherapy fragrances for businesses,
shops and studios.
See also "
Fragrant marketing" and "The
For practicing Aromatherapy
at the workplace see the Aromatherapy
La Via del Profumo - Via Indipendenza 538 - 47854 Montecolombo (RN)
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It actually is providing an image, you just cannot see it because of contrast. The light you have in the picture is flooding the room with enough ambient light that the image that is actually formed has no contrast.
- Pinhole camera image quality heavily depends on the pinhole size.
However, the smaller the pinhole, the "dimmer" the image will be,
this is the problem that you have.
- In order to be able to view the image you will need to make the
pinhole basically in a box. The box could be an entire room (e.g.
cover all windows in a room with aluminum foil so it is very dark,
then prick a pinhole in the foil on one of the windows) or a smaller
box with a "viewing screen." The key think is that whatever "box"
that you use needs to be relatively dark inside.
A viewing screen can be something clear but diffuse, like parchment paper or privacy glass. Even with the viewing screen, you need to somehow make it dark enough so that your eyes can see it.
You could also make an enclosure large enough for you head to fit into, but still maintain a good level of darkness.
If you have an old webcam, this might work inside of an enclosed box, then you can view the image on your computer.
This is one of the things that makes using pinhole cameras in demonstrations difficult, you want the object being imaged to be well lit, but you need the viewing screen to be dark.
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Avast! is a company that makes a decent anti-virus program. They recently published some statistics that are interesting:
- Their anti-virus programs blocks 1 billion malware a month. That’s 1,000,000,000 attempts to install viruses, trojans, password stealers, etc on to people’s PCs. A month. And that’s just by one small company.
- 1 in 15 people encounter a malware every day.
- They find about 3,000 new malware each day (that’s new and unique viruses, trojans, etc). They have 2.1 million in their database.
These statistics are not just marketing numbers, they give you an idea of how serious a problem malware is. If you don’t have a good anti-virus system installed on your computer they you need to take action now (today) and install something to protect you. Good anti-virus systems generally cost money – it’s a good investment, the cost of not buying one is usually greater.
And get something from a known vendor. Last week I talked about a comparison of anti-virus programs, you can use this as a guide.
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|
You can watch the video at Al Jazeera at: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2011/08/2011889711816877.html
|On Saturday, more than 250,000 Israelis took to the streets in protest over the rising cost of living in the country and the growing social divide it is creating. This social movement of people demanding their share of Israel’s new economic prosperity is posing an increasingly powerful challenge to Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and his coalition.
In response to what was one of the largest demonstrations in Israel’s history, and its biggest-ever on social and economic issues, Netanyahu promised to address the peoples’ demands.
On this episode we ask: Will Netanyahu’s government manage to defuse the rage? And can they succeed in stopping the Arab Spring reaching Israel?
Inside Story, with presenter Stephen Cole, discusses political and economic power in Israel with guests: Avi Sinhon, the chief economic adviser to the Israeli finance minister; Anshel Feffer, a correspondent on Israeli and international politics at the daily Israeli newspaper, Haaretz; and Ofri Raviv, the vice chairman of the National Union of Israeli Students.
- If these protests were about “social justice” they would be more concerned with Israeli crimes against the Palestinians (ikners.com)
- Israel and democracy. The beacon was never really shining (ikners.com)
- Israelis march for lower living costs (guardian.co.uk)
- Netanyahu pledges dialogue to address economic protests (windsorstar.com)
- Haaretz Editorial on Netanyahu (ikners.com)
- Netanyahu pledges dialogue to address economic protests – Reuters (news.google.com)
- Report: 81 members to visit Israel (politico.com)
- Quarter-million Israelis march for economic reform (lonerangersilver.wordpress.com)
- Israelis Plan Million-Strong March (stevebeckow.com)
- The Arab Uprising… now in “Israel” (attendingtheworld.wordpress.com)
- In Israel nothing ever changes. Everything is directed at hegemony over the Palestinians, paid for by the US (ikners.com)
- The Israeli “Real Estate” protest by wannabe landlords A Gilad Atzmon article (ikners.com)
- Israel outsourcing security operations (ikners.com)
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|
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| 0.906419
| 512
| 1.59375
| 2
|
Fisheries Management: Progress toward Sustainability
April 2008, Wiley-Blackwell
This price is valid for United States. Change location to view local pricing and availability.
Other Available Formats: Hardcover
Several new approaches from around the world have proved to be successful in stemming the decline whilst increasing fish catches, and under the editorship of McClanahan and Castilla this international team of authors have looked to these examples to provide the reader with carefully chosen case studies offering practical suggestions and solutions for problem fisheries elsewhere. Coverage includes:
- Community based fisheries
- Collaborative and co-operative fisheries management
- Coastal fisheries management
- The future for sustainable fisheries management
Written by many of the world’s most experienced practitioners Fisheries Management: Progress toward sustainability is an important purchase for all fisheries scientists, managers and conservationists. All libraries in universities and research establishments where this area is studied and taught will find this book a valuable addition to their shelves.
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| 0.916979
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Today’s HOW TO tip is a quick, but useful one.
If you’re unsure whether you cookware or dishes are microwave-safe, put them in the microwave with a cup of water next to it and nuke it for 1 minute.
If the cookware or dishes become hot and the water stays cool, don’t use them. Simple as that.
(Just so you know, baby bottles and baby food jars should never be microwaved.)
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| 0.923933
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While it's not as though hospitals have ever been lauded for their gourmet cuisine, the idea that you're filling your body with the nutrients it needs to heal has certainly inspired more than one patient to force that last bit of rubbery mystery meat down the hatch.
Because when you're lying prostrate in a bed on wheels, IV firmly hooked into your right arm and your wellbeing in the hands of the people around you, it's important to trust your health is being looked after from top to bottom.
But according to the CBC, your gag reflex may have been trying to tell you something all along.
According to a host of experts sourced by the news network, hospitals often use frozen, processed food out of cost and convenience — food that, naturally, lacks proper nutrition. It's edible, but it's not actually good for you.
"The vegetables are frozen and it is convenient, but they are so waterlogged that they are really not there," Joshna Maharaj, a Toronto-based chef and healthy food advocate told the CBC. "It is just empty, spongy versions of themselves."
[ More Daily Brew: Study finds a new problem with kids: Intermittent explosive disorder ]
Heather Fletcher, manager of food services at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital, said that hospitals will often "take cold, processed foods such as lasagna and spoon it out onto patient trays that are heated on carts," while the other half of the tray stays chilled for the cold foods.
And that's just from the professionals. Former patients were less kind when describing their dinnertime ordeals.
"There was a giant blob of purple vegetable matter; after a couple of reluctant tastes, I couldn't identify what it once was. I never dreamed that hospital food could be used as an incentive to check out as quickly as possible," reader Leonard Matte wrote about his stay at a Prince George, B.C., hospital, although he emphasized the excellent care he received from the doctors and nursing staff.
Much of the issue can be boiled down to cost. Cash-strapped hospitals allot the majority of their budget toward treating patients medically, not gastronomically — a principle that would appear to be sound.
Paule Bernier, a registered dietician at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital who co-authored a study on hospital food, found that most hospitals put aside around 1 per cent of their budget — or $8 per day — for food.
[ More Daily Brew: Cod stocks returning 20 years after moratorium ]
But the danger lies in those patients not getting the nutrients they need during convalescence.
Even if they're having trouble keeping food down post-surgery or simply have a diminished appetite, it's important that what little these patients manage to digest staves off malnutrition — a condition that can put them at the risk of infection and longer recuperation.
Although hospitals often employ dieticians to educate patients on the importance of proper nutrition, there appears to be a disconnect between this advice and the options that appear on dinner trays.
Thankfully, a handful of hospitals are starting to take the issue seriously. Maharaj has spent the past year churning out healthy, homemade meals at Scarborough hospital in Toronto's east end, while North York General Hospital in Toronto implemented a "restaurant-style" meal system to great fanfare in 2009.
Until these exception become the rule, however, you may want to pack a few healthy snacks before hitting the triage.
(Photo courtesy CBC)
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|
USDA Cuts Soy Stocks, Raises Corn
Thursday morning’s USDA monthly supply/demand update lowered projected 2004-2005 U.S. and world soybean ending stocks, but raised the forecast for corn stocks again.
The changes may not have a big impact on corn and soybean prices because they were largely expected by the trade.
The USDA lowered its estimate of U.S. soybean stocks by 30 million bushels to 410 million bushels. The cut reflected stronger-than-expected exports due to record shipments to China and cuts to South American production.
Projected world soybean stocks were cut to 55.98 million metric tons, from 61.35 million tons – a drop of 8.7%. World stocks declined primarily due to smaller production in Brazil.
USDA lowered its Brazilian crop estimate to 59 million metric tons from 63 million. However, Argentine production was left unchanged at 39 million tons.
Due to the smaller stocks estimates, USDA raised its projection for the U.S. on-farm average price of soybeans to $5.05-$5.45 per bushel from $4.80-$5.40.
The USDA raised its estimate of U.S. corn ending stocks by another 45 million bushels to 2.055 billion, due to continued slow export demand.
Projected exports were cut 50 million bushels for the third month in a row due to increased competition from Argentina and South Africa and smaller world imports.
The USDA raised its estimate of world corn ending stocks by another 4.77 million metric tons to 122.04 million tons. That’s an increase of over 4%.
The larger world stocks were due to higher U.S. stocks and higher production estimates for Argentina, China and South Africa.
The USDA raised Argentine production by 2 million metric tons to 19.5 million tons. China’s crop was raised by 2 million tons to 128 million, while South African production was raised 1.3 million tons to 11 million. Those gains were partially offset by a 2 million ton decrease in expected Brazilian production.
Despite the larger stocks estimates, the USDA raised its projected range for the U.S. on-farm average price of corn to $1.95-$2.15 per bushel from $1.85-$2.05.
Editors note: Richard Brock, The Corn and Soybean Digest's Marketing Editor, is president of Brock Associates, a farm market advisory firm, and publisher of The Brock Report.
To see more market perspectives, visit Brock's Web site at www.brockreport.com.
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June 27, 2011
All In – Day Five at Taliesin
We had a beautiful moment in our project today. After a few days of guided exploring and 3D sketch-building the students finally started to create real prototypes for the structure they've come here to create.
We learned a few key things about the constraints for our design from our research and requirements gathering:
It must be in an area with cell phone reception
It must keep out the bugs (mosquitos!), rain and sun, and withstand high winds
It should be private enough for a phone conversation and public enough to hold a small group of 2-3 people
It must be portable or easily broken down
We started by laying out plans for the structure on our newly established site. Everyone was hesitant to make decisions and get into the activity at first. Finally someone picked up a 1×2 and started zip tying it to another piece of lumber. The whole team fell into place. We all followed each others’ moves, quickly working together to build a sketch of the still-to-come concept.
We worked the rest of the day to turn our 3D sketched plans into reality. We measured and laid the framework for the decking and worked past sunset into the darkness of the night to lay the tongue and groove flooring on top of our frame. The whole team moved in a single direction with each of our six students performing a micro-task that fed into the whole. A rhythm developed out of their work: lay down a plank, mallet it into place, drill the holes, screw it in, next! Observing the whole scene was like watching an orchestra of design- and power tool-driven passion.
We’ve been so lucky with this phenomenal group of students. They instantly clicked with each other on our very first day driving to Taliesin, and that bond translates to all the work we’ve done in the field these past few days.
If we had been inside a classroom it would have taken weeks for Alex and I to teach our students to understand the rhythm and cadence of a project. It’s not a cut and dry lesson — they have to experience it completely see the value. Being here in the woods in a fast-paced, hands-on learning environment has forced them to learn about the nuances of teamwork quickly. I’m glad they discovered it and made it work so well.
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Our curriculum allows you to explore any aspect of the law that interests you. This breadth is matched by an analytic rigor of in-depth study in many areas of concentration, so you can master your specific focus. Traditional course electives are augmented with interdisciplinary instruction in emerging fields in the study of law that deal with issues such as climate change and the application of new technologies to legal concepts. Our acclaimed clinics provide hands-on experience with real cases and our international program offers compelling options for you to study abroad.
Did you know?
Our curriculum is grouped into seventeen areas of concentration, with almost 250 courses, nearly 30 clinics, and a legal writing program ranked fifteenth in the nation in 2010.
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The word sticky is an adjective used to describe the ability of something to adhere to a surface. In marketing terms, it describes something that is easy to remember. The more sticky something is, the greater is the chance of having people remember that thing after encountering it for the first time. This makes stickiness a very important factor in every marketing campaign.
Some of the things that are known to make a product or brand more sticky include:
Uniqueness – A unique but still useful product will definitely be sticky but for products that are more generic uniqueness is achieved by a stand out packaging.
Simplicity – Though giving out complete information is good but a prominent logo, short one line motto, and a number to call will work better than a leaflet with a long list of product offerings written in really small letters if you just want to catch people’s eyes.
Jingle – A catchy tune is a great way to get people to remember any product. Just make sure that the tune includes something about the product or people will end up remembering the tune and wondering what the product was about.
Co-branding – Riding on the success of a big brand can really help a lot when launching a new product or revitalizing the image of an old one.
In internet marketing web site stickiness is important to ensure that first time visitors will be converted to repeat visitors. Website stickiness is achieved by having a great landing page (both in terms of layout and content) as well as easy navigability.
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Rabbi Yitskhak Yaakov (Isaac Jacob) Super
(Written by his granddaughter Jane Berliner’s husband Chaim Freedman on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his birth in 1981. Published in the Australian Jewish News, August 7, 1981)
Rabbi Yitskhak Yaakov Super served the Melbourne Jewish community for half a century of its religious life. Many passed through his hands from Brit Milah through Cheder to Barmitzvah and benefitted from his meticulous and relenting supervision of Kashrut.
Son of Shmuel (son of Yosef-Yehoash) Super and Khaya-Minna (daughter of Avraham) Dobrin, Yitskhak-Yaakov was born in 1881 in Lutzin (Ludza) Latvia, a community known as “Jerusalem of Latvia”. The Super family were merchants, scribes, and butchers. He grew up in Karsava (Korsovka). Rabbi Super was educated at local Yeshivot in Rezekne (Rezhitza), Daugavpils (Dvinsk) and Vilnius (Vilna) and then received certification as a Shokhet at the young age of seventeen. He served in that capacity in several small towns in Latvia including Rofe, Sloboad and Lipne.
In 1901 he was obliged to flee from the threat of military conscription which, in Tsarist Russia, was the scene of violent anti-Semitic persecution of Jewish recruits. He arrived in London in 1899 where his services were eagerly sought by the United Synagogue which appointed him as minister to several congregations including Yarmouth and Croydon.
In 1906 Rabbi Super married Lena (Leah) a daughter of Reb Mordekhai Zev (Marks) Bull, one of the first Chabad Chassidim in England. The Bull family was from Karsava (Korsovka), Daugavpils (Dvinsk) and originally from Livani (Lewwnhoff). See separate article.
In 1911 he gave up ministerial duty to serve the London United Shechitah Board in the village of Evercreech, Somerset.
In 1914 Super was sought out by Rabbi Jacob Danglow who had been sent on a mission by the Melbourne community to find a Chief Shokhet for the Melbourne United Shechitah Board. The candidate recommended by Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz was Yitskhak Yaakov Super.
Arriving in Melbourne on August 17th, 1914, Super immediately acquainted himself with the then inadequate Kashrut facilities. The early years were not without conflict and turmoil as he strove to provide strict control over the standard of meat. Many anecdotes are related of his zeal in raiding butcher shops which he suspected of evading the regulations.
Yitskhak Yaakov Super is remembered by numerous families for his services as Mohel which often took him to provincial communities. Likewise he served as a Hebrew teacher and his soundly based European learning enabled him to raise the standard of Jewish knowledge which he imparted to a generation of Australian children. He was also responsible for the training of Shochtim interstate and in New Zealand. At the Chief Rabbi’s request he wrote a report on the state of Kashrut in New Zealand.
In 1929 he was appointed a member of the Melbourne Beth Din under Rabbi Israel Brodie (later Chief Rabbi of the British Empire). Super continued to serve as one of the Dayanim (judges) of the Beth Din for the duration of his life under Rabbis H. Freedman, H. Stransky, and I. Rapaport. He participated in the conferences of the Australian Rabbinical Council and submitted a paper on Kashrut.
He was often vocal through the Jewish press when he felt the need to raise his voice to condemn lapses in religious observance. He was an active and enthusiastic supporter of the Zionist cause and visited the State of Israel in 1956.
In 1944 Super completed thirty years of service to the community and British Chief Rabbi J. Hertz conferred upon him Semikhah (rabbinical ordination) in recognition of his learning and contribution to the community.
In 1949 Rabbi Super retired from active service and was presented with a testimonial by the community. But his drive to serve Kashrut would not let him rest and he soon came out of retirement to accept the appointment in 1950 of Mashgiakh Rashi (Chief Supervisor) for the Kashrus Commission of Victoria, a body he fought for many years to have established, even to the extent of personal financial support.
This position gave him ultimate authority over the State’s kosher meat supply, Matzah production and all catering establishments carrying the Kashrut Commission license. In this capacity he often resorted to seeking the support of Chief Rabbi Brodie in England on contentious issues.
In his later years Rabbi Super was associated closely with the St.Kilda Hebrew Congregation. At his nearby home in Crimea Street he and his wife Lena Super (until her untimely death in 1945) held open house to the congregation. Hardly a Shabbat passed when he did not bring home a guest for Kiddush. There he held a regular Shiur on a Shabbat afternoon.
Super continued to function as a Shokhet until his last days, despite failing health, assisted by his son-in-law Rev. Phillip Berliner, husband of his daughter Edna.
He passed away on June 28, 1961 (Tamuz 14th 5721).
Rabbi Isaac Jacob and Lena Super were the parents of seven children:
Susaman-David (Cecil), Nakhum (Newton) Melbourne solicitor, Rabbi Dr. Arthur Saul Super of South Africa and Israel, Adolf (died a small child), Shlomo-Meir (Montie), Edna-Yenta (Edna) married to the Reverend Pinkhas (Phillip) Berliner, and Zalman-Ber (Albert).
Below are some documements reflecting his life including an article published in the Ausralian Jewish News marking the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Click to enlarge
An archive of Super's personal and communal papers is to be donated to the Jewish Museum in Melbourne.
Rabbi Super and family, Evercreech, England 1914
Rabbi Super's parents Shmuel and Khaya Minna Super with his sister Fruma, Korsovka (now Karsava) Latvia, about 1905
Mohel certificate Chief rabbi Adler 1910
Semikha (rabbinical) ordination by Chief Rabbi Hertz 1944.
Congratulations to Rabbi Super's son Newton on his father's ordination, from Sir Isaac Isaacs, later Governor General of Austalia.
Appointment to Melbourne Beit Din 1931
L-R: Rabbis J.L. Gurewicz, J. Danglow, I.J. Super, I. Brodie
Inspection of Melbourne abbatoirs 1930's
Super Family tree showing selected relationships
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The Teaching Channel is free resource for educators that has video lessons and lesson resources for educators. There are videos on all different areas including science, differentiation, classroom management, assessment, collaboration, and different academic subject areas.
Videos are searchable and sorted by topic, subject, and grade and range from 1 min in length to 15 minutes (the longest I found).
Videos are categorized as "Teaching Practice" - sort professional development type topics, and "Lesson Ideas". The ones I watched were very good and I got some great project ideas for my physics class.
Check it out.
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Are You Chained to Your Pillbox?
What to do to curb your need for drugs that treat high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, and osteoarthritis.
“Say that you’re a 250-pound man with a BMI of 29,” Harlan says. “If you lose about 20 pounds, you may be able to go off your blood pressure medication altogether. I see this every single day in my practice. People who really embrace this and work at losing weight will do great.”
With more severe hypertension and more significant obesity -- like Silber Korn’s -- it may take longer to get off medication, but it can still often be done with lifestyle changes, Harlan says.
One diet that has been found to lower the average systolic blood pressure an average of 5 points -- which is about what you can expect from most blood pressure medications -- is the American Heart Association’s DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, www.dashdiet.org), combined with reduced salt intake.
Another healthy diet that has been found to reduce hypertension is the so-called “Mediterranean diet.” It’s not as exotic as many people think -- that is, you don’t need to be eating Greek salads and hummus every day. “The Mediterranean diet just means eating more legumes, fruits and nuts, and vegetables; more fish, leaner meats, less dairy, whole grains, and alcohol in moderation, plus much more unsaturated than saturated fats,” Harlan says. “That’s all it is.”
Exercise by itself -- even without weight loss -- can reduce your blood pressure, although whether it’ll be enough on its own to get you off medication is another question.
“In the short term after you exercise, your blood pressure will be up. But after you’ve been exercising aerobically -- that means moderate to vigorous exercise for at least half an hour most days of the week -- for about two months, you’ll have a lower resting blood pressure,” Wilbur says.
Two months? It’s true, Wilbur says -- lifestyle changes are not a quick fix for any of these conditions. You could take medication and see significant changes in just a couple of weeks. “But these are lifelong issues. Do you want to have to take all these pills for the rest of your life?”
Just as with hypertension, losing a small amount of weight -- sometimes as little as 10-15 pounds, according to the American Diabetes Association -- can lower blood sugar. Exercise also helps to keep blood sugar in better balance, experts say.
So what’s the best diet to help you lose weight if you have diabetes? Because you don’t want wild swings in your blood sugar, it’s particularly important to consult your doctor when making major dietary changes. But a low-fat diet diet and the Mediterranean diet have been found to significantly improve blood sugar, although the Mediterranean approach seems to top the charts.
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The fall is a busy time of year for traveling. Some are taking fall family vacations and some are traveling for the upcoming holidays. Either way, you may be dreading another long road trip with your children.
Sometimes a family vacation isn’t really a vacation at all. No one seems to be having any fun. I have some ways to help you make the most of traveling with children!
The most important thing to remember when you travel with children is to set realistic travel goals and expectations. If a trip takes you 8 hours without children, you need to assume that it will take at least 10 hours with small children. Also, be careful of your travel times, you do not want to get stuck in traffic in a major city with hungry or potty-bound kids!
Be flexible when planning your road trip with children, plan frequent stops, even if only for 10 minutes at a time. Anything longer than 2 hours in the car and the whining will begin. Kids are just not designed to sit still in a confined space for long periods of time. Travel breaks with children can include state parks, rest areas, playgrounds at local parks, restaurants with play areas, or just a picnic table on the side of the road.
Make Activity Bags
Before we leave on a trip, I like to make an activity bag for each of my boys. I fill it with activities they can do during the trip and a few fun snacks as well. When possible, I like to theme the bag according to where we are going. If you are going to Disney World, buy Disney coloring books, fruit snacks, games, books, stickers, etc. If you are going to the beach, buy water-themed or summer-themed items. If you are going to an amusement park or zoo, include a guidemap of the park. This is so fun for the kids and it gets them excited about where we are headed! I also have a blast finding the stuff to fill the bags.
If you are headed to visit family, put together a small album of the people you will see and talk about each one of them with your children. This is a great way for them to get to know family and for you to recall your memories of family. Play a game of family trivia…see if your children can recall their own memories of family.
Always remember to pack your family’s essentials…wipes, hand sanitizer, paper towels, extra toilet paper, etc. If you have a child that is prone to motion sickness, be prepared. There are many options to help cope with motion sickness, talk to your doctor about all of them and which is best for your child. I like to use the motion sickness bracelets for my son. If you have a child with a disability or severe allergies, make certain their medical bracelet information is up to date.
If you are traveling with a toddler, you may want to bring along a small potty or potty seat. Your toddler’s timing does not always coincide with an acceptable bathroom option.
Do not forget their favorite toy or stuffed animal. I usually allow my children to each pick a couple of their favorite things from home. Of course, you have to be careful with this as an open invitation. My 4 year old requested to bring his “Mickey Mouse” when we went to Disney World. Sounds like an easy request, however “Mickey Mouse” is a huge stuffed elephant that is larger than he. We were able to convince him to take something else, thank goodness because there weren’t enough seats in the van!
Encourage some quiet time during your trip. When we travel to my hometown in West Virginia, the view of the mountains is beautiful, especially in the fall! Turn off the electronics, put away the crayons, activities and games and just enjoy the view and quiet. Reflect on God’s creation and everything around you. If you want to do a family devotional about God’s creation or just talk about the things around you, this is a good time to do that.
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made -Romans 1:20
Here is a list of ideas to help entertain your children on road trips…
Maps or a road atlas: For older children, include a road map of your trip and let them help navigate. This also helps with the times they ask, “Are we there yet?”you simply answer, “You tell me!”.
Notebook: Bring a spiral bound notebook for each of your children and they can journal about the trip. Have them write about the oversized peach or giant cow they saw! This will be a fun way to look back on the places you have been and some of the fun memories that were made.
Metal Cookie Sheet: One of the best travel tools for children is a small metal cookie sheet. Use it as a tray table and it gives your child something to draw/color on and it keeps the crayons and pencils from rolling away! You can also go to the dollar store and buy magnets with letters and numbers or with their favorite characters and they can use the tray to create their favorite scene from a book or movie.
Audio Books: If you have access to a CD player or in our case, a cassette player, be sure to include audio books. Many are also available to download for MP3 players. There are many fun family friendly options available. My family loves the Adventures in Odyssey Series.
Portable DVD Player: If you have access to a DVD player in the car, it can definitely entertain them for a while. Bring a variety of movies from home or if you want something new and different, you can go to your local library and borrow movies. Also, many kiosk DVD rental companies allow you to pick up and drop off at different locations. Pick up a movie on your way out-of-town and drop it off when you get there, this way you only pay for one night’s rental. Make sure you bring movies that appeal to the whole family. If you have multiple players, remember to bring headphones! The last thing you want to hear is everyone fighting over the volume of the different movies playing.
Handheld Gaming Devices: If your child has a Leapster, MobiGo, or Nintendo, this is a great way to keep them busy for a while. I recommend having screen time guidelines on the road. As entertained as they may seem while playing, too much screen time on the road can cause headaches and motion sickness which makes for upset and whiny children.
There are many fun activities to pack that are great for road trips. The key is to stay away from tiny pieces or messy activities. These are a few road trip-friendly activities:
- Pipe Cleaners and/or Wiki Sticks – these are so fun and there are so many different possibilities with them. You can bend them and shape them to make jewelry, or animals, or trucks, or whatever you can dream up!
- Travel board games are great for older kids, but be careful because some of them have tiny pieces. Most are made with magnetic pieces so they do not move around while the car is moving.
- Coloring/Activity Books and crayons and pencils.
There are many fun travel games to play that include the scenery around you. When I was growing up, this was our favorite travel activity! These get the whole family involved and make for very fun memories!
- I Spy is fun for the whole family, especially the toddlers!
- The ABC Game is fun and actually gets the younger ones thinking about the alphabet! Who knew learning could be so fun? There are many different variations of this game. Instructables explains it well here.
- It is also fun to see how many different state license plates you can find or play it in the style of BINGO for a more competitive approach. KOA has instructions here.
- Play a fun travel version of BINGO. Momsminivan has some fun printable BINGO cards for the road. You will also find other fun travel games to print.
- You can also create your own roadside scavenger hunt, include things like cow, red truck, school bus, purple car, a particular restaurant sign, etc.
Snacks, of course!
Be sure to bring snacks that are road-friendly. Chocolate, sticky, and crumbly snacks can quickly become a huge mess in your car! Things like pretzels, granola bars, dried fruit, jerky, and fruit snacks are good options. If you have a cooler, grapes, cherry tomatoes, carrots, and mini sandwiches are great for traveling.
Just remember to enjoy this time with your family. You have an amazing opportunity for quality time with your children, are you going to embrace it?
I pray for safe and pleasant travels for your family, wherever you may go.
The Traveler’s Psalm
I will lift up my eyes to the hills— From whence comes my help? 2 My help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth. 3 He will not allow your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber. 4Behold, He who keeps Israel Shall neither slumber nor sleep. 5 The Lord is your keeper; The Lord is your shade at your right hand. 6 The sun shall not strike you by day, Nor the moon by night. 7 The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul. 8 The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in From this time forth, and even forevermore.
~by Heidi, Heidi’s Miscellany
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Success has a thousand fathers, as the saying goes. Social network Facebook is no exception. Aaron Greenspan, a college classmate of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, has said he came up with the idea of of a college-focused social network before Zuckerberg did — and grabbed some attention as a result.
Now, he’s grabbing more attention. He’s trying to publish a book called AUTHORITAS: One Student’s Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era, that tells his side of the story.
However, Greenspan’s publisher (also his own company, apparently), called Think Computer, was denied the right to advertise the book because it used the “Facebook” name.
Now Think is petitioning the US patent office to cancel the Facebook trademark on three grounds: “priority of use, genericness, and fraud committed on the agency itself.”
This follows up on a lawsuit filed by another would-be Facebook cofounder, rival social network ConnectU, that is reportedly nearing settlement.
See the Think Computer press release, below, for more:
Think Takes Legal Action Against Facebook, Inc.
PALO ALTO, CA — April 15, 2008 — Think Computer Corporation today filed a Petition to Cancel with the United States Patent and Trademark Office regarding Facebook, Inc.’s registered trademark on the term “FACEBOOK,” after Think Press was denied the right to advertise its upcoming book, Authoritas: One Student’s Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era for trademark reasons.
Think began using the term “The Facebook” to describe one of the components of its houseSYSTEM student portal at Harvard University in the summer of 2003. It launched the feature on September 19, 2003, several months before thefacebook.com began accepting new users on February 4, 2004. thefacebook.com was later incorporated as Facebook, Inc. Think CEO Aaron Greenspan, who authored the book in question, was classmates with Facebook, Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard when both sites were on-line.
Think’s petition asks the USPTO to cancel the Facebook, Inc. trademark on three grounds: priority of use, genericness, and fraud committed on the agency itself.
About Think Computer Corporation
Think was founded in 1998 with the long-term goal of developing simple, useful computer software. From its inception through 2001, the company offered IT consulting services to over 150 clients. Today, it writes software programs that make businesses and organizations worldwide more productive. Think is on the web at http://www.thinkcomputer.com.
[Photo via The New York Times]
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Biography of Fritz Machlup (1902-1983)
Biography of Fritz Machlup (1902-1983)
By Mark Thornton (Columbus State University)
"A return to Austrian School tenets, both in capital theory and in monetary theory, and also in business-cycle theory, is absolutely needed."
- The Stock Market, Credit and Capital Formation by Fritz Machlup (1931, 1940): translated from a revised version of the German edition by Vera C. Smith (a pdf file)
- Read an interview with Machlup in the Austrian Economics Newsletter
Fritz Machlup (Dec. 15, 1902-Jan. 30, 1983), economist, was born in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, the son of Berthold Machlup owner of a cardboard-manufacturing business. He entered the University of Vienna in 1920 where he studied under Friedrich von Wieser and Ludwig von Mises (and became his professional advocate in later years). His dissertation on the gold- exchange standard was completed under von Mises in 1923 and published in 1925 as Die Goldkernwahrung. He married Marianne (Mitzi) Herzog in 1925 and they had a son and daughter.
Machlup became a partner in an Austrian cardboard-manufacturing firm in 1922 and helped form a paperboard corporation in Hungary in 1923. In 1927 he became a member of the Austrian cardboard cartel. Machlup also served as the treasurer and later secretary of the Austrian Economic Society and participated in the famous seminar of von Mises and the interdisciplinary seminar, the Geistkreis.
As an academic in Austria, Machlup published a book in 1927 on the adoption of the gold- exchange standard in Europe, two important articles on the effects of German war reparations payments, and an important book on the stock market and captial formation in 1931. As Austria and the World slipped deeper into depression, Machlup wrote 150 newspaper articles advocating liberal economic policy.
In 1933, Machlup accepted a Rockefeller fellowship that took him to Columbia, Harvard, Chicago, and Stanford Universities and put him into contact with most of the leading members of the American economics profession. He held a professorship at the University of Buffalo from 1935-1947 and served in visiting positions at Cornell University (1937-8), Northwestern University (1939), University of California at Berkeley (1939), University of Michigan (1941), and two stints each at Harvard (1936 & 1938-39), and Stanford (1940 & 1947). In the war effort, Machlup served as a special consultant to the Post War Labor Problems Division of the US Department of Labor (1942-43) and in the Office of Alien Property while a visiting professor at American University (1943-46). During this period he wrote extensively including seminal papers on the supply and demand of foreign exchange and an influencial book that exposed the limitations of the Keynesian multiplier approach to foreign exchange and national income. In 1946, Machlup defended economic theory in research on industrial organization and exposed the problems of using questionnaires in empirical research.
In 1947, Machlup became professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins University. His 1949 book on the basing-point system that was published in the wake of the Surpreme Court's decision against basing point pricing was a tour-de-force and is given some credit for President Truman's subsequent veto of further attempts to legalize the practice. His work in industrial organization continued with two books in 1952 where he established the primacy of theory and demonstrated that that the purely factual approach in economics contained undisclosed theory. He served as visiting professor at Columbia University (1948), University of California at Los Angeles (1949), Kyoto and Doshisha Universities of Japan (1955), and as Ford Foundation Research fellow (1957-58).
Fritz Machlup began the investigation of innovation and knowledge in 1950 leading to the publication of The Economic Review of the Patent System (1958), important articles in 1958 and 1960, The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States (1962), and Education and Economic Growth (1970). He published the three volume Information through the Printed Word: The Dissemination of Scholarly, Scientific, and Intellectual Knowledge (1978) and the first three volumes of the projected ten volume series Knowledge: Its Creation, Distribution, and Economic Significance (1980, 1982, 1983).
Machlup was the Walker professor of internation finance and director of the International Finance Section at Princeton University from 1960 to 1971. He was visiting professor at City University of New York (1963-64), New York University (1969-71), Osaka University (1970), University of Melbourne (1970), and was consultant to the US Treasury (1965-77). He had worked on international monetary economics throughout the 1950s and provided a comprehensive asssessment of the looming international monetary problems in the early 1960s. In 1963, he formed an organization of academics, known as the Bellagio Group, to study this problem, develop an academic consensus, and offer practical solutions. His success in this venture attracted the attention of governments and central bankers and resulted in the publication of numerous books and articles on the international currency crisis and its solution. Robert Triffin dubbed him "the unquestioned intellectual leader and mentor of our vain efforts to reform the crumbling international monetary system." Ironically, his dismissal of the traditional gold standard as a possible solution on grounds of political practicality, led to a temporary split with his mentor, Ludwig von Mises. Later, when Mises was seeking a publisher for his 1949 work Human Action, Machlup intervened on his behalf with Yale University Press. Machlup's influence was decisive in bringing this great book, the culmination of the Austrian School, to light.
In 1971, Machlup began commuting to New York University. He published Optimum Social Welfare and Productivity with Jan Tinbergen, Abram Bergson, and Oskar Morgenstern in 1972. While continuing his massive projects on the international monetary system and the economics of knowledge, he published A History of Thought on Economic Integration (1977) and Methodology of Economics and Other Social Sciences (1978). He died in Princeton, New Jersey shortly after finishing the third volume of Knowledge.
In addition to his offices in the Austrian Economic Society, Machlup served as President of the Southern Economic Association (1960), Vice-President (1956) and President (1966) of the American Economic Association, and President of the International Economic Association (1971 74). He was also an active member of the American Association of University Professors, contributing articles to the Bulletin on academic freedom, tenure, and the business of education and by serving as President of the Association from 1962 to 1964. Fritz Machlup was very influencial on the development of economics by making contributions in nearly every field and by making crucial clarifications in methodology, theory, and policy. The Nobel committee listed his name several times as a candidate and Nobel Laurette, Theodore Schultz, said that he was "every inch an economist."
Fritz Machlup's papers are in the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace Archives at Stanford University. No biography is available, but much biographical information is contained in Breadth and Depth in Economics: Fritz Machlup--The Man and His Ideas, edited by Jacob S. Dreyer (1978). A bibliography of his work is contained in the selected="true" Economic Writings of Fritz Machlup edited by George Bitros (1976). His early work on the language of economics is collected in Essays in Economic Semantics (1963, 1967, 1975). His most important papers include "The Commonsense of the Elasticity of Substitution," Review of Economic Studies 2 (1935); "The Theory of Foreign Exchanges," Economica N.S. 6 (1939) & N.S. 7 (1940); "Elasticity Pessimism in International Trade," Economia Internazionale 3 (1950); "Concepts of Competition and Monopoly," American Economic Review 45 (1955); "The Problem of Verification in Economics," Southern Economic Journal 22 (1955); "Relative Prices and Aggregate Spending in the Analysis of Devaluation," American Economic Review 45 (1955); "Theories of the Firm: Marginalist, Mangerial, Behavioral," American Economic Review 57 (1967).
Read an interview with Machlup in the Austrian Economics Newsletter
Mark Thornton is a professor of economics at Columbus State University. email@example.com
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Pre-race pasta parties sure sound like a fun way to enjoy the night before the race. But does carb loading really work, and how can we use it to achieve peak performance?
Sugar is back in the news as researchers suggest it can do more damage to our bodies than just expanding waistlines.
The smell of freshly-baked cookies or a big bar of chocolate may put a smile on our face. But these sugary treats may not be the best way to turn that frown upside-down.
Yes, it’s a score on a scale of 1 to 100 (that has nothing to do with a spelling test)— but what exactly is the deal with the glycemic index?
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France vs. the US: Wind, nukes and oil spills
The United States and France have a strange rivalry. American revolutionaries were helped by France and in turn inspired French republicans. One hundred years later, France gave the Statue of Liberty to the US as a centennial gift. Things soured after the World Wars and years of hegemonic struggle vis-à-vis Anglo vs. Franco cultural-linguistic dominance.
In other words, to quote the Dandy Warhols: ‘a long time ago, we used to be friends’.
Nowadays anything the French do seems to raise hackles on the back of many red-blooded American necks, at the very least for ‘red state’ Americans. On the other hand, wine-drinking, cheese-eating, NPR-listening liberal do-gooders love French stuff. On the other side of the pool, France can’t get enough of Schwarzenegger films, hip-hop and McDonald’s – yet the French seemed to embody the anti-American sentiment of Europe during the Bush years, as opposed to the UK’s ‘New Labour lapdog syndrome’.
Let’s briefly compare the energy and environmental circumstances of the two erstwhile allies. The United States is a big oil nation – in case you didn’t know – while the French are big on nuclear power (see France’s energy stats from 2004 here).
The current massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico provides an opportune moment for a comparison between the two countries regarding energy and the environment. France 24 contrasts America’s infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez spill with France’s current plans to construct new offshore wind turbines:
In the short term, the slick killed 250,000 sea birds, 2800 otters and around 22 orcas. Today, at first glance, the shores look clean but scrap away the surface sands and the consequences of the accident can still be seen. Salmon stocks remain significantly lowered and commercial fishing of herring is still outlawed. Meanwhile off France’s oil free shores; ten sites have been picked to plant offshore windmills, part of new plans surrounding the renewable source of energy. The government has pledged to build at least 500 windmills every year.
Bit of cherry picking, for sure, but if the environment is a big laboratory – which is how energy and agricultural industries treat it – then can’t we at least learn from our successes and mistakes as well as those of our friends and rivals?
Check out the entire story from France 24, which includes a 9-minute video report and a feature on how to ‘make water’ with wind turbines.
I’m not saying we should put a giant wind turbine on Ellis Island in place of Lady Liberty – or in Paris in lieu of the Eiffel Tower, for that matter. But maybe if we saw wind power as something monumental rather than a necessary eyesore as many affluent Americans and Europeans see it, the future – and our transatlantic rivals – would perhaps look a little bit better as well.
by Graham Land
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Does anyone have some memories to share from your previous dogs? I’ll love to hear from you. One of my previous dog (Cookie) hated frogs & cats. He loved to wear my reading glasses & each time I wanted to grab them he turned his head. I believe Cookie thought he was human ha ha. He didn’t sit like a dog & he loved watching TV. He had...Read More
While not a pet in any conventional sense, people around the world came to love Pete the Moose, the Vermont ungulate who received a gubernatorial pardon when he became the center of a swirling controversy over the treatment of wild animals in domestic situations in 2009.
Pete the Moose was mauled by dogs when he was only five days old. Badly ...Read More
Like many phrases evoking animals, “raining cats and dogs” has been used so commonly that its origins are taken for granted. And those who do wonder why people started associating heavy rainfall with falling pets will find the phrase’s origins shrouded in myth and conflicting interpretations. Many of these interpretations ar...Read More
Angel Cats, a collection of stories compiled by Allen and Linda Anderson, tries to set itself apart from the admittedly bloated genre of sentimental feline-themed nonfiction books. It doesn’t just have stories about people who love their cats, it has stories about people who love their cats and think said cats are messengers from the Di...Read More
The Turkish Van is famed as the "swimming cat", one of the few felines that actually embraces water. It's also a symbol of the Kurdish people, found in art and culture dating back to the 16th century. However, as the indigenous Kurds were persecuted by the Turkish Republic, so were their beloved cats. Turkish Vans were targeted for extermina...Read More
African grey parrots are popular for their friendly nature and speech-mimicking abilities. However, their abilities go far beyond copying what they hear. The African grey is one of the most intelligent animals on the planet, and their walnut-sized brains have cognitive abilities closer to humans than other birds. This was proven to the world by ...Read More
Cats are notorious for their fervent hatred of water, but this trait isn't exclusive to all breeds. The Turkish Van is a type of cat that has become famous for its ability not only to swim in water, but to actively seek it. But unlike many breeds, the Turkish Van is not the result of domestic breeding, but a naturally occurring cat tha...Read More
When our dog died, we chose not to keep her remains as displaying a conventional urn would be depressing and focus on the loss. Looking at photos was comforting, which inspired me, a mosaic artist, to develope a process of incorporating a photo montage into a beautiful mosaic design to transform an urn into a personal and uplifting piece of ar...Read More
Vicki Myron's memoir Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World, was an unprecedented success. This is because the story of Dewey Readmore Books, who was found cruelly dumped in the book drop of the Spencer, Iowa library when he was just a stray kitten, was more than just Myron's love letter to her cat. Dewey (and by extensi...Read More
Sometimes real stories do have happy endings-- even for those who killed Harry Potter's parents.
The saga of Charlie (a.k.a Voldemog), a 14-year-old cat who lost his nose and ears to skin cancer, reached its conclusion yesterday. Living in a shelter in the West End of London, it was feared that the older, deformed feline would never find ...Read More
Every person can benefit from animal companionship, even those more powerful than a locomotive. But conventional animals aren't so impressive next to Superman. So, believing that a flying man in a cape was too down to earth, DC Comics created Super-animal characters, and eventually had enough of the caped critters to form a Legion of Super-P...Read More
Happy Thanksgiving, animal lovers! In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I wanted to share a personal story as well as extend my gratitude to the man responsible for my earliest childhood experience with dogs.
He lived at the very bottom of my street. He was a quiet type, but also kind of reminded me of "the man in the b...Read More
Few people with access to multimedia haven't heard of Marley and Me. John Grogan's newspaper columns about his lovably ill-behaved Labrador Retriever Marley were a massive success, and the book he wrote about the dog cemented the story's status. Marley and Me's narrative strongly resonates with the public, because it simultaneous...Read More
One of the most addictive sites on the internet is KittenWar, which works exactly as the name suggests. Created by Fraser Leway and Tom Ryan, the site works by having its viewers vote for which kitten pictures are the cutest. Though battles are temporary, the kittens' profiles retain popularity rankings, and some lucky ( or unlucky ) cats will r...Read More
For a cat that started as a sickly stray, Dewey Readmore Books did remarkably well. Vicki Myron, a librarian at the Spencer Public Library in Iowa, had no idea how far his influence would spread when she found him cruelly stuffed in the book drop slot. But Dewey not only became a fixture of the library, but a symbol of the town’s spirit. I...Read More
Lessons from Stanley the Cat is a self-help book with a much simpler-- and debatably more effective-- approach. The author, psychotherapist Jennifer Freed, shares the wisdom she learned from her late cat Stanley, with cute cartoons from Swedish illustrator Tone Gellerstedt illustrating those points. Stanley's lessons range from simple common sen...Read More
The ocelot is a small wildcat found in forests extending from the Southwestern United States all the way down to South America. The ocicat is a renowned cat breed, named for its resemblance to the ocelot. The resemblance is a large part of the breed's appeal, because of the mystique surrounding the ocelot-- their distinctive spotted coat makes t...Read More
A common folk myth in the Northeastern States is that the Maine Coon breed of cat is part raccoon. The legend is fueled by the breed's appearance, because they have quite a few traits similar to the wild animal. They have long, bushy tails that sometimes have ringed patterns, they have distinct tufted ears, they are excellent climbers, and-- by ...Read More
Any one shopping in Japan will come across a store which has a maneki neko statue on display. The statue, which translates into English as " welcoming cat ", takes the shape of a chubby white cat sitting on its hind legs and raising one paw. Several folk tales have been told regarding the origins of the maneki neko, and they all treat the feline...Read More
The Cold War space race between United States and Russia demanded intensive research before either side was ready to send human beings into off of the Earth. At first, the physical effects of outer space were tested on animals. The first animal in space was Laika, a three-year-old stray dog found on the streets of Moscow. In 1957, she was put in...Read More
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Benefits of Women Financial Grants
Filed Under: Business, US | Posted: 01/08/2013 at 4:50AM
Comments | Region: United States
World is not as favorable as it seems to the fair sex or the other half of the population. All around the world there are several countries where women are not given equal rights and opportunities to grow their overall personality. Girls are not provided with basic education so they are unable to understand what is going on around them and do not question any maltreatment done to them in their country. If any brave heart woman or girl gathers courage to move forward and raise her voice against all the odds done to them, she is brutally punished by the orthodox society. United States of America is not at all like this because here all the women are treated equally and with respect.
Federal government of United States has taken serious steps to help every women and girl in the country. They provide government grants to the NGOs who work for the betterment of the women and girls belonging to the migrant communities and minority communities seeking residence in the country. Generally government funding is used in three fields:
Education: federal government of United States understands how important it is to have basic and higher education for overall development of any being especially women. Even if the women or girl is not a permanent resident of USA then also she can contribute a great deal to the growth of the country by her education. All the girls are given opportunity to seek federal financial help to support their education in form of Pell grants. With aid of this grant they can avail enough funds to pay for their tuition fee of the academic year in college.
Business: women are good in running a business as well and not only any household. With help of the women business grants they can start a new business or expand their own business to the next level. Business grants are also helpful if you want to upgrade the technology used or to utilize some energy efficient methods like solar energy or green energy to save cost of the business. Several state governments are trying to invite business houses or companies to invest in their state through business grants.
Real estate grants US are also helpful in increasing the business as it will provide you free land or at a discounted price. Federal government promotes small scale business with this because they are the ones who pay most of the taxes and higher around 50% of the total work force in united states. To know more about these grants visit newusagrants.com.
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Both Obama and Romney are assaulting public education. Five threats, in particular, stand out
Here in the industrialized world’s most economically unequal nation, public education is still held up as the great equalizer — if not of outcome, then of opportunity. Schools are expected to be machines that overcome poverty, low wages, urban decay and budget cuts while somehow singlehandedly leveling the playing field for the next generation. And if they don’t fully level the playing field, they are at least supposed to act as a counter-force against both racial and economic inequality.
That vision, however, is now under assault by both political parties in America. On the Republican side, the Washington Post reports Mitt Romney just unveiled “a pro-choice, pro-voucher, pro-states-rights education program that seems certain to hasten the privatization of the public education system” completely. On the other side, Wall Street titans in the Democratic Party with zero experience in education policy are marshaling tens of millions of dollars to do much of what Romney aims to do as president – and they often have a willing partner in President Barack “Race to the Top” Obama and various Democratic governors.
Funded by corporate interests who naturally despise organized labor, both sides have demonized teachers’ unions as the primary problem in education — somehow ignoring the fact that most of the best-performing public school systems in America and in the rest of the world are, in fact, unionized. (Are we never supposed to ask how, if unions are the primary problem, so many unionized schools in America and abroad do so well?) Not surprisingly, these politicians and activists insist they are driven solely by their regard for the nation’s children — and they expect us to ignore the massive amount of money their benefactors (and even the activists personally) stand to make by transforming public education into yet another private profit center. Worse, they ask us also to forget that in the last few years of aggressive “reform” (read: evisceration) of public education, the education gap has actually gotten far worse, with the most highly touted policies put in place now turning the schoolhouse into yet another catalyst of crushing inequality.
Here are the five most prominent of those policies — and how they threaten to make this country even more economically unequal and racially segregated than ever before.
1. Unequal Funding Formulas
A half-century of social science research confirms that factors outside the school — and specifically, poverty — are far more determinative in student achievement than anything that happens inside the school. This is why, as both New York University’s Diane Ravitch and Dissent magazine’s Joanne Barkan note, public schools in America’s wealthiest enclaves consistently rank among the highest achieving in the world.
Knowing that, it stands to reason that schools in the lowest-income areas should receive disproportionately more education funding than schools in high-income areas so that they can combat the systemic out-of-classroom factors that schools in wealthy neighborhoods don’t face. With this extra money, they might be able to fund the so-called “wraparound” services that even reformers like Geoffrey Canada admit are crucial to the success of public schools in high-poverty locales.
Yet, it’s the other way around. As a 2011 U.S. Department of Education report documented, “many high-poverty schools receive less than their fair share of state and local funding” leaving “students in high-poverty schools with fewer resources than schools attended by their wealthier peers.” This inequity is further exacerbated by local property-tax-based education funding formulas that often generate far more resources for wealthy high-property-value school districts than for destitute low-property-value enclaves. Inequality also is intensified by devious new taxpayer-subsidized scholarship programs that, according to the New York Times, “have been twisted to benefit private schools at the expense of the neediest children” in traditional public schools.
Policy-wise, changing such funding formulas to make sure schools in poor areas get more funding than schools in wealthy neighborhoods is fairly straightforward. But, then, the commonsense idea threatens the gated-community ethos of the wealthy and powerful who control our politics. It also fundamentally challenges the core principles of a nation that still likens spreading the wealth to confiscatory socialism. Thus, the idea remains off the table — and consequently the increasingly unequal funding of education now effectively subsidizes a system that is cementing inequality for the long haul.
In practice, that means schools in low-income areas continue to receive comparatively less funding to recruit teachers, upgrade classrooms, reduce class sizes and sustain all the other basics of a good education.
2. Vouchers and Charter Schools
In national politics, private education profiteers and anti-government ideologues have successfully manufactured a debate over privately administered charter schools and private-school vouchers, insisting that, if created all over the nation, they will improve educational achievement. “Manufactured,” though, is the key word — because when it comes to results, there is no debate over what the data show.
Stanford University’s landmark study of charters found that while “17 percent of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than traditional public schools, 37 percent of charter schools showed gains that were worse than their traditional public school counterparts” — meaning that, in total, charters actually harm overall student achievement. (Those results were corroborated by the Education Department’s National Center on Education Statistics.) Likewise, data from the nation’s largest voucher system prove that voucher-subsidized students do not systemically outperform students in traditional public school systems.
These facts, unfortunately, have little — if any — impact on the political rhetoric about education. But, then, at least there’s an ongoing discussion about the academic effectiveness of charters and vouchers. The same cannot be said for how those charter and voucher programs threaten to severely exacerbate racial and socioeconomic inequality.
When it comes to charter schools, Businessweek’s headline says it best: “Segregated Charter Schools Evoke Separate But Equal Era in U.S.” Here’s what we know, as I recounted in a recent newspaper column:
According to a new report from the National Education Policy Center, however, charters “tend to be more racially segregated than traditional public schools” – and in lots of places, they seem to be openly hostile to children who are poor, who are from minority communities or who have special education needs.
A smattering of headlines from across the country tells that story. “Nashville Charter Schools Blasted Over Racial Imbalance,” blared a recent headline in the Tennessean. “Charter Schools Face Discrimination Complaints,” read The Chronicle of Philanthropy. “Colorado Charter Schools Enroll Fewer With Needs,” screamed the Denver Post. “Charter Schools Enrolling Low Number of Poor Students,” reported the Miami Herald. The list goes on and on.
When it comes to vouchers, we can expect much the same if current pro-voucher efforts and a new Romney Administration successfully expand the idea nationwide. We know we can expect this because that’s exactly what happened in the nation that most recently went to a voucher system.
As University of Texas researchers documented in their study of Chile’s national voucher program:
Private-voucher schools have not only not reduced educational inequality, but also … have increased segmentation of the educational system according to (socioeconomic status) of students. Thus, the low and medium-low classes attend public schools, medium and medium-high classes study in private-vouchers, and the elite are educated in private-paid schools.
Why do vouchers increase inequality? Because they typically do not fund the entire private-school tuition bill, nor do they typically force private schools to accept the voucher as the sum total tuition. Not surprisingly, then, the wealthy are able to fill in the tuition gap with their own disposable income, while lower-income families can’t. Consequently, the voucher becomes a taxpayer handout to already middle- and upper-class parents to subsidize their children’s private school education, leaving economically disadvantaged kids in a newly defunded public school. Indeed, as the Texas researchers say, “Chilean parents from medium and medium-high classes were able to pay the additional money required, whereas the poorest parents did not have this choice.”
This very dynamic is already prevalent in the crypto-voucher programs being pioneered in states throughout the country. As the New York Times recently documented, conservative lawmakers have set up scholarship programs that pretend to be charitable endeavors but instead are designed as a tax subsidy for wealthy parents to finance their kids’ private school education. Because poorer families can’t afford those tuitions, even with the tax subsidy, low-income kids often remain in public education systems. Thanks to the way the scholarships divert public money into private schools, those public education systems are further depleted of resources, thus creating yet more educational inequality.
3. The Fee-Based Public School
For public education to be the great social equalizer it is supposed to be, it must limit economic barriers to entry. It must, in other words, be as close to free as possible. That’s why the new move to fee-based public schools is so troubling — it further turns public education into yet another instrument of economic stratification.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, schools across the country are “imposing or boosting fees for everything from enrolling in honors English to riding the bus.”
The fees run the gamut. In Kansas, for instance, one school district has created a $90 across-the-board “participation fee” for all students in order to fund extracurricular activities. In Maryland, it’s special fees for Advanced Placement biology courses. And perhaps worst of all, in Colorado’s largest school district, administrators are throwing kids off school buses until their parents pay a stiff transportation fee.
The move to such regressive fees has been prompted by the conservative movement’s success in draining government revenues, anti-tax politicians’ unwillingness to embrace new levies, and communities’ refusal to embrace measures to make up for budget shortfalls. Left without resources, local school administrators have thus resorted to fees. As one Maryland school official put it: “The reality is that the money has to come from somewhere.”
In the process, the new system is creating a whole new meaning for educational inequality. No longer is the inequity only between poor and rich school districts, it’s now between poor and rich kids within individual schools, themselves. Indeed, if high-income parents can pay the fees, their kids can have access to basic educational services — but when low-income parents can’t pay those fees, their kids are denied those same services.
4. Higher-Education Tuition Increases
For much the same reason, K-12 school administrators are moving their schools to fee-based models, and public universities have been jacking up tuition rates at a pace that far outstrips inflation. In just the last year, for example, tuition at these institutions rose a whopping 8.3 percent as universities sought to make up for legislatures’ huge reductions in higher-education funding.
At the same time, the New York Times reports that both private and public college scholarships have been cut. Additionally, as both Mitt Romney’s Wall Street-centric student loan initiative and Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget prove, federal loans and grants would only become more anemic in a Republican-dominated Washington.
The aggregate result of all this is to make access to higher education even more driven by economic privilege than it has been in the past. If your parents are wealthy and can pay ever higher tuition, you will have access to higher education, which gives you a better chance of higher wages. But if your parents aren’t wealthy and therefore can’t follow Mitt Romney’s request to lend you money, you either can’t go to college and will miss out on those opportunities for career advancement, or you are forced to assume crushing student debt. (No doubt, free college in other industrialized nations is a big part of why those other nations have higher rates of social mobility and lower rates of economic inequality than the United States.)
While it’s certainly true that economic status has always played a role in higher education in America, the key difference today is that economic status now increasingly affects access to public universities, not just private ones. That’s a major shift because those public universities were set up specifically to expand access — and mitigate economic obstacles — to higher education. Now, with financial barriers so high, they are becoming just another instrument of inequality.
5. Differential Tuition Rates Based on Majors
In 21st century America, math, science and business majors often make more money in the job market than their peers in other majors. In that sense, majoring in such subjects can be a means of moving up the economic ladder.
Unfortunately, more and more public universities are instituting regressive fees on those students who want to pursue those majors. As USA Today recently reported:
A growing number of public universities are charging higher tuition for math, science and business programs …
More than 140 public universities now use “differential tuition” plans, up 19% since 2006, according to research from Cornell’s Higher Education Research Institute. That number is increasing as states cut higher-education spending and schools try to pay for expensive technical programs …
Some worry that higher tuition will put off low-income students.
“The fear in all of this is will it lead to people being rationed out of classes?” said Ronald Ehrenberg, the Cornell researcher behind the tuition study.
That fear is legitimate. Already facing high tuition and massive debt, lower-income students are naturally more sensitive to add-on fees than wealthy students. The fees, then, serve to create a powerful deterrent to low-income students to major in precisely the fields that typically generate higher post-college incomes.
Ultimately, just like K-12 fees transform economic inequality into a factor inside individual schools, so to do “differential tuition” rates. In this case, low-income students face not just barriers to a given set of more expensive private schools, they now face new economic barriers to particular studies within the schools they somehow manage to afford. And because of that, low-income students will have an even harder time than rich kids in getting a post-college job that pays a good wage.
David Sirota is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and the best-selling author of the books "Hostile Takeover," "The Uprising" and "Back to Our Future." E-mail him at email@example.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com. More David Sirota.
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- Obama: Moore "needs to get everything it needs right away"
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- Still no polling backlash for Obama
- Oklahoma senator wants to offset tornado aid with other cuts
Featured Slide Shows
The week in 10 picsclose X
- 1 of 11
Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
Credit: AP/LM Otero
Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
Credit: AP/Matt Rourke
A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
Credit: AP/Molly Riley
Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite
Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster
O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid
Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield
When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin
A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin
Recent Slide Shows
- 1 of 11
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Miranda Devine has skewered the Australian government's slurs, lies, and distortions against Tony Abbott, leader of the opposition. She suggests that the behaviour of Julia Gillard confirms some of the worst stereotypes of women. The antics of Gillard and her colleagues have brought disgrace and shame upon the heads of Australian females.
WATCHING Julia Gillard desperately flail around last week in the last death throes of her government, you could wish her prime ministership had been different. But as a woman I’m embarrassed, insulted and angry that the stocks of women in power have been brought so low.So, Tony Abbott is a misogynist. What is the evidence? Manufactured, concocted slurs and spin are being put forward as "evidence".
Playing the gender card is the pathetic last refuge of incompetents and everyone in the real world knows it. It offends the Australian notion of the fair go. Australians who were delighted, regardless of politics and the way she got the job, that a strong, agreeable, seemingly capable woman was in The Lodge, have been sorely disappointed, to the point of cynicism and despair, by Gillard’s self-indulgent performance “calling out” Tony Abbott on misogyny.
This was the best her enormous stable of spin-doctors could do to justify the accusations of misogyny they have been throwing around; it boiled down to five charges:
THAT Abbott did make sexist remarks in 1998, during a roundtable discussion with then-NSW Treasurer Michael Costa about the under-representation of women in positions of power.
Costa: “I want my daughter to have as much opportunity as my son.”Abbott “completely” wants his three daughters to have equal opportunities to take powerful jobs, but he asks whether men might have an innate advantage. He wasn’t asserting it as fact, but as a discussion point, and it’s well worth pondering.
Abbott: “Yeah, I completely agree, but what if men are by physiology or temperament, more adapted to exercise authority or to issue command?”
For instance, voice is very important to demonstrate authority. A man with a booming baritone will command attention. Height is another issue. Men are usually taller than woman, and height generally correlates with high office. But we all know people who command authority, whether male or female, just by the power of their personality. What qualities do they have that help them transcend any physiological deficits, and how can we learn from them?
In any case, the dearth of women in high places is hardly because of sexism any more than it is because they lack talent. It is mainly because of individual women’s choices. Many have passed up opportunities offered to them, in some cases ahead of equally deserving male colleagues, because they preferred to nurture their families. That’s the real silent conversation.
Charge number two against Abbott:
THAT in 2004 he did say: “Abortion is the easy way out.”
The line comes from a nuanced speech which Abbott gave in 2004, in which he concluded: “Even those who think that abortion is a woman’s right should be troubled by the fact that 100,000 Australian women choose to destroy their unborn babies every year.”
Any reasonable person would conclude that he was no extremist, was respectful of different views, and compassionate about the plight of women with unwanted pregnancies.This is the line which so offends the Prime Minister, in context:
“To a pregnant 14-year-old struggling to grasp what’s happening, for example, a senior student with a whole life mapped out or a mother already failing to cope under difficult circumstances, abortion is the easy way out. It’s hardly surprising that people should choose the most convenient exit from awkward situations.”Abbott’s offence is that he holds different views on abortion to those of most women in the Labor party.
But is that a crime? Abbott’s colleague, Opposition Foreign Affairs minister Julie Bishop, declared last week that she, too, disagrees with Abbott on abortion, “but I respect his views. They happen to be different to those that I hold. That does not make him a sexist at all.” And she pointed out “when he was the Health minister, at no time did he seek to change the laws in relation to abortion in this country.”
So what Gillard objects to is that Abbott holds a different opinion to hers. That is a worrying trait in the most powerful person in the country.
Charge Three against Abbott:
THAT he did make a throwaway remark about “housewives” doing ironing. Big deal.
THAT he did say: “If the Prime Minister wants to, politically speaking, make an honest woman of herself”.
Whether he intended or not to use a turn of phrase associated with marriage, Abbott certainly has made the prime minister’s honesty a central criticism, and one which bites electorally because of her broken promise on the carbon tax.
THAT he did stand next to a sign that read: “Ditch the witch.”
Abbott didn’t know the sign was there when he addressed that carbon tax protest. He didn’t create the sign or organise for it to be there. For sure it was offensive. But it’s dishonest to pretend he was responsible. The elderly protesters that day behaved properly otherwise. They didn’t smash down the doors of parliament house like unionists had done, and they were offended at being branded a “convoy of incontinence” by Gillard ministers.
So there it is, Labor’s entire case of misogyny against Abbott. It’s a joke, and yet all week long, ministers hit the airwaves to claim Abbott hates women.
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The end of World War II brought hyper growth of industrialization in occupied Latvia introduced by the soviet regime that generated urbanisation and influx of workers from Soviet countries, predominantly Russia. That created an imbalance of demographic situation that is still felt. Daugavpils, the second biggest city of Latvia, is a vivid example of Soviet industrialisation programme as more than 70% its current population are Russian-speakers.
This photo essay explores emigrants from former Soviet Countries that came in search for work and better way of life. After collapse of the Soviet regime and Latvia becoming part of the European Union the former industry workers found themselves in changed and utterly unfamiliar political and economic setting that is still regarded with animosity.
A tram, unaltered since decades, makes its way through the city as an expressive metaphor and living memory of past times. Primarily used by older generation it creates a setting of nostalgia, fused realties and sense of bewilderment. The whispering manner of talking, the clothing, the hairstyle, even the accessories add to an atmosphere reminiscent of once upon revered authoritarian regime.
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Publication Date:Oct 23, 2003
Source:Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation
English Hardcopy Black & White
Also Available in:
|English Hardcopy Black & White||
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, conducted by its newly appointed music director, performed a rarely heard composition. The musical performance was, by all accounts, superb. Although most in the audience cheered the performance, a few stormed out of the concert hall. These audience members were largely reacting to the high-tech mixed media show designed by a well-known artist that accompanied the performance. This performance was one of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's recent occasional and innovative breaks from concert tradition. The vice-president and general manager of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra recognized that opportunities to facilitate growth existed onstage and offstage for broadening and enriching the orchestra's services and the concert experiences of its audience.
- Geographic: United States
- Industry: Arts administration
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Even those sitting on a pile of gold need cash every once in a while.
That was the thinking behind a new product from Emirates Money that allows customers to borrow against the value of their gold.
It is the first such scheme in the Gulf, according to company officials, but similar to popular financing programmes in India and elsewhere in South Asia.
"The idea basically was these loans are very common in the subcontinent," says Vikas Thapar, the general manager of Emirates Money. "If you look at the UAE market, a lot of people hold a lot of gold, but the credit accessibility over the past few years has been slightly limited, as we all know."
The offering marks yet another step in the development of gold as a versatile financial instrument.
Emirates Money is a consumer finance subsidiary of Emirates NBD, the country's largest bank by assets. The company is offering loans of up to 80 per cent of the value of a consumer's gold, based on the spot price the day it is evaluated. A customer can submit gold bars, jewellery or bullion, but Emirates Money will only accept pieces that are 18 carats or more. The bank also notes that the gold deposits are insured and all transactions are recorded on camera. A customer must deposit at least Dh25,000, up to a maximum of Dh2 million, for a loan term of between six and 36 months.
Mr Thapar says he believes that the attraction for customers will be the potential to pay lower interest rates compared with other potential financing options.
He says most banks are offering salary transfer loans of between 11 per cent and 13 per cent annually, while self-employed individuals or those without positions at established companies pay between 16 per cent and 22 per cent.
"In this loan we are charging much less, 8 or 9 per cent," he says. "That allows customers to release the value of their gold without paying exorbitant rates on consumer loans." Emirates Money also charges a 1 per cent fee for processing the loan and calculating the value of the gold. The gold is stored in a vault at the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre Authority (DMCCA) and returned to the customer intact after the loan is repaid.
The price of gold has tripled in recent years, creating large stores of wealth in communities that use the precious metal as a traditional savings vehicle. It topped US$1,400 (Dh5,142) per troy ounce this month, up from less than $400 as recently as 2003.
In India, which is believed to hold 10 per cent of the world's gold, loans against gold are booming.
Many banks offer them, as well as specialised firms such as Muthoot and Manapurram, which claim to process gold loans within minutes. Emirates Money says it prices deposits within three to five days because it does not value the gold, but relies on the DMCCA to do so.
According to a recent survey by ICRA Management Consulting Services, India's gold loan industry grew 72 per cent in the past year.
The UAE boasts a large South Asian population, and gold is also a popular investment among GCC nationals and Arab expatriates, which makes Mr Thapar confident that the new offering will be well-received. "This is our first exposure [of this product] and we have already had 30 or 40 inquiries," Mr Thapar says.
While some gold enthusiasts will no doubt want to hang onto their stash for the long term, some advisers suggest investors may want to consider selling at least a portion of their holdings if they need cash rather than borrow against them.
"If there was ever a time to start selling out a little bit, this would be it. It has had a great run. It may make sense to lock in some profits," says Vince Truong, an adviser with Holborn Assets in Dubai.
To some extent, the introduction of gold loans is yet another indication of the metal's growing importance within the financial community. Less than a decade ago, the mining companies that funded the World Gold Council were thinking of shuttering the organisation, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal this week. The price was low and there were few buyers to help absorb a growing supply glut. To better market gold as an investment and make it more accessible to investors who were put off by the hassle of holding physical gold, the council created an exchange-traded fund under the symbol GLD. It is now the fastest-growing investment fund in history, according to the research firm Lipper, popular among everyone from hedge funds to individual investors.
The fund holds the equivalent of six months of the world's gold-mining production. Even one of the men who helped to create the GLD fund says the massive rally in gold prices will not last forever.
"We don't believe gold is always going to go up," he told The Wall Street Journal. "No investment does."
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The Forgotten War
If the Korean war of 1950 to 1953 that came close to taking my life has, indeed, been forgotten, certainly among the youth of our country, it may be due to its convenient omission by an educational system that is biased against United States involvement with democratic struggles of other countries across the globe. It could also be due to the fact that the war was never won. It might be time to turn off the soaps, the cartoons and the sports channels, to have serious discussions with your children about the history that you and your grandfather experienced, since the one proven fact of life is that history repeats itself. The Forgotten War, my war, the Korean War, cost over 52,000 young American lives, lost in a short three years, far more lives than it took 10 years to expend in the Vietnam conflict. The Korean War took place on a continent where thousands of rice paddies were tilled with human excrement ! We could smell our waiting battlefields, 3 miles at sea, from the deck of the U.S.S.Mitchell, which was crammed with young U.S.Army, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Marines, headed across the Pacific, for over a year of bloody combat. We were on a mission that provided no time, nor inclination for the drug abuse by soldiers that took place in Viet Nam. Not in Korea, where you would fight every day, charge forward in frost bitten feet…retreat when you ran out of ammo…..where you were lucky to have food every day… potable water…and sufficient ammunition.
Ours was a United Nations War, with the United States suffering the preponderance of mutilated casualties. Canadians were the youngest…foolish with confidence…charging North Korean machine gun nests like the brave actors of a John Wayne movie…..cut to pieces just as fast as their charge into action. The Aussies were tall, great fighters…hyper masculine with their show of courage…well trained with the bayonet….powerful enough to fire a Browning Automatic with one hand, while dragging a fallen brother with the other….. The Brits were amazing ! Taking cover from a barrage of incessant cannon fire, they would break for tea every day at the “ proper “ evening hour.
When potable water and mud soiled tea bags became seriously scarce, they boiled their “ bloody urine “. We borrowed that foul trick and used it until the first snows blanketed our battalion, blessing us with a foot of God’s clean white moisture. A surprising number of days were fought without food, but the lack of potable water brought sickness, weakness….and, among the brave warriors, confused awareness…that the richest Nation in the world could not provide sufficient food and water for its fighting troops. We couldn’t blame it entirely upon the hat salesman-turned-President, Truman. The North Koreans were wise enough to loft their cannon fire and strike at the rear of our division, knowing that the water and food trucks were there. Half of the North Korean units were trained to fight at night, knowing that American combat training was restricted to daylight. To sleep, we were advised to use dead North Korean bodies as protective cover, with fixed bayonets at the ready….poised for their quietly creeping comrades…. The Monsoon brought 40 days and 40 nights of incessant rain, pounding our helmets like a gentle machine gun Years later, we survivors were amused at the statues that were sculpted for commemoration of our efforts. The soldiers were draped in sculpted raincoats. We were never issued those raincoats until a month before the Peace Talks at Panmunjom, three years after the first shot.
Our nation had elected a President who had no close combat experience in situations that drive a soldier to his most basic, primitive behavior. Thousands of young American boys were slaughtered, crossing the Pusan perimeter. Several of my high school friends were blown apart with sophisticated munitions. We had no flak jackets. Shrapnel that tore through so many of those young bodies were stamped with Russian printing. The Russians were our silent enemy. We were supplied with World War 2 Garande rifles and fixed bayonets, barely three feet in length and with sparsely limited bullet clips. The Chinese had rifles over a foot longer, far superior in a bayonet fight. Our charging orders were “ Three on One…or run !” Those who didn’t follow that directive were speared, their limp, lifeless bodies sunk into the human excrement that nurtured the odiferous Korean rice fields. In desperation, against intolerable cold that brought bitter frostbite, many Army personnel tore off the down filled vests and fur hats from dead North Korean and Chinese soldiers, to wear over their thin combat fatigues, which offered little protection against the bitter Korean winter !
In April of 1951, Truman vociferously fired one of our Nation’s greatest Generals ! Successfully striking with surprise from the Northwest, at Inchon, our heroic General MacArthur planned and executed a brilliant pincer movement, resulting in recapture of the capitol, Seoul. He wanted our soldiers to push the North Koreans to the Chinese border after that successful show of strength, but President Truman angrily rejected the plan. MacArthur flew to Washington, pleading for permission to advance our troops to the Yalu River. He begged our Commander In Chief to allow a show of strength that might have prevented the heavy onslaught of Chinese soldiers that soon overwhelmed us with their sheer number. Truman, jealous of MacArthur’s popularity and worried about his competition in the next election, relieved the great combat leader of his command ! The morale of the troops, after that shocking dismissal, compelled some to throw down their weapons in disgust. A politician was controlling our progress ! MacArthur, the adulated head of our finest forces, had been disgraced ! Many went so far as to throw their hands up and surrender. They were never seen again. “ Stand down ! “ was Truman’s order. “ Ours is only a Police Action. Hold at the 38th Parallel ! ” “ Until your ammo runs out…..” the naive hat salesman might have added…” It was a foolish way to fight a war…
“ Stand down ! “ Does that directive sound familiar ? It’s the same cowardly command that we now know was delivered to our brave defenders of the American Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, while our President and his staff watched the horror of their demise in their White House Situation Room, real time video of the bloody scene delivered by drone ! ( This evidence is now confirmed by retired Army Lt.Colonel Tony Shaffer ). One brave soldier disobeyed the official command, in an effort to rescue the survivors. Ty Woods, a Navy Seal, was trained to NEVER leave an American in danger, when you have the courage and means to rescue them. He saved 30 shocked diplomatic employees, and, unfortunately, gave his life for that. Ty recognized that a U.S. Diplomatic compound is American Soil ! Ty was a patriot ! I would have felt secure with him watching my back !
In this day and time, we are confronted with a savage enemy whose chauvinistic men honestly believe that their 72 Virgins award awaits the sacrifice of their lives for Jihad. This is a difficult enemy, one that will only respect power and confidence. Our Congress should pass a law that the Commander In Chief of our fighting forces be a strong patriot, one preferably with combat experience, to guide his decisions in the defense of our country, and, in the defense of the principles “…for which it stands…”
Seven of us returned from The Forgotten War, from a brave Division of 340. “ Stand down ? “ I choose to stand up….with real men, like Ty Wood, with patriots who are willing to defend flag and country. May God Bless all American Combat Veterans, those who have passed, and those who are still plagued by horrific dreams of incessant Hell On Earth. We may be old, and a bit wrinkled…..but we will die as Patriots. God, help us deal with the thundering dreams.
SGT. FRANK COVINO 81 Yr. old Armed Veteran of The Forgotten War
Recipient of the distinguished Synghman Rhee Presidential Unit Citation Seoul, Korea, 1953.
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Often described as the very incarnation of Romanticism,
Robert Schumann created some of the most enduring works in all
music. Born in the Saxon town of Zwickau he was sent to university
to study law but soon turned his back on it when the drive to
compose proved irresistible. Studying piano under Friedrich Wieck,
whose daughter Clara was already something of a piano prodigy,
he had by the age of 30 composed such pieces of staggering originality
as Kinderszenen, Fantasiestücke, Carnaval and Kreisleriana.
In 1840, shortly before his marriage to Clara, an event her father
did everything he could to frustrate, he composed some of the
most astonishing song cycles ever written, including Dichterliebe,
Frauenliebe und Leben and several others on this 4 CD box set.
Though highly thought of during his lifetime he nevertheless failed
to enjoy the kind of success warranted by his prodigious talent.
It is a tragedy that his undoubted love for Clara that was manifested
in so many wonderful songs, was marred by his jealousy of Clara’s
international pianistic success, following his own dashed hopes
of a career as a virtuoso, caused by the loss of control over
his fingers. This jealousy resulted in the souring of a loving
relationship that produced eight children, and this together with
a general mental decline led him to attempt suicide in 1854, and
his life ended in an asylum where he spent his final two years,
dying there in 1856.
Dichterliebe (A poet’s love) is a cycle of sixteen
songs taken from poems by Heinrich Heine and was composed in the
dazzlingly short time of 9 days (24 May-1 June 1840). The story
of two lovers’ first pangs of love, their estrangement and eventual
reunion, no doubt had an autobiographical significance for Robert
and Clara, and the poems were cleverly chosen to highlight the
peaks and troughs of the relationship within the cycle.
The first song "Im wunderschönen Monat
Mai" (In the marvellous month of May) must surely be one
of the most well-known songs ever written, and sets the scene
for the cycle:
"In the marvellous month of May
when all the birds were singing,
then did I reveal to her
my yearning and longing"
In the first six songs the glory and uniqueness
of human love is expressed in a way all of us can identify with,
but then comes "Ich grolle nicht" (I do not complain),
and we understand that the woman’s love for the poet is over and
appreciate the utter wretchedness he feels. The words of the ensuing
songs are so poignant:
"If only the flowers, little as
could know how deeply wounded is my heart,
they would weep with me to heal my sorrow"
My reference for Dichterliebe is a Classikon
disc with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Christoph Eschenbach. Listening
to them both I find pluses and minuses in each version. My first
impression was that the tenor voice of Peter Schreier is more
telling than Fischer-Dieskau’s baritone, particularly in the first
passionate declarations of love. Though Schreier is somewhat "breathy"
at times he has a younger sounding voice that seems more in keeping
with the poet in the songs. In each case it was easy to locate
then follow the text though I know no German, but Schreier has
the edge on enunciation, every word clear and precise. However,
his problems with pitch appear with "Ich grolle nicht"
the first dark song of the cycle which taxes his range, requiring,
as it does, an altogether darker sound. He struggles to give it
that colour with the low registers almost beyond his capacity.
For the rest, though, he was the more convincing with superb renditions
of "Hor’ ich das Liedchen klingen" (When I hear the
sound of the song) (track 10) and "Am leutenden sommermorgen"
(On a gleaming morning in summer) (track 11) when his particularly
delicate and hushed tones perfectly underline the heartbreak the
poet feels. Fischer-Dieskau, on the other hand, doesn’t impart
the same feeling at all, but is rather declamatory, and in "Ein
jungling liebt ein madchen" (A lad loves a girl) (track 11)
he appears almost merry and far too upbeat for someone singing
of such bruised emotions.
There are some wonderful moments in both discs
and if one didn’t appreciate the meanings behind the words it
might only be a question of preference between a tenor and baritone
voice. As it is I really felt that Peter Schreier has a better
ability to impart the poet’s feelings of joy at the first feelings
of love as well as those of desolation and regret for lost love.
In Liederkreis (Op.24) Peter Schreier’s voice
is just right and the clarity of enunciation and the perfect control
he exerts over these lovely songs makes them a joy to listen to.
I particularly enjoyed track 21 "Schöne wiege meinen
In the other major song cycle in this set, Frauenliebe
und Leben (A woman’s love and life) Schumann set the words of
Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838), telling of a woman’s love for
a man from the first moment she saw him until his death. As this
seems to have happened in a relatively short time once again a
younger sounding voice works best for me but I have learnt this
is so only through doing this review. The result of this is that
my recording of Brigitte Fassbaender with Irwin Gage has been
well and truly usurped by Felicity Lott with Graham Johnson. Fassbaender’s
rich mezzo is simply too mature in timbre compared to Felicity
Lott’s soaring soprano and sounds too matronly and far removed
from the young girl, young bride, young mother and young widow
of the cycle. I don’t want to decry Fassbaender’s singing which
is excellent, as one would expect, but it just doesn’t suit these
songs, for seven out of eight are joyous declarations of young
love. Fassbaender sounds not only too old to be singing these
words, but too operatic in her delivery. These songs need a light,
deft touch, not a Brünnhilde with might behind her. This
feeling also colours my reaction to the remaining songs on this
disc as Felicity Lott’s voice is, I feel, much more suited to
lieder than Brigitte Fassbaender, whose powerful voice is heard
to its best advantage on the operatic stage as countless other
CDs bear witness.
The third singer in this set is the soprano Mitsuko
Shirai, accompanied by Hartmut Holl, in a selection from Myrthen
(Op.25) as well as six songs on poems by Lenau and Requiem (Op.90)
plus eight more songs. Myrthen begins with Widmung, with words
by Ruckert, a song that always gives me a frisson of excitement
and is followed by Der Nussbaum (words by Mosen), a truly delicious
song. As far as I can tell Mitsuko Shirai has mastered the tricky
pronunciation of the German which, I suspect is no mean feat for
a Japanese. She has a deep voice for a soprano which suits some
of the songs better than others and I often found myself wishing
I was still listening to Felicity Lott. In fact I tired of Shirai’s
voice long before the disc was over.
With so many of the songs in the four disc set
composed in 1840 it is no wonder that year became known as Schumann’s
‘year of song’ and motivated, there is no doubt, by his impending
marriage to Clara Wieck.
All the songs on all four discs, including the
Shirai disc, are sung with a deep understanding and appreciation
for the meaning in the texts and with much colouration. The whole
listening experience was very enjoyable, apart from the Shirai
disc, and has taught me a lot about the singing of lieder.
I don’t want to end without paying tribute to
the accompanists (or pianists as I understand they prefer to be
known – I should think so too!) Norman Shetler, Graham Johnson
and Hartmut Holl are all class acts in their own right and serve
their singers wonderfully well. I recently heard an "accompanying
pianist" say that to be successful in this role meant knowing
instinctively what the singer was going to do before they did
it. These four discs show plenty of examples of what he meant.
It goes without saying that Schumann’s glorious music makes the
whole enterprise easier. I love the way in which in many of the
songs, after the singer had sung their final note, Schumann continues
with the piano part for several bars, not in the manner of a postscript,
but as a perfect rounding off. It was a particularly poignant
moment in Frauenliebe und Leben, when, following the last words
of the woman’s final song telling of her beloved’s death:
"I withdraw quietly into myself;
the veil falls;
there I have you and my lost happiness
you, my whole world!"
Schumann reintroduces the theme from the first
song in which she tells of the first wondrous meeting with him
and how that moment eclipsed everything else around her – powerful,
This set is brought out under various licence
agreements by Brilliant Classics and at the bargain price (4 CDs
for less than the cost of a fullprice disc) brilliant it certainly
is. One gripe though – no English translations (those quoted are
from my Classikon disc), and no words of introduction, explanation
or background. If a company can buy the licences to produce the
discs why can’t they buy the rights to reprint the inserts or
write their own?
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Reflection Three: Life in Refugee Camps as an American Volunteer written by volunteer Mark Rafferty
It's rather remarkable how at home I felt in Jalazone Camp. By appearances, it was the most foreign place I could imagine, but as I settled into life in the camp and got to know the people there, I found that in many ways it was just like a small town anywhere else: close knit, friendly, full of gossip, and warmly hospitible to newcomers.
Every time I stepped out the door of the house onto the dusty, unpaved road that leads down the mountain to the Karama Center, a new learning experience awaited me. The people that I met on the streets of Jalazone were curious about where the strange looking foreigner was from, and just about every block I walked, kids and adults alike would stop me and ask me where I was from. At times, we'd share a quick exchange in Arabic and move on, but when there was free time, I loved sitting with young people on street corners and getting to know them. I didn't speak their language terribly well, but somehow, it was always the children who communicated best with me. They'd ask me about life in America, and I'd tell them in broken Arabic about my town, my family, and my culture. We'd sing songs together, and I would try making jokes in Arabic, which usually failed miserably. At times, we'd talk about religion and the relationship between Religion and Islam; maybe our conversations went so well because their basic understanding of the topics matched perfectly with my basic vocabulary. I also took the time to get to know the adults of the community, which was easy enough given that the men sitting on the sidewalk drinking tea were almost always issuing invitations to sit and talk. In the coffee shops and in the internet cafes, I learned about the political currents in the camp and the people's aspirations for the future, and I got a fuller picture of what it means to be a Palestinian refugee.
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Thursday was the fifth anniversary of the day President Bush gave a speech declaring "Mission Accomplished" - that all major combat operations in Iraq were over. It made for a good opportunity for Democratic candidates to speak out against the war.
Adam Cote, a Democratic candidate in the First Congressional District visited the Westbrook Armory and outlined a plan to help meet veterans' needs. Cote was shipped out from the Westbrook Armory in 2004 when he was deployed to Iraq.
The Maine Democratic Party's coordinated campaign also responded to the anniversary, along with U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, who is challenging Collins and Congressional candidate Chellie Pingree.
Also this week, proposals by two members of Maine's Congressional delegation regarding the military were approved.
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins touted a decision by the Senate Armed Services Committee, who approved her proposal to make Iraqis assume costs for reconstruction and other projects Wednesday night.
Also, U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud helped author two veterans' health care bills that passed this week.
Collins worked with Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb. and Evan Bayh, D-Ind. on a proposal to make Iraqis pay for any major reconstruction projects, salaries and training for their troops, and other expenses - and also prohibits American tax dollars from being spent on such proposals. This was part of the Fiscal Year 2009 Defense Authorization Act.
The proposal begins negotiations between the U.S. and Iraqi governments to have Iraq cover other expenses.
"The quarterly SIGIR report released yesterday confirms that the Iraqi government is reaping an unanticipated windfall because of the high cost of oil. There is no reason why the Iraqis cannot bear more of the cost of securing, stabilizing and rebuilding their country. No more American funds should be spent for major reconstruction projects. The costs of the salaries for the Sons of Iraq, for the training and equipping of the Iraqi security forces, and for other costs such as the fuel we use in Iraq should be borne by the Iraqis. It is really difficult for Americans who are struggling with the high cost of energy to pay these costs in a county that has the second-largest oil reserves and a burgeoning budget surplus.
"The Senate Armed Services Committee's approval of our proposal is a great leap forward as we work to advance this important proposal."
U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud has recently pushed through legislation pertaining to veterans' health care.
One bill expands the Department of Veterans' Affairs health care services to include substance use disorders. The second bill would authorize major medical facility projects and leases for the VA.
"Over the past several years, Congress has increased funding for VA substance use treatment programs," Michaud said in a statement. "I believe that continued and adequate funding is extremely important to the health and well being of our veterans and their families. Substance use frequently co-occurs with other mental health conditions. VA needs to rededicate itself to providing services that can address both substance abuse and other mental health conditions such as PTSD."
U.S. Rep. Tom Allen is challenging Collins for her Senate seat this year. He released a statement today, discussing his positions on Iraq. Click here for video.
"Today, there are 160,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Many are on their second or third or even fourth tours of duty. Tens of thousands have come home wounded. More than 4,000 have been killed. And American taxpayers are paying more than $10 billion per month in a bloody and endless civil war.
"While my opponent Susan Collins and I were subject to the same pressures in 2002, she voted for the war and I did not. Five years later, she remains steadfast in her support for an open-ended commitment.
"I was against this war from the beginning, and I believe we must set a safe and responsible deadline for withdrawal of our troops. If we are going to change the direction of our country, we first must change our policy in Iraq."
Cote opposes the war and has made veterans' needs a priority in his campaign. He also has an op-ed piece in the Portland Press Herald earlier this week discussing his position on the war.
He outlined six priorities at the Westbrook Armory today:
-Mandatory funding for veterans' health care
-Decrease wait times for severely injured veterans
-Renew the GI Bill for the 21st Century
-Fight veteran homelessness
-Increase local access to care
-Improve VA treatment of PTSD and TBI
"We can and should debate the right way to get out of Iraq. What I don't believe is debatable is the need to live up to our commitments to our veterans when they come home."
Jim Batchelder, State Commander of the VFW and a member of the Veterans for Cote Steering Committee, also spoke at Cote's event today.
"Adam Cote is one of us. He understands the issues veterans are facing because he's been through them. It's time we stepped up to elect one of our own who will go down to Washington and represent our needs," Batchelder said.
Chellie Pingree, who is also seeking the Democratic nomination for the First Congressional District, also released a statement about the anniversary of "Mission Accomplished."
Pingree has joined with other Congressional candidates around the country in support of "The Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq," which calls for an end to the war while also addressing diplomacy and humanitarian concerns.
This week she spoke out against the increased cost of oil, and the amount the government is spending overseas. Her statement:
"In many ways we are far less secure. When President Bush declared Mission Accomplished, gas was $1.57 a gallon. Today it's $3.60. And skyrocketing oil prices have driven up prices on food and other necessities. That sure doesn't make me feel very secure
"I think America is ready for a change in our priorities and investing that money here at home on healthcare and rebuilding our economy and the things that really will make us feel more safe and secure. Not the disaster we've created in Iraq
"When the Bush Administration got us into this war, they promised it would be paid for by oil revenue, in reality it's being paid for by the American people, especially the 4,063 men and women who lost their lives and the 30,000 who have been injured in Iraq."
Maine Democratic Party's coordinated campaign
John Knutson, director of the campaign, sent out a fundraising solicitation, speaking out against the war. He noted how many people have died, and how much the country has spent.
"In the last five years, 4,000 Americans have lost their lives; tens of thousands of Americans have been wounded; we've spent at least $500 billion; and 160,000 troops are still there. Meanwhile, John McCain says keeping our troops in Iraq for 100 years would be fine with him (??!) One of Maine's U.S. Senators has refused to listen to the overwhelming number of Mainers who support withdrawal from Iraq, while also refusing to hold hearings on the waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money by federal contractors.
"You can help change the direction in Iraq by supporting Victory 2008, the Maine Democratic Party's campaign arm that is 100% committed to electing leaders with the ability and vision to move ahead and put an end to a war that should've never been waged."
Rebecca Pollard, communications director for the campaign, sent out a separate e-mail reminding voters that Collins supported the war. The party wants to see Collins unseated in November.
Pollard notes that Collins voted to go to war and then to block Iraq withdrawal legislation.
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Summer Arts Camp started in 1997 as part of the "talents" program to raise funds for Sussex Christian School. It was a challenge based on the parable of the talents(currency) found in Matthew 25:14-30. Children, parents, and teachers were given seed money. Each person (or group) used their money as best as they could to multiply their profits. Summer Arts Camp has been held each year at the home of Troy and Rita Yanoff in Wantage, NJ.
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WHOLE BODY VIBRATION History: Whole Body vibration was developed in the 1960’s in Russia for the Space Program, and in Germany for Ballet dancers and for Athletes. The Russians realized that the Cosmonauts could only stay in space for a very short period of time due to zero gravity, where the bones degenerate and the muscles atrophy. They could stay in Space for 420 days and the Americans for only 120 days. Their athletes and dancers were superior due to this training. Physiology: Mechanical vibration causes the muscles to have a stretch reflex due to constantly having to stabilize. Muscles contract 30-50 times per second, and the participant has a feeling of tingling and relaxation. Benefits :( research based.) • Muscle strength • Muscle power • Bone density increase and Osteoporosis prevention • Pain reduction and healing (especially the Spine and Knees) • Arthritis relief • Relaxation and massage • Flexibility increase • Cellulite reduction • Reduction in Cortisol (stress Hormone) • Increases HGH and Igf1 Applications: o Sport’s applications – athletes,equestrians, golfers and racket sports. o Regular population o Overweight, De-conditioned and Sedentary populations Who USES Whole Body Vibration? Fitness centers, Sports teams (Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Dallas Mavericks and many others) NASA, Hospitals and Rehab Centers, Universities, Spas, Corporations, Individuals in their homes.
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Egyptian Cleric Condemns Christianity for Teaching Gender Equality
Tue, November 20, 2012
A recent talk show on the Egyptian station Al Hafiz partially explains why it is that Islam’s clerics are staunchly against discussing Christian or biblical teachings in Egyptian schoolrooms—even as the teaching of the Quran is mandatory, for both Muslim and Christian students.
Discussing Christianity’s teachings concerning women, one of the guests, a sheikh dressed in traditional cleric garb, said they “truly stab at the rulings of Islam.”
To exemplify, he read from a text that said, “the Christian religion does not differentiate between women and men, but it confirms their perfect equality: It gives them an equal share in inheritance, it bans divorce, and it bans polygamy.”
“Now,” said the sheikh, “if my son hears such things while he’s in school, he’ll come home and say to me, ‘Father why do you have many wives? You are unjust—unlike Christianity which is full of justice’!”
He went on to say that such teachings completely contradict “the religion of the prophet,” who of course had many wives—more than the Quran’s prescribed four—made divorce a simple matter for men and decreed that females only inherit half of what males inherit.
The cleric complained that, based on such Christian teachings, Muslim men who try to exercise their Islamic rights — including polygamy, double-inheritance and easy divorce (recent examples include via text-messaging)— become “criminals, and the religion [Islam] that taught them such things taught them crimes.”
The cleric concluded by saying it is impermissible “to produce texts that contradict the teachings of the Quran, or the practices we’ve been raising our children on for a million years [a figure of speech: Islam is less than 1400 years old].”
-- Raymond Ibrahim
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