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Well, Heather Wallace has you covered! Grab ahold of this book as quick as you can and sit down for a good read. PACKED with awesome ideas, this 196 page book will have you wondering why you never thought of……
Yeah, I know! Right?
Here are some examples:
Preventing Ribbing From Flipping
There’s nothing like the disappointment of finishing a sweater only to discover that the ribbing just won’t lay flat. Yes, it’s the dreaded flipping ribbing and it strikes without warning. What is a knitter to do? Well, the good news is that there are a few measures that you can take to prevent this troublesome problem from occurring. So, if flipping ribbing has been a problem for you, then here are some things that you can do to prevent it.
•If the pattern that you’re working calls for a very small amount of ribbing, then work extra rows until it measures between one and a half inches to two inches in length.
•Knit one purl one ribbing may be more prone to flipping than knit two purl two ribbing, so try switching over to knit two purl two ribbing instead.
•If you’re casting on loosely, then you might want to try knitting a row before you begin working in your ribbing pattern. This will add a small garter stitch border to your piece that will help to curb the curl.
•In this instance, a firm cast on edge may help, so instead of following the advice detailed in the Casting On and Binding Off Loosely pointer, you might want to, instead, cast on using a needle that’s one size smaller than the needles that you will be using when working your ribbing.
Putting Your Gauge Swatches to Good Use
Knitting a gauge swatch is a necessary part of any project. Sure, they serve their purpose, but, once your gauge is established, those little squares no longer have any use. That, however, doesn’t have to be the case because with a little creative thinking you can put your gauge swatches to some very good uses.
It may take you a while to accumulate enough gauge swatches, but, once you do, you can assemble them in to all sorts of things. You could sew them together to make a an afghan, a pillow, a rug, a scarf, a placemat, or a dish clothe.
If you decide that you would like to save your swatches for later use, then you will have to plan ahead. That means that you will need to do two things. First, be sure to knit your swatches so that they all measure exactly the same size. That way it will be possible for you to easily assemble them later on. Secondly, you should add a selvage to your swatches. That’s because a selvage will make your swatches less prone to rolling, which will mean that they should lay nice and flat once they’ve been assembled.
Blocking Made Easy
Blocking your knitted items doesn’t have to be a major undertaking. As a matter of fact, if your knitted item was made from a washable fiber, the blocking process can be completed quite easily using the method detailed within this pointer. Here’s what you need to do to have perfectly blocked knitting without a lot of effort.
First, plan to block your knitting on wash day. After washing a load of bath-size towels, remove a spun-out, damp towel from the washer and then smooth it out on a flat surface. Next, arrange each of your pieces of knitting on the towel. If your project includes several pieces, you may need to place some of them on additional towels. As you do this, be sure to smooth your knitted pieces out so that they’re lying flat. Now, roll up your towel(s). As you do, ensure that your pieces are still smooth and that they haven’t bunched up.
Wait several hours, or even overnight, before unrolling the towel(s). After unrolling, arrange the knitted pieces on a flat surface. Then, shape each piece until it reaches the measurement required by your pattern. Once you’ve gotten them shaped to the perfect size, pin each piece in place, so that this size is maintained. Now, just leave these pieces to dry completely. After they have dried, you will find that they have been perfectly blocked with a minimal amount of effort.
Using a Lifeline
Those who have only just begun knitting, and even advanced knitters, know all too well that mistakes happen. Mistakes that occur when knitting a simple project can be a bit annoying, but those that happen when knitting complicated designs are ten times worse. In either case you can easily use a lifeline as a safety net of sorts so that mistakes won’t be a problem.
Placing lifelines at regular intervals will mean that you can easily unravel back to a certain point in your project and begin your work from there, should you ever find the need.
To place a lifeline into your work, first select a suitable row. This could be after a certain number of inches have been knit or after a repeat has been completed. Once you reach the row where you would like to place your lifeline, string a tapestry needle with a length of quilting thread or cotton yarn, in a contrasting color, that’s longer than the row is wide. Then, run the needle through each stitch on that row. If you’ve placed markers anywhere within that row, be sure to string the yarn around rather than through them, so that they can be removed or slipped back onto the needle once you commence with your knitting. Once the stitches have been threaded onto the lifeline, you can just leave the ends hanging from the sides of your work as you continue with your knitting. Once you reach the end of your project you can then pull these lifelines out since they will no longer be needed.
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There are lots of strange looking Certificate Authorities in my keychain as well as Firefox. I am sure they are legitimate CAs (as they are the same on my Mac and PC and other computers I checked). And by strange I mean they seems to be specific to same other countries or organizations that I am sure I have nothing to do with, is there a way to safely remove these unnecessary CAs? Is there a list for regular US users or a way to disable them and enable them when they ar needed?
The Web is worldwide. That you are a "US user" does not mean that you will only look at US websites.
You can remove any CA certificate that you do not wish to trust. That's your prerogative. The only consequence of removing a CA certificate is that the machine will cease to automatically accept as valid any certificate issued by the said CA. Translation: some HTTPS Web site may begin to trigger scary warnings, which you can always bypass, but which are scary nonetheless (and training yourself to bypass scary warnings might not be a good idea anyway).
The truth is that, as a user, you have very little information on which you could base your decision of trusting or not trusting any particular CA. Ideally, you would trust only those CA for which you can establish a clear responsibility path down to you: the CA which will give you a lot of money in case you get swindled due to a mistake made by the CA. However, there is no such CA. Instead, what you have is a list of "default CA" who made a deal with the OS vendor (Apple, in the case of Mac OS) so that the OS vendor accepts to include them as "default CA". These CA, and Apple, are way too smart, legally speaking, to give you money in case of any problem (as a Mac user, your money relationship with Apple rather flows in the other direction). Yet, if one of the "default CA" begins to behave improperly, that's Apple public image which is at stake.
So my advice would be to let things as they are. This is what almost everybody does. Remember that, in any case, the point of the CA is to validate the certificate, which does not mean that the corresponding site is maintained by honest and trustworthy people; the only thing that the CA guarantees is that the Web page you are looking at really came from the Web site whose name is in the URL bar.
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Get ready to see banking costs and balance requirements go up while free checking is put on the endangered-species list. That's the expensive state of banking, according to BankRate.com's 15th annual checking survey, which concludes that banks are in a "fee-ing frenzy."
What's a bank customer to do? Take a walk on the Web. Find a better institution on BankRate.com or other sites like MoneyRates.com, MyBankTracker, or FindABetterBank. Cheaper deals abound—usually, at an Internet or community bank or credit union, says Bankrate.com senior financial analyst Greg McBride.
Granted, smaller lenders don't offer full-service-branch and ATM networks the way big banks do. But the price of convenience has skyrocketed over the past four years as network banks have hiked and rehiked nearly every charge on their complex fee schedules.
The average monthly fee on basic checking accounts rose 25% over the past year to a record $5.48, says the survey. The average minimum balance required to avoid that charge on "free" checking accounts rose 23% to $723 nationwide, also a record. Neither a checking nor basic savings account pays enough interest these days to bother calculating.
Accounts still called "free" have dwindled from 76% of all checking in 2009 to about 39%, notes McBride, and will grow scarcer. Wells Fargo, operator of the U.S.'s largest branch network, has dropped free checking, and a $1,500 minimum balance is required to avoid a $7 monthly charge at many large regional banks.
"Free checking won't go away completely," says McBride. "Community banks, credit unions, and online banks will still offer it, so it's important for consumers to shop around."
Both BankRate.com and MoneyRates.com track the many details of the most popular financial products from savings and checking to mortgages and credit cards. A bevy of calculators, charts, and tables facilitate comparisons. But personal finance is personal, and both sites also do a good job matching products and institutions to different consumer groups—college students, individuals with low income or low credit scores, or those interested in reward programs. MyBankTracker has many of the same features, but starts by breaking the 7,000-plus banks it tracks into best online banks, best traditional banks, and highest-rated banks, based on its own five-star rating system.
WIDESPREAD ELECTRONIC connectivity means that a Californian can easily maintain a banking relationship with, say, Chesapeake Bank (chesbank.com), a price-conscious, 112-year-old institution at the Virginia end of Chesapeake Bay. The site describes its "Totally-Free Checking" account as, "No fees, no minimum balance, no kidding. ATM and VISA CheckCards are available. Plus, your first order of in-house checks is free."
Everbank, Ally Bank, and ING Direct have offerings that are pretty typical for community banks, credit unions and online institutions. They will use relatively high interest rates to attract new customers, like Everbank's 0.93% return on checking balances above $25,000.
But, for most of us, proximity still matters. So FindABetterBank starts with your ZIP Code and how far you're willing to travel to a branch or ATM. A quick questionnaire then ranks nearby institutions—including those of the 85 largest banks—by costs and by how important certain products and services are to you.
FABB offers BankSwitcher, a service to walk you through the confusing process of changing—or adding—banks. That includes step-by-step instructions, phone numbers, URLs, and the forms needed to switch automated deposits and payment settings for a one-time fee of $15.
CheckingFinder.com also has a step-by-step guide to switching, but focuses on high-interest accounts at community banks and credit unions which, it argues, offer the best pricing and service. CheckingFinder.com's primary recommendation for me: City National Bank in Taylor, Texas—1,164 miles from my front door.
Long-distance banking makes some sense in this age of online transfers, electronic bill-paying, and check deposits via smartphone. And no law says you can't bank at more than one institution—those with and those without branch networks.
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Wikki-wikki-wikki! Students at Berklee College of Music are throwing their hands in the air. The school has announced that it will be offering the first college classes in turntablism, the art of scratching!
Boston’s Berklee College of Music, one of the leading institutions for the study of contemporary music, is breaking new ground in music education by becoming the first music college in the world to incorporate the study of turntablism into its curriculum. This spring semester, Turntable Technique will teach students the art of playing the turntable.
Turntable Technique will be taught by Professor Stephen Webber, a veteran of classical, jazz and electronic music who is considered a leading authority on turntable education, as the author of the first instructional method book to teach the turntable, Turntable Technique: The Art of the DJ (Berklee Press, 2000).
Berklee’s decision to adopt the turntable as a musical entity worthy of academic study continues the institution’s historical tradition of defying the music conservatory establishment by adopting new and often controversial music forms. In the 1940s, Berklee became the first music college to offer jazz in its curriculum, and later in the 1960s was the first college to adopt the electric guitar as a principal instrument.
Berklee Press was the first publisher to introduce a line of books and records to offer instruction in the art and techniques of the DJ. Turntable Technique: The Art of the DJ culminates the music education that Berklee College has made famous for over 50 years and offers a formalized method of musical notation so DJs can better communicate with and learn from each other. Turntable Technique: The Art of the DJ is now a best-selling title available as a book and vinyl set, and in DVD and VHS formats.
“Turntablists are musicians,” says Webber. “Many of them, like DJ QBert, are virtuoso musicians, who practice hours a day and constantly strive to push their art further. I recently saw QBert perform, and he transported the entire audience; made us forget where we were and who we were, with nothing but a turntable and a piece of vinyl.”
“People take it for granted today that jazz is serious music worthy of the same disciplined study as classical music,” said Webber. “But when Berklee began teaching jazz improvisation in the 1940s and rock guitar in the 1960s, most other music schools perceived those musical forms as a threat to ‘serious’ music. It’s the same situation with Hiphop and turntablism today.”
As with jazz and guitar, the decision to create a curriculum for Turntablism was not made lightly, according to Gary Burton, executive vice president of Berklee College of Music and a legendary jazz musician. For the past year, Burton has chaired a study group of faculty members that has debated and dissected turntable music to evaluate how it would hold up to academic analysis.
Burton commented, “We knew that there was serious interest in turntablism from many of our students, but we had concerns about how this emerging mode of music making could fit into a college music curriculum. So, we studied the work of some of the established names in the field and debated the musical issues, such as the lack, to date, of an agreed upon method for notating turntable performances, and how we could teach our students these skills within our educational approach. Issue by issue, we sorted out how we could do this at Berklee and respond to our students’ interest.”
Part of what makes it possible to offer the study of the turntable at the college level is the representation of scratching in music notation. Webber’s method first appeared in his book Turntable Technique: The Art of the DJ, and consists of a “scratch staff” in which the movements of the record and the mixer’s controls are expressed in standard musical notation. This is the first time that anyone has adapted standard musical notation to teach the turntable.
Noted electronic musician, DJ, creator of the soundtrack to the film Monster, and Berklee alumnus BT commented, “I’m extraordinarily excited that turntablism is finally being recognized as an instrument unto itself. The skill of rhythmically and melodically manipulating vinyl is a more than 25-year-old tradition and it’ll be great to see people check off turntable as their primary instrument.”
“That will be a while,” says Webber. “At this point, we only have one class, as well as a vibrant club and an unofficial turntable ensemble. We want to let this grow organically.” The course has already received a tremendous student response and has a waiting list of over 50 names.
History of Turntablism
Webber notes that the architects of Hiphop were young DJs from the Bronx in the 1970s. DJs Kool Herc, Grand Master Flash and Afrika Bambaataa changed what it meant to be a DJ by aggressively pushing the limits of mixing, interacting with the virtuoso dancers known as B-Boys and B-Girls, and assembling crews of MCs who spawned the practice of rapping. Grand Wizard Theodore, a protégé of Flash, was the first to start scratching, manipulating the record back and forth under the needle for musical effect. Grand Mixer DXT was tapped by Bill Laswell to scratch on the Herbie Hancock hit “Rockit,” inspiring thousands of kids to head for their parents’ turntables.
DJ competitions helped push the art form forward in the 80s and 90s, much like the legendary “cutting sessions” that took place in the early days of jazz. DJs who rose to prominence after success in battles include Jazzy Jeff (who teamed with Fresh Prince Will Smith), DJ Swamp, Roc Raida and Rob Swift of the X-ecutioners, and Mix Master Mike and QBert, formerly of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz.
Webber points out that more recently, DJs have been appearing in Nu Metal bands, and with pop stars ranging from Moby to Sugar Ray. Progressive scratch DJs like DJ Logic have been playing with jazz acts from Medeski Martin and Wood, to John Scofield. Arizona’s DJ Radar has even written, with partner Raúl Yáñez, a turntable concerto for turntablist and symphony orchestra. The term “turntablism” was coined by DJ Babu to refer to the practice of playing the turntable as a musical instrument.
Webber adds, Hiphop is more than a style of music; it’s a culture. As with any culture, there are various artistic expressions of Hiphop, the four principal expressions being:
- Visual art (graffiti)
- Dance (breaking, rocking, locking and popping, commonly known as break dancing)
- Literature (rap lyrics and slam poetry)
- Music (DJing and turntablism).
Generous support from select vendors allow the Berklee classroom for this prototype class to be equipped with professional state-of-the-art instruments and gear. Numark contributed their TTX hybrid analog/digital turntables, cartridges, analog and digital DJ mixers, and innovative CD turntables. Vestax supplied turntables, DJ workstations, and DJ mixers that link together so that multiple turntablists may perform together.
Calzone Case Company provided protective cases for all DJ components and created custom rollaway cases that enable the mixers and turntables to be easily rolled into the classroom from an adjacent storeroom for class and practice times. Alesis supplied “air FX” units, which use infrared light to allow DJs to control effects in “real time.” Korg supplied KAOSS Pads, which allow users to intuitively incorporate sampling and effects controlling into their performance with the touch of a finger; and the KAOSS Pad entrancer, which does the same with video effects as well.
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How To Play
are compensated for recommending products.
Click here for
When you consider learning how
to play classical guitar it is good to have a little understanding of where the classical guitar differs from its
contemporaries within the overall guitar culture.
The modern classical guitar
has evolved over a period of more than four hundred years from the family of instruments known as chordophones such
as the vihuela, Renaissance and Baroque guitars.
The characteristic shape of the
modern classical guitar was introduced in the nineteenth century as the work of the Spaniard, Antonio Torres
Jurado. It is because of its Spanish ancestry that today it is so often referred to as the Spanish Guitar. However
the classical guitar has now developed into a truly international experience.
strings of the classical guitar are primarily nylon and are played by plucking with the fingers or fingernails as
opposed to the more usual guitar playing strumming techniques. The use of a plectrum as you learn how to
play classical guitar would be most
As you learn how to
play classical guitar you
HERE appreciate that it is at its best as a medium for solo
performance. The natural sound of the classical guitar, which is heard unamplified, has a very intimate and
personal voice to it that is quite at odds with the noisy and complex world that we live in
It would be good to learn to
read traditional music script if you are serious about learning how to play classical guitar. Classical music is
not presented in guitar tablature but rather a specifically annoted traditional script. In classical guitar
notation the specific fingers of the right hand used to play each note are indicated with one of four letters
marked above the note. The four fingers are represented by the letters p, i, m and a. The thumb is represented by
the letter p, which is in fact the first letter of the Spanish word pulgar meaning thumb. The index finger is
represented by the letter i, for indice. The middle finger by m, for media and the ring finger by a, for
anular. The little finger is not
normally used when playing classical guitar.
HERE TO LEARN & MASTER YOUR GUITAR
It is important as you begin
learning how to play classical guitar that you adopt a habit of sitting in the right position to play. The
classical guitar is not best played in a casual style as you might play perhaps an electric
It is best when first learning
how to play classical guitar to sit towards the front of an upright chair with the left foot raised slightly, about
six inches or so off the ground. This is most easily achieved with the aid of a footstool placed such
that your lower leg is held perpendicular to the floor. The purpose of this set up is that you can then sit upright
in a good posture to support the guitar on your left leg whilst your arms and hands are relaxed and free to play
the instrument. The guitar should be positioned such that its head is held level with your shoulder and with the
weight of your right arm resting on the top of the body of the guitar holding it securely in position to
Strange though it might seem,
when learning how to play classical guitar you have first to grow and manicure the finger nails on your right hand!
Because you pluck each string as you play classical guitar, the length of the nail will have a significant impact
on the tone of the note. If the finger nail is too short, it is the fleshy part of the finger which strikes the
string, resulting in a soft and mellow tone. If the nail is, on the other hand too long, then it is the nail which
strikes the string producing a relatively sharp or metallic note. To produce a well rounded and pleasing sound the
nail should be trimmed to be of the same height as the top of the finger and to be rounded to follow its profile.
Played thus, it is both the flesh and the nail of the finger striking the string at the same time that produces the
correct and recognisable tone of the classical guitar.
right hand now correctly manicured it has to be held in the right position if it is to achieve the true classical guitar
sound. As you are learning how to play classical guitar you will need to play the strings in the classical style.
The string must be plucked not strummed and to achieve this consistently the fingers must be held at right angles
to the string they are playing. So you will hold your fingers very much above the strings and relatively straight
compared to how you might have them were you strumming an electric
There are essentially two plucking strokes to learn as
you master how to play classical guitar. They are known as Free Strokes and Rest Strokes. Whilst both strokes
produce a note they are notes of two very different styles.
With the Free Stroke the string is struck in a slightly
upward angle such that the finger finishes up in the air just above the neighbouring string. This style produces
the less emphasised notes in a piece. For more emphasis or volume the Rest Stroke is played where the string is
struck parallel to the face of the guitar, the finger coming to rest against the next string. From this stroke
comes the maximum volume of sound thereby accentuating the particular note in a piece.
When a note needs to be accentuated using a Rest Stroke the
standard guitar notation shows an accent, shown thus, > , above the note to be played, telling you to play
While all this is going on of
course, your left hand has to be correctly held as it plays the frets as well. Here too it is important that the
fingers come into contact with the strings and fingerboard at right angles to the board. The thumb should be kept
behind the neck of the guitar to counter the pressure of your playing fingers. The position thus attained should
remain constant and as the fingers find the frets up and down the neck the thumb should stay in its relative
position behind the fretboard.
HERE TO LEARN & MASTER YOUR GUITAR
To enjoy the undoubted
pleasure of mastering the skills necessary to learn how to play classical guitar will require a great deal of
dedication and practice. But you will also need some structure to your learning process. To have that structure
will necessarily need you to take some lessons from a skilled and competent teacher. How will you do
You can of course take lessons
either privately or in a group at perhaps a local school or college. The best learning experience will come on a
one to one basis, but such lessons are very expensive. There is though an alternative. You can learn how to play
classical guitar at home, at your own pace and at a time to suite yourself with the aid of a high quality and
comprehensive multimedia course of instruction.
Such courses offer a wealth of information, instruction and practice material for you to pick up and use as the mood takes you. You can progress
toward your goal of learning how to play classical guitar starting at whatever level you feel comfortable with. You
do it at your own pace and you can do each module as many times as you feel you need to eventually arrive at your
own desired skill level. You are in complete control.
Just such a course and a course that many, many people have found success
with is from Legacy Learning Systems. Their Learn & Master Guitar Course
is a complete course. It encompasses everything you could
need to have success in learning how to play classical guitar. Take a look through the link below and judge for
yourself. You have absolutely nothing to lose but you have an opportunity here to make your dream of learning to
play guitar a reality and a reality today.
CLICK HERE TO LEARN & MASTER
"Learn & Master Guitar is a phenomenal program. It's clear and concise and watching the DVDs is
like having your very own guitar instructor in the room with you. The course is extremely thorough and
well planned out. It's like having at least a year's worth of guitar lessons in one complete package! I
wish a program like this existed when I was learning to play—it would have saved me a lot of time and
|— Michael Elsner, Professional Guitar Player
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Policy & Research INSIGHTS
Changes in U.S. Poverty Rates, by County, from 2007 to 2011
by Matthew Adams -
On Wednesday, the U.S. Census Bureau released its Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates for 2011, which provide the most accurate and detailed poverty estimates nationwide each year.
A recent methodological breakthrough has allowed for the comparison of data from previous years. To highlight and supplement the release of the new data, ICPH created a visualization using a technique originally publicized by the Bureau in the early 1970s.
This map graphic compares counties to the national poverty rate1 of 15.9% in 2011 (upper left), and identifies changes in rates from 2007, before the recession began (upper right). These two maps are superimposed on a single map to show the relationship between the two sets of data.
In the areas where poverty increased, there was variation by region. In 2011, 21% of counties in the north were below the national rate (shown in light green), while 21% of counties in the south were above it (indicated in purple), both with no change in the rate from 2007. While many parts of the northeast and midwest experienced increases in poverty rates since 2007, these areas were still below the national rate in 2011 (10%, bright green). On the other hand, poverty not only increased, but was above the national rate in pockets of the southeast and southwest (11% of total, shown in blue .
The maps show that in 30% of counties across the country, the poverty rate has stayed consistent. As a testament to the lasting impact of the recession, less than 1% of all counties witnessed decreases in poverty, regardless of whether they were above or below the national rate (bright pink, light pink, and tan).
Viewed together, these maps show that already high poverty rates are increasing in many areas around the country, and that even in areas where poverty rates are at or below the national average, these counties have not seen an improvement in their poverty rates since 2007.
1 Defined by the U.S. Census at $23,021 a year for a family of four
Post a Comment
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Happy, safe Fourth of July?
When I was little, our family would host a huge BBQ in our backyard that would last until dark so we could lie on the grass and watch fireworks. Like a lot of holidays, the meaning of the holiday -- "Independence Day" -- was washed out by the food and drink that accompanied the generic celebration. Still, it marked the start of the summer for us, and here in Portland it definitely marks the start of warmer weather.
Have you explained to the kids the meaning of the day? How are you celebrating or recognizing?
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In April of 1942 there was one battle involving the U.S. It was April 9, 1942 the Philippines surrendered to the U.S.
On May 6,1942 during World War II U.S. and Filipino troops surrendered to Japan on Cornegidor Island. Also in May the U.S. Navy defeated the Japanese fleet at the Battle of the Coral Sea.
In June, with the help of our Navy, we defeated the Japanese in the Battle of Midway. This was one of the major turning points in the war. This was because the U.S. didn't know if they were going to win World War II.
U.S. forces invaded Guadalcanal in the month of August.
The Allied's first battle in North Africa began with "Operation Torch" on November 8, 1942.
In Willhelmshaven, Germany, the U. S. Air Force opened daylight bombing on January 27, 1943.
were freed by the U. S. forces in March 1943.
U. S. forces invaded Kwajalein on January 31, 1944.
On February 15, 1944 Allied bombers destroyed the 400 year old Benedictine monastary at Monte Cassino.
The most famous battle was D-Day. The Allies landed at Normandy on June 6, 1944.
Saipan was invaded
by the American Marines on June 15, 1944.
The United States troops liberated St. Lo in France on July 18, 1944.
The U. S. captured the Marinara Islands in the month of July.
The Allies invaded southern France on August 15, 1944.
The U.S. naval forces destroyed the remains of the Japanese Navy at the Battle of Leyte Gulf on October 23-26,1944.This battle was the largest naval battle in history, up to this point.
On December 15, 1944 American forces invaded the Phillipine island of Mindoro.
The U.S. forces invaded the Phillipine island of Luzon on January 9, 1945.
In the month of February the American forces invaded Okinawa. Also in February, American forces landed on Iwo Jima.
On March 3, 1945 U.S. forces liberated Manilla in the Phillipines.
The Allies captured Mandalay, Burma on March 21,1945.
U. S. troops encircled the German troops in the Ruhr on April 1, 1945.
On August 6, 1945 the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan by the U. S.
U.S.'s second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan August 9, 1945.
On August 15, 1945 the Allies won victory over Japan on VJ Day.
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For years I have considered digging into what I consider "low level" languages. For me this means C and assembly. However I had no time for this yet, nor has it EVER been neccessary.
Now because I don't see any neccessity arising, I feel like I should either just schedule some point in time when I will study the subject or drop the plan forever.
For the past 4 years I have focused on "web technologies", which may change, and I am an application developer, which is unlikely to change.
In application development, I think usability is the most important thing. You write applications to be "consumed" by users. The more usable those applications are, the more value you have produced.
In order to achieve good usability, I believe the following things are viable
- Good design: Well-thought-out features accessible through a well-thought-out user interface.
- Correctness: The best design isn't worth anything, if not implemented correctly.
- Flexibility: An application A should constantly evolve, so that its users need not switch to a different application B, that has new features, that A could implement. Applications addressing the same problem should not differ in features but in philosophy.
- Performance: Performance contributes to a good user experience. An application is ideally always responsive and performs its tasks reasonably fast (based on their frequency). The value of performance optimization beyond the point where it is noticeable by the user is questionable.
I think low level programming is not going to help me with that, except for performance. But writing a whole app in a low level language for the sake of performance is premature optimization to me.
What could low level programming teach me, what other languages wouldn't teach me? Am I missing something, or is it just a skill, that is of very little use for application development? Please understand, that I am not questioning the value of C and assembly. It's just that in my everyday life, I am quite happy that all the intricacies of that world are abstracted away and managed for me (mostly by layers written in C/C++ and assembly themselves). I just don't see any concepts, that could be new to me, only details I would have to stuff my head with. So what's in it for me?
Thanks to everyone for their answers. I must say, nobody really surprised me, but at least now I am quite sure I will drop this area of interest until any need for it arises.
To my understanding, writing assembly these days for processors as they are in use in today's CPUs is not only unneccesarily complicated, but risks to result in poorer runtime performance than a C counterpart. Optimizing by hand is nearly impossible due to OOE, while you do not get all kinds of optimizations a compiler can do automatically. Also, the code is either portable, because it uses a small subset of available commands, or it is optimized, but then it probably works on one architecture only.
Writing C is not nearly as neccessary anymore, as it was in the past. If I were to write an application in C, I would just as much use tested and established libraries and frameworks, that would spare me implementing string copy routines, sorting algorithms and other kind of stuff serving as exercise at university. My own code would execute faster at the cost of type safety. I am neither keen on reeinventing the wheel in the course of normal app development, nor trying to debug by looking at core dumps :D
I am currently experimenting with languages and interpreters, so if there is anything I would like to publish, I suppose I'd port a working concept to C, although C++ might just as well do the trick.
Again, thanks to everyone for your answers and your insight.
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By Kia Croom,
Over 150 public officials, faith leaders and residents of the Iron Triangle, Shields-Reid and Parchester Village neighborhoods marched Jan. 14 under the banner “Marching for Change” to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Walkers lined up at the Nevin Community Center in Richmond. Others caravanned in vehicles. The group made its way from the Nevin Center onto Fred Jackson Way in North Richmond where they met up with residents of the Parchester Village Neighborhood. From there the group continued to the Shields-Reid Community Center.
As they marched, they sang, “We Shall Overcome” and “Victory is Mine,” their voices reverberating in the neighborhoods.
Onlookers watched the marchers from their windows, open doors and front yards. Many onlookers tipped their hats and saluted marchers as they passed by. Others joined the procession, uncertain of its final destination but still in support of the cause.
“This is my city. This is where it all started,” said Marcel, a long-time resident of North Richmond. “This is real positive.”
At the corner of Fred Jackson Parkway and Chelsea Avenue, the procession stopped and held a moment of silence in memory of the late Fred Jackson, an esteemed community activist who died last year.
Afterwards, Supervisor John Gioia and Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin spoke. The program ended at the Shields-Reid Community Center with a program featuring presentations and performances by community members, civic and faith leaders.
Event organizers, Otheree Christian, Marena Brown and Goretha Johnson are planning another march in April.
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By Lonnie from Chatsworth, CA
Caution: Small children can drown in open buckets. This system should not be used in homes with toddlers without safeguards.
Even a short length of garden hose can be heavy to lift and awkward to carry. Depending on the size of your yard, dragging it to where you need it can put a lot of unnecessary strain on your back. Let your equipment take the weight off your back. Use wheeled carts and reels to make moving hoses around the garden easier.
Protect Tender Plants
Once uncoiled, use hose guides to keep hoses from and running over and crushing tender plants. Decorative guides can be purchased online or at garden centers, or you can save yourself some money by re-purposing found objects to make your own. Here are just a few ideas:
You'll get a longer life from your hose if you store it off the ground, and let the water drain out of it freely. One easy and inexpensive way to do this is to wind it around an old wheel rim attached to a fence post with the nozzle facing down.
Home improvement stores and garden centers offer a wide range of decorative metal hangers, which come ready to attach to your shed, garage, or house. Freestanding hose hangers are yet another option, albeit a pricey one. They take up more space, and unless anchored securely into the ground, they have a tendency to become wobbly over time.
Coiling your hose by hand can be an arduous task, and it's worth investing in equipment that makes the job as easy as possible - if only to spare you the frustration. Powered reels are nice because they wind your hose automatically. At the very least, a reel with a simple manual crank handle will enable you to wind your hose into a tidy coil.
An alternative to putting your hose away after each use, is to hide it away in freestanding container close to where you need it (e.g. a plastic garbage can cut in half, a large decorative terra cotta pot, or a half barrel).
Bubblers: Attached to the nozzle end of your hose, these devices turn a harsh stream of water into a gentle trickle. They are great for watering fragile seedlings and areas prone to erosion.
Quick-release Couplers: Screw them into faucets, hose ends, and attachments to connect your irrigation devices together quickly and easily.
Select Spray Nozzles: These nozzles are equipped with a dial that lets you choose between multiple types of spray settings. Depending on your watering needs, choose settings like mist, shower, stream, flat, jet, or even flood.
Water Wands: If you have to water hanging baskets or plants in the middle or near the back of a flower bed, attach a water wand to the nozzle end of your hose. Usually made from hard plastic or lightweight aluminum, they instantly extend your reach and allow you to direct water to hard to reach places.
By Ellen Brown
I've tried everything imaginable, until I had an 'aha' moment last week. I purchased an 18-gallon, green, storage container from WalMart for $6.00. Then I had hubby drill a hole in the center and toward the bottom of the container.
I snaked the female end of the hose through the hole and behind some plants and connected it to the faucet. Then I curled the hose inside the container and closed the lid.
To ensure the wind didn't blow the lid off, I put a couple of small plants on top, then to disguise the container, I put a larger, more mature potted plant in front of it.
Watering is easier now that I don't have to worry about dragging the hose over plants nor do I worry about disturbing the mulch. Just lift out the hose, turn on the faucet, and I'm ready to water.
Works great for me and I don't have to 'hide' hoses when I'm photographing or just want to relax in the gardens. I tried only one initially, but now that I see how well it works, I'll be going back for more containers to place in other gardens.
By Norma from Parrott, GA
I am looking for ideas on how to make a garden hose holder/winder? I don't mind if it sits on the ground or is mounted to the house. I just need someone's creativity to help me come up with a way not to spend $50 on a contraption that holds a garden hose.
By editornj from NJ
He dug a small hole and sunk a long pipe into the ground next to the water faucet. Next he screwed on an elbow at the end of the pipe, then he screwed on a shorter pipe. So by the time he was done it looked like an upside down letter L. The longer pipe was in the ground and the shorter pipe is where he wrapped the garden hose.
We didn't waste our money on those cheaply made plastic garden hose storage units. I've seen more of those in the trash along side of the road after a few years. (05/04/2009)
By cheap momma
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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Command Troop Leader Training
CTLT is conducted at many Army bases nationwide, in Germany, and in Korea. This consists of a 3-5 week assignment at an Active Army unit. Each cadet is assigned as a Junior Officer, either as a platoon leader or assistant platoon leader. They are given leadership experience and practical knowledge of the daily functions of an active Army unit.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.cn.edu/undergraduate/programs/army-rotc/departmental-programs/command-troop-leader-training
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Annual Free Blood Screening and Ask the Experts Panel
October 9, 2010
8:30 a.m. to Noon.
The University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center will hold another successful free blood screening on Saturday, October 9, 2010. In addition to screening 500+ people for Celiac Disease--thanks to the generosity of Prometheus Laboratories--their panel of experts will take questions from the audience and exhibitors will showcase delicious gluten free products.
Every fall the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center holds a free, celiac blood screening day to test people who are at risk for celiac disease. Each year we test nearly 500 participants, who come to the University of Chicago from all over the country. Many of the participants would not otherwise have had access to celiac disease testing, either because their doctors refused to carry out the tests, their insurance would not cover the cost or they were uninsured altogether.
You are eligible for the free blood screening if you are at risk for celiac disease. There is no need to fast before the test.
You are eligible for the Blood Screening if:
- You have a close family member that has celiac disease or Type-1 diabetes
- You have Down Syndrome
- You have a related autoimmune condition such as, rheumatoid arthritis or Addison's Disease
- You have digestive problems, chronic fatigue, osteopenia/osteoporosis
- You have other related symptoms or conditions.
There is no charge to be screened, but pre-registration is MANDATORY!
For the testing, they require a brief phone consultation before you register, to determine your eligibility.
The blood screening is held on the 4th Floor of the University of Chicago Duchossois Center for Advanced Medicine. The test performed is the tTG-IgA, or anti-tissue transglutaminase test. This test is the most sensitive screening test available for celiac disease. Please click here for directions.
Visit www.CeliacDisease.net for more information.
ASK THE EXPERTS! 10:30-11:30 Open to the public!
Bring your questions for a Q&A session with our world-renowned experts in celiac disease. We will also host an exhibit area for our sponsors: samples and information will be available beginning at 8:30 am.
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<urn:uuid:cc08a9e9-7f5f-4c19-a44c-78a50045ad79>
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Discover one of our 28 local entrepreneurial communities »
Be the first to know as we launch in new countries and markets around the globe.
Interested in bringing MIT Technology Review to your local market?
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Underground rocks that react with carbon dioxide to form minerals could offer a safe way to keep the greenhouse gas from reaching the atmosphere.
Small reactors have some benefits, but they won’t make nuclear as cheap as natural gas.
With security, reliability, and legal issues yet to be resolved, the first self-driving vehicles will perform only specific tasks.
The optical properties of nanowires suggest a new way to make more efficient solar panels.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/stream/page/6/0/
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The journey into the wonderful and exciting World of Knowledge begins at school as it encourages creativity and liberates the world of imagiantion within each child.
Fast paced technological changes and easy access to information at the click of a 'mouse 'have created new challenges for Learners and educators.We have to make an effort to come out of the safety of routine conformity and encourage originality and exploration.
We have to be ready with innovation and fresh ideas which will equip our children with both hard and soft skills and make them ready to face the world.
It is our endeavor to make learning a joyful and meaningful experience so that School years at KV-2 Bhopal will be memorable ones for all our promising stars.
Kendriya Vidyalaya No.2,Bhopal
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.kv2bpl.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48&Itemid=38
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The governor wants to expand Medicaid.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) _ Ohio's Republican governor wants to expand Medicaid under the federal health care law to cover more poor people in the state.
Gov. John Kasich's decision announced Monday is likely to face opposition within his own party from conservatives against President Barack Obama's health care law.
Kasich has criticized the law as well and its potential long-term costs.
The state thinks 365,000 Ohioans will be eligible for coverage under the expansion right away and expects to get $2.4 billion in federal funds over the next two years for the expansion.
A group of Ohio's doctors and hospitals backs the idea.
The U.S. Supreme Court left it up to states last year to decide whether to expand Medicaid.
Kasich now will need to persuade the Republican-controlled state Legislature to go along.
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Continuing the debate on the two-state vs. the one-state ideas, I asked Henry Norr for permission to cross-post his terrific analysis that was first published on Mondoweiss on Sept. 18.
Norr is a retired journalist and longtime activist. He has written widely on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and over the last decade he has spent a total of six months volunteering in various capacities in the occupied Palestinian territories, most recently two months in Hebron. In 2011 he was a passenger on "The Audacity of Hope," the U.S. boat in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that planned to run the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Here is Norr's analysis:
Every week this year seems to bring some new obituary for the two-state solution. Both in Israel and in the U.S., more and more politicians on the right (the Netanyahu-appointed Levy Committee in Israel; settler spokesman Dani Dayan in the New York Times; the legislatures of Florida and South Carolina; even, apparently, the Republican National Committee) have been coming forward to acknowledge what many on the left have argued for years: there’s only one state between the river and the sea, and there’s no realistic prospect of that changing.
From a different perspective, several prominent long-time champions of the two-state approach have joined the chorus just in the last couple of weeks: Nahum Barnea, widely described as “the dean of Israeli columnists;” Henry Siegman, the former Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress; and Richard Silverstein, the well-known Tikun Olam blogger, who titled his post "Two States Are Dead, Long Live the New State!" Meanwhile, the brightest lights on the left are increasingly focused on mapping out what a one-state solution might look like.
I hesitate to disagree with such a diverse array of pols and pundits, but I don’t buy it. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence that a two-state outcome - of sorts - remains very much in the cards: I think it’s almost certainly what Netanyahu et al. are planning, if not for the immediate future then for some opportune moment down the road.
In fact, I believe those announcing the demise of the two-state solution are inadvertently sowing an illusion that could be damaging to the movement for Palestinian rights.
On one level, of course, I agree completely: the kind of two-state solution liberal Americans, Israeli left Zionists, and Palestinian Authority loyalists have long imagined (and right-wing Zionists have feared) - that is, a state with at least many of the attributes of sovereignty along something close to the 1967 borders - is dead. But that’s nothing new: the whole idea was probably stillborn at Oslo, but if there was ever a possibility it would come to life, that chance ended years ago, as the settler population swelled into the hundreds of thousands, successive Israeli governments kept building out the infrastructure to support them, and Israelis of all stripes realized that no one - not the U.S., not the U.N., not the E.U., and not the Arab states - was actually prepared to do anything to impose the two-state “international consensus” they all talked about.
The only thing that’s changed in recent years is that liberals and moderates are finally shedding their blinders, and the right is emboldened to say openly what it always sought privately.
But to acknowledge that one idealized version of the two-state solution is dead doesn’t necessarily mean that other versions of it aren’t possible. It certainly doesn’t mean, as many of the recent obits imply, that the only issue before us now is the nature of the single state - i.e., will Israel continue denying any real legal and political rights to the Palestinians of the West Bank, even if it formally annexes their land? Will it devise some new form of limited pseudo-citizenship for them? Or will it finally fulfill the fantasies of the farthest-right (expelling the whole Palestinian population) or the dreams of many of us on the left (granting them full and equal rights)?
Each of these alternatives strikes me as completely implausible. After all, although the Zionists have always sought to control all of “Greater Israel,” their elite has also been guided from the beginning by another principle: not just maximizing their territory, but minimizing the number of Palestinians on it, in order to ensure Jewish control. If they had their druthers, most Israelis would no doubt opt for complete ethnic cleansing (a.k.a. “transfer”); the only reason it hasn't happened is that their leaders haven’t been confident the world would let them get away with it, especially in view of the resistance the Palestinians would likely put up. That remains the case today, I believe. (Of course, in the event of all-out, sustained regional war, all bets would be off...)
But as long as transfer is off the table and millions of Palestinians remain on their land, the Zionist leadership has consistently chosen not to incorporate all of it into their state: That’s why Ben Gurion didn’t push to “finish the job” in 1948, and why Israel didn’t annex all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after the 1967 war. That’s why Sharon pulled back from Gaza in 2005. And that’s why I can’t see complete annexation of the West Bank now.
What seems much more likely is that the Israelis will seek to preserve the status quo as long as possible, while they keep expanding the settlements and quietly driving out as many Palestinians as they can (mainly by making their lives miserable and hopeless) - all the while blathering about the need for negotiations. Is there any reason to think that Washington and the Europeans wouldn’t let them get away with this little game, just as they have for so many decades?
And if at some point, from somewhere, there did arise real pressure to resolve the issue - or if the Israelis succeed in so demoralizing the Palestinian population and corrupting its leadership that they can impose the terms they want - I’m convinced they’ll actually implement a two-state “solution.”
It just won’t look anything like what the peace processors have pretended to discuss for the last 20 years. Forget the 1967 borders - Israel will annex the majority of the West Bank. What they'll leave for the new state is an archipelago of minuscule fragments, including the main Palestinian population centers, all cut off from one another and surrounded by what will become officially Israeli territory.
Specifically, in terms of the supposedly short-term administrative divisions originally laid out in the “Oslo II Agreement” between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1995, count on Israel to formalize its currently de facto but complete control of Area C, which represents 62 percent of the West Bank’s land area. It includes all the settlements, the buffer zones around them, the Israeli highways, the IDF bases and “firing zones,” and the entire Jordan Valley except the city of Jericho. (See this factsheet from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and especially the European Union report "Area C and Palestinian State Building," released early this year, though dated last July).
The real beauty of Area C, from the Zionist perspective, is that swallowing it up, even without further ethnic cleansing, would increase the state’s non-Jewish population only modestly: after decades of decline, its Palestinian population is down to somewhere between 92,000 and 150,000 people, depending on whose estimate you believe - not much more than 5 percent of the West Bank total. Thanks to a systematic and amply documented Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing, the Jordan Valley in particular has been almost completely depopulated of Palestinians: in 1967 it was home to between 200,000 and 300,000 people, but now the total, not counting at least 9,400 Jewish settlers, has dropped to 56,000, of whom 70 percent live in Jericho (Area A), according to the EU.
To top it off, the Israelis might also grab some choice bits of Area B, where Jewish settlers have recently begun, for the first time, to set up settlement outposts. But it’s hard to imagine them taking it all: it’s only 20 percent of the West Bank, but nearly a million Palestinians (41 percent of the West Bank Palestinian population) live in the villages and towns it encompasses. It's no secret that Israeli Jews are already obsessed with the “demographic timebomb” represented by the roughly 1.5 million Palestinian citizens inside the Green Line - would they really want to add another million, just in order to achieve formal control of such a modest area?
And as to Area A - 14 separate fragments encompassing all the major Palestinian cities on the West Bank - only fanatics determined to control every inch of Eretz Yisrael, regardless of the consequences for the Zionist project, would want that incorporated into the state as long as its Palestinian population remains. After all, it’s only about 18 percent of the West Bank - about 4 percent of the area of Mandatory Palestine - but it's home to roughly 1.3 million Palestinians, which means that swallowing it up would nearly double Israel’s Palestinian population, even without counting the Area B population.
Few if any of those proclaiming the death of the two-state solution argue that Israel is ready to grant full citizenship to the 2.3 million Palestinians of Areas A and B. When they talk about a single state, they’re assuming, at least implicitly, that Israel will continue to deny the population the right to vote and other civil and legal rights. But if Israel were to formally annex the whole area while continuing to deny citizenship to the natives, the state and its defenders in Europe and North America would face even more difficulty than they do today in trying to refute the charge of apartheid. At that point, it would almost certainly face an accelerating loss of liberal support and renewed condemnation from most of the world, and the size and power of the already growing BDS - boycott, divestment, and sanctions - movement would swell, perhaps finally approaching the proportions of the movement against South African apartheid in the 1980s.
Why would the Zionists risk all that, when they have alternatives? Why won’t they just stretch out the status quo as long as possible? And then, if they have no other choice, they can resort to their own version of the two-state solution: either unilaterally or in conjunction with a quisling Palestinian leadership, they could simply annex Area C (and whatever parts of Area B they want) and declare the remaining fragments of the West Bank to be the Palestinian state. Undoubtedly, the Israelis would insist on demilitarization and a variety of other limitations on the sovereignty of this Palestinian entity, but they could still call it a state.
In fact, Bibi Netanyahu and his cronies have long hinted at such a “solution.” In 1996, when he was first elected prime minister, he promised to implement the Oslo agreement, but compared the kind of entity he had in mind for the Palestinians to either a territory with the right to hold a referendum on sovereignty, like Puerto Rico, or a demilitarized state like Andorra.
When David Bar-Illan, then director of communications and policy planning in Netanyahu’s office, was asked about statehood, he answered “Semantics don’t matter. If Palestinian sovereignty is limited enough so that we feel safe, call it fried chicken.” And just last year, when Moshe Ya’alon, Netanyahu’s deputy prime minister and minister of strategic affairs, was asked to explain his thinking about a Palestinian state, he put it even more clearly: “Our intention is to leave the situation as it is: autonomous management of civil affairs, and if they want to call it a state, let them call it that. If they want to call it an empire, by all means. We intend to keep what exists now and let them call it whatever they want.”
This scenario sounds somewhat like what the South African whites tried to do in the apartheid era by setting up black bantustans. Of course, they didn’t get away with it, but there’s another precedent where similar plans succeeded (from the occupier’s perspective): right here in the U.S.A., Israel’s prime supporter and role model, federally recognized tribes are nominally sovereign nations. Indeed, the “Navajo Nation” is larger than West Virginia. (The comparison to apartheid South Africa probably has more resonance with contemporary Americans, but I’ve always thought the closest analogy to the Palestinian situation was the white man's treatment of native Americans.)
Some astute observers of Israeli politics have been predicting the annexation of Area C - Jeff Halper has repeatedly warned about this possibility (see, for example, Frank Barat’s interview with him in Al Jazeera in May), and just last month Israeli historian Ron Pundak, who helped negotiate the Oslo agreement and later the Geneva Initiative, laid it out very clearly in a Haaretz column entitled “Decoding Bibi’s West Bank Agenda.” My impression, though, is that this very plausible scenario is getting lost in the rising tide of rhetoric about the death of two-state solution and the not-very-likely prospect of a single state.
Does it matter? I think so, insofar as the progressive community can still hope to have some effect on what happens in the Middle East. Consider this scenario: suppose Netanyahu (or a successor) goes to the UN (probably not this year - he’s too preoccupied with Iran - but maybe next year, especially if Romney wins) and boldly declares that it's time to end a stalemate that has gone on long enough. Since the Palestinians can’t get themselves together and won’t negotiate, he’ll announce, Israel is going to settle the conflict once and for all by recognizing a Palestinian state. That state will encompass, basically, Areas A and B; simultaneously, Israel will set setting borders for itself that include Area C.
Instead of recognizing this maneuver as the grotesque landgrab it really would be, Washington (whoever’s in charge) and most of the media would undoubtedly hail him for his “boldness,” “courage,” “vision,” and “fairness.” They’ll declare his plan a “magnanimous compromise,” “the fulfillment of the long-held dream of a two states living side-by-side in peace and prosperity,” blah blah blah.
How the Palestinians would react, I certainly can’t say. Let’s hope they could overcome their current divisions and apparent exhaustion and rise up with sufficient numbers, militancy, and creativity to make the world recognize that this kind of “two-state solution” is no solution at all.
But whatever the Palestinians do, they’ll need help from supporters abroad, especially in the U.S., who can expose the Israeli ploy as a farce and a fraud. And if we’re going to play that role, we’d better be prepared for what’s really in the cards, instead of wasting our time either wringing our hands or celebrating over the supposed demise of the two-state solution.
The ethnic cleansing of the Jordan Valley began in June 1967, when Israeli forces razed numerous villages and camps housing 1948 refugees, driving out perhaps as much as 88 percent of the population - even though no major military battles were fought in the area. Since then, Israel has worked quietly but relentlessly to finish the job, first by preventing the return of refugees (and routinely shooting those who tried), then by establishing a variety of policies and practices designed to deny the remaining Palestinians any prospect of a decent life. Among the techniques employed to this end: land theft (for settlements, “military zones,” and “nature preserves”); physical harassment by settlers and soldiers; home demolitions (40 percent of all the structures Israel demolished in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in 2011 were in this sparsely populated area); planning restrictions and denial of permits for even the most modest construction (out of 440 permit applications in 2010, the latest data available, four were granted); destruction of foreign-aided development projects (including European-funded solar panels); theft and murder of animals; and, perhaps most egregiously, a variety of policies that limit Palestinian access to water - deliberate destruction of Palestinian cisterns, denial of pipeline service by the Israel water company, outrageous pricing of water from other sources, and drilling wells much deeper than the Palestinians’, so the latter run dry as the water table is depleted to fill settlers’ swimming pools and nourish their export crops.
Although the Jordan Valley commands little attention in the West, it must be the best documented case of ethnic cleansing in human history. Good recent overviews include “The Forcible Transfer of the Palestinian People from the Jordan Valley,” by Al-Haq legal researcher Mercedes Melon; a report and interactive feature from B’Tselem, entitled “Dispossession and Exploitation: Israel's Policy in the Jordan Valley and Northern Dead Sea” ; and a beautifully illustrated report from the Ma’an Development Center called “Parallel Realities,” comparing the lives of Palestinian residents and Jewish settlers in the Jordan Valley. See also the website of Jordan Valley Solidarity, a network of Palestinian grassroots community groups and international supporters, and two excellent documentary films, the LifeSource collective’s “Jordan Valley Blues” (2010) and Al Jazeera’s superb “Last Shepherds of the Valley,” aired and posted just last month.
So much documentation, so little justice!
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Age may just be a number, but it's not one we like to give out willingly. Knock a few years off by tweaking your diet with these foods proven to be full of anti-aging properties. Plus, they'll help you reap the benefits of a smaller waist, too.
Guacamole, anyone? According to Paula Simpson, BASc, RNCP, the oil found in avocados works to toughen your skin while also hydrating it. Another perk? "Avocados are full of monounsaturated fatty acids," says Robyn Flipse, MS, RD. "This is the healthiest type of fat for the cardiovascular system because it doesn't promote inflammation."
Stocked with antioxidants, these yummy snacks neutralize damaging free radicals, says Simpson. They also help the body manufacture collagen, leaving your skin firm and smooth.
Read More: 30 Days to a Skinny Summer
#3. Low-Fat Yogurt
Read More »from 10 Foods to Stay Young
You already know it's full of protein and calcium, but yogurt contains other vital nutrients as well, according to Lisa Drayer, MA,
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Shell’s Record Transocean Deal Shows The Importance Of Ultra-Deepwater
Transocean has won a 10-year contract from Europe’s largest oil company, Royal Dutch Shell, to provide 4 newbuild ultra-deepwater drillships. The contact is the largest ever signed by the Swiss-based drilling firm and is expected to add a revenue backlog of $7.6 billion, excluding mobilization charges. The first drillship is expected to be delivered in mid-2015. The company estimates that it will incur capital expenditure of about $3 billion towards the construction of the drillships, excluding capitalized interest.
The drillships will be dynamically positioned, capable of operating at water depths of up to 12,000 feet and drilling wells of up to 40,000 feet. The ships will feature Transocean’s dual drilling technology that allows two drilling operation to be conducted simultaneously, saving time and reducing the costs of deepwater drilling. The ships will be built by South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Co., Ltd.
Growing Importance of Deepwater Exploration
Despite the increasing scrutiny and regulatory oversight following incidents such as the Mocondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, deepwater oil exploration has seen a strong revival. As land based oil resources are getting depleted, oil companies are increasingly relying on offshore and more particularly in deepwater reserves to cater to the world’s growing energy needs.
Transocean has also been realigning its fleet to cater to the growing deepwater market. Last month, the company announced the sale of 38 shallow water rigs to Shelf Drilling Holdings Limited for $1.08 billion.
Among the various offshore drilling practices, ultra-deepwater drilling is the most expensive and technically challenging method since it involves drilling at water depths of over 5,000 feet. It is also known to involve the highest levels of risk. However, ultra-deepwater drilling is attractive to contractors like Transocean since it offers better day rates and profit margins. Ultra-deepwater rigs such as drillships and semi-submersibles can fetch day rates nearing $600,000, compared to shallow water rigs such as jackups that earn average rates of less than $200,000 per day.
Factoring the total value and duration of the Shell deal, we estimate that the average day rates for the newbuild drillships will come to around $520,000 each. These rates are significantly higher than the average $295,000 in revenues per rig that the company earned in 2011. We believe that if the company continues the trend of strengthening its deepwater and ultra-deepwater assets, its average daily revenues per rig and the gross margins of its contract drilling business will be positively impacted going forward.
Tags: Dynamic Positioning, transocean
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Brown to Warren: Answer the questions
The flap over Elizabeth Warren's Native American heritage is far from over -- at least according to Sen. Scott Brown.
Returning to the Capitol on Monday evening, the Massachusetts Republican was asked about Warren's rationale to list herself as a minority law teacher from 1986 to 1995. But rather than weigh in himself, he said it's his Senate opponent who needs to come clean.
"The bottom line is: You guys have asked a lot of serious questions and she needs to answer the questions. It's pretty simple," Brown told POLITICO.
Asked to elaborate, Brown would only stick to that line of criticism.
"I think she needs to answer the questions that you guys have all asked her. I'm not quite sure what else there is to say."
This line, which Brown has used since last week, appears to be an attempt to give him some space from the controversy, but, at the same time, fan its flames.
Warren has been on the defensive since a Boston Herald report late last month that Harvard touted her as a diversity hire in the mid-1990s, and that she was listed as a minority teacher in law directories for nearly a decade. Warren, a Harvard law professor, has said she was listed this way because of her Native American roots, but the campaign has struggled to produce documentation certifying her ties to the Delaware and Cherokee tribes. A genealogist last week said she appeared to be 1/32nd Cherokee.
Asked about the issue last week, Warren says that family stories passed on about their Native ties were the basis of her listing. And she said she removed herself in 1995 as a minority in the directories because her efforts to connect with people like her were not successful.
While Warren and Harvard officials deny she used her Native ties to advance her career and gain tenure at the Ivy League school, her initial decision to list herself as a minority has become a major distraction for her campaign, particularly given her apparently tenuous ties.
Alethea Harney, Warren's spokeswoman, said the campaign is focused on "getting back to the issues that really matter."
"Elizabeth has been straightforward and open about her heritage while the people who recruited her have made it clear it was because of her
extraordinary skill as a teacher and a groundbreaking scholar," Harney said. "Scott Brown has been peddling nasty insinuations to distract from his million-dollar tax returns and multi-million-dollar Wall Street fundraising."
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Oklahoma DWC Meetings this Week
Public hearings held by the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation will kick off across the state Monday Jan. 7, 2008, to collect input on a slate of proposed hunting and fishing regulation changes. Hearings will be held through Jan. 10.
Sportsmen are encouraged to attend and voice their opinions on proposals, which range from certain deer hunting regulation changes to changes in size and daily limits on some fish.
Several of the proposals involve adjustments to deer seasons and deer bag limits both statewide and in designated areas. Specifically, one proposal would allow deer archery hunters to harvest a deer of either sex during the period from Jan. 1-15. Currently, only antlerless deer may be taken during that time period. Also involving deer archery season is a proposal to increase the number of deer that can be harvested by archers from four deer to six deer. Another proposal would open deer gun season to the same as statewide season dates on Broken Bow, Honobia Creek, Three Rivers and Ouachita wildlife management areas.
Among the fishing-related proposals is one to exempt spotted bass from length limits and to remove the bag limit on spotted bass statewide, except in certain streams. Another proposal would limit the harvest of alligator gar to one fish per angler per day statewide, except from April 1 - June 15, when fishing for alligator gar would be catch and release only.
Other fishing-related items are on the public hearing agenda as well, such as tightening restrictions on dealing with invasive aquatic species, adjusting definitions related to limbline angling and making permanent a currently established emergency rule requiring paddlefish anglers to carry a free paddlefish permit.
Other hunting-related proposals include the following:
- * Changing the deer gun season limits and muzzleloader season limits on Keystone and Skiatook WMAs so that the limit on each season would be one antlered and one antlerless deer.
- * Changing the muzzleloader season at Lexington WMA to allow for the harvest of antlerless deer the second Saturday and Sunday of the season. Currently, deer muzzleloader season on Lexington WMA is limited to antlered deer only.
- * Allowing those persons certified to use a crossbow to use a device that permits a bow to be held mechanically at full or partial draw for archery hunting.
- * Clarifying that persons with disabilities and youth hunters are eligible to draw more than one controlled hunt per year and clarifying permit requirements (nonambulatory or motor vehicle permits) for those applying for the Deer Hunts for Persons with Disabilities category of the Controlled Hunts program.
A slate of other wildlife, hunting and fishing-related items will be open for discussion during the public hearings across the state, including allowing the use of poison to control prairie dogs on public land, establishing rules regarding the nuisance control programs for beaver and coyote and the Feral Hog Depredation Program and others. To view the complete agenda for the public hearings, log on to wildlifedepartment.com.
Those unable to attend the hearings are encouraged to send their comments by mail to: Attn: Proposed hunting and fishing regulation changes – Wildlife Department, P.O. Box 53465, Oklahoma City, OK 73152. All comments are weighted equally whether received in writing or delivered at the public hearings. Comments will be accepted at this address until 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 25.
The following is a list of public hearing dates, times and locations. The public is encouraged to attend.
- Date: Jan. 7, 2008 Time: 7 p.m.
Ada – Pontotoc County Technology Center, 601 W. 33rd
Jenks – Tulsa Technology Center, 801 E. 91st St.
Lawton – Lawton Public Library, 110 SW 4th
Oklahoma City – Oklahoma DWC Auditorium – 1801 N. Lincoln Blvd.
- Date: Jan. 8, 2008 Time: 7 p.m.
Clinton – City Hall, 415 Gary Blvd.
Durant – Durant Fish Hatchery Meeting Room, 2021 Caddo Hwy
Enid – Central Fire Station, 410 W. Garriot
- Date: Jan. 9, 2008 Time: 7 p.m.
Miami – Miami Civic Center, 129 5th Ave NW
- Date: Jan. 10, 2008 Time: 7 p.m.
Guymon – OSU Extension Center, 301 N. Main
Hugo – Kiamichi Tech Center, 107 South 15th St.
Okmulgee – East Central Electric Co-op, 2001 S. Wood Dr. (U.S. Hwy 75)
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Senate Committee Takes Up More Than a Dozen Bills for Alternative-Fueled Vehicles
Tax credits for consumers and corporations, all-important infrastructure are on the agenda
Monday, September 17, 2012
New Jersey has one of the most ambitious clean energy programs in the nation, but some have criticized the state for not doing enough to promote the development of electric vehicles and other alternative-fueled cars.
That may begin to change this week, when the Senate Environment and Energy Committee takes up a wide-ranging package of bills to help spur consumers and businesses to buy and develop the infrastructure for alternative-fueled vehicles.
With 15 different bills on its agenda, lawmakers will consider measures to give tax credits to motorists and corporations that purchase vehicles not fueled by petroleum. Also on the docket: proposals aimed at promoting the development of the infrastructure to make consumers more likely to buy the cars.
The proposals cover plug-in electric vehicles, compressed natural-gas vehicles, and vehicles powered by fuel cells, which typically convert hydrogen into energy through a process that creates no pollution.
Some of the bills have languished in the Legislature for a few years; others are relatively recent. Clean energy advocates say the state needs to aggressively promote cleaner-running cars, given that motor vehicles are one of the biggest sources of pollution in New Jersey.
“If we don’t get the infrastructure in place, we lose not only environmentally but also economically,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. He noted that Princeton-based NRG Energy is building the infrastructure for plug-in electric vehicles in Houston, but not in New Jersey.
New Jersey has approximately 84 plug-in electric vehicle charging stations, but the majority are not available to the public. New Jersey ranks about 18th in the county in the number of charging stations, according to Doug O’Malley, interim director of Environment New Jersey.
One of the bills, A-3028, already has cleared the Assembly. The bill would establish a Zero Emission Vehicle Commission to study what incentives and other steps that New Jersey needs to take to conform to an eight-year-old state law requiring less polluting vehicles.
In a rare instance in which auto manufacturers and environmental groups reached a consensus, both endorsed the bill, saying that without an infrastructure in place for plug-in vehicles and other alternative-fueled cars, consumers would never buy enough clean vehicles to meet the goal of the law.
New Jersey’s inaction in promoting alternative vehicles is puzzling given that two companies based in the state have both expressed an interest in building out the infrastructure for plug-in vehicles -- Public Service Electric & Gas and NRG Energy.
“Look at NRG Energy, they are building a system in Houston, and even though they are based in New Jersey, they are not building anything here,” Tittel said.
NJ Spotlight is an online news service providing insight and information on issues critical to New Jersey, with the aim of informing and engaging the state’s communities and businesses. Read more From New Jersey Spotlight.
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The Double Trouble of Taxation
by Ron Paul
Taxes were on the forefront of many Americans' minds this week as they scrambled to meet the April 15th deadline to file their returns. Tax policy in this country hurts taxpayers twice — once when they pay taxes, and then when the government spends the money. Americans are sick and tired of the financial burden and the endless forms to fill out. To add insult to injury, after collecting this money the government does some very detrimental things to the economy.
The burden of complying with the income tax is tremendous. Since its inception in 1913, the tax code has gone from 400 pages to over 67,000. The Tax Foundation estimates that around $265 billion dollars and 6 billion hours are spent just on compliance. That expense amounts to about 22 cents of every dollar the IRS collects. Imagine the boon to the economy if we spent that time and money expanding our businesses and creating jobs!
Aside from the direct loss of money and productivity, the funds from the income tax enable the government to do some very destructive things, such as vastly over-regulating economic activity, making it difficult to earn money in the first place. The federal government funds over 50 agencies, departments and commissions that formulate rules and regulations. These bureaucracies operate with little to no oversight from the people or Congress and generate around 4,000 new rules every year and operate at a cost of about 40 billion dollars. There are some 75,000 pages of regulations in the Federal Register that Americans are expected to know and abide by. Complying with these governmental regulations costs American businesses more than one trillion dollars per year, according to a study by Mark Crain for the Small Business Administration. This complicated system drives production to other countries and shrinks our job market here at home.
Big government is destructive when it takes your money and when it spends it. There is no economic benefit to supporting a government sector as massive as ours. In fact, this country thrived for well over 100 years without an income tax. Today, if you took away the income tax, the government would still have revenue from other sources equal to total government spending in 1990, when government was still too big. $1.2 trillion should be more than enough to fund a government operating within its constitutional confines, and that is exactly what we need to get back to.
I have introduced legislation many times to abolish the IRS and the income tax. It is fundamentally un-American to require taxpayers to testify against themselves and be considered guilty until proven innocent. Abolishing the IRS altogether would trigger an avalanche of real growth in the economy.
With these financial hard times only just beginning, this would be the most efficient and logical way to get our economy growing again, and Americans would need not dread the 15th of April every year.
April 22, 2008
Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com
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Bio: Spry, Lloyd L.(1957)
Contact: Dolores Mohr Kenyon
Surnames: Spry, Garbisch, Kintzele,
Tischer, Prange, Trindal, Winn, Wallek, Jahr, Hemp, Amidon, Davis,
Lombard, Williams, Schoengarth
----Source: Clark County Press
(Neillsville, Clark Co., WI.) November 14, 1957
Spry, Lloyd L. (1957)
Did you know that Lloyd L. Spry moved to
the Granton area in 1899 traveling by train via Babcock, Pittsville
and Romadka, lived in a log cabin for many years, took an active
part in hunting and baseball as a young man, and has had a lifetime
desire to travel in Europe.
He was born on Lincoln’s birthday,
February 12, 1899, in Richland County. In the fall of that
year he came to Clark County with his parents, W. J. Spry and Ida,
locating north of Granton in the Romadka area. At that time
Granton was a community only three years of age, and there was no
road from Romadka to Granton, the only highway into Romadka being a
trail from Loyal.
There was, however, a spur of the
Milwaukee railroad running as far north as Romadka, and it was over
this railway that the Sprys made their entry into Clark
"The railroad," said Mr. Spry, "ran as
far north as what is now the Ben Garbisch farm and what is now
County Trunk ‘H’." There was no depot at Romadka,
but the spur of the Milwaukee road was extended that far north in
order to bring out timber that was then being cut by large lumber
Mr. Spry’s father made arrangements
for the purchase of timber land in Romadka through John Kintzele,
who was then representing the Nast Lumber Company, and the
Milwaukee Railroad. This land was maiden timber, and logs were cut
for construction of a log cabin and a log barn, into which the W.
J. Spry family moved. On December 31, 1900, a brother,
Phelps, was born to the pioneer Spry family.
"There was a school house in Romadka,"
Mr. Spry recalled, "located about 80 rods east of the present
school. Boys only went to school in the winter months, so it took
them additional years to complete an eighth grade course.
Many of them were mature young men before graduating."
The Spry family resided in the original
log cabin until 1912, when they moved south to a farm purchased
from Carl Tischer, a farm which also included a log house and log
barn; but upon which more farm improvements had been made. A frame
house was erected on this farm in 1915, and in 1916 County Trunk
"H" was constructed near this property.
In 1918 the Spry family moved to Granton,
where three children, a boy and two girls, were born. In 1917
Mr. Spry took an automobile course at Detroit, Mich., and in 1918
he entered into a partnership with Harold Garbisch in a garage
which they operated for two years. In 1921 he married
Hildegarde Prange, to which union four children were
In 1921, Mr. Spry, in partnership with
his brother, Phelps, and his father, purchased a bankrupt feed mill
and elevator from American Co-operative. This mill was powered by a
gasoline engine that ground grist two days each week. It was
sold to O. W. Trindal of Loyal in 1928; and in 1929, Lloyd, Phelps
and their father purchased the farmers Co-operative Feed Mill in
Chili, which since 1931 has been under the management of Phelps
The Byrl F. Winn elevator was purchased
in Granton in 1931 by the firm of W. J. Spry & Son, and has
been managed since that time by Lloyd. After World War II,
Lloyd’s son, Robert, was added to the firm.
Mr. Spry’s first wife died in 1931
and in 1936 he married Violet Wallek. One child was born to them.
In 1921, Lloyd was called to community
service, serving for 15 years as village treasurer; eight years
(from 1936-1944) as director of the school board; president of the
village from 1945 to 1957; and as trustee of the village in 1944
A disastrous fire in Granton in 1924
destroyed the Al Jahr-Bill Hemp General Store, the George Amidon
drug store, the Hale and Lew Davis Hardware store, and Lombard
brothers barber shop. The fire started from a blowtorch. The
entire business block was destroyed.
In 1926, Mr. Spry was selected fire
chief, and during this 10-year period Granton employed the old cart
system, "bucket-brigade," and three pressure tanks which generated
pressure by use of acid and soda. No bad fire was experienced
during this period; but in 1936 a modern, fire-fighting truck was
purchased by the village.
During his term as president of Granton,
Mr. Spry saw a sewage system established, curb and gutter added to
the downtown area, the old worn-out sidewalks replaced with
concrete, and the streets blacktopped.
In 1938 he and Henry Williams were appointed as a committee to represent the village of Granton in an interview with Clark County Judge O. W. Schoengarth to work out a program of perpetual care of the Windfall Cemetery at Granton. Authority was granted to include, on all deeds drawn after that date, a guarantee of perpetual care for cemetery lots.
A member of Granton’s first
businessmen’s organization, Mr. Spry was a charter member of
the Rotary club, a member of the Moose Lodge at Neillsville, and an
active worker in the Granton Community Church, which more recently
has been operated as a Methodist Church.
"I should have established a finance agency in Granton in 1928," says Mr. Spry. "I should have spent more time hunting and fishing, and I should have been more active in sports. Yes, I should have made that European trip long before this; but I’ve been busy and happy, and hope to remain that way for many years to come."
© Every submission is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.
Show your appreciation of this freely provided information by not copying it to any other site without our permission.
A site created and
maintained by the Clark County History Buffs
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Parenting, Child & Teen Expert • Educational Psychologist • Author • Speaker
Michele Borba, Ed.D. is an internationally recognized expert on children, teens, parenting, education, bullying and ethical development. Her work aims to help strengthen children’s character, build strong families, reduce peer cruelty and build compassionate and just learning communities. She has presented keynote addresses and workshops throughout North America, Europe, Asia and the South Pacific and has served as a consultant to hundreds of schools and corporations. Dr. Borba offers realistic, research-based advice culled from a career of working with over one million parents and educators world-wide. Her proposal: “Ending School Violence and Bullying” (SB1667) was signed into California law in 2002.
National media regularly depend on Dr. Borba as the expert on parenting, bullying prevention, educational and child issues. She is an NBC contributor appearing over 100 times on the TODAY show and featured on Dr. Phil, Dateline, The View, The Doctors, Nightly News, MSNBC, Fox News, The Early Show, CNN, and to discuss late-breaking news and solutions. She is the parenting expert on Dr. Drew’s Lifechangers and national publications including Newsweek, People, U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times and The Globe and Mail.
Dr. Borba serves as national media spokesperson on family issues for corporations including 3M, Ragu, All, Office Depot, Splenda, General Mills, Similac, Galderma, V-Tech, Cetaphil, RC2 Learning Curve, Florida OJ, and as a parenting consultant for Wal-Mart, McDonalds and Johnson & Johnson. She is a board member for Parents, Character Education Partnerships, Boys & Girls Club of America Focus on Family, and is the Ambassador for OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) helping distribute laptops to children in third-world countries and serve as spokesperson.
She is the award-winning author of 22 books translated in 14 languages including Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me!, No More Misbehavin’, Don’t Give Me That Attitude!, Parents Do Make A Difference, The Big Book of Parenting Solutions: 101 Answers to Your Everyday Challenges and Wildest Worries, Building Moral Intelligence (cited by Publishers’ Weekly as “Among the most noteworthy of 2001”), and Esteem Builders used by 1.5 million students worldwide.
Her numerous awards include the National Educator Award, presented by the National Council of Self-Esteem; Santa Clara University’s Outstanding Alumna Award; and the Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Educational Profession, presented by the Bureau of Education and Research. She was named the Honorary Chairperson for the Implementation of Self-Esteem in Hong Kong and served as a consultant for the Center Resource Group for Character Education and Civic Engagement for the U.S. Department of Education.
Dr. Borba received a Doctorate in Educational Psychology and Counseling from the University of San Francisco, an M.A. in Learning Disabilities and B.A. from the University of Santa Clara, and a Life Teaching Credential from San Jose State University. She is a former classroom teacher who has worked in regular education as well as with children with learning, physical, behavioral and emotional disabilities and in private practice for troubled youth.
She lives in Palm Springs, California with her husband and has three grown sons.
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February 25, 2011 | 10
In July, 2010, one corner of the blogosphere erupted with the seething, burning rage that online communities seem to have a unique ability to muster.
The spark that lit bloggers’ fuse was a decision by SEED Media Group decision-makers to allow a team of writers from PepsiCo Inc. to operate a blog about nutrition and global health on its popular ScienceBlogs.com blogging network. Many of ScienceBlogs’ other writers felt this choice had leapt across the ethical line. Some thought the Pepsi-authored blog wasn’t labelled clearly to let readers know what they felt it was – advertising in disguise. Some felt that by staying, their reputations, and their credibility, would be diminished.
While SEED did eventually reverse its plan, the damage had been done. The network began haemorrhaging writers, losing nearly a quarter of its roster before the week was out. Blogging as a platform flies on wings of trust, and it seemed that ScienceBlogs – one of the first, and certainly the most prominent science blogging network – had flown too high.
The fiasco – dubbed Pepsigate as the saga unfurled – revolved around two major issues: traditional notions of the advertising-editoral divide that have plagued publishing for ages, but also a new struggle stemming from a lack of understanding of how readers assess the credibility of blogs. Knowing how readers decide to believe a blog post could help make sense of Pepsigate, and whether or not giving a clearer biography of the Pepsi blog’s authors would have made any difference.
Chesney and Su gave 269 undergraduate students – 182 in the UK, 87 in Malaysia – a fake story chronicling a blogger’s discovery of, and subsequent battle with, nail fungus (ew?). The posts were identical except for the blogger’s biographical information running along the top. Here, the researchers had three types of bio: 1) a pseudonym only 2) a pseudonym, age, and sex, or 3) the blogger’s “real” name, age, sex, email address and photograph.
The students rated the blogger’s perceived credibility, successfulness, trustworthiness, and reputation, along with whether they thought the writer had “an interest in important affairs,” integrity, and had “information of superior quality.” Each of these terms was judged out of seven and combined to give a one-number measure of the bloggers perceived credibility, with one being believable and seven being a skeezy dirtbag.
It turned out, much to the surprise of the researchers, that having a full set of biographical information, or having nothing but a nickname (KrystalKidd, or another similarly creative pseud) made absolutely no difference on how credible the students thought the blogger was.
"I wasn’t expecting that at all,” said Chesney, a researcher at the University of Nottingham. "I thought it would make a difference, this idea of having not just a name but also a photograph, but it didn’t. There was no difference.”
Pseudonymous bloggers were rated with a 4.40 +/- 0.93, pseud, age and sex earned 4.28 +/- 0.79, and fully identifiable bloggers got 4.26 +/- 0.89. In other words, all three set-ups left the bloggers somewhere in the middle of the seven point scale.
"Whatever the reason," said Chesney, "the implication of [the study] for bloggers is that, should they wish to publish anonymously, they can do so without a loss of credibility."
But in my mind, this is only one possible way of looking at the results. Yes, it could be that people are sympathetic to anonymous bloggers. Or, maybe it’s just that the level of trust for blogs isn’t up for discussion. So it might not be that bloggers aren’t losing credibility by being anonymous, but rather that even by having a photo, an email address and all the rest, bloggers just aren’t capable of gaining any points. Chesney said he’s sympathetic to the two different interpretations.
"I think that’s exactly right. This study doesn’t shed any light on which of those it is, but it could be either," he said.
Chesney said there is at least one strong reason why the results may not be perfectly applicable to blogging today, however. He said the research was conducted in around 2006, "before it became known in the mainstream that news organizations were willing to look at blogs, Flickr streams, and microblogs as valid information sources."
He said that at the time, it might have been that, despite their growing prominence, “blogs perhaps were not seen as something worth attention.”
But, Chesney and Su’s findings seem to fit within previous research into the perceived credibility of websites in general. The pair wrote that in a study by Eysenbach and Köhler, which looked at how people get health information online, that "few participants were able to name the website where they had eventually found information, and none of them had checked any ‘disclaimer’ or ‘about us’ section of the websites they looked at."
The research, along with a pinch of extrapolation, suggests that for the average browsing reader, the one who will come across a story from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or any other source, will hardly even notice – let alone care – whose blog they are currently reading. They will read the post, and decide what to make of it based on the content. And then, just like when people learn bad science from movies, they will probably forget where they found the information in the first place.
My point in tying this research to the Pepsigate scandal is to suggest that those who happen to be in charge of giving bloggers an expanded platform (like by being on a blogging network run by a magazine company), need to be particularly ethical in regards to who they hand a keyboard. If the research shows that readers don’t look at biographies or check an author’s credentials, then the practice of running disguised advertising is a huge breach of their obligations to their audience.
With the default credibility of blogs running so low, and there being little a blogger can do to improve it, they need to be especially protective of any gains they manage to make – a lesson SEED may have learned just a little too late.
*The authors refer to anonymous blogging throughout their study, but technically the research seems to refer to pseudonymous blogging – blogging under a nickname. Anonymous bloggers would be completely unidentified.
For more on this topic, see:
The Pseudonymity Laboratory, a series of posts exploring pseudonymity in science online.
Image Credits: Nuclear explosion, "ScienceBlogs.com, circa July 2010." Photo credit: FEMA. Anonymous, "Anonymous bloggers are seen as equally credible as named bloggers. No word yet on the internet group ‘Anonymous.’" Photo credit: Vincent Diamante
Thomas Chesney and Daniel K.S. Su (2010). The impact of anonymity on weblog credibility, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 68 (10), 710-718 : 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2010.06.001
About the Author: Wow, you’re actually reading this? Somehow, I knew you would. Scientific American readers are a clever, skeptical bunch, after all… Colin Schultz is a freelance journalist from the frigid North. He enjoys free healthcare, geophysics, and blogging about science communication theory. He is also very active on Twitter. Colin is a graduate of the Masters of Journalism program at the University of Western Ontario.
The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
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Preparation – Select only tender, freshly gathered corn in the milk stage. Husk and trim the ears, remove silks and wash.
Blanching (scalding vegetables in boiling water or steam for a short time) is a must for almost all vegetables to be frozen. It stops enzyme actions which can cause loss of flavor, color and texture.
Blanching cleanses the surface of dirt and organisms, brightens the color and helps retard loss of vitamins. It also wilts or softens vegetables and makes them easier to pack.
If you currently subscribe or have subscribed in the past to the LaRue County Herald, then simply find your account number on your mailing label and enter it below.
Click the question mark below to see where your account ID appears on your mailing label.
If you are new to the award winning LaRue County Herald and wish to get a subscription or simply gain access to our online content then please enter your ZIP code below and continue to setup your account.
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Steven L. Stockton, P.E., Director of Civil Works, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, gave this address at the recent 2013 Gilbert F. White Lecture in the Geographical Sciences: Global Context - The Flood Risk Management Challenge. The lecture was sponsored by the NAS/NRC.
From the WWW site:
Damages and loss of lives due to natural disasters, particularly flooding, is on the rise. The number of reported flood events has increased from ~ 250 per decade in the 1970s to more than 1,700 during the first decade of the 21 Century. All indications are that this trend will continue.
Managing flood risks is a complex endeavor. Determining flood risks at any given location entails evaluating how high waters might rise as well as the vulnerability of people and assets in a flood's pathway. Assessing a communities' resiliency to return to pre-flood conditions must also be considered. Local governments, households, and businesses are key decision-makers regarding choices that affect flood risk and should be involved in planning processes.
Join Steve Stockton as he explores the key principles in managing flood risks, including a new set of operating principles established by the agencies involved in the Hurricane Sandy Recovery.
Steve will be the keynote speaker at the 2013 AWRA Annual Conference.
“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” - Victor Hugo (from the remarks)
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Persistent vomiting and diarrhea can result in dehydration, because huge amounts of fluid are lost from the body. These conditions can have an effect on people.
Editor : Moazzem Hossain, Published by the Editor for International Publications Limited from Tropicana Tower (4th floor), 45, Topkhana Road, GPO Box : 2526 Dhaka- 1000 and printed by him from Al-Falah Printing Press, 423, Elephant Road, Bara Moghbazar
He is dangerously malnourished, a condition aggravated by chronic diarrhea. During a brief interview with VOA, he and his mother, Qaali Abdi, 30, cannot stop coughing. “We are suffering. I'm sick, the children are sick, their father is sick – we have
Diarrhea may be described as a condition exactly where loose bowel movements takes spot because of some abnormality within the intestines. A lot of men and.
Salmonella can sicken people who handle the food and then put their fingers in their mouth and pets. Symptoms to watch for in your cats include decreased appetite, fever and diarrhea. They should be treated by a veterinarian.
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Radical by David Platt - study guide
1. Explain David Platt's (henceforth referred to as D.P.) uneasiness about being referred to as the "youngest megachurch pastor in history."
2. What were the 2 questions he had to ask himself and that we have to ask ourselves? (pg.3)
3. When D.P. came back from his trip overseas , his conclusion was that in America "we are settling for a Christianity that revolves around ________ to ________ when the central message of Christianity is actually about _________ __________." (pg 7)
4. Read Luke 9:57-62. What were the 3 ways Jesus talked people out of following Him?
Read Luke 14:25-33. What were 3 more ways Jesus talked people out of following Him?
Read John 6:53. How did he talk these people out of following Him?
Read Mark 10:21. How did He talk this person out of following Him?
Read Mark 1:16-20. How did He unsuccessfully try to talk these disciples out of following Him?
5. Read Psalms 50:21.What is the danger when we say,"Jesus didn't really mean that like it sounds."?
6. What is the cost of our non-discipleship to the rest of the world?
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By COLLEEN LONG, Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — The excavation of a Manhattan basement yielded no obvious human remains and little forensic evidence that would help solve the decades-long mystery of what happened to Etan Patz, a 6-year-old who vanished while walking to a bus stop 33 years ago.
On Monday, FBI and police completed a four-day search of a basement that began with a search warrant after a cadaver-sniffing dog detected the scent of possible human remains. The basement, once the workspace of a handyman, is down the street from where Etan's parents still live and along the route he would have walked to reach his school bus stop when he vanished on May 25, 1979, wearing a backpack with elephants printed on it.
"No obvious human remains were found, but it's still a missing person case," said Paul Browne, spokesman for the New York Police Department.
FBI spokesman J. Peter Donald said agents had concluded "the on-site portion of the search." The Manhattan district attorney's office, which said in 2010 it would take a fresh look at the case, had no comment.
Officials hauled away large brown steel containers full of rubble and muddy dust from the blasted concrete floor and brought them to a landfill on Staten Island, where they will be preserved.
Though the search was over, some of the material gathered was still being examined, and officials were continuing to pursue leads and interview people.
Investigators found a stain on a piece of wall that was tested on site and did not contain traces of blood, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the search was ongoing.
FBI officials sent the piece to a Quantico, Va., lab for further testing. Some hairs also were collected, though it's not clear if they were human, and they also will be tested, one of the officials said.
An official with the city medical examiner's office had been on site during the search, and would have taken any potential human remains, including clothing or bones, but the official left without taking anything, one of the officials said.
Etan's 1979 disappearance touched off a massive search that continues today, but has ebbed and flowed over the years.
It also ushered in an era of anxiety about unprotected children and led to a national movement to publicize missing children. Etan, a sandy-haired boy with blue eyes and a toothy smile, was one of the first missing children whose face would appear on a milk carton.
His parents, Stan and Julie Patz, (rhymes with plates) were reluctant to move or even change their phone number in case their son tried to reach out. They still live in the same apartment, down the street from the building that was examined.
The couple has endured decades of false leads, and a lack of hard evidence. The two were briefed by authorities about the work there on Saturday, one official said.
They have not commented since the search began last week, and did not again Monday.
The case seemed to have been largely focused on Jose Ramos, a convicted child molester now serving time in Pennsylvania who had been dating Etan's baby sitter at the time the boy disappeared. In 2000, authorities dug up Ramos' former basement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, but nothing turned up.
Stan Patz had his son declared legally dead in 2001 so he could sue Ramos, who has never been charged criminally and denies harming the boy. A civil judge in 2004 found him to be responsible for Etan's death.
But the focus shifted recently to Othniel Miller, who is now 75 and lives in Brooklyn. In 1979, Miller was a handyman who used the basement at 127B Prince St. as a workspace.
Miller, who was described by longtime residents as a neighborhood staple, was interviewed soon after the boy vanished. Investigators noticed at the time that the basement had a fresh concrete floor; his space was searched then but never dug up.
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Play it and find out... On second thought don't
play it. If you're involved in college you really wanna graduate.
EQ will addict you so much you'll forget about work. I don't know
why it is. I really HATE RPG's but EQ is just extremely fun. It's
got a weird aura about it, all I can say. [m, 16]
Almost everyone who has taken an introductory psychology
course in high school or college has heard of B.F. Skinner. Skinner
is an important figure in Behaviorism, and developed a learning
theory known as Operant Conditioning. Skinner claimed that the frequency
of a given behavior is directly linked to whether it is rewarded
or punished. If a behavior is rewarded, it is more likely to be
repeated. If it is punished, it becomes suppressed. This deceptively
simple and straight-forward theory may explain why EverQuest is
The rewards cycle in EverQuest begins with instant
gratifications. When you start a new character, everything you need
to do is close by - finding the guildmaster; finding mobs to kill.
The first few mobs you attack die in several swings and you make
level 2 in about 5 kills. By the time you make level 3 half an hour
later, you are more aware of the underlying skill points, the accumulation
of money, and gain a desire to get better equipment. Gradually,
it takes longer and longer to get to the next level. The simple
tasks that you did to improve trade skills have become trivial,
but the rewards you get - the blue skill points and the metal bits
- drive you to perform tasks more elaborate than before because
trivial tasks are no longer rewarded. The one-click reward disappears,
and is gradually replaced by rewards that take more and more clicks
to get. And suddenly, some of us find ourselves clicking away for
hours in front of a forge or jewellery kit.
This process of guiding an individual to perform
more and more elaborate and complex tasks is known as shaping in
Operant Conditioning. It is usually explained in textbooks in conjunction
with Skinner Boxes. Skinner boxes are small glass or plexi-glass
boxes equipped with a combination of levers, food pellets, and drinking
tubes. Laboratory rats are placed into Skinner boxes and conditioned
to perform elaborate tasks. At first, the rat is rewarded with a
food pellet for facing the lever. Then it is rewarded if it gets
closer to the lever. Eventually, the rat is shaped to press the
lever. Once the rat learns that pressing the lever is rewarded,
a food pellet does not need to be dropped every time and the rat
will still continue pressing the lever. It is in the same way that
EverQuest shapes players to pursue more and more elaborate blacksmithing
or tailoring combinations. Moreover, EverQuest players continue
to attempt elaborate combinations in the face of many costly failures.
There are several schedules of reinforcement that
can be used in Operant Conditioning. The most basic is a fixed interval
schedule, and the rat in the Skinner Box is rewarded every 5 minutes
regardless of whether it presses the lever. Unsurprisingly, this
method is not particularly effective. Another kind of reinforcement
schedule is the fixed ratio schedule, and the rat is rewarded every
time it presses the lever 5 times. This schedule is more effective
than the fixed interval schedule. The most effective method is a
random ratio schedule, and the rat is rewarded after it presses
the lever a random number of times. Because the rat cannot predict
precisely when it will be rewarded even though it knows it has to
press the lever to get food, the rat presses the lever more consistently
than in the other schedules.
A random ratio schedule is also the one that EverQuest
uses. Both melee and trade skill points increase after a random
number of attempts. You know you won't get skill points unless you
practice the skill, but you don't know how many attempts it will
take to get another skill point. Level increases also take a random
number of kills. You know that you won't gain a level by standing
around, but you don't know exactly how many mobs you need to kill.
Because the time it takes to level can be estimated however, one
might argue that level increments follow a fixed ratio rather than
a random ratio schedule. It is the presence of experience penalties
from dying that randomizes this estimation, because it is hard to
estimate deaths. The ability for certain classes to use effective
strategies (druid quad-kiting for example) at certain levels also
means that a higher level may be completed in less time than the
level before it. Veteran players know that just because you can
get a bubble of experience in half an hour today doesn't mean you
can do it again tomorrow, because class demand and grouping conditions
change even in the same zone from day to day.
A completely transparent experience points system
would be a fixed ratio schedule because you have a very good grasp
of how many more solo kills it takes to gain a level. Thus, if EverQuest
exposed the underlying numerical experience points and told you
how many points a mob gave you, and how much more experience you
need to gain a level, it would be less effective as a reinforcement
schedule. A system that can most effectively hint at progress without
sacrificing this opacity maximizes the random ratio schedule, and
this is why the recently implemented blue macro-view line in the
experience bar enhances the schedule already in place. This is particularly
true for mid-level players who would get frustrated by the normal
experience bar that moved too slowly, and thus made them feel that
progress was not being made.
The presence of multi-layered and overlapping goals
in the game allow players to pursue multiple rewards concurrently.
You need more experience to gain levels so you can kill bigger creatures.
Along the way, you need more money to buy better equipment. You
may want to develop trade skills, complete quests, travel across
Norrath, or camp a rare spawn. Most of the time, you'll be doing
several of these at the same time. In fact, the game forces you
to. You can't keep up with mobs if you level but don't buy new gear.
You can't continue blacksmithing if you run out of money. What this
means is that you're always close to a goal - a reward. You are
seldom far away from all possible rewards.
But something more intensely provoking has happened
in EverQuest which makes it addictive. Another frequently encountered
figure in introductory psychology textbooks is Maslow, known for
his proposed hierarchy of needs. Maslow sees human needs in a pyramid
scheme. At the bottom are basic hunger and thirst needs. Then follows
security. At the top of the pyramid are aesthetic needs and personal
achievements, which would only be possible on a strong foundation
of sated hunger and security needs. Thus, even though personal achievements
are more rewarding than filling an empty stomach, these achievements
are only possible once you've filled your stomach. But EverQuest
makes it possible for Joes and Janes to become heroes. EverQuest
makes it so that you can slay Vox in a guild raid on an empty stomach.
What happens when people can feel achievement through continuous
mouse-clicking? What happens when these achievements are more rewarding
than "real life" achievements? And what if it's easier
to click the mouse than to cook dinner?
One important tenet of Operant Conditioning is that
behaviors are not inherently rewarding - they are made rewarding
through reinforcement. It is the shaping process in EverQuest that
makes the in-game "achievements" rewarding. It is the
shaping process that make "achievements" achievements.
People who don't play EQ don't see the appeal in clicking "COMBINE"
in front of a forge for hours. They don't see why players would
camp Quillmane or ice cougars for hours, even days, for an item
that usually doesn't drop. To outsiders, the time players spend
playing the game is mind-boggling. But it's hard for those of us
inside the construct to realize this because the game has conditioned
us to pursue these rewards.
Many things set EverQuest apart from other available
computer games. Unlike other RPG's, there is no story-line or super-ordinate
goal. In fact, there really isn't even any kind of plot, which allows
the player to feel in control. Games like Diablo II give constant
instant gratification, and do not gradually take more and more time
to reach rewards. Game-play at level 25 in Diablo feels just like
game-play at level 10, whereas that is not the case in EverQuest.
No one would play Diablo if you needed to camp a mob that only sometimes
dropped an item. In fact, no one would play Diablo if you had to
wait for a mob to spawn. But what sets EverQuest apart is that it
is multi-layered and complicated in a way that few other games are.
Everything from trade skills to faction, from mobs to their loot,
from zones to planes, is complex and well-textured. Finally, it
is different because it is massively multi-player, but while most
multiplayer games are completely destructive, EverQuest has a decidedly
constructive and cooperative tone to it. There is no blood in the
game. No disemboweled intestines splatter on your screen. Instead,
players often find themselves chatting while waiting for a mob to
spawn. The ranger may be fletching as he recounts a particularly
close battle. The warrior chugs some Dwarven Ale. There may be some
emotes with playful, sexual overtones. In contrast with Quake or
Diablo, this scene feels awfully relaxed and idyllic.
The massively-multiplayer nature of the game takes
the virtual construct one step beyond just an elaborate Skinner
Box. The problem with many people is that you can't have one box
tailored to all of their reinforcement needs. But having them all
in their separate Skinner Boxes is not interesting. The internet
solves this problem by allowing individually tailored Skinner Boxes
interact with others. And in this way, EverQuest has created a system
of inter-connected Skinner Boxes, a Skinner Network even, where
each Skinner Box is tailored to its host's needs and reinforcement
schedule, and where individuals can interact with each other without
sacrificing the integrity of their own construct. It is like the
Matrix where everyone is isolated in their own nutrient vat, but
where they can interact in a digitally-constructed world.
. Click .. click .. Click .. click
recent findings on this issue can be found at the "Ariadne"
|
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|
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| 0.946837
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|
The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World
Many well-meaning people and organizations throughout the world have had grand visions for African and Indian aid over the years, but many of these projects and initiatives have not had a lasting impact for the poorest people. Author and Acumen Fund founder Jacqueline Novogratz has written a book that will change the way you think about Africa, India, philanthropy, and probably your own life.
Novogratz, who had been an international banker, knew she wanted to make a difference in the world. Like many of us, though, she wasn’t sure how. The Blue Sweater traces her quest across the globe and back, and her strong personal conviction that poverty can be alleviated through educated philanthropic investment. Novogratz illustrates in detail, sometimes painfully, sometimes hilariously, the many lessons she learns along the way, and why many traditional types of charity just don’t work in poor countries.
The Blue Sweater is not a lecture, but a rich narrative describing the people, places, and experiences (emotional and intellectual) Novogratz discovers on her journey. She brings African and Indian landscapes to life in full, vivid color, and describes the inspiring and frustrating people she encounters with equal candor. Readers with a travel bug, beware; this book will make you want to visit the places Novogratz describes, running water or no.
Beyond its practical value as a modern day look into effective philanthropy, or its aesthetic value as a beautiful story, The Blue Sweater is a paradigm-shifting book about interconnectedness and the new necessity of a global perspective. It’s also about granting self-respect and purpose to those with nothing in a practical, detail-oriented, and well-planned way. The Blue Sweater is an inspiring reaffirmation of the goodness in the world, in people, and in the dream of dignity, purpose, and plenty for all.
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|
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|
PANAMA CITY BEACH — Panama City Beach Mayor Gayle Oberst signed a proclamation Tuesday to honor the accomplishments of women in history and also to recognize the equality struggles women still face today.
Surrounded by representatives from agencies with a goal to end those struggles, Oberst proclaimed March Women’s History Month in Panama City Beach, marking the 27th anniversary of the observation in the United States.
Oberst was joined by representatives from the Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division (NSWC PCD) Diversity Council, NSWC PCD’s Federal Women’s Program manager, and members of the local Federally Employed Women’s (FEW) Chapter 461.
“These three groups, we all work together, and we all have similar goals in mind,” said Jacqui Barker, public affairs specialist for NSWC PCD and vice president of FEW. “Overall, we want to advance the status of women in the workforce on both the state and federal levels.”
Barker said the overall goal of the FEW is to advise women on how to become productive members of society.
“We’re trying to make sure that women have the same opportunities and make sure they’re groomed to reach the highest position they desire,” said FEW President Geri Kohler. “We represent federal women employees and also state women employees and anyone who shares the common goal of helping women get ahead in the workforce.”
The organization received its charter one year ago, and currently has about 30 members.
FEW members hope to soon launch community service projects in the area, which will include establishing a series of mentoring and scholarship programs for local students. The organization also hosts training sessions for women, which include tips on dressing for success, financial planning and information on legislative issues regarding equal rights for women.
One of the major initiatives of the FEW is to work for ratification of the women’s Equal Rights Amendment, which was first introduced in Congress in 1923. Although it was approved by Congress in 1972, it failed to get the support of the 38 states required to become part of the Constitution.
Zena Le, manager of the mandated Federal Women’s Program at NSWC PCD and member of the diversity council, said the goal of the council is to improve on all areas of diversity.
Using the theme “Women inspiring innovation through imagination: Celebrating women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” the NSWC PCD Diversity Council will host a Women’s History Month Celebration March 20, at which Oberst will be a guest speaker.
“The diversity council as a whole works with partners in the community to enhance diversity,” Le said. “Women’s History Month is to recognize the outstanding women we have here today and those of the past as well.”
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Utica, NY (June 18, 2002) – Ameresco, Inc., one of the nation’s fastest growing energy services companies, today announced the acquisition of the Utica City School District energy conservation project from Niagara Mohawk Energy, Inc., the unregulated subsidiary of Niagara Mohawk Holdings, Inc.
Upon execution of the energy services agreement, Ameresco will install, operate and maintain energy efficient technologies for the school district, which are expected to save up to $600,000 in energy costs each year.
“Ameresco’s conservation services group is excited to implement this comprehensive project to address Utica City School District’s energy needs,” said David J. Anderson, Executive Vice President, Ameresco, Inc. “We are confident these energy conservation measures will significantly reduce energy costs and maximize savings for all schools participating in the program while enhancing the learning environment for its students and faculty.”
Under the agreement, Ameresco will provide the District with the most effective measures to reduce energy consumption and costs for heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting, and other energy uses in each school. Encompassing approximately $9 million in capital improvements, this project will include the installation of: energy efficient windows and doors, premium efficiency lighting, energy management controls, premium efficiency motors, variable frequency drives, heating fuel conversion from electric to gas, boiler replacements, steam trap replacements, pool HVAC improvements, and insulation on piping and insulation.
“In an age when education dollars are scarce but education outcomes are high, this will allow us to redirect funds to the students and staff.” This also helps us to teach about energy conservation because now we can walk the talk,” said Daniel G. Lowengard, Superintendent of Schools.
Release Date: 6/25/2002
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|
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|
5:00 AM CDT, September 24, 2012
The best news to come out of Capitol Hill last week was largely buried in the back pages. It was the statements made by senior Republicans that if President Barack Obama wins reelection in November, they will retreat in their position on raising taxes on high-earners.
Finally, a sign of compromise of some sort. It's hardly a guarantee that Congress will retreat from the looming "fiscal cliff" of massive tax increases and spending cuts that could easily plunge the nation back into an economic recession early next year, but considering how ridiculous and self-destructive the political standoff in Washington has become, it's something.
The concession looms large particularly given how little the 112th Congress has accomplished this term. As others have noted, these representatives have made Harry Truman's "do-nothing" Congress of 1948 look like over-achievers by comparison, having passed four times as much legislation as the current edition.
And that isn't even a fair comparison. Has there ever been a time when so much important legislation was left behind as Congress left for recess prior to an election? Lawmakers even wrapped up their business early — the House's Friday adjournment marking the earliest election-year recess since 1960. These must be the lazy, entitled victims on the government dole that Mitt Romney was talking about.
Mr. Romney and his supporters like to say the nation's economy has been stalled by uncertainty in Washington, and to some extent, that's likely true. How can businesses plan for the future and make hiring or expansion plans when Congress refuses to pass important long-term measures such as the Farm Bill (one of the more vital pieces of legislation left on the House docket last week), or the energy, jobs, immigration, or transportation bills before it?
Of course, when such criticism is raised, House Republicans counter that they passed numerous bills that simply languished in the Democratic-controlled Senate. But that ignores the fact that much of what was passed by the Republicans was done as pure political theater — like reducing Pentagon cuts required by sequestration without a compromise over domestic cuts or taxes — that never stood a chance in the other chamber.
Take, for instance, the recent dust-up over what should have been a no-brainer: offering green cards to foreign students who come to this country to obtain advanced degrees in science, engineering and math. Under current rules, U.S. universities train these talented scientists, who frequently end up leaving the country to take top posts at foreign companies because visas aren't available. But Republicans insisted that instead of offering more visas to allow these valued students to stay here, the U.S. should re-purpose those offered by the current diversity lottery.
Thus, the GOP could offer a bill that wasn't going to pass but could potentially help them with minority voters. They scored political points but did nothing, which has been par for the course this term.
Democrats offered their share of empty gestures in the final days before the election recess, too — such as Friday's protest of adjournment. House Democrats stood on the Capitol steps to insist that both sides should stay in town until more job-creating business got done. That likely induced a collective yawn from the other side of the aisle.
To describe Washington as gridlocked right now is an insult to traffic jams. It is now officially a kind of gridlock that seems to want to perpetuate itself. Small wonder that polls show the 112th Congress has set another kind of record — more Americans disapprove of its members' job performance than any previous Congress.
That leaves the November election as the best and perhaps only chance Americans have of getting action out of Washington. When Congress returns in mid-November, it will have only a matter of weeks to address the half-trillion in spending cuts and automatic tax increases that are now set to go in effect Jan. 2.
If GOP lawmakers at least recognize that an Obama victory in six weeks will require them to abandon their untenable position on taxes, that's a good first step, particularly given the incumbent's increasingly strong position in the swing states. Obviously, that retreat won't solve the problem, but it means that a bipartisan agreement over taxes and spending is not out of the question. And with that possible, perhaps other important business can get done as well.
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Sean McDonald (1968-1994) was a rookie police officer killed in the line of duty at twenty-six years of age. McDonald was born in Ireland and moved as a child to Astoria, Queens, where he later graduated from Most Precious Blood Catholic School. When he joined the New York City police force in the early 1990s, he was assigned to the 44th Precinct in the Bronx.
On March 15, 1994, Officer McDonald was standing guard at a condemned building in the Bronx and was notified of a disturbance in a nearby tailor shop. He investigated the situation and disrupted a robbery in progress. As McDonald tried to handcuff one of the perpetrators, he was shot and killed. On June 3, 1995, city officials and Astoria community members gathered to dedicate Sean’s Place in memory of Officer McDonald in the neighborhood where he was raised.
The Fourth Ward Primary School previously occupied the land that is now Sean’s Place. Erected in 1885, this school, also known as P.S. 6, was the first in Long Island City. In 1968, the building was demolished, and jurisdiction over the land was given to the Department of Transportation. Transportation planned to build a parking facility on the site, but when construction stalled, Astoria residents rallied support for the creation of a neighborhood park. They cleared the site of rubble, hired a bulldozer to level the land, erected baseball backstops, and began to use the property for recreational purposes.
In 1971, community members, Parks, and Transportation reached an agreement that allowed for the dual use of the site as a park and a parking lot. Public Works designed the new facility for Parks, and the land was transferred to Parks jurisdiction in 1972. A sitting area with benches and game tables, a tot play area, and basketball, handball, and roller hockey facilities were built. Willow oaks (Quercus phellos) and linden trees (Tilia spp.) were also planted. Sean’s Place and the accompanying parking lot are located on the south side of 38th Street, between 31st Avenue and Broadway.
In the late 1990s, Council Member Peter F. Vallone sponsored two projects to improve Sean’s Place. In 1996, he allocated funds for the installation of new play equipment and a cast stone turtle. In 1998, he again sponsored an extensive $850,000 reconstruction of the playground, installing new curbs, pavement, fences, benches, a drinking fountain, a drainage system, and ten new plantings.
A decorative theme, reminiscent of the marshy landscape of 19th-century Long Island and inspired by the organic motifs of the Art Nouveau style, characterizes this playground. The 1998 renovation also graced the park with cast iron dragonflies and flower petals, a frog spray shower, rosettes set in colorful bluestone and granite pavements, and a flagpole with a yardarm.
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The United States is imposing new sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear weapons program.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laid out the sanctions, Wednesday, in South Korea.
"We continue to send a message to the North: There is another way. There is a way that can benefit the people of the North," she said. "But until they change direction, the United States stands firmly on behalf of the people and government of the Republic of Korea, where we provide a stalwart defense along with our allies and partners."
The measures are designed to stop the North from spreading nuclear weapons and will target goods that fund the country's nuclear programs.
Clinton said the sanctions are not aimed at the North Korean people, but at their defiant government.
"As long as the North Korean leadership takes a different choice, continuing defiance, provocation and belligerence, it will continue to suffer the consequences," she said.
The U.S. also reassured its commitment to South Korea's security, in response to the North's recent torpedo attack on one of the country's ships.
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Hi Doves,One thing many are overlooking is that Moses authored the first 5 books of the Bible.He is one of the Witnesses for this very reason.In fact I'll go as far as saying ONLY for this reason!"You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which TESTIFY of Me...Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father, there is one who accuses you- Moses, in whom you trust."For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.""But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My Words?" (John 5:39,45-47)The Lord is referring to the 1,260 Day Testimony of Moses!This is when Moses is going to accuse the Jews of rejecting Jesus as the Messiah.The the Jews are going to hate Moses and Elijah for this very reason, and are going to try to kill before the end of their Testimony.They will not succeed until their Testimony is completed on the 13th of April 2014 (13th of Nisan)And just like the Lord, they will be killed on the Day of Passover, the 14th of April 2014! (14th of Nisan)Moses, in spite of the arguments against him, is definitely one of the two witnesses.Do remain blessed,Ola.
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President Obama and Mitt Romney heaped criticism on China during the presidential campaign, with the Republican candidate advocating an especially aggressive policy stance toward Beijing.
Romney pledged to label China a currency manipulator on his first day in office. And if Beijing did not immediately move to float its currency, Romney said he would slap countervailing duties on Chinese exports to the U.S.
Obama was more measured in his criticism, but still quick to point out China trade cases brought by his administration.
On Tuesday, the American electorate gave Obama a second term, elected Democrats to a majority in the Senate and stuck with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. In other words -- the balance of power changed very little.
That sense of continuity should extend to Washington's relationship with Beijing. China's foreign ministry said Wednesday that Chinese President Hu Jintao had offered his congratulations to Obama, and stressed the need for cooperation that will benefit the people of both countries.
According to analysts at Nomura, Romney's defeat should reduce the risk of China pushing its currency into depreciation in retaliation for aggressive trade tactics.
"Although Obama and the U.S. Treasury will continue to press China for greater [currency] liberalization and appreciation, the pressure is likely to be more diplomatic," the analysts said.
Still, much about the relationship remains in flux. Just weeks before Election Day, the U.S. Treasury delayed the release of a report that has in the past criticized China for keeping the value of its currency artificially low. That report must be addressed in coming months -- although it is not yet known who will replace Sec. Tim Geithner at the agency's top post.
And China is about to appoint its own new leadership. The transition will set a new cast for the powerful Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party -- a small group of officials who will wield tremendous power over China's tightly-controlled economy for years to come.
"I think people here now hope Obama can become more constructive in his relationship with China," Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group in Shanghai, told CNN on Wednesday. "There was a lot of happiness with Obama when he was [first] elected, but people now feel he hasn't focused on China in the right way."
Former President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that lawmakers will most likely put off making a set of crucial spending and tax decisions until 2013.
"[Congress] will probably have to put everything off until early next year," Clinton said during an interview with CNBC. "That's probably the best thing to do right now."
Clinton was referring to the so-called fiscal cliff -- a series of measures set to begin in January that would MORECharles Riley - Jun 5, 2012 7:14 PM ET
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|
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| 0.958473
| 748
| 1.523438
| 2
|
Faculty Mentoring Focus Groups
Faculty development recently offered the opportunity to participate in focus group discussions of faculty mentoring. The discussion topics included sharing mentoring experiences, defining types of mentoring, expectations for mentors, and suggestions for developing faculty mentoring at Buffalo State.
The guiding questions are below.
- What type(s) of mentoring already occur at Buffalo State?
- What is a mentor?
- How are mentors assigned?
- How are mentors developed?
- How do mentors benefit from the relationship?
- What is the role of faculty development in facilitating mentoring?
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| 0.919471
| 123
| 1.601563
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|
There is one argument in Belize City presented by the newspapers of that local town and vocal population, that shows the ignorance and misconceptions of the townies debating the issues of political reform.
What came to my notice, was the comment by a media commentator, that there were two groups basically in the port town. The first group says the country and rural people are not ready for democracy, autonomy, self rule, they need educating. The second smaller group argues that you have to just go ahead.
I would like to point out as a Founding Father of the Northern Fisherman's Cooperative that these two arguments are basically the same as the arguments we were given by the government of the day and the citizens of that port town Belize City who control national politics some 35 years ago.
We were told that fishermen could not cooperate. By the Director of Cooperatives and by politicians running the government. We were told that fishermen were uneducated ( too true at the time!), that we fought, drank, womanized and were ignorant people. All true comments at the time and maybe not so different today either. But what has that to do with anything? Do we have to know arithmetic to handle millions of dollars? No! We do not, those that don't know arithmetic quickly learn how by being self taught through necessity. It's not a big thing. You should have watched the painful self education process of Dolo Marin of Caye Caulker back 35 years ago. Then see him critique a Cooperative balance sheet of 30 million dollars today.
What we found out, lo these 35 years or so ago, was that government and democracy, be it by a cooperative, cane farmers association, or district governments and Village Council Associations is a LEARNED PROCESS.
I observed it with a critical and philosophers eye over the years and came to the conclusion that the democratic process takes the ignorant, the uneducated, the poor blighted poverty masses about 13 years as a group to learn. Indeed, there is no academic education that will teach it. No school certificate, or degree. It is a process of self discovery, of what works and what does not work. At times it can be expensive learning, but those hard expensive lessons are necessary to the process.
So, in answer to those of the port Belize City that bring up the cry once again, justifying their existance and why they should run the political nation and finances of Belize, let me just point out some Belizean History. Democracy is learned by doing and making mistakes. There is no other way of learning it. No reading, or academic education will teach it. A civilian population of voters must DO IT themselves?
Please don't show your bigoted ignorance by trotting out that worn out old argument, that the rural masses, because they are uneducated cannot govern themselves. Belizean history shows YOU, to be the educated ignorant one!
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|
en
| 0.974647
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| 1.929688
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The Social Organization of Zen Practice
- Publication date:August 1988
- Dimensions: 228 x 152 mm
- Weight: 0.452kg
- Temporarily unavailable - no date available
This 1988 book provides both a first-hand account and a theoretical analysis of the way an American Zen community works. The form Zen practice takes in the United States is described in detail through close study of two Zen groups in southern California. Preston leads readers through the buildings and grounds of a Zen residential community and introduces them to the main forms of Zen practice, paying special attention to the styles and implications of meditation. The book's second half develops a theory of the nature of religious reality as it is shared by Zen practitioners. Preston attempts to explain how this reality - based on a group's ethnography yet at the same time transcending it - relates to meditation and other elements of Zen practice by drawing on the notions of ritual, practice, emotions, and the unconscious found in the writings of Pierre Bourdieu, Randall Collins, Erving Goffman and Emile Durkheim.
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Settings abound! We get to explore lots of different landmarks in America through Sal. As a result, we get a kind of portrait of America (which we explore more fully in the "Themes" section of this learning guide). But we also get a portrait of our narrator through all the things she sees.
On Sal's road trip from Euclid, OH to Lewiston, ID, she and her grandparents stop in a lot of places:
Because Sal's mother is part American Indian (Seneca), Sal explores America through the perspective of American Indian history. Some of what she sees and learns through her road trip opens her eyes and makes her happy. Other things make her sad and disappointed, as she learns about the history of Native American people and how they were robbed of their land by white Americans.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Instead, let's zoom in on a few key locations.
Euclid, Ohio is three hundred miles north of Bybanks, Kentucky. It is a boring, boring place compared to Sal's farm in Bybanks, because there's not a lot of nature around:
Tiny squirt trees. Little birdhouses in a row—and one of those birdhouses was ours. No swimming hole, no barn, no cows, no chickens, no pigs. Instead, a little white house with a miniature patch of green grass in front of it. It wasn't enough grass to keep a cow alive for five minutes. (3.6)
Oh my. Sal does have a really amazing sense of humor sometimes. We can totally imagine a cow squeezed into one of these backyards, chomping on some grass. Poor Sal. To go from huge fields and wide open spaces full of trees to a tiny little house with a tiny little backyard must be really, really hard, don't you think?
When Sal sees her actual house in Euclid, it's bad news bears:
We walked through the tiny living room into the miniature kitchen and upstairs into my father's pint-sized bedroom and on into my pocket-sized bedroom and into the wee bathroom. I looked out the upstairs window down into the backyard. Half of the tiny yard was a cement patio and the other half was another patch of grass that our imaginary cow would devour in two bites. There was a tall wooden fence all around the yard, and to the left and right of our yard were other identical fenced plots. (2.8)
Where are the trees, the fields, the plants, and animals that Sal loves so much and that are so important to her? Euclid just can't deliver. There's something about the cement patio in particular and the tall wooden fence that really gets to us. Cement is pretty much the opposite of anything living or growing, and fences box you in.
So then why, oh, why would Dad Hiddle ever make the decision to leave beautiful Bybanks and move to cementy Euclid? Sal tells us in Chapter 18:
"But for now," he said, "we have to leave because your mother is haunting me day and night. She's in the field, the air, the barn, the walls the trees." He said we were making this move to learn about bravery and courage. (18.23)
So that brings us to Bybanks, the place that's so haunted by the memory of Chanhassen that Dad Hiddle has to flee, with an unwilling Sal in tow.
Bybanks is the site of Sal's magical family farm in Kentucky, and as Sal tells us, it "is not much more than a caboodle of houses roosting in a green spot alongside the Ohio River" (1.1). It's a paradise to Sal and her family, full of wildlife, farm animals, and gorgeous, wide open spaces. The natural world thrives in Bybanks in ways that it definitely doesn't in Euclid.
So it's no wonder then, that Sal misses her hometown so much:
I wanted to be back in Bybanks, in the hills and the trees, near the cows and chickens and pigs. I wanted to run down the hill from the barn and through the kitchen door that banged behind me and see my mother and my father sitting at the table peeling apples. (4.2)
There's so much freedom in Bybanks. A person can run all over the place and not have to worry about cars or strangers or any kind of real danger that you might find in a city like Euclid. Everything is alive in Bybanks – from the trees to the farm animals to the apples that her parents peel.
There's also kind of a magic to Bybanks: it seems like a very spiritual place. Consider Sal's descriptions of her singing tree:
Next to my favorite sugar maple tree beside the barn is a tall aspen. When I was younger, I heard the most beautiful birdsong coming from the top of that tree. It was not a call; it was a true birdsong, with trills and warbles. I stood beneath that tree for the longest time, hoping to catch sight of the bird who was singing such a song. I saw no bird – only leaves waving in the breeze. The longer I stared up at the leaves, the more it seemed that it was the tree itself that was singing. (16.10)
What a beautiful description, Sal. Through this moment, we really begin to see just how much Bybanks means to her. It's not just a beautiful place – it is full of wonder and mystery. It's a place where miraculous things like a tree singing can exist.
Sal feels a deep connection to her farm, which really rings true when Sal hears the very same birdsong at the end of her story, when she visits her mother in Lewiston, Idaho:
In the midst of the still morning, with only the river gurgling by, I heard a bird. It was singing a birdsong, a true, sweet birdsong. I looked all around and then up into the willow that leaned toward the river. The birdsong came from the top of the willow and I did not want to look too closely, because I wanted it to be the tree that was singing. (42.23)
For a moment, it's almost as if she's back in Bybanks, and nothing has changed. We really understand, then, how horrible it must be for Sal to have to leave her farm. She tells us:
I refused to move. I would not leave our farm, our maple tree, our swimming hole, our pigs, our chicken our hayloft. I would not leave the place that belonged to me. I would not leave the place to which, I was so convinced, my mother would return. (18.22)
Sal associates her beautiful farm in Bybanks with her mother and with her happy life before her mother lost her baby and grew very sad. For most of the novel, we're pretty sure she'd do just about anything to go back there. Finally, she does.
When Sal, her dad, and Gramps return to Bybanks at the end of the story, the place hasn't changed, but Sal's family definitely has. It seems everyone has gone through a huge journey:
We're back in Bybanks now. My father and I are living on our farm again, and Gramps is living with us. Gram is buried in the Aspen grove where she and Gramps were married. We miss our Gooseberry every single day. (44.1)
So many sad things have happened, but there are also new things to welcome them. Gramps gets a new puppy and names it Huzza Huzza. He gives Sal driving lessons on his old farm, and the two play a game in which they pretend to walk in someone else's moccasins. Though everyone – Sal, Gramps, Dad – has been hurt and has dealt with lots of pain, we get the feeling that they are going to be just fine back in Bybanks.
Madison is one of the early stops on Sal's road trip, and from the looks of it, it's a pretty awesome place:
The city of Madison sprawls between two lakes, Lake Mendota and Lake Monona, and dribbling out of these are other piddly lakes. It seemed as if the whole city was on vacation, with people riding around on their bikes and walking along the lakes and feeding the ducks and eating and canoeing and windsurfing. I'd never seen anything like it. […]
There's a part of the city where no cars can go, and thousands of people stroll around eating ice cream. We went into Ella's Kosher Deli and Ice Cream Parlor and ate pastrami sandwiches and kosher dill pickles, followed by raspberry ice cream. After we walked around some more, we were hungry again, and so we had lemon tea and blueberry muffins at the Steep and Brew. (10.11-12)
It's interesting to note Sal's tone here when she describes the "piddly lakes" and the fact that everyone seems to be "on vacation." It's almost as though she doesn't like the hustle and bustle of Madison. Perhaps she really is a country girl at heart and isn't used to being around so many people.
We love how Sal tells us about the food that she eats in Madison – it all sounds delicious. However, again we get the feeling that Sal somehow doesn't feel that all of this "vacationing" is right when she's on a mission to get to her mother. It's almost as though she doesn't feel like she can let herself really relax or have any kind of fun on this road trip.
Oh, and just so you know, Ella's Kosher Deli and Ice Cream Parlor is totally a real place. They serve something called a Hot Fudge Deep Dish Banapple Jubilee. Has anything ever sounded more delicious in your life? The Steep and Brew, too, is a real place in Madison.
Sal has a very interesting conversation with a man in Pipestone, Minnesota when she and her grandparents stop at the monument there for a few hours:
I asked one if he was Native American, but he said, "No, I'm a person." I said, "But are you a Native American person?" He said, "No, I'm an American Indian person." I said, "So am I. In my blood." (12.20)
How do you feel about this interaction? Why does Sal ask this man how he identifies himself? It seems like she is searching for a piece of herself by asking the man these questions. Her mother identified with her own American Indian heritage, and maybe Sal's looking for a way to do that, too.
Have you noticed that Sal is very good at observing other people's homes? Here are a few examples:
Each time I went into that house I noticed new things. It was a scary place. The walls were lined with shelves crammed with old musty books. On the floor were three rugs with dark, swirly patterns of wild beasts in forests. Two chairs were covered in similar ghastly designs. A sofa was draped in a bear skin. (30.23-24)
Perhaps the reason why Sal pays such careful attention to homes is because her own home is broken, and she misses it more than anything. Based on Sal's observations, what do you think she thinks makes a home homey? What makes it uncomfortable?
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<urn:uuid:87d5ace9-86a4-4c90-8e24-699525c2c12c>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.shmoop.com/walk-two-moons/setting.html
|
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|
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|
The purpose is to create spline-faces based on given mesh of point data. The user interactions have been reduced on sketching the boundaries for the new faces. All calculations will be done automatically. This leads to a very simple and intuitive handling. One big advantage is the option to represent large complex shapes by a few faces.
Average rating based on 3 reviews
423 of 779 people found the following review helpful
surface generation from ply format
by 'sreenivas' from sreenivas
Tool was excellent in creating the surfaces from ply format.
260 of 952 people found the following review helpful
Crashes with Vista
Does not work with Vista. Several crashes and black screen. Rhino loading problems. Not recomandable at this time.
159 of 787 people found the following review helpful
Works Great, When It Works
by 'Joseph R. Keezer' from Joseph R. Keezer
Most of the time, it does not work.
It is impossible at times to get the plug in to commit when you have completed the task of outlining the area you want to make a surface from. You cannot do one area, go back and do a different area after completing.
In order to complete a model, as a work around, you must sequentially save each segment and hope you can join them later (something Rhino itself is not terribly good at).
If this were a plug in that cost less than $100 USD, I might recommend it as a pig and a poke. However considering the nearly $1,300 USD price tag, I'll take my business elsewhere. Users would be advised to do the same.
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http://www.rhino3d.com/resources/default.asp?id=795
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|
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|
It's mid-January and the dearth of snow continues. Personally, I couldn't be happier - but what does the lack of snow mean for our gardens?
Despite the fact that it's cold and wet, snow provides good insulation for plants and protects them from freezing temperatures. But what happens to plants when there is no snow?
If you've planted shrubs and perennials that are hardy for your planting zone (zones 5 and 6 in Fairfield and Westchester counties), then you have no worries. These plants can withstand the cold of our winters and our hot, humid summers.
Nick Mancini, a master gardener who teaches organic vegetable gardening in Connecticut, says, " Snow is always good to have because it blankets the soil from the cold and adds moisture, but this year we’ve had plenty of rain and the temperature has been warmish, so we should be okay."
He adds, "I water my seedlings with melted snow, and to me, that’s what I’ll miss the most. However, it’s not even the middle of January yet, and we can still get our allotment of snow."
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<urn:uuid:b5b95346-f39c-4a4f-b4e6-9057292f046c>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://mamaroneck.dailyvoice.com/home-garden/can-gardens-survive-without-snow
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|
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OSLO, Norway — Over the more than 90 minutes that gunshots echoed around her, Julie Bremnes was able to call her mother just once. A crazy man was shooting, the 16-year-old said. People were dying.
Marianne Bremnes, more than 800 miles away from Friday's youth-camp massacre on the Norwegian island of Utoya, couldn't make her stay on the phone — it was too dangerous.
"I didn't know what to do," Marianne said in a telephone interview Wednesday, "other than ask her to text me."
So she did. Beginning at 5:42 p.m., Julie texted regularly while hiding along the rocky shore, trading vital information and words of love with her mother. Their full conversation follows, translated from Norwegian:
Julie: Mum, tell the police to hurry. People are dying here!
Marianne: I am working on it, Julie. The police are on their way. Do you Dare give me a call?
Julie: Tell the police that a madman is running around shooting people.
Julie: They have to hurry!
Marianne: The police know about it and they have received many messages. It is going to be fine, Julie. The police are calling us now. Give us a sign of life every fifth minute, please?
Julie: We are in fear of our lives!
Marianne: I understand that well, my love. Stay under cover, don't move to another place! The police are already on their way, if they have not already arrived. Do you see injured or killed?
Julie: We are hiding in the rocks along the coast.
Marianne: Good! Should I ask your grandpa to come and pick you up when everything is safe? It is your choice.
Marianne: We are contacting grandpa right away.
Julie: I love you, even though I may yell at you sometimes.
Julie: And I am not panicking, even though I'm s--- scared.
Marianne: I know that, my girl. We love you very much too. Do you still hear shooting?
Marianne, at home in the northern city of Harstad, was trying to be strong.
"I had to be calm for her," the 46-year-old said. "She also remained calm so it was easier for me to remain calm.
"I heard from her every five minutes — she did what I told her to do," Marianne said. "The whole time I knew how she was and where she was. It helped me and I guess it helped her."
But Julie's ordeal wasn't over. The break in gunfire was just a lull. The gunman, dressed as a policeman, ran loose on the island for about 90 minutes while police struggled to get there from Oslo, just 25 miles (40 kilometers) away.
About 6:15 p.m., Julie offered what sounded like hopeful news — but her mother warned her to be careful:
Marianne: Have you heard anything of the others from Tromsoe? Grandpa is on his way down.
Julie: The police are here.
Marianne: The person shooting apparently wear a police uniform. Be careful! What is happening to you now?
Julie: We don't know.
Marianne: Can you talk now?
Julie: He's still shooting!
Julie sent that panicked text message about 6:30 p.m., about the time Anders Behring Breivik surrendered. Breivik is accused of killing 68 people on the island and setting off a massive explosion that killed eight people outside government headquarters in Oslo earlier that afternoon.
There were several more nervous exchanges, along with some good news about a fellow camper, before Julie and her mother realized she was safe:
Marianne: Joergen has swum to shore. I have just spoken to his father.
Marianne: This is all over national news now, full attention on Utoya now. Be careful! When you get the chance, you get back to the mainland and meet grandpa from Hamar.
Julie: I am still alive.
Marianne: Thank God for that.
Julie: We are waiting for the police to pick us up.
Julie: We heard shooting just now, so we dared not walk there.
Marianne: Good! The evacuation is going on now, they're saying on TV.
Julie: We hope someone will pick you up soon. Can't they catch him soon?!!
Marianne: The anti-terror police is there, and they are working on getting him.
Marianne: Should we try to get a flight ticket home tomorrow?
Julie: I've no time to think about that now.
Marianne: I understand.
Julie: Do you know if they've got him?
Marianne: I'll keep you posted, my girl. We're following the TV constantly.
Marianne: Hey, are you there?
Julie: Yes. The helicopters are circling over us.
Marianne: Then you have been spotted?
Julie: They are looking for people in the water, they haven't picked us up yet!
Marianne said at one point, Julie emerged from her hiding place when she saw a helicopter and waved her pink rain jacket to attract attention. It wasn't the police, but a news crew that had filmed Breivik surrounded by bodies piled up on the shore and in the water.
"If she had been at the wrong spot she would have been killed," Marianne said.
Instead, by 7:01 p.m., relief for the family was nearly at hand:
Julie: What's on the news?
Marianne: The police are also on a boat to Utoya, otherwise nothing new. It is not clear what happened to the gunman, so you stay still. Wait for someone to pick you up.
Marianne: Now they've got him!
When Julie called her mother again, she was on a rescue boat. She was safe.
"And she cried," Marianne said. "I cried and she cried."
Mother and daughter were reunited Saturday evening, when Julie flew back to northern Norway with other survivors from the region.
Julie lost five friends in the shooting. Marianne said her daughter is holding up well — but she worries about the future.
"She is fine," Bremnes said. "But I don't know about the long-term aspects of it."
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<urn:uuid:ea702330-30f4-4760-9788-a4991c278906>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.monroenews.com/news/2011/jul/28/messages-offer-mother-daughter-hope-amid-carnage/
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|
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|
When we visit relatives in Pennsylvania, they call around to find a room for us because most of them have been taken by itinerant gas well workers. This also raises local rents. (These workers do have a positive effect with their local spending.)
The motel clerk said her engineer son explained that fracking for gas was perfectly safe since the gas was way below the water aquifer. Of course, that means you have to drill through the aquifer to get to the gas. A significant number of people have discovered they can ignite their tap water, or that their livestock’s been poisoned after drilling. A whole town in Wyoming has had its water contaminated.
Clearly, the drilling methods are not foolproof, yet gas companies are still not required to reveal all of the chemicals they put in their fracking fluid. And, once the gas is tapped out, who will maintain the abandoned well? We have abandoned oil wells, slow leakers, all over the Gulf of Mexico now! Can you imagine fracking fluid slowly leaking into the water you drink?
The well doesn’t even have to leak. One of my relatives has a friend working as a night watchman at one of the drilling sites. The companies collect used fracking fluid in ponds to be trucked off for purification. However, the watchman reported, they often come in at night and bulldoze the sides of the pond to let the fracking solution just run out.
It is up to our state government to hold the gas companies to responsible behavior. I don’t see that happening.
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<urn:uuid:fddcbe94-d53e-48ca-9387-52c5ab7cac3c>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://cincinnati.com/blogs/letters/2011/12/20/fracking-dangers-and-company-responsibility/
|
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|
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|Long Island Spinal Cord Injury Recourse Center (LISCIRC)
LISCIRC is committed to providing education programs to junior high and high school health classes. The programs are aimed at
prevention as well as discussing the many scientific advances in SCI research. It is designed to fit into a one hour classroom period.
LISCIRC applied for and received a grant from the NYS Department of Health for $10,000 to produce an educational video. (Our
thanks to Senator Chuck Fuschilla). This 20 minute stirring and informative account of Joe's experience with interviews with Dr. Wise
Young is now being shown as part of the presentation.
Most spinal cord injuries are preventable and many the result of a motor vehicle accidents or sports accidents, and many are related
Joe Testaverde was 17 when he dove from the roof of a friend’s house into a swimming pool while attending a 4th of July party. It was
only the quick thinking of two friends that went to his aid, that saved his life.
Joe, now 27, can relate well to teenagers, and he is an integral part of the educational program. He will address students at their
level, and appeal to them to use their heads and not be stupid about drinking as well as engaging in activities that can damage you
Joe will also share tips about SCI prevention other than the obvious ones, an an entertaining and down to earth manner that kids will
enjoy and react to.
The second part of our education program is aimed at giving students a sense of how the medical and neuro-scientific community is
actively working on a cure. As our group is affiliated with the Spinal Cord Injury Project at Rutgers University, we will talk to kids about
the amazing work being done there under the renowned leadership of Dr. Wise Young, director of the program.
Dr. Young is a firm believer that science has proven that the spinal cord can be repaired….Its now a matter of engineering and
money. Dr. Young will be involved in clinical trials that will be beginning soon on new drugs and therapies to treat SCI. This is
amazing in that only a short time ago, the conventional wisdom was that this would be impossible.
Dr. Young is a big advocate of collaboration and therefore, works with and shares information with many other institutions. We will
aim to share some of the new breakthroughs with the kids at a level they can understand and appreciate.
For information on how you can arrange a one day presentation for your class, please call or email us at 516-221-WALK or
|Joe Testaverde and Dr. Wise Young
|Joe speaking at Stimson Jr. HS in Huntington, LI.
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|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://testaverdefund.org/Education.html
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|
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I came across this great article from Wireless World May 1972. The link for that article is here:http://schematicsforfree.com/archive/file/Analog/Linearity%20of%20the%20Transistor%20Amplifier.pdf
I was interested in this because of what I had read in a recently purchased used book titled: "Principles of Transistor Circuits" by Stan Amos and Mike James. This is a good summary of transistor parameters, which is great if you've become familiar with it in more detail with other texts first.
The issue concerned me since I am designing a solid state guitar amplifier. The author in chapter 7 "Small Signal A.F. Amplifiers" had dropped this little bomb about a case where the next stage would operate very non-linear, due to an inappropriate level of source resistance. This was something I had not given a lot of consideration to.
So I thought this would make a good LTspice experiment to prove the issue. So you'll find that documented here:http://www.experimentalistsanonymous.com/ve3wwg/doku.php?id=ce_linearity
The original article above and the LTspice experiment confirms however, that unless you avoid negative feedback- you don't have much to worry about in this regard.
This also debunks another tube vs solid-state myth about the differences between these in their amplification of the signals (ignoring intentional tube overdrive). Both technologies use negative feedback and similarly achieve linear amplification. In the linear region, there is mighty little difference between them.
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<urn:uuid:ab53e373-c03a-4ee5-96c6-c0bcada95d4a>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://experimentalistsanonymous.com/board/index.php?topic=2829.0;prev_next=next
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|
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|
I am astounded at the proposal before Gov. Bill Haslam championing a voucher system for public school students to attend private Memphis schools (Nov. 14 article).
Vouchers would be provided to students from the lowest-performing schools to pay tuition at private schools, with the aim to help these students advance academically. Because these far-behind students have special needs that require the best-trained, most skilled educators, there are several reasons these vouchers will not only hurt the public schools, but rob these students of the help they need.
First, the private schools with the highest academic standings and the best-trained teachers won't participate in the voucher system. This leaves private schools, needing enrollment-paying students, drooling at the prospects of enlarging their student body at the taxpayers' expense. Many of these schools are religious; many of them are more interested in religious education than academics. Few of them have the facilities and well-trained faculty to teach with the needed skills. Taking money from the city schools for these vouchers harms our city schools, which need all the financial support they can get. With all the programs to further train the best teachers and the skills required of our current city school teachers, the public system better understands and is better prepared to help underperforming students.
The voucher system proposed seems very ill-advised and with a hidden agenda that is not for the benefit of the students it proposes to help.
Julia W. Allen
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<urn:uuid:6c3b0546-b6c3-441e-96ec-87c699609e16>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/nov/25/letter-downside-vouchers/
|
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|
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ANSWER: The language of the proposed law could be read as imposing a two-part test for compliance. We expect plaintiffs to argue that the grocer must:
(1) be able to show that the food was not “knowingly and intentionally” made with genetic engineering; and
(2) have a sworn statement on file from the supplier attesting to the non-GE nature of the food.
This reading would be based upon the language of the initiative, which exempts:
“A raw agricultural commodity or food derived therefrom that has been grown, raised or produced without the knowing and intentional use of genetically engineered seed or food.”
Prop 37 does not say that it applies to a grocer only if he or she “knowingly and intentionally” offers genetically modified food for sale. Instead, it says that any food can be the basis for a lawsuit, unless the food was produced without knowing and intentional genetic engineering. This subtle difference in language could have a major impact on litigation because it could be read to put the burden of proving that there was no “knowing and intentional” use of genetic engineering on the grocer. Proving the negative—that one did not know something—is very difficult.
Please see full alert below for more information.
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Administrative Law Updates, Commercial Law & Contracts Updates
DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.
© Morrison & Foerster LLP | Attorney Advertising
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/question-of-the-week-under-prop-37-can-89561/
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|
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1943 - Allard was born in Fort Collins, Colorado on December 2, 1943.
1968 - Received his Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from Colorado State University.
1983-1990 - Worked as a veterinary while representing Larimer and Weld Counties in the Colorado State Senate.
1991-1996 - Elected as a Representative in the United States House of Representatives from Colorado's Fourth Congressional District and served on the Joint Committee on Congressional Reform.
1996 - Elected as a Senator to the United States Senate.
2002 - Re-elected again to the United States Senate.
2003 - Appointed by Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell as Deputy Majority Whip and became the Chairman of the Senate Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Caucus.
2005 - Introduced the Federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution regarding the banning of same sex marriages.
2006 - Time magazine selected him as one of "America's Five Worst Senators".
This page is copyright © s9.com
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http://www.s9.com/Biography/Print/AllardAlan-Wayne
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|
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VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Catholic church has chosen a new pope.
Argentine Jorge Bergoglio has been elected pope, the first ever from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium. He chose the name Pope Francis.
The new pope appeared on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, after a church official announced "Habemus Papum" -- "We have a pope" -- and gave the name of the new pontiff in Latin.
Pope Francis -- the first Jesuit pope -- has spent nearly his entire career at home in Argentina.
The former Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 76, reportedly got the second-most votes after Joseph Ratzinger, the last pope, in the 2005 papal election. He has long specialized in the kind of pastoral work -- overseeing churches and priests -- that some say is an essential skill for a pope.
In a lifetime of teaching and leading priests in Latin America, which has the largest share of the world's Catholics, the former Bergoglio has shown a keen political sensibility as well as a self-effacing humility, according to his official biographer, Sergio Rubin. His personal style is the antithesis of Vatican splendor.
Bergoglio is also known for modernizing an Argentine church that had been among the most conservative in Latin America.
The conclave was called after Pope Benedict XVI resigned last month, throwing the church into turmoil and exposing deep divisions among cardinals tasked with finding a manager to
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However, instead of resorting to conventional art materials, Porsche 911 GT2 sports car bonnets have been pressed into service as a “canvass”. The project is the brainchild of Argentinian Jorge Gómez. As both art lover and big fan of the Porsche brand, he came up with the idea of simply combining his two biggest passions, linking two fascinating art forms in the process.
19 important artists from Uruguay and Argentina, including for example Pablo Atchugarry, Rogelio Polesello and Jorge Ferreyra Basso, accepted Gomez’s invitation to lend Porsche bonnets their very own signature and put a creative twist on them. The work on the skin of a racing car inspired the artists to very different works, offering the beholder a great variety of styles and materials employed – from acrylic to enamel, from mosaic tiles to tyre rubber. But from time to time the works of art still fulfil their original purpose as car bonnets, because Gómez occasionally insists on fitting them on his own Porsche 911 GT2 and taking the artworks for a spin. The collection is now making its European debut in the Porsche museum, being exhibited against the impressive backdrop of 23,000 hp.
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The Food Network aired a pretty impressive program last Sunday: The Big Waste. Four celebrity chefs were in charge of feeding 100 people using only food products that were discarded or earmarked to go into the garbage.
The Food Network should be renamed ESPNFood, because everything is a damn competition these days, and this was no exception. However, the point was well made: about 40% of our food is wasted. The chefs visited butchers, fishmongers, bakeries, farms and supermarkets, where they were confronted with this sad reality.
My heart really hurt while watching this program. I knew things were bad, but not to this extent. The owner of a peach orchard summarized the problem: “We've trained the American consumers to expect perfection”. This is why he was standing in a field with hundreds of good peaches at his feet. Some had a little blemish, or a tiny scar, so they could not be sent out. They would simply be rejected, like the tomatoes below. No big chain supermarket would allow all that scarring and lack of uniformity.
At a poultry farm, a quick walk through the coop showed that eggs are not uniform. What a surprise... There was one as big as an avocado, most likely a double-yolker. Some eggs were tiny, the size of walnuts. Eggs that are too big or too small get destroyed. They cannot be sold, because they do not fit in the standard egg carton.
One of the chefs hooked up with a Freegan, someone who feeds himself for free (my kind of hero). He explained how he doesn’t do this because of need. He had a good job, made enough money. He was a freegan because he was outraged at the vast amounts of food wasted in front of his eyes. He took the chef to the back of a supermarket. When they rummaged through the trash bags, they were able to find all sorts of goodies. There were tons of deli containers, discarded because the “Best by” date was the next day. This is another huge issue: we see the “Best by” date as an expiration date, when it is nothing of the sort. “Best by” is an indication of quality. After that date, quality may not be 100%. That doesn’t mean the food becomes inedible or spoiled, yet to the eyes of the consumer, that’s exactly what that means. Many believe that if the lid says December 28, at 11:59 pm on the 27th that food will start transforming into poison, like the Cinderella pumpkin. Expiration dates are only required for infant formula and baby food. Everything else gets the “Best by” or “Sell by” qualifiers.
I am a thrifty person, so I love shopping at the Grocery Outlet. I can find fancy yogurts, like Stonyfield, Brown Cow, Athenos or Liberté, at 25 or 50 cents a container, because they are very close to the “Best By” date. It never fails that by the time I eat one of them, like the one above, the “Best By” date happened to be two weeks ago. Maybe if I tasted a fresh-off-the-dairy yogurt next to this two-week discard I could tell the difference in quality, but my taste buds are not that well trained. I am getting the same amount of protein and calcium, I spent a fraction of the money, and I helped reduce a little bit of waste. And I didn’t get food poisoning.
I am very familiar with the expectations of the American consumer. Once upon a time I studied Plant Science in college, and I quickly realized that there is a whole bunch of pests and diseases that get treated not because they have a yield impact on the crop, not because they change the nutritional or flavor aspects of it, but because of AESTHETICS. When we walk into the grocery store to buy apples, peaches, potatoes, we inspect every single one before we put it in the bag. They have to be picture perfect. Growers cannot afford not being able to sell their crops due to looks. Nature doesn’t work that way. Anyone who has ever had a fruit tree in the backyard or has grown a vegetable garden should know that. Nature is a constant battleground. Bugs, molds and anything alive have the biological mandate to reproduce, and in order to do that they need to feed. They are going to be on the lookout for tender leaves, sweet fruits and yummy roots, like the raccoon I suspect was in the yard last night, judging from the number of half-eaten persimmons all over the ground. We consumers place an incredible burden on the grower, who in many cases may be forced to treat crops solely to preserve their appearance.
A few nights ago The Food Network aired an episode of Chopped, another food sport competition, where they featured four lunch ladies. One of them explained that she always serves pasta on Mondays, because there are many kids who go through the weekend without a meal. She wants to fill them up when they come back to school. She tries to send those kids off into the weekend with packed lunches, but obviously she can’t help them all. I was thinking of her while watching The Big Waste. I am sure that if she were watching the program, her heart would have been aching, just like mine. I could only think of all the schools, soup kitchens and nursing homes that could benefit from all this food waste. We need to change our ways, urgently. There are people in this country that go to bed hungry, yet 40% of food ends up in the trash. This is immoral.
The Big Waste will air again on January 14. Check your local listings and spread the word!
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Livonia, N.Y. - Shannon Dougherty has one wish for her sweet 16th birthday.
She doesn’t want a shiny car or the latest fashion trend.
She wants to save a life because she says it's what her mom would have wanted.
“A lot of people say I look like her. That I laugh like her,” Shannon Dougherty said.
Shannon's mother died shortly after she was brought into the world.
“There was a day full of joy and then Tuesday Susan was having difficulty with pain,” Shannon’s father, Kevin Dougherty said. “It wasn't until Wednesday that we really knew something was wrong.”
Shannon’s mother, Susan Dougherty died from Necrotizing Fasciitis, also known as a flesh-eating bacteria.
The bacteria progressed from a Strep infection while in the hospital, weeks after giving birth.
The infection is so rare, it made local and national headlines.
“It's still surreal looking back on it, you don't think it's ever going to happen close to home,” Susan’s son, Ryan Dougherty said.
Ryan, now 24, was almost eight years old when his mom died.
“Me and her were very close, we had similar personalities,” Ryan said.
“Everyday I see Shannon, I can see more and more of her mom,” Kevin said.
Perhaps it's that piece of Susan Dougherty that lives on in her youngest daughter, Shannon, who instead of presents for her birthday, wants donations made to the National Necrotizing Fasciitis Foundation.
“My mom died for me, I feel like it's my way of giving back to her,” Shannon said.
Shannon hopes to raise more awareness and promote research.
That’s something that's given her family joy as they still struggle to cope with their loss.
“I'm really proud that she's giving up presents and all that to give to this foundation,” Ryan said.
“That makes me feel very proud of her and also the fact that her personality is similar to her mom's and her mom would be definitely proud of what's she's doing,” Kevin said.
“I hope she'd be proud,” Shannon said. “I try to make her proud.”
Many people have successfully been treated from this infection but still many people die because it's not caught in time.
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You walk into a plant and immediately your cell phone begins to buzz. But you don’t have a call. Instead, your phone just alerted you that the air is bad for your asthma or allergy. You reach for your inhaler or meds and the problem’s solved.
Gentag Inc. of Washington, D.C. has developed technology that can perform diagnostic functions from your cell phone anywhere, even if you don’t have phone service in the immediate area. The company recently received a patent for its product called the Method and Apparatus for Wide Area Surveillance of a Terrorist or Personal Threat. Handset makers who use this technology can program their devices to detect most chemicals, from pollen and carbon monoxide to the noxious gases dispersed by criminals or terrorists.
Gentag’s patent covers the use of this technology for personal wireless devices such as cell phones, PDAs, pagers or watches. The aim is to allow people with multiple chemical sensitivities to customize their personal device to recognize specific chemicals that cause allergies or are dangerous.
This cell phone can perform diagnostic functions and detect most chemicals from pollen and carbon monoxide to noxious gases.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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The Pennine Way National Trail is a walk starting from Edale in Derbyshire through 3 National Parks finishing at Kirk Yetholm across the Scottish Border.
The Pennine Way National Trail, 268 miles of chasing the Pennine Mountain tops along the rugged backbone of England, from the Peak District through the Yorkshire Dales and over Hadrian's Wall to the Cheviots. Amongst the finest upland walking in England.
Image galleryMore photographs
Below is a list of shortcuts answering your most commonly asked questions. Click on a link to view the answer:
Keep up to date with the news from the Pennine Way.
Places to Stay
If you are looking for a place to stay - have a look at our accommodation map
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There's surely no doubt that French politician Cécile Duflot is an educated, articulate and ambitious woman.
Her political career has been what the national daily Le Monde has described as "meteoric".
She joined Les Verts (the Greens) in 2001 and became the party's national secretary in 2006.
When it merged with Europe Écologie last year, she took over where she had left off by becoming the first national secretary of Europe Écologie - Les Verts.
The 35-year-old has become a regular guest on current affairs programmes, and right now her ability to express her thinking and ideas in a well-informed yet intelligible manner are more than welcomed and appreciated by many journalists.
You might not agree with what she says, but there's no denying she has something to say, so much so that she figured at position 32 in the list of the American magazine Foreign Policy's global thinkers in 2010.
But even the best and brightest are prone to mistakes.
And such was the case when Duflot, who holds a Masters in geography (remember that) appeared as a guest on BFM TV's Wednesday edition of its early evening news and current affairs programme hosted by Ruth Elkrief.
Asked about the risks of radioactive materials from the damaged nuclear reactors in Japan reaching French shores, Duflot said that nobody could say for certain at the moment.
"In theory the chances of it reaching mainland France are low," she said.
"The incident has happened in the southern hemisphere and in theory meteorological conditions should mean that the radioactivity will remain in the southern hemisphere. But we can never be certain."
Notice the slip-up?
Remember Duflot has a Masters in geography.
Jacques-Emmanuel Saulnier, the spokesman for the French energy giant Areva, certainly did when he was asked a couple of minutes later whether it was true that France's nuclear power facilities were as safe as the country's politicians maintained.
"Before answering that, and without being a geographical expert, I would just like to invite Cécile Duflot to take a look at a globe of the world," he began.
"Because as far as I know Japan is actually in the northern hemisphere."
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The Boo Radleys
|The Boo Radleys|
The Boo Radleys, 1993
|Origin||Wallasey, Merseyside, England|
|Genres||Alternative rock, shoegazing, noise pop, dream pop, Britpop|
Rough Trade Records
Columbia Records (US)
The Boo Radleys were an English alternative rock band of the 1990s who were associated with the shoegazing and Britpop movements. They were formed in Wallasey, Merseyside, England in 1988, with Rob Harrison on drums, singer/guitarist Sice Rowbottom, guitarist/songwriter Martin Carr, bassist Timothy Brown . Their name is taken from the character Boo Radley in Harper Lee's 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Shortly after the release of their first album, Hewitt replaced Rob Harrison on drums and he was in turn replaced by Rob Cieka. The band split up in 1999.
In 1990, the band's first album Ichabod and I was released on a small British indie label, Action Records. Although not a commercial success, this release brought the band to the attention of Rough Trade Records, to whom they signed. Around this time, Hewitt was replaced on drums by Rob Cieka.
Almost immediately after the release of the Every Heaven EP in 1991, Rough Trade collapsed and the Boo Radleys were signed by Alan McGee's Creation Records. Their first for Creation was Everything's Alright Forever in 1992, and Giant Steps (1993) followed. Giant Steps was awarded 9/10 by the UK music magazine NME, which stated, "It's an intentional masterpiece, a throw-everything-at-the-wall bric-a-brac of sounds, colours and stolen ideas. That The Boo Radleys (of all people!) have decided to accept their own challenge and create a record as diverse and boundary-bending as this is, at first glance, staggering. Isn't this the job of the U2s and the leisured idols of rock, unable to do anything without the tacit approval of history? Fortunately not. The Boo Radleys are sifting through time (the mid-'60s, mostly) and conjuring up something that's as cut-up and ambitious as anything you'd care to mention". Reviewing the album's re-release in 2008, Sic Magazine wrote, "For 64 minutes they were the greatest band on the planet."
Giant Steps placed second to Debut by Björk in the 1993 NME album of the year list, voted by the paper's contributors, although it came in first place in the subsequent NME readers' poll. The now-defunct Select magazine declared Giant Steps their album of the year for 1993".
Wake Up! and beyond
Despite critical acclaim and a cult fanbase, the Boo Radleys were still largely unknown to the general public by the time the Britpop phenomenon broke into the mainstream in 1995. This changed when the band released the upbeat single "Wake Up Boo!" in the spring of that year. It made the Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number 9. The single remained on the chart for two months, by far the band's longest run for any of its singles; later, on 26 October 2009, BFBS Forces Radio launched its live Afghanistan studio output with the track after it topped a listeners poll seeking a suitable first track. Carr describes writing the song watching The Big Breakfast after a night on acid. The follow-up release, "Find the Answer Within," was the band's only other single to chart for more than two weeks. Their fourth album Wake Up! (1995), was their commercial peak. Interviewed in 2005 by the BBC, Carr said: "I tried to have nothing to do with what was being called Britpop. Our whole career was spent trying not to 'fit in'. We just carried on doing what we had been doing. I didn't like most of the new bands or the flag-waving. I didn't like New Labour or idolise Paul Weller and I hated media-generated movements within music".
In 1996, the Boo Radleys released their fifth album C'mon Kids. As explained by Rowbottom in an interview in 2005: "We didn't want to scare away the hit-kids, we wanted to take them with us to somewhere that we'd not been before. All we wanted to do was make a different type of album than Wake Up... All we wanted to do was try something new - to keep ourselves fresh and interested. We were very surprised to find that it was seen as a deliberate attempt to scare away newly created fans. That would have been an extremely foolish thing to do."
The Boo Radleys' final album was 1998's Kingsize. One single was released from the album, "Free Huey!". The title track was due to have been released as a second single, but the band decided to split up.
A compilation album, Find The Way Out, was released in 2005, and a further compilation The Best of the Boo Radleys appeared in 2007.
The Boo Radleys disbanded in early 1999. Brown built a popular recording studio before going on to John Moores University for teacher training. He progressed on to teaching information technology at St Louis Grammar School in Kilkeel, Northern Ireland, and also taught at Park High School in Birkenhead.
Under the name Bravecaptain, Carr has since released six albums, including The Fingertip Saint Sessions Volume 1, Go With Yourself, Advertisements for Myself (2002) and All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2004). His most recent album was titled Distractions. Carr has since announced that he will be retiring the Bravecaptain name to work on new projects, but these will not include reforming the Boo Radleys. His first solo album Ye Gods (And Little Fishes) was released in mid 2009. Cieka is now a member of the band Domino Bones, alongside Mark "Bez" Berry, formerly of Happy Mondays.
After an album in 1996 (First Fruits) under the name Eggman, while still a member of the Boo Radleys, Rowbottom walked away from music for several years after the split. Then, following a guest vocal on Bravecaptain's, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, and also two songs with the Japanese musician Ryo Matsui's solo project, Meister, he formed Paperlung. The band featured Rowbottom on vocals, Simon Gardiner on bass, Ben Datlen on guitar and Guillaume Jambel of Transcargo on drums. They released two singles, "The Days That God Sold You" and "Do What Thou Will", and an album, Balance.
|UK Albums Chart|
|1990||Ichabod and I
|1992||Everything's Alright Forever
|UK Albums Chart|
|1992||Learning to Walk
|2005||Find the Way Out
|2007||The Best of the Boo Radleys
|UK Singles Chart|
|Does This Hurt / Boo! Forever
|UK Singles Chart||IRL||N.Z.||US Alt|
|1993||"I Hang Suspended"||-||–||–||–|
|"Wish I Was Skinny"||75||–||–||–|
|1994||"Barney (...and Me)"||48||–||–||30|
|1995||"Wake Up Boo!"||Wake Up!||9||25||35||–|
|"Find the Answer Within"||37||–||–||–|
|"From the Bench at Belvidere"||—||24||–||–||–|
|1996||"What's in the Box (See Whatcha Got)"||C'mon Kids||25||–||–||–|
|1997||"Ride the Tiger"||38||–||–||–|
- Strong, Martin C. (2000). The Great Rock Discography (5th ed.). Edinburgh: Mojo Books. pp. 106–107. ISBN 1-84195-017-3.
- Moody. "The Next Big Thing". NME. Boo Radleys Official. Retrieved 11 May 2012 first=Paul.
- "The Boo Radleys - Giant Steps, Deluxe Edition". [sic] Magazine. Retrieved 4 May 2012.
- Maconie, Stuart (19 January 1993). "Album of the Year". Select Magazine. Boo Radleys Official. Retrieved 11 May 2012.
- "Retrochart for March 1995". everyHit.com. Retrieved 4 May 2012.
- "Live From Afghanistan". www.bfbs-radio.com. Retrieved 14 March 2010.
- "Wake Up Boo!". Boo Radleys. Retrieved 4 May 2012.
- Dowling, Stephen (18 August 2005). "I survived Britpop". BBC. Retrieved 11 May 2012.
- "interview with Sice (ex. Boo Radleys, now PAPERLUNG)". Eardrums Music. 8 May 2006. Retrieved 12 May 2012.
- Bosman, Julie (24 May 2010). "A Classic Turns 50, and Parties Are Planned". The New York Times.
- Rees, Paul, ed. (December 2003). "Where Are They Now?". Q (Bauer Media Group) (210): 42.
- Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19th ed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p. 70. ISBN 1-904994-10-5.
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Hollywood -- On the WB TV series Charmed, Shannen Doherty, Alyssa
Milano, and Holly Marie Combs portray bitches.
They are, however, quick to stress that they prefer the term "Biccans."
"We're not Biccans in real life," said Combs. "We just play them on television."
"Well, except for Shannen," added Milano.
"Shut up!" said Doherty.
Biccans in Hollywood, and even the rest of society, are misunderstood. Many
call them "bitches," but, Biccans say, that term is misused.
"A bitch is someone in old movies, who makes people do what she wants, and is
evil and horrible to look at," said Doherty, "like Barbra Streisand."
Bicca is an universe-based religion, in which the entire universe orbits around
the Biccan. Biccans know and honor a female god, known to them as "myself."
Biccans believe in a creed that states, "Do everything you want as long
as it helps yourself."
Biccans do not believe that Bicca is the only valid belief system. It is just
the only one they care about. Since Bicca is a universe-based religion, the
need for perfect imbalance must be pointed out. Any Biccan who does anything
to help another person, even another Biccan, must be ridiculed by small groups
of gathering Biccans, known as "those Biccans sitting over there."
Biccans do not practice magic, except on television's Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
where actresses Amber Benson (Tara) and Alyson Hannigan (Willow) perform "spells"
believed "sexy" by young men. It is doing things that men believe to be sexy
that is "precisely following the Biccan tradition," says Benson. "Now leave
us alone. It's time for our bath," said Hannigan.
When asked to comment about Biccans for this article, every man surveyed stammered,
Hollywood has been a popular breeding ground for Biccans for many years. The
abundance of money, the focus on good looks, and the abundance of even more
money, means Hollywood is home to many Biccans.
While some actresses, like the Charmed cast, only portray Biccans, other
actresses are Biccans in real life. Except for Shannen Doherty, who recently
left the series after a reported squabble with producers. Doherty's former 90210
co-star Luke Perry agrees: "One time I accidentally brushed against her
in the hallway, and she dug her nails right in my arm until I cried out. But
she's not a Biccan. No, no, no. Tell her I said she wasn't, OK?"
Doherty will be replaced in the cast by Rose McGowan, whose acting credits include
pretending to be romantically involved with well-known nerd Marilyn Manson,
who says, "I'm glad she left me, really I am. I was buying her all these nice
things, but it was cutting into my makeup and thong underwear budget." He added,
"My Mom still thinks I'm cool," he added.
"Your upside-down crucifix isn't on straight," said Mrs. Eunice Manson.
Chase Masterson is a practicing Biccan. The actress, famed around the globe
for her 16-episode role as Leeta the space whore on Deep Space Nine,
says, "Do you go around to everyone asking stupid questions?" Masterson lashed
out at her manservant, swatting him away like a gnat, which is also Masterson's
pet name for him.
Biccans in Hollywood are know to biccan about a lot of things. However, the
following terms have been mutually agreed upon during meetings of individual
conclaves of Hollywood Biccans, when they gather in their "plastic surgery waiting
The Rule of Three: no Biccan shall engage in a relationship with a man
for longer than three months. Except for Julia Roberts, who has special dispensation
to relate with a male for a year to 15 months, but only until a marriage seems
Bane: A villain in the Batman comic book. But no self-respecting
Biccan should know anything about that.
Besom: Broom. Something never to be used by a Biccan.
Book of Shadows: A movie that was a sequel to The Blair Biccan
Project. It casts Biccans as mere bitches, content to run around the woods
and do stuff involving "nature." There are many copies of Book of Shadows
at the video store. Watch none of them, for they are all the same. Watch
it not, lest ye be cursed.
Cakes and Ale: Delicious food and drink that every Biccan loves. Often
presented to Biccans by Men in the vain hope that they will receive the Projective
Hand in return.
Festival of Biccanery: Celebrations involving groups of Biccans, usually
to celebrate new levels of Biccanery that can commence when a Biccan enters
into marriage, divorce, starting college, finishing college, any time during
college, or pregnancy.
Folk Magick: The power, simply bewildering to Biccans, ordinary folks
have to enrage and frustrate Biccans, merely by behaving as ordinary folks do.
Men: Best ignored. If left alone, they will naturally migrate toward
Not a Biccan: A term used when someone obviously doesn't know a Biccan
Personal Power: The credit line and / or bust size of the Biccan.
Projective Hand: To be used for slapping, scratching, punching, displaying
the Symbol of the Bird, and finger-snapping to get a servant's attention. Not
to be used for caressing. That method to get one's way is to be avoided at all
Tongue: A Biccan ritual weapon, usually containing a double edge. Shall
be used in conjunction with the mouth and lips only to dispense sarcasm, irony,
and sharp retorts. Any other use is not the Biccan way.
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I had occasion recently to evaluate FarmVille - one of a growing number of phenomenally successful social-media-based games from Zynga - and somewhere inside that jumble of infantile graphics and activities, annoying messages, terrible UI and seriously buggy and lag-prone software, I discovered what I believe are the reasons for Zynga's success in pushing past the hype and harnessing social media for real gain.
What's more, these lessons can be applied to almost any business or organization looking to use social media to increase its impact and/or revenue.
I'll start with a definition:
Content Management System (CMS): a tool or set of tools designed to simplify website maintenance and allow non-technical users to add, change, and remove website content (text, images, pages, articles, calendar events, etc.) as needed. Most content management systems also reduce or eliminate the need for custom code to accomplish many common tasks.
Remember when one of the most important decisions facing a new business owner was "Do I need a yellowpages ad?"
The answer wasn't always obvious. For one thing, it costs nothing to just have your business name and phone number listed. For another, there are often so many ads and "featured listings" that sometimes the more modest unpaid listings are the ones that jump out at the reader. A potential customer might assume, correctly or not, that the savings would be passed on to them.
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As you get older, you leave behind countless forks in the road, paths that led to lives you decided not to lead, and however wise your choices, there’s always a pang for the more beautiful or romantic might-have-beens. James Evans’s photographs remind me of all the rural and backwater lives I never lived. The lure of such places is not just the spectacle of the surrounding landscape but some faintly heard music, slower and simpler than the turbulent orchestra of urban life, an intimation of the life that might be lived there, less varied, less hurried, maybe a little less distracted, with the quality of time that sometimes gets called boring and is otherwise known as quiet.
People talk about landscape as place, but in photography it’s also always about time: about the various cycles of geology and meteorology, the million years it took to make this mountain range and the few seconds during which the light broke through the clouds that way. The rural runs on these other clocks of weather and seasons, and the rocks always remind you that you’re just a tiny fragment of time, you with your hopes, your prime, your marriages, your decline, your offspring, your secret failures, your slow erosion, all the things that seem interminable, expressible as some tiny fraction of what the indifferent rocks endure.
You could itemize what’s not in these photos, all the pictures a Dorothea Lange might’ve taken of houses, interiors, workplaces, ways of life, an economic reality that isn’t on display here—the reality of making a living, making a home, making the world, the world of labor. History isn’t here either: the old unfinished war with Mexico; the Odyssean migrations on foot north; the border that, when you actually get to the Rio Grande in Big Bend, turns out to be just a fictitious line down the middle of a real river, which even cows and cactus wrens ignore daily; the old economy of cows that’s been dying out for at least six decades; the new economies that passed by places like this; the wars and politics far away; and the peculiar identities that are Texan.
The land itself tells us we are looking at a particular place, the West, but there’s no emphasis on ranchers and cattle and the open range; there’s just arid spaciousness and luscious skies that seem to exist in some sort of inverse ratio to the dryness of the land. These photos are a portrait of a world, and they tend toward a more aesthetic and affectionate apprehension than the social-economic comprehension of the documentary. They understand the world in other ways.
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Customer Information is Power
In the new mobile advertising arena, intelligent use of detailed customer information can lead to significant gains for advertisers willing to pay a premium for well segmented audiences. Real time mobile search and location information can further improve advertisers’ ability to predict customers on-the-go intentions and ads relevance.
Mobile Audience Intelligence
Mobile users are at the heart of the mobile advertising eco-system. Accurately modeling users’ engagement patterns and predicting their intentions are key to the success of any mobile advertising campaign. Mobile users intent is influenced by a variety of factors including demography, context and social networks. It is also important to understand the users’ hidden intent indicated by actions such as search queries, location, time of day and social discovery interactions. Strict privacy preserving algorithms protect mobile users’ personal space and safety.
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Waco Tribune Herald: Waco Rep. Flores, Texas group urge development of West Nile virus vaccine10/16/12
From staff reports
Members of Texas’ congressional delegation are urging federal health officials to make the development of a West Nile virus vaccine a top priority after this year’s deadly outbreak.
Twenty-one members of the state delegation, including U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan, made the request in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden.
The outbreak totaled 4,249 human cases in the U.S., including 1,520 in Texas, as of Oct. 9, according to CDC figures. It is blamed for 545 deaths so far this year, including 58 in Texas.
McLennan County has seen 45 reported cases and one death, with the most recent case reported Oct. 2.
In their letter, the House and Senate members urge federal health officials to place priority on developing a federally approved vaccine and other medical countermeasures.
“Indeed, this emerging public health threat is exactly what the recently awarded federal/private centers for the development and manufacturing of medical countermeasures were intended to address,” they wrote.
In June, Texas A&M University was awarded a federal contract to develop one of three national Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing.
In a joint news release Monday, Flores and U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington, said they think the center is prepared to work with the federal government and industry to pursue promising West Nile vaccines and countermeasures.
To read the full article, click here.
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DrySolv is a newer alternative solvent that is available for drycleaners to get out from under perc and its related rules, regulations, taxes, continually rising cost and general bad publicity.
The solvent is N-propyl-bromide and other names are bromomethylethane, 1-propyl bromide, 1-bromopropane and nPB according to Wikipidia, an online encyclopedia. The trade name is DrySolv. There is an antiseptic, or alcohol odor to the raw solvent that can be unpleasant when sniffed directly. The boiling point is 160° F. and the viscosity index is 5.241 cP at 20 °C. (68° F.) The MSDS states there is no flashpoint and it is heavier than water by about 1/3rd and it is not known to be a carcinogen. With that said, there are some concerns about its future testing for toxicity and human health effects, the same as any other chemical or chemical compound.
It is a corrosive material the same as perchloroethylene is corrosive without inhibiters and stabilizers. When we began utilizing fourth and fifth generation perc machines there began to be a lot of internal corrosion of the perc machines as some manufacturers of machines or chemicals promoted continuous distillation for solvent clarification. The constant distillation would wear out the inhibitors and stabilizers resulting in a very corrosive chemical inside of a metal housing with water and heat added to the mixture. Many years ago I asked one of the perc chemical company’s technical representatives about the corrosiveness and stability of perc and was told that perc was a very stable product and stabilizers were not added to control corrosion. It soon was made public that perc is very corrosive and stabilizers and inhibitors are added to the raw perc in order to use it in drycleaning machines. DrySolv is also a corrosive chemical and has been stabilized but with proper distillation and drying temperatures it should not be a problem in a tight machine.
The DrySolv solvent was originally thought of as a “drop-in” replacement for perc after replacing gaskets and seals with those that were more resistant to degradation from the solvent and with some minor conversion necessary for a perc machine.
A Conversion Story
A drycleaner in Portland, Oregon, Brian Olson at 45th Ave. Cleaners was one drycleaner who converted his Permac machine for the use of DrySolv. He was faced with the dilemma of an aging perc machine, higher taxes on perc and in an area where people tend to go along with any improvement that will be a bit more environmental, and felt a conversion would be a lot less costly than a new alternative machine. He was also intrigued by the short cycle of approximately 28 minutes per load, its greater cleaning ability and gentleness to fabrics, dyes and trims. The fact that he would not have to buy, use or dispose of filters was also a selling point for him while maintaining water clear solvent in which to clean clothes. Brian was also happy to get out from under the dark cloud that surrounds perc. His converted machine is delivering 1022 pounds per gallon on the high end and a minimum of 987 pounds cleaned per gallon solvent. These numbers are impressive for anybody’s solvent.
Well over 100 machines are running with DrySolv in the United States. They range in sizes from 30 to 110 pound capacity. Brands being used are BowePermac, VIC, Marvel, Columbia , Firbimatic, Multimatic, Union, RealStar, TechnoDry USA, Hoffman/NY, Detrex, and Donini. The machine sizes are varied but the majority are 55 to 80 pound capacity units. They range in age from brand new to a 25 year old Multimatic.
At this time, only a few manufacturers will support their warranties when running DrySolv, two of which are Firbimatic and Multimatic. Multimatic had a sign on their display machines at TEXCARE this year that read, “For Perc or DrySolv”. TechnoDry USA has run DrySolv in Europe and configured their machines for cleaners in the U.S. and Hoffman/NY will warranty their machines with DrySolv.
Columbia and Union will not honor their warranties if anything other than PERC is used. Columbia is currently the only manufacturer found to have still doors made of cast aluminum, incompatible with DrySolv in the distillation process. Retrofit doors are available from other sources.
At the California Convention recently in Long Beach the first DrySolv EDGE drycleaning machine was on display. A totally new machine designed and built in the U.S. by Dry Cleaning Technologies specifically for DrySolv solvent. The EDGE is an all electric machine that uses fewer Amps than traditional PERC machines. It promises to do a complete cycle in 20 to 24 minutes and have less than 200 ppm in the wheel when the cycle finishes. According to Dry Cleaning Technologies, the EDGE will be priced competitively with PERC machines.
When Brian’s drycleaning machine was originally converted and set-up Brian was given the following program to install, understanding that every machine is unique and he would adjust it as needed:
- Fill time 1 minute; add 1 to 1.5 ounces of DrySolv D detergent per 10 lbs. of clothes.
- Wash 5 minutes circulating through button trap. (No Filters)
- Drain 30 Seconds to Still set at 10 pounds of steam pressure.
- Extract 1 minute 30 seconds to Still.
- Set dry time for 8 minutes at 110 F. and then go into auto-dry.
- Cool down 7 minutes to about 85-90 F.
Brian has been in contact with other cleaners who have converted their machines to the use of DrySolv and received several emails from current satisfied users who stated that their experiences mirrored his and are very happy with their conversions. He has also received emails from those who tried it, didn’t like it, and went back to perc. Not one of them cited corrosion as an issue. Poor solvent mileage was the problem and they decided to return to the use of perc. (There has been one drycleaner who converted to DrySolv and has reported drastic corrosion problems to his drycleaning machine and surrounding metal)
In his converted BowePermac, the cast iron elbow leading into the condenser corroded, he reported, and the solvent is very corrosive to aluminum or cast iron still doors installed on a few machines but there are other doors that can be purchased to eliminate this problem
Actual cleaning results are quite satisfactory with very minimal dye bleeding and on the one occasion he had a dye bleed a simple re-cleaning eliminated the re-deposited dye. It was an off white cotton/Spandex with an orange fabric on the inside of the coat at the sewn seams. The orange bled and re-cleaning removed the fugitive dye.
Brian went on to say “There were two minor alterations to the machine; the pressure relief vent from the water separator was disconnected and then attached to the hose we used to fill the machine to run a “closed loop” from the separator to the button trap. DrySolv is much more volatile than PERC and by doing so we are reclaiming solvent that would otherwise be lost through the carbon filter. The last thing we did before running the machine was to close off the drain line from the water separator to the waste water treatment unit. This is done to help reduce vapor loss. A pair of vice-grip pliers made quick work of this and I simply drain the hose once a day and seal it off again.
Because DrySolv is volatile even just sitting in the machine, we found that the machine manufacturers start-up program, a short dry cycle, was inadequate to clear the wheel of vapor before the first run of the day. I now use the pre-programmed dry cycle which takes about 14 minutes as my “Good Morning” cycle. This works extremely well. We loaded the machine with clothes and started it. I have to admit, I was still nervous so I chose to run a dark load first. With a little experience behind me I am now comfortable running any classification of load as I need it. Going from dark to light creates no worries as I am using pure, fresh and distilled solvent in every load. This is particularly useful to get the larger loads out first and keep production going.
We made minor adjustments to the program I added and raised the steam pressure to the still so as to allow for the distillation to be complete by the end of the cycle. We also increased fill time and raised the drying temperature. Each machine will be somewhat different. The goal was to have the complete cycle finish in 30 to 35 minutes, which we easily accomplished. In addition, we added a second, shorter program for beaded and delicate fabrics. I could have done all the work required to convert this machine myself with just a little “tech support” over the phone to help guide and assure me that I was doing things correctly. It really was that easy.
The Edge Drycleaning Machine for DrySolv
The new Edge machine, designed for the use of DrySolv is being released first in a 75 lb capacity. Smaller versions will follow. It will do a complete cycle in about 20 minutes reducing the current 30 minute standard with DrySolv by 10 minutes. The drum will have 200 ppm, or less, at the end of the cycle. This is impossible to achieve with a conversion machine so it promises spectacular mileage. It is also an all electric machine, so there is no drain on your boiler; it uses about half the amps of a perc machine and has an all new sub-zero heat pump. It also has a simple 3 program microprocessor, regular clean, delicate clean and still maintenance.”
Brian Olson says “when I learned about the new Edge machine, I was immediately intrigued. I found out about it after I was already using DrySolv and I really liked the idea. It will be a couple of years before a machine the size I would need is in production and I have already ordered mine. My Permac drycleaning machine will be 12 years old by then. Will I suffer from corrosion issues before then? Who knows? I do know that I am not worried about it. Any repair I have to make will be less expensive than the new machine I would have had to buy to get out from under perc. I love the short cycles, reduced maintenance without the need for filters and crystal clear solvent EVERY load. Most importantly, I love the fact that it is not perc and doesn’t have the baggage associated with it. My customers are very happy about that!”
“I think DrySolv will be THE solvent that replaces perc in the future and many dry cleaners will be able to save their businesses by converting to it. But then, maybe someone will come up with yet another alternative. Only time will tell.”
The manufacturer says its solvent works as well or better than PERC. I would counter that by saying it is far superior. I am cleaning everything in DrySolv that I was able to clean in PERC including beaded and trimmed garments. The faster run times have resulted in four loads cleaned in the same time I used to do three. The solvent itself, being stronger, does the cleaning work instead of relying on mechanical action resulting in little or no static or lint.. I have not needed to clean the button trap since I began using DrySolv. The lint filter itself is cleaned daily and only has a light layer of dust to remove. The shorter run times and lower drying temperatures also provide less distortion of the fabrics resulting in much faster finishing and I have been able to reduce pressing time by approximately one full hour a day and there is no odor what-so-ever in the finished clothes. Only a clean fresh scent is present. I have had no problems with redeposition of soils by not using filtration. There have been no issues with dye transfer or bleeding. Even in a dark load the white cotton linings in the waistbands of pants come out bright white. Of course the white loads come out bright and colors remain brilliant.”
DrySolv in the Marketplace
Brain said he always questioned the amount of waste generated while running PERC. “A great deal of it had to be coming from lint and with DrySolv I am generating a fraction of what I was before. With no need for filtration, the monitoring and maintenance of that component has also been removed. As far as spotting goes, it does an exceptional job on greasy food stains, mud and oils. Some prespotting is still required but has been greatly reduced. There is an increase in “sweet” spots due to lack of moisture in the system but with lower drying temperatures they are quick and easy to remove.”
“The conversion of a ten year old machine to a solvent it was never designed to use has not been without frustration and challenges. DrySolv is extremely volatile and even sitting dormant in the machine vapors will expand. This has resulted in a lot of extra work in making sure the machine is tight. Most of the gaskets only required minor tightening, a little at a time over a few weeks, and have held without a problem. Some have needed replacing. The materials of some of them soften from the vapors and may need to be replaced with viton gaskets. Once they are placed in the atmosphere they quickly dry and go back to their original form. The still gasket is viton and while I purchased an extra there has been no need to replace it. As well, the door gasket is holding fine but I have a spare on hand. I am reminded of co2 machines that need to change out the door gaskets every few loads. I did have to replace the still sight glass and condenser gaskets, but they were ten years old and in need. I also replaced the lint filter/button basket gasket. I think the design of the fitting will be a continual problem and will have a viton gasket made to replace the factory issue. Fortunately, my PERC leak detector works well with DrySolv and its easy to locate where the vapors are coming from. I consider the costs associated with gaskets just a part of the conversion and learning process.”
Brian went on to say “In order to answer the question, “Is DrySolv right for me?” I had to try it. It works better and faster than anything now on the market. It has reduced my labor in several areas and with increased solvent mileage is cost effective. Most important to me, it has no negative environmental history and that makes it easy to promote to my customers. DrySolv is not only right for me, but with its relatively small cost to convert a PERC machine may well be the answer so many PERC cleaners are looking for.”
Dry Cleaning Technologies, a division of Enviro Tech International Inc., produces the DrySolv Solvent. ETI was formed in the early 90′s with the goal of creating a cleaning solvent that would replace existing environmentally hazardous solvents being used in the industrial degreasing market. Research led to the development of n- Propyl-Bromide, (NPB), as the desired solvent. An additive was developed to improve solvency, azeotropic performance and inhibit acidity. EnSolv Precision Cleaning Solvent was patented in 1995.
DrySolv evolved from EnSolv and is the only direct replacement currently on the market for PERC in class IV cleaning machines.
NPB has received EPA “SNAP” approval. The Significant New Alternatives Policy program has determined NPB possesses minimal Ozone Depletion Potential. In addition, NPB has been shown to possess minimal Global Warming potential. Based on low atmospheric reactivity data produced through independent labs, ETI has petitioned the US EPA for Volatile Organic Compound, (VOC), exempt status. The exemption petition is currently pending.
An update to the above article is that Brian is still using DrySolv in 2010 and is still pleased with its performance.
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There are a number of business practices that make a company successful in both good and bad economic times. Included are great leadership and management, high quality employees and, of course, great products and services. There is often even a little good luck. This article is not about these attributes. Instead, it focuses on several key financial management and accounting practices that we have observed in successful companies during the past 30 years that have proven effective in any industry or economic cycle.
Cash flow management
Successful companies treat cash as king. They maintain sufficient cash reserves to cover normal forecasted working capital needs through the year, to manage unexpected expenses, and to take advantage of opportunities as they arise. They are extremely proficient at collecting receivables and they pay timely, take advantage of key discounts, and manage planned daily investments. They effectively use bank credit lines, not from a position of dependence, but as a key management tool. Their entire cash management system is fully integrated to all aspects of the business.
Break-even point management
Successful companies are able to properly manage through economic cycles by fully understanding the drivers of their break even point. When sales decline, it is critical to understand what costs are fixed, variable or semi-variable and what combination of each is needed to maintain a profitable position. A financial model that allows for instant decision-making about cost cutting measures or product pricing can give management the confidence and opportunity to substantially impact both short and long-term financial results.
Internal accounting controls
Not usually the most exciting aspect of business operations, successful companies value internal accounting controls. They demand that reconciliations to bank accounts and subsidiary ledgers be performed accurately on a timely basis. They understand the importance of segregation of duties and proper oversight and review in preventing problems and they know that management decisions are much better when based on accurate, reliable financial information. It starts with the “tone at the top” and permeates through the entire organization that accuracy is critical and adherence to prescribed record-keeping systems are as important as quality control on the production lines to ensuring company profitability.
Proper use of leverage and financing
Successful companies understand how to use debt as a tool to grow and generate higher returns on equity. They keep debt well within their ability to manage it, and they avoid allowing debt or debt terms to manage their operations. This requires using debt pursuant to a well-designed plan, rather than resorting to debt to fix problems.
Timely and accurate financial reporting
Successful companies typically generate accurate financial statements on a monthly basis no later than five days after the end of the month and, with the advanced electronic software systems in use today, often produce accurate financial statements on the first day following the end of a reporting period. The financial reports are typically augmented with a clear, concise dashboard-type report that summarizes the key business financial drivers. Nimble management decision-making requires timely data in a format understandable to management.
Budgeting and business plans
Written plans complete with well thought out financial projections and detailed budgets provide a mechanism to keep management focused on the end results when encountering the normal twists and turns that every year typically brings. The budget development process requires management to focus on all of the necessary processes essential to success. And, budgets provide an excellent barometer each accounting period from which to benchmark progress toward the desired goals. Successful companies put a lot of thought into these plans and not surprisingly end up achieving their goals much more consistently.
Too many times, increasing sales and profits lead to increasing extravagance and waste. A disciplined, thrifty approach to controlling expenses can provide significant downside protection in declining economies and allow maximization of profits under any conditions. For example, a company with a 20 percent variable gross margin on its products would need to generate five dollars in sales for every dollar of unnecessary or wasted cost to just break even. Little things can count a lot. Some of the areas with the most impact include health insurance plan structure, information technology management, telecommunications, auto and truck fleet costs, and overall fringe benefit programs.
Effective tax planning
Successful companies optimize tax savings opportunities to fit their business plans, rather than focusing their business plans around potential tax savings strategies. In today’s environment, income taxes can drain up to 45 percent of a company’s annual profits. Taking prudent advantage of all available tax benefits can substantially improve the return on investments within the company and accordingly, create free cash flow. Bonus depreciation is a perfect example in 2011. Effective use of this opportunity can reduce the cost of capital substantially, but fixed asset additions solely to save taxes can create excess capacity and greatly expand the break-even point.
Managing value drivers
A business’ value is often determined by its productive use of capital, liquidity, cash flow, and quality of its assets. Successful companies understand the drivers of total value in their company. Commissioning a business valuation by a Certified Valuation Analyst can provide a roadmap of the critical valuation drivers for your business, which can serve as the basis for long-term business plans.
Mastering the practices above will not guarantee the success of your company, nor will ignoring them automatically lead to failure. However, based on our observations of clients that seem to weather recessions and experience consistent profitability, these attributes are common to all.
Your CPA can assist with implementing these practices.
Content contributed James E. Hazel Jr., CPA, shareholder and chief operating officer of Elliott Davis, PLLC, an accounting, tax and consulting services firm. Jim serves clients in a variety of areas including manufacturing and distribution, construction, and not-for-profit, and provides management oversight of the firm’s 10 offices throughout the Southeast. For more information, contact him at firstname.lastname@example.org or visit www.elliottdavis.com.
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“You might be considered a West Virginian if … (1) Your front porch collapses and more than six dogs are killed … (2) Less than half the cars you own actually run … (3) Your diploma contains the words ‘Trucking Institute’ … (4) Your wife’s hairdo has ever been caught in a ceiling fan … (5) You have a rag for a gas cap … (6) Your brother-in-law is also your uncle.”
“A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.”
“The little boy was heard by his teacher using a most unsuitable word. “Jeffrey,” she said, “you should not use that word. Where did you hear it?” “My daddy said it.” “Well that does not matter,” the teacher explained. “You do not even know what it means.” “I do, I do!” Jeffrey corrected. “it means that the car won’t start.”
“A consultant is a man who knows 49 ways to make love but doesn’t know any women.”
“Intelligence is like underwear. It’s important that we all have it, but it isn’t necessary that we show it off.”
— James Dent (1928-1992)
James Dent wrote the daily “Gazetteer” column at the Charleston Gazette. Dent was one of those rare writers who occupied a warm spot in the public’s heart, because his charming accounts showed a sympathetic understanding of people’s daily difficulties. Charleston Mayor Kent Hall, who worked with Dent on a West Virginia University humor magazine when both were students, said Dent had a perfect ear for picking up the humor from a conversation and the rare ability to put it in written form. Dent was an only child, never married. He was a pack-rat and his apartment and office were crammed with books, magazines, newspapers and memos.
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The Guardian reported today that two Israeli groups have set up training courses in subversive Wikipedia editing aiming to 'show the other side' of the Jewish State.
Those who lend their pen to the Palestinian cause know about Wikipedia Jews, a term that was coined a few years ago. It refers to a bunch of rabid and crypto Zionists who constantly vandalise encyclopaedia entries to do with Palestine, Palestinian activists and Israeli atrocities.
According to the Guardian two Israeli groups seeking to gain the upper hand in the online debate have launched a course in "Zionist editing".
Yesha Council, representing the Jewish settler movement ran their first workshop this week in Jerusalem, teaching participants how to ‘rewrite’ and ‘revise’ some of the most “hotly disputed pages of the online reference site.”
The Wikipideia project is a phenomenal humanist and universalist initiative. Hence, it should not take us by surprise that its biggest opponents are tribal operators, amongst them Zionists, crypto Zionists and the so called ‘Jewish anti Zionists’.
One Jerusalem-based Wikipedia editor, told the Guardian that publicising the new Zionist conspiratorial initiative might not be such a ‘good idea’. "Going public in the past has had a bad effect," she says. "There is a war going on and unfortunately the way to fight it has to be underground."
One may be surprised to discover that chief amongst ‘Wikipedia Jews’ is alleged ‘Anti Zionist’ Roland Rance. Rance, is a London based Jewish Marxist who spends most of his time peppering Wikipedia entries with Judeo-centric context. Roland Rance was also one of the leading opponents of Deir Yassin Remembered (DYR), probably the most successful Palestinian solidarity operation in the UK.
Here is a snapshot of Rance’s relentless attempt to vandalise Israel Shamir’s Wikipedia entry last week.
Wikipedia Jews have history behind them. According to the Guardian, in 2008, members of the hawkish pro-Israel watchdog Camera who secretly planned to edit Wikipedia were banned from the site by administrators. There is a war going on my own Wikipedia entry. More than once Wikipedia Administrators have been called in just to remove contamination by Rance and other Zionists.
The Wikipedia project is all about knowledge and the availability of knowledge. Is it a coincidence that political Jews in the right and in the left are united to subvert this project? I do not think so. Once again we come across what seems to be Zionist continuum. They are all united against knowledge.
Apparently The organisiers of the Zionist Wikipedia courses, are already planning a competition to find the "Best Zionist editor", with a prize of a hot-air balloon trip over Israel. I guess that by now we know who should be the candidate for the blue & white air balloon adventure.
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February 27, 2012 / 4 Adar 5772
New York, NY - The Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency for Israel, comprised of leaders and representatives of Jewish communities around the world and meeting this week in Jerusalem, voted to grant emergency aid to the Jewish community of Greece in order to address immediate needs in the wake of the crippling financial crisis in the country.
Jewish Agency Chairman of the Executive Natan Sharansky convened an urgent meeting of the organization’s leadership, which decided to provide some $1 million over two years to help the Greek Jewish community weather one of the worst crises it has faced in living memory. The funds will enable communal institutions to continue their operations, including programs to strengthen the community’s ties with Israel and the development of unique aliyah (immigration) tracks for those members of the community who wish to immigrate to Israel. The aid package will be funded by the Jewish Agency and by its partners, Keren Hayesod-United Israel Appeal (UIA) and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
The Jewish Agency leadership, including the leaders of Keren Hayesod-UIA and the Jewish Federations of North America, also announced a special fundraising campaign for the Jews of Greece and the Jewish Agency decided to dispatch Hebrew teachers to local schools and summer camps in Greece, within the coming months, in order to preserve Hebrew instruction in the community.
Some 5,000 Jews live in Greece, of whom some 3,500 reside in Athens and an additional 1,000 in Thessaloniki. The Jewish community operates synagogues, a Jewish school, a museum, and a soup kitchen. According to community leaders, the majority of Jewish communal institutions in the country are on the verge of closure due to the financial crisis gripping the country, which has led to a dramatic decline in donations, the collapse of income from communal assets, and a series of new taxes imposed on the communal institutions themselves. Many members of the Jewish community are now unemployed and falling below the poverty line. Some 70 elderly members of the community require financial support to pay for basic necessities such as food and shelter.
Jewish Agency Chairman of the Executive Natan Sharansky said, “The Jews of Greece are known for their tremendous generosity toward their needy brethren in Israel and around the Jewish world. They have contributed some $20 million to Keren Hayesod-UIA over the past decade, a huge per capita sum that has helped support the disadvantaged in Israel and elsewhere. Today, this wonderful community needs us, and it would be unthinkable for us not to come to their aid in their time of need.”
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RIMANEWS-Syrian forces have kept up a day-long ground and air attack against rebels in parts of the city of Aleppo.
The BBC's Ian Pannell, who is in Aleppo, has seen fierce battles, with a number of rebel fighters killed.
Rebels with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) say they have repelled an army incursion and destroyed tanks, but there is no independent verification.
Western nations have warned of a potential massacre in Aleppo, Syria's most populous city.
There are also reports of fighting in the western city of Homs, where state media said a number of rebels had been killed, and in the provinces of Hama and Deraa.
Activists said Syrian tanks began moving in on south-western districts of Aleppo city early on Saturday.
The bombardment of rebel-held areas intensified throughout the day, with military aircraft flying over at low altitudes, they said, and violent clashes were reported around the Salah al-Din and Hamdanieh quarters near the centre.
Our correspondent says there has been constant shelling and mortar rounds all day, with helicopter gunships deployed.
The rebels in Aleppo are upbeat but vastly outgunned and outmanned by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, he adds.
A government official told the AFP news agency: "Rebels are stationed in narrow streets, in which fighting will be difficult."
Both sides are braced for heavy casualties.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 29 people were killed in Aleppo on Saturday. They were among at least 90 people to die across the country throughout the day.
Syrian state television said that rebels, having failed in Damascus, were now trying to turn Aleppo into a den for their terrorism.
On Friday, the Red Crescent suspended some of its operations in Aleppo because of the heavy fighting, which began more than a week ago.
A steady stream of vehicles has been heading out of the city carrying hundreds of families trying to escape the violence and deteriorating conditions.
Tens of thousands of people have fled Syria over the past few months. Jordan, to the south, is preparing to open its first official camp to house some of the 140,000 Syrians who its say have crossed its border.
Russia, an ally of Syria, warned of a "tragedy" in Aleppo, saying international support for the rebels would lead to "more blood".
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Syrian government could not be expected to "stand by" when rebels were occupying Aleppo and other areas and that the West and Syria's neighbours were "essentially encouraging, supporting and directing an armed struggle against the regime".
Later, Mr Lavrov also denied speculation that Moscow would offer asylum to Mr Assad if he chose to leave Syria.
"We have said more than once publicly that we are not even thinking about this," he told reporters.
The fighting comes after two weeks during which rebels made significant gains.
On 18 July, an attack at Syrian security headquarters in Damascus killed four senior officials, including the defence minister and President Assad's brother-in-law.
The Free Syrian Army (FSA) took control of several parts of Damascus before being driven out by a government counter-offensive. The rebels also seized several border crossings with Turkey and Iraq.
Earlier this week, thousands of government forces were moved from the border with Turkey to join fierce fighting in Aleppo, activists said.
On Friday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged the Syrian government to halt its offensive and demanded a clear statement that chemical weapons would not be used under any circumstances.
Syria has implicitly acknowledged that it has chemical weapons but says it will not use them against its own people, only against foreign invaders.
The former head of the UN monitoring mission in Syria, Maj Gen Robert Mood, said it was "only a matter of time" until President Assad was ousted.
On Saturday, the Syrian Observatory said that more than 20,000 people, including civilians, rebels, government soldiers and government figures, since the uprising began in March last year.
The UN said in May that at least 10,000 people had been killed.
In June, the Syrian government, which blames the violence on foreign-backed "armed terrorist gangs", reported that 6,947 Syrians had died, including at least 3,211 civilians and 2,566 security forces personnel.[ach/BBC]
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I’m at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles this week. On Monday, panelists discussed K-12 education in the U.S. and what reform is needed — just one of a host of panels directly or indirectly focused on education.
The U.S. education system is broken, leaves classrooms unable to compete against the rest of the world and has mismatched priorities for local, state and federal roles, said a former secretary of education and current federal, state and charter-school officials at Monday morning’s panel. The session had a feel of optimism for America’s ability to regain its edge, but only through tremendous effort coupled with drastic changes in policy, focus and operational practices.
Teachers and teaching quality were the focus, though no active teachers were on the panel, and there was general agreement that weeding out bad educators, training better ones and figuring out why excellent teachers get to be that way is the best way to improve student achievement. Notably, there was scant, if any, mention of input from teachers in these discussions.
Where teachers were a priority, however, was in the need to find good ones and learn how to adjust training, recruiting and support systems to repeatedly generate quality. “We shy away from excellence” when it comes to identifying the best teachers, learning from them and paying or otherwise rewarding them, said Joanne Weiss, chief of staff for Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Those sentiments were repeatedly emphasized by asset manager and charter-school operator Tony Ressler, who advocated for flexibility throughout operations, particularly in hiring and pay-for-performance. There’s no shame, he said, in admitting that some teachers and principals aren’t up to the job.
How would this focus on excellence be accomplished? Perhaps because of the breadth of the 75-minute panel, there were a lack of specifics, particularly in how teacher-training colleges might be involved, how professional development would help or how this would be funded. What was noted was how the Department of Education has been recently focusing on areas beyond compliance in its grants and using federal power to encourage bottom-up reforms at the district level. Nevada schools Superintendent James Guthrie had praise for the Teacher Incentive Fund and was optimistic that measuring accountability would become easier: “The infrastructure is dropping into place to make that happen.”
Going against conventional wisdom
Panelists acknowledged that there is a tension between the roles of the federal government, states and local districts. The solutions proffered were less about about giving one sphere dominance and more about altering the dynamics between them. The federal government — criticized over the years and by this panel for its increasing role in the details of K-12 education — did receive praise, particularly from Guthrie, for its ability to initiate programs, to create incentives and drive innovation; Guthrie also noted the poor federal record in dictating instruction, emphasizing small class sizes and the problems, in hindsight, of No Child Left Behind.
The government also was lauded for raising standards and taking on the competitiveness-destroying practices of state self-reporting. Former Education Secretary Bill Bennett expressed his love of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which has a standard for proficiency that almost no state has matched. There was even a bit of bipartisanship, as Reagan-appointee Bennett noted tough but positive steps by Secretary Duncan, and lifelong Republican Guthrie said he was embracing the Common Core standards because they raise the bar beyond what his state and many others now require.
There were also expectations-defying statements that came in on topics that generally bring agreement. Most of the panelists spoke emphatically about how they felt that small class sizes had been overemphasized, and that the positive effect of small classes could be surpassed through other methods. Ressler operates 20 charter schools but says he “doesn’t care about great charter schools; I care about great schools.” Furthermore, he disagreed that business experience alone translates into building great schools, or that unions need to be driven out for schools to be successful. Here was an area of true disagreement, as Guthrie challenged Ressler on both points, saying he felt there had been decades of money wasted by business efforts that didn’t take business principles into account.
As the session closed, panelists reiterated that tough decisions and painful steps lay ahead if U.S. education is to advance. One area left as a teaser for a later session was K-12 technology. Weiss estimated that technology is providing about a 1% benefit — leaving a vast untapped terrain into 21st century education that no nation has conquered.
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The University of Delaware and two of its faculty are recipients of the New Castle County Historic Review Board's 1997 Historic Preservation Awards.
The University was recognized for its restoration of the George Evans House at 5 West Main St. in Newark. The structure was built as a residence in 1863 by George Evans, a Newark entrepreneur who served as secretary of the Board of Trustees of Delaware College, now the University of Delaware. The University purchased the building in 1949.
University President David P. Roselle accepted the certificate, which honored the University for "its meticulous restoration of this building...at a strategic corner location, where it contributes a flash of history in front of the brilliant setting of the new Trabant University Center" and for "its respect for Newark's history."
John A. Munroe, historian, educator and H. Rodney Sharp Emeritus Professor of History, accepted an award for teaching and writing about Delaware history for more than 40 years.
His citation reads, "In his creation of what have become the standard sources on Delaware history, he has helped us understand our local community and has given us, with the highest level of scholarly integrity, the precise framework in which to analyze our place in a larger history." Munroe has written five major books on Delaware history, Federalist Delaware 1775-1815; Louis McLane, Federalist and Jacksonian; Colonial Delaware-A History; History of Delaware and The University of Delaware: A History.
Jay F. Custer, professor of anthropology, received a certificate for his "extensive, high-caliber work in the field of prehistoric archaeology on the East Coast."
The award recognizes Custer for his numerous publications and his directorship of UD's Center for Archaeological Research.
The 1997 awards were given to 10 structures and four individuals. This is the fifth year the Historic Review Board has honored Delawareans for their efforts at preservation, and the University has won awards for its ongoing efforts in three of those years.
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12.28.2011 / Blog Posts Health and Wellness
By Jane Jakubczak, Washington Redskins Team Nutritionist
A large part of my time as a Registered Dietitian (RD) is helping my clients navigate through the jungle of nutrition information that are bombarded with everyday. Throughout the year, I will be addressing various dietary myths to help you decipher truth from fiction.
As a Registered Dietitian (RD) I am committed ethically to base all my dietary advice and nutrition information in sound scientific research. To earn the credentials RD, one must earn a four-year degree focusing on the science of food as well as the science of the human body including anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, biology and food science. My job as an RD is to interpret the science of nutrition for the public and offer the information in a “user friendly” format.
It is important to look at the credentials of the person or organization you are receiving nutrition information from. Many people call themselves “nutritionist” but without the RD credential they may not possess formal education in food or nutrition science and their advice and information may not be based in sound research. To learn more about what if takes to become a Registered Dietitian visit http://www.eatright.org/BecomeanRDorDTR/content.aspx?id=8143
The following are the top 5 myths I found my clients believing as truths and the scientific explanation behind why they are myths:
Myth: “Fats Make Me Fat”
Truth: Fats do not make us fat; consuming more calories than our body needs will cause us to store fat. Dietary fat is an essential nutrient and plays an important role in absorbing fat-soluble vitamins (A, K, D, E). Dietary fat is also important in keeping your skin and hair soft and supple and maintaining a strong metabolism. Some fats are less healthy than others, saturated fats may contribute to cardiovascular disease and should be limited in our diets. Saturated fats are found in marbled meats, whole milk products (including cheese), creamy dressings and sauces, fried foods and commercially packaged baked goods and savory snack foods such as potato chips. Healthy fats should be integrated into our daily diets and include unsaturated fats found in nuts (such as almonds, walnuts and peanuts), seeds (such as sunflower and pumpkin), nut butters (peanut butter or almond butter), avocado, hummus and olive or canola oil. (most women need between 45 – 60 grams of total fat per day, limiting saturated fats to less than 20 grams per day)
Myth: “Iron is for Pumping”
Truth: Iron is a component of your blood that carries oxygen from your lungs to your muscles and cells. If you do not have enough iron in your blood you will feel very fatigued, weak and may experience frequent headaches, irritability and trouble concentrating. Good sources of iron include lean red meats, dark meat chicken, and fish because the type of iron in these foods is easily absorbable. You can also get iron from dried lentils and beans, soy, spinach, egg yolks, raisins, whole grains and fortified foods. To increase the absorbability of iron in non-meat foods, pair them with a vitamin C rich food such as tomatoes, bell peppers, oranges or orange juice, strawberries or broccoli. Iron needs = 18 milligrams/day.
Myth: “Liquid Calories Don’t Count”
Truth: Liquid calories do count towards our total daily caloric intake and need to be taken into consideration if we are working on managing our body weight. Beverages can sneak in extra calories without us realizing because liquid calories don’t make our stomachs feel full like solid calories do. Our body weight is a simple equation = calories in + calories out, no matter what the source of the calories are. Watch portion size when consuming juice, regular soda, regular lemonade, coffee drinks, sweetened ice tea, and alcohol. Save sports drinks for when you are sweating for over one hour. Best beverage to consume is water (calorie free!). If you need a bit of flavor, consider adding a lemon, lime, orange or cucumber slice. (you can calculate your base fluid needs per day by dividing your body weight in pounds by 2. Exercise, environmental factors and health status will increase your hydration needs above this base sum).
Myth: “Milk is for Kids”
Truth: Most women are deficient in calcium and Vitamin D and putting themselves at high risk of osteoporosis. Every muscle contraction your body performs requires calcium. If you are not supplying your muscles with calcium through your diet, you are forcing your body to pull calcium from your bones. When your body pulls calcium from your bones to allow your heart to keep beating (a very important muscle!), your legs to walk across the street, your arms to lift your groceries, etc. the bones get thinner and thinner. This is the progression to osteoporosis. To prevent this debilitating disease, strive for 3 servings from the dairy group everyday. One serving = 8 oz of low-fat milk or soy milk, 8 oz of low fat yogurt and 1.5 oz of cheese. If you are unable to consume dairy, consider calcium fortified 100% orange juice or fortified cereal. (calcium needs = 1000 – 1200 mg/day)
Myth: “Carbohydrates are Fattening”
Truth: Carbohydrates do not make us fat; consuming more calories than our body needs will cause us to store fat. It is very true that it is easy to over eat carbohydrates however it is not the fact that it is carbohydrates, it is the fact that carbohydrates contain calories and eating too many calories cause us to store fat. We get calories from 4 places; carbohydrates, fats, proteins and alcohol. Over consuming any of these will cause weight gain. Carbohydrates are an essential part of our diet that provides instant energy – similar to high-octane gasoline in a car. Carbohydrates are our main source of fiber – important for weight management and a healthy digestive tract. The grain food group (the main source of carbohydrate) also offers an abundance of B Vitamins, which aid in the release of energy from foods and keeps the immune system strong. The healthiest carbohydrates to consume are whole grains – whole wheat bread, whole grain cereal, brown rice, whole wheat pasta, whole grain crackers, and low fat popcorn. To ensure you are getting whole grains, check the food label and make sure the first ingredient on the ingredient list says the word “WHOLE” (carbohydrate needs for most women = 250 - 350 grams/day depending on activity level).
I hope this blog entry has clarified some information for you. I would love to address any nutrition information or dietary advice WOW members have questions about. This is YOUR blog and I want to touch on topics that YOU are interested in!
I wish you and your family a happy and healthy new year!
Refer a friend now
WOW is better with friends. So get yours to join. And share every Burgundy and Gold moment.
- May 25, 2013
- May 29, 2013
- June 11, 2013
- June 26, 2013
- July 12, 2013
- July 17, 2013
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[author: Adrian Miedema]
After stating that “many workers continue to be unaware of their workplace rights and responsibilities”, Ontario’s Chief Prevention Officer, George Gritziotis, has noted a “trend to more small workplaces and fewer large ones”, and states that the trend requires “new approaches” for reaching employers and workers with safety messages.
In the same article, Mr. Gritziotis states that, “An important priority will be to establish adequate standards in the area of training and certification.”
As we have previously noted on occupationalhealthandsafetylaw.com, the Ontario Ministry of Labour intends to introduce mandatory worker and supervisor training obligations on Ontario employers. Mr. Gritziotis’s comments may indicate that the training requirements will be more onerous than had previously been anticipated. Stay tuned.
Mr. Gritziotis’s article can be accessed here.
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Seems like just yesterday, Sarah Palin was on a passionate crusade for open and transparent government. Fighting the Randy Ruedrichs and the Greg Renkes of the world, demanding a government that allowed a clear view for all to see from the outside.
Today it appears time for Palin to write an obituary for that noble crusade.
In a shocking interview with Anchorage Daily News Reporter Lisa Demer
on Thursday, Palin's Communication Director Bill McAllister defended the administration's abandonement of their "open and transparent government" promise by saying it didn't really apply to everything.
"Open and transparent government was something that came up during the campaign and was largely in reference to the stranded gas act versus the AGIA concept under Governor Palin."
One thing comes to mind after listening to McAllister rewrite history regarding the promises Palin made about open and transparent government; what the hell is Bill McAllister talking about?
But don't take my word for it; look at the facts.
First, go the State of Alaska website and search the terms "Open and transparent." No fewer than 5 pages appear with soundbites from Governor Palin about her commitment to open and transparent government while speaking about different initiatives.
Second, simply look at history. Time and time again, when Palin has invoked the words open and transparent, there is no mention of the stranded gas act or AGIA as McAllister claims.
In November of 2006 on her campaign website she promised voters, "Sarah will open the door wide to transparent and accountable government."
On November 1, 2007 after the indictment of Vic Kohring, Palin's press release stated, " Public trust and integrity are the foundation of good government. This reaffirms my commitment to conduct the people’s business in an open and transparent fashion.”
On March 28, 2006 in a press release regarding putting the state's checkbook online she said it was part of implementing her mandate for more open, transparent government.
In the interview with McAllister, the ADN's Demer ask him if the Palin administration was backing away from it's "guiding principle" of open and transparent government.
McAllister offered Demer another shocking response, "Open and transparent does not mean you lose all common sense and conduct everything out in the open."
The truth is this entire administration has begun to batten down the hatches due to the Branchflower investigation.
The recent opinion by Attorney General Talis Colberg that state employees have a right to privacy while using state issued communication equipment has set off a heated debate and one that will undoubtedly end up in court.
In addition, the governor's Department of Administration appears on the verge of enacting more stringent requirements for the public to ask for public records.
Oh my dear openness and transparency, what has happened to thee?
I'll tell what happened; Palin and her staff have been using their state issued Blackberrys and computers to conduct acts of personal retribution, and the attorney general is covering for them.
So why come out with this opinion now, especially in the middle of a scandal fueled by the revalations of secret communications?
According to one of my sources who tipped me off about the Bailey phone call days before it was publicly released as well as the Kopp payout days before it was publicly released; the governor is in deep snow.
Apparently there is credible evidence of Blackberry communications that Palin herself communicated with her staff and Monegan about firing Wooten.
This explains Colberg's over reaching opinion which has many government watchers shaking their collective heads.
One of our legal friends offered this brief analysis of Colberg's recent opinion:
The AG says that we the People need to trust our government to make decisions for us. It is doubtful that any employee ever has a constitutionally protected "expectation of privacy" when they are using their employer's communications equipment. That is black letter law for private employers, and the AG makes a huge leap in logic when he then says that the privacy clause of the Alaska Constitution turns that on its head.
This is not a situation where the government is proactively intruding into private citizens' private lives; instead, it is a situation where a person has chosen to be employed by the State and has voluntarily placed their personal information on a public system.
The argument that because the use is "insignificant" in no way means that it should be excepted from the public records act. That logic simply doesn't follow. It just means that if that indeed is the legal standard, and the use is "insignificant," then the employee doesn't get tagged with an ethics violation.
Here is but one ridiculous result from this new ad hoc "policy": the public is not allowed to see the documents by which the public could determine if the use of public resources is de minimus or insignificant. We must simply trust the government – in this case, the same people that may have violated the law -- to look at the communications in secret and out of the public view and make a determination.
The AG also applies tortured interpretation of the public records law to mean that it somehow excludes certain documents because they are not "public records" as defined by statute as "developed or received by a public agency."
Following this reasoning, political activity on state computers (or alleged political activity) would NOT BE A PUBLIC RECORD, and therefore could not be disclosed to the public.
In addition, as noted above, to the extent the privacy clause of the AK Constitution protects state employees expectations of privacy, it would likewise apply allegedly political activity. This cannot be right, and this example shows the fundamental flaw in logic of Sarah's AG office.
The People are entitled to see and judge for themselves if a state employee's communications are de minimus or insignificant just as they are entitled to view alleged political activity and judge for themselves.
A former State Labor Relations Director also offered his opinion:
This is a formal, written opinion of the Attorney General and as such is the law unless and until a Court decides otherwise. Significantly, it was written by Bockman, the Ethics Attorney. More significantly, it represents a fundamental departure from the State's official practice regarding private use of State electronic resources.
Back in the "good old days" the only issue was either excessive time on a State phone or running up long distance bills on one. Excessive time would get you disciplined, running up long distance would get you disciplined and made to pay for them and might get you fired. Life was simple.
The Knowles Administration was in a heated rush to wire the State and get everybody on email and the internet. There were some pretty good fights between the "free internet" types with the Administration, e.g., Com. Boyer, and the tight-assed bureaucrats, like me, who wanted some rules on usage. At first the free internet types had the upper hand, but life being life and employees being employees, a high level IT employee in Public Safety used a State computer to make a date with a fourteen year old, at least it was a girl, and got caught by the APD. The Administration decided they might need some rules after all and the IT policy was promulgated and each employee obligated to adhere to it.
The key to State policy regarding electronic resources, and any other State resources, e.g., your desk drawer, is that it is NOT your resource and you have NO expectation of privacy in its use. The State explicitly tolerates de minimis personal use, but the price of being able to get the grocery list from your spouse by email is that it becomes the State's email and if somebody wanted your grocery list, they get it under the PRA.
This Opinion is a dramatic departure from that, and it is an unnecessary and foolish one. The AG has now countenanced PRIVATE personal use of State resources, something that is unprecedented. The Opinion is right, but the policy is wrong, stupid, and will bite this or some other administration in the a**. It is a policy question as to whether State employees have an expectation of privacy in the use of State electronic resources. If they do have that expectation, then Alaska's quite stringent Constitutional privacy protections inhere to the employees. But the Constitution does not guarantee them that privacy, it only protects them where they have the expectation of privacy.
State employees have never before had the expectation of privacy in ANY act related to their job or for which there is even a nexus to their job. The State rather routinely fires employees for off duty conduct for which a job nexus can be demonstrated. Now the State has said that some of your actions on a cell phone, Blackberry, or State computer are private and cannot be used against you or discovered under the PRA.
I have had some spirited exchanges with AAG Bockman myself over the contours and limits of the Ethics Act. I'm willing to bet this ain't her idea! I know most of the Labor and State Affairs (or whatever they're calling it this week) attorneys and I know they know better than to confer an expectation of privacy on State employees. So, the question becomes, Who made the policy decision and why?
It is evident to anyone watching that almost everyone in this Administration with a range that starts with a 2 uses Blackberries like Ninth Grade girls use their cell phone. It is equally evident that some very dumb things have been said and done on those Blackberries. Now they want to countenance a notion of privacy so those dumb things don't get spread all over the front page of the ADN as the result of a Public Records Act request.
Here's hoping that there's another dumba** in the wings to make a date with a fourteen year old or some such so that the utter foolishness of this shortsighted opinion will become evident and the policy will be reversed.
There's been an ongoing controversy about whether or not even the allowed de minimis use of State cell phones, laptops, PDAs, internet services, etc. represents a form of compensation to employees and thus must be reported to the IRS as taxable compensation.
I'm pretty sure this settles it; now that it is legally sanctioned to make PRIVATE, not governmental, use of these devices, the State can spend a few thousand dollars worth of Fiscal Section time every month going through the bills, emails, and histories to determine what is personal, private use, determining its value, and adding it to each employee's taxable compensation.
Sometimes I'm still amazed at what supposedly intelligent people do.
Changes in regulations regarding public information requests
The Department of Administration has issued a notice to adopt regulation changes in Title 2 of the Alaska Administrative Code, dealing with the Alaska Public Records Act, to comprehensively refine, update and clarify the regulations, standardize terminology used; refine statutory authority citations and make other changes.
It appears very clear that the Palin administration is using the Attorney General's over reaching opinion to craft more restrictive rules on what the public can gain access to.
One has to wonder, what if Governor Murkowski attempted this brazen move while Palin was waving the red flag about Randy Ruedrich and Greg Renkes using state resources for personal business.
The news regarding the death of open government has not been greatly exaggerated.
Labels: Andrew Halcro, Palin Investigated, palin unethical behavior, Syrin
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Dakotas farmers rebound after historic floodBISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Customers are tossing back more beer this spring than last at Drinks Inc. on Main Street in Mohall, and it has a lot to do with the barley farmers are once again planting in the fields around the town of about 1,000 people.
By: BLAKE NICHOLSON, Associated Press
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Customers are tossing back more beer this spring than last at Drinks Inc. on Main Street in Mohall, and it has a lot to do with the barley farmers are once again planting in the fields around the town of about 1,000 people.
A year ago, many tractors and seeders in northwest North Dakota sat idle as snowmelt, heavy rains and overflowing rivers swamped fields and roads. A record number of acres went unplanted, putting a strain on farmers' wallets. That carried over to small-town businesses that depend largely on farmers' spending for their livelihoods.
It was an unexpected downturn in a state spotted with oil fields and an influx of so many well-paid workers there aren't enough hotels or homes to house them. If it hadn't been for workers from North Dakota's booming oil patch, Drinks Inc. owner Chad Schmidt said, his bar might have collapsed because "farmers weren't spending."
But one mild winter and relatively dry spring later, farmers have a more optimistic outlook — and are willing to buy more beer. In North Dakota, durum wheat acres are expected to double, and the barley crop is projected to be almost 1 ½-times bigger. In South Dakota, this year's corn crop could be the biggest in state history.
"It's been really great up here, (with) farmers getting into the fields," Schmidt said.
Natural disasters ravaged 33 states last year, prompting more than $300 million in federal emergency assistance. The Dakotas were hit by flooding from the Missouri River, which cuts through both states and swelled with heavy rain that fell on top of ground still soaked from a snowy winter. North Dakota also saw historic flooding along the Souris River. Nearly 7 million acres of normally productive cropland went unseeded, about one-fifth of the land typically planted with annual crops in the two states.
The flooding hit hardest in North Dakota, where the amount of unseeded land in 2011 was historic. The federal Risk Management Agency and the federal Farm Service Agency, which use different methods of calculating "prevented planting" acres, estimate the number of acres that couldn't be seeded due to weather at between 5.3 million and 5.6 million. Both figures shattered the 1999 record of 3.9 million acres.
South Dakota had between 1.2 million and 1.4 million prevented planting acres in 2011, fourth most in state history.
North Dakota State University researcher Dwight Aakre estimates the state's farmers last year took a direct financial hit of more than $1 billion because they couldn't plant.
"That $1.1 billion loss, you're actually talking, with a multiplier effect, of almost a $4 billion effect on our state economy," state Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring said.
In Bottineau County, for example, Terry Holsten, general manager of the Theel Inc. automobile dealership in the city of Bottineau, saw his business suffer after more land sat empty than got planted.
"Farmer sales weren't as high as they were the year before, without a doubt," Holsten said.
What a difference a year makes.
"This will be one of the lowest years in both states (for unseeded acres) — if not the lowest," said Doug Hagel, regional director for the Risk Management Agency, which oversees crop insurance programs.
Doug Opland, who farms near Des Lacs, typifies the turnaround: He didn't get any durum wheat planted last year. This year, he got his crop in a month early.
"Anyone in the Minot area, within 150 miles, was glad to see last year disappear," Opland said. "Jan. 1 came, and we just said, 'Good, the new year has come.'"
The situation was just as dire last year for some corn growers in South Dakota, said Bridgewater farmer Mark Gross, president of the South Dakota Corn Growers Association.
Corn acres in South Dakota are expected to total 5.5 million this year, up 300,000 from last year and rivaling the 1931 crop as the largest in state history. Good prices have a lot to do with that, but good weather also is a big reason.
"Planting conditions are almost ideal," Gross said. "The ground hasn't been in this good of condition in my part of the state in years. Everybody is cautiously upbeat."
Farmers who can't plant because of flooding can collect crop insurance, but the amount is much less than what they would get by growing and selling a crop.
"All you do is cover your cash rent, your machinery payments, and survive," Opland said. "You've got to have a crop to make money."
North Dakota typically leads the nation in the production of durum wheat, which is used for pasta, and barley, which becomes beer and livestock feed. The plummet in production last year — 62 percent for barley and 72 percent for durum — didn't provide much of a boost to durum prices, with plentiful supplies in Canada. But the malting industry dramatically increased contracts it offered to farmers last fall to buy back acres lost to flooding and to more profitable crops such as corn.
"People are excited to just get out in the field and get a crop in," said Keith Deutsch, who last year was able to get only about half of his durum planted near Plaza. "Much more optimistic than last year."
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
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Gordon Cain Fellow, 2010–2011
Cesare Pastorino is a Gordon Cain Fellow. A historian of early modern science and natural philosophy, Pastorino has a particular interest in the history of experiment and in the emergence of experimental practices and standards in the early modern period. A major theme of his work regards the interactions between mechanical artisans and natural philosophers and the links between experimentation and technical practice.
Pastorino pursued his Ph.D. in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University. In his doctoral research, Pastorino investigated the role that inventors and projectors of the early Stuart age played in shaping Francis Bacon’s reflection on technical innovation and his notion of experiment.
Pastorino also holds an M.A. in history and philosophy of science from Indiana University (2006), an M.A. in history of science from Lancaster University, United Kingdom (2000), and an undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Genoa, Italy (1996).
In 2006 Pastorino was awarded a Roy G. Neville Fellowship from CHF. In 2002 he received a Norwood Russell Hanson Fellowship from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University. Between 2004 and 2009, Pastorino worked on the project The Chymistry of Isaac Newton as a research and editorial assistant.
While at CHF, Pastorino will develop a project titled “‘Minerall Tryalls’: Metal Assaying and Experiment in Early Modern England.”
Mineral and metal assaying had a fundamental and well-recognized place in early modern societies and economies. Goldsmiths routinely tested the purity of precious metals employed in commerce. Mint assayers and officials assured that state coinage would fit precise standards and helped to fight counterfeiting. In the mining industry, tests were commonly carried out to ascertain the composition of mineral ores and to guide further investigations. Expeditions to unexplored regions normally included metallurgists and assayers, and large-scale assaying projects were often undertaken to prove—or to debunk—claims of economic potential of a newly discovered land. In Elizabethan England, this was the case with Martin Frobisher and Walter Raleigh, who sought assayers’ expertise after their travels to the Arctic and Guyana.
In his research, Pastorino addresses the important yet little-studied role of early modern assaying in the origins of 17th-century English experimental science. He claims that early modern English assayers naturally employed working methodologies, standards, and practices that anticipated those of the English experimental philosophers. Early modern assaying inherently entailed concerns for accuracy, quantification, and replicability. Moreover, issues of trust regarding assayers' impartiality and integrity commonly were at stake. Assayers were not just technical practitioners but experts officially certifying their work. Their assessments were often binding in an institutional context, and their trials were linked to law courts in a more than metaphorical sense.
Assayers serving as expert witnesses established a middle ground between the legal and the experimental tradition. A remarkable example of this fact is given by the assaying tests taking place in the Star Chamber, the so-called Trials of the Pyx. Every year, assayers of the Goldsmiths’ Company sat as legal jurors at the presence of the Privy Council in order to ascertain and certify the purity of the coins produced at the Royal Mint. The Trials of the Pyx represent a striking case in which “minerall” trials were also literally judicial trials.
In the long term, this research will provide a map of the early modern English culture of assaying, of its practitioners, and of the sites where assayers were employed. A particular emphasis will be given to the English colonies and the role of metallurgy in the context of the voyages of exploration. Pastorino will examine assaying standards and technical procedures and will consider the assayers' systems of data collection and experimental recording. He will look at the institutional and entrepreneurial dimensions of assaying, investigating the role of assayers as mint public officers and the legal implications of assaying trials. Finally, he will look at assaying culture in the context of the emergence of English experimental philosophy. Pastorino will especially consider assaying and metallurgy in the Hartlib Circle, and the role of assaying in the work of Robert Boyle.
“The Mine and the Furnace: Francis Bacon, Thomas Russell, and Early Stuart Mining Culture.” Early Science and Medicine, 14 (5) 2009: 630-660.
“Francis Bacon.” Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by Noretta Koertge. Vol. 19. Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2008.
“The Digital Index Chemicus: Toward a Digital Tool for Studying Isaac Newton's Index Chemicus.” Body, Space & Technology Journal, 7 (2) 2007. (with T. Lopez and J. Walsh)
“Bacon's Proteus.” Chemical Heritage. 24 (4) Winter 2006/07.
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|<< Micah 3 >>|
King James 2000 Bible
Rulers and Prophets Condemned
1And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and you rulers of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment?
2Who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones;
3Who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron.
4Then shall they cry unto the LORD, but he will not hear them: he will even hide his face from them at that time, as they have behaved themselves in an evil way in their deeds.
5Thus says the LORD: Concerning the prophets who make my people stray, who bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace; and he that puts nothing into their mouths, they even prepare war against him.
6Therefore night shall be unto you, that you shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that you shall not divine; and the sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them.
7Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded: yea, they shall all cover their lips; for there is no answer from God.
8But truly I am full of power by the spirit of the LORD, and of justice, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin.
9Hear this, I pray you, you heads of the house of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel, that abhor justice, and pervert all equity.
10They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.
11Her heads judge for reward, and her priests teach for hire, and her prophets divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? no evil can come upon us.
12Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins, and the mountain of the house like the high places of the forest.
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To my comment:
> What eventually overcomes this opposition, when the ideas are correct,
> are the things Ted Davis attacks: observations and experiments.
> Then by your criteria, the theory of evolution is not "scientific
> knowledge", or is it?
Without doubt, the confidence of scientists in the validity of the theory
of evolution has increased enormously, over many decades now, as a
consequence of observations and experiments. These observations and
experiments are occurring in research laboratories and in field studies on
a daily basis. So, yes, I would call it scientific knowledge. Most
scientists do. Likewise, observations and experiments would provide the
basis for the rejection of the theory if they did provide contrary
evidence. But, in the judgment of most scientists, they have not. As with
all areas of science, there remain perplexing situations that have not
been resolved one way or the other yet.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jan 02 2002 - 09:46:36 EST
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More Government Spending Won't Reduce Poverty
Despite unprecedented levels of government spending to help low-income Americans, a record 46 million people in the United States are living in poverty. In 2011, two thirds of the working-age poor were unemployed for the entire year. Some will argue that more public sector intervention is necessary to reduce poverty. But as we continue to slowly recover from the Great Recession, history shows us that only job gains from stronger economic growth can solve the problem.
A full five years since the start of the recession, the economy continues to underperform. Economic growth has averaged just 2.3 percent growth since the end of the recession in mid-year 2009, not enough to begin a full labor market recovery. There are still more than 100 million working-age people that remain jobless, and wages in 2012 grew at just 1.5 percent, the slowest increase on record and well below the rate of inflation. Based on data from the past two decades, every 1 percent reduction in the poverty rate requires a corresponding 2 percent rise in the share of the working age population with employment.
Since the start of the recession, the number of Americans in poverty has grown by 9 million. This increase has come at a time when government spending on the poor has also reached record levels. In 2011, more than 100 million people lived in households that received some kind of low-income government assistance; spending on these programs at the federal, state, and local level combined now exceeds $1 trillion annually. Government assistance for low-income families now equals a shocking 10 percent of all household spending.
It has been long recognized that recessions can increase the number of families in poverty, and over the past 20 years it has become clear that the rising and falling poverty rate correlates directly with the jobless rate. The graph below shows this relationship.
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“I AM an Irish American/Irish citizen. My parents were born in Ireland, and they came to the U.S. many years ago. I have an Irish passport. I am married to my second wife, who is American with no Irish roots at all. My first wife also was not Irish. In 1996 my first wife obtained her Irish passport through her marriage to me. We were married for 11 years at the time, and we have two kids who also have Irish passports.
“My questions – is my first wife’s Irish citizenship still valid, even though we are no longer married? Also, I would like to have my second wife obtain an Irish passport. Would this be possible as a non-Irish person has already obtained Irish citizenship through me? My wife and I are thinking about spending a good deal of time in Ireland when we reach retirement age, and having an Irish passport would make this easier, I imagine.”
Even though you are divorced from your first wife, the Irish citizenship she obtained through you would absolutely still be valid for her to use.
When non-Irish spouses obtained citizenship through marriage prior to November of 2005 the process was called post-nuptial declaration. Provided all the requirements were met – and in 1996, it was much easier for non-Irish spouses to obtain Irish citizenship than it is now, because a period of residence in Ireland was not required – then the citizenship will always remain legitimate.
It’s the same in the U.S., by the way. When a non-American spouse receives permanent resident status through marriage, and eventually U.S. citizenship, it does not get taken away if the marriage ends in divorce -- again, provided that all the rules have been followed, chief among them that the marriage wasn’t entered into for immigration-related reasons.
There’s nothing in Irish law stopping you from obtaining Irish citizenship for your second wife, but as mentioned above, it’s not as simple as it used to be.
When your first wife was granted her Irish citizenship, all the post-nuptial declaration really required was a marriage that was at least three years old before applying. Post-nuptial requests could be handled at the nearest Irish consular post to the applicant’s place of residence.
That has all changed, though. Since November of 2005, non-Irish spouses must go through the Irish naturalization process, albeit with less stringent requirements than others wishing to become citizens.
Now, prior to applying for Irish citizenship, the couple must have lived in Ireland continuously for the one-year period preceding the application. Also, during the four years prior to applying, the couple must have lived in Ireland for at least two years. The couple must also intend, in good faith, to keep living in Ireland after naturalization has been granted.
You say that you and your wife would like to spend an extended amount of time in Ireland after retirement, but the new naturalization requirements may well be more than you bargained for. But certainly, it will be possible for both of you to visit and enjoy Ireland.
Americans do not need visas to enter Ireland. They can be granted stays of up to three months at a time.
If you’re looking to remain longer, it’s possible for the spouse of an Irish citizen to obtain a visa for long-term residence. For information, visit the Irish government’s Naturalization and Immigration Service website at http://www.inis.gov.ie/en/INIS/Pages/WP09000003.
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1. Extensive ecchymoses following a fall
A 72-year-old man slipped and fell backward in the bathroom, hitting his head on the toilet seat; he suffered only minimal discomfort. The following day, he presented with mild back pain and extensive bruising.
Impressive ecchymoses extended from his left flank to his right flank, across the midline, where a tender mass was palpated. Swelling was visible from a distance at the L4 level; the 17 X 10-cm lesion was raised approximately 1.5 cm, with overlying black-blue ecchymoses. The patient was taking self-prescribed baby aspirin(Drug information on aspirin), 81 mg/d; vitamins C, E, and B12; and Ginkgo biloba, 400 mg/d.
Could the fall alone have caused this extensive bruise—or is something else involved?
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Most Active Stories
News & Music Contributors
Solar storm goes easy on Earth — But more are sure to come, NASA says
Originally published on Fri March 9, 2012 9:07 am
The huge solar storm that NASA detected hurtling toward Earth hit our planet at 5:42 a.m. EST Thursday. So far, there have been no reports of major power or communications disruptions. The storm's magnetic fields are oriented in a way that's "been opposite of what is needed to cause the strongest storming," says the Space Weather Prediction Center.
So, the main effect of this storm, which the AP calls the largest in five years, may only be to paint colorful auroras across the night skies above Iowa, New York and Illinois. But it's not the last you'll hear about "Solar Flares Speeding Toward Earth," as we told you yesterday. The sun is currently in a very active phase, and it won't peak until 2013, according to NASA.
This week's large solar flares, and a similar episode in late January, have sparked a lot of curiosity about the phenomena — and led some to worry about how they might disrupt life on Earth.
NASA has uploaded an "HD closeup" version of its video of Tuesday's flares:
Here's how Adam Frank, of our 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog, describes a solar flare:
"Powerful magnetic fields arc upwards from the surface, rising high into the solar atmosphere to form giant, twisting arcades of energy. Matter streams up these arches to be gripped in a magnetic vise a million miles above the surface. Then something happens. Something shifts. Magnetic lines of force in the arcade snap like steel cables on the bridge to heaven. Billions of tons of solar gas are suddenly blown outward, exploding across interplanetary space. Three days later the shimmering ball of energy smashes head-on into the unsuspecting Earth."
But Adam is quick to clarify that we earthlings are not, in fact, unsuspecting — we're very aware of what the sun's up to. And to him, the fact that we study solar activity the way our ancestors might have noted the oceans' shifting tides means that we've arrived in a new era.
"Now we have become a high-tech, space-faring race encircling the planet's surface with power lines and its skies with orbiting satellites," he wrote.
And there lies the rub. Thanks to advances in science and technology, we're very good at detecting the ebbs and flows of the sun's 11-year activity cycle. But much of our communications and energy technology can also be devastated by the effects of a massive solar storm.
The worst-case scenario of a huge solar storm leaving "millions of people around the world without electricity, running water or phone service" isn't a matter of sci-fi conjecture — it's a precise possibility raised by U.S. space and emergency officials, as Jon Hamilton reported in 2010.
In the government exercise, officials from the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center and the Federal Emergency Management Agency looked at how our systems might respond to a solar storm of a magnitude like those that struck the Earth in 1921 and 1859 — events that, as Jon reported, "can release as much energy as 1 billion hydrogen bombs."
Here's what they saw in their projection models:
- It would start with radio and GPS signals being disrupted.
- 10-20 minutes later, most satellites that link phones, computers and TVs are knocked out.
- One day later, the solar storm overloads high voltage power lines, destroying transformers.
The effects of what Jon called "a sort of solar Katrina" would be felt most dramatically in northern hemispheres.
As for what you might do to prepare for a potential solar calamity, FEMA's Craig Fugate recommended the standard emergency kit of water, food and first-aid supplies.
"If you've got your family disaster plan together, you've taken the steps," Fugate said, "whether it be a space storm, whether it be a system failure, whether it be another natural hazard that knocks the power out."
To clarify, those are the possibilities if we experience a category-5 solar storm. For comparison purposes, this week's solar storm has been estimated to have a rating above 1 (minor) and spiking into 3 (strong).
But NOAA uses a different measure to rate possible effects here on Earth — the geomagnetic scale, on which this week's event rates just a 1. You can see a guide to the rating scale at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's site.
Even a small storm can cause trouble. For instance, in 1989, Canada's Hydro-Quebec power grid went off-line for more than nine hours, a disruption that was estimated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs and lost revenue.
As Adam Frank wrote in his 13.7 post back in January:
"There are other winds and other storms we must now be attentive to as we go about our business. In this way, as in so many others, our long childhood as a species has ended for better or for worse."
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kauri pineArticle Free Pass
kauri pine, also called Dammar Pine, (Agathis australis), a resinous timber conifer of the family Araucariaceae, native to the North Island of New Zealand. The tree sometimes reaches 45 metres (150 feet) in height, with a diameter up to 7 m (23 ft).
Kauri resin, obtained from this and other Agathis species, is an amber-like deposit dug from the sites of previous forests; the hard, durable resin, called kauri copal, kauri gum, or dammar, is used in making varnishes, lacquers, and linoleum.
What made you want to look up "kauri pine"? Please share what surprised you most...
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On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress drafts its rationale for taking up arms against Great Britain in the Articles of War.
In the Articles of War, written one year before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Congress referred to "his Majesty's most faithful subjects in these Colonies" and laid the blame for colonial discontent not on King George III, but on "attempts of the British Ministry, to carry into execution, by force of arms, several unconstitutional and oppressive acts of the British parliaments for laying taxes in America."
By phrasing their discontent this way, Congress attempted to notify the king that American colonists were unhappy with parliamentary policy. By July 1776, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed something very different:
"The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States."
Congress language is critical to understanding the seismic shift that had occurred in American thought in just 12 months. Indeed, Congress insisted that Thomas Jefferson remove any language from the declaration that implicated the people of Great Britain or their elected representatives in Parliament. The fundamental grounds upon which Americans were taking up arms had shifted. The militia that had fired upon Redcoats at Lexington and Concord had been angry with Parliament, not the king, who they still trusted to desire only good for all of his subjects around the globe. This belief changed after King George refused to so much as receive the so-called Olive Branch Petition, sent to him by Congress in July 1775 in a final attempt to make him aware of the colonists grievances. Patriots had hoped that Parliament had curtailed colonial rights without the king's full knowledge, and that the petition would cause him to come to his subjects' defense. When George III refused to read the petition, Patriots realized that Parliament was acting with royal knowledge and support. The king became the central focus of the Americans patriotic rage when English-born radical Thomas Paine published his blistering attack on the monarchy, Common Sense, in January 1776.
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Headstart Programs Fail in Enricher Central
South Africans Rape Children As Cure For AIDS
By David Beresford in Nelspruit
The Observer - UK
Nelspruit, the provincial capital of Mpumalanga, previously known as Eastern Transvaal, is running out of space for graves. Cemeteries expected to last another 50 years are now full. The announcement, another marker in a growing pandemic, comes as a new parliamentary report has condemned as lamentable the health facilities in one of the world's epicentres of Aids.
An estimated 31 per cent of Nelpruit's population of 600,000 is infected. Now the city has another problem, a dramatic increase in child rape caused by the myth that sex with a virgin cures HIV.
Until 2000 most rape victims were adults. but there was an abrupt turn-around from 2001, when 65 to 70 per cent of victims were children, some as young as two weeks old. The city seems helpless in the face of its woes. The ANC's provincial Health Minister, Sibongile Manana, has been placed under 'curatorship' - the Minister of Housing and the Minister of Public Works are going to help her do her job.
In the main Mpumelela hospital - Rob Ferriera, in Nelspruit - the telephones were not working and public phone boxes had to be used to call doctors and ambulances.
Surprisingly, the shortage of burial space does not appear to extend to the health facilities. Tonga hospital itself is difficult to miss - a red cross signalling its presence is painted on the side of a water tower that can be seen for miles. But the parking places for cars, while efficiently signposted - 'public', 'maternity', 'casualty', 'disabled' - are empty.
The impression that it is a modern hospital, with all the mod cons that a doctor might require, is confirmed by a plaque next to the entrance recording that it was opened by South Africa's Minister of Health only four years ago.
But inside wheelchairs and hospital trolleys stand unused. The neat line of registration booths are empty. Spider webs across doors show that most of the wards are never used, although the beds are made.
The individual tragedy into which all this translates is epitomised by the case of Senzo Mgwenya. Senzo knows he is dying, what is killing him, how he got it and how, in theory at least, he could save himself.
He explains that as a pianist in a band he used to have as many girls as he liked. Now he has abscesses under his right arm and one of his testicles has been removed. But the drugs he really needs he cannot get. 'Vuka Kwabifile' is how they describe anti-retrovirals: 'Wake up from the dying.'
Not many are being saved from the dying. South Africa's Constitutional Court has ordered the authorities to administer anti-retrovirals to pregnant mothers and their newborns to block transmission, but the syrup by which the drugs are administered is not available in Mpumalanga.
Rape victims get anti-retrovirals immediately after an attack, but if they are found to be HIV-positive treatment stops. Barbara Kenyon, who runs a counselling service for rape and HIV/Aids victims, says they have seen an extraordinary turnaround in the incidence of rape.
She attributes this to the myth that HIV/Aids sufferers can be cured if they have sex with a virgin. Kenyon recalls how a senior policeman who recently overheard her rebutting the widespread belief interrupted her. 'But it does!' he said.
This is clearly propaganda that was pushed out by the white Central Intelligence Agency, this idea of virgins being a cure for AIDS.
After all, the CIA and the white man engineered HIV and set it across Africa much like they infused every inner city ghetto with crack cocaine and guns. :roll:
Fucking animals, they might as well be living in California. And the world wants the US to do their 'fare share' to fight AIDS while they've got en entire culture of sub-humanity that believes in witchdoctors and magic as cures. Why do we need to help these people again?
Originally Posted by hermyhermit
Animals and subhumans?
Originally Posted by bmulligan
Well, I know where you go in my book.
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*** CACHE IS NOT AT THE LISTED COORDINATES ***
According to ancient legend, thirteen animals once gathered on the bank of a Chinese river to discuss an affair which would dictate the actions of mankind for millenia to come: the cycle of years in the calendar. The thirteen animals (pig, rat, snake, tiger, horse, ram (or sheep), ox, rooster, dog, cat, dragon, monkey, and rabbit) debated the matter from all angles, but could not reach an agreement.
Thus the gods decided to intervene, and decreed that a race would be held to settle the matter forevermore. The race would be simple: the first to reach the far bank of the river would gain the most prominent spot, the second the next, and so forth, while the hindmost would not be honored at all (there were, after all, only twelve cycles on the calendar).
The cat wondered how he would get across if he was afraid of water. At the same time, the ox wondered how he would cross with his poor eyesight. The calculating rat suggested that he and the cat jump onto the ox's back and guide him across. The ox was steady and hard-working so that he did not notice a commotion on his back. Meanwhile, the rat snuck up behind the unsuspecting cat and shoved him into the water. Just as the ox came ashore, the rat jumped off and finished the race first. The lazy pig came to the far shore in twelfth place. And so the rat got the first year named after him. The cat finished too late to win any place in the calendar, and vowed to be the enemy of the rat forevermore.
You'll be looking for a camouflaged Pelican Case. Inside you'll find a few nice trade items. The lucky FTF cacher will also discover a brand-spanking-new 2005 White Jeep Travel Bug. Happy puzzling!
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Tools get rusty. It's one of the things they do best. But they don't have to stay rusty. The DIY experts at Stack Exchange offer a few solutions to keep your tools gleaming clean.
Photo provided by Stack Exchange.
Should I use sandpaper to clean the rust off old tools? Can I soak them in vinegar or lemon juice?
Would I be better off just buying new tools?
Answer: WD-40 + Scotch Brite or "Rust Free"
While I don't use hand tools much, I certainly own a lot of hand tools. This happens when you sell them all day. Norm Abram at This Old House provides some pretty good tips on cleaning rust from tools.
His tips, summarized:
- First, store tools in a dry drawer or toolbox. Use silica gel packets to keep this place even more dry (you can find these at a hardware store or use the packs that come with pills, electronics, etc.).
But once rust appears...
- Spray with a penetrating lubricant such as WD-40 and scrub with a heavy-duty Scotch-Brite pad. Abram is very clear that you should NOT use sandpaper, as it tends to scratch metal.
For seriously rusted tools...
- "For more heavily rusted metal, try a spray-on, wipe-off, acid-based rust remover like Rust Free. Follow with a rust-inhibitor spray like Boeshield T-9, which leaves a thin, waxy film on the surface. Wipe away any excess immediately."
I've used this stuff and it's amazing — one of the most amazing products I have ever put my hands on. I left a drill press in the rain for two years, and after soaking the parts in Evapo-Rust they were restored to near brand new.
Check out this old thread for some pics: How to clean rust in hard to reach places?
Answer: Naval Jelly
Yep. It works.
Answer: Steel Wool & Elbow Grease (or DIY Electrolysis)
I've always just used steel wool etc. and elbow grease.
But if you really want to get crafty, pull rust from your tools using electrolysis. Check out ToolNut's step-by-step instructions on how to make a DIY electrolyzer for about $40 at instructables.com.
Think you know the secret to removing rust from old tools? Leave your suggestion in the comments or submit it at Stack Exchange, an expert knowledge exchange on diverse topics from software programming to cycling to scientific skepticism.
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The National Curriculum requires schools to teach not computer science but ICT – a strange hybrid of desktop-publishing lessons and Microsoft tutorials. While Word and Excel are useful vocational skills, they are never going to equip anybody for a career in video games or visual effects. Computer science is different. It is a vital, analytical discipline, and a system of logical thinking that is as relevant to the modern world as physics, chemistry or biology. Computer science is to ICT what writing is to reading. It is the difference between making an application and using one. It is the combination of computer programming skills and creativity by which world-changing companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Zynga are built. Indeed, in a world where computers define so much of how society works, I would argue that computer science is “essential knowledge” for the 21st century.
Posted by: Alexandre Borovik | November 28, 2011
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It wasn't just delegates, politicians and party supporters making the trip down the mountain to Charlotte for the Democratic National Convention this week. Activists and protesters also showed up to voice their opposition to the government's policies and raise issues they claim are forgotten in the course of campaign season.
Asheville resident John Penley was among the first arrested at the convention, making national news after trying to cross a barricade. In a video of his Sept. 4 arrest posted on YouTube, Penley says the protesters were trying to speak to delegates about issues including bringing the military home, soldier's suicides and the detention of Pfc. Bradley Manning, accusing of leaking classified documents to Wikileaks.
Penley, a longtime activist, was also among those arrested when Occupy Asheville's camp was cleared in February, and also protested at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. He was released the next day.
"Much love and respect to my sisters and brothers who bravely fought in the streets of Tampa and Charlotte," Penley later wrote on his Facebook page. "For me and you it was very very hard, uncomfortable and at times dangerous but because we made the long journey we showed America that [Occupy Wall Street] is not dead and will continue to be in the streets showing the world we are not sheep who will be silent in the face of fascism and corporate military industrial complex police state control."
Contingents from the local Veterans for Peace chapter, Warren Wilson College, the UNCA chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and the Katuah medics also went to Charlotte for the DNC protests.
Coleman Smith and Clare Hanrahan, both notable figures in Asheville's protest scene and the New South Network of War Resisters, helped set up a “forgotten issues” exhibit in Spirit Square along with the Fayetteville-based Quaker House. The event included seminars, performances and pictures of peace protests over the last 40 years as well as information about domestic violence in the military and other issues Smith says are slipping below the radar.
"We're getting encouragement from surprising places: Many of the guards here at Spirit Square are ex-military; they're thanking us for doing this," Smith says. "It was natural for us to come down here to talk about the work we've been doing to expose the military-industrial complex. Our Asheville contingent have worked with these other groups, it's larger than all of us."
Just a few blocks down from Spirit Square, lines of police blocked off intersections in preparation for a march of about 150 people, some affiliated with the Occupy movement. The protests drew less people than anticipated. According to several protesters, the police were mostly cordial, but they quickly outnumbered and surrounded the protesters during their marches through downtown Charlotte. Spokespeople handed out pamphlets inveighing against an array of issues from corporate money in politics to repealing Amendment One and labeling genetically-modified foods.
Others took a more satirical approach to political action. Jason Scott Furr, an Asheville artist, helped run an event for Vermin Supreme, a prankster presidential candidate who wears a boot on his head and promises a free pony for every American.
Furr says he'll be voting for Supreme instead of any of the major party candidates, as an act against what he calls “this sports team, red vs. blue, two-party system” and as an act of “culture jamming.”
“People from those parties will say you're throwing your vote away, but I think it makes a statement, and I think if more people weren't afraid to make that statement, you might see some nuance come back to politics,” Furr tells Xpress. He believes that America has lost the protesting spirit of the '60s, something Vermin Supreme serves as a reminder of.
“Vermin embodies the spirit of the court jester,” Furr says. “There's this tradition of the media focusing on the person who looks the craziest; Vermin uses that to his advantage."
Read more articles in:News
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Colin Powell, former Secretary of State under George W. Bush, had this to say on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday:
I'm also troubled by—not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said—such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He's a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.
Powell also mentioned Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, a specialist in the US Army who was killed in Iraq at the age of 20. He was 14 when the September 11th attacks occurred. He was an American, born in New Jersey, and he died fighting for his country. Is there something wrong with the fact that he happened to be a Muslim? What's wrong with this country?
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We know it would rain today. But should that stop the girls from walking to school? Of course not. Raindrops doesn't hurt at all.
The girls were dressed for the weather: warm and water-proof jackets with hoods, their school bags protected by waterproof covers.
When they left home, it was not raining at all. Then, a girl decided to join them in walking to school, bringing with her a big umbrella.
In the middle of their journey to school, it rained. They continued to walk. School is not too far away.
You'd think that's all? No. The mother of the girl (with the big umbrella) who walked with my girls decided to cruise around with her car and look for the girls. She saw the girls in the corner near the school and told the girls to jump into the car.
And she told MC, 'your father also have a car. Why don't he drive you to school in this rain?' MC just shrugged.
Of course, she informed us of what happened. My husband was irritated and wanted to confront that mom with these words, 'a few raindrops won't hurt your kid.'
I simply asked my girls, 'what do you think about walking to school in the rain?' Both agreed it is okay to walk to school.
Both agreed that it is fun walking to school. Why? Because they meet up with friends along the way. Because they discuss and exchange stories along the way. Because they usually see interesting things along the way (they usually see squirrels, moles, raccons, etc). Because the air is fresh out there. Because sometimes they sneak time to play, too. But most especially, because walking is healthy!
We don't understand the worries of walking to school in the rain. Unless of course, a child is too weak to walk. But even the weak needs to move, too, right?
We told the girls: as long as you keep safe, walk to school all you want -- rain or shine.
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Organizations need people who can communicate effectively with the hundreds of millions of Spanish-speakers worldwide. If you have a knack for understanding new cultures — and perhaps a touch of wanderlust — a Spanish Studies degree is a great way to launch your career on an international stage.
Our Spanish Studies Program
Unlike many traditional Spanish majors that emphasize literature, our curriculum combines business study with exploration of language, culture, history and contemporary affairs in the Spanish-speaking world. You’ll focus on the three principal Spanish-speaking regions: Spain, South America and the Caribbean.
Spanish Studies Tracks
We’ve designed the major for both native and non-native speakers of Spanish through a two-track system. You’ll be required to complete an applied learning experience specific to your track.
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Lord’s, Wembley, Old Trafford, Eden Gardens and Yankee Stadium are considered among the greatest sporting arenas in the world, but for history, pure drama and emotion, it’s hard to look past the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
The ground was built way back in 1853 when the then 15-year-old Melbourne Cricket Club was forced by the government to move from its former site because the route of Australia’s first steam train was to pass through the oval.
Since then the MCG has established a marvellous history that compares favourably with any other in the world, hosting plenty of international cricket including the first-ever Test and the 1992 World Cup final, countless VFL/AFL Grand Finals, and the 1956 Olympic Games.
Other sporting spectacles that have been held there are Australian World Cup soccer qualifiers, rugby league home and away matches and State of Origin, international rugby union clashes and the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
Apart from its sporting events, the MCG has also witnessed many blockbuster music concerts, and even Pope John Paul II held a mass there when he visited Melbourne in 1986.
People from all over Australia, and indeed all over the world, speak reverently about the MCG, a ground that is as well known as any other.
Back to top
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A baseball player's diet is just as important as a commitment to training. Healthy eating often separates the "great" players from the "good." (See The 5 Most Effective Supplements for Baseball Players.)
Here are some nutrition tips to help you recover and replenish so you can perform to the best of your ability.
It's the essence of life and vital for athletic performance. Water rids the body of toxins, flushes out waste, regulates body temperature, improves digestion, lubricates joints and protects organs. It also allows other organs to do their jobs—the liver, for example, which metabolizes fat into usable energy for the body.
Adding lemon to water is alkalizing for the body, conferring numerous health benefits and promoting hydration, which is really important during long, hot days on the field. (Check out Talking Water: Facts and Tips on Staying Hydrated.) Remember: 3% dehydration equals a 10% loss in strength and 8% loss in speed.
Recommended amount for baseball players: 0.5 ounces/pound/day + workout needs
Meeting your recommended daily requirement of protein is essential for proper hormone production, immune function and maintaining lean muscle mass. Good sources are eggs, lean poultry (skinless breast), whey, fish, lean meats and dairy (if not lactose-intolerant).
Recommended amount for baseball players: ~1g/pound/day
Carbs provide fuel for the body. Ditch them and say goodbye to high-intensity training. Good sources are vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes. Personally, I avoid wheat, because it makes me feel sluggish. Stick to oatmeal, quinoa, millet, rice, yams and sweet potatoes.
Recommended amount for baseball players: 1.5-4g/pound/day. This is a wide range because needs vary depending upon goals for weight loss/gain/maintenance, training intensity and training duration.
Healthy fats play an important role in hormone function and have anti-inflammatory properties. Fish oil, olive oil, oil blends, avocados, nuts and seeds are good sources.
Recommended amount for baseball players: around 20% to 30% total daily intake, depending on goals for weight loss/gain/maintenance and individual tolerance. Some athletes digest fat easily and feel good on a higher fat diet. Others do not. If you eat a high fat meal and feel sluggish, or it just "sits" in your stomach, stick to the lower end of the range.
To maintain consistent energy, eat every three hours. Never fast or starve. When the body thinks it's starving, it releases ghrelin, a hormone produced in the stomach whose function is to tell the brain that the body must be fed. Release of ghrelin favors an increase in body weight by slowing metabolism and decreasing the body's ability to burn fat. You will feel sluggish and slow.
Proper nutrient timing also results in a better ability to focus and concentrate, which is vital to success in baseball.
It's best to eat three small meals plus three snacks of workout-specific fuel. Divide your total daily requirements into five portions:
To do: Achieve a constant energy balance throughout the day—never starving, never stuffed. Eat six times a day instead of only two or three times. Breakfast is the most important meal, because the body has been fasting all night. Prior to a morning workout, taking in even just 50 calories—such as with watered down juice, a bite of an energy bar, a piece of fruit or a couple of spoonfuls of yogurt—will keep your body from entering "starvation mode." Everyone's timing is different, so find what works best for you.
A proper diet takes commitment and work. Pre-planning meals and snacks takes the guesswork out and helps with shopping. Once you get a routine going, it becomes easier.
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Who is Charles Koch? (A builder of business and critic of political capitalism)
[Editor note: Robert L. Bradley Jr.'s book review of Charles Koch's The Science of Success (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2007) appeared in the August/September 2008 issue of The New Individualist (Atlas Society). It is reprinted below to better publicize the worldview of the individual who has been behind a number of free-society initiatives across the country for several decades--and is now a target of Al Gore and the anti-free-market Left).
In 1859, the first treatise on “best practices” appeared: Self-Help, With Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance, by Samuel Smiles. Motivational self-improvement books were not new, but Smiles’s 400-page opus was persuasive. Profusely illustrated with stories of men-made-good in industry, engineering, the arts, and music, Self-Help combined age-tested wisdom with knowledge of the industrial present.
From Self-Help to Organizational Success
Nearly 150 years later, the most recent addition to the self-help literature is The Science of Success by Charles G. Koch: businessman, philanthropist, and applied intellectual. Koch’s book has all the earmarks of a classic, but not because it is a tome (the 166-page main text is quite brief for the material covered) or because it is the last word on the subject (it is really just the beginning, despite two monographs published by Koch disciples a decade or more ago). The book’s seminal potential is that it presents what could be the most logical, systematic framework for organizational success articulated to date.
Applying primarily to business but also to nonprofits and government, the book offers the outlines of a tested framework for organizational success. Koch draws upon his forty years of experience in building what Forbes calls America’s largest privately held business (80,000 employees, $90 billion in annual revenue), studying and applying what is called “The Science of Liberty,” and founding and nurturing dozens of libertarian-related nonprofits.
Charles Koch deserves an audience. The family company he took over in the 1960s that had an enterprise value of perhaps tens of millions of dollars (inflation-adjusted) is worth, again according to Forbes, tens of billions. Koch Industries has never suffered a yearly loss. And in relative terms, a dollar invested in Koch in 1967 (the year Charles took over from his father) would be worth $2,000 today, outdistancing the same investment in the S&P 500 index ($500 today) or Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway ($1,400).
Koch, like Smiles, stresses the timeless personal attributes required for success. The Victorian moralist had carefully made a case for self-respect, cleanliness, chastity, reverence, honesty, thrift, sobriety, politeness, courtesy, generosity, forethought, economy, and (his favorite) perseverance. Koch pays homage to “principled behavior” and “a culture of virtue,” consisting of integrity, humility, and respect, as well as “the sense of urgency, discipline, accountability, judgment, initiative, economic and critical thinking skills, and risk-taking mentality necessary to generate the greatest contribution to the company.”
But for Koch these personal traits are only the beginning. For it is one thing to tell an employee what is good, to instruct him to be good, and to urge him to do well—but quite another to have employees creating real wealth for an organization and thus for society. The challenge of “the science of success” is to get from the commonsensical micro to the complex macro, or to achieve what Charles Koch has termed Principled Entrepreneurship™, defined as “maximizing long-term profitability for the business by creating real value in society while always acting lawfully and with integrity.”
Enter Market-Based Management®, defined as “a philosophy that enables organizations to succeed long-term by applying the principles that allow free societies to prosper.” MBM, Koch’s framework for the science of success, has five dimensions (reproduced here verbatim):
• Vision—Determining where and how the organization can create the greatest long-term value
• Virtue and Talents—Helping ensure that people with the right values, skills and capabilities are hired, retained and developed
• Knowledge Processes—Creating, acquiring, sharing and applying relevant knowledge, and efficiently measuring and tracking profitability
• Decision Rights—Ensuring the right people are in the right roles with the right authorities to make decisions and holding them accountable
• Incentives—Rewarding people according to the value they create for the organization
Five of the book’s eight chapters explain these dimensions, one chapter per principle. What is left is an opening chapter on the history of Koch Industries, a second chapter introducing the science of human action (of which MBM is a part), and a final chapter on lessons.
MBM entails asking the right questions and getting to the right answers about how to continually create economic value while staying within the rules. MBM is about creating a free market in communication and feedback (“free speech”) and a meritocracy where property rights (“decision rights”) flow to the value creators. Such economic concepts as opportunity cost, sunk cost, transaction cost, comparative advantage, and time preference come alive in the framework, as do the more abstract notions of tacit knowledge and spontaneous order. MBM is a way to learn and apply Austrian-school economics, which is just real-world economics under another name.
Koch repeatedly (eight times by my count) emphasizes that MBM is a holistic system, with all five dimensions being interdependent and mutually reinforcing. Just as one can neuter a diet by breaking the regimen for just minutes of a 24-hour day, one cannot expect to obtain the benefits of MBM by following only some of the dimensions or by following all the dimensions for only part of the time. And not only the organization, but MBM itself, must be subject to continuous improvement and creative destruction for inter-temporal success.
The underlying assumption of MBM is that there is an objective means for identifying success and for becoming successful (thus the science of success). The terms “reality” and “truth” (see the sidebar) are taken as self-evident, although there is a warning that correctly interpreting reality takes work and having the right values. For example, profit/loss measurement should not be profit-maximizing for its own sake (“let’s show as much profit as we can to please the bosses and get more reward”) but for the sake of value-creation (“let’s realistically match period costs and revenues for learning”). Koch explains:
A business can best determine where and how to create value when it is organized into profit centers . . . . [But profit/loss] financial statements must reflect economic reality. Remember, anywhere profit and loss is measured, analysis is also needed to understand what drives those results.
Koch does not mention companies other than his own in the book. But, to use a riveting example, Enron was “profitable” during almost the entire time it was destroying enterprise value on a grand scale. By gaming the accounting rulebook, Enron reported paper profits instead of creating real wealth. And so there was little midcourse correction, almost everyone was surprised, and many were victimized.
Enemies of Success
The Science of Success also takes aim at the enemies of wealth creation (and thus of applied MBM): “cynicism, form over substance, bureaucracy, command-and-control, or destructive, self-serving behavior.” Other attitudes and behaviors that come in for criticism are “emotion and gut feeling,” “impulsive action,” “entitlement and unaccountability,” and “inaction, abdication or finger-pointing.”
Koch takes particular pains to warn against arrogance and to extol the virtue of humility, which might surprise some who are supremely confident about interpreting objective reality. But if business and life are about learning and making mid-course corrections for improvement, then humility—understood contextually—is important indeed.
For the business person, humility means being open to changing course, if necessary. Consumers can start and stop valuing something altogether. What works today might fail tomorrow, and, given competition, each business success will inevitably peter out unless changes are made (cost reductions, product improvement or differentiation).
Thus the challenge for any organization is not only to become successful but to stay successful. “It is often more difficult to overcome success than adversity,” Koch notes—the implication being that, ironically, it can be easier for an unsuccessful company to become successful than for a successful company to remain that way.
Politics and Principled Entrepreneurship™
Thus Principled Entrepreneurship™ is a framework for how to deal with the “creative destruction” of the marketplace, how to stay successful in the sense of avoiding losses and making real wealth. Such success has to get beyond personalities and products—the stuff of the moment—to an organizational methodology where success can be replicated amid change, where the good drives out the bad and the better drives out the good.
A section of Koch’s book deals with “Practicing MBM in a Political World.” Here, Koch distinguishes between the economic means and the political means to success. The first involves voluntary transactions in the marketplace; the latter, the use of government coercion to achieve business ends.
Koch advocates the economic means as part of Principled Entrepreneurship™ by which value and wealth are created rather than forcibly obtained (redistributed from others). But given existing regulations and laws—even those that the company opposes on business or intellectual grounds—full compliance is rule number one. Only in that context can reform be effectuated, Koch explains:
Striving to comply with every law does not mean agreeing with every law. But, even when faced with laws we think are counter-productive, we must first comply. Only then, from a credible position, can we enter into a dialogue with regulatory agencies to demonstrate alternatives that are more beneficial. If these efforts fail, we can then join with others in using education and/or political efforts to change the law.
This is a profound, even radical, book. For historians, including the present writer, it explains organizational success in a way that also helps us to understand organizational failure, such as the bankruptcy of notable companies. But, to repeat, this book is but an introduction. One can hope for a good deal of follow-up study, analysis, and testing, to see just how far a “science of success” can go—and whether such a science can overcome its own success. Stay tuned.
Thoughts on Success from Charles Koch
“We must constantly remind ourselves that just because we believe or want a thing to be true does not make it so.” (Page 30)
“[We] pioneered internal markets and greatly expanded the use of scorecards. This helped us more fully appreciate the value of having measures based on economic reality.” (Page 43)
“A company’s reputation is critical to how it will be treated by others and to its long-term success. We must build a positive reputation based on reality, or others will create one for us based on speculation or animus. . . .” (Page 47)
“Our losses . . . were costly examples of the failure to develop a reality-based vision . . . .” (Page 70)
“As . . . Richard Whately observed: ‘It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another thing to wish sincerely to be on the side of truth.’” (Page 115)
“Decisions should be made using economic and critical thinking, logic and evidence, rather than emotion or gut feeling . . . . [Moreover], style should never take precedence over substance.” (Page 117)
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Welcome to the Devon Community Composting Network (DCCN) Website - Now with much more than before. Not just community composting but lots on home composting and our pet subject - composting food waste.
DCCN has been involved for years at looking at composting food waste - from pioneering work done with Proper Job in Chagford - through to developing compost systems with the Compost Doctors - (see Green Machine solutions and Ridan
DCCN is now involved primarily with helping schools to compost food waste - see schools section or download PDF from right hand sidebar. DCCN has now doubled its workforce by employing Melissa Harvey to work with Nicky Scott in undertaking all those school revisits and so much more.
It's fantastic.The world of community composting is incredibly diverse. So many people from so many walks of life from all over the Country are involved in composting in their communities; why? (Download information pack on right hand side bar or Community Composting section Home Page)
Well there is no single reason and I’m sure that if you asked them you would get a huge range of answers. Some common themes are bound to emerge though. For one thing we all hate to see wastage of valuable resources. All composters hate to see lovely potential compost being landfilled or burnt.
Most composters are also gardeners and it is extremely rare to find a gardener who has enough compost! Especially no dig gardeners and so look for every scrap of material that could be turned into compost. Community composters are pragmatic people, they like action more than words and want to do something – now! After all what could be simpler than diverting some garden clippings, otherwise destined for landfill, to make compost. Saving all that pollution not only at the landfill but also by trucking it there and at the same time improving local soils and sequestering carbon. The mandatory waste reduction targets and the Kyoto protocol on carbon emissions, are just two good reasons why Devon Local Authorities are so supportive of community composting.
Also see www.recycledevon.org for Devon wide recycling and waste information
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An excavation worker was briefly buried in collapsing earth Monday at the Marshfield High School construction site, but he was not seriously injured. At about 11:50 a.m., the worker, an employee of J. Derenzo Co., was standing next to a hole dug for utilities, said Scott Borstel, Marshfield’s superintendent of schools. An apparatus called a “trench box” had been placed in the hole to prevent it from collapsing, but the earth next to the hole gave way and buried the worker completely except for one hand, he said. Co-workers began trying to free him, and the Marshfield fire and police departments responded. The worker was conscious when he left in the ambulance, said Borstel, who added that he was released from the hospital and was recovering from bumps and bruises.
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