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A talk that analyzes the work of Thomas Stockett, a former editorial cartoonist for the Afro-American Newspapers, is scheduled to be included in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s 2017 Archives Fair: Performance and Preservation on Oct. 21.
“The Fight in Black and White: The Afro-American Newspaper and the Political Cartoons of Thomas A. Stockett” talk will be one of three in a day-long panel discussion, including “Preserving the Story of the Artist: The John La Farge Collection at Mount St. Mary’s University” and “Not ‘Just American:’ Two Case Studies of Musical Archives and Cultural Identity Among Descendants of Immigrants.”
Stockett served as the AFRO’s editorial cartoonist from 1955 until his death in 2007. Throughout that time, he was the visual voice of the paper, illustrating its editorial point of view to help readers envision numerous topics from a Black perspective.
His illustrations provide historical relevance to African American Studies, African Diaspora Studies, and media studies, as well as those interested in the study of American political cartoons, and as a resource for state and local historians.
Though known for his cartoons, Stockett’s paintings also garnered local and national attention from the Maryland-Delaware Press Association and the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA). | <urn:uuid:118c0731-d884-4de6-9cb4-6274325e9754> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://afro.com/smithsonian-exhibit-displays-work-afro-cartoonist-thomas-stockett/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.930911 | 289 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Climate Action, Community Driven
The UN and SDG’s at Work Around the World
Human Rights Day: Uyghur Genocide
Guardian, Short overview, 5 minutes
CNN, Chinese policeman confessions, 8 minutes
CNN, Rare images, 6 minutes
CNN, Victims, 6 minutes
MSU Muslim Studies Program
MSU Asian Studies Center
Islamic Center of East Lansing
Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights
UN Day Celebration
International Studies and Programs at Michigan State University
UNA Michigan State University Chapter
Peace Education Center
African Studies Center of Michigan State University
International Mother Earth Day
International Mother Earth Day was co-sponsored by Peace Education Center, Edgewood United Church, the Islamic Center of East Lansing, the Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce, and Ovid-Elsie Schools.
The 6 Year War on Yemen
- Edgewood United Church Justice & Peace Team
- Friends Committee on National Legislation – Lansing Area Advocacy Team
- Greater Lansing Network Against War & Injustice
- Greater Lansing United Nations Association
- Islamic Center of East Lansing
- Students United for Palestinian Rights
EVENT RECORDING WILL BE AVAILABLE SOON
International Women’s Day
- To advocate for gender equality, TEXT “WOMEN” to 30644 for link to send letter to Congress.
- Nominate someone for MI Women’s Hall of Fame. Deadline is April 10.
- Support EVE (End Violent Encounters)
Donate $ or provide items on EVE’s “needs list”.
- Support the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing
Donate $ or provide items on their “wish list”.
Human Rights Day 2020
‘The Essential Intersection: The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, SDGs and Environmental Justice’
This virtual event offered presentations about the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the ways the Declaration is connected to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In addition, we explored how the SDGs about Environmental Justice are related to our understanding of Human Rights.
UN 75TH Anniversary
Thank you for joining our celebration!
- UN Ambassador Andrew Young
- Senior Director Partnerships UNA-USA, Troy Wolfe
- Recognized 17 Michigan exemplary SDG organizations
Humanitarian Relief for Refugees in Kakuma, Kenya
Under the Adopt-a-Future initiative of the United Nations Association, the Greater Lansing UNA chapter (GLUNA) undertook the sponsorship of Horseed Primary School, located in the Kakuma refugee center in Kenya.
GL-UNA raised over $40,00 for the Horseed School! | <urn:uuid:a81854b6-9e8c-466d-842b-c29b6a7989b7> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://gluna.org/past-events/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.793441 | 592 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Work practices will be examined after a second coal operation employee died in less than two years.
Investigators will probe how effectively the Curragh Mine team worked together before a night-shift employee became fatally injured in Blackwater, 209km west of Rockhampton.
“The investigation will consider issues such as communication between machine operators and persons on the ground, and verification of work practices,” Resources Safety and Health Queensland coal chief inspector Peter Newman said in a public statement.
Preliminary investigations found Clark Peadon died on November 21 while using a cable tractor to perform cable relocation work on a stationary dragline.
“The worker either re-entered or remained in the operational swing boundary when the dragline became operational,” Newman said. “The worker was struck by the dragline propel shoe, resulting in him sustaining fatal injuries.”
Proponent Coronado Global Resources confirmed the Queensland Police Service has already left the mine site, operations are still suspended, and work will resume shortly.
“The RSHQ Inspectorate has issued directives to isolate the accident site, and to suspend all operations of draglines at Curragh, until it is satisfied that these activities can recommence safely,” the company said in a public statement.
“Coronado has [since] commenced planning for a gradual and phased recommencement of operational activities that will progressively restart over the coming days.”
RHSQ urged every employer to make sure “effective controls” exist to manage risks from draglines and other moving equipment.
“This may include ensuring persons undertaking activities are adequately trained in all relevant aspects of the mine’s safety and health management system, [and] auditing and validating operating procedures on a regular basis,” Newman said.
“[Workers should also be] made aware of the ongoing risks when working in the vicinity of mining equipment when an operator is at the controls and … [be] trained in the content and application of positive communication procedures,” he added. “Supervisors [should] monitor compliance with site positive communication procedures.” | <urn:uuid:281ff12c-9c88-40c0-8ba1-2ecc6f9324bc> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.amsj.com.au/teamwork-scrutinised-after-central-qld-coal-mine-fatality/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.951534 | 442 | 1.5 | 2 |
- Low ceramide – a waxy, moisture-holding lipid found in the skin
- Low amount of sebum (oil), vital to lubricating skin layers & acts as a protectant
- Cold dry weather
- Harsh ingredients in skin care products
- Avoid long, hot showers that zap moisture from skin
- Use a humidifier, especially in winter months when air is more dry
- Apply a serum or cream that’s right for you, morning & night to strengthen and protect the barrier from harsh weather.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) divides skin care products into two separate categories: Cosmetic & pharmaceutical. Pharmaceutical products undergo rigorous testing that can go on for more than 10 yrs and cost millions of dollars. Pharmaceutical grade products are only available through a licensed professional. These products not only contain a higher percentage of active ingredients, but higher quality of each ingredient. According to the FDA, pharmaceutical grade products are required to be 99% pure, where cosmetic grade products are only required to be 70% pure. Active ingredients are those that can make a change in your skin such as (reducing wrinkles, pigmentation, alleviate acne, etc.). | <urn:uuid:6048ac35-c53b-4cf3-a86d-5ddc21663877> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://carolyager.com/blog/page/2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.880236 | 240 | 2.375 | 2 |
Apr 08, 2021 · If 200 feet of 6-inch-by-18-inch concrete curb costs $2,500 in labor and materials, five 200-foot jobs in a month would equate to $12,500. That can either be considered as profit from new
Dry Mix Mortar Plant (10-120t/h) The dry mortar mixing plant is a new type of high efficient mixing equipment, It is widely used in chemical industry, compound fertilizer,dyestuff,pigment,rubber,building materials,refractory materials, clastic glass and new material,such as solid -solid(powder and power),solid-liquid(powder and li
Mar 17, 2016 · Ammann Elba, the company created when German-based Elba was acquired by 6791 Ammann in 2014, has introduced the new CBS Elba Concrete Mixing Plant. It is designed for small and medium-sized businesses seeking flexible concrete plant solutions. It features state-of-the-art design and offers output ranges from 105m³/hr to 160m³/hr.
Batch Concrete Mixers Batch mixers are widely used machines for concrete mixing. Concrete mix obtained by this mixer is collected batch by batch and time by time. So, it is called as batch mixer. After pouring all the materials into pan or drum, it mixes all of those for some time and finally discharges.
Pi Makina, which was founded in 1972 with a view to reduce Turkey's dependence on the foreign supply in the field of heavy equipment and construction machinery, became the first and only company to produce scores of domestic heavy equipment and construction machinery such as concrete batching plant, concrete paver, asphalt paver, trans mixer, grader, dozer, loader, backhoe loader and tower
Concrete block and mixing machines for the production of concrete blocks Specialized machines and complete systems for the production of concrete blocks and pavers. Website Finishing lines for concrete blocks and presses for concrete slabs Complete systems for the production, finishing and packaging of concrete pavers and slabs. Website Machines for the production of pipes,
Concrete batching plants provide the highest quality of concrete for every single project. Depending on the project, jobsite and required capacity, stationary, mobile, compact and on-site concrete batching plants are available. With over 40 years of experience, technological production and innovative approach in concrete machinery, ELKON has
Asphalt mixing plant is a kind of equipment to mix the proportioned aggregates into the asphalt mixture under the specified temperature. ALQ100 asphalt plant equipment Indonesia. And its main application is to produce asphalt, modified asphalt mixture, colored asphalt mixture and meet the requirements of highway construction, classified highway
Concrete Mix Design and Quality Control Software Management System. StonemontQC includes a powerful concrete mix design and quality control software program for concrete producers. StonemontQC is fully integrated with the aggregate portion allowing for mix component properties to be easily kept current with data from aggregate plants.
11. Batch plant and Fabrication Shops Batch plants are provided on projects where it is more economical to produce concrete on site than to buy a ready mix. Aggregate storage piles, cement silos and admixture tanks will accompany an on-site batch plant. Shops are used where materials and equipment are fabricated on site.
Electric Type Mobile Concrete Mixer And Pump. Our ABJZ Series electric concrete mixer pump is applicable on fine stone concrete production and conveying, floor heating construction, tunnel and underground construction, mortar conveying, used as spray pump when installed with incidental spraying equipment, for concrete, mortar, refractory material and green soil spraying, applied for high-rise
May 14, 2020 · At present, the new-type cement plant has advantages of high profit, quick effect, high efficiency, energy saving, environmental protection, easy operation, and low cost. The hot-sale cement plant is composed of following cement factory machines: Cement crushers: jaw crusher, cone crusher, impact crusher, hammer crusher and etc.
Jan 03, 2018 · • Total transit mixers: 4 • Ideal Production Plant: 30 m3/hr • Production of 4 fleet transit mixers: • (Capacity of Each Transit) × (No. of Transit Mixers) × (60 min) • (Total Time for 1 Cycle) • = (7 m3/hr) × (4) × (60 min) ÷ (114.53 min) • Production = 14.68 m3/hr • Efficiency: (Actual production / Ideal production) × 100 = (14.68 / 30) × 100 • Efficiency = 48.93 % Prof. R.V.Kolhe 13
Fibo Intercons Concrete Batching Plants is the best available on the market, it is a well thought out solution, designed to provide optimum flexibility, performance and operating efficiency. For more information: Phone + 45 97 17 16 66 Email: [email protected] #construction #quality #concrete #batching. Play Video.
India Price AAC Block Making Machine Plant for Making Light Concrete Block Equipment FOB Price: US $60,000-200,000 / Set. Min. Order: 1 Set Contact Now. New Technology AAC Production Line /Block Making Plant Machine FOB Price: US $200,000-1,500,000 / Set. Min Ltd. is a professional manufacturer of aerated concrete block equipment, aerated
MEKA has a proud history of serving the aggregates and concrete equipment industries since 1987. With a wide range of rugged and reliable crushers, screens and washers along with mobile, fixed, and compact concrete batching plants, concrete recycling systems and fiber dosing machines, MEKA engineers solutions to meet the real-world needs of
CONCRETE MIXER MACHINES | Mix cement efficiently with mixers
Aug 19, 2019 · Depending on the requirement of the application, concrete mixers of various sizes and types are available. Portable concrete mixers can be used in small and medium-sized applications whereas for large scale applications concrete batching plants can also be built at the construction site.
Sep 23, 2011 · Let's calculate the line efficiency of one production line. 48 operations worked in a line for 8 hours. They produced 160 garments and SAM of the garment is 44.25 minutes. Here, Total minutes produced = (160 x 44.25) = 7080 minutes. Total minutes attended = (48 operator x 8 hours x 60) = 23040 minutes. Effiicnecy% = (7080 x100)/23040 % = 30.729%.
News. 23.09.2021 | BFT Technical Forum WetCast 2021 – register now! 02.08.2021 | For the first time as an exhibitor at the Middle East Concrete in Dubai 09.07.2021 | Peikko Australia: New, larger facilities near Brisbane, new Managing Director 05.07.2021 | Kefid: Spectacular construction site in the Swiss Alps 07.06.2021 | Concrete Society & Rapid International to host online technical seminar
Copyright © 2021 of Talenet Group all rights reserved | <urn:uuid:b0b81afe-2ec9-4ed1-8fda-94a8482fa885> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.pomorskismartup.pl/1645747487/concrete-plant-efficiency-with-new-machines.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.902903 | 1,496 | 1.515625 | 2 |
In a recent presentation to the Summer 2007 Privacy Symposium, Jim Harper lays out a series of concerns about a national identification system. I’m just going to run through them quickly – watch the video that I link to at the end of the post to view his presentation yourself.
Authentication versus Identification
- Authentication is where you are challenged to provide a set of items/data in order to gain access to something. An example would be the requirement to have both a banking card and a PIN to access your bank account – this authenticates your access to the resource, but it isn’t a wholesale validation that it is actually Christopher Parsons who is accessing my bank account. Instead, what this does it is gives enough information to the bank that it is comfortable providing access to my bank account, without actually knowing for sure that it is me accessing the account.
- Identification draws on unique characteristics that make up who you are, and validates that person attempting to gain access to X or do Y against the recorded characteristics that identify that person. This involves validating a person against facets of their constitutive being, with a popular identifier coming from biometric information. This passes beyond authentication systems because the person is certifiably identified. Whereas I can give you my bank card and PIN, I would have a far harder (and more painful) time giving you my right eye and left thumb. | <urn:uuid:482f0182-73c6-482e-945a-af0454fc2623> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://christopher-parsons.com/tag/validation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.947416 | 282 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Implementing the Quiet Time Principle in your family can be beneficial. Most days, around 1 pm, we have “Quiet Time” in our house. Kids, and adults, retire to their rooms for a breather and we rest.
For some, like my littles, this is nap time. The teenagers, it’s a time where they read or quietly work on a project.
I have a cup of tea, or coffee. I work on reading, writing or some other project I can do quietly.
Sometimes, we all decide to take a nap!
This has been one of the most beneficial and practical helps in our homeschool day. We all value rest, not just from physical viewpoint, but from the emotional and mental viewpoint as well. Having a short rest every day refreshes all of us, gives us a “shift” if the day hasn’t gone as planned and a break from each other’s company so that when we do come back together, we are able to do so with fresh perspective.
Being a larger homeschooling family means we are with each other 24 hours a day. These breaks have allowed us all to have a small window every day for privacy.
It’s also been a great tool for teaching the younger children self-control. My children are high-energy kiddos and quiet time has helped to train them to calm themselves, embrace rest and to focus on quiet work.
The “rules” for Quiet Time are simple:
You must stay in your bed (or chair). (The idea is to limit motion as much as possible.)
No talking. (Not even to yourself- yes, this DOES happen in my house!)
You are allowed one book and one drawing pad with supplies, but NO toys, NO TV and NO electronics.
If you feel sleepy, you must close your eyes for a little bit. (The littles almost always fall asleep)
That’s it! For us, the 1pm time slot works well. It gives us enough time to cover breakfast, chores, school and lunch. By the time we finish those, we all are ready for a break and for the house to be quiet.
After 1 hour, if the kids want to get up they can, but often, they don’t stroll out of their rooms til 2:30-3pm. 3pm is the cutoff time though, and if anyone is still asleep, I make the rounds and wake them up for free/outside/art time.
Do you implement the Quiet Time Principle in your home? Share your tips and benefits in the comments below! | <urn:uuid:f2f567bf-7cba-48b6-ba19-09f6f350f2ed> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.fvwoman.com/2016/10/using-the-quiet-time-principle-to-promote-rest-in-your-family/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.958932 | 552 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Associate Professor Kim Senger at UNIS is the Svalbox Principal Investigator and initiated the Svalbox project in 2016 with the first UArctic co-operation project. Kim has a background from the petroleum industry (Bayerngas Norge and EMGS), and conducted a PhD on the CO2 storage project in Longyearbyen. Kim’s main passion is integration of different geoscientific data to better understand the subsurface – with the motto that as long as data are in the same location they can be integrated.
PhD student Peter Betlem at UNIS is the Svalbox Project Manager and main Svalbox coder, python-expert and drone pilot. Peter’s PhD project, partly funded by the NCCS centre and partly by the Norwegian Ministry of Education & Research, examines cap rock integrity with respect to CO2 storage both on Svalbard and in the North Sea. Peter is an experienced drone pilot and spends months upon months in the field collecting more data for Svalbox.
PhD student Tom Birchall at UNIS is the Svalbox “rock star” – a geologist who loves working under pressure and who found a calling in generating humorous yet educational videos utilizing many Svalbox data sets.
Post-doctoral researcher Aleksandra Smyrak-Sikora at UNIS is working on onshore-offshore correlations of the Upper Paleozoic succession – and is the in-house field geologist for the Svalbox team, in addition to being the “Queen of Billefjorden”, coined after her PhD thesis on the area.
Rafael Kenji Horota
Geologist at heart, Rafael is now a PhD candidate in higher education research at UNIS. He is focused in understand field-based teaching and learning in the geosciences through the application of state-of-the-art virtual technologies. This approach also requires field data acquisition and drone pilot skills in high arctic extreme conditions which have been put to the test since his arrival in Svalbard in May 2021.
Biologist Lilith Kuckero is not only a biologist with focus on ecology and marine and arctic biology. She also has specialized herself in outreach and science communication and likes to translate between “scientific language” to popular understandable speech. Writing for the Svalbox website is her main tasks in the Svalbox team.
Master student in geology
Nil`s enthusiasm about nature since childhood, and his profound interest in science, led him to study the BSc in Marine Sciences and the MSc in Polar and Marine Sciences. Through his studies, he had the opportunity to have a first-hand experience of the High Arctic of Svalbard which became his main focus of interest. Now, as a master student of Arctic Geology at the University Centre in Svalbard, he is also part of the Svalbox team and supports the team with digital model aquisition, processing and visualization. | <urn:uuid:7b13754d-068b-481d-b395-8c3100a6dd04> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.svalbox.no/the-team/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.948563 | 675 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Amazon's virtual voice assistant just got a whole lot smarter.
With the arrival of Alexa can now perform a variety of personalized tricks -- "skills," as Amazon calls them, that are personalized to you and your family.,
For example, is someone studying for a test? With the Flashcards Blueprint, you can set up a customized set of questions -- and answers, natch -- and Alexa will deliver a voice-powered quiz.
Do you Houseguest Blueprint to answer guest questions. ("Alexa, where can I find more toilet paper?")? You can use the
That's just the tip of the iceberg. There are about 20 Blueprints available now, and Amazon says more are on the way.
In the meantime, let's walk through creating your own. It's not hard, and Amazon guides you through pretty much every step of the process, but a quick tutorial may help.
For starters, and it probably goes without saying, you'll need at least one Alexa-enabled device. (Once you've created a skill, it'll be accessible on any and all devices registered to your account.)
Next, head to the Skill Blueprints page -- and consider bookmarking it, because this is where you'll come to add future Blueprints and manage the ones you have.
A great one to start with is Custom Q&A, which lets you set up answers to any questions you care to ask. Although you could use this for any number of practical purposes -- "Alexa, what's that password I'm always forgetting?" -- the potential here for fun and mischief is downright limitless.
Head to the Custom Q&A page, check out the provided samples, then click Make Your Own. You'll see a list of questions and answers already filled in; just replace any or all of them as you wish. Amazon says to limit yourself to about 10 words, but I was able to go longer -- for the answers, anyway.
Of particular interest, if your question is one that already exists in Alexa's database, the answer you supply here will supplant the stock answer. (Again: soooo much potential for mischief, here.)
When you're done, just click Next to finalize the Blueprint. This particular skill doesn't require you to preface it by saying, "Alexa, open such-and-such skill." Instead, you just ask your questions.
If you want to make changes, return to the Skill Blueprints page, click Skills You've Made, choose the one you want to modify, then click Edit.
Which Blueprint is your favorite, and what would you like to see Amazon add down the road? Let me know in the comments. | <urn:uuid:e12012d1-0a5d-41f6-bcb3-1a072faf2427> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/how-to-make-your-own-custom-alexa-commands/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570741.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808001418-20220808031418-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.939175 | 549 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Saturday 26 December 2009.
42 Endemics,7 Antpittas, 8 Tapaculos: Record-breaking Colombian birding tour.
The first ProAves/EcoTurs “40 Endemic Bonanza Tour” that ran from 15th November – 1st December 2009 recorded no less than 42 Endemics in just 17 days birding in Colombia. That’s way over half of all Colombian endemics! This is the most successful birding tour seeking Colombian bird endemics over a two week period.
Lead by the experienced birding guides Trevor Ellery and Juan Carlos Luna the tour began with Flame-winged Parakeets in the high elevation températe forests near Bogota and finished with the recently split Santa Marta Foliage-gleaner in the El Dorado Bird Reserve in the Santa Marta mountains.
“This was the most ambitious tour we’ve undertaken with the aim of 40 endemics with a money back guaranteed,” noted Trevor, “but we easily outstripped our expectations, scoring many incredible endemics with an outstanding new itinerary.”
EcoTurs Colombia, a for-profit venture by Fundación ProAves to raise funds to protect critical bird habitat, organized the tour that visited some of the most spectacular birding sites in Colombia and produce a mouthwatering list of endemic, near endemic or hard to find species. No less than two-thirds of the endemics were seen within ProAves Reserves! Plus 7 Antpitta and 8 Tapaculo species were recorded!
“We also made a special effortto see near endemic species or those that are potential future splits (especially in the SantaMartamountains) and this further added to the excitement of the tour.”said Trevor.
All but one of the 17 Santa Marta mountain endemics were seen – all within the El Dorado Bird reserve, including the Santa Marta Screech Owl perched low by the side of the road, while two often difficult-to-see endemic hummingbirds, the Santa Marta Woodstar and White-tailed Starfrontlet, came to feeders at the El Dorado Bird Lodge.
This first “pilot” tour was so successful, EcoTurs will be running further tours in 2010 with Trevor Ellery guiding. Two of the tour participates, Betty and Elaine from the US and Belgium, both in their 70s, had a wonderful time and testified that while the tour was fast paced and involved the odd uphill walk it was more than manageable bybirders from any age group with reasonable fitness. You had best book fast if you want to join the next Endemic Bonanza Tour!!
· Antioquia Bristle-tyrant — Mariquita
· Apolinar’s Wren — Parque La Florida (Bogotá)
· Beautiful Woodpecker — Mariquita
· Black-and-gold Tanager — Arrerito and Chocó (ProAves Reserve)
· Bogotá Rail — Parque La Florida, Bogotá
· Brown-rumped Tapaculos — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· Brown-banded Antpitta — Rio Blanco
· Brown-breasted Parakeet — Chingaza (ProAves nestbox scheme)
· Cauca Guan — La Suiza
· Chestnut Capped Piha — Arrerito (ProAves Reserve)
· Chestnut-bellied Flowerpiercer — Colibri del Sol (ProAves Reserve)
· Colombian Chachalaca — Mariquita
· Dusky Starfrontlet — Colibri del Sol (ProAves Reserve)
· Fenwick’s Antpitta — Colibri del Sol (ProAves Reserve)
· Flame-rumped Tanager — Choco
· Gold-ringed Tanager — Choco (ProAves Reserve)
· Multicolored Tanager — La Suissa and Arrerito (ProAves Reserve)
· Munchique Wood-Wren — Choco
· Parkers Antbird — Arrerito (ProAves Reserve)
· Red-bellied Grackle — Jardin (ProAves Reserve)
· Rusty-headed Spinetail — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve
· Santa Marta Antpitta — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· Santa Marta Brush-finch — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· Santa Marta Bush-tyrant — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· Santa Marta Foliage-gleaner — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· Santa Marta Mountain-tanager — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· Santa Marta Parakeet — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· Santa Marta Screech-Owl — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· Santa Marta Stripe-headed Brush-finch — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· Santa Marta Tapaculo — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· Santa Marta Warbler — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· Santa Marta Woodstar — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· Silvery-throated Sinetail — Parque La Florida Bogotá
· Sooty Ant-Tanager — Mariquita
· Tolima Dove — Libano
· Velvet Fronted Euphonia — Mariquita
· White Lored Warbler — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· White-mantled Barbet — Mariquita
· White-tailed Starfrontlet — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· Yellow Crowned Whiestart — El Dorado (ProAves Reserve)
· Yellow Eared Parrot — Jardín (ProAves Reserve)
· Yellow-Headed Brush Finch — Libano | <urn:uuid:8fea200c-9d1c-493f-8b49-2eb23324beb4> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://proaves.org/en/record-breaking-birding-tour-in-colombia/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.818157 | 1,280 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Acceptable Recyclable Materials
|Aluminum Cans||Beverage Cans, Aluminum Foil, Pie Pans, Etc.||Aluminum Chairs, Siding, Etc.|
|Cardboard||Flattened Cardboard, Boxboard (Cereal, Shoe, Detergent Boxes, Ect.), Dog/Cat Feed Bags, Paper Grocery Bags, Etc.||Please remove styrofoam and liners|
|Glass||Clear and Brown Food and Beverage||Lids, Window Glass, Ceramics, Light Bulbs, Cookware|
Magazines, Junk Mail, Office Paper, Telephone Books, Soft Cover Books.
Hard Cover Books: You may separate the covers and recycle them as cardboard, and recycle the pages as paper.
|Medical Waste||Information Below||Unacceptable|
|Metal Appliances||Information Below||Unacceptable|
|Metal Cans||Food Cans (Labels may be left on)||Clothes Hangers, Skillets, Utensils, Pans, Paint Cans, Etc.|
|Newspaper||Dry Newspaper||Wet Newspaper|
|Packing Peanuts||Information Below||Unacceptable|
|Plastics||#1 and #2 Jugs and Bottles||Lids, Oil Jugs, Antifreeze Jugs, Party Trays, Clear Plastic Coverings or Wrappings, Plastic Utensils, Shopping Bags|
Goodwill: All eleven Goodwill stores in southern Indiana are now accepting technological items for recycling. It’s FREE! You can now recycle your used computers, computer equipment, cell phones, printers, scanners, cords, USB drives, fax machines and more simply by dropping the item off at the nearest participating Goodwill!
Bedford Recycling: They can be contacted by calling (812) 275-6883 and are located at 904 Summit & H Street. They accept salvaged metals such as aluminum, steel, copper, VCRs, Computer Processing Units (CPUs), laptop computers, stereos, printers, microwaves, fans, radios, telephones, curling irons, hair dryers, power tools, speakers, calculators, keyboards, toasters, coffee makers, and other counter-top appliances. There is a fee to recycle these items with Bedford Recycling.
Medical Waste Recycling: We are currently researching the best options for medical waste recycling and disposal. If you know of any local options please feel free to contact us by writing a short message from our Contact Us page.
Metal Appliance Recycling:
Contact Bedford Recycling at (812) 275-6883. Most salvaged metals and electronics are accepted.
For additional information on recycling appliances and electronics, we found appliancehelp.com‘s Appliance and Electronics Recycling guide to be very useful!
Packing Peanut Recycling:
Contact your local UPS Store or Mail Boxes Etc. The material must be cleaned and free of debris. | <urn:uuid:63ab72e3-46f0-418e-b03f-2c5441411644> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.lawrencecountysolidwaste.org/facilities/recycling-center/acceptable-materials/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.777024 | 679 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Tracey Fine lay on a stretcher in an emergency room hallway for 13 hours in excruciating pain, with lesions on her face and scalp.
All around her, Covid-19 patients filled beds in a Madison, Wisconsin hospital. Her nurse was so tormented that she could not remember Ms. Fine's condition and the staff were slow to bring her pain medication or food.
At a small rural hospital in Missouri, Shain Zundel's severe headache was found to be a brain abscess. His condition would normally have required surgery within a few hours, but he had to wait a day while doctors struggled to find a neurosurgeon and a bed – eventually at a hospital 375 miles away in Iowa.
From New Mexico to Minnesota to Florida, hospitals are teeming with record numbers of Covid patients. Smaller hospital staff have repeatedly had to ask larger medical centers to accept one more patient, just one more, but many of the larger hospitals have severely restricted the transfers they will accept as their own halls and wards are overcrowded.
In the spring, the pandemic was mainly centered in hard-hit areas like New York, where hospitals in other states were given classes to anticipate the spread of the virus. Despite months of planning, many hospital systems in the country are now overcrowded with a staggering number of patients, no available beds, and an increasing shortage of nurses and doctors. Some hospitals have had to refuse transfer requests for patients who need urgent care or arrive in emergencies every day.
And rising infection rates among nurses and other frontline workers have doubled the patient burden for those standing.
There's no end in sight for the country's hospitals as the pandemic continued to hit cities and rural areas across the country, with a total of 13 million cases this year. And public health experts warn that the holidays could accelerate the already rapid pace of infection and keep increasing demand for hospital beds and medical care.
A record number of Americans – 90,000 – have now been hospitalized with Covid, and new cases had risen to nearly 200,000 daily.
Health systems "are on the verge of collapse," said Dr. Michael Osterholm, member of the Covid-19 Advisory Board to President-Elect Joseph R. Biden, in a podcast this month.
The public doesn't know how bad the situation is, said Dr. Osterholm, and may only answer, “When people die and sit on chairs in emergency room waiting rooms for 10 hours to get a bed and they can't find one, and then they die. "
When Ms. Fine went to UW Health University Hospital in Madison, she found doctors there overwhelmed and distracted. "They only parked me in a hallway because I ran out of space," said Ms. Fine, 61, who eventually had a severe bout of shingles that threatened her eyes.
She had missed her annual check-up or a shingles vaccination because of the pandemic.
Ms. Fine was let into a makeshift room with curtains between the beds and watched the chaos around her. One nurse didn't know who she was and asked if she was having trouble walking or if she heard any noise in her ears. She "was just utterly amazed," recalled Ms. Fine, although she added that the staff were "friendly, caring, and doing their best in terrible conditions."
The hospital staff posted a plea last Sunday, published as a two-page ad in the Wisconsin State Journal, calling on citizens to prevent the virus from spreading further.
"Without change immediately, our hospitals will be too full to treat everyone with the virus and those with other illnesses or injuries," they warned. "Soon, you or someone you love may need us, but we won't be able to provide the life-saving care you need, be it for Covid-19, cancer, heart disease or any other urgent medical condition. As a healthcare provider we are afraid that this will become a reality. "
UW Health declined to comment directly on Ms. Fine's experience, but acknowledged the pressures created by the pandemic. While the patients were sometimes housed in the emergency room before the new coronavirus surge, the occupancy is now "super high," said Dr. Jeff Pothof, the Group's Chief Quality Officer.
UW Health "is starting to do things it hasn't done before," he said, including recruiting general practitioners and general practitioners to treat critically ill patients in the hospital. "It works, but it's not great," he said.
St. Louis hospitals have been particularly hard hit in the past few weeks, said Dr. Alexander Garza, the chief community health officer of SSM Health, a Catholic hospital group that also serves as the leader of the task force on the virus in the region. Last month, SSM Health turned away about 50 patients who could not receive immediate care.
And nurses – already one of the most infected groups – are adding more and more hours to their shift.
Hospitals are assigning nurses from adult pediatric intensive care units, doubling the number of patients in a single room, and requiring the nurses who typically care for two critically ill patients at the same time to care for three or more patients, he said.
"If you don't have that much time and resources devoted to them, they are obviously not being optimally looked after," said Dr. Garza.
Consuelo Vargas, a Chicago emergency room nurse, says patients spend days in emergency rooms because the I.C.U. are full. The lack of care has a cascading effect. It "leads to an increase in patient falls, which leads to pressure ulcers, which leads to delays in patient care," she said.
Personnel, available beds and protective equipment are generally scarce. Speaking at a press conference for the National Nurses United union, Ms. Vargas said there was still not enough protective gear like N95 masks, which forced her to buy her own.
Some hospitals have sounded the alarm together: The supplies of test kits, masks and gloves are running out.
The country has never quite caught up with the previous bottlenecks, said Dr. Osterholm. "We're just going to bump into a wall regarding P.P.E.," he said.
Even if hospitals in some cities have ample physical space or can quickly build new units or set up field hospitals, the staff shortage offsets the benefits of expansion.
"Beds don't care about people; people care about people," said Dr. Marc Harrison, executive director of Intermountain Healthcare, a sprawling system of hospitals and clinics in Salt Lake City.
At any point in the past few weeks, a quarter of Intermountain's nurses have been absent – sick, quarantined, or caring for a virus-infected family member. Nursing students have been granted temporary licenses by the state to fill in the loopholes, and the hospital system is making efforts to retain travel nurses, who are in high demand and expensive to hire in many states.
To ease the burden on the large hospitals, Intermountain is keeping more patients in its smaller centers, which are virtually monitored by specialists from the larger hospitals who consult with local doctors via remote connections.
Smaller hospitals are under considerable stress. "We don't have intensive care units," said Tony Keene, executive director of Sullivan County Memorial Hospital, a 25-bed rural hospital in Milan, MO. "We don't do any operations here or anything like that. If we have Covid cases, this puts a lot of strain on our skills."
His tiny hospital usually doesn't have more than half a dozen patients in a busy day, but can now treat twice as many. About a quarter of the hospital's 100 employees, including Mr Keene, have contracted the virus since March.
"It is sometimes a daily and hourly struggle to make sure we have adequate staff in the hospital," he said. The hospital nurses, who usually work three 12-hour shifts a week, do up to five or six shifts each week.
"We're out here alone," said Mr. Keene. "We don't have a bigger system that pumps money into us or something." With the help of Covid, the hospital invested in medical gas lines so that patients could receive oxygen.
The sickest patients have yet to be referred, but the larger hospital 35 miles away is full of its own large volume of Covid patients and is reducing staffing levels.
Even if hospitals in a community talk weekly, if not daily, about how to deal with rising admissions peaks overall, few have room in areas where the number continues to rise. Many have reduced or even discontinued the provision of elective operations and procedures.
"We're all concerned about the waves we're seeing now," said Nancy Foster, vice president of quality and patient safety for the American Hospital Association. Patients who usually need special medical attention can be sent to a nearby city area, but "often these referral centers are full or almost full," she said.
Mr. Zundel's case was a matter of life or death. He had a debilitating headache and "was unable to function at all," he said. A major nearby hospital was flooded with patients, and his wife, Tessa, took him to a small hospital in rural Missouri to be seen quickly. The doctors there realized that he had a brain abscess but could not immediately find a medical center to treat him.
"He was dying," said his wife. Some hospitals had beds but no neurosurgeon available. The staff spent an entire day trying to find a place to operate on.
"They just kept talking on the phone until they found a solution," she said. "You haven't given up."
Mr. Zundel, 48, was eventually flown to the University of Iowa hospitals and clinics where Dr. Matthew Howard, a neurosurgeon, performed an operation.
But Iowa is also turning down patients, said Dr. Howard. “At the beginning of the crisis, we were told by restrictions in P.P.E. Now the problem is that the beds are full, ”he said.
Dr. Dixie Harris, an intensive care specialist at Intermountain, volunteered in New York City during the height of the pandemic last spring. Doctors are now better able to treat the virus and predict disease progression, she said.
But they are also very thinly stretched and take care of Covid patients in addition to their regular patients. "Almost nobody has had a real vacation," she said. "People are really tired."
And readmissions or the ongoing health problems of long-distance Covid drivers have tightened the intensified medical care regime. "Not only do we see the tsunami coming, we also have this back wave," said Dr. Harris.
Some healthcare workers feel abandoned. "Nurses have been screaming for months that this was a problem and we really weren't saved," said Leslie McKamey, a nurse in Bismarck, N.D. and a member of National Nurses United.
"We work overtime. We work in different professions," she said. "We really feel the strain." | <urn:uuid:acc54364-6604-43c2-9842-0a3d49cbc71e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://deephealing.co/health/how-us-hospitals-are-stretched-approach-too-skinny-as-a-result-of-covid-19/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.98004 | 2,286 | 1.945313 | 2 |
- This event has passed.
WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH REP (Racial Equity Project) EVENT
March 10, 2017 @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm PSTfree
WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH REP EVENT
Friday, March 10, 2017
4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Free, no need to RSVP!
Mark your calendars and help spread the word for the next Racial Equity Project (REP) event, celebrating Women’s History Month! Friday, March 10th from 4 pm-6 pm.
Tentative schedule is as follows:
- 30 minutes guest speaker – Dr. Mariaimeí© Gonzalez, Clinical Mental Health Counseling Core Faculty
- 30 minutes of a dance instruction led by Hannah Sanders and a woman from her dance class
- 30 minutes Jeopardy (this time its Women’s Jeopardy led by Ron Harris-White and Averry Cox)
- 30 minutes of an open space for spoken word and others who would like to tell their story/experience
Celebrating Black History Month last week with REP was awesome. Feel free to spread the word. Everyone is invited! 🙂
REP’s Mission Statement: “Our motive is to challenge and confront norms and to establish equality for everyone; to decrease hate, racism, prejudice, and sexism. Overall, to promote love and acceptance.” | <urn:uuid:d8443f24-1dc3-45c9-bfcf-f517c5560f79> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.antioch.edu/event/womens-history-month-rep-racial-equity-project-event/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.917236 | 305 | 1.695313 | 2 |
My Illuminating Conversation With Rogelio Hernandez-FloresBy Michele Clark, MAC President
My illuminating conversation in May 2021 with Rogelio Hernández-Flores about multiculturism and diversity [paraphrased].
Michele: I’ve been using the terms “diversity, equity and inclusion” to focus theMAC’s work on expanding the backgrounds and perspectives of our mediator community. You use terms like “multiculturalism” and “cross-culturalism.” What’s the difference?
Rogelio: What we are really talking about is changing the culture of mediation, no matter the words we use. But, the more we talk about what the words mean, the better our understandings.
A multicultural society contains several cultural or ethnic groups who co-exist but don’t necessarily have engaging interactions with each other. A cross-cultural society goes a little deeper, trying to understand more about each other’s cultures. Finally, an “intercultural society” tries to remove the norms imposed by a dominant culture, creating mutuality, reciprocity and equality.
Michele’s Reflections: After this exchange, my first thought was that we could use diversity, equity and inclusion as tools in moving toward interculturalism. Then, I had one of those perspective-shifting moments – does thinking about our change in terms of equity, diversity and inclusion suggest assimilating all other cultures into the dominant culture? | <urn:uuid:5f41799b-dffa-47ed-b5f4-5ccaeef87c18> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://coloradomediation.org/illuminating-conversation-with-rogelio-hernandez-flores/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.918817 | 316 | 1.890625 | 2 |
About the Author: Juliet Beckstrand is a first-year law student at American University Washington College of Law. She graduated magna cum laude from Wake Forest University, majoring in Politics and International Affairs. Prior to law school, she worked in the United States Senate and as a professional researcher. She is currently an intern at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She hopes to pursue a career in civil rights advocacy and voting rights.
On November 9, 2012, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, considering whether Congress’ decision in 2006 to reauthorize Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act under the pre-clearance formula of Section 4(b) was unconstitutional. The state of voting rights in the United States remains uncertain, with recent attempts to strengthen provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 failing to gain bipartisan support in Congress.
In Shelby County, the Court invalidated a key protection established by the Voting Rights Act of 1965—the decision struck down Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act, a provision that imposed federal preclearance requirements on jurisdictions that had engaged in prejudicial voting practices.
Prior to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, many states employed discriminatory voting practices to deny Black Americans the right to vote. Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act established a “coverage formula” that identified states and political subdivisions that had a history of employing racially discriminatory voting practices. Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, any change made by a covered jurisdiction that affected voting could not be legally enforced until the jurisdiction obtained federal approval.
After the Shelby decision, states formerly under the preclearance requirement immediately began to adopt restrictive voting laws. Texas announced a photo identification law within a day of the Shelby decision, and 2013 alone, over thirty states introduced ninety-two bills restricting voting.
The Department of Justice and voting rights litigators were forced to reconsider how they would challenge discriminatory voting practices in the wake of the Shelby decision, turning to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as an alternative.Section 2 prohibits any “standard, practice, or procedure” that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color…”
Section 2 is used to challenge discriminatory voting practices after they are in place, whereas Section 5 provided a tool to prevent discriminatory practices before they went into effect. Section 5 placed the burden on states and localities under the preclearance requirement to prove that their proposed change was not discriminatory before the law went into effect, conversely, Section 2 requires that impacted voters demonstrate that a challenged law had a discriminatory result.
As we approach the ten-year anniversary of the Shelby decision, the Supreme Court has called the future of Section 2 into question. Concurring in the case of Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Clarence Thomas signaled that the Court may reconsider the right of private parties to bring lawsuits challenging state election laws under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Historically, both the Department of Justice and private citizens have successfully brought claims under Section 2 to enforce the protections of the Voting Rights Act. If the Supreme Court were to rule that no private right of action exists under Section 2, it may determine that the only party authorized to bring a Section 2 claim would be the Attorney General of the United States.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has reiterated its position that Congress clearly intended the existence of a private right of action under Section 2 during the numerous amendments and reauthorizations of the Voting Rights Act. A private right of action to enforce the protections of the Voting Rights Act has been acknowledged by courts for decades and has been presumed and recognized in every federal Circuit. A decision determining that no private right of action exists under Section 2 would run counter to the legislative history of the Voting Rights Act and judicial precedent.
The Supreme Court has previously discussed the importance of private rights of action to enforce the protections of the Voting Rights Act in the case of Allen v. State Board of Elections in 1969, stating that the ultimate goal of the Voting Rights Act would be obstructed if citizens could only rely on litigation undertaken at the discretion of the Attorney General, highlighting the limited ability of the Department to take action against the numerous state and local laws and regulations enacted each year.
The issue of voting rights has grown increasingly divisive in the ten years after the Shelby decision. In 2006, the House and the Senate reauthorized the Voting Rights Act—including the preclearance requirement—by a significant bipartisan majority. The bill passed the House by a vote of 390-33, and by a vote of 98-0 in the Senate. In contrast, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019 received a vote of 228-187 in the House and was not brought to the Senate floor for a vote.
Narrowing the right to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act would dramatically limit the remedies available to aggrieved citizens seeking relief for voting rights violations. The Attorney General of the United States retains broad discretion, and a law that is enforceable only at the direction of the Attorney General could lead to a lack of enforcement should the Department of Justice deem it unnecessary. During the Bush Administration, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division brought over ten cases raising claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Five cases were brought under the Obama Administration, and only one case was brought under the Trump Administration.
State legislatures across the United States are currently considering hundreds of bills that have the potential to restrict voting. The Court’s questioning of whether private citizens can bring suit under Section 2 presents a cause for concern that the remaining protections afforded by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 after Shelby may remain in jeopardy.
Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013).
Carl Hulse, After a Day of Debate, the Voting Rights Bill is Blocked in the Senate, N.Y. Times (Jan. 19, 2022, 7:44 PM), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/us/politics/senate-voting-rights-filibuster.html.
Farrell Evans, How Jim Crow-Era Laws Suppressed the African American Vote for Generations, History.com (May 13, 2021), https://www.history.com/news/jim-crow-laws-black-vote.
Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, U.S. Dep’t Just., https://www.justice.gov/crt/section-4-voting-rights-act (last visited Apr. 18, 2022).
Voting Laws Roundup 2013, Brennan Ctr. for Justice (Dec. 19, 2013), http:/ /www.brennancenter.org/analysis/election-2013-voting-laws-roundup.
Ryan J. Reilly, Harsh Texas Voter ID Law “Immediately” Takes Effect After Voting Rights Act Ruling, Huffington Post (Jun. 25, 2013, 2:04 PM), https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-voter-id-law_n_3497724.
Christopher S. Elmendorf & Douglas M. Spencer, Administering Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act After Shelby County, 115 Colum. L. Rev. 2114, 2152-2158 (2015).
U.S. Dep’t of Just., Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, (Sept. 1, 2021) (on file with author), https://www.justice.gov/crt/section-4-voting-rights-act.
Danielle Lang & J. Gerald Hebert, A Post-Shelby Strategy: Exposing Discriminatory Intent in Voting Rights Litigation, 127 Yale L.J.F.779 (2018).
Brnovich v. Democratic Nat’l Comm., 141 S. Ct. 2321 (2021).
The Use of Section 2 to Secure Fair Representation, Brennan Ctr. Just. (Aug. 12, 2021), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/use-section-2-secure-fair-representation.
Judge to toss Arkansas redistricting case unless DOJ joins, Politico (Feb. 17, 2022, 9:16 PM), https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/17/judge-to-toss-arkansas-redistricting-case-unless-doj-joins-00010050.
S. Rep. No. 97-417, at 30 (1982).
Office of U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, Section by Section Analysis: The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021 (S.4) 117th Congress (2021), https://www.leahy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Section%20by%20Section%20Analysis%20Senate%20John%20Lewis%20VRAA.pdf
Allen v. State Bd. of Elections, 393 U.S. 544, 556 (1969).
Actions – H.R.9 – 109th Congress (2005-2006): Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006, H.R.9, 109th Cong. (2006), https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/house-bill/9/all-actions.
Actions – H.R.4 – 116th Congress (2019-2020): Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019, H.R.4, 116th Cong. (2020), https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/4/all-actions.
Cases Raising Claims Under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, U.S. Dep’t Just., https://www.justice.gov/crt/cases-raising-claims-under-section-2-voting-rights-act-0 (last visited Apr. 18, 2022).
Voting Laws Roundup, Brennan Ctr. Just. (Dec. 21, 2021), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-december-2021. | <urn:uuid:8ad0f001-3b4d-478e-bb71-5723ecda999d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.legislationandpolicy.com/4601/ten-years-post-shelby-the-future-of-section-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.907862 | 2,284 | 2.40625 | 2 |
The New Year’s Eve celebrations quickly turn into resolutions on New Year’s Day. If you are like most people, keeping resolutions prove to be difficult. We start with good intentions of self-improvement, but most of us are not prepared to make the changes we vowed on January 1. This year, consider making a resolution of improving your life with more grace. What is in your heart? What is occupying your mind? Are there any unresolved feelings of anger or the inability to forgive? Are you holding onto unhealthy resentment?
This year, you can resolve to examine your emotional and spiritual health daily. Let go of the bitterness in your life in the new year. God is ready to take hold of those things that you have been holding onto emotionally. Let 2019 be the year you lay your heart in the hands of God. Be blessed.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Resolution: 101 Stories… Great Ideas for Your Mind, Body, and …Wallet
By Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, D’ette Corona and Barbara LoMonaco
Everyone makes resolutions—for New Year’s, for big birthdays, for new school years. In fact, most of us are so good at resolutions that we make the same ones year after year. This book is an inspiring look at those resolutions. Why did we make them? How did they turn out? What did we learn? This collection of real-life stories covers topics such as losing weight, getting organized, stopping bad habits and restoring relationships.
Keep the Change: Break Through to Permanent Transformation
By Becky Tirabassi
We all have areas of our lives in which we would like to see improvement or do things differently. But how often are we able to bring about permanent change? The secret to lifelong transformation rather than another failed New Year’s resolution involves more than just recognizing some important self-truths. This book addresses challenges we all face—from overcoming addictions to struggles with weight, controlling anger, procrastination and disorganized lifestyles. Get ready to make some new commitments and lifestyle adjustments in your journey to Keep the Change.
Small Changes for a Better Life: Daily Steps to Living God’s Plan for You
By Elizabeth George
How can you improve your relationships, stretch your budget, streamline your schedule, break bad habits and cultivate good ones? Providing cutting-edge answers from God’s Word, this book offers practical tips to enhance every area of your daily life—from family, home and work to friendships, finances and health.
Surviving One Bad Year: 7 Spiritual Strategies For When Life Goes Terribly Wrong
By Nancie Carmichael
Loss can come in many forms including divorce, death, illness, bankruptcy and more. When you experience these losses, you may wonder, “How will I survive?” This book offers spiritual strength and practical strategies to help you with emergency tactics to keep your head above water when tragedy strikes. It reveals tactics to help you navigate the stormy days ahead. While the impact of most losses extends beyond one year, you can take a step down the path of healing now. | <urn:uuid:12647412-dca0-4018-ad23-ff6cd1f887cb> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.ospreyobserver.com/2019/01/hooked-on-christian-books-make-a-graceful-resolution-in-2019/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.930202 | 643 | 1.773438 | 2 |
The secretary general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said recently that US economic sanctions against Venezuela have affected global energy supplies.
He told Venezuelan media that the ECONOMIC sanctions imposed by the United States on Venezuela and other countries have seriously affected the ability to produce and export oil worldwide and violated the right of people in other countries to use energy.
Venezuela has one of the largest proven crude oil reserves in the world, but U.S. sanctions have made it impossible for Venezuela’s oil industry to consistently export reliable energy to the world, he said. Despite this, he highly appreciated the efforts of the Venezuelan oil industry to maintain concrete foaming agent are expected to increase in the future.
Foam concrete has a low density. In practical application, the density grade of ordinary foam concrete is 300 kg/m3~1200kg/m3. In recent years, ultra-lightweight foam concrete with low density has also appeared, but it has not been widely used in construction engineering. In practical engineering, the density of foam concrete can be reduced to 200 kg/m3~700 kg/m3.
Due to the low density of foam concrete, it is applied to the building's inner and outer walls, layers, layers, columns, and other parts, can reduce the weight of the building by about 25%, and some can even reduce the weight of up to 34%. In addition, the bearing capacity of structural members can be improved by using foam concrete instead of ordinary concrete. Therefore, the rational use of foam concrete in construction engineering can not only ensure the durability of the building and the bearing capacity of the structure, but also greatly reduce the cost of the project, and has significant economic benefits and broad market prospects.
Good insulation performance
The good thermal insulation performance of foam concrete is determined by its internal structure. By observing the internal structure of foam concrete, it can be found that the foam concrete is filled with a large number of closed and uniform small round holes. These pores maximize the fixation of air, resulting in low thermal conductivity and good insulation. The excellent thermal performance of foam concrete is not possessed by ordinary concrete. The thermal conductivity of foam concrete with common density grade of 300kg/m3~1200kg/m3 is 0.08W/(m·K)~0.3W/(m·K). If this kind of foam concrete is widely used in building roofing material and wall material, it will produce a good energy-saving effect.
Excellent sound insulation and fire resistance performance
As a kind of porous material, foam concrete contains a lot of closed pores and has good sound insulation performance. Therefore, foam concrete can be widely used on building floors, highway sound insulation boards, underground building top floors, and other building parts, as a sound insulation layer. At the same time, foam concrete also has the general characteristics of inorganic materials, that is, not easy to burn, and has good fire resistance. A large number of research data show that the dry bulk density of foam concrete is in the range of 500 kg/m3 to 900 kg/m3, the compressive strength is in the range of 2.5 Mpa-7.5 MPa, the fire resistance of foam concrete can reach 2.7h, the sound insulation performance can reach 20dB, and the impact resistance can reach 100dB. It is a kind of high-quality soundproof refractory material that can be promoted vigorously.
Good seismic performance
Because of its special porous structure, foam concrete has the characteristics of low density, lightweight, and low elastic modulus. These characteristics make the foam concrete structure bear less seismic force and the propagation speed of vibration waves are much slower than that of the ordinary concrete structures. According to seismology, the longer the seismic period, the faster the shock energy is absorbed by a building structure. Therefore, foam concrete has an excellent damping effect. Appropriate application of foam concrete in specific parts of construction engineering can effectively improve the seismic performance of buildings, and enhance the safety and robustness of seismic buildings.
Foam concrete not only has a variety of excellent performance, but in the production process can also be mixed with a large number of industrial waste, not only effective use of resources, waste into treasure, conducive to environmental protection but also greatly reduce the cost of foam concrete.
Concrete Additives Supplier
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The impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on the supply and prices of commodities is widening, and commodity prices remain at high levels. There is still great uncertainty about the future price of the concrete foaming agent.
Diamonds are forever, Gold is precious but which is rarer? Gold is a heavy metal formed during the collision of neutron stars and is one of the rarest elements on Earth.During the formation of the earth, heavy elements gradually accumulated towards t…
The application of various concrete admixtures can not only improve the performance of concrete, but also promote the development of new concrete technologies, promote the application of industrial by-products in cementitious material systems, and al…
The European Union recently approved sweeping new sanctions against Russia, including bans on imports of coal, timber, chemicals, and other MnO2 powder. What is Manganese Dioxide MnO2?Manganese dioxide is an inorganic compound with the m… | <urn:uuid:966b83fa-f0ef-438d-9733-5b8c73370702> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.wgraj.net/Answers/Global-concrete-foaming-agent-market-trend-2023-2027-Main-Performance-of-Foam-Concrete-by-Newswgraj.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.932283 | 1,215 | 2.34375 | 2 |
1. Rise of China's New Youth Volunteer Movement
The Chinese youth volunteer movement was a new social phenomenon that started to make its presence felt in the early 1990s. On 19 December 1993, passenger transport reached its peak and the railway system began to enter its busiest period of the whole year. More than 20,000 youths working on the railways took the lead in holding up the banner of Youth Volunteers and conducted voluntary service activities, to provide warmth to passengers at over 120 railway stations and on 33 trains along the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway, over 2,400 kilometers long. Subsequently, more than 400,000 college and high school students, making use of their winter vacation, began to conduct the voluntary activity, New Spring Zeal along the major railways and at major railway stations all over the country.
On March 5 and 6 of the same year, the first two-day weekend as prescribed by the Chinese government, over 10 million youngsters all over the country wore uniform symbols and went into thousands of family homes and construction sites of key national projects to conduct large-scale voluntary activity. Thus the youth volunteer movement spread rapidly throughout the country. On December 5, 1994, to promote the development of the cause of youth volunteer services, the China Youth Volunteers Association was established under the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League. It is now the only national organization specializing in voluntary services. Since then, a network of voluntary service organizations, comprised of the China Youth Volunteers' Association, 35 volunteer associations at the provincial level, and volunteer associations at the municipal and county levels in two thirds of all the cities and counties, have been basically formed.
In August 1999, the People's Congress of Guangdong Province adopted the first regulations on youth volunteer services in China, giving youth volunteer services a legal basis. Subsequently, Shandong Province and Nanjing City also adopted regulations on youth volunteer services. Provinces such as Fujian and Henan have enacted regulations for youth volunteer services on their legislative agendas. Cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin have made special provisions providing legal support for high students, 16 to 18 years old, to participate in adult volunteer services, which have greatly promoted legislative processes for volunteer services throughout the country.
According to preliminary statistics, as of December 12, 2007, there were over 268 million youth volunteers throughout the country, providing over 6,100 million hours of voluntary service for the society, in areas such as poverty relief through development, community building, environmental protection, large-scale activities, emergency relief, and overseas services; and the number of volunteers who had gone through formal registration totaled more than 25.11 million. | <urn:uuid:88ec4746-eaf2-4284-9283-d72dfbeafd5a> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.china.org.cn/books&magazines/2008-12/04/content_16899949.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.967009 | 531 | 2.75 | 3 |
Tag Archives | SDGs Economics, Environment, Health, Industry and trade, Social development and protection, UncategorizedEnergy, Governance and public sector managementSanitation, WaterEnergy
By John Beirne. Posted October 27, 2021
The economic impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in Asia highlights the importance of entrenching longer-term sustainability and economic resilience into the recovery process. The macroeconomic effects of the pandemic, as well as the impact on firms and households in Asia, are featured in a new ADBI edited book, COVID-19 Impacts and Policy Options: An Asian Perspective.
Air pollution in the cold countries of Central Asia is particularly high during winter due to the consumption of solid fuels for space heating. Evidence-based policy recommendations are needed to facilitate the transition from solid fuel consumption to the use of cleaner fuels for residential heating and cooking, particularly in Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic. This is important not only for improving health conditions for the inhabitants and visitors in these countries but also for reducing the life-threatening health hazards arising from indoor cooking and heating.
By Sandy Rodger. Posted August 31, 2018
In both respects, sanitation is deeply embedded. Grids of sewer pipes have been fixed into the surface of cities in the developed world for more than a century, and it has become a strong and important part of most policy makers’ belief that this is how to provide sanitation. Or, despairing of such systems ever being built in developing countries, some have swung to the opposite view, advocating off-grid solutions, which, while less embedded in the ground, become an equally strong and important part of their proponents’ beliefs.
By Kapil Narula. Posted March 28, 2018
In 2015, all countries of the world agreed to adopt the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. These goals came into force on 1 January 2016 and are aimed at ending poverty, protecting the planet, and attaining prosperity for all. The adoption of the goals was a unique achievement as they are applicable universally, and countries are making joint efforts to achieve them. Although the SDGs are not legally binding, countries are expected to take ownership and to voluntarily report their progress at the national level.
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- Central banks lead the way on green monetary policy on | <urn:uuid:265bc6f7-1eac-4ba3-85ee-e56975441534> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.asiapathways-adbi.org/tag/sdgs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.924924 | 756 | 2.375 | 2 |
How to update an NVR via USB using a local monitor and mouse
To update your NVR via USB using a local monitor and mouse please follow the steps below.
1) Download the latest firmware for your device from the link below:
2) Once the firmware has downloaded, extract the .zip file.
Inside the extracted .zip file you will see a folder called ‘firmware’ (all in lower case).
3) Insert your USB stick into your PC and copy the ‘firmware’ folder to the root of the USB stick.
4) Once copied, eject the USB stick, insert it into the front USB port on the NVR.
5) Enter the NVR menu and navigate to the ‘system’ section.
Depending on which NVR you have you will either see a firmware update option on the right-hand side or you will see a maintenance tab at the top of the screen.
Click the firmware update button and the NVR will start its update process.
The update process is full automated, the NVR will reboot once the update has been applied. | <urn:uuid:63544054-8e29-45ca-9951-9d5ae5e5f641> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://lilin.zendesk.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360046846371-NVR-USB-Firmware-Update-Guide | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.821909 | 243 | 1.546875 | 2 |
First, I have to comment I found this video very difficult to watch due to the narration. The big take away for me regarded the navigation and consistency of design. The simple swipe functions and scroll are navigation functions users will be familiar with and should be utilized. The design must also make sense. Colors and layouts should remain the same while keeping in mind that “the content is the interface.” Interface design should not limit content and we must always remember the value of screen resolution.
- Artist Series
- Broadcast Designers
- iPhone Interface Design
- Journalism in the Age of Data
- Pica Towers
- Seventy-nine Short Essays On Design
- Short Films
- Stitch Bitch
- Story of Stuff
- Thirty Conversations on Design
- Title Sequences
- What Is Art and Does It Matter? | <urn:uuid:919363ac-5d8a-40f7-8bb7-518e48609195> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://blogs.elon.edu/com5651301/?p=3283 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.859631 | 211 | 1.632813 | 2 |
The number of children with gambling problems has quadrupled to more than 50,000 in just two years, a study has shown.
Research by the Gambling Commission indicates there could be a further 70,000 children aged 11 to 16 who are at risk of developing problems.
Matt Serlin, a Families Counsellor at Action on Addiction said gambling can be "traumatic" for families.
He said: "When a child has a problem with gambling it can be extremely frightening, confusing and traumatic for parents.
"It is important to remember that if a child gambles it does not automatically mean they are going to get addicted."
Here is some advice for parents on how to spot the warning signs of child gambling from Action on Addiction:
Unexplained absences from school or college
Sudden deterioration in grades or failure to complete assignments on time
Unaccountable explanation for new items of value in possession
Borrowing or stealing money
Selling personal belongings
Change or uncharacteristic shows of personality or behaviour
Unusual interest in newspapers, magazines, sports scores etc.
Withdrawing from family and friends
How can you combat gambling in your child?
Talk to your child about gambling
Show children that you are willing to talk to them openly
Give them the facts - ideally before they are exposed to the fantasy
Seek professional support if your child has a serious problem
Increased awareness and understanding
Offer a connection with people who've been through similar experiences
Where to seek help? | <urn:uuid:1b18148c-e54c-4018-89f2-a86833a8eb6d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.itv.com/news/2018-11-21/gambling-advice-signs-to-look-out-for-and-how-to-seek-help | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.941624 | 310 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Congratulations on your decision to build your own house.
Now the very next thing that you will have to decide is whether to go for a single storey or a double storey house. Of course, a lot will depend upon the size of the plot. If the plot size is small then the only option is to go vertical and build a two storey house.
However, let’s say that you have a good-sized plot and are unable to decide which would be better.
Read on to help you decide :
Advantages of a Single storey House
Easier to build and construction will also be completed faster.
Ideal for the elderly as they do not have to climb stairs
More square feet space will be available as space for stairs is not needed.
The cost to build is comparatively less than a double-story house.
Disadvantages of a Single storey House
Less privacy as the living areas and bedrooms are on one level only.
Not suitable for urban areas as the land cost is higher.
Floor plans are comparatively limited.
Takes up more land space
Ideally, single-story home is a good choice for retired couples as well as for families with small kids as it will be easier to keep an eye on them.
Now we come to the advantages and disadvantages of a double story house.
|Advantages of a Double storey House
It can be built in a very small plot.
It can take advantage of its height to give a nice view
More privacy as the bedrooms will be on the upper floor
More ventilation as the number of windows is more.
It will be cooler on the lower floor as there is an upper floor plus terrace.
|Disadvantages of a Double storey House
Less space because of the staircase
Risk of an accident while climbing the stairs for seniors and kids.
The cost of construction is more as foundation expense increases.
More time is needed for construction
You need to go up and down the stairs a lot of times in a day.
Double-story houses are ideal when you have a small plot of land. It is also suitable for people who need more privacy and have a larger family with teenage kids. | <urn:uuid:f26f0877-0dd3-40ca-a7f4-0e0b5d5e7e89> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://vestalprojects.com/single-storey-house-v-s-double-storey-how-to-choose/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.958167 | 466 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Working group to prepare national space legislation
Minister of Economic Affairs Mika Lintilä appointed a working group to prepare national space legislation on 16 January 2017. The working group is also tasked with giving proposals for organising the registration and authorisation procedures for space objects. The term of the working group is 1 February–29 December 2017.
Finland is becoming one of the space nations when the first nanosatellite of the Aalto University is launched to space, very likely this spring. There are also other nanosatellite projects under way. Besides scientific research and study projects of the universities, small commercial satellites will become increasingly common.
At the moment Finland has no national legislation on space activities. International activities in outer space are regulated by the UN Space Treaties. Within the EU there is national space legislation at least in Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and France.
As the sector is advancing, it is also important for Finland to lay down the conditions for space activities by law, including the registration and authorisation procedures for satellites, additional insurance requirements, and requirements for advance risk analyses.
The working group is chaired by Marjaana Aarnikka, Commercial Counsellor at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, and the members are:
Tuija Ypyä, Ministerial Adviser, (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment),
Tarja Långström, Counsellor (Ministry for Foreign Affairs),
Kai Knape, Deputy Security Director (Ministry of Defence),
Petteri Kauppinen, Counsellor of Education (Ministry of Education and Culture),
Seija Miettinen-Bellevergue, Senior Adviser (Ministry of Transport and Communications),
Ari-Matti Harri, Head of Unit (Finnish Meteorological Institute),
Tiina Sarjakoski, Research Director (National Land Survey of Finland),
Pauli Stigell, Senior Adviser (Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation Tekes),
Juha Ilola, General Counsel (PIA ry/Reaktor Innovations Oy) and
Jaan Praks; Professor (Aalto University).
Professor Minna Palmroth from the University of Helsinki acts as a permanent expert of the working group. The secretary of the working group is Maija Lönnqvist, Senior Legal Counsel at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment. The working group reports on its work to the Finnish Space Committee, which operates under the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment.
Marjaana Aarnikka, Commercial Counsellor, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, tel. +358 50 338 4350
Maija Lönnqvist, Senior Legal Counsel, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, tel. +358 50 331 3791 | <urn:uuid:936ecd3d-18b5-4007-9e2f-92df23e5184d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://tem.fi/en/-/tyoryhma-valmistelemaan-kansallista-avaruuslainsaadantoa | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572408.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816151008-20220816181008-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.890437 | 588 | 1.71875 | 2 |
On March 4th 2014, articles started to appear on line. “Animal protein-rich diets could be as harmful to health as smoking” said the Guardian. The Daily Mail captured the age dimension more accurately with “Eating lots of meat and cheese in middle age is ‘as deadly as SMOKING‘”.
The source of the media headlines is this article in Cell Metabolism. The full article is available on free view.
The study reviewed data for 6,381 adults aged 50 and over (average age 65) using American public health data (NHANES III). The participants were followed for up to 18 years, giving 83,308 person years worth of data.
Average calorie intake was reported as 1,823 per day (which already suggests under-reporting). This was 51% carbohydrate (by calorie intake); 33% fat intake and 16% protein intake. Most of this protein intake (11 of the 16%) was reported as protein from animal sources.
Instead of dividing the people into three equal groups, the percentage of calorie intake in the form of protein was used to allocate subjects to one of three groups:
– High protein intake was categorised as more than 20% of calories from protein (1,146 people);
– Moderate protein intake was categorised as 10-19% of calories from protein (4,798 people);
– Low protein intake was categorised as fewer than 10% of calories from protein (437 people).
This is interesting in itself. Normally groups are divided so that equal numbers of people fall into each group. The most common grouping used is tertiles (3 groups), quartiles (4 groups) or quintiles (5 groups). If subjects had been divided into tertiles, 2,127 people would have been in each of the 3 groups and the percentage of protein would have been the outcome – not the input (e.g. we may have found that one third of people had protein intake lower than 14% of calories; one third had protein intake between 14-18% and the final third had protein intake higher than 18%). The method used here is not wrong, but we are not comparing equal groups and this will have a difference when relative risk comes into play – as it will.
Association between protein and mortality
This is a direct quotation from the article (my emphasis): “Using Cox Proportional Hazard models, we found that high and moderate protein consumption were positively associated with diabetes-related mortality, but not associated with all-cause, CVD [cardiovascular], or cancer mortality when subjects at all the ages above 50 were considered.”
i.e. when we looked at the 6,381 over 50 year olds there was not even an association with protein intake and all-cause mortality, or CVD mortality, or cancer mortality.
There was a relationship with diabetes mortality and protein intake, but the numbers were so tiny (one death from diabetes in one group) that this was not considered important.
And that could have been the headline – “There is no association between protein intake and mortality” – but then there would be no headline.
After finding no overall association, the researchers spotted a pattern with age and split the information into participants aged 50-65 and participants over 65. They then found (direct quotation again): “Among those ages 50–65, higher protein levels were linked to significantly increased risks of all-cause and cancer mortality. In this age range, subjects in the high protein group had a 74% increase in their relative risk of all-cause mortality (HR: 1.74; 95% CI: 1.02–2.97) and were more than four times as likely to die of cancer (HR: 4.33; 95% CI: 1.96–9.56) when compared to those in the low protein group.”
This means that there was an equal and opposite result for the over 65 group. If all the participants together showed no association and one section of the group are then separated out to show a positive association, the remaining section of the group must have a negative association. That’s the law of averages. Sure enough, the 3,342 people over the age of 65 were far less likely to die from any cause if they were in the moderate or high protein intake group. Cancer mortality for the low protein group was two and a half times the cancer mortality for the high protein group.
Cardiovascular (CVD) mortality was about the same for the high protein group and the low protein group for the 50-65 year olds. CVD mortality was then much lower for the moderate protein intake group than for the low protein intake group for 50-65 year olds. For the over 65 year olds, the highest protein intake group was the best one to be in for all-cause mortality, cancer mortality and CVD mortality.
The fact that the headlines chose to claim “protein will kill you in middle age” rather than “protein will save you in old age” just highlights the nonsense and bias.
The usual errors
There are two facts that every study fails to clarify:
1) Association does not mean causation (just because we observe singing in the bath, it does not mean that being in the bath causes singing any more than singing causes being in the bath); and
2) Relative risk is a poor measure when absolute risk can be reported instead. (You can double your chance of winning the lottery by buying 2 tickets. Your relative chance is twice as high as it was before. Your absolute chance was 1 in 14 million and is now 2 in 14 million. You’re still not going to win the lottery!)
This study has absolute risk numbers and should share them. There could be 4 deaths in 1,000 people from cancer in the high protein group and 1 death from cancer in the low protein group. This meets the headline “four times as likely to die of cancer”, but it’s hugely different to having a 1 in 1,000 chance of dying vs. a 1 in 250 chance of dying – neither of which is going to lose you any sleep at night. I’ve emailed Dr Longo to ask for the raw data on death rates to see what the absolute risk is. (And remember – this is still only in the 50-65 age group and will be the other way round in the over 65s).
Protein vs animal protein
The study claims to have adjusted for protein in general vs. animal protein to conclude that animal protein is the harmful factor and not protein per se. Call me suspicious, but I always check for conflicts of interest and the lead researcher, Dr Longo, has declared interests in (actually, he’s the founder of) L-Nutra – a company that makes ProLon™ – an entirely plant based meal replacement product.
So the study would have us believe that animal protein increases cancer mortality in people between the ages of 50 and 65, but then magically reverses this ‘causation’ at 65 such that you’d better be in the high protein group or you’ll be dropping dead like flies. This just doesn’t make sense.
I could go into a discussion of quality animal protein (meat, eggs and dairy from pasture living animals) vs. processed animal protein (fast food burgers with white buns and ketchup, mass produced chickens, low-fat sugared yoghurts) and so on, but this cannot explain why animal protein across all the people surveyed would be allegedly harmful before the age of 65 and protective thereafter. By the way – do eat quality animal produce and don’t eat processed anything (meat or otherwise), but that’s just a general health golden rule. It can’t explain this study.
Of mice, not men
The researchers turn away from John and Jane Doe to Mickey and Minnie Mouse to try to explain the results. Dr Longo is well known for his mice experiments (he was one of the chaps whom Michael Mosley interviewed when he did his Horizon programme on Intermittent Fasting).
The researchers thus did some experiments on mice. They gave some 18 week old male mice a diet with either low (4-7%) or high (18%) protein intakes. (We don’t know if either fat or carbohydrate made up the difference for the different protein intakes). They implanted melanoma cells in Mickey Mice (gave them cancer in effect) and then looked to see how the cancer progressed over the next 39 days, while the mice were fed either high or low protein intakes. Tumour incidence was reported as 100% for the high protein group and 90% for the low protein group after 25 days. The discussion that followed centered around a term you may recall from the Horizon programme – IGF-1 – Insulin-like Growth Factor.
This could have led to the headline – “Male mice given cancer cells get cancer”, but it is being used as an explanation for the observations in the human study. The hypothesis being put forward is that protein intake increases IGF-1 and that IGF-1 helps our bodies grow and it may therefore help cancer to grow. We have not even proven if protein intake determines IGF-1 in humans and therefore the hypothesis falls over at the first hurdle. The theory then suggests that IGF-1 falls with age. So are they then saying that protein over the age of 65 doesn’t impact IGF-1 and doesn’t therefore impact growth or cancer? It still just doesn’t make sense.
The final twist was that the researchers found no significant difference when they gave animal vs. plant protein to mice. So this cannot justify the headlines condemning meat and cheese. Additionally – bang goes the ProLon™ PR!
What should we take from this?
* Humans don’t need that much protein. As a rule of thumb we need approximately 1 gram of protein per 1 kilogram of body weight. Body builders and pregnant women may benefit from more, but we don’t need that much.
Having said this, protein has a substantial metabolic advantage over carbohydrate and fat and can help with weight loss as a result[i]. Hence more than 1 gram per kilogram of body weight is not a problem – so long as the intake comes from real food and not from fake shakes.
* Protein is in virtually every food provided by nature (oils and sucrose being the only two exceptions and they’re not really food). Nature provides fat/protein combinations – meat, fish, eggs, dairy products – and carbohydrate/protein combinations – grains, pulses, fruits, vegetables. Rarely do foods have fat/protein and carb in good measure (nuts and seeds being the exceptions). Why would nature put protein in everything if it were out to get us?
* This study has made an interesting observation and that’s it. It has not provided a plausible explanation. As for the smoking comparison – this is a stunt to grab headlines – not appropriate for researchers who want to be taken seriously. Smoking presents an absolute risk – provide the same numbers for my grass-grazing roast dinner if that’s what you’re claiming.
* Should you ditch meat and dairy as a result of this? Not unless you want to deprive yourself of essential fats, complete protein and invaluable quantities of vitamins and minerals. The golden rule of diet remains unchanged and that is – eat real food! This means meat, eggs and dairy from pasture living animals; fish; nuts and seeds; vegetables and fruits in season. Enjoy whole grains and starchy veg only if you are normal weight – limit these fattening foods if not. Red wine and dark chocolate and what more could a man want? Or mouse!
p.s. just had a thought a couple of hours after this was posted. Where are the vast majority of deaths going to be among the 6,381 people who were over 50 when the study started? In the 50-65 year old group or in the 65+ year old group? The latter of course. So, notwithstanding that we have no plausible mechanism, the ‘advantage’ of animal protein is thankfully in the group that will benefit most! Looking forward to the raw data…
[i] Eric Jequier, Institute of Physiology, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, found that the thermic effect of nutrients (thermogenesis) is approximately 6-8% for carbohydrate, 2-3% for fat and 25-30% for protein. I.e. approximately 6-8% of the calories consumed in the form of carbohydrate are used up in digesting the carbohydrate and turning it into fuel available to be used by the body. In contrast, 25-30% of the calories consumed in the form of protein are used up in digesting the protein and turning it into fuel available to be used by the body. (Eric Jequier, “Pathways to Obesity”, International Journal of Obesity, (2002).) | <urn:uuid:0b390bff-7cf4-4a1a-82a1-b51f4355a21c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2014/03/animal-protein-as-bad-as-smoking/?replytocom=24984 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.960852 | 2,704 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Quality of life comparison
If you lived in Turkey instead of Switzerland, you would:
live 7.1 years less
In Switzerland, the average life expectancy is 83 years (80 years for men, 85 years for women) as of 2020. In Turkey, that number is 76 years (73 years for men, 78 years for women) as of 2020.
be 64.6% more likely to be obese
In Switzerland, 19.5% of adults are obese as of 2016. In Turkey, that number is 32.1% of people as of 2016.
pay a 12.5% lower top tax rate
Switzerland has a top tax rate of 40.0% as of 2016. In Turkey, the top tax rate is 35.0% as of 2016.
make 56.5% less money
Switzerland has a GDP per capita of $62,100 as of 2017, while in Turkey, the GDP per capita is $27,000 as of 2017.
be 3.4 times more likely to be unemployed
In Switzerland, 3.2% of adults are unemployed as of 2017. In Turkey, that number is 10.9% as of 2017.
be 3.3 times more likely to live below the poverty line
In Switzerland, 6.6% live below the poverty line as of 2014. In Turkey, however, that number is 21.9% as of 2015.
have 41.0% more children
In Switzerland, there are approximately 10.5 babies per 1,000 people as of 2020. In Turkey, there are 14.8 babies per 1,000 people as of 2020.
be 3.4 times more likely to die during childbirth
In Switzerland, approximately 5.0 women per 100,000 births die during labor as of 2017. In Turkey, 17.0 women do as of 2017.
be 4.5 times more likely to die during infancy
In Switzerland, approximately 3.5 children die before they reach the age of one as of 2020. In Turkey, on the other hand, 15.8 children do as of 2020.
be 20.8% less likely to have internet access
In Switzerland, approximately 89.7% of the population has internet access as of 2018. In Turkey, about 71.0% do as of 2018.
spend 15.7% less on education
Switzerland spends 5.1% of its total GDP on education as of 2016. Turkey spends 4.3% of total GDP on education as of 2015.
The statistics above were calculated using the following data sources: The World Factbook, Swiss Federal Tax Administration, Revenue Administration, Government of Turkey.
Turkey: At a glance
How big is Turkey compared to Switzerland? See an in-depth size comparison. | <urn:uuid:b4f9155f-233f-4492-b855-e0620c810937> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/compare/switzerland/turkey | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.968405 | 584 | 2.453125 | 2 |
I believe in truth, love, and understanding. We all have to live together in this increasingly connected world. We must learn to understand each other. This doesn’t mean we all have to agree on everything, but that we all should respect on another enough to live together in peace. If we could learn to understand each other, we would be much slower at judging other people. We need be able to understand that we don’t know what other people have been through, so we can’t know exactly why they are the way they are. When we realize this, we can understand that we have no right to judge.
I believe that there is truth that applies to all people at all times. Even more I believe that there is a universal human law. Nearly everybody would agree that there is a universal truth. Not many people would argue that the earth is round. I believe that there must be a truth on moral behavior for all people. If someone’s child is murdered, it doesn’t matter if the culture accepts it or not, that person will feel the immorality of it in the emptiness and sadness that they feel. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t moral differences in culture. If you look at an Amish town, and then look at an island in the Pacific, you will find very different cultural norms in the way that people dress.
I also believe that the world could be a much better place if we all could learn how to love. It would solve so many problems. If we only loved other people even half as much as we do ourselves would there be over a billion people living in poverty? would there be up to 500,000 child soldiers in the world? If we loved others even half as much as we loved ourselves would we watch as eighty children die every day in Darfur? What is love? Love is caring for each other enough not to let this happen. | <urn:uuid:38892826-9ef3-4af3-be42-97a77eb38503> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://thisibelieve.org/essay/61913/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.979984 | 397 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Logistics Operations can be a component of a prosperous corporation. It includes a complete collection of routines and strategies geared towards meeting the requirements of the different phases working in the offer sequence. It is an interdisciplinary subject managing the organized handling of physical tools in virtually any firm. It calls for the research, choice, recognition and good application of economical ways to improve the company efficiency and obtain utmost gains.
Logistics supervision is essentially the act of logically handling the investment, safe-keeping and movements of raw carried out, parts and materials products (the similar info generally flows and also their spots) in the whole life routine in the merchandise and its particular delivery. It therefore features a number of exercises like arranging, organizing, analyzing tasks of all the persons within the chain and work movement, tracking action, allocation of labor and material expenses, creation of financial constraints and monitoring products and finalized merchandise. It takes complete familiarity with freight expert services, delivery techniques, legal guidelines, other and customs pertinent restrictions having an effect on the travel of merchandise. Logistics has to be elastic in framework and improvement. It ought to be adaptable in order to reach quick imbalances sought after for the solution and become competent at adapting easily to these types of changes. It will provide theset and digesting, and storage space of data in regards to the source sequence.
In an effort to perform those activities properly, a storage place must be appropriately structured. In fact, the particular procedure of logistics managing is a fitness in arranging: the creation of a warehouse strategy, the setting up of logistical back links, the servicing and development of structure, as well as supply of adequate internal regulate service and systems solutions. In addition, a chance to collect and retail store facts, organize distributing sources, review and utilize facts, and use the correct details to put into action changes, are common necessary for successful warehouse administration. On top of that, every one of these activities ought to be undertaken promptly and with plenty of accuracy and reliability.
In an effort to put on the theories and ideas of logistics administration, businesses really need to develop proper options and abide by-through steps. At the primary part, corporations can set up a framework regarding their targets in connection with supply and satisfaction. The structure may include phrases like solutions presented, amount of complete models supplied, volume of storage units vital for delivery, and techniques of settlement and shipping, among others. These phrases and processes may help put in priority the supply in addition to help suitable organizing of linked facts.
After the organization includes a platform in place, it could start to clearly define the several stages within the supply chain. At this time, anyone can assess the performance of every section, establish changes and shortcomings, established limited-time period and long-term targets, and identify approaches to integrate every one of these things in the unified whole. This is when logistics control software programs can play a substantial function. It assists in the automation of logistics procedures, assists in forecasting upcoming need, and makes it possible for quick aggregation and expressing of products information. With all the software, you can have updated products data and will predict your profits determined by famous records. Your companies, for his or her portion, can simply perspective your present supply requirements, predict your demand from customers, which will create different purchases depending on this kind of information.
Another level within the give chain could be the transportation of uncooked supplies on the ultimate level. An important component in travelling having charges are the energy ingested because of the motor vehicles utilized to transportation those things. By integrating the Logistics Administration Program, you can obtain true-time updated information about fuel prices, which you can use to employ tactics linked to energy maintenance, discount rates and other such activities. You could also use these program applications to cut down and examine the prices connected with customer support. A serious problem with many businesses is simply because they usually do not often deliver consumers with the absolute best client service experience. You can actually appraise the full satisfaction amount of employees, recognize locations where support services is lacking, and put into practice remedial calculates.
During your final spot, it may possibly not be possible to maintain a fleet of motor vehicles to transport those items, by including Logistics Administration Application. You can actually avert a real condition by employing alternatives related to Logistics Operations Software. You can actually ascertain the optimal quantity of automobiles to get carried at anyone time, as reported by the characteristics of your respective business and finalized vacation spot. In case that there are actually any bottlenecks inside the shipment method, it is possible to promptly remove these types of problems by the installation of Logistics Administration Software.
Eventually, another primary aspect of Logistics Supervision is warehousing. In today’s current society, it is actually quite difficult to record the variety of goods that are needed in a variety of steps of your making, procurement along with logistics approach. You may get reliable details with regards to the location of shares, the storage area and syndication of products and solutions, and the condition of share and merchandise in transit, by making use of Logistics Supervision Software. You can easily observe the action of goods during the deliver chain avoiding bottlenecks from the total approach. Thereby, Logistics Control Application offers a strong foundation for productive logistics surgical procedures.
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Proceed your research for additional similar posts: | <urn:uuid:cb9a3b3f-4dca-40c8-be0e-66fdf71f01cc> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://myoldtea.com/essential-components-of-logistics-control/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.945096 | 1,106 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Indonesian Translator Shares Her Advice (Be You)
The story you're about to read is a sneak peek into one of the interviews I did for my new book series. Faiza and I met at a female entrepreneurship event in Bali. The event was miraculously communicated in both English and Indonesian. Faiza was the one translating from one language to the other.
I was so impressed by her patience and skill. Faiza has an interesting story, as she was raised partly in Indonesia and partly in Holland, before finally settling in Bali. She was exposed to many different languages at a young age and stresses how beneficial it is for Indonesian people to learn English in order to build a better life for themselves. Keep reading to learn what advice she would give to her younger self.
October 2018, Bali, Indonesia
Language Expert & Founder, Makna Wacana
Maeve: How do you define success?
Faiza: For me, success is doing what you love and loving what you do. You do it wholeheartedly and you feel that sense of fulfillment by the end of every task. You're growing as a person from your experiences and from your interactions. Success is when you're happy with who you are, with whom you’re becoming, and with what you’re doing.
Maeve: What is something you wish you could go back and tell yourself when you were a teenager?
Faiza: I would tell the younger version of myself that the things that I focused on obsessively are just a part of being a teen, most of them don’t really matter.
You don’t have to be good at everything. You don’t need to beat yourself up. If you’re bad at something, then maybe it’s just not part of your gift and you should focus on what you can do well. Be more productive and stop beating yourself up over something you’re not great at.
Be the truest version of yourself. You don’t have to fit in, because if you don’t, there’s probably a good reason for that. This is a colorful world full of different people; you don’t always have to fit in. It’s totally fine and it’s not an issue.
For more insights like Faiza's, check out It's the Depression for Me: 3 Ways to Make Being a Teenager Suck Less.
For more stories like this one, you can check out Vanessa's: Thai Entrepreneur Shares Her Story (Broke to Business Owner). | <urn:uuid:6dcf6908-8fb6-4511-8f13-cccfbb6db19b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.maeveronan.com/post/indonesian-translator-shares-her-advice-be-you | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.963324 | 545 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Winston Churchill did not have an easy childhood.
He grew up in a home where neither of his parents truly loved him. They were gone much of the time, completely consumed by their own interests. His father, Randolph, was a politician who had his sights on becoming prime minister. His mother, Jennie, was a local beauty and spent much of her time with other men and planning social gatherings. Both traveled often, leaving Winston at home with his nurse.
His nurse, Mrs. Everest, was the one consolation Winston had in his early years. He called her “Woom,” which was “derived from an early attempt to say ‘woman,’” as William Manchester wrote in The Last Lion—Visions of Glory. Since his parents were almost always traveling, Woom was the one who raised him. He loved her dearly. “She was the dearest figure in his life until he was 20; her picture hung in his bedroom until he died.” (ibid).
When he was seven years old, “his parents decided it was time he left home.” They sent him to St. George’s, a boarding school, where he stayed for two years. During his stay, he wrote his parents often, and he begged them to come visit him. They never did.
At St. George’s, Winston and the other boys had eight hours of lessons a day, followed by sports like cricket or soccer. When they disobeyed, they were beaten with strips of birch wood. Most likely because “the deprivation of parental attachment bred resentment of authority,” Winston developed quite a rebellious spirit (ibid.). He received many beatings, and he was bullied by other students. Eventually, he was beaten so badly that he ran away to find Mrs. Everest. When she saw the welts on his back and bottom, she immediately summoned Winston’s mom, who had her son pulled out of St. George’s and put into another boarding school in Brighton.
On two occasions, his father came to Brighton for a business appointment. He was only a short distance from Winston’s school, but he did not visit his son either time.
Although Randolph Churchill never did anything to win his son’s affection, Winston loved him anyway, and he strongly supported his father’s political views. Randolph was a powerful politician in his day. “Newspapers called him ‘Gladstone’s great adversary,’ and described workmen smiling at his mustache and doffing their caps as his carriage passed by. Winston clipped these stories and cartoons of his father and pasted them in his scrapbooks. He next memorized his speeches verbatim” (ibid). He would write to his father and ask for his autograph because everyone around him wanted it. “He was his father’s staunchest support. He yearned to battle for him. He was obsessed with his image. He had placed him on a high pedestal. He worshiped at the altar of a man he did not, in fact, even know” (ibid).
When Winston was 10 years old, he took an entrance examination to get into another boarding school: Harrow. He failed the test abysmally, but he was still accepted into the school because his father was a former British cabinet minister. He was put in the lowest form, however, and he soon became known as the school dunce.
During his four years at Harrow, his parents each visited him once—at different times. He developed a stutter when he spoke, and he constantly made trouble for everyone. He became hardened and stubborn. “He refused to learn unless it suited him,” Manchester wrote. He was smart enough to be at the top of his class, but he turned his schoolwork in late, he lost his books, and he was lazy.
It was at Harrow, however, that Winston first started to cultivate a love for history and the English language. He would spend evenings in deep discussion about history and essays with his fencing master, L. M. Moriarty. “None of this was reflected in the report cards … but … Winston was being taught to teach himself. He would always be a dud in the classroom and a failure in examinations, but in his own time, on his own terms, he would become one of the most learned statesmen of the coming century” (ibid).
As he got older, his mother warmed up to him more. “She later told friends she ignored Winston until he grew older and became ‘interesting’” (ibid). Jennie Churchill lived until Winston was in his forties, so “he resolved his relationship with her. It was otherwise with his father. Here the grave denied him any opportunity for reconciliation” (ibid). His father died of syphilis when Winston was 21.
Eventually, after three tries, Winston Churchill passed the entrance exam for the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He ranked 92nd out of 102 students when he began attending. Nevertheless, it was at Sandhurst that Winston began to come into his own. The subjects they studied—“fortification, tactics, topography, military law and military administration”—were subjects that he thoroughly enjoyed and threw his heart into learning. “In the examinations at the end of his first term, he scored near the top of his class, his strongest subjects being tactics and military law,” Manchester wrote. His earlier status of public-school dolt was forgotten now that he was an admirable young soldier with a brilliant career ahead of him.”
Winston Churchill did not have an easy childhood—but the experiences he went through as a child prepared him for that brilliant career. He was ignored by his parents, bullied by his peers, and beaten by his teachers. “Except for his hours in the nursery with Woom, his early years had brought him very little pleasure and much pain. But they had fashioned him into a strong young man possessed of immense drive, ready to mount the steep slopes of challenge ahead,” Manchester wrote.
Most of us have not grown up in situations like Winston Churchill’s, but we all do face various levels of adversity. When we go through trials, do we allow them to knock us down, or do we allow them to strengthen our resolve and prepare us to “mount the steep slopes of challenge ahead”?
Because Winston Churchill powered through his unfortunate upbringing and used his trials to spur him toward action and accomplishment, he became the man credited with saving Western civilization. Because he had the tenacity to endure the bullies in his childhood, he had the tenacity to stand up to a fierce tyrant and lead his country to victory in World War ii. If he had allowed the adversity he faced as a child to run him over, Britain, Europe and the entire world would have been overrun by a terrifying and bloodthirsty regime. Instead, the Axis powers were defeated, and the world remained free. That is the power that one man with a lot of tested and proven resolve can have.
Everyone goes through tests and trials. Determine to mount the steep slopes of the challenges you face. Use your tests and trials to strengthen your resolve to stand up for what you believe. | <urn:uuid:21bfc3da-2599-4578-916f-9d360100ce98> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://pcg.church/articles/5558/lessons-from-history-ignored-bullied-beaten-resolved | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.995951 | 1,525 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Born in Auckland, New Zealand, the eldest of five, whom according to Tua are a “fruit salad” of rich, mixed Polynesian blood, Cook Island-Tahitian on his mother’s side and New Zealand Maori-Cook Islands on his fathers side. Tua’s family relocated to Rarotonga when he was five years old. In 1985 Hokulea visited Rarotonga. During the hurricane season that year, Hokulea was left in the hands of Tua and his brothers to keep her safe. When the vaka began voyaging again they invited an indigenous person from each stop along the way and Tua was asked to join. After his first voyage he swore never to go back to sea again. But when the invitation to join the crew from Rangiroa to Hawaii came up, he went. On board was Micronesian Master Navigator Mau Pialug.
In 1992 the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands sent out a challenge to all canoes in the region to sail to Rarotonga for the Pacific Arts Festival using non-instrument navigation. Accepting the challenge, the Polynesian Voyaging Society from Hawaii said they would come under one condition, that Cook Island voyagers must learn to navigate their own canoe. On his second trip to Aitutaki onboard Hokulea, Mau handpicked Tua to join Nainoa Thompson and six of his fellow countrymen to learn this ancient tradition. Two decades later and thousands of miles of voyaging, Tua was bestowed the title of PWO or master navigator by Mau Pialug in Micronesian in 2008, As a thank you to Nainoa and Mau, Tua made a lifelong promise to teach others and continue to nurture this tradition.
On July 20th 1995 the Cook Islands Government and Parliament unanimously endorsed sending a traditional vaka to Mururoa Atoll to protest at the resumption of French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. Prime Minister at the time Sir Geoffrey Henry told a Greenpeace delegation at an official reception that the vaka would best symbolise the opposition of Polynesians to nuclear tests. Vaka Te Au O Tonga, was captained by Tua. They sailed to meet the fleet in Mururoa, representing the Cook Islands and Pacific Island Nations at the protest.
Throughout the 2010-2012 Te Mana O Te Moana Voyage PWO navigators Tua, Peia and Jacko Thatcher took turns on each of the 7 vaka, working with the new crop of young navigators. The navigator has to memorise up to 200 stars in the sky, differences in constellation, and understand where they are rising from on the star compass.
Tua says if you look after the vaka, the vaka will look after you. The vaka can be used as a metaphor for our earth, if we look after our earth, the earth will look after you. Tua will lead the Te Manava Fleet to Rarotonga in May to celebrate the inaugural Te Manava Vaka festival. This festival is a celebration of “The Essence, the heart and soul of our origins of Vaka” and the 50th anniversary of self governance of the Cook Islands.
PHOTO: Tua and the youngest two of his children, daughters Tiahuia and Aimata
One of our senior and long time member of the Cook Islands Voyaging Society Tetini Pekepo.
Born in a small township in central Hawkes bay under the korowai of Ngati Kahungungu, Whataiapiti. Later on in life influenced by carving and stories on marae’s, I took a deep interest in maoridom until a kaumatua said to me ” Boy no whea mai koe” It was then that I planned to search for myself, a search that brought me to the Cook Islands. Within the first 5 months I sailed on interisland boats to 7 islands, it was then that I discovered “no ea mai au” that was in 1987 E kimianga mekameka tikai.
Tetini is a master carver and a taunga tatau and has sailed on many voyages with the CIVS throughout the pacific islands.
Tetini designed the motifs on the sails of Marumaru Atua and hand painted them on to the original sails. He also designed the logo for the Te Manava Vaka festival. The Logo has 3 wave designs, left side “ngaru nui” wind generate swells,middle “ngaru roa” trade swells, left side ” ngaru pa enua swells reflected off land. The weaving. tight knit of the family of vaka moana. The koru shown in negative form “tupuanga” depicts the growth of the voyaging society.
Te Manava Vaka Festival means “The Essence, the heart and soul of our origins of Vaka.”
PHOTO: Captain Ti and Captain in training James
It is an honour to have PWO Navigator Onohi join the crew of Marumaru Atua.
Onohi was born on the island of Oahu, Hawaii in Papakolea or as it affectionately known, “Beverly Hills” & raised in Nanakuli. He moved to Waimea on Moku o Keawe or the Big island in 1994 for the building of Makali`i.
Onohi first sailed on Hokule`a during crew trainings under Nainoa Thompson back in the early 90’s and was invited to be a crew member onboard in 1992 during the No Na Mamo Voyage from Hawai`i to Tahiti under Captain Clay Bertelmann. He started focusing on wayfinding, seamanship skills, and traditional navigation training with a family of 16 men from Hawai’i and the South Pacific. For 3 years their time was spent together during the summer; hence they became known as “the boys of summer.”; as a family, their rites of passage was sailing Hokule`a to 9 degrees north and than finding their way to Hilo, Hawai’i.
For Onohi our waka are a “bridge” that connects us to so many different areas of consciousness both spiritually and physically if we allow ourselves to. It is this “bridge” that we must remember to continue to walk over so that we never forget our connections and our relationship to one another. “He wa`a he moku he moku he wa`a” the canoe an island the island a canoe. When we can remember and reflect on the experiences, relationships and remember the privilege that we had while sailing together onboard Marumaru Atua and become the bridge when we are home for our ohana and community, then we will all continue to flourish.
His hope for all of our waka is that we return home from our voyages with a greater understanding of how we are connected to everyone on this wa`a, called Earth. Understanding clearly what we do effects others around us, especially our moku, our oceans and each other. Knowing this, we feel a greater responsibility and act upon it.
The ocean has always been his greatest teacher. So when he is home and he starts to forget, it is where he finds himself retuning to. It has influenced his life and it is the place where he goes to and immerse himself in, so that he is able to reflect upon and remember his place on the moku.
When Onohi is not voyaging he is the Senior Captain for their non- profit organization, Na Kalai Wa`a.
PHOTO CREDIT: Kaimana Barcarse
We are honoured to have Magnus join our crew on board Marumaru Atua for the Te Manava Voyage from Auckland to Rarotonga.
Magnus Danbolt was born in Sweden in 1972 by the Lake Roxen. His love for sailing started from an early age sailing from the Lake Roxen on the Swedish rivers/canals to the Ocean and from there started voyaging.
He studied at the University of Gothenburg, graduating in 2003 with a Master’s Degree in Marine Biology and Biological Oceanography. He previously worked as a researcher and skipper for International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) on scientific projects with marine mammals. A chance meeting led to his move to New Zealand in 2009. Magnus got involved as a marine biologist doing work on a documentary about ocean issues. “We wanted to alert people about oxygen starvation, coral bleaching and steadily rising levels of acidification,” he said. “Because of acidification, phytoplankton — one of the building blocks of life — can’t form shells properly, and that has ripples throughout the food chain.
Magnus was the Skipper of Hine Moana during Te Mana o Te Moana and the fleet captain from July 2009 – September 2012. Magnus safely leading the fleet of eight vessels and 120 crew from 15 island nations 25000 nautical miles across the Pacific during a two year Te Mana O Te Moana environmental project.
More recently as General Manager for Pacific Voyagers Trust he has successfully carried out transport/fisheries/relief work pilot projects in Fiji, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Marshal Is, Palau, Tahiti, Tuamotus with the Vaka Motu project in collaboration with local governments, local organisations and Pacific Voyagers (PV) management.
He was involved in planning, building and running two prototype inter-island transport vessel including implementation of state of the art solar electric propulsion system resulting in a unique robust, low priced, environmental friendly transport vessel.
Magnus says the voyaging societies common goal is to raise one voice from the Pacific to highlight oceanic problems.
“The ocean is in trouble, and we need to take care of it,” Danbolt said.
PHOTO: Hoturoa Kerr, Magnus and Tua Pittman in Hawaii
I am Japanese, I was born in Japan. When I was in High School, Hokule’a came to Japan. I got a chance to sail around my town with her. Since then I fell in love with Vaka. I decided to move Hawaii after I graduated from High School and have been training with the Polynesian Voyaging Society since 2008. My first deep sea voyage was 2012 Aotearoa-Tahiti-Hawaii. In 2014, I was so lucky and had opportunity to sail with Uncle Tua and Peia on Hikianalia. I had never sailed with other than Hawaiian Vaka. I am really really excited to sail with Marumaru Atua and learn from their Pwo Navigators again, and all the crew of Marumaru Atua. I am so arigato to this opportunity.
Saki flew all the way from Japan to join the Te Manava Voyage. We welcome Saki to our crew, she is one of our young voyagers that are part a future exchange program that the Cook Islands Voyaging Society is establishing with other voyaging societies.
Milton was born at Middlemore Hospital 28.04.1990, father Jean-Pierre Huri (Full Tahitian Tahaa/Raiatea-Tikehau/Tuamotu) mother: Tuarau Maeva-Huri Mauke/Ngatangiia/Palmerston. He is the 2nd Eldest of 4 children 2 Sisters and a brother. Born and Breed in NZ, But has been fortunate to be surrounded with lots of culture since he can remember.
Milton is a full-time artist-tattooist. He put his Bachelor of Youth Development on hold to pursue a challenge and adventure, he believes that our youth are our future.
Milton was approached by an uncle (first cousin to mum) Maara Maeva to come up with some concept drawings to be painted on the sides of the MARUMARU ATUA with a team of 2 other young Artists. He and the other artists applied the artwork to the vaka. While do so Captain Peia Patai pulled him aside and asked if he had been to Rarotonga, then he asked him if he would like to join the Voyage to Rarotonga, Milton was lost for words and without thinking about it he said YES.
Milton wants to follow in the foot prints of his father, grandparents great grandparent on both sides of the family that traveled by SEA….ITS IN HIS BLOOD.
This is Milton’s first voyage. His first introduction to life at sea was last weekend on the sail up to Aurere. We welcome Milton to our crew and look forward to him sailing home for his first visit to the Cook Islands.
PHOTO: India from Faafaite, Milton
Luther is 25 years of age and a very talented young tattooist. Luther hails from the Ngati Karika and Ngati Robati families. Funny story about Luther, back in July the Exec of CIVS was sitting around the monument for the 1992 Pacific Arts festival and we had a dilemma, we didn’t have enough crew to help us take MMA out to meet Hokulea and Hikianalia. Luther was sitting at the Mooring (probably just finished one of their WORLD famous FOBS), and we thought, hey lets ask Luther, Luther had sailed with us one afternoon with Terii Pittman a while back. Anyway we called out to him, hey Luther you wanna come sailing? Yeah bro, I’m keen as!! 5 weeks later Luther left on his maiden voyage!! So proud of him. Why did Luther want to sail on Marumaru Atua?
In his words… to grow, to experience and learn ancient methods of seafaring. To travel vast distances without fossil fuel dependency and to share ideas of conservation with like minded people. To better myself and my peers!! Luther’s first voyage was the MUA Voyage… Rarotonga, Apia, Suva, Port Vila, Gold Coast, Sydney.
Luther sailed from Sydney back to Auckland and then came home to Rarotonga for a break, when the call came, he was the first one of the Raro based crew to fly to Auckland to get ready to bring Marumaru Atua home. Luther has vowed when he sails home to Rarotonga, THEN he will shave his beard..
Therese (pronounced Terase) Inano Mangos is a new member of the voyaging family. She was born and raised in Aotearoa and lives in West Auckland with her partner and three children. She is the daughter of Tuaine Utanga and Leonard Mangos (Mangos is Greek) and granddaughter of Rebecca Tekonini (Nga-Pu-Toru) and Utanga Utanga (Mangaia / Rarotonga). She is a descendant of the Makea Karika line, the vaka Te Au O Tonga, and tapere, Rua-O-Te-Tonga.
Her passion for voyaging was ignited when she crewed on the Spirit of Adventure in the early 80s. This led on to further voyages with the both the Spirit of Adventure and Spirit of New Zealand.
Voyaging was also an integral part of her research which spanned two decades into our Cook Islands history and arts. This culminated into a book that was published in 2011 ‘Patterns of the Past: Tattoo Revival in the Cook Islands’.
Today Therese is an advocate for the environment, in her work, at home and in her community. She is passionate about building resilience in communities and education for sustainability.
Ia ora na, I’m India Ranitea Teohiuarii Vehiatua Tabellini and I just turned 21. I was born in Moorea and I grew up in Italy, which is my dad’s country of origin. When I finished high school, I moved back to Tahiti. I wanted to understand my tahitian side, to create a real link with my roots and a culture that I felt it as part of me but that I didn’t really know.
That’s why I sail on Fa’afaite, my tahitian va’a: it is not only about the pleasure of being on the Ocean but it answers to these deeper questions.
In this moment I am part of the crew which is bringing Marumaru Atua back to Rarotonga, back at home.It is a special experience, that makes me richer in knowledge. I will be able to share this with my people.I am so glad to be here. India is part of a cultural exchange program that is being established between the Cook Islands Voyaging Society and sister societies.
Photo Credit: Pelika Andrade… India and her Hawaiian twin Ohu modelling Haunui’s wet weather gear, they loved it so much they bought themselves a set!!
Ohu was born and raised in Hawaii, Ohu comes from the Makalii voyaging family and from there joined Hokulea crew on her first voyage in 2014 from Tahiti-Rarotonga-Aitutaki-Pago Pago with Tua and Peia. Ohu is 22 years old. Ohu is fluent in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, she represents Hawaii with pride!! She is a fantastic ambassador for Makalii and Hawaii. It was during the Malama Honua voyage with Tua and Peia she asked if she could join them on Marumaru Atua on the MUA voyage.
Ohu joined the crew in Sydney sailing to Auckland, while in NZ she helped out with the haul out of the vaka and showing our crew how to do the lashings with fellow Hawaiian Kala. It is a great pleasure and honour to have Ohu on board again to bring our vaka home while representing Makalii family and our polynesian brothers and sisters from Hawaii.
Elijah-James Hanita Pakoti, or James, was born in Moonee Ponds, Australia and is the younger brother of Jamaal. James is one of 4 brothers and 5 sisters, his family hails from Takuvaine, Happy Valley, and he recently played in the Rugby Grand finals when the Takuvaine Reds scored a 34-0 victory over the Avatiu Eels taking out the trophy for the second year running. He is the baby of the crew just turned 22 years. He joined Marumaru Atua – Te Mana O Te Moana voyage when he was barely 18, and like his brother has clocked up more nautical miles than most people would amass in a lifetime!! He put his sailing career on hold to pursue his rugby career, but when he heard about this voyage, he dropped everything and flew home to join the crew. When James first joined Marumaru Atua he was very envious of the nicknames all the old school sailors had earned, Steak, Ninja, Snake… he wanted a cool nickname too, and from that moment he was known only as “Sausage”!!!
James was chosen to skipper Marumaru Atua home to Rarotonga for the Te Manava Vaka Festival, under the mentor-ship of PWO Navigator Tua Pittman and Admiral of the Te Mana O Te Moana Fleet Magnus Danbolt. The festival is a celebration of the vaka and our youth are our future, our up and coming leaders, James and his brother Jamaal (currently sailing on Vaka Motu Rangi) are the future of Cook Islands Voyaging Society.
PHOTO: Veteran sailor Ti Pekapo and Sausage
Kia ora koutou katoa,
No Tuhourangi Ngati Waihiao me Ngararanui ahau He uri au no te waka o Te Arawa Me ki mai Maketu ki Tongaririo Tihei Mauriora
I first became involved in waka hourua in 2001 when i was fortunate to do a couple of day sails on Te Au o Tonga. Not long after I became involved in the Te Wananga o Aotearoa waka AO1, the construction, ocean trials,crew selection and training. During the AO1 training I met Papa Hector, Jacko Thatcher and Stan Conrad who invited me to become a part of the Te Aurere whanau. So until the trials began on the new fleet of waka I moved between both AO1 and Te Aurere attaining as much sailing experience and knowledge I could. In 2009 the trials for the new fleet of waka began and once again I was fortunate to be involved with the first waka “off the rank” Marumaru Atua. Also in 2009 I crewed Te Matau a Maui back from Fiji. The following year 2010 the journey Tavaru began and as luck would have it i was humbled to gain a spot on Marumaru Atua for its return voyage to Rarotonga via Raivavae and Tahiti. 2011-2012 I was again fortunate enough to sail on Te Matau a Maui under the kaupapa of Te Mana o te Moana throughout the Pacific. 2014 I was fortunate to do a delivery sail of one of the new waka motu “Rangi” to Tahiti. At this moment I find myself once again on Marumaru Atua on the kaupapa Te Manava Vaka Festival.
In terms of experience of waka hourua I find myself relatively new to this kaupapa. There is much more to learn I have been privileged to meet esteemed people such as those I have previously mentioned and others such as Tua, Peia, T, Magnus, Nainoa, Paio, etc. The list is continuous! If there is one thing that sticks in my mind about this kaupapa in recent times is the new and keen voyagers that have appeared on the scene. This tells me that the treasures that have been handed down through the generations from our ancestors are alive and well.
Finally my Aotearoa whanau ask me, how come you always sail on Marumaru Atua? My reply “Te Au o Tonga” gave me my first experience to sailing” What other answer do I need to give?
mauriora – Pererika Makiha
PHOTO CREDIT: Ilka Rere (Captain Nicholas Henry, Pererika, Tua)
Haimoana is 26 years, His Iwi Te Aupouri, Te Arawa. He joins Marumaru Atau as an experienced voyager, 6 years with vaka Te Aurere / Ngahiraka as a crew member.
Haimona sailed the entire Waka Tapu journey from Aotearoa to Rapanui and back which took 9 months. He was crew on board Te Aurere to Austral, Tupuai, Gambier (Mangareva), Rapanui, Tahiti, Rarotonga and back to New Zealand.
He is a student and worker in Te Aurere in “Te Wananga nui o Kupe” under the guidance of Hector Busby and Hemi Eruera with the support of New Zealand Maori Arts & Crafts. “I am humbled and fortunate to be invited on board Marumaru Atua. I am a passionate sailor and hope to learn and have great experiences amongst the crew and the Cook Islands people.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Dan Lin
Why do i want to be on the Marumaru Atua Vaka? I really wanted to get the feel of how our Tupuna were sailing the ocean back then, and what they were thinking what they could have done to make charges to their Vaka also how did they get here to Aotearoa did they find it hard coming over? all these things I want to know….Just fell in love with our Vaka when we were working on her…And to sail back from here Aotearoa to the Mother land Rarotonga it feels like we are the Tupuna’s who came over here and found land and going back home to tell our people. Love It!!
Karorangi spent many hours sanding and preparing and painting our vaka while she was on dry dock in Auckland, We made a plea for help and he came down and so we are honoured to have Karorangi sail with us back home.
This guy doesn’t need any introductions… veteran voyager, the oldest member of our crew, Steven Daniel, aka Steve or Steak. Born and raised in Ngatangiia, Rarotonga. Steve hails from the Kirikava Atai family of Aitutaki and the Ngati Kainuku of Takitumu from the Koropuaka line. Steve by day is a fisherman and farmer. Steve has sailed with Te Au O Tonga for many years and but more recently Marumaru Atua and also with Te Matau a Maui. Steve has sailed to Tahiti, Marquesas, Hawaii, San Francisco, Monteray, Los Angeles, Mexico, Coco Islands, Galapagos, Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu and the Solomons with the Te Mana O Te Moana Voyage and Gold Coast and Sydney on the MUA voyage.
When Steve heard the call for the MUA voyage there was no question, he had to go, voyaging is in his blood. Steve has been in NZ since the vaka arrived in December and he is happy to be FINALLY making his journey home… Watch out Ngatangiia!! Your boy Steve is coming home and he is expecting the “Big Boys” to be cold and ready and waiting!!! | <urn:uuid:e9282d7b-759c-4077-a858-b501b7fad748> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.cookislandsvoyaging.org/te-manava-crew/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.962211 | 5,436 | 1.820313 | 2 |
In 2022, some camps are organising camp experiences for you to participate in. We are hopeful that they will be able to go ahead. Camps will follow the local conditions closely, and may have to cancel activities if the local COVID-19 situation forces them to do so. If you have already signed up for a camp-activity you will be informed when this happens. We will update the website also, when such decisions are taken. Please check your own local authority travel advisory to see if you can travel to or return from the camp after the activity. At all times, when at camps, please observe it’s COVID-19 policy (such as wearing masks, social distancing, washing hands, etc).
Camp Elk Run Farm is the pilot farm for a non-profit called Drylands Agroecology Research. It is situated on 14 acres of previously dry and degraded fields in the rolling hills and grasslands of Longmont, Colorado. This region was once inhabited by native peoples of the Ute, Cheyenne-Arapaho, Comanche, Apache, Hopi, Dine, and other tribes. Once settlers from other continents arrived in the 1800s, towns, farms, and cities throughout Colorado were established. Many of the new settler’s agricultural practices were unsustainable and quickly degraded the once fertile grasslands.
In 2015, when Elk Run Farm began, the topsoil on this 14-acre foothills property had been visibly degraded, and little to no biodiversity remained. The overgrazing of ruminants, non-sustainable land management, extractive productions, and dry/arid/drought conditions was to blame. There was only enough well water on-site to irrigate about one acre of the farm, and the prevailing opinion was that there was not enough water on-site to restore the land to a farmable state.
Seven years later, the techniques that the founders used to regenerate the land have become the core methodologies of the pilot farm’s non-profit, Drylands Agroecology Research (DAR). These techniques include water-harvesting earthworks, dryland agroforestry, intensive livestock management, and drought-resilient grain crop trials and breeding. DAR is scaling its implementations through partnerships with landowners and simultaneously developing a research program to track how well the landscapes are sequestering carbon, retaining moisture, supporting biodiversity, and producing viable agricultural yields. Camp Elk Run Farm aims to restore over 1000 hectares of land within the next decade so that these lands can once again teem with the spirit they used to hold.
Anyone is invited to support Elk Run Farm through our volunteer program, which provides general opportunities to engage with farm activities, the research program, and events. We also have a need for volunteers with particular hard skills such as equipment/tractor operation, construction, community outreach, etc…
A warm welcome, service-based leadership, gentle, confident guidance and ample community connections. You can also join us for simple day time classes, plant walks, workshop intensives, Permaculture Design courses, farm to table dinners, and celebrations with live music.
Camp Elk Run Farm has:
Camp Elk Run Farm is the pilot research project for Drylands Agroecology Research. Their core belief is that this project will allow many local farms and community members to come together and effectively learn and practice regenerative design, installation, and socially/environmentally responsible land stewardship. Together as a team, Camp Elk Run Farm is striving to show the importance of creating true connections to the land through regeneration and environmental justice work.
Long-term, Camp Elk Run Farm envisions a massively-scaled up network of farms, public lands, private properties, and Indigenous lands interconnected in a restoration and stewardship culture, with thousands of regenerative economic livelihoods supported by super-abundant mixed agricultural and social enterprise ecosystems.
3 – 6 June – details to follow!
Three-season outdoor gathering spaces
Medical facilities nearby
Restoration of livelihoods
Your safety is very important to us. Most camps are in locations that are completely safe for you to travel to. Some camps are in locations where there is civil unrest, higher levels of crime, or in areas where there could be severe nature events (earthquakes, tornados, vulcanic eruptions). We strongly advise you to check with your national authority’s travel advisory service to see if there are specific travel advisories for the region you are travelling to. We strongly advise you to comply with that travel advisory. If there is a negative travel advisory for the area you plan to go to, we want to impress on you that it is your decision to not heed the warnings and go. ERC can then not be liable in that situation if something happens to you.
Work at camps is usually safe. The camp coordinators make your safety their highest priority too. But you will be working with tools and sometimes even (heavy) machinery. Sometimes the terrain can be slightly treacherous. Heat or cold can become a problem for people at work that do not take the necessary measures to prevent injury from weather conditions. Especially in remote locations, all people at an Ecosystem Restoration Camp will need to watch out for eachother’s safety. For this reason we ask you to also sign our Code of Conduct, through which you commit to contributing to a safe environment at camps for all that are there with you. Take yours and all other camper’s safety seriously! Together, while watching over eachother, we can restore our ecosystems safely and successfully.
Stichting Ecosystem Restoration Foundation /
Ecosystem Restoration Camps 2020 | <urn:uuid:c1d88ccc-f61a-42d1-8c8d-1dc1731eda02> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ecosystemrestorationcamps.org/camp-elk-run-farm-usa/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.940329 | 1,220 | 2.09375 | 2 |
The language we use is important. Nice sounding buzzwords like “reform,” “choice,” and others can be used in ways that have devastating effects on communities. The latest word getting a lot of buzz in Camden education circles is “accountability.” But the accountability fetish only applies to a very narrow understanding of the word; the Camden School District is neither legally nor democratically accountable.
With Uncommon Schools now officially approved by the state to come to Camden, it’s worth taking a deeper look at what they mean by accountability. Let’s go directly to the Uncommon Schools website.
Under the heading What is a Charter School? Uncommon Schools explains “accountability” by saying:
A charter school is an independently run public school granted greater flexibility in its operations, in return for greater accountability for performance.
“Performance” is another one of those words that sounds great until we take a deeper look at what it means. By performance, Uncommon Schools means test scores. Uncommon Schools are accountable to the state and judged by test scores. This is controversial only because analysis by Mark Weber and Bruce Baker shows that much of test score gains in Uncommon Schools comes from lower rates of special education or disadvantaged students. Essentially, a significant portion of these scores comes from exclusion.
But test scores are not the only, or even most logical, way to define accountability. And when we expand “accountability” to touch on democratic or legal areas, the school district fails the test.
As I’ve detailed at length here, there is no democratic accountability in Camden. It is the only district to have both a state-appointed superintendent, and a non-elected school board. I’ve long been calling for some sort of standard that parents and students could meet if they disapproved of the changes. Four months ago I asked:
– Is there any scenario in which community feedback could result in the changing of a plan to replace a public school with a Renaissance School? What specifics benchmarks could be met by communities for this to happen?
The answer is no. Teachers have protested. Parents have protested. Students have protested. None have received any indication that there is a scenario in which their voices would make a difference.
The school district uses test-based accountability as a club, but is unwilling to set up any system that will hold itself accountable to the people it serves. That’s a theme. Not only is there a lack of accountability to the Camden residents, but there is a lack of accountability to the law. My colleague at Rutgers, Dr. Julia Sass Rubin, published a piece at EdWeek that details what she calls “Shady Public Dealings:”
Last week, while many of us were busy making plans for the summer, something much more sinister was happening in the halls of the State Capital in Trenton, N. J..
At 11 p.m., on Tuesday, June 24th, legislation was discussed and voted on by the New Jersey Senate and Assembly Budget Committees, without all the legislators understanding what they were approving. “We didn’t have the bills in advance,” complained one of the Senators, “I didn’t know what the hell the bills were.” This legislation was then quickly pushed through the full New Jersey Senate and Assembly.
The legislation revised a 2012 law known as Urban Hope in order to enable two charter chains – Mastery and Uncommon Schools – to claim a large share of Camden’s public education dollars. The charters’ efforts had been imperiled by the grassroots group Save Our Schools NJ, which had sent a series of letters in May to New Jersey Education Commissioner David Hespe. The letters detailed how the two charter chains and the Camden state-appointed Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard were violating various aspects of the Urban Hope law in their efforts to open new renaissance charter schools in Camden next fall. The violations included using temporary facilities instead of building new schools; failing to provide key information required by the application; and not giving Camden residents the opportunity to review and comment on their applications.
Rather than stopping their illegal activities in response to the letters, the Mastery and Uncommon charter chains and the Camden Superintendent turned to their friends in the legislature to “fix” the problem by amending the Urban Hope legislation so that what had been illegal could now be legal.
In this case, Uncommon and Mastery Schools, along with the district, did not follow the law as written. The state legislature then changed the law to make their actions legal. This after state-appointed superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard stood in front of the public at a board of education meeting and, when questioned on the topic, insisted that the Renaissance schools’ applications were in compliance. Will he be held accountable for that?
When it comes to the district’s flawed understanding of test scores, the Camden School District is more than happy to use accountability as a hammer to fire teachers and close schools. But when it comes to being accountable to the people it serves, or to the law it serves under, the district is woefully lacking. | <urn:uuid:290d2697-0b69-431e-b1ed-79f819ca665f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://danley.camden.rutgers.edu/2014/07/11/false-accountability-from-the-camden-school-district/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.963765 | 1,053 | 2.3125 | 2 |
The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers
Foreign Policy presents a unique portrait of 2012's global marketplace of ideas and the thinkers who make them.
1 AUNG SAN SUU KYI, THEIN SEIN
For showing that change can happen anywhere, even in one of the world's most repressive states.
Member of parliament, president | Burma
In 2012, the hopes for the Arab Spring began fading into cynicism as the world watched Syria descend into civil war, while the region's nascent democracies struggled with their newfound freedom. But, meanwhile, one of the most remarkable and unexpected political reversals of our time has unfolded on the other side of the globe: Burma, long among the world's most repressive dictatorships, began to reform under the leadership of two very unlikely allies.
In 2012, the hopes for the Arab Spring began fading into cynicism as the world watched Syria descend into civil war, while the region’s nascent democracies struggled with their newfound freedom. But, meanwhile, one of the most remarkable and unexpected political reversals of our time has unfolded on the other side of the globe: Burma, long among the world’s most repressive dictatorships, began to reform under the leadership of two very unlikely allies.
For nearly 20 years, dissident Aung San Suu Kyi was sealed under house arrest by Burma’s paranoid military junta, which had drawn an iron curtain over the country since 1962. Now she’s a duly elected member of the country’s parliament — and it’s partly thanks to reformist President Thein Sein, a former general often described as an awkward, bookish bureaucrat. To the astonishment of many, Thein Sein began loosening restrictions on free speech and opening the economy after coming to power in 2011. This year, as the United States restored diplomatic ties with Burma (which the junta renamed Myanmar in 1989) and eased travel and economic sanctions, his government curbed censorship of the media and freed hundreds of political prisoners.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the soft-spoken, iconic political activist whom devotees call simply “the Lady,” may not seem like an obvious partner for Thein Sein, but she has become one by doing what few legends of her stature can: embracing the messy pragmatism of politics. Although Burma’s struggles are far from over — she has warned that international investment has been too rapid, and ethnic violence is escalating — the willingness of both the Lady and the general to embrace short-term compromise and foster long-term reconciliation in what was only recently one of the world’s most isolated countries is something to celebrate.
Fittingly, Aung San Suu Kyi finally was able to accept her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in June. She used the occasion to remind the world of those like her, who struggle in the most forlorn places: “To be forgotten too is to die a little. It is to lose some of the links that anchor us to the rest of humanity.” It is a sentiment still felt from Aleppo to Havana, Pyongyang to Tehran, but also, as Aung San Suu Kyi and Thein Sein have shown, one that doesn’t need to be permanent.
As the spirit of 2011 has faded this year amid religious violence in Egypt and Libya and the bloody sectarian civil war in Syria, Tunisia remains the Arab Spring’s most promising success story, with a contentious but robust political system and an economy that is growing again.
Much of the credit goes to President Moncef Marzouki, who has provided vision and wisdom since taking office in December 2011. At the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September, the doctor-turned-democracy-activist called on the United Nations to declare dictatorship a “disease” and launch an official campaign against autocratic rulers, including the establishment of an international court to arbitrate elections and government legitimacy so as to prevent dictators from taking power in the first place. “It behooves us to implement an ambitious, bold program to eliminate dictatorship in the same way in which we got rid of polio and smallpox,” Marzouki said.
But Marzouki, a former professor of public health, is no starry-eyed idealist. An admirer of Mahatma Gandhi, he devoted himself to human rights early in his career, traveling to India in his youth and South Africa soon after the end of apartheid. As head of Tunisia’s leading human rights organization, he was arrested several times by Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s regime and was eventually forced into exile in France, where he remained a prominent figure in Tunisia’s liberal opposition but angered many of his cohorts by working with the Islamist Ennahda movement. Marzouki returned home after Ben Ali’s ouster and was elected president by the country’s Constituent Assembly.
A committed secularist, Marzouki, who is overseeing the writing of a new constitution, insists that Islamist parties must play a role in Tunisia’s governance, though he has also been willing to stand up to them when they overreach. He describes the country’s ultra-conservative Salafi groups as “extremely dangerous” but outside the mainstream. If anyone can guide Tunisia through its transition to democracy — and hopefully create a model for a troubled region — it’s Marzouki, who just might have the right combination of tenacity and levelheadedness to see the country through.
Reading list: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond; Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future, by Peter D. Ward; anthology of haikus. Best idea heard in 2012: Tax financial transactions. Worst idea: The support of China, Russia, and Iran to the Syrian regime. American decline or American renewal? Renewal. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? Not to tweet.
Love them or hate them, America’s ultimate power couple are also its most effective advocates for liberal internationalism: a vision that government can build prosperity at home and promote democracy and development abroad without demonizing the successful or needlessly antagonizing other countries. It’s a different kind of American exceptionalism, based on more than just firepower. And in a U.S. election year that often felt like Randian revanchism vs. opportunistic populism on economics and chest-thumping aggression vs. coldhearted realism on foreign policy, it’s no wonder that America is in the grips of a serious case of Clinton nostalgia.
In an ironic twist, Hillary Clinton — once seen as the calculating cynic to Barack Obama’s idealistic optimist — has emerged as one of the Obama administration’s most forceful advocates for human rights and democracy. Clinton, who was among those who led the push for the United States to intervene in Libya last year, remains a relentless campaigner for women’s rights and economic development, and she has insisted on the promotion of rights for gays and lesbians as an official component of U.S. diplomacy for the first time. But she has also added hardheaded global tactician to her portfolio, as when she spearheaded tense negotiations in China this past spring for the release of dissident Chen Guangcheng (No. 9). With a 66 percent approval rating, she’s a lot more popular than her boss these days and has taken the ups and downs of the Arab Spring — which she accurately predicted at a time when many others succumbed to starry-eyed wishful thinking — as proof that her brand of pragmatic politics harnessed to global star power can be a recipe for American restoration.
As for Bill Clinton, he silenced the doubters at the Democratic National Convention with an impassioned speech on Obama’s behalf that had many pining for the salad years of the 1990s. Forty-eight minutes long and heavy on statistics and his trademark folksy ad-libs as he made the case for economic revitalization, the speech proved once again that no one in American politics does a better job of “‘splainin’ stuff” to the public. He’s still willing to criticize the president, for example, questioning Obama’s assaults on opponent Mitt Romney’s business success. And fittingly, Clinton’s signature post-presidency achievement, the Clinton Global Initiative, is dedicated to the notion that bringing the world’s most powerful and successful people together to work on pressing global problems is more productive than attacking those people. He has been busy on his own innovative projects as well, touring Africa to promote sustainable agriculture and Haiti to discuss alternative energy, periodically dispensing his homespun wisdom along the way. “We have a saying in Arkansas,” he told a group of baffled nurses in Kigali, Rwanda. “If you find a turtle on a fence post, he didn’t get there by accident.”
After four years and a record 112 countries visited (as of writing), Hillary will soon step down as secretary of state. Despite her stated plans to retire from politics as a grandmother-in-waiting, many supporters still haven’t given up hope that the Clintons will once again be in the White House come 2016. Only this time, Bill may be the one at home baking cookies.
Not since Henry Ford’s Model T brought driving to the American masses at the turn of the 20th century has a motor vehicle so promised to revolutionize global transportation. Hydrogen and electric cars once seemed poised to fill that void, but their costs and upkeep have proved prohibitive. Enter the driverless car, the brainchild of Google fellow and Stanford University computer scientist Sebastian Thrun — and now street-legal.
How radical is it? Thrun has in effect reimagined the future of cars — as more about software than hardware. Relying on high-powered sensors and artificial-intelligence software that mimics human decisions, Thrun’s cars can maneuver on and off highways and through rush-hour traffic all by themselves. (One even made it up San Francisco’s famously winding Lombard Street.) The self-driving cars’ growing legion of advocates says the vehicles could completely overhaul the way we think about transportation, making it more efficient, cheaper, greener, and safer. “This is an opportunity to fix a really colossal, big problem for society,” the German-born Thrun says. Robot drivers don’t drink, get distracted, or fall asleep behind the wheel — and their reflexes are measured in milliseconds. Thrun thinks the cars could halve the number of annual road deaths, now at more than 1.2 million worldwide. And because the safer driverless vehicles could be built smaller and lighter, they could also radically reduce fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions.
The journey toward a self-driving vehicle began back when Thrun and his team of Stanford researchers spent a year in the California desert designing the Stanley robot car to compete in a 2005 Pentagon road race aimed at sparking innovation. Stanley took home the $2 million prize after successfully traveling 131 miles across the Mojave Desert.
Today, the driverless cars of 2012 are hitting the streets. In August, Google’s fleet of experimental cars logged its 300,000th mile on public roads. That followed Nevada’s move in March to issue the first license for a self-driving car. As of September, Google’s version of Stanley was also cleared to drive in California, the most populous U.S. state and one that historically sets the standard for how cars are built worldwide. Audi, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, and Volvo are all designing or testing self-driving vehicles now.
Plenty of technical hurdles remain — not to mention the need to update current traffic laws that assume a human driver — before the cars are produced for a mass market. Still, it’s no longer a stretch to imagine that someday soon, if you’re driving on Highway 101 between San Jose and San Francisco, you just might see Thrun finally starting to relax behind the wheel of his robo-powered Prius.
Reading list: Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. Best idea: New approach to desalinization of seawater. Worst idea: Cutting taxes for the rich helps poor people. American decline or American renewal? Renewal. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? Absolutely.
For insisting on women’s power to choose.
As a leader of the world’s largest private development organization, Melinda Gates has long impressed development hands by tackling extreme poverty, pioneering vaccinations, and waging a bold campaign with her husband to eradicate polio. Now she’s establishing herself as a powerful force in her own right, taking on the Catholic Church for its conservative resistance to contraception. By 2020, she says, the Gates Foundation will make “affordable, lifesaving contraceptive information, services, and supplies” available to 120 million women in the world’s poorest countries. According to Gates Foundation-funded research, increasing access to contraception could save the lives of more than 100,000 women each year, slashing maternal mortality by nearly one-third.
Gates, a practicing Catholic, firmly disagrees with the Vatican’s longstanding opposition to contraception and argues that improving access to it is vitally important for public health — and she has personally and more or less single-handedly vowed to “get this back on the global agenda.”
“This will be my life’s work,” she told the Guardian in July. And she has the funds to do it: By 2020, she announced this year, the Gates Foundation will invest $560 million in improving access to birth control, and it plans to raise roughly $4 billion from outside donors. Most will be spent in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where access to contraceptives is not widespread and maternal and infant mortality rates are devastatingly high. Contraceptive use already prevents 272,000 maternal deaths per year, but millions of women around the world still lack access to modern family planning — precisely the void Gates has taken bold steps to fill.
Reading list: In the Shadow of the Banyan, by Vaddey Ratner; A Good Man: Rediscovering My Father, Sargent Shriver, by Mark Shriver; The Last Hunger Season, by Roger Thurow. Best idea: Three Tanzanian women who innovated an unbreakable security system for their group mobile money account. Worst idea: Women in the developing world not being empowered to determine if and when to have a child. American decline or American renewal? American renewal because of the human promise, innovation, and opportunity that exists in our country. More Europe or less? More Europe, they continue to be leaders in global development aid. To tweet or not to tweet? To tweet and join the global conversation.
For daring to imagine a better everything.
A perennial FP Global Thinker for the enormous scale and ambition of his efforts to finance — and reimagine — global health and development, Bill Gates earns a mention this year for investing in … toilets. Don’t snicker. It’s an urgently worthy cause: 2.5 billion people — or nearly 40 percent of the world‘s population — lack proper bathroom sanitation, leading to the spread of diarrheal diseases that claim the lives of 1.5 million children each year.
To combat it, his Gates Foundation has invested nearly $150 million in programs that improve global sanitation, hosting an engineering competition to develop a “super-toilet” that’s inexpensive to build and maintain and that doesn’t require a water or sewage system. It’s a simple concept but one that Gates, the man whose innovations helped transform personal computing software, says will “revolutionize” sanitation in the developing world as well as in wealthy countries. The winning design, from the California Institute of Technology, uses a solar-powered electrochemical reactor that kills off microorganisms while producing hydrogen and electricity. The foundation hopes to make a pilot version of the system operational by 2014.
Of course, sanitation is just one sideline for Gates. Late last year he became the first private citizen to address a G-20 summit, giving a speech on the future of development that cemented his move from “businessman to statesman,” as the Guardian put it. With much of the world looking inward to fix economic messes at home, Gates is filling the development void abroad — from spearheading an ambitious effort to eradicate polio by 2018, with the foundation giving $150 million to the cause annually, to ramping up his push for food security, including committing $2 billion toward fighting hunger over the next five years. Meanwhile, Gates and Warren Buffett (No. 42), who has committed to giving much of his wealth to the Gates Foundation, persuaded 11 more billionaires to join their two-year-old “Giving Pledge,” bringing the tally to an astonishing 92 families who will donate half their wealth to philanthropic causes before they die.
The Taliban’s most fearsome enemy in Pakistan isn’t U.S. drones or the military’s tanks: It’s a 15-year-old schoolgirl. Malala Yousafzai’s tool of defiance? Her own bravery in speaking out for the simple idea that girls should have access to the same education as boys. That shouldn’t be a radical notion in 2012, but even as Pakistan bristles with roughly 100 nuclear warheads, up to 60 percent of women are still illiterate and two out of every five girls fail to finish primary school. Challenging the tyranny of those low expectations can get you killed in today’s Pakistan.
In October, as Malala headed home after an exam, a Taliban gunman stopped her school bus and announced that she must be punished for insulting “the soldiers of Allah.” Then he shot her in the head.
Malala, who was grievously wounded but miraculously survived, has fit a lifetime of activism into her few short years. When Islamist militants overran Malala’s native Swat Valley in 2009, banning girls’ education, she penned an anonymous blog for the BBC about the daily horrors of life under Taliban rule. “My five-year-old brother was playing on the lawn. When my father asked him what he was playing, he replied ‘I am making a grave,'” she wrote in one entry. The journal offered a ground-level view of the creeping totalitarianism in Pakistan — and some soon compared it to Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, but set in modern-day Swat Valley.
Armed only with her convictions and the firm support of her father, who runs a private girls’ school, Malala refused to be silenced. She became a celebrity in Pakistan through her outspoken interviews, chaired a “child assembly” that aimed to expand opportunities for youth in the Swat Valley, and pleaded with late U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke to help halt the Talibanization of her country. “I shall raise my voice,” she said last year. “If I didn’t do it, who would?”
It’s a lesson in courage that is inspiring others to stand up to the forces of barbarism in their midst. Too bad it took a tragedy to do it.
The brainy 44th president is a huge basketball fan, but Barack Obama knows that none of the plays he calls from the Oval Office are slam dunks. “Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable,” he said in an interview this year. “Any given decision you make you’ll wind up with a 30 to 40 percent chance that it isn’t going to work. You have to own that and feel comfortable with the way you made the decision.”
At home, Obama has done far more to lift the faltering U.S. economy out of the doldrums than his critics will acknowledge, while expanding the social safety net and daring to take on the greatest threat to America’s fiscal well-being: the country’s exploding health-care costs. Abroad, he has curbed his predecessor’s dangerous excesses, though that doesn’t mean retreating from the world. As he never ceased reminding us on the campaign trail, Osama bin Laden is dead; killer drones aggressively patrol the skies over Pakistan and elsewhere in search of al Qaeda targets; and Obama’s decision to lead (from behind!) an international coalition against Libyan despot Muammar al-Qaddafi created the strange paradox of an avowedly pro-American Arab country awash in armed militias.
But Obama, ever the cautious realist, has been a careful steward of American power. This year has seen the pullout of tens of thousands of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the theater of America’s longest war. The president has also been wary of getting entangled in the even bloodier sectarian conflict in Syria, refusing to contemplate a Libya-style intervention, and he has wisely adopted a low-key approach to Egypt as it struggles to preserve its newly won democratic freedoms amid an Islamist resurgence.
Whoever sits in the Oval Office in the years ahead will find it hard to break away from Obama’s more restrained view of America’s role in the world — especially now that he has four more years to follow through on his promise to end the wars of the post-9/11 decade.With the president’s determination to “chip away” at global problems and make America’s allies part of the solution, he has conclusively put cowboy diplomacy out to pasture.
Repeal Obamacare. Lower income tax rates and simplify the tax code. Cut Medicaid by a third and make it a state-controlled block-grant program. Overhaul Medicare by giving beneficiaries money to buy competing public and private health plans. Reduce non-entitlement spending to its lowest level since World War II. And save $5 trillion in the process.
These are the bold ideas contained in Paul Ryan’s austere budget proposal, which the congressman from Wisconsin has gradually persuaded Republican thought leaders, lawmakers, and presidential candidates to support in an effort to shed the reputation for fiscal profligacy that the Republican Party earned under President George W. Bush. “To find a parallel to the way Ryan has so thoroughly seized control of the Republican agenda and identity, you have to go back at least to Gingrich in his nineties heyday, or possibly to Reagan,” New York magazine marveled last spring.
In the 2012 presidential election, contender Mitt Romney didn’t just champion Ryan’s ideas — he tapped the 42-year-old libertarian-leaning lawmaker as his running mate, catapulting the debate over the size and scope of the U.S. government to the top of the political agenda. “The choice is whether to put hard limits on economic growth or hard limits on the size of government, and we choose to limit government,” Ryan declared during his speech at the Republican National Convention, where organizers prominently displayed a humming national debt clock.
Ryan’s anti-deficit jihad has global implications too. He has embodied his party’s internal struggle over defense spending, voting for automatic defense cuts to trim the deficit while opposing reductions in military spending. “Letting budgetary concerns drive national-security strategy means choosing decline,” Ryan declared in his budget, proposing cuts that would effectively slash funding to entities such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department — but not the military — by nearly $5 billion. We may not see Ryan’s dramatic ideas enacted now that his ticket has lost the election. But they might very well prove prescient.
A year ago, Chen Guangcheng was living under house arrest in the small Chinese village of Dongshigu, unable to travel or receive visitors and subject to constant harassment by the local authorities. Today, he is a global human rights icon, living with his family in New York’s Greenwich Village and free to study and go where he pleases — though uncertain about whether he will ever be allowed to return to his homeland.
Chen, a self-taught lawyer who has been blind since early childhood, first came to prominence in 2005, when he brought a class-action lawsuit alleging that local authorities had forced women in his region to undergo forced abortions and sterilizations as part of their adherence to China’s one-child policy. He was imprisoned for four years for his temerity and then detained in his home, where he faced regular physical abuse. As his fame grew within China, futile attempts to break past the phalanx of guards near his house became a popular method of protest. He soon was adopted as an international cause célèbre, with everyone from U.S. Rep. Chris Smith to actor Christian Bale seeking to visit.
Chen shocked the world in April when he made a daring, next-to-impossible escape, climbing over the wall surrounding his house (breaking his foot in the process) and catching a ride some 350 miles to Beijing, where he took refuge in the U.S. Embassy. After a tense, days-long diplomatic standoff closely involving Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (No. 3), a deal was struck under which Chen would be allowed to travel to the United States to study. Now at New York University, Chen has embraced his new role as an evangelist for human rights, making the case that incremental change — one village or even one person at a time — can eventually transform a superpower. Against all odds, he remains optimistic, believing that China, taking a cue from Japan and South Korea, must “learn Eastern democracy.” He even thinks it’s inevitable: “Nobody can stop the progress of history,” he says.
Best idea: The determination of China’s common people. This is the hope of China’s future. Worst idea: Violence. American decline or American renewal? This depends on whether the good nature of common people can be given expression in government policies, including foreign policy.
Flip-flopping gets a bad rap. Yes, it can be depressing to hear politicians cynically reverse strongly held positions from one election cycle to another. Sometimes, however, when a particularly forceful and articulate voice in a policy debate switches sides, it can be the most effective way to shift the entire conversation.
David Blankenhorn may not have been the most high-profile gay marriage opponent to have had a change of heart this year — that was President Barack Obama — but he was definitely the most surprising. The founder of the conservative Institute for American Values wrote The Future of Marriage, a 2007 book offering intellectual cover to those arguing that same-sex marriage threatens to undermine the institution of the family. He also served as an expert witness in court defending California’s Proposition 8, which legally defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. This year, however, swayed by the growing support for same-sex marriage, Blankenhorn did a full 180, putting his heresy on display in the New York Times in June. “Whatever one’s definition of marriage, legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness,” he wrote, prompting an enraged reaction from his former allies.
Monetary policy may not provoke the same visceral emotions as the marriage debate, but it was no less shocking in the economics world when Narayana Kocherlakota, the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank’s president, said publicly in September that the Federal Reserve should hold interest rates near zero until unemployment falls below 5.5 percent. Kocherlakota, a lifelong inflation hawk, had been one of the most outspoken opponents of lowering rates and had voted against doing so in 2011. Why did he switch? Facts on the ground, namely little real threat of inflation and the need for jobs, jobs, jobs (in Fed speak: “By increasing monetary accommodation,” he said, “the committee can better meet its employment mandate while still satisfying its price-stability mandate.”) The turnabout was in line with a major shift by the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Ben Bernanke (No. 15), resulting in the new growth-targeted monetary policy known as quantitative easing. Time will tell whether this will kick-start America’s job market or lead to out-of-control inflation.
A closer look at the numbers also changed the mind of Richard A. Muller, a University of California/Berkeley physicist and author of popular science books like Physics for Future Presidents, who had long been the go-to climate-change skeptic for those unsatisfied with sneering Drudge headlines. For years, he argued that widely used climate-change models were flawed because thermometers around the world had been placed too near the pavement and scientists were manipulating the temperature data they used. So Muller, along with his daughter, embarked on his own effort — the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project — which automated data analysis to eliminate human bias. Given that they were partly funded by conservative billionaire Charles Koch, who also bankrolls the climate-skeptical Heartland Institute, Muller’s numbers were widely expected to “disprove” global warming. But instead, he had an epiphany: “Call me a converted skeptic,” he wrote, saying that “prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct” and “humans are almost entirely the cause.”
As these three thinkers prove, it’s never too late to change your mind.
MULLER Reading list: The Social Animal, by David Brooks; Uncommon Sense, by Alan Cromer; Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. Best idea: Clean fracking (producing shale gas in an environmentally acceptable way). Worst idea: Shut down conventional energy (Japanese nuclear, Gulf oil). American decline or American renewal? Renewal is possible, but it requires more sensible policies in the three Es: energy, education, and economics. We need less politicization and more objectivity. More Europe or less? Europe is about the right size. Maybe it should add Turkey and Morocco. To tweet or not to tweet? Twhat?
“Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening,” James Hansen wrote in a New York Times op-ed this year. Using his stature as NASA’s top climate scientist, Hansen has arguably done as much as anyone to sound this alarm, forcefully and unequivocally arguing that climate change is the work of humans long before other scientists were willing to say so. A self-described “reticent Midwestern scientist,” he may not look like a radical protest figure, but when it comes to the climate, Hansen is a latter-day Abbie Hoffman. After Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc across the Eastern Seaboard in October, an American public distracted for years by the troubles of the Great Recession finally seemed to awake to the destructive potential of a changing climate — which Hansen had been warning of for decades.
Since publishing some of the seminal studies on the effects of greenhouse gases in 1981, he has steadily ratcheted up the pressure on public officials to take his dire warnings seriously. Last year, the 71-year-old was even arrested in front of the White House after imploring President Barack Obama, via megaphone, to reject the Keystone XL pipline “for the sake of your children and grandchildren.” Nor was it the first time the outspoken scientist has found himself on the wrong side of the law. He has been censored by NASA, attacked by conservatives, and denounced by other climate scientists for his advocacy. But Hansen continues to speak widely about a threat he compares to a large asteroid headed for the Earth. Just in the last few months, as Arctic sea ice shrank to its lowest level yet, he published a study finding that as much as 13 percent of the planet’s surface has suffered from extreme heat in recent summers, up from less than 1 percent before 1980. We doubt Hansen is happy to see his theories confirmed.
More than half the countries in the European Union have changed leaders since the region’s sovereign debt crisis erupted three years ago, but Angela Merkel has not only remained in charge — as the steward of Europe’s largest economy, she has become the continent’s chief crisis manager. And Merkel, long known as “Frau Nein” for opposing efforts to bail out Europe’s troubled south, finally seemed to embrace that leadership role in 2012, prescribing a mix of austerity measures, structural reforms, and fiscal integration. She has tacked on mandatory spending cuts to aid packages for Greece, Ireland, and Portugal and spearheaded a historic EU deficit-reduction treaty. All along, the much-misunderstood Merkel has insisted on solving the regional crisis with more Europe, not less.
Yet she has done it by deftly catering to the frugal instincts of her political base. “We all have to resist the temptation to finance growth with increased debt yet again,” Merkel cautioned in June. A month earlier, France had elected François Hollande, who supports the very solutions — stimulus spending and collectivizing eurozone debt — that Merkel opposes. Caught between European leaders’ renewed focus on growth and domestic opposition to bailouts for Germany’s debt-saddled neighbors, Merkel finally backed a new European rescue fund and the European Central Bank’s plan to buy the debt of troubled eurozone countries.
What all her moves have in common is a relentless determination to resolve Europe’s gravest crisis since World War II by deepening the continent’s economic and political union, not unwinding it. Inspired to pursue politics by the fall of the Berlin Wall and EU architect Helmut Kohl, Merkel the onetime East German physicist often cites German reunification as an object lesson in Europe’s ability to overcome. “Do we dare to be more European?” she asked this year, advocating for more centralized decision-making on budgets and taxes. The answer could very well determine whether Merkel will be remembered as the savior of the European project or the leader who presided over its demise.
KNOCKED OUT: 15 of the EU’s 27 member states have lost leaders thanks in part to the eurocrisis. The list includes: Ivars Godmanis (Latvia, 2009), Ferenc Gyurcsany (Hungary, 2009), Mirek Topolanek (Czech Republic, 2009), Gordon Brown (Britain, 2010,) Brian Cowen (Ireland, 2011), Jose Socrates (Portugal, 2011), Mari Kiviniemi (Finland, 2011), Lars Lokke Rasmussen (Denmark, 2011), George Papandreou (Greece, 2011), Silvio Berlusconi (Italy, 2011), José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (Spain, 2011), Emil Boc (Romania, 2012), Borut Pahor (Slovenia, 2012), Iveta Radicova (Slovakia, 2012), Nicolas Sarkozy (France, 2012).
Almost single-handedly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have wrenched the world’s attention toward the apocalyptic potential of a nuclear Iran. “Today a great battle is being waged between the modern and the medieval,” Netanyahu said at the United Nations in September. “At stake is not merely the future of my country. At stake is the future of the world.”
Barak, once the standard-bearer of the Israeli left and an implacable foe of Netanyahu, has improbably become Bibi’s closest ally in the effort to stop Tehran from going nuclear. He has played a crucial role in focusing minds on what he calls the “zone of immunity” — when Iran’s nuclear program is past the point it can be destroyed by arms. If Israel does decide to strike on its own, it will be in no small measure due to Barak’s framing of a threat that he has called “a sword on the neck” of the Jewish state.
The effects of a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities remain unknown, but the result of this rhetorical offensive has been impressive. The two Israelis not only sparked a political debate at home but also induced Europe to cut off oil imports from Iran and got U.S. President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney into a prolonged argument over which presidential hopeful would be a better ally to the government in Jerusalem. Pretty impressive for a country the size of New Jersey.
As Netanyahu, at times an open partisan of the Republicans in the U.S. campaign, pressed Washington to define “red lines” that could provoke military action, Obama rushed to warn the Islamic Republic that “time is not unlimited” for a peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue, in addition to lining up an international coalition to isolate Iran. Israeli leaders have watched these moves with grudging appreciation, but they haven’t taken their fingers off the trigger. “We’ve waited for diplomacy to work. We’ve waited for sanctions to work,” Netanyahu said recently. “None of us can afford to wait much longer.”
If the Israeli government doesn’t end up launching a war against Iran, it won’t be because of the persuasive abilities of U.S. President Barack Obama or the political machinations of Israel’s opposition parties. More likely, it will be the work of calculating former security officials like onetime intelligence chief Meir Dagan and internal security director Yuval Diskin, who have stepped into the public arena in unprecedented fashion to make a convincing, hard-nosed case that a strike would only make the Iranian threat greater.
These former soldiers are no peaceniks: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once praised Dagan by saying that he went to war not with a knife but with “a rocket-propelled grenade between his teeth.” So when the legendarily aggressive former spy chief opposes a strike because it “would lead to a regional war and solve the internal problems of the Islamic Republic,” Israelis take note.
Diskin has not only criticized a strike on Iran as unworkable, but has also called into question the capability of Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to make the right decision. Their judgment is clouded by “messianic feelings,” Diskin has warned — an accusation that Israel often directs at the mullahs. These former spymasters are doing their best to help cooler heads prevail, reminding Israelis that not every problem can be solved by their impressive military.
“Professors at Bentley University who’ve never published a famous book don’t normally shift the public debate,” Slate‘s Matthew Yglesias wrote after the Federal Reserve announced in September a new round of “quantitative easing,” stimulating economic growth by buying assets from private banks. But Scott Sumner’s dogged blogging on his website, TheMoneyIllusion, has won rare bipartisan plaudits across the economics world, ranging from Goldman Sachs to Paul Krugman (No. 34) — and Sumner just might have permanently shifted U.S. monetary policy.
His big idea is nominal GDP targeting, the notion that the Fed’s policies should be focused on economic growth rather than inflation rates. As Sumner explains, “it’s about setting specific goals and promising to do whatever one can to meet those goals.” This means the Fed should keep up aggressive easing and inject money into the financial system until growth returns — inflation be damned.
The most important convert to Sumner’s ideas was Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke himself. As recently as November 2011, he dismissed the notion that the Fed should reorient its policies from inflation to growth targets. Over time, however, Bernanke reportedly came to realize that the U.S. jobs crisis was more severe than he realized and needed some unorthodox thinking. And he managed to bring his hawkish board around: On Sept. 13, the Fed announced that it would buy $40 billion a month of mortgage-backed securities and continue doing so until the U.S. job market improved, and never mind about inflation. “This is a ‘Main Street’ policy,” Bernanke said. “What we’re about here is trying to get jobs going.”
Influential economist and blogger Tyler Cowen, one of Sumner’s earliest champions, proclaimed it “Scott Sumner day.”
SUMNER Reading list: The Great Recession, by Robert L. Hetzel; 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami; The Places in Between, by Rory Stewart. Best idea: Develop self-driving cars. Worst idea: For the eurozone to double down with a fiscal union. American decline or American renewal? Decline in the short run. More Europe or less? More money, less Europe. To tweet or not to tweet? Not.
When was the last time a rock band changed the world? The Russian punk collective known as Pussy Riot captured global attention this year after three of the group’s members were sentenced to jail for the “punk prayer” they staged at a Moscow cathedral, earning the support of everyone from Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers to British Prime Minister David Cameron and the U.S. State Department, and becoming the unlikely international symbols of Russia’s re-energized opposition to an increasingly autocratic Vladimir Putin.
But the three members of the band arrested for the stunt — Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who were sent to remote prison camps for two-year sentences, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, who was released — are more than just slam-dancing “hooligans,” as the authorities describe them. Just read the powerful closing statements at their closely watched trial — a ringing manifesto that puts them squarely in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr., and Vaclav Havel.
In a sense, the band argued, it had already won its case by drawing an almost comical overreaction to an act that would have been treated as a minor infraction almost anywhere else. By using its own trial as a platform to indict the system as a whole, Pussy Riot did something more profound, exposing Putin’s “sovereign democracy” as “an organism sick to the core.” As Alyokhina put it, “The sickness explodes out into the open when you rub up against its inflamed abscesses.”
Tolokonnikova concluded with a speech citing Dostoyevsky, Socrates, and the Bible, laying out a mission statement for the project. “People can sense the truth. Truth really does have some kind of ontological, existential superiority over lies,” she said. “It is not three singers from Pussy Riot who are on trial here,” she declared. “It is the entire state system of the Russian Federation.”
Tolokonnikova then quoted a line from one of the band’s songs — “Open all the doors, tear off your epaulets/Come, taste freedom with us” — just before being led off to jail. What could be more punk than that?
If Adm. William McRaven has turned hunting terrorists into an art form, Abraham Karem is the man who provided him with the paintbrush. It has been three decades since Karem, a former Israeli Air Force engineer, retreated to his garage to construct something the Pentagon did not then consider possible — an unmanned drone that would reliably stay aloft for hours on end. The ultimate result of the project was the Predator drone, which has emerged as the defining weapon of the post-9/11 era.
McRaven, who oversees some of the most elite U.S. fighting forces at Special Operations Command, has spent a lifetime studying special operations and has formulated a blueprint for what makes them successful. He emphasizes the need for speed in commando assaults and extensive planning that relies on precise intelligence, which is where drones come in. In the operation that earned McRaven a spot in the history books — the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan last year — drones provided vital intelligence for months on the compound where the al Qaeda chief was staying. The raid presented a compelling vision for the 21st-century U.S. military: fast, networked, and deadly. But though the modern-day warrior has tools at his disposal that his ancestors could only dream of, McRaven doesn’t discount the old-fashioned virtue of a soldier’s dedication to the mission. “In an age of high technology and Jedi Knights we often overlook the need for personal involvement, but we do so at our own risk,” he has written.
While McRaven is busy revolutionizing warfare and the drones are buzzing over faraway lands such as Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen — killing well over 1,000 people in countries with which the United States has not been at war during Barack Obama’s presidency — Karem, now 75, is hard at work designing the next generation of aviation technology. His current project: a Boeing 737-size plane capable of taking off and landing like a helicopter. A pipe dream? “I never fail,” he retorts.
KAREM Reading list: East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart, by Susan Butler; Einstein, by Walter Isaacson; Stalin, by Dmitri Volkogonov. Best idea: Capital gains tax on a sliding scale (90 percent on assets held less than six months, 10 percent on assets held 10 years). Worst idea: Acceptance of unlimited growth of political campaign financing without transparency of contributors. American decline or American renewal? Both very feasible. More Europe or less? Europe has the same economic problems as the U.S., except they are more complex and more difficult to solve. To tweet or not to tweet? I didn’t start. But it is an unstoppable next step for human contact through computer networks.
The Arab Spring might have brought newfound freedoms to the Middle East, but it also saw a wave of Islamists rise to power intent on restricting the liberties of women. Tunisian feminist Ahlem Belhadj has fought back — and proved in the process that liberals will not remain silent as Islamist forces attempt to hijack the revolution for their own ends.
Belhadj’s Tunisian Association of Democratic Women has led the charge against Islamist attempts to bring back archaic practices such as polygamy and female circumcision, which were banned under the previous regime. But unfortunately, the 47-year-old child psychiatrist has her work cut out for her. This summer, Islamists pushed through a clause in the draft constitution that declared women “complementary” to men. In response, Belhadj helped organize a thousands-strong demonstration in the streets of Tunis to protest what women saw as an open assault on their rights. The clause was soon reworded, but Belhadj sees more subtle dangers on the horizon. “Parents are exercising greater moral pressure on young girls to wear the veil,” she worries. “And feminists are the victims of intimidation: They are attacked on the streets [and] insulted during sermons in mosques.” Belhadj has also taken her battle to the courts, where she helped represent a woman who was questioned about whether she was guilty of “indecency” after allegedly being raped by two policemen.
The battle to expand women’s rights is being fought not only in Tunisia but across the Arab world, where only one-fourth of women are part of the labor force, polygamy and arranged marriages are all too common, and there is not a single country where women’s political voice is equal to that of men. To Belhadj, these battles are inseparable from the Arab world’s larger struggle for freedom. “As feminists, we are more vigilant than ever in the face of these reversals,” she says. “It is out of the question to see the result of 50 years of struggle go up in smoke.”
How Bad Is It? •More than 90 percent of women ever married in Egypt have been subjected to genital mutilation; 80 percent report experiencing sexual harassment. •In Yemen, 52 percent of girls are married before age 18, and 53 percent of women are illiterate. •An estimated 20 percent of women in Iraq and at least 35 percent in Lebanon are victims of domestic violence. •In both Qatar and Saudi Arabia, there is not a single woman in parliament and not a single female minister.
With Syria mired in sectarian mayhem, a few brave souls still stand as a testament to the possibilities — and the extraordinary costs — of nonviolent revolution. When dictator Bashar al-Assad‘s artillery laid waste to entire neighborhoods this spring, Rima Dali, a volunteer for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, strode alone into a busy Damascus street with a sign bearing a simple message: “Stop the killing. We want to build a country for all Syrians.” She repeated her act of silent defiance the next week, and even more onlookers gathered to cheer her on — a sign that the spirit of peaceful protest that sparked Syria’s uprising in early 2011 endures even after a bloody year and a half of civil war. Dali, a 33-year-old law school graduate, was arrested for her activism, but she has refused to be cowed, either by the Assad regime’s intimidation or by the spread of extremism within the ranks of the armed rebellion. “We look for hope, day in, day out,” she said after her release from jail.
Not all those who have publicly defied Assad have been so fortunate. Bassel Khartabil is, or was, a young computer engineer living in Damascus whose innovative programming skills helped integrate Syria into the online community — fostering an open-source community in a country long on the margins of the Internet’s youth culture. He was hauled off by Assad’s security forces in March, and despite a “#FREEBASSEL” campaign launched by his friends, he has not been heard from since. “The people who are in real danger never leave their countries,” he tweeted weeks before his arrest. “They are in danger for a reason and for that they don’t leave.”DALI Reading list: Le Dérèglement du Monde, by Amin Maalouf; Dictionary of Nonviolence, by Jean-Marie Muller; Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding, edited by Cynthia Sampson, Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Claudia Liebler, and Diana Whitney. Best idea: “The means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.” –Martin Luther King Jr. Worst idea: “Al-Assad or we burn the country down.” —shabiha slogan American decline or American renewal? American renewal. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? To tweet.
When Mario Draghi, head of Italy’s central bank, was mooted to succeed Jean-Claude Trichet as European Central Bank (ECB) president in 2011, two factors held him back: his stint at Goldman Sachs — a firm that had helped Greece disguise its debt — and his nationality. “For Italians, inflation is a way of life, like tomato sauce with pasta!” the German tabloid Bild groused. But “Super Mario” eventually prevailed over his critics (even Bild later conceded, “He’s actually pretty German”), and he has since embarked on an aggressive effort to resolve Europe’s three-year-old sovereign debt crisis. In the process, he has liberally interpreted the ECB’s mandate to control inflation and, just maybe, has established himself as the savior of the European project.
Draghi’s boldest move came in September, when he announced that the ECB would buy the bonds of debt-saddled eurozone countries such as Italy and Spain in an effort to bring down their borrowing costs and reassure investors. (A flood of headlines like “Mario Draghi May Become the Man Who Saved Europe — and the World” followed.) But perhaps it was his vow to do “whatever it takes to preserve the euro” that finally cooled the fever. Draghi’s bold moves have helped him win over markets, bankers, and politicians, though nearly one in two Germans mistrusted him on the eve of the bond-buying announcement. After introducing the measure, Draghi offered to allay Germans’ concerns by defending his monetary policies before the German parliament. Why volunteer to enter the lion’s den? After months of pitched battle with the bond markets, perhaps the Bundestag didn’t seem so daunting.
As Europe’s crisis rages on, don’t expect reassurance about the future of global capitalism from this Hungarian-born hedge fund billionaire and market guru. At a June speech in Italy, George Soros argued that the financial crisis represents a failure of economic theory “more profound than generally recognized” and decried the austerity-promoting policies of European governments, arguing that they “cannot reduce the debt burden by shrinking the economy.”
Soros has been particularly withering in his assessment of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s (No. 12) response to the crisis. In a widely discussed New York Review of Books essay in September, he made the case that penny-wise, pound-foolish Germany, not Greece, is the country most at fault in the crisis. Germany must either lead Europe out of the crisis or leave the eurozone, he argued, which would limit the fallout of the crisis and allow smaller countries to return to growth with a devalued currency. Shortly thereafter, Merkel reversed course and supported the European Central Bank’s plan to buy Spanish and Italian bonds — so perhaps Berlin was listening.
Soros, often the object of conspiracy theories for his support for liberal groups in the United States, dialed it back a little this election year — even going so far as to say that there “isn’t all that much difference” between President Barack Obama and contender Mitt Romney. An investor as shrewd as Soros knows it’s always wise to hedge.
When Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika died of a heart attack in April, it wasn’t immediately clear what would become of his vice president, Joyce Banda. The two had fallen out in recent years, with the increasingly autocratic president booting Banda from his political party in 2010. Even Mutharika’s wife publicly derided the smalltown veep — a longtime grassroots advocate for women, children, and the poor — scoffing, “She will never be president. How can a mandazi [fritter] seller be president?” After a tense two days in the wake of Mutharika’s death, however, Banda proved the first lady wrong, becoming Africa’s second-ever female president.
Governing Malawi — where an estimated 75 percent of its more than 15 million residents live on $1 or less a day — presents enormous challenges, to be sure. But in just seven months Banda has largely thrown out her predecessor’s playbook, showing the world how to take charge and work to turn around a troubled country. Within days of taking office, she dismissed key members of Mutharika’s administration, including the police chief in power when 19 Malawian demonstrators were killed at a 2011 opposition rally, and in May, amid rising persecution of gays in Africa, she vowed to repeal Malawi’s laws against homosexuality. By devaluing the Malawian currency by more than a third, a move Mutharika had long refused despite the IMF’s urging, Banda also secured a much-needed $157 million IMF loan in June — a first step toward rebuilding Malawi’s debilitated economy.
Her work is cut out for her. So far, however, all signs suggest Banda could become a new model for African leadership — shedding the strongman syndrome and getting down to business to help the poor. To prove it, she has cut her own salary by 30 percent and put her predecessor’s $12 million presidential jet and most of his fleet of 60 luxury cars up for sale. “I can as well use private airlines,” she said. “I am already used to hitchhiking.” But it’s more than that: “I must demonstrate to Malawians that we are in this together,” she explained to Al Jazeera. “I must be the first person to set an example.” For Malawi, and the world over.
In March, Ed Morse and several Citigroup colleagues published a 92-page report with a provocative thesis upending the conventional wisdom on global energy scarcity. North America, they said, is hurtling toward energy independence on the strength of shale, oil sands, and deepwater output in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. By 2020, booming energy production and declining consumption could have a transformative impact on the sluggish U.S. economy, goosing GDP by more than 3 percent, reducing the current account deficit — the balance of imports and exports — by 60 percent, and creating nearly 4 million new jobs. The continent, in short, could become the “new Middle East” in less than a decade.
The study has already had a far-reaching impact, encouraging both U.S. political parties to revamp their energy strategies and focus not on the dangerous U.S. dependence on Mideast oil but rather on the country’s potential to supply its own energy needs and the many benefits that come along with doing so. When Republican Mitt Romney announced a plan to achieve energy independence by 2020, his presidential campaign’s white paper cited the Citi report eight times. Barack Obama’s campaign, meanwhile, touted the president’s commitment to reducing “our dependence on foreign oil” through “an all-of-the-above approach to developing all our energy resources.”
Morse, Citi’s global head of commodities research, argues that the United States’ new role as a net petroleum-product exporter could reshape the geopolitical landscape by weakening OPEC countries and insulating North America from oil price spikes. “We will no longer be kowtowing to despotic rulers and feudal monarchs whose oil supply lines are crucial to other aspects of foreign policy,” he recently predicted. And the effects could be even more profound if a more inward-looking United States decides it no longer needs to play the country’s post-World War II role as the guarantor of global supply lanes and protector of Gulf sheikhdoms. As for Romney’s plan? “I think they have the basic story absolutely correct,” Morse told the Atlantic. And he should know. After all, he wrote it.Reading list: A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War, by Amanda Foreman; Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, by Dan Senor and Saul Singer; Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future, by Robert Bryce. Best idea: The G-Zero world. Worst idea: A unilateral strike against Iran’s nuclear enhancement facilities. American decline or American renewal? The energy revolution in North America could well be the source of long-term American renewal and strength in the 21st century. More Europe or less? Less. To tweet or not to tweet? Not I, never.
Jabs at the “1 percent” became the battle cry of disgruntled Occupy Wall Street protesters and the subtext of much of the U.S. presidential campaign this year, but they were hardly the first to draw attention to the outsized wealth of America’s top earners. Much of the credit should go to Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Armed with a century’s worth of hard data, the two French economists have revealed just how acute income inequality has become in the United States. And the disparity, their research found, has recently reached levels not seen since the eve of the Great Depression.
Piketty, at the Paris School of Economics, and Saez, at the University of California/Berkeley, started their income-tracking project two decades ago. Their deep dive through U.S. Internal Revenue Service tax returns dating to 1913 resulted in their signature paper, first published in 2003 and recently updated. The study’s centerpiece is a stark, U-shaped graph showing the top 1 percent’s share of total U.S. income bottoming out after World War II, rising after the 1970s, and, by the mid-2000s, nearly matching the record set back in 1928. (After the financial crisis, guess which group recovered fastest — and most robustly?) Today, that squiggle has become a favorite smoking gun of left-leaning intellectuals who argue that the rich should bear much more of the U.S. tax burden. Piketty and Saez’s work is cited in White House budget documents and “helped to point the way for the administration in its pledge to rebalance the tax code,” according to Peter Orszag, President Barack Obama’s first budget director.
The French duo’s suggested remedy is something they say is as American as apple pie: higher income taxes on the very richest. They recommend a rate as high as 83 percent for the top bracket of earners — much higher than the 30 percent of the proposed “Buffett Rule” and even more than French President François Hollande’s proposed 75 percent top tax rate. Piketty, who calls the level of U.S. income inequality today “completely crazy,” argued this year that the United States is switching places with Old Europe. “Inequality of wealth and income used to be much larger in France,” he told the New York Times. “And very high taxes on the very rich — that was invented in the United States.”
PIKETTY Reading list: Premodern Financial Systems, by Raymond Goldsmith; The Black Book, by Orhan Pamuk; Arthur Young’s Travels in France, by Arthur Young. Best idea: Hollande’s 75 percent top tax rate, if it were applied in the U.S. and Europe with a broad tax base. Worst idea: Hollande’s 75 percent top tax rate, as applied in France with a narrow tax base. American decline or American renewal? Slow, steady decline. More Europe or less? More Europe: The world needs the United States of Europe. To tweet or not to tweet? No tweet so far.
We all know the effect of a deadline when it comes to a project at work or paying a bill. Nadim Matta sees this power as something much more consequential. Matta is the head of the Rapid Results Institute, a nonprofit that helps poor communities around the world set ambitious goals on timelines so short that they seem unreasonable — just 100 days. Rapid Results then moves in to train locals, who coach their peers to meet the targets: build a school in a Sudanese village, get 700 people tested for HIV in Addis Ababa, double the number of attended births in a Rwandan town. The driving idea behind the method, Matta believes, is that an often overlooked barrier to development is motivation — that final push to get over the finish line. The work Rapid Results does, he says, is about stepping in and “unleashing local capabilities.”
This deadlines-driven approach, developed four decades ago at the management consultancy where Matta also works, was originally applied to Fortune 500 companies. It was Matta who adapted the method for the realm of development — and with impressive results. Since its founding in 2007, Rapid Results has set down roots in more than half a dozen sub-Saharan African countries. Nearly all of Kenya’s government ministries, as well as the World Bank, have adopted the method, and this year in the United States, it’s helping provide housing to tens of thousands of homeless people. “The biggest issue is that people don’t actually mobilize.… The last mile is where solutions need to come together in specific ways,” Matta explained. “We think we have part of the answer to the last-mile problem.”
Reading list: Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson; Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath; Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World, by Tina Rosenberg. Best idea: Incubators and Internet start-ups in Arab countries — channeling the energy of the youth in post- (and pre-) Arab Spring countries toward productive economic activity. Worst idea: The resurgence of the concept of American exceptionalism in this election season. American decline or American renewal? Renewal, always. More Europe or less? About the same — I hope. To tweet or not to tweet? So far I have not felt the urge to join the tweeters. Maybe in 2013.
It has been a year of shrinking horizons for China’s best-known artist turned dissident, but as he has throughout his career, Ai Weiwei has turned his difficult circumstances into living performance art, exposing just how petty and paranoid even the most seemingly impregnable authoritarian system can be. Ai was released from prison in July 2011 after being held for three months on trumped-up tax-evasion charges. Once a source of pride for the Communist Party as a designer of the Beijing Bird’s Nest stadium, he got on the government’s bad side after ripping into its response to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In September he lost his final appeal and was ordered to pay $2.4 million in back taxes; he’s still not allowed to leave the country. (Many of Ai’s supporters folded money into paper planes and flew them over the walls of his home to help him cover his bill.)
But Ai has found ways to occupy his time. When one of his Twitter followers asked in May whether he was working on any new artwork, Ai tweeted back, “I am the artwork.” In April, he set up cameras throughout his house, providing a live feed on his website and to his 170,000 followers. (“Twitter is my city, my favorite city,” he told FP this year.) The authorities soon pressured him into removing the cameras, evidently preferring that they be the only ones to watch the rotund 55-year-old work on his computer and play with his cats.
But make no mistake — this performance art is deeply political. Throughout his career Ai has insisted that artists have a duty to humanity that outweighs the obligations of nationalism. Even declaring one’s opposition to “trafficking children, selling HIV-infected blood, [and] operating slave labor coal pits” is enough to get branded as “anti-China” in today’s political climate, Ai once noted on his blog, asking, “If we aren’t anti-China, are we still human?”
In October, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington presented the first major U.S. retrospective of Ai’s work. The artist was not in attendance.
Ai-isms: Tweets from Confinement •”Love of totalitarian propaganda is more evil than hatred.” •”This country does not need to give reasons. It isn’t accustomed to it, nor is it able to, until we no longer need an explanation.” •”Sovereignty without human rights is just a ruler’s privilege.” •”Saving a country must start from saving one person.” •”In the courtroom, the idiot judge went so far as to say ‘Comrade Ai Weiwei’…I puked.”
While members of the U.S. Congress were threatening to cancel $450 million in emergency aid promised to Egypt, the IMF’s Christine Lagarde was meeting with Gulf Cooperation Council representatives and laying the groundwork for a $4.8 billion loan to rescue Egypt’s damaged economy. In the wake of the Arab Spring, which slashed growth rates across the region as political instability overwhelmed already fragile economies and left nascent democracies struggling to provide basic services like water and sewage treatment, the former French finance minister — who replaced the scandal-ridden Dominique Strauss-Kahn midway through the 2011 uprisings — has set about filling the void.
The Middle East’s destiny “lies ultimately with the region itself, but the international community also has a responsibility to help,” she said one year after the protests began. Neither Washington nor Brussels has really answered the call, so Lagarde’s IMF has approved $2 billion in loans for Jordan and a $6.2 billion liquidity line for Morocco, not to mention helping Tunisia improve its financial sector, Libya revamp its government payment system, and Egypt make its tax code more equitable. In total, the IMF has pledged $35 billion to the countries affected by the uprisings. U.S. President Barack Obama’s funding request for Arab Spring states this year, by comparison, totalled just $770 million — and Congress rejected it. If the Middle East ever emerges from its economic morass, Lagarde and her foresight will deserve more than a little of the credit.
It wasn’t a reference you’ll ever hear in Washington’s corridors of power: “I say it very clearly: What is happening in Syria right now is exactly the same thing as what happened in Karbala 1,332 years ago,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this fall, referring to one of the foundational battles of Islam, which cemented the divide between Sunni and Shiite. The allusion to sectarian bloodshed may have made some Western leaders cringe, but it also showed why Turkey under Erdogan’s leadership has emerged as the Middle East’s indispensable power, grappling with the region’s struggles over identity and religion in a way no American politician ever could. With the Arab world in disarray and the United States criticized for “leading from behind,” Turkey has taken on an increasingly prominent international role, fueled by a belief that its unique culture and history make it an ideal bridge between East and West.
But as Erdogan and his cerebral academic turned foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, are discovering, that new leadership comes at a price. Their opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — Erdogan blasted his old friend as presiding over a “terrorist state” — has created new security threats in Turkey’s southeast, while the flood of more than 100,000 Syrian refugees into its territory has stretched Ankara’s resources to the breaking point. Now, Erdogan and Davutoglu face a dilemma on Syria that is all too familiar in Washington: stay on the sidelines or go it alone. The premier has blasted Assad’s “attempted genocide” and ordered Turkey’s relentlessly globe-trotting top diplomat, the intellectual architect of the country’s newly assertive foreign policy, to rouse the world to action. As Davutoglu put it before the U.N. Security Council, “How long are we going to sit and watch while an entire generation is being wiped out by random bombardment and deliberate mass targeting?”
Willem Buiter, Citigroup’s chief economist, relishes a good intellectual dust-up, especially if it involves debunking an economic conventional wisdom or two. “I like saying things that drive people around the bend,” he recently told the Wall Street Journal.
When it comes to Europe’s monetary union, Buiter has been doing just that for quite some time. In 1999, the Dutch-born economist published a paper, “Alice in Euroland,” arguing that the European Central Bank (ECB), created a year earlier, was so flawed it could threaten not just the embryonic common currency but the “continued success of the post Second World War European integration process.” At the time, it seemed an unlikely critique; today, it seems like gospel. Buiter is Europe’s prophet of doom. Ever since the European debt crisis broke out in 2009, he has considered whether debt-hobbled, bailout-bound Greece will exit the eurozone — a prospect so often discussed that Buiter and a colleague coined a word in February to describe it: “Grexit.” The term went viral by May as political instability rocked Athens and the media embraced the year’s catchiest eurocrisis shorthand. By September, even Greece’s beleaguered prime minister was using it, as in: “What they call ‘Grexit’ is not an option for us — it would be a catastrophe.” Buiter isn’t done prophesying. In September, his team challenged the conventional wisdom that an ECB bond-buying program marked a turning point in the debt crisis, arguing that the plan made a Greek departure from the eurozone “more manageable” and estimating the probability of a Grexit in the next 12 to 18 months at 90 percent. The news isn’t good for Europe either. The eurozone could be in “cardiac arrest” for at least two to three more years, he informed clients that same month. That’s plenty of time to drive more euro-optimists around the bend.Reading list: Books — what’s that? Best idea: Listen more to your kids. Worst idea: “We must have growth, not austerity.” American decline or American renewal? Renewal through decline. More Europe or less? More please… To tweet or not to tweet? Tweeting is for mindless illiterates.
Look closely during a party scene in the blockbuster Iron Man 2, and you’ll see eccentric playboy billionaire Tony Stark shaking hands with Elon Musk, the real-life model for Robert Downey Jr.’s update of the comic-book superhero.
He may not be able to fly — yet — but at 42, Musk’s way-outside-the-box ideas of how to make the world a better place have resulted in the creation of not one but four of America’s most innovative companies. Shortly after college, Musk and fellow future billionaire Peter Thiel founded the online payment system that eventually became the now-ubiquitous PayPal. After selling it for $1.5 billion in 2002, Musk started SpaceX, the private spaceflight company that in 2008 won a NASA contract to take over cargo transportation to the International Space Station from the now-defunct space shuttle. This May, SpaceX launched the first-ever commercial flight to the station. Musk is also co-founder of Tesla Motors, which stands a real chance of producing the first economically viable all-electric cars. And his latest passion project is SolarCity, an innovative energy company that provides low-cost solar services to businesses and is working to build electric car-charging stations in California — a business idea that came to Musk during a road trip to Burning Man, the annual hippie-meets-Silicon Valley extravaganza.
He isn’t done yet. Other plans include the “Hyperloop,” a tube-based “fifth mode of transportation” that he claims will one day be able to take passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes, and an idea to build a Mars lander that can create a mini-greenhouse to grow crops and set the stage for eventual human habitation of the red planet. “I would like to die on Mars,” Musk has said. At this rate, it would be foolish to bet against him.
In 2012, a record-breaking number of women reached the top of America’s Fortune 500 companies. The number that broke the record? Twenty — just 4 percent. As more and more women enter the workplace but remain stubbornly absent from the corner offices, the conversation about female titans of industry has taken on a new urgency, and former Google executives Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg are at the center of the storm.
Sandberg, now chief operating officer of Facebook, had a roller-coaster year when the company’s much-touted stock offering turned into a flop. But it was her comments on why there are too few women in the workplace that helped transform her into a controversial feminist icon for the tech era. In a series of widely discussed talks, Sandberg urged women to close the “ambition gap” — a tendency to defer to men in the workplace so as to not appear “bossy” or in anticipation of leaving to start families. The predictable raging dispute ensued — and is sure to flare back up when she publishes a book on the subject in 2013 — but through it all Sandberg has stuck to her pragmatic approach to how women can help themselves get ahead while still getting home for dinner with the kids (at least occasionally). Sandberg is certainly leading by example: The mother of two young ones holds dual degrees from Harvard University, cut her teeth at the U.S. Treasury Department as Lawrence Summers’s chief of staff (before his comments implying women are innately less capable at the sciences than men), and tirelessly campaigns for other women to fight for having it all as well.
For her part, Mayer announced this summer both that she was pregnant and that she was taking the helm of troubled tech behemoth Yahoo. Disapproval rained down from business elites, who accused her of compromising the health of her company, and from mothers, who accused her of compromising the health of her baby. But Mayer, a Stanford University-educated engineer who rose from one of Google’s earliest employees to a vice president, refused to be cowed, and Yahoo agreed. Two weeks after giving birth to a boy in September, she tweeted that she was back in the office full time and announced a new COO to boot.
Between the two execs, the endless compromises and contradictions of the modern working woman were laid bare, prompting a searingly honest debate about women in power at a time when only a handful have made their way to its most exclusive corridors. Maybe the world is finally beginning to realize that a generation of mothers is going to need to figure out how to get to the top — and stay there.
Anne-Marie Slaughter has been a dean at Princeton University and a top official at the U.S. State Department, where she oversaw the first-ever attempt to review and rationalize the sprawling bureaucracy’s overseas priorities. She has been a passionate advocate for intervention in Syria. And she is an innovative and prolific scholar, arguing in numerous books and articles that the stodgy foreign policy of old is being transformed by the new realities of a networked world. But it was in another role — as a mom and disaffected global policymaker — that she catapulted herself into the public eye this year.
Slaughter’s summer cover article in the Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” chronicles her two years juggling her high-level Washington job with the needs of two teenage boys back in New Jersey — a balancing act she concluded “was not possible.” At more than 12,500 words, her essay on the inflexible work environment for even the planet’s most successful women sparked a viral debate about the harsh reality of the glass ceiling in the U.S. workplace and around the world. Her critics zeroed in on the phrase “having it all” as implausible or even indulgent, and even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded that while “some women are not comfortable working at the pace and intensity you have to work at in these jobs.… Other women don’t break a sweat.” But Slaughter said her hope is ultimately to make it easier for ambitious women to balance their family and professional lives — an urgent necessity given that fewer than 20 women lead countries in the world today, 80 percent of all parliamentary seats are held by men, and a grand total of 17 percent of the world’s government ministers are women.
“I think if I had an absolutely accurate title, it would be ‘Why Working Mothers Need Better Choices to Be Able to Make It to the Top,'” Slaughter later said. But then again, “I’m not sure a million people would have read it. And I wanted to start a conversation. And we’ve started a conversation.”Reading list: China Airborne, by James Fallows; The Locust and the Bee: Predators and Creators in Capitalism’s Future, by Geoff Mulgan; Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back, by Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy. Best idea: The “slow money” movement. Worst idea: The creation of national intranets and greater global regulation of the Internet through the International Telecommunication Union. American decline or American renewal? Renewal. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? Tweet!
More than two decades before U.S. embassies throughout the Middle East were overrun by rioters angry about a crude anti-Islamic video and more than a decade before the 9/11 attacks, Salman Rushdie received the phone call that changed his life forever when a BBC reporter asked him, “How does it feel to know that you have just been sentenced to death by Ayatollah Khomeini?”
This year saw the release of Rushdie’s astonishingly well-timed memoir, Joseph Anton, which describes his life in hiding after the 1989 fatwa condemning him to death for The Satanic Verses, a book that fundamentalists deemed offensive to the Prophet Mohammed. The title of Rushdie’s memoir comes from the pseudonym — composed of the first names of his favorite authors, Conrad and Chekhov — he adopted while underground. The book’s release took on added political significance amid anti-American riots across the world this fall provoked by the online video Innocence of Muslims. “I always said that what happened to me was a prologue and there will be many, many more episodes like it. This is one of those,” Rushdie said. “The correct response would be to say it is garbage and unimportant,” he said of the video. “To react to it with this kind of violence is just ludicrously inappropriate.”
Through it all, Rushdie has continued to make a powerfully personal case for freedom of expression, writing that the fatwa was “a violent attack not on the novel in general, or on free speech per se, but on a particular accumulation of words, and on the intentions and integrity and ability of the writer who had put those words together.”
To hear Paul Krugman tell it, the U.S. economic crisis is Americans’ own damn fault. “The depression we’re in is essentially gratuitous: we don’t need to be suffering so much pain and destroying so many lives,” he wrote recently. Washington’s obsession with austerity is to blame, he rails; what is needed is an aggressive, deficits-be-damned stimulus package to jump-start the economy and get Americans working again.
The Nobel Prize-winning Princeton University economist’s prescription for the U.S. economy is actually fairly simple: Inject cash into it, and fast. He has suggested boosting federal aid to state and local governments, providing assistance to homeowners struggling with the deflation of the housing bubble, and having the Federal Reserve buy up government bonds to reduce long-term interest rates. While those ideas make Krugman anathema to those on the right, his New York Times column is required reading by conservatives and liberals alike — and his insistence on providing help for struggling American families is a welcome antidote to the Washington establishment’s relentless focus on budget cuts. “Tens of millions of our fellow citizens are suffering vast hardship, the future prospects of today’s young people are being eroded with each passing month,” he wrote, “and all of it is unnecessary.
Thanks to his academic bona fides and slashing style, Krugman — who this year also published a pro-stimulus book, End This Depression Now! — has become a sort of folk hero among liberals and a scourge of both Republicans and moderate Democrats. One safe prediction for 2013: He’ll keep on being a thorn in the side of the powers that be, whichever way the political winds blow.
As far back as 2005, Nouriel Roubini saw dangerous speculation in the housing market for what it was: a harbinger of financial Armageddon. At the time, as Paul Krugman (No. 34) later noted in Time magazine, “the likes of Alan Greenspan were dismissing concerns about excessive home prices and declaring that banks were stronger than ever.”
Since then, Roubini has hardly had time to gloat; he has been too busy warning that the worst isn’t over. In 2006, he speculated about a eurozone breakup at a time when it seemed outlandish, and in 2008 — when most economists were throwing around numbers in the hundreds of billions — Roubini warned that bank losses would total more than $2 trillion. (It turns out he was close but if anything too cautious: The IMF’s 2010 estimate was $2.28 trillion.) He was also ahead of the curve in identifying the global reach of the subprime-mortgage crisis and has repeatedly warned against rosy predictions of recovery. In 2010, when the stock market appeared to be turning around, Roubini — dubbed Dr. Doom by the financial press — asserted: “The crisis is not over; we are just at the next stage.”
Lately, Dr. Doom has taken to warning of a “perfect storm” in which the “slow-motion train wreck” in Europe, along with the cooling Chinese economy and sluggish U.S. recovery, coincides with a war between Israel and Iran that inevitably drags in the United States. But Roubini is more than just a bearer of bad news: He has become the gloomy bard of this age of financial upheaval.
Every year in Nigeria, roughly 1.5 million students would like to go on to college, but because of limited university space, only a few hundred thousand can. That means some 80 percent of Nigerians hoping to pursue higher education are simply out of luck. Enter Shai Reshef, an Israeli-born entrepreneur whose online education NGO, University of the People, promises to grant bachelor’s degrees to the poor around the world — essentially tuition-free. Reshef’s idea piggybacks on the growing migration of world-class university lectures to the Internet, where students from any country can now have access to the best international minds and at least a virtual slice of the Ivy League educations that for so long were the preserve of a small elite. But his project goes a step further, offering a full, four-year college education to “anyone who speaks English and has an Internet connection,” as he told the New York Times. His audacious goal is nothing less than to change how the world learns.
Reshef, who made his fortune in for-profit supplementary education, does not draw a salary from the university, which has only 10 paid employees; the professors are all volunteers, many from top universities around the world. Although 1,500 students in 135 countries have been admitted to University of the People, which Reshef founded in 2009, the program is still in the process of applying for accreditation from the U.S. government. But partnerships with heavyweights like Yale Law School, New York University, the Gates Foundation, and the Clinton Global Initiative hint at the outsized impact his idea is likely to have on the world of higher ed. Reshef says University of the People plans to increase enrollment to 5,000 students by 2015 — and then grow indefinitely. With 3,000 volunteers now working toward that goal, “we don’t know what to do with them,” Reshef recently told the Washington Post.Reading list: Woman Flees Tidings, by David Grossman; Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman; The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World, by Ben Wildavsky. Best idea: Using the goodwill of educators in developed countries to educate students in developing countries. Worst idea: To attack Iran.
Note: This profile has been updated to reflect University of the People’s most recent enrollment and employee numbers.
Since 1980, tuition increases at U.S. universities have outpaced the consumer price index, inflation, and even the housing bubble that precipitated the current financial crisis. But with the arrival of companies like Coursera, an online educational consortium founded by Stanford University computer scientists Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, higher ed is reaching far beyond the privileged few in the ivory tower. Through Coursera, anybody with an Internet connection and the desire to learn can log on and tune in to courses at the world’s leading research universities — and for now at least, it’s free. “We have the incredible opportunity to make education what it should be,” Koller and Ng write, “a fundamental human right.”
Several similar programs offering “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs — most prominently Sebastian Thrun’s (No. 4) Udacity and edX, a Harvard-MIT joint venture — have helped online education flourish in recent years. Coursera alone is partnered with more than 30 brick-and-mortar universities, including Stanford, the University of Michigan, and Princeton University, and it offers a wide range of courses in engineering, computer science, math, and, increasingly, the humanities. As of August, it had enrolled more than 1 million students from 196 countries. The for-profit tech company has no immediate plans to offer degrees, but its course-by-course certification scheme is already advancing students’ careers. This year, for instance, a 22-year-old computer science student from Kazakhstan scored a job at Twitter — after taking an artificial intelligence course at Stanford through Coursera.
KOLLER Reading list: Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman; A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini; Night, by Elie Wiesel. Best idea: Increasing U.S. efforts in green energy. Worst idea: Republican attempts to cut support for family planning. American decline or American renewal? Neither. More Europe or less? Less. To tweet or not to tweet? To tweet selectively.
NG Reading list: The Essential Drucker, by Peter Drucker; Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson; In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, by Michael Pollan. Best idea: More Pell grants. Students should not have to choose between paying for college and paying for groceries. Worst idea: Ouster of University of Virginia president. American decline or American renewal? Renewal. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? Tweet, and use hashtags wisely.
If scaring us silly were a religion, Dick Cheney would be its high priest. The most powerful vice president in U.S. history is still waging a campaign, even after a heart transplant in March, to convince us that the dark side of terrorists and rogue states is out there and must be defended against at all costs. An unrelenting critic of Barack Obama’s foreign policy, Cheney has called the president’s efforts to portray himself as strong on national defense “hogwash.” In the wake of the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya in September, Cheney framed the administration’s confused response to the attack as symptomatic of a larger failure of leadership. “They refuse to recognize the situation we are in, and that’s the first step towards ultimate failure and ultimately the future terrorist attacks,” he said on the Sean Hannity Show.
But it may be daughter Liz, a former official in George W. Bush’s administration who founded the advocacy group Keep America Safe in 2009 and co-wrote her father’s bestselling 2011 memoir, who has emerged as the most influential and outspoken member of the Cheney family, arguing for a more imposing U.S. presence abroad. “In too many parts of the world, America is no longer viewed as a reliable ally or an enemy to be feared,” she recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal. The younger Cheney, a Fox News political analyst, raised funds for Mitt Romney’s campaign in her home state of Wyoming, and there’s speculation she may be planning her own run for office.
Following the Bush administration’s foreign-policy controversies, many believed the Republican Party would move away from its more pugnacious recent past. Some, like Condoleezza Rice (No. 39), maintain a sunnier optimism about American power. But given the hawkish rhetoric and hard-line advisors of Romney’s campaign, it seems that Cheneyism is alive and well in today’s Republican Party.
Condi Rice has long dismissed the terms “idealist” and “realist” as meaningless academic distinctions. An expert on the Soviet Union whose worldview shifted dramatically with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the woman who became George W. Bush’s national security advisor and secretary of state is at once both and neither. More than anything (and very much unlike her dark-side-minded rival, No. 38 Dick Cheney), Rice is an optimist whose faith in historical progress — and America’s role at its forefront — has been likened to “theology.”
This unwavering belief in American indispensability guided her principled critique of Barack Obama’s administration this year, when she re-emerged into the Republican spotlight with a starring role at the Republican National Convention. “Where does America stand?” Rice asked emphatically in a speech that drew praise from both sides of the aisle and stirred rumblings of “Condi 2016.” Without robust American leadership, she warned, chaos will ensue — “or someone will fill the vacuum who does not share our values.” And Rice, rarely a partisan warrior, made a pointed jab at Obama, saying, “We cannot be reluctant to lead, and you cannot lead from behind.”
Unlike much of candidate Mitt Romney’s foreign-policy team, however, Rice would have America lead the world in a decidedly moderate direction. There is considerable continuity between the foreign policy of Bush’s second term — when Rice was secretary of state — and that of the Obama administration. But Rice, though she has largely escaped public blame for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is no dove — “Peace really does come through strength,” she reminded the audience in Tampa. Still, rebuilding America’s alliances, so that friends and partners know the United States is “reliable and consistent and determined,” and expanding free trade top Rice’s priority list, as do “sensitively” developing America’s oil and natural gas reserves and coming up with new immigration laws that “show that we are a compassionate nation of immigrants.” In a party increasingly dominated by its spoon-banging right wing, Rice has emerged as an important voice in favor of tough, but smart, foreign policy.
Boasting hundreds of millions of customers for his company’s anti-virus software, Eugene Kaspersky is one of the leading global authorities on cybersecurity. So when he warned executives at a technology conference this spring that “cyberweapons are the most dangerous innovation of this century,” the tech world took notice.
After all, Kaspersky was among the first to publicly document the state-sponsored use of cyberweapons, signaling the advent of a new era of war. His company, Kaspersky Lab, alerted the world to the danger posed by the Stuxnet worm — reportedly developed by the U.S. and Israeli governments — that attacked the Iranian nuclear program before spilling out into the wider web, as well as the Flame virus that infected thousands of computers, mostly in the Middle East. He has also provocatively called for Internet users to be issued online virtual “passports” that would work like driver’s licenses in the offline world.
Kaspersky is no stranger to controversy. Before co-founding Kaspersky Lab in 1997, he was educated at a technical school sponsored by the KGB, and he spent time working for the Russian military. He has refuted allegations that he still has ties to Russian security services and was working on their behalf to expose U.S. cyberweapons. “I’m just a man who’s ‘here to save the world,'” he wrote in a rebuttal to a negative profile in Wired.
Kaspersky’s Hobbesian view of cyberspace might be discomfiting for people used to thinking of the Internet as a place of cute cat videos and anodyne status updates, but it’s becoming clearer and clearer that we can no longer afford to ignore his warnings.
Reading list: Why Smart Executives Fail — and What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes, by Sydney Finkelstein; Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson; On China, by Henry Kissinger. Best idea: This was a boring year in terms of amazing ideas. Worst idea: Advocating cyberweapons and a cyberarms race. American decline or American renewal? Both — renewal after decline. More Europe or less? More, to accelerate science, technology, education, economy, and democracy. To tweet or not to tweet? Definitely yes, if you want and can write.… Definitely yes, if you can’t write.
Many lament the plight of women in Afghanistan — Sima Samar has actually done something about it. The 55-year-old doctor founded the Shuhada (“Martyrs”) Organization in 1989, and it has gone on to help educate tens of thousands of Afghan girls and provided health services to millions more. Now, ahead of a scheduled U.S. withdrawal in 2014 that is raising the prospect of a post-American Afghanistan where the Taliban once again force women out of public sight, Samar insists the government in Kabul and its Western allies take their rhetoric on women’s rights seriously. As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it in at a ceremony honoring Samar last year, she challenges us to “think more deeply about what making peace really requires” — and it’s more than just getting the men to lay down their arms.
From her perch at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, the country’s official monitor for everything from civilian rights during wartime to detainee abuse, Samar has rung the alarm bell about the dismal state of women’s participation in modern-day Afghanistan. Even after a decade of the United States showering Afghanistan with some $90 billion in taxpayer dollars, there’s not enough to show for it. “The sad part is that the international community’s actions do not reflect what they say,” Samar said this year. “It talks about women’s rights, but then they don’t include them” in peace negotiations with the Taliban, or much of anything else. She has also taken on her own government, loudly criticizing its reliance on Islamic law and cultural norms that force women to wear burqas.
It’s a vital message in a country where almost 90 percent of women can’t read and childbirth is more dangerous than just about anywhere else on the plantet; a country where a woman who is raped can be prosecuted for adultery and the female suicide rate is among the world’s highest. And with the government actively trying to bring the Taliban back into the political process, Samar represents a bulwark against the return of the Islamist movement’s medieval vision. “I am used to playing with fire,” she has said. “Somebody has to do it.”
Reading list: Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson; Obama’s Wars, by Bob Woodward; Siraj al-Tawarikh, by Faiz Mohammad Kateb. Best idea: The impact of social networking. Worst idea: Another war in the region. American decline or American renewal? American decline. More Europe or less? Less Europe. To tweet or not to tweet? Not sure.
Not long ago, the world’s fourth-richest man did something very unusual: He demanded to pay more taxes. “[W]hat I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office,” Warren Buffett announced to a chorus of hosannas in the New York Times.
One person who enthusiastically took up the call was U.S. President Barack Obama, who made “Warren Buffett’s secretary” part of his stump speech amid a growing debate over skyrocketing inequality in the tax code and most other facets of the American economy. He soon proposed a tax plan known as the “Buffett Rule,” which would impose a minimum 30 percent tax on individuals making more than $1 million annually. (Republicans in Congress were decidedly less enthusiastic about the idea.) In Obama’s State of the Union address in January, when he came to the line, “Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary,” the camera flashed on 56-year-old Nebraska native Debbie Bosanek, a living symbol of tax inequality. The modest Bosanek, who has worked for Buffett for two decades, says merely, “I was representing just the average citizen who, you know, needs a voice and wants to be treated fairly in the area of taxation.” But it’s clear that the Sage of Omaha and his assistant have sparked a long overdue conversation about economic fairness in the United States and the public policies that undermine it.
Charles Murray thinks that the United States is splitting at the seams, and the culprit is a widening gap between the country’s wealthy and its poor. But it’s the yawning cultural gulf between the two white Americas that he’s most worried about, as he writes in his 2012 book, Coming Apart, which paints a sad picture of the decline of the white working class in the United States amid the rise of a globally empowered wealthy new upper crust.
To examine this divergence, Murray devised hypothetical Fishtown and Belmont, the first corresponding to a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood and the second to a wealthy Boston suburb. In Fishtown, marriage rates plunged from 84 percent to 48 percent between 1960 and 2010, the violent crime rate sextupled, and the number of disabled quintupled. But in Belmont, a full 83 percent of the adult population is married and 84 percent of children live with both biological parents. In other words, Murray’s conclusion is that those Volvo-driving, latte-sipping coastal liberals got where they are today by embracing conservative “family values,” not rejecting them.
Even some critics of Murray — whose lightning-rod views came to the fore with his controversial 1994 book, The Bell Curve — have called Coming Apart a compelling portrait of a new problem that American politics has yet to grapple with. “The word ‘class’ doesn’t even capture the divide Murray describes,” New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote. “You might say the country has bifurcated into different social tribes, with a tenuous common culture linking them.” Rich and poor Americans used to engage in the same leisure activities and live in the same ZIP codes, but today, as Murray notes, it’s inconceivable to imagine Belmont’s 1 percenters turning up at Applebee’s or a NASCAR race. “The problem I describe isn’t a conservative-versus-liberal problem,” Murray said. “It’s a cultural problem the whole country has.”Reading list: Losing Mum and Pup, by Christopher Buckley; Emperor series, by Conn Iggulden; A History of Britain, by Simon Schama. Best idea: Using a palm scan as a replacement for all computer passwords. Worst idea: The National Security Agency’s new Utah facility that will effectively capture everything U.S. citizens do electronically, encrypted or not, and store it indefinitely. American decline or American renewal? If Obama wins, American decline, perhaps abrupt. If Romney wins, perhaps stabilization (at best). More Europe or less? Monetary union without centralization of fiscal policy was doomed to fail, and Europe is deep in the endgame. To tweet or not to tweet? For me, it has turned out to be an acquired taste. I have fun with it.
Known as the Pentagon’s “futurist in chief” — or, more affectionately, “Yoda” among Defense Department insiders — Andrew Marshall has spent the past 40 years speculating about over-the-horizon threats to the United States. At the top of his list today: a rapidly militarizing and increasingly belligerent China. As the longtime director of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, the nonagenarian Marshall has spent recent years devising battle plans for an admittedly unlikely showdown with Beijing.
But unlikely scenarios are Marshall’s specialty. The details of his blueprint, known as the Air-Sea Battle, are classified, but its aim is to coordinate the U.S. Air Force and Navy more closely in order to respond to future threats to the global commons, not just in potential flash points like the South China Sea but all over the world — even helping the military reach melting ice caps in the Arctic. Marshall’s ambitious “organizing concept,” as Air Force Secretary Michael Donley calls it, has moved outside the realm of ideas as Barack Obama’s administration has sought to turn its proclaimed “pivot” to Asia into military reality. A hot war with China, for one, would be one of the most complicated logistical problems in U.S. military history. In that sense, Air-Sea Battle is bigger than any single military doctrine — it’s a bureaucratic reorientation that has already inspired more than 200 Air Force and Navy initiatives, including a new precision conventional-weapons system called Prompt Global Strike, as well as the Next-Generation Bomber program. Wired magazine has called Marshall’s concept a “help desk for 21st Century warfare.”
Marshall, an appointee of Richard Nixon who has been reappointed by every president since, seems also to have shaped Chinese military strategy. Gen. Chen Zhou, who helped write China’s four most recent defense white papers, told the Economist, “Our great hero was Andy Marshall in the Pentagon. We translated every word he wrote.”
Alexey Navalny almost single-handedly reinvented Russia’s moribund activist culture for the digital era. Soon, he could be spending his days behind bars, if President Vladimir Putin has his way. A commercial-rights lawyer by training, Navalny painstakingly built a large following in recent years for his unique LiveJournal blog, a pioneering exercise in accountability in which he and his loyal readers sift through mountains of paperwork to uncover corrupt practices by Russia’s political and business elite — a busy job in a country that ranks 143rd on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. After exposing embezzlement and malfeasance at major state-owned energy companies and banks, he turned to politics more explicitly. Navalny famously described Putin’s ruling United Russia party as the “party of crooks and thieves,” a nickname that stuck and helped fuel the anti-regime protests that began in late 2011. Navalny took a central role in organizing those protests, sparked by Putin’s impending return to the presidency — a process that felt more like a coronation than an election. Regularly at the forefront of major demonstrations in Moscow, the blogger has ties to nationalist parties rather than the traditional Western-backed anti-Putin intelligentsia, making him a particularly potent, homegrown threat. Navalny has said he took inspiration from Arab Spring uprisings, telling Reuters, “If they do not voluntarily start to reform by themselves, I do not doubt that this will happen in Russia.”
Now the Kremlin has seemingly struck back by filing charges of embezzlement against Navalny. Although they appear dubious, they’re certainly cause for concern given the fate of Kremlin critics like former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now in his ninth year in prison. Of course, if the authorities do lock up Navalny, they’ll only be proving his point.
The past few years have produced one testament after another to America’s broken political system: the most partisan Congress on record, the first U.S. credit-rating downgrade ever, one of the most polarizing presidencies in recent memory, and the least popular and productive U.S. legislature in modern history.
But that’s usually where the conversation ends. Enter the Brookings Institution’s Thomas Mann and the American Enterprise Institute’s Norman Ornstein, two of the Beltway’s most respected congressional experts, who had the temerity to point fingers and name names. Their verdict, rendered in their new book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, is surprisingly blunt for two such consummate centrist insiders: The increasingly adversarial relationship between the Democrats and Republicans is imperiling America’s constitutional democracy, and the GOP is the primary villain.
The Republican Party “has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition,” they write, while allowing that the Democratic Party is “no paragon of civic virtue” either. The “asymmetry between the parties, which journalists and scholars often brush aside or whitewash in a quest for ‘balance,’ constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance,” they add.
It’s hard to disagree, when Republicans’ obstinate refusal to countenance any new revenues has America staring at a “fiscal cliff” that independent economists warn could plunge the country into a new recession. We can’t say they didn’t warn us.
MANN Reading list: Our Divided Political Heart, by E.J. Dionne; The New New Deal, by Michael Grunwald; Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Best idea: Progressive consumption tax pegged to the state of the economy. Worst idea: Libertarianism. American decline or American renewal? Renewal (if we get our republic working effectively once again). More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? Not for me.
ORNSTEIN Reading list: Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics, by Jeff Greenfield; The New New Deal, by Michael Grunwald; The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt. Best idea: A lottery prize for voting. Worst idea: We need more permanent tax cuts. American decline or American renewal? Teetering at the edge, but renewal is more likely. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? Not me, thanks.
“Make no mistake,” Saudi activist Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani said this summer after being arraigned on a long list of charges accusing him of promoting sedition. “We are all going to prison.” It’s hard to argue with that: The Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, which Qahtani co-founded, has broken some of Saudi Arabia’s biggest taboos, highlighting corruption within the monarchy and questioning its legitimacy to govern.
Qahtani, an American-educated economics professor outraged at Saudi Arabia’s treatment of political prisoners, has been at the forefront of efforts to popularize the idea that even citizens of one of the planet’s most repressive and unaccountable monarchies deserve to be treated like human beings, regardless of what lies beneath its sands. “All authoritarian rule is illegitimate, even more so when it is an apartheid and despotic regime,” a petition posted on his group’s website reads.
The Saudi regime charged Qahtani with “breaking allegiance to the ruler,” but the activist has tried to put the entire government on trial. Banned from leaving the country as he awaits his verdict, he faces years in prison if convicted. Although few Saudis are nearly as outspoken, Qahtani hears the rumblings of dissent on the horizon. “Eventually, the regime will fail,” he told Al-Monitor. “This price … is a small token for regaining our people’s liberty and freedom.”
Reading list: The Oil Kings, by Andrew Scott Cooper; On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines — and Future, by Karen Elliott House; Saudi Arabia on the Edge: The Uncertain Future of an American Ally, by Thomas W. Lippman. Best idea: The increasing possibility of political change in Saudi Arabia that will bring about democracy. Worst idea: Stories that still praise tyrannies in Arab countries. American decline or American renewal? American renewal. More Europe or less? Europe will weather the storm. We will see “more Europe.” To tweet or not to tweet? I do tweet. @MFQahtani.
Bahrain, the tiny archipelago wedged between Saudi Arabia and Iran, is the only country where tear gas and buckshot have succeeded (so far) in squelching an Arab Spring uprising. And for the ruling monarchy, the brave activists who run the Bahrain Center for Human Rights are Public Enemy No. 1.
The center, co-founded in 2002 by Nabeel Rajab, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, and others, played a vital role in advancing the idea that all Bahrainis should be treated equally in this religiously divided kingdom, regardless of their sect. But after Rajab called via Twitter for a powerful member of the ruling family to step down, the monarchy had enough — in July he was hauled into prison for “insulting” Bahrainis. Khawaja, who has been a thorn in the government’s side since the 1970s, fared even worse: His jaw was shattered in four places by police upon his arrest last year, and he subsequently embarked on a marathon hunger strike that turned him into a global cause célèbre.
The activists’ sacrifices, however, have gone largely unrecognized in Washington, which has been only too eager to ignore the revolt in a country that hosts a critical U.S. naval base and is an ally in efforts to isolate Iran. “It has become evident today that, to the United States, democracy and human rights should only be applied to countries that are in conflict with the United States — but not with dictatorships it calls its allies,” Rajab told Foreign Policy before his arrest. With the two veteran opposition leaders in jail, the Khawaja daughters, Maryam, 25, and Zainab, 29, have taken up their father’s mantle to remind Americans that their founding principles are applicable the world over. “This is an issue of pride and dignity. People are sick and tired of living in a country where they cannot speak about what is on their mind,” Zainab told Der Spiegel. “I am speaking out, but we are paying a high price for it.”
MARYAM AL-KHAWAJA Reading list: Iran Awakening: One Woman’s Journey to Reclaim Her Life and Country, by Shirin Ebadi; Little Daughter: A Memoir of Survival in Burma and the West, by Zoya Phan; The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi, by Peter Popham. Best idea: Developing laws that protect people online. Worst idea: Use of drones. American decline or American renewal? Decline. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? To always tweet.
RAJAB Reading list: As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda, by Catherine Claire Larson; An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, by Mohandas Gandhi; Call of Surat (history book in Arabic). Best idea: We got rid of some autocratic tyrants during the Arab Spring. Worst idea: Tribal and sectarian feuds taking over. American decline or American renewal? American decline. More Europe or less? Less Europe and weaker eurozone. To tweet or not to tweet? To tweet.
When New York Times Magazine critic Sam Anderson visited Tokyo last year to interview Haruki Murakami, he arrived, he later wrote, “expecting Barcelona or Paris or Berlin — a cosmopolitan world capital whose straight-talking citizens were fluent not only in English but also in all the nooks and crannies of Western culture: jazz, theater, literature, sitcoms, film noir, opera, rock ‘n’ roll.” It’s no wonder — Anderson had immersed himself in Murakami’s fictional Japan, where ennui-afflicted characters read Kafka and listen to Thelonious Monk. Although his novels are set in his insular native country, Murakami has become something of a patron saint of globalization.
Growing up outside Kobe, Murakami became enamored of American jazz and Western writers, from Dostoyevsky to Vonnegut, Dickens to Capote. He owned a jazz club in Tokyo before turning to the world of fiction, where he is renowned for his genre-bending novels that span different universes yet are littered with real-world cross-cultural references. Now, with 12 novels and dozens of short stories translated into more than 40 languages, Murakami is his country’s most famous living author.
His latest novel, the nearly 1,000-page 1Q84, has been hailed as a lively, if bizarre, creative achievement and a paean to a Tokyo that Murakami calls “a kind of civilized world.” But Murakami doesn’t shy away from hot political topics. Last year he controversially called Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident a “mistake committed by our very own hands.” And this year, after his books were pulled from shelves in China amid a territorial dispute with Japan, he chalked up the standoff to the “cheap liquor” of nationalism. 1Q84‘s title is a nod to the classic by George Orwell, with whom Murakami says he has a “common feeling against the system” — a subversiveness he perhaps best expresses by creating a universe all his own.
These days, it’s nearly impossible to get Republicans and Democrats to agree on anything. But Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, managed to capture the attention of both left and right with this year’s The World America Made. The book, which argues forcefully that American decline is a myth and calls for a continued assertive U.S. role in world affairs, was a major influence on Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address, in which the president declared, “Anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” Mitt Romney’s campaign, meanwhile, brought on Kagan as a foreign-policy advisor.
Kagan, whose previous big-think book cemented the Bush-era image of a muscular America from Mars and a soft-power Europe from Venus amid the disagreements of the Iraq war, now makes a powerful case that the present international order rests on U.S. military and economic might — not its liberal values. Maintaining American hegemony is imperative for global peace and security, he argues, because “one of the main causes of war throughout history has been a rough parity of power that leaves nations in doubt about who is stronger.” In an election year, it’s not difficult to see why Kagan’s narrative about America’s indispensability appealed to both parties. Romney, for example, took to including a line or two about how America is the “greatest country in the history of the world” in his speeches. Obama liked the book so much that he reportedly spent 10 minutes during a meeting with leading media personalities going over an excerpt line by line.
Reading list: Breaking the Heart of the World, by John Milton Cooper; George F. Kennan, by John Lewis Gaddis; Berlin 1961, by Frederick Kempe. Best idea: Reviving the long-form essay. Worst idea: More social networking. American decline or American renewal? Renewal. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? Not.
As a candidate in this year’s unusually public race for the World Bank presidency, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala seemingly had it all: an MIT education, high-level experience with both the bank and the Nigerian government, the potential to be the first woman and first person of color to run the institution, and the support of everyone from the African Union to the Financial Times. She just didn’t have the one thing that really mattered: a U.S. passport.
But though she may have missed out on her chance to run the bank — American Jim Yong Kim got the post — Okonjo-Iweala is arguably as influential in her role as the powerful finance minister of Africa’s most populous country and one of its fastest-growing economies. In a previous stint in the position, she successfully negotiated to wipe out millions of dollars of international debt, and since reassuming the post last year she has cut spending and helped establish a sovereign wealth fund to manage Nigeria’s oil riches. Her driving idea: African countries can’t hope to develop economically until they get their institutions in order.
It hasn’t always been easy. Although she enjoys a potent mandate from President Goodluck Jonathan, Okonjo-Iweala has seen her reform efforts consistently meet opposition from the “godfathers” — the powerful officials who benefit from the oil wealth in Nigeria’s notoriously corrupt political system. Her efforts to end a popular but economically disastrous fuel subsidy have also so far been slow going. “It has not been easy, and the struggle is still ongoing,” she told Reuters this year. “You make progress; then you get courage to make more.” If she can succeed in helping one of Africa’s most pivotal countries overcome the infamous oil curse, it might have a much more lasting impact than anything she could have accomplished back in Washington.
You might call Martin Feldstein, a former head of the National Bureau of Economic Research and chairman of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, the original euroskeptic. “If a single currency is accepted,” the longtime Harvard University economist wrote back in 1992, “national governments might soon have to decide whether to accept the greater volatility of employment and incomes that comes from abandoning an independent monetary policy and flexible exchange rate, or accept instead the loss of national sovereignty over taxes and spending.” (Translation: The euro is doomed.) He doubled down on his argument five years later in Foreign Affairs, warning of the “danger of a treaty or constitution that has no exits” and the “adverse economic effects of a single currency on unemployment and inflation.”
With the seemingly successful introduction of the euro in 1999, Feldstein was in a distinct minority. He stuck to his guns, however, even suggesting in 2008 — a month before Slovakia joined the euro (ironically, to seek relief from the global financial panic) — that a eurozone breakup could be “a real possibility.” Now, amid the very real talk of just such a breakup, Feldstein has turned to critiquing European leaders’ responses to the meltdown. Some of his predictions — Greece defaulting and exiting the eurozone, for example — have yet to come true. Feldstein can point to his prescience, however, noting that his early warnings “were pretty much on target, even though they were written 20 years ago.”
The Great Recession is coming up roses for Mohamed El-Erian. The Egyptian-American investor has already emerged as one of the most important theorists of the economic downturn — positing a “new normal” of sluggish growth and lower returns — and is poised to take over the investment firm Pimco, making him what the New York Times called the bond markets’ “new leading man.”
El-Erian, who made his intellectual reputation by describing the destructive cycle between financial crises and political instability, had proclaimed that 2012 would be “Europe’s moment of truth.” Now the verdict is in, and El-Erian’s warnings about the collapse of the eurozone and global market contagion seem more Cassandra-like than ever. Europe, El-Erian said recently, is simply avoiding the tough decisions that will allow it to recover. “Greece is like the infection in your toe. If you don’t pay attention to it, it’s small, and then the next thing you know, it’s spread to your leg, and the next thing you know it’s affecting your vital organs,” he said. “You’ve got to deal with it. And Europe has not dealt with the problem of Greece.” Although El-Erian saw the current financial crisis coming before just about anyone, he lays the blame for this latest downturn squarely at the feet of politicians, whose endless bickering and buck-passing have become the dangerous “new new normal.” Now, when the markets come crashing down, he writes, Western leaders “won’t have anyone to blame but themselves.”
China’s leaders often declare publicly that their country needs to “reform.” “Reform can only move forward,” Premier Wen Jiabao waxed after the country’s rubber-stamp legislature met in March. “It cannot stagnate. Even more so, it can’t move backward.” But China’s mandarins rarely elaborate on just what reform means, preferring instead to govern by cryptic slogans and vague pronouncements.
Not so Yu Jianrong, the rare Chinese academic who has taken up the challenge of defining how exactly China could change course — and from inside the system. In April, he released a succinct, two-phase plan he called a “10-Year Outline of China’s Social and Political Development.” Despite its bland title, Yu’s blueprint offers a timetable for Chinese reform that for once is as credible as it is ambitious. The plan puts dates and specifics to the task, advocating, for example, a stronger law on private property, the revealing of “information pertaining to government affairs” and “officials’ property,” and the abolition of “speech crimes,” after which China should “open up” the media and political parties. Yu’s short manifesto immediately caused a splash when he released it to his nearly 1.5 million followers on the popular microblogging site Sina Weibo (though the government has maintained a deafening silence). “We’ve already decided to change,” Yu explained in an interview. “The question is: In which direction do we change, and from where do we start?” Sweeping reform in this authoritarian land of 1.3 billion won’t be easy, but Yu’s plan is as good a place to begin as any. The era, he said, of crossing the river “by feeling the stones” is over. Best idea: Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize. Worst idea: Political reform in China may be delayed. American decline or American renewal? Renewal. More Europe or less? Less.
Today, the old cliché that money can buy anything is more true than ever. The going rate for an Indian woman’s womb is about $8,000, the right to emit a metric ton of carbon dioxide costs $10.50, and for $15 to $20 an hour, a man will stand in line overnight for a lobbyist who wishes to attend a congressional hearing. On the one hand, it’s a testament to the power of the modern market, where efficiency rules and anything is open to free exchange. But should everything be for sale? That is the burning question posed by Harvard University professor Michael Sandel, who has emerged as the world’s foremost critic of the rush toward “commodification.”
The problem with putting a price on everything, Sandel argues in his new book, What Money Can’t Buy, is twofold. First, it exacerbates inequality: When more and more goods and services — including health care, education, and political access — can be bought and sold like gold or oil futures, the rich can accumulate them in greater amounts. Second, placing objects and ideas on the free market, Sandel argues, often degrades their social value. Think, for example, of the growing practice of paying students to read. In our quest to boost test scores, are we recasting learning as a chore rather than a joy?
At Harvard, Sandel teaches one of the university’s most popular courses — simply titled “Justice” — which in a single semester has drawn upwards of 800 students, to whom he poses vexing moral dilemmas. A runaway train is hurtling toward a fork in the track. On one side, Gandhi lies tied to the rails; on the other, two ordinary individuals. Should you save Gandhi or save the two others? What if 10 people were on the other side? Sandel has also become an international phenomenon and a pioneer in the democratization of a world-class education: His class is now an internationally syndicated television show, making him a minor rock star in China, Japan, and South Korea, where his open-ended teaching style and focus on big questions are far from the norm. The introductory lecture for “Justice” has tallied more than 4 million views on YouTube. Who knew a philosophy-minded professor’s tough questions about Bentham and Kant could compete with cat videos and “Gangnam Style“?
Reading list: The Syrian Rebellion, by Fouad Ajami; Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives, by Ruth W. Grant; How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life, by Robert and Edward Skidelsky.
John Brennan has been at war with al Qaeda longer than any other top U.S. official, and he has learned a trick or two along the way. The 25-year CIA veteran has gone from a supporter of “enhanced interrogation techniques” under George W. Bush to the architect of Barack Obama‘s counterterrorism strategy, emphasizing pinpoint strikes and commando raids over grandiose attempts to transform the cultures of distant lands. And he has reframed Bush’s expansive war on terror as a more focused mission to dismantle specific terrorist groups in places like Somalia and Yemen.
Brennan no longer operates only from the shadows. He has mounted a public defense of the White House’s reliance on drone strikes, which have emerged as Obama’s signature tool in hunting terrorists, as “legal, ethical, and wise,” in a bid to convince skeptics that the administration has wielded its extraordinary powers responsibly. And he has largely won the argument: More than 60 percent of Americans support drone strikes to target terrorists abroad.
Brennan, reportedly the last man in the room with Obama before the president decides to order a strike, doesn’t take these life-or-death decisions lightly. The man whom colleagues refer to as the “priest” of the counterterrorism effort has formulated a moral blueprint for when to call in the drones. “It is the option of last recourse,” he explained this year. Obama “wants to make sure that we go through a rigorous checklist: the infeasibility of capture, the certainty of the intelligence base, the imminence of the threat, all of these things.”
Barack Obama has turned drones into his signature counterterrorism tool, even personally selecting targets from a “kill list” as he has deployed this new sort of air force to rain death down on terrorists across two continents and bludgeon al Qaeda into submission. But far too much of the U.S. president‘s secret assassination program has been shielded from legal scrutiny — and Jameel Jaffer, an influential lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union specializing in national security issues, is working to change that.
“[T]he legal foundation of the targeted killing campaign is not simply shaky, but rotten,” Jaffer wrote this year. For the first time, he’s forcing the CIA to justify its veil of secrecy: In a landmark court case, he’s challenging its consistent refusal, over several years, to confirm or deny the drone program’s existence. Even as multiple U.S. officials — from Obama on down — have spoken publicly about the strikes, America’s top spies still refuse to say whether they have records about the drone program, let alone share them.
Jaffer, who played a central role in challenging the warrantless wiretapping program and use of torture under George W. Bush, isn’t giving Obama a pass either. “Remember outcry after Bush detained Americans as [enemy combatants]?” Jaffer recently tweeted. “Imagine the outcry if he’d proposed killing them (secretly!) instead.”Reading list: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander; Mating, by Norman Rush; NW, by Zadie Smith. Best idea: The Arab Spring was a good idea, and still is. Worst idea: Canada’s decision to close its embassy in Iran. American decline or American renewal? Private opulence and public squalor (as John K. Galbraith said). More Europe or less? More would be good, but less is more likely. To tweet or not to tweet? Tweet, but regret it constantly.
The climate-change debate’s most consistent iconoclast continued to go after environmental sacred cows this year, dismissing the Rio+20 summit as a “wasted opportunity,” warning against “policy by panic” efforts to connect this summer’s droughts to global warming, and celebrating hydraulic fracturing as “this decade’s best green-energy option.”
But Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish political scientist often mislabeled a “climate skeptic,” is more than just a critic of environmentalism run amok. In a world of terrifyingly daunting problems and limited resources, Lomborg doesn’t say that global warming isn’t happening; he tries to urge leaders to think realistically about what to tackle first. For his innovative Copenhagen Consensus 2012 project, he convened a panel of more than 50 experts, including four Nobel-winning economists, and asked them how they would spend $75 billion — a 15 percent increase in global aid spending — to most efficiently bolster global welfare. The panel’s top recommendations were interventions to fight hunger and improve education, as well as increasing subsidies for malaria treatment and childhood immunizations. Research to “fight biodiversity destruction and lessen the effects of climate change”? That came in sixth.
Reading list: Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman; Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air, by David MacKay; The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality, by Branko Milanovic. Best idea: Fracking gas could be this decade’s best green option — it has actually reduced U.S. emissions twice what the Kyoto Protocol ever did. Worst idea: Predictions that 100 million people would die from global warming by 2030 — turned out it was exaggerated more than 12-fold, to get attention.
If there’s one man who has stepped into the void in the Middle East, it’s Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the ruler of a tiny country that few had heard of. Some might say it’s his vast oil and natural gas wealth that has made the enigmatic emir a major player in conflict zones as varied as Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen — not to mention Palestine, where Qatar has largely usurped Egypt’s role as the principal mediator between the feuding factions of Hamas and Fatah.
But the Qatari emir, who has been called the “Arab Henry Kissinger,” is not just a sheikh with a big bank account. His ambition is nothing less than the remapping of power dynamics in the Arab world. Known for his grit and determination, which enabled him to turn the nearly bankrupt statelet he inherited in a bloodless 1995 coup into the planet’s richest country, the emir also knows how to play great powers off each other to get what he wants. Qatar is home to one of the largest U.S. air bases, but the canny emir maintains cordial relations with his neighbors in Tehran as well, never mind his misgivings. (In one leaked 2010 diplomatic cable, he told U.S. Sen. John Kerry that “based on 30 years of experience with the Iranians, they will give you 100 words. Trust only one of the 100.”)
Magnifying Sheikh Hamad’s voice is Qatari media giant Al Jazeera, which became the “unquestioned home of the revolution” during the Arab Spring, as FP‘s Marc Lynch put it. Not content simply to cheer the revolutionaries from the sidelines, the Qatari emir took the lead in mustering Arab League support for the NATO intervention that toppled Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi, provided at least $400 million in aid for the rebels, and helped them establish training camps. He has also unveiled a mini-Marshall Plan for the post-Arab Spring world, pledging billions of dollars in aid and investment to Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and Gaza. Now the loudest Arab voice calling for intervention in Syria, Sheikh Hamad, at September’s U.N. General Assembly meeting, urged Arab countries to “do what is necessary to stop the bloodshed in Syria.” Based on his track record, the rest of the world will get there — eventually.
Hew Strachan may be an expert on World War I, but the Oxford University professor isn’t stuck in the past. He has emerged as one of the world’s preeminent thinkers on the character of modern warfare at a time when governments are confronting a host of new realities, from drones to cyberattacks to asymmetrical warfare. And he has the ear of top U.S. military officials. Gen. James Mattis, head of U.S. Central Command, is one of many to call himself one of Strachan’s students.
Strachan would tell you that war hasn’t changed as much as we may think because states are still the primary actors in conflict. But, perhaps more than any other military scholar, he has pressed civilian leaders to think deeply about how they articulate strategy, while urging military leaders to wrestle with their role in implementing it. He argues that since the 1980s, the U.S. Army has had an ever freer hand in running America’s wars, while opting out all but entirely from the crucial policy debates on whether and in what way to use military force. Conflict, Strachan writes, became “a policy-free zone, in which military expertise was unfettered and where armies reasserted their authority over war’s conduct.” Unsurprisingly, he thinks this is what led to disastrously unsound strategy post-9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq, like the dramatic 2010 firing of Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, which Strachan says stemmed from the general’s frustration over a lack of political guidance from the capital. And he has lacerated Barack Obama’s administration for sending mixed messages to Afghans and Americans alike, citing its failure to understand that in modern warfare, communications are strategy. Reflecting on the war on terror in late 2011, Strachan made an observation that could equally apply to many of today’s conflicts: “The paradox of having wars with big objectives, at least in declaratory terms, but only being ready to use limited means and limited levels of mobilization to fight them, puts you in a pretty confused place.”Reading list: The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, by Thomas E. Ricks; And the Land Lay Still, by James Robertson; War from the Ground Up, by Emile Simpson. Best idea: Reintroducing the idea of victory in counterinsurgency. Worst idea: Bombing Iran. American decline or American renewal? Decline unless the U.S. recognizes the need for renewal. More Europe or less? Less. To tweet or not to tweet? Not to tweet.
Husain Haqqani and Farahnaz Ispahani have spent their careers fighting the slow-motion radicalization of Pakistan — even as it became increasingly obvious that the deck was stacked against them. The husband and wife, now in self-imposed exile in the United States, were two of Islamabad’s most prominent interlocutors with Washington as jihadists spread throughout Pakistan’s tribal areas and Osama bin Laden was discovered a mile away from the country’s version of West Point. Now, after a career defending Pakistan’s deeply unpopular ties to the United States, Haqqani is beginning to think it’s time for a geopolitical divorce.
“If in 65 years, you haven’t been able to find sufficient common ground to live together, and you had three separations and four reaffirmations of marriage, then maybe the better way is to find friendship outside of the marital bond,” Haqqani, a scholar of the Pakistani military, said in August. Ispahani, meanwhile, has tried to push Pakistan toward a frank discussion of its internal demons. The real struggle in Pakistan, she wrote this year, is “the systematic elimination” of anyone who stands up to the country’s generals, who have created “a militarized Islamist state.” She found out what standing up to them means in Pakistan’s parliament, where she was a leading voice calling for the repeal of the country’s notorious blasphemy laws — an explosive cause that has cost several of Pakistan’s leading liberal politicians their lives at the hands of Islamist killers.
Their outspokenness has had its own cost: Haqqani was forced to resign as Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington and was hauled before a Pakistani court over allegations that he had sought U.S. help to head off a possible military coup, while Ispahani was stripped of her seat in parliament, ostensibly because she holds dual U.S.-Pakistani nationality. Instead of convincing Washington to rush to their aid, however, they’re trying to convince Pakistanis that their true struggles can’t be won by burning American flags. As Ispahani tweeted recently: “Stop blaming the world — look inside.”
HAQQANI Reading list: Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson; The Dictator’s Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy, by William J. Dobson; The World America Made, by Robert Kagan. Best idea: Containment of totalitarian Islamism. Worst idea: Leading from behind. American decline or American renewal? American renewal. More Europe or less? More Europe. To tweet or not to tweet? Tweet, but only meaningfully and with purpose.
ISPAHANI Reading list: Ideas of a Nation, by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad; Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide, by Paul Marshall and Nina Shea; Realizing Human Rights: Moving from Inspiration to Impact, edited by Samantha Power and Graham Allison. Best idea: Using social media to defeat the overwhelming presence of jihadi extremists on social media. Worst idea: Not intervening in Syria immediately with the backing of the international community. American decline or American renewal? American renewal. More Europe or less? Europe with all its issues is still a more reliable partner than any others. Will prevent a resurgent Russia. To tweet or not to tweet? Always tweet. So many ideas emerge; so many conversations with ordinary people, intellectuals, and voiceless groups happen on Twitter and only on Twitter.
A tenured MIT professor since age 29, winner of various top-notch economics prizes, co-author of a groundbreaking book on poverty (last year’s Poor Economics) — Esther Duflo, still just 40, is firmly cemented among the world’s elite economists. Her place there is secured by a relentless (and prolific) dedication to the novel proposition that we should subject our wishful thinking about how to help poor people to cold, hard analyses of whether those ideas actually work.
She and her Poor Economics co-author, Abhijit Banerjee (her partner in life too — they had a baby this year), are co-founders and directors of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, where they have the radical idea of actually asking poor people about how they live and subjecting the various programs aimed at helping them to real, scientific, randomized controlled trials to evaluate their effectiveness. This year, for example, Duflo and two colleagues released a study debunking the oft-touted saving graces of Western-designed cookstoves. Contradicting previous laboratory results, a four-year trial in one Indian state found no evidence that families that received the stoves had improved lung function or reduced their fuel consumption. “More broadly,” Duflo’s team wrote in what could be read as her raison d’être, “this study underscores the need to test environmental and health technologies in real-world settings where behavior may temper impacts.”
Despite results that often show good intentions aren’t nearly good enough, Duflo insists her work should be seen as encouraging. “The fact that policies often fail for no good reason is annoying but less depressing than the view that it is a big conspiracy against the poor,” she explained to the Financial Times this year. “Name your favorite enemy — capitalism, corruption.… Our view is easier. You think hard about the problems and you can solve them.”
On March 11, 2011, tsunami waves from the worst earthquake Japan had ever seen slammed the island country. Some 15,872 people died; 129,577 buildings collapsed; and three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in eastern Japan suffered a full meltdown, spewing radiation into the air and tainting a 50-mile radius of surrounding area. In the national debate that followed, the Japanese government commissioned three major reports to determine what happened. The most searing one was chaired by the outspoken Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a medical doctor and emeritus professor who blasted “collusion” between government regulators and Tokyo Electric Power Co., which runs the plant, for causing the disaster.
In Japan’s opaque political system, Kurokawa’s report amounted to a bombshell. Following a six-month investigation, including interviews with more than 1,100 people, he concluded not only that the Fukushima disaster was “man-made” but also that it resulted more fundamentally from the “ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the program’; our groupism; and our insularity.” Critics have argued that even Kurokawa didn’t go far enough; the report names no names, and critical elements that appear in the English-language report didn’t make it into the Japanese. But his rare willingness to point fingers is exactly what may be needed to shake the world’s third-biggest economy out of its dangerous complacency.Best idea: Critical importance of human wisdom. Worst idea: Continuing greed. American decline or American renewal? Renewal. More Europe or less? Less. To tweet or not to tweet? To tweet.
It’s fitting that in the year after the Arab Spring and the European debt crisis dethroned one head of state after another, MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and Harvard University political scientist James Robinson put out an authoritative tome arguing, based on a sweeping historical survey stretching back to the Neolithic age, that state failure stems not from culture, geography, or insufficient technocratic expertise, but rather from what they call “extractive institutions” — those that concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few elites. “Poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty,” the two write in Why Nations Fail. “They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose.”
In tackling one of history’s most vexing questions — why some countries flourish while others flounder — Acemoglu and Robinson argue that Mexico is poorer than the United States because of the institutions established by Spanish versus British colonialists, and that authoritarian China’s current economic growth is simply not sustainable. The duo has also launched a blog to apply their thesis to everything from the eurozone crisis to sexual repression in North Korea.
Along the way, Acemoglu and Robinson are making people think again (and again) about geopolitics. “The more you read [Why Nations Fail], the more you appreciate what a fool’s errand we’re on in Afghanistan and how much we need to totally revamp our whole foreign aid strategy,” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman marveled. “But most intriguing are the warning flares the authors put up” about America’s growing inequality and China’s unsustainable growth. They’re danger signs world leaders would do well to heed.
ACEMOGLU Reading list: Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, by Laurent Dubois; Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, by Jason Stearns; The Evolution of God, by Robert Wright. Best idea: A growth pact for Europe. Worst idea: A growth pact for Europe based on just carrying on with business as usual. American decline or American renewal? American renewal. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? Why not?
ROBINSON Reading list: Oblivion: A Memoir, by Héctor Abad Faciolince; Country of Bullets: Chronicles of War, by Juanita León; Antecedents to Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom, by Jan Vansina. Best idea: To have the World Bank led by someone who actually has a track record in solving the problems of poor people in developing countries. Worst idea: CIVETS (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, South Africa) as favored emerging markets. American decline or American renewal? Renewal. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? Not.
Back in 2009, Paul Romer began talking about “charter cities” — his novel idea for persuading a developing country to sign away a parcel of land to be governed by a foreign power as a model for economic growth, essentially creating mini-Hong Kongs throughout the Third World. The concept was generally received as intriguing but infeasible. Free trade zones and low-cost maquiladora factories are one thing, but what government would ever voluntarily let another country enforce laws on its territory? It seemed like a mix of wild-eyed futurism and old-school colonialism, and the one government that seriously considered adopting it — Madagascar’s — was overthrown in a coup shortly afterward.
Then came Honduras. President Porfirio Lobo, who came to power following his own country’s coup in 2009, was intrigued by Romer’s proposal, and over the past two years, Honduras moved substantially toward enacting his dream, even passing legislation establishing a Región Especial de Desarrollo — or RED — that would have special, market-friendly laws to attract international investors. In a geographically bizarre arrangement, the court system of Mauritius, a tiny island country in the Indian Ocean, was enlisted to serve as the RED’s appeals court. Still, big dreams don’t come easily. In September, Romer resigned from the project’s advisory board after the Honduran government signed an investment deal without the board’s input. In October, the Honduran Supreme Court ruled “private cities” unconstitutional. “I don’t know what people mean when they refer to private cities,” Romer told the Guardian before the decision. “But if it suggests that there will be no institutions or government, then I fear that misses the essential requirement for successful urbanization.”
Whether or not the Honduran Hong Kong ever materializes, Romer deserves credit for showing the power of even an outlandish idea to make us reimagine the world’s poorest places.
With last year’s Arab uprisings, the world saw the power of Twitter to channel popular sentiment, mobilize protests, and even, some argued, topple dictators. That power isn’t always a given, however, and it’s Alexander Macgillivray’s job to defend it. As Twitter’s head lawyer, he has done battle with governments across the globe to protect the right of tweeps everywhere to spout off — provided, of course, they do it in 140 characters or less.
In just the past year, the longtime Silicon Valley attorney, who previously represented Google as it redefined intellectual property law for the search era, has contested attempts by the Indian government to shut down accounts, fought a U.S. court order to release data on Occupy Wall Street protesters, and even reprimanded a fellow Twitter employee for helping the company’s corporate partners silence critical voices on the site. “You don’t want business interests affecting judgment about content,” Macgillivray insisted. “It’s against the trust your users have in your service.”
But it’s a tricky balancing act. Early this year, Twitter announced a new policy giving the company the ability to “reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world.” (Removing a tweet previously meant deleting it from the web entirely.) Critics said the move was a form of censorship, but Twitter promised tweets would be removed only upon request and only if they broke the law — a system that Macgillivray, one of the policy’s architects, defended as a way “to keep more tweets up in more places.” The company refused to comply with all six government removal requests in the first half of 2012, but in October Twitter blocked access in Germany to the account of a neo-Nazi group that is banned by the German government, in addition to removing anti-Semitic tweets in France. “Never want to withhold content; good to have tools to do it narrowly & transparently,” Macgillivray tweeted.
The microblogging service may still be figuring out the kinks of this new policy, but at a time when multinational corporations are caving left and right to countries like China, Macgillivray’s principled defense of free speech is vital. “No one wants a pen that’s going to rat them out,” he told the New York Times. “We all want pens that can be used to write anything and that will stand up for who we are.”
In 2008, the crash of Lehman Brothers sent the world economy into a tailspin. Four years later, the United States and the major economies of the European Union are growing anemically, if at all. The investing world has seen the Chinas and Indias as practically the only bright spots of global growth. According to Ruchir Sharma, however, the golden age for these up-and-comers is fast coming to a close.
In his new book, Breakout Nations, Sharma — who oversees a portfolio worth an estimated $25 billion — debunks the conventional wisdom that the emerging markets of the last decade will continue to drive global growth in the next one. Where some see in India, Mexico, and Russia’s growing ranks of billionaires symbols of newfound affluence, Sharma sees dangerous imbalances. Smart investors should look instead to a new class of promising economies — like “boring” Poland. Sharma’s smart geoeconomic insights — like his riff on how overpriced cocktails in Rio could be a sign of green shoots in Detroit or his take on why China’s slowdown won’t be the “cataclysmic event” that many fear (after all, “a dead camel is still larger than a horse”) — are the end product of two decades of traveling the world to seek out ground truth for himself. “The next decade is full of bright spots,” Sharma writes, “but you can’t find them by looking back at the nations that got the most hype in the last decade.”Reading list: The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential … in Business and in Life, by Leo Babauta; Joseph Anton: A Memoir, by Salman Rushdie; The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, by Daniel Yergin. Best idea: The abundance of oil. Worst idea: Another marketing acronym for which countries will do well: MIST (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, and Turkey). American decline or American renewal? American renewal. More Europe or less? Less. To tweet or not to tweet? Not to tweet.
A giant of contemporary African letters for more than half a century, Chinua Achebe is still best known for his 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart, which drew on oral traditions to tell the story of a Nigerian village transformed by colonialism and Western-imposed Christianity. He also achieved renown for his withering critiques of depictions of Africa by European writers, demanding a literature that traveled well beyond the Heart of Darkness clichés to reveal African realities, while urging Africans to be the ones to tell their own stories.
True to that appeal, this year brought Achebe’s own powerful memoir, There Was a Country, an account of his life during the 1967-1970 Biafran war. Achebe had taken the Biafran side in the conflict, which left more than 1 million people dead, and served as a roving international ambassador for the breakaway government, narrowly escaping Nigerian attacks on multiple occasions. His book makes the case that the Biafran war — Africa’s first civil war to generate major international media attention — was a harbinger of African conflicts to come, from Rwanda to Congo to Sierra Leone, all of which have their roots in the arbitrary drawing of borderlines during colonialism, were exacerbated by natural resources, and proved the inability of the international community to stop the bloodshed. “Nigeria was once a land of great hope and progress, a nation with immense resources at its disposal,” writes Achebe, today a professor of Africana studies at Brown University. “But the Biafran war changed the course of Nigeria. In my view it was a cataclysmic experience that changed the history of Africa.”
Sludge flows through China’s rivers. The air tastes like glue. Synthetic eggs and pigs pumped full of growth hormones and cooked in oil made of recycled sewage feature on menus across the country. In the United States, asking “Why is the sky blue?” implies something so obvious that it doesn’t have to be explained. But in China, home to some of the world’s most polluted cities, the question’s very premise is questionable.
Enter Ma Jun, the most prominent Chinese activist attempting not only to hold the government accountable but, first, to get it to tell the truth about just how dire China’s pollution problem really is. His method: diligently and painstakingly collecting evidence of companies behaving badly to try to shame them into compliance. A journalist turned environmentalist who founded the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, Ma applies scientific rigor to exposing such corporate violations (more than 90,000 to date), flagging everything from a small coal-tar factory improperly storing its dangerous waste to Apple suppliers poisoning workers with a toxic chemical used on touch screens — as well as local governments that flout environmental regulations across China. Dozens of major multinationals now consult Ma’s pollution readings when working with suppliers in China. And by documenting environmental violations that had long been obvious but were never compiled in a way the public could easily understand, Ma has given statistical ammunition to Chinese citizens trying to nudge the Communist Party into cleaning up its act.
Ma has pushed his message with vivid depictions of China’s black rivers and dun-colored heavens. In one recent article titled “A Dream of Blue Skies,” Ma writes of waiting for the day when “hospitals aren’t filled with children suffering from respiratory diseases … when you don’t have to think hard to choose the type of dustproof mask so that they can walk home from school without breathing in too much soot and exhaust.” He might be waiting for a long time, but it won’t be for lack of trying.
Yevgenia Chirikova had never been involved in politics before 2007, when she noticed red paint on the trees of the Khimki forest outside Moscow, where she enjoyed taking walks with her family. When she learned that a wide swath of the forest was due to be razed for the construction of a highway, she did something almost inconceivable in Russian political culture: She got organized.
A successful businesswoman with her own engineering company, Chirikova soon proved an effective activist, organizing protests and blogging her struggle to save the forest. When thousands of people began attending the rallies and celebrities including U2’s Bono began speaking out on her behalf, the Russian state fought back. Chirikova was jailed multiple times, and at one point officials threatened to take away her children on trumped-up neglect charges. The Khimki protests were an early sign of the growing levels of dissent in Russia, which boiled over into the massive rallies held before, and after, Vladimir Putin’s reelection this year. And Chirikova, who helped organize the protests and recently challenged the ruling United Russia party in local elections (she lost, but alleged voter fraud), was way ahead of the curve. During the Putin era, the public faces of the Russian opposition have typically been intellectuals, ex-politicians, or tycoons. With Chirikova, who runs her campaign out of a tiny basement beside a fruit and vegetable store, Russian activists have a more accessible symbol: an ordinary woman with unusual determination fighting to save her home.
Reading list: Anton Chekhov short stories and novels (reread); Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas Friedman. Best idea: Preserving the view from your own window, the small motherland each of us has. American decline or American renewal? Renewal. Smart America will realize it is time to walk away from the idea of consuming society and become a responsible society. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? To tweet.
Chirikova tells FP:“Before the Arab revolutions, many lived with the stereotype that poverty pushes people to street protests. The Arab Spring demonstrated that even when people do not starve, they still go to protest, because they are unhappy about the regimes in their countries. If they can do it, why cannot we? We saw that the square can be real, that we also can come out and demand changes. Before, people were too scared to demonstrate their views. Since last winter, our squares have filled up with people demanding Putin’s resignation, demanding political changes.” “I am against revolutions. We have had negative experience with coups and rallies in the past. We remember the shooting at the White House in Moscow. We still mourn dozens of victims. The new Russia’s protest is the most beautiful, most peaceful, most intelligent protest in the world — not a single broken window, not a single burned car or victim.”
In the years since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Republican Party’s base has grown increasingly wary of engagement overseas — to the point where Republican primary voters in 2012 were split straight down the middle about whether the United States should intervene in world affairs whenever America’s interests are challenged. And since 2010, when he rode the Tea Party wave to Washington, Rand Paul has quickly emerged as the standard-bearer for his party’s noninterventionist wing. The freshman senator from Kentucky — son of libertarian leader Ron Paul, the congressman who waved the come-home-America flag as an also-ran in this year’s Republican presidential primaries — has called for a “foreign policy of moderation” that “works within the confines of the Constitution and the realities of our fiscal crisis.” He has also argued that a “more defensive foreign policy” is in the long-term interest of a Republican Party whose support is increasingly concentrated in the American South. “I think that would go over much better in New England than the typical ‘we have to bomb everybody tomorrow’ policy that you hear some Republicans have.”
In practice, these views have translated into opposition to the Patriot Act, military intervention in Libya, aggressive rhetoric against Iran, and increases in defense spending. This year, Paul also held up a government-funding bill and several ambassadorial confirmations in an effort to cut foreign aid to Egypt, Libya, and Pakistan. “We send billions of taxpayer dollars abroad and what do we get in return?” he asked in September after the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. “Disrespect, disdain and, ultimately, violence.” Plenty of Americans are starting to agree.
As Indonesia’s finance minister from 2005 to 2010, Sri Mulyani Indrawati won high praise for tough-minded reforms — from dismissing corrupt tax officials to nearly quadrupling the roll of income-tax payers — that helped the country of 250 million beat back the global financial crisis with annual growth rates averaging 6 percent. Now that she’s a managing director at the World Bank (and its most senior woman), Sri Mulyani is peddling her wares to the rest of the world, offering advice on economic growth for those countries hoping to replicate the Indonesian miracle.
Her prescription is simple: sensible fiscal cutbacks plus policies that encourage growth — the tried-and-true methods of breaking down barriers to trade, investment, and innovation. At a March speech in Beijing, for instance, she cautioned that China’s rise could be in jeopardy unless it allowed more, and more equal, competition. In a bit of role reversal for an official from a former Dutch colony, Sri Mulyani has also dispensed words of wisdom to debt-saddled Europe: Countries like Greece and Spain should get their balance sheets in order and then worry about building up their economies, she says — but the two go hand in hand. Call it the Indonesian model.
Sri Mulyani has good reason to put her country on a pedestal: Indonesia has the world’s third-fastest-growing consumer base after China and India, and it is predicted to surpass the likes of Britain and Germany to become the world’s seventh-largest economy by 2030. So forget the BRICS, she says, and find a way to put another “I” on the list of the world’s most successful emerging economies.
The foreign policy of the world’s No. 2 superpower remains a bit of a mystery. Chinese leaders rarely elaborate or take questions in news conferences, instead offering canned statements to Communist Party propaganda outlets such as the People’s Daily. And lower-ranking Chinese officials and think-tank experts are far more constrained in their ability to explain what’s really going on than their voluble U.S. counterparts.
That’s why Wang Jisi, China’s most respected expert on the United States, is so crucial to understanding what Chinese leaders think about the world. A gifted writer and the former director of the Institute of International Strategic Studies at the Central Party School, the most prestigious training institution for Communist Party officials, Wang has both the ability and, crucially, the permission to demystify Chinese views. What does Wang want us to know? That the feel-good stories U.S. officials tell themselves about China’s global ascent are an elaborate form of denial. In an influential monograph co-authored by Brookings Institution senior fellow Kenneth Lieberthal, Wang this year described China’s actions on the world stage as rooted in the conclusion that “America will seek to constrain or even upset China’s rise.” Beijing’s view, he says, is that the United States is “heading for decline” and that China’s development model provides an “alternative to Western democracy and market economies.” The result? “[T]hese views make many Chinese political elites suspect that it is the United States,” Wang says, “that is ‘on the wrong side of history.'”
How much is a good fourth-grade teacher worth? Enough to pack an extra apple with your kid’s lunch? Or maybe a nice gift for the holidays? How about $700,000? That figure, it turns out, is the amount of extra income the students of an average-sized U.S. classroom, combined, can earn over their lifetimes thanks to a good fourth-grade teacher. If that sounds excessive, Raj Chetty, a Harvard University economist, has the numbers to back it up — just one of this 33-year-old’s pioneering, empirical discoveries in his short career so far.
The Indian-American Chetty, who earned tenure at Harvard at the tender age of 29 and is a winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant this year, has been bucking the conventional economic wisdom since he was an undergraduate, also at Harvard. As a sophomore, he caught the eye of legendary economist Martin Feldstein (No. 52) by proposing a counterintuitive reason that companies might increase investment under higher interest rates; Feldstein told Chetty to quit working for him and instead pursue his own research. Since then, Chetty — driven by the simple impulse for “math to guide the intuition, not for the intuition to guide the math,” as he has put it — has managed to overturn various age-old assumptions and ensure his place at the center of the U.S. policy debate over everything from unemployment benefits (they’re not necessarily a crutch — they give people time to find well-suited jobs) to tax breaks (one of their most important qualities, it turns out, is that beneficiaries actually know how they work). With an already hefty list of findings like these, Chetty is at the forefront of the growing field of behavioral public finance, using hard data to track how economic policy affects individual behavior and social welfare. It may sound simple, but, as Feldstein once put it, most economists today are “happy to take the data as they find it.” That’s just what makes Chetty’s novel, truth-testing experiments, in Feldstein’s words, “ingenious.”
Weeks after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called Israel a “cancer tumor” in the latest rhetorical salvo of hatred from the leaders of the Islamic Republic, Asghar Farhadi presented a decidedly different portrait of their country. Accepting the Academy Award for best foreign film in a gilded Hollywood theater, he spoke of peace and tolerance, reminding tens of millions of viewers worldwide that “at the time when talk of war, intimidation, and aggression is exchanged between politicians, the name of their country, Iran, is spoken here through her glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics.”
Farhadi’s carefully chosen words avoided outright criticism of the Iranian regime. (And for good reason: Fellow Iranian director Jafar Panahi was sentenced to six years in prison and banned from filmmaking for 20 years after speaking out in support of Iran’s 2009 opposition protests.) Yet, precisely by sidestepping the overtly political — by depicting “the way that millions of normal people live in Iran today,” as the lead actor put it — Farhadi’s Oscar-winning film, A Separation, reminded us how art can transcend nationalism. The story of a Tehran couple’s split — which arises from a clash over how to raise their daughter but blows up after a violent incident, setting off a complex legal imbroglio — had decidedly Iranian trappings, broaching questions about Islam and the treatment of women. At its core, though, the film’s appeal proved universal. In a year when Iran and Israel seemed to grow more aggressive by the day, Farhadi elegantly articulated the basic shared humanity of peoples across borders, even on the brink of war.
The reports from Mexico are all too familiar: another journalist who has been killed, the latest victim of that country’s protracted drug war. The means are as grisly as they are varied, but the reason is nearly always the same — a willingness to report on cartel violence and corruption in the Mexican government. As a result, self-censorship has become rampant among journalists across Mexico, but Adela Navarro Bello is a striking exception. The editor of the Tijuana weekly Zeta, Navarro leads one of the few remaining publications that prides itself on investigative work into the drug war and the associated miasma of corruption and incompetence. For Navarro and her staff, the stakes could hardly be higher. In 1988, the magazine’s co-founder, Héctor Félix Miranda, was shot and killed, and in 2004, co-editor Francisco Ortiz Franco was murdered. Since 2006, when President Felipe Calderón came to office and unleashed the official campaign against the country’s cartels, at least 40 Mexican journalists have been murdered or disappeared in a conflict that has killed at least 50,000 — more than the number of American combat deaths in the Vietnam War. Navarro’s magazine practices a kind of journalism both essential and extremely dangerous — she’s following the money. “They say Chapo Guzmán [Mexico’s most powerful cartel boss] is worth a billion dollars,” she said in a recent interview. “Where is that money? Where are their investments?” In Navarro, who travels with two bodyguards, Mexicans have found a rare reporter brave enough to keep asking the right questions.Reading list: The Invention of Solitude, by Paul Auster; To Each His Own, by Leonardo Sciascia; Confessions of a Young Novelist, by Umberto Eco. Best idea: Rich people paying more taxes. Worst idea: Restricting Internet content.
Like Haiti, Somalia, and Mississippi, India’s Bihar state has been called many unflattering names; it’s often referred to as the country’s “bleakest state” and the “jungle Raj” for its colonial levels of poverty and corruption. Many viewed it as one of the most dysfunctional corners of a country world famous for government dysfunction. Much of that began to change, however, when a low-key bureaucrat from a local center-left party, Nitish Kumar, won the 2005 election and set out to clean up a wasteland where 100 million people are squeezed into a territory smaller than Arkansas.
In his two terms in office, he has done just that, relying on an array of innovative programs to crack down on crime, shame corrupt public officials, and boost economic development. In addition to setting up a special fast-track court system to move trials along more quickly, Kumar’s administration has offered cash rewards to whistleblowers and has broadcast bribery complaints on YouTube. A law passed last year allows the government to take control of ill-gotten land and, unless the owner is cleared in court, use it for schools and health clinics. He has overseen the construction of nearly 15,000 schools, hired 150,000 new teachers, launched a program to give free bikes to girls so they can get to class, and distributed free radios to lower-caste citizens to “listen to music, news, and improve your areas of information,” as he put it. With crime rates finally plummeting and education rates rising, there’s no question these efforts have paid off. In 2011, Indian economists Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari called Bihar India’s least corrupt state, and this year the state’s service- and agriculture-based economy was the country’s fastest-growing for the second year in a row (this while India’s national economy is waning and, with it, enthusiasm for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh). Although Kumar says he’s not a candidate to replace Singh, he is now being floated as a potential prime minister for 2014. Quite a leap for the leader of a region once decried as a “criminal fiefdom.”
When the Tor Project was announced a decade ago, Google was still largely seen as fulfilling its corporate motto, “Don’t be evil,” and Twitter didn’t even exist. But researchers Roger Dingledine, Nick Mathewson, and Paul Syverson could already see trouble on the horizon. Created in a U.S. naval lab to safeguard government communications, their brainchild the Tor Project (which stands for “the onion router”) is designed to protect anyone and everyone from the dangers of Big Brother. The free software, now relied on by hundreds of thousands of users daily, bounces information through the computers of 3,000 volunteers around the world, hiding the identity of the original user.
Operated by just 15 full-time employees with a budget just over $1 million, thanks to grants from the U.S. State Department and the National Science Foundation, Tor allows people who otherwise might be silenced online — whether corporate whistleblowers or domestic-violence victims — to bring important information to light. It has become an especially critical tool over the last two years as activists and journalists from Bahrain to Syria find themselves the targets of increasingly tech-savvy tyrants. “We developed Tor originally with civil liberties in mind,” Dingledine told an interviewer. “We want to let people in free countries be able to communicate and secure their communications so they can keep their freedoms.” Bit by bit, it’s working.
DINGLEDINE Reading list: Kallocain, by Karin Boye; Under Heaven, by Guy Gavriel Kay; Blindsight, by Peter Watts. Best idea: Holding Western corporations accountable for selling censorship and surveillance tools to dictators. Worst idea: Bloggers shouldn’t get the First Amendment protections that journalists do. American decline or American renewal? Decline, unless we can solve the corporate influence on our government. More Europe or less? Either, but pick one. To tweet or not to tweet? Feel free.
MATHEWSON Reading list: Homestuck (webcomic in progress), by Andrew Hussie; The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker; Overcoming Bias (blog). Best idea: Cryptoparties, though the execution still needs work. Worst idea: The constellation of anti-democratic speech regulations and surveillance proposals operating under the names of “Internet safety,” “copyright enforcement,” and the like. American decline or American renewal? That’s up to us, isn’t it? More Europe or less? Some of each; European unity is not a single axis. To tweet or not to tweet? Yes, if you have a good number of 140-character ideas.
It was Eliot Cohen, the former State Department counselor and Pentagon advisor, who first laid out Mitt Romney’s vision for a bolder, more self-assured American foreign policy — one that the bow-tied Johns Hopkins University professor contrasted with President Barack Obama’s call to focus on “nation-building here at home.”
“The United States cannot withdraw from world affairs without grave danger to itself and to others,” Cohen warned in an October 2011 white paper for Romney’s presidential campaign. Above all, the United States must not look “weak and uncertain,” he wrote — a theme the candidate would earnestly take up on the stump. As for Obama, Cohen accused him of “currying favor with our enemies.”
For Cohen, the role of the presidency itself was at stake. The leading military strategist, whose 2002 book, Supreme Command, made it onto President George W. Bush’s reading list in the lead-up to the Iraq war, has long touted strategic vision and strong, hands-on leadership from the White House during wartime. He is perhaps best known for defying the conventional wisdom that presidents, once they’ve given the order to go to war, should leave the strategic planning to their generals. Romney may have lost despite touting the need to restore “strong, confident, principled global leadership,” but you haven’t heard the last of Cohen and his argument.Reading list: Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, by Christopher Andrew; Essays, by William Hazlitt; Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Best idea: Philip Tetlock’s finding that political experts tend to be systematically less correct in their predictions than the proverbial chimp throwing darts. Worst idea: That we should consider suppressing free speech at home to mollify Salafi mobs abroad. American decline or American renewal? Depends on what Americans choose. More Europe or less? The more of an artificially unified European polity, the less there will be of a Europe worth having. To tweet or not to tweet? Not on your life. At a time when we read less widely and deeply, and write less cleverly and precisely than in previous times, why make ourselves even more vapid than we already are?
In the United States, where Raghuram Rajan lived and worked for years as a professor at the University of Chicago and chief economist at the IMF, he is known primarily as one of the guys who saw it coming. In a 2005 paper — widely derided by his colleagues at the time — Rajan warned that financial markets were encouraging irresponsible speculation that could lead to a major crash. He would be vindicated three years later. In the past year, Rajan has argued against “the standard Keynesian line” that governments can simply borrow and spend their way out, urging the West to “treat the crisis as a wake-up call to fix what debt has papered over.”
Now, Rajan is bringing his know-how to his most challenging assignment yet: saving the world’s largest democracy from economic ruin. In August, he accepted the post of chief economic advisor to the Finance Ministry in his native India at a time when the country’s GDP is slowing and deficits are beginning to spiral out of control. Rajan argues that India has been coasting off the dividends from economic reforms passed in the 1990s as its politicians have gotten lazy, giving away government funding to politically influential groups while failing to make the investments in energy and infrastructure that could help India reach the next level of growth. As his appointment suggests, Rajan’s views are increasingly becoming the conventional wisdom. Winning the argument is one thing, though — getting India’s entrenched political interests to do something about it may prove another matter entirely.
The design world has long been preoccupied with dreaming up ever sleeker cars, laptops, smartphones, and even kitchen gadgets. But Patrice Martin and Jocelyn Wyatt are at the forefront of a hip new field fashioning decidedly less glamorous — if all the more consequential — systems and devices aimed not at the world’s yuppies but at those left out of the design revolution.
Martin is creative director and Wyatt executive director of IDEO.org, a spinoff of the design firm IDEO that brings engineering and marketing innovations to poor communities throughout the world. The idea: Put Silicon Valley’s brains and money toward tackling development challenges from sanitation to agriculture, financial services to gender equality. In Kenya, where only 61 percent of the population has access to clean water, IDEO.org came up with a subscription home-delivery system — designing everything from the shape and look of the water containers to a stylish logo to help market the service, now being piloted in Nairobi. “The solutions that we come up with, we really try to make tangible,” Wyatt explained. Part of the goal, she says, is “storytelling” — offering simple, visual explanations of their new designs, whether it’s an in-home toilet system in Ghana or kitchen accessories to make Tanzanians’ cookstoves easier to use.
Wyatt, a development expert, is the business brains behind IDEO.org, and Martin is the artist. Together, they’re turning Silicon Valley’s eye for elegance toward the needs of the poor. The wealthy have Apple iPads to handle their information overload and Herman Miller ergonomic chairs for their aching backs. Why not apply design thinking — which Wyatt calls “inherently optimistic, constructive, and experiential” — to the world’s messier problems too?
MARTIN Reading list: Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman; What Is the What, by Dave Eggers; Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese. Best idea: Coca-Cola and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria partnering to leverage Coca-Cola’s distribution systems for medicine delivery in Tanzania. Worst idea: The offensive YouTube video, Innocence of Muslims. American decline or American renewal? Renewal. More Europe or less? More Europe. To tweet or not to tweet? Tweet.
WYATT Reading list: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo; The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, by Eric Ries; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. Best idea: Slavery Footprint’s Made in a Free World platform for businesses to eradicate forced labor in their supply chains. Worst idea: Mitt Romney’s Big Bird comments and suggestion to cut PBS funding. American decline or American renewal? American renewal. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? Tweet.
Brutal dictators, sectarian divisions, political repression. These are among the messy and unpredictable causes oft cited for modern-day conflicts. Robert D. Kaplan reminds us that other, more elemental factors are still often at play: mountains, rivers, even soil types. As he writes in his ambitious new book, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, topography and borders (or lack thereof) are inseparable from geopolitics — from the “utterly porous” frontier fatefully linking troubled Afghanistan and Pakistan to the vast natural resources spanning China and Russia, whose proximity “commands a perennially tense relationship.”
In 1993, Kaplan, then a globe-trotting Atlantic correspondent, skyrocketed to fame when President Bill Clinton reportedly read his gloomy third book, Balkan Ghosts. (Presidential aides said it helped convince Clinton against initially intervening in the Balkans.) Flash forward 17 years and 11 more books. Kaplan predicted in his 2010 book, Monsoon, that the Indian Ocean would “demographically and strategically be a hub of the twenty-first-century world,” a view that caught the attention of Barack Obama’s administration as it weighed a strategic “pivot” to Asia and one that looks more and more ahead of the curve as global power continues to shift from northern landmasses to southern seas.
Now, in The Revenge of Geography, Kaplan synthesizes his canon of geographic writings to show how landscapes and climates still shape our world. He links America’s failures in the Iraq war (which he initially backed) to a misunderstanding of Iraq’s desert landscape and “terrain-specific” militias, and he argues it’s no coincidence that last year’s Arab democracy protests began in one of the North African countries closest to Europe. Most controversial (at least among the “liberal humanists,” whom, Kaplan warns, he will make “profoundly uneasy”) is his revival of early 20th-century geographers like Halford Mackinder, whose theory that control of Central Asia “is the pivot on which the fate of great world empires rests” was infamously adopted and distorted by the Nazis to justify their idea of Lebensraum. Kaplan’s book is not only the definitive account of geography in modern history, but the most convincing argument in recent memory for its centrality in foreign policy today.
Reading list: The Second Nuclear Age, by Paul Bracken; God’s Playground: A History of Poland, by Norman Davies; The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker. Best idea: We need to return to the bipartisan realism of the likes of the elder Bush administration. Worst idea: Obama is a foreign-policy disaster. American decline or American renewal? Both. More Europe or less? Both, as the EU will compete with Russia and Turkey for influence in Central Europe and the Balkans. To tweet or not to tweet? If we could all only stop.
Despite growing into the world’s second-largest economy in 2011, China is still most often dismissed as a manufacturer rather than an innovator, a borrower rather than a creator. The man most likely to guarantee that China becomes a pioneer and not merely a pirate is Kai-Fu Lee, the Taiwanese-American former head of Google China and a tech guru who manages China’s most prominent venture-capital fund and whose koan-like pronouncements on everything from start-ups to sports are eagerly lapped up by his millions of online followers.
In an effort to replicate the successes of Silicon Valley, Lee has raised more than $600 million and invested in more than 50 companies since he started his firm, Innovation Works, in 2009; he also hosts educational programs and incubators for promising Chinese entrepreneurs. His companies include Zhihu, a question-and-answer-based “social knowledge network”; Wonderpod, which helps users sync their mobile and PC content; and Nevel, a cloud-based service that optimizes websites while helping to protect them from security breaches. With more than 33 million followers combined on China’s two most popular microblogging platforms, Lee is also a real-world celebrity.
In an article he published on his LinkedIn page in October, Lee named China’s narrowly focused school curriculum and the risk-averse nature of Chinese students, as well as the country’s chaotic Internet environment, among the reasons China hasn’t yet produced its own Mark Zuckerberg. That may be why he has also started a popular education website encouraging Chinese students to think more creatively. Although none of his companies has exploded yet, Lee’s ultimate contribution may be more fundamental: laying both the intellectual and financial groundwork for a revolution in the world’s largest online community.
Reading list: Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson; The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries; Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, by Ezra Vogel. American decline or American renewal? American renewal, because American innovation cannot be challenged yet. More Europe or less? Less Europe. To tweet or not to tweet? To tweet, but people need more expressiveness than 140 characters. Chinese people tweet about five times more information in 140 Chinese characters, and the quality, usage, and impact show the difference.
When U.S. President Barack Obama issued a memorandum on his first full day in office to make government more transparent and open, it was no coincidence he tapped Beth Noveck to lead the unprecedented initiative. Noveck, an open-government pioneer who made a cause of crowdsourcing experts to help the overloaded U.S. Patent and Trademark Office review all those innovative patent applications, not only took the job, but she used it to draft open-government rules for federal agencies with input from Internet users and launch data.gov, which, to date, has published nearly 400,000 government data sets that fuel roughly 1,500 apps on everything from product recalls to national obesity trends. Her goal, she said in an interview, was sweeping: to “use new technology to hard-wire this kind of reform and accountability into the culture of government so that it can’t be undone in the next administration.”
Now back in academia, Noveck continues to experiment with how data and technology can revolutionize democracy. She has advised British Prime Minister David Cameron on open government (“Beth literally wrote the book, Wiki Government, on how policymaking needs to change in the Internet age,” George Osborne, chancellor of the Exchequer, noted in announcing the hire), founded a “do tank” that has developed ideas like virtual town-hall forums, and prototyped OrgPedia, a Wikipedia-esque platform for data on corporations.
Open government isn’t built in a day, or one presidential term, for that matter. But if the initiatives she has set in motion — from the National Archives dashboard for citizen archivists to the Department of Health and Human Services website for comparing insurance options — are any indication, Noveck has arguably done more than anyone to lay the foundations for a Washington that feels less like a cloistered village and more like an online public square.
Reading list: A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway; Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age, by Steven Johnson; Honeybee Democracy, by Thomas Seeley. Best idea: The National Endowment for the Arts should become more like Kickstarter. Worst idea: That Kickstarter should replace the National Endowment for the Arts. American decline or American renewal? American reinvention. More Europe or less? More innovative European cities. Less agile and capable nation-states. To tweet or not to tweet? Early and often: @bethnoveck.
As the only country in the European Union that never went into recession, Poland has a unique vantage point on Europe’s economic woes. And Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has taken up the mission of delivering hard truths to governments that need to hear it.
In a speech late last year, Sikorski shocked his Berlin audience by saying, “I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear its inactivity” — a near-historic statement given the long past enmity between the two countries. In an op-ed, he described the prospect of a eurozone breakup as a “crisis of apocalyptic proportions” and demanded that Germany, as one of the prime beneficiaries of European integration, take greater action to help the rest of the continent escape the crisis. In September, Sikorski turned up the pressure on Britain, demanding that David Cameron’s government take a greater interest in European leadership. “The EU is an English-speaking power. The single market was a British idea,” he said. “You could, if only you wished, lead Europe’s defense policy. But if you refuse, please don’t expect us to help you wreck or paralyze the EU.”
A onetime journalist married to Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, Sikorski is a staunch advocate of transatlantic cooperation to tackle security threats — particularly an increasingly belligerent Russia. Although he has credited Poland’s own 2007 “reset” with Russia with paving the way for the policy of Barack Obama’s administration, Sikorski now warns of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ever-creeping authoritarianism. Nor is Sikorski, who has close ties to Washington hawks, always impressed with the current occupant of the Oval Office: In May, when Obama made an offhand reference to a “Polish death camp,” rather than calling it a Nazi death camp located in Poland, Sikorski tweeted that the remark was evidence of “ignorance and incompetence.”
Reading list: Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson; Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, by Anne Applebaum; Vanished Kingdoms, by Norman Davies. Best idea: Rewarding bankers in proportion to capital they create, rather than debt. Worst idea: The UK leaving the EU. American decline or American renewal? Renewal, in a form of reinventing itself. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? To tweet, of course.
For Americans, world events inevitably come colored through a Western prism, whether it’s believing that the American ideal of democracy inspired the Arab Spring or that China’s economy will stall without opening more to the West. And that’s not surprising: The West dominated the 20th century, and today nearly every society “seems at least partially Westernized, or aspiring towards a form of Western modernity,” as Pankaj Mishra writes in his provocative 2012 book, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia. But Mishra reminds us, “there was a time when the West merely denoted a geographical region, and other peoples unselfconsciously assumed a universal order centered in their values.”
Mishra, an Indian-born novelist and essayist, offers the rare ability to write both knowledgeably and critically about the continent of his birth — and for a largely Western audience. At his day job, he pens columns for Bloomberg View on Asia’s shifting role in today’s geopolitical climate. In From the Ruins of Empire, he looks back at the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when much of Asia was still wrestling with the ideological influence of its colonizers. The book focuses on Liang Qichao, a Chinese reformer and early influence on Mao Zedong who wrote — in a line that might have been plucked from the 2012 news cycle — about the risks and temptations of viewing China as the world, as well as Persian ideologue Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who advocated pan-Islamic “zeal” as the way to revive the Muslim world. If these unheralded thinkers were better known, Mishra argues, the world might better understand Asia’s rise today. In Afghanistan, for instance, money and lives could have been saved, Mishra says, “if the simple moral equations — miniskirts versus Taliban beards” were replaced with deeper intellectual engagement with the past. Binary frameworks like this, he says, show just how unaware East and West are of their history — both shared and, more importantly, not.
In the wake of the Arab uprisings, which simultaneously swept Islamists to power and brought new democracies into being in much of the Middle East, Arab countries are grappling with how to reconcile Islamic tradition with freedom, gender equality, and human rights — ideas that many perceive as alien imports from the West. These are precisely the questions with which Tariq Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies at Oxford University and the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, has spent his career wrestling. Islam, he argues, is not inherently anti-Western; the two can be reconciled. Ramadan’s aim is to reform minds, he is fond of saying, not rewrite holy texts.
It’s a message that resonates among émigré populations in the West, but has much to offer newly liberated Middle Eastern societies as well. In Islam and the Arab Awakening, his controversial new book that infuriated some because of its conspiracy-theorizing about the Western origins of the Arab Spring, Ramadan challenges Muslims to embrace democracy on their own terms, suggesting now is an excellent time for some “political creativity.” He’s no mere cheerleader for street politics, though, acknowledging that decades of oppressive dictatorship crippled “the life of ideas” in much of the Arab world and demanding change rather than blind adherence to the past. There can be, he says, “no faithfulness without evolution.”
Reading list: The Islamophobia Industry, by Nathan Lean; Spiritual Gems: The Mystical Qur’an Commentary Ascribed by the Sufis to Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq, translated by Farhana Mayer; The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. Best and worst idea: To run for the Egyptian presidency! American decline or American renewal? American decline. More Europe or less? More Europe. To tweet or not to tweet? To tweet.
Among a generation of gloomy 20th-century European philosophers who sought to tear down reason and justice as instruments of oppression, Jürgen Habermas long remained an intemperate optimist. He found his inspiration in the coffeehouses and cafes of an earlier era in European history and, in 1981, coined his most famous concept: communicative rationality, the idea that the very process of talking and arguing produces agreement.
But the current crisis in Europe has beaten the optimism out of Habermas. He has described European politicians’ halting response to the mess as a creeping coup d’état that has put power in the hands of faceless bureaucrats in Brussels. And as the eurozone economy imploded, the nationalism that the European Union was supposed to suppress came roaring back, with parties across the continent dabbling in a potent brew of racism and Islamophobia that has turned right-wing extremism into a political growth industry. For the first time in the EU’s history, the 83-year-old Habermas told Der Spiegel, “we are actually experiencing a dismantling of democracy. I didn’t think this was possible.”
So what is this Europe whose decline Habermas so laments — and how will it be saved? In his new book, The Crisis of the European Union, Habermas lays out a case for a more cosmopolitan Europe that more fully transcends its national borders, where political power vested in an EU government elected by the people of Europe would foster the kind of cross-border solidarity that the crisis has so clearly exposed as lacking. It is a bold vision of a pan-European democracy that would effectively end state sovereignty and foster a unity that no market force could undermine. In a year of stifling incrementalism, Habermas’s ambitious vision is like a breath of fresh air.
Ricken Patel has taken the fuzzy concept of a “global community” and given it teeth. Avaaz, the civic organization he co-founded in 2007, has grown into the world’s largest web activism movement. Its more than 16 million members vote on the organization’s priorities and direct their donations in support of a wide array of causes, from combating global warming to convincing the Hilton hotel chain to train staff to spot guests trapped in prostitution. In harnessing the Internet as a force for global change, Patel has disproved the notion that such ventures are mere “clicktivism” and has pioneered a new model for advancing human rights and democracy.
Patel, a Canadian who spent his career working as an analyst in conflict zones such as Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, modeled Avaaz after the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org, but on a global scale. These days, however, Avaaz has gone far beyond the usual roster of progressive causes, most notably with its daring bid to play a direct role in Syria’s civil war. Armed with millions of dollars donated from supporters across the world, Patel’s network has smuggled medicine and communications equipment to activists inside the country and helped with the evacuation of journalists from the besieged city of Homs. In stark contrast to the international community, which has “been full of words and light on actions,” Patel said, “we’ve given concrete support and assistance.”
Whether coordinating assistance in a guerrilla war or supporting gay rights in Uganda, Patel says that Avaaz’s ethos of transnational empowerment remains the same. “There are two types of fatalism,” he said. “The belief the world can’t change, and the belief you can’t play a role in changing it.”
Best idea: Shift fossil fuel subsidies to the renewables sector. Worst idea: Saudi vision of expanded Gulf Cooperation Council to team up against the Arab Spring. American decline or American renewal? American choice. Corrupt plutocratic decline or progressive democratic renewal. More Europe or less? More! But of the right kind — people-driven, people centered. To tweet or not to tweet? To each his own.
Start-ups create jobs. Immigrants create start-ups. But immigrants have such a difficult time entering the United States that for the first time in decades, immigrant entrepreneurship has stalled. According to a study by entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa — which he turned into a book this year, The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent — even as the number of immigrants in the United States has risen, the percentage of immigrant-founded companies has hardly budged from the 25 percent it was at in 2005; in Silicon Valley the numbers fell from 52 percent to 44 percent. It’s so bad that the start-up Blueseed is planning to anchor a ship in international waters outside Silicon Valley so that foreign entrepreneurs can live on the vessel and be closer to their investors and clients without needing work visas. How can the United States hope to compete in the 21st century, Wadhwa asks, without welcoming the world’s best and brightest?
An Indian-born U.S. citizen, Wadhwa is at the forefront of the movement to institute what he calls a “start-up visa,” through which entrepreneurs with proven job creation and company size get fast-tracked for long-term visas. Otherwise, Wadhwa says, the skilled immigrants will be long gone. “They’ll be back home building the next Googles and Intels in other countries, and we will wake up five years from now and wonder how we let this happen,” he says. It’s a wake-up call that post-recession America would do well to heed.
Reading list: Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler; Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City, by Brad Feld; The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries. Best idea: Dean Kamen’s “Slingshot” water purifier. With cheap, pure water, we can dramatically reduce the incidence of disease and illness in the developing world. And we can reduce the likelihood that wars will break out over water shortages. Worst idea: When you live in Silicon Valley, you come across an abundance of bad ideas. One idea is worse than the next! Entrepreneurs are still trying to build more Facebooks and Twitters. American decline or American renewal? Major renewal. We live in the most innovative period in human history. More Europe or less? The same. To tweet or not to tweet? Tweet or perish! Social media has become part of the fabric of modern society. You need to be on it or be left out.
The discussion of Big Data — a buzzword for the proliferation of information in the digital age and the technologies that have emerged to collect and analyze it — often centers on potential: the power of massive data sets to transform government and revolutionize business, and even spell the “end of theory” in the social sciences, as Wired‘s Chris Anderson boldly asserted. Federal agencies from the CIA to the Defense Department have launched initiatives based on the concept.
danah boyd (not a typo: she stripped her name of capital letters in 2000) has done her share of data-mining too, studying the key role social media has played in spreading information during the Arab Spring and Mexican drug war. But, she warns, Big Data isn’t necessarily better data. “Will large-scale search data help us create better tools, services, and public goods?” boyd and a co-author inquired in a paper this year. “Or will it usher in a new wave of privacy incursions and invasive marketing? Will data analytics help us understand online communities and political movements? Or will it be used to track protesters and suppress speech?” boyd worries about using data gathered from sites like Facebook and Twitter just because it is accessible. She’s also concerned about the growing power gap between the many people who create data (think Facebook’s 1 billion users) and the few with the resources and the power to establish rules governing its use (think Mark Zuckerberg). They’re questions we often forget to ask as we move more and more of our lives online, but if we don’t listen to visionaries like boyd, we may not like the answers so much.
Reading list: Communication Power, by Manuel Castells; Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline; Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It, by Lawrence Lessig. Best idea: When mathematician Doug Muder wrote an essay on “privileged distress,” that was an aha moment for me. Privileged distress describes the anxiety that privileged individuals feel when the cultural norms that have benefited them start to shift, thereby undermining their status even though they’re not directly responsible for the inequalities that gave them privilege in the first place. Worst idea: I am still dumbfounded that anyone could possibly believe that raped women have biological mechanisms that prevent them from getting pregnant and, therefore, any woman who does get pregnant must have secretly enjoyed being raped. American decline or American renewal? Relative to other countries, American decline, but when measured locally, American renewal. More Europe or less? I’m not sure what this even means.… More European power? No. More countries in the eurozone? Probably not. More European crises? Definitely. More European influence on other countries? Perhaps in some domains. To tweet or not to tweet? That is the question.… I tweet, but not because I am. I tweet because I am committed to the dissemination of information and the production of knowledge in the hope that doing so will benefit others.
With intellectual influences ranging from Karl Marx to French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to the films of Alfred Hitchcock and the Matrix trilogy, Slavoj Zizek has emerged over the past two decades as a modern rarity: a celebrity philosopher, appearing everywhere from op-ed pages to cable-news debates to your local art-house movie theater. At a time of capitalism in crisis, Zizek has proved that the hard left can still offer valuable critiques of current events and contemporary culture — even as the left itself has often been the subject of his withering criticism.
Zizek, who holds professorships at the University of Ljubljana and the European Graduate School in Switzerland, is an almost absurdly prolific writer of dozens of books, including four just this year on subjects ranging from the global financial crisis to Hegel. He’s perhaps better known, however, for his agitated, rapid-fire public speeches. He’s a favorite on the university speaking circuit, not to mention the star of several feature-length documentaries, including Zizek! and The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema. It doesn’t hurt that he laces his arguments with frequent allusions to pop culture. Zizek is a self-described communist but is probably a bit too misanthropic (“Humanity? Yes, it’s OK — some great talks, some great arts. Concrete people? No, 99 percent are boring idiots.”) to neatly fit into any particular ideology. He spoke at Occupy Wall Street in its early days but later lost enthusiasm for the movement, describing the New York Police Department’s clearing of Zuccotti Park as a “blessing in disguise.”
With his flair for self-promotion and penchant for the deliberately outrageous — he has written that “the problem with Hitler was that he was not violent enough” — Zizek has led some critics to wonder whether he is more performance artist than philosopher, a “Borat of philosophy,” as he has been called. But in an ever-more-absurd world, that might be just what we need.
Reading list: Logiques des Mondes, by Alain Badiou; Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution, by Rebecca Comay; Hegel’s Rabble, by Frank Ruda. Best idea: The big revolution the left is waiting for will never come. Worst idea: The nation-state is back. We should support it against the global market. American decline or American renewal? Neither, things just dragging on. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? Not, loss of time.
In a year when an anti-Islam video sparked deadly protests across the Arab world and a spate of violent incidents targeted minority groups in the United States, Martha Nussbaum’s new book offered a thoughtful, timely corrective to the divisive dangers of religious intolerance, particularly Islamophobia. Charting its rise and evolution in Europe and the United States since the 9/11 attacks — from European laws prohibiting burqas in public to the uproar over a proposed mosque near Ground Zero in New York — Nussbaum’s The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age forcefully defends those whose religious freedoms have recently been circumscribed or attacked.
An author and editor of dozens of books ranging over the big ideas of everything from the Greek classics to feminism, Nussbaum brings a philosopher’s mind to an explosive political topic, pinpointing the roots of religious fear as a fundamentally “narcissistic” emotion that dovetails with a “visceral reaction against strangeness.” Nussbaum, who converted to Judaism in the 1960s and is the daughter of a Southern Protestant she admits was anti-Semitic and racist, knows religious hatred firsthand. “When it’s a minority that dresses differently, that has different customs, people are afraid of that,” she explained in an interview this year. “It’s easy for them to swallow some paranoid fantasy.”
Reading list: Sailing on the Sea of Love, by Charles Capwell; Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton; The Counterlife, by Philip Roth. Best idea: For me, the best ideas are always subtle and complicated ideas, and not always new, so: John Rawls’s idea of “political liberalism,” Peter Strawson’s idea of the importance of the “reactive attitudes” in human freedom, Rabindranath Tagore’s proposal for a global culture of imagination, emotion, and justice. American decline or American renewal? In the area of religious toleration, I hope for renewal; in the area of social justice, I hope for renewal but predict decline; in the area of education, similarly, I hope for renewal but am skeptical about whether it will occur. More Europe or less? There never was a “Europe” in the sense of a unified political culture, and we are now seeing the fruits of premature economic union without political union. To tweet or not to tweet? I avoid all social media because they will devour all one’s time if one uses them, and I am fond of writing.
When John Maynard Keynes used the term “animal spirits” in 1936, he was referring to the ways human hubris and fear can inflate profits and deepen losses. But that is only part of the story. John Coates — who ran a trading desk at Deutsche Bank during the dot-com crisis and left Wall Street to become a Cambridge University neuroscientist — realized that his traders’ responses to big gains and losses were also driven by their physiology, an insight that is changing our understanding of financial risk at a time when the actions of a handful of traders can increasingly dictate the course of global markets.
Humans’ innate fight-or-flight response, which primes the body for danger, forms the basis for the kind of risky behavior that can drive big gains. But these physical processes can also work against Wall Street traders. The title of Coates’s fascinating 2012 book, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, refers to a medieval French expression that describes the transformation in a man as his testosterone level climbs and he is primed for a fight: He becomes cocky, aggressive, and confident in his own superiority. These are qualities that have helped humans overcome risky situations for millennia, but on Wall Street, Coates argues, our primal instincts can backfire.
His research measuring traders’ hormone levels, which has helped spur newfound interest in the biology of risk, reveals that as profits mount, testosterone levels increase, contributing to the irrational exuberance crucial to a financial bubble. Conversely, when losses increase, a different hormone, cortisol, begins to build up. That stress hormone contributes to the irrational pessimism that can turn a market downturn into a full-fledged crash. The solution, Coates suggests, is simple: Hire more women and older men on trading floors and end the practice of massive bonuses for short-term profits. “If we want to understand how people make financial decisions, how traders and investors react to volatile markets,” Coates writes, “we need to recognize that our bodies have a say in our risk-taking.”
Reading list: The Wisdom of the Body, by Walter Cannon; Creation, by Gore Vidal; Arabian Sands, by Wilfred Thesiger. Best idea: None come to mind. Worst idea: Too many come to mind. American decline or American renewal? Holding steady. More Europe or less? More. To tweet or not to tweet? Not.
When the World Conference on International Telecommunications convenes in Dubai in December, delegates will tackle an enormously consequential question: Should the United Nations assert greater control over the Internet, or should a motley collection of public and private “stakeholders” continue to govern it? Ahead of the summit, authoritarian countries such as China and Russia have expressed support for international standards in the name of cybersecurity — raising concerns that human rights will be trampled and the Internet shackled.
We can’t say we weren’t warned. Jonathan Zittrain’s 2008 book, The Future of the Internet — and How to Stop It, focused on the threat that government regulators and companies, in their quest to address security problems and assert control, pose to digital freedom. It helped establish Zittrain as the general counsel of the digital age, and the Harvard University law professor has continued to wrestle with the web’s biggest questions ever since. Is Internet access a human right? How do we respect the rights of the unwitting people who become the subject of Internet memes? Is it legal for an insurance company to set rates for its customers based on GPS data? More than anyone, Zittrain has asked who the Internet’s public and private gatekeepers are, how they’re acting, and what that means for the future of the open web. And he has addressed his own questions by helping establish the OpenNet Initiative, which monitors Internet surveillance around the world, and Chilling Effects, which posts legal complaints about online activity. In May, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission tapped Zittrain to chair a committee tasked with evaluating the agency’s efforts to keep the Internet open and the telecommunications market competitive. There’s little doubt Zittrain is skeptical of this latest bid by Russia and China to put the Internet back in the box; the web can’t be governed by committee. As he wrote in his book, “The Net and its issues sail blithely on regardless of the carefully worded communiqués that emerge from a parade of meetings and consultations.”
Reading list: Consent of the Networked, by Rebecca MacKinnon; Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems, by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser; Some Remarks, by Neal Stephenson. Best idea: Dealing with cybersecurity problems through technically facilitated mutual aid among many participants, rather than solely top-down mandates or rigid best practices. Worst idea: Rioting over a YouTube video. To tweet or not to tweet? Tweet! With a link to a more thorough blog entry and a willingness to tweet later corrections.
When deficit hawks compare the United States to the ailing economies of Europe, they’re often making a point about America’s unsustainable debt and social welfare spending. But Luigi Zingales, an influential business professor at the University of Chicago, likens the United States to his native Italy for a different reason: They’re both reeling from crony capitalism. Runaway debt and ballooning entitlements, he argues, are merely symptoms of a debilitating disease: widespread collusion between politicians and big business. Zingales left Italy for the States in 1988 to escape a country that “invented the term nepotism and perfected the concept of cronyism,” only to find the phenomenon spreading like a virus in his adopted home.
In his new book, A Capitalism for the People, Zingales contends that the Republican Party abandoned its pro-market principles under George W. Bush and instead became pro-big business, courting companies with tariffs and tax breaks rather than building a competitive marketplace. Now he’s pleading with Republican leaders to return to their conservative roots by busting monopolies, refusing to bail out banks, eliminating de facto corporate subsidies in the tax code, and imposing a tax on lobbying. “We need to stand up and criticize business when business is not helping the cause of free markets,” he declares.
It’s a resonant message at a fraught moment for American-style capitalism. In the wake of the global recession, faith in the free market has plunged in countries such as Italy and Spain and declined in the United States, albeit less sharply. Nearly 40 percent of Americans believe their country has a system of crony capitalism, while seven in 10 think government and big business are working together against them. In that sense, his ringing denunciation is the Capitalism and Freedom of our time. As economist Tyler Cowen put it, “If I had to pick out one book … to explain what is going on right now to a popular audience of non-economists, this might well be it.”
Reading list: Bailout, by Neil Barofsky; So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government, by Robert Kaiser; Republic, Lost, by Lawrence Lessig. Best idea: Debt restructuring for Greece. Worst idea: Another stimulus plan for America. American decline or American renewal? Hoping a renewal, fearing a decline. More Europe or less? More reformed Europe. To tweet or not to tweet? With moderation.
Among the largest companies in the European Union, women held just 10.3 percent of corporate board seats five years ago. This year, that figure is all of 13.7 percent. “Sorry,” Viviane Reding, the European Commission’s top justice official, told Der Spiegel, “that’s just too slow for me.”
Her solution? Reding this year pushed an ambitious, if improbable, EU law to create mandatory quotas for women in the boardroom across the member states of the world’s biggest economic union. The proposal called for large companies to give at least 40 percent of their supervisory board positions to women by 2018. (In the United States, women filled a grand total of 16 percent of board seats at Fortune 500 companies in 2011.)
A native of Luxembourg and ex-journalist, Reding insists that giving women greater decision-making powers is not only a matter of fairness but also would be a boon for the economy. Having women on corporate boards corresponds to higher profits, she argues, and a standardized policy would make intra-European business easier. Unsurprisingly, she faces entrenched opposition. The law was shot down amid legal concerns in October, though Reding vowed to put forward a modified version. She is keeping at it if only because her proposal is the one serious idea on the table for addressing a gender imbalance that is consequential enough to impact Europe’s economic performance — and its values. “I hope that I’ll live to see the day when we have a society in which it isn’t important whether you’re a man or a woman,” she sighs.
Why is it that poor Americans might vote against their apparent economic self-interest and pull the lever for a candidate like Mitt Romney? Jonathan Haidt, whose work explores the psychology of political and religious division, has a message for liberals: Conservatives understand how to speak to voters’ moral concerns. Liberals, concludes Haidt, author of this year’s The Righteous Mind, just don’t get it.
A leading member of a new generation of psychologists applying the insights of evolutionary theory to morality, Haidt argues that we form political opinions not through simple reasoning but based on moral preferences humans have developed to reinforce ties to larger groups or tribes. He identifies six values that form the baseline of any moral system: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Using experiments, ethnographies, and surveys of tens of thousands of people around the world, he demonstrates that both left- and right-leaning people respond positively to the first three values, though the left-leaning place greater emphasis on care and fairness. Conservatives, meanwhile, emphasize loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Both groups value liberty but consider it threatened by different oppressors. The right wing, Haidt posits, simply has a greater number of moral taste buds. Arriving in a year marked by unprecedented political polarization in the United States and elsewhere, Haidt’s book offers a psychological explanation for the partisan divide. By stepping back and dispassionately examining the deeper origin of our disunion, he also offers hope that we can achieve something more — a wisdom that transcends brute moral emotions.
Reading list: It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism, by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein; The Mind and the Market, by Jerry Muller; The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker. Best idea: Paul Romer‘s charter cities. Start new cities with good norms and institutions, rather than trying to change old and corrupt ones. American decline or American renewal? Decline for a while, until we can reboot our institutions and efficiency and reduce corruption and cronyism. More Europe or less? Less. Europe does not have a strong enough shared identity to manage a union among unequals. If the weaker nations drop out, a Europe of wealthy and efficient equals can survive. To tweet or not to tweet? Tweet. It’s a normal human reaction to want to share interesting and useful information. I see it as a public good.
Few issues are as contentious as Israel’s policies toward the Palestinian territories, and few debates are as heated as that over the role of America’s Jewish lobby in enabling those policies. Peter Beinart, former editor of the New Republic, took on both this year with his explicitly controversial new book, The Crisis of Zionism.
Heralded as “brave” by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (No. 34) and blurbed by Bill Clinton (No. 3), who called it a “deeply important book for anyone who cares about Israel,” The Crisis of Zionism offers a powerful critique of both Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the American Jewish establishment’s willingness to go along — an especially pointed critique in the midst of a U.S. election year that once again saw politicians in both parties rushing headlong to profess their reflexive defense of Israeli policies. At its heart, The Crisis of Zionism is a plea to resurrect what Beinart calls the “liberal Zionist dream” — a progressive democratic state that’s also capable of safeguarding the Jewish people — against the rise of the Israeli far right, which, aided and abetted by Jewish leaders in the United States, has slowly pushed Israel toward a de facto one-state solution.
The Crisis of Zionism not only shines a much-needed spotlight on Israel’s hard-right turn, but it may also prove a bellwether for shifting American attitudes toward the Jewish state. Beinart’s call for moral vigilance marks the rise of a new generation of American Jews who are unwilling to support Israel blindly. It’s unclear if this cadre of young intellectuals can change this bedrock assumption of American politics, but if Beinart’s book is any indication, they’re going to ruffle a few feathers trying.
In September, when deadly riots swept across the globe following the release of the anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims, the seriousness of the charge of “blasphemy” became starkly clear. In Egypt, for instance, there were calls for an anti-blasphemy clause in the country’s new constitution, and observers were outraged when officials in Pakistan arrested a 14-year-old Christian girl under the country’s blasphemy laws, widely used to persecute religious minorities. It will take people like Sana Saleem, a 25-year-old activist and blogger in Pakistan who is waging her own private campaign against government censorship, to push back.
In February, Pakistan solicited proposals for a “URL Filtering and Blocking System” — a system reminiscent of that in authoritarian China next door that could allow the government to block unwanted websites en masse. Saleem, founder of the Karachi-based anti-censorship group Bolo Bhi, which means “speak up,” decided to fight the proposal, the latest in a series of moves by Islamabad to curb free speech. Saleem reached out to executives at international companies, asking them not to participate in building Pakistan’s firewall. Despite threats and offensive taunts on Twitter, Saleem and her partners eventually shamed the government into shelving the proposal. She is still fighting for an official court injunction.
As she wrote in April on her blog, Mystified Justice, “When a state embroils its citizens in an ‘either you are with us or against us’ argument every dissent is at risk of being equated to treason — or in an Islamic country, blasphemy.” As an increasingly networked world butts heads with the historical forces of obscurantism and discrimination, we’ll need savvy activists like Saleem to defend everyone’s right to free speech online — even, or especially, if we don’t like what’s being said.
Reading list: The Moslems Are Coming: Encounters with a Desktop Terrorist, by Azad Essa; The New Rulers of the World, by John Pilger; Consent of the Networked, by Rebecca MacKinnon. Best idea: (Last year, but still unmatched): raiding an office used for spying on civilians, reclaiming your private data, and exposing the criminals. The Egyptian people, this one’s for you. Worst idea: Pakistan advertising its plans to censor 20 million people. American decline or American renewal? #OccupyWallStreet. More Europe or less? More Europeans in Pakistan. To tweet or not to tweet? Think before you tweet.
Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer is the Europe editor at Foreign Policy. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and Forbes, among other places. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and master’s degrees from Peking University and the London School of Economics. The P.Q. stands for Ping-Quon.
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From Saint-Tropez to Amalfi, the region’s most attractive tourist destinations are also its most vulnerable. | <urn:uuid:d06b6ee5-6aad-4889-b7dd-79ec141c7f3d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/11/26/the-fp-top-100-global-thinkers-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.952716 | 49,401 | 2.125 | 2 |
Raymond Tallis, Johan Grimonprez, Shadow World Productions, LLC
2017, 7 min 53 sec
In this short film by Johan Grimonprez, British neurologist Raymond Tallis argues that consciousness is not an internal construct, but rather relational. Through the intriguing notion that humans are physically unable to tickle themselves, Tallis explores the philosophical notion that we become ourselves only through dialogue with others. Shouldn’t Descartes’ first tenet “I think, therefore I am” rather be: we dialogue, therefore we are? A view underscored by the observation that many sensations can only be triggered by others. Images of a heated television-debate on the war in Syria, during which two speakers angrily thrust a table at each other, illustrate that aggression, like tickling, requires two parties. | <urn:uuid:5b9f5246-9267-47a5-a20f-d8e88567837d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://johangrimonprez.be/wp-commons/1993/04/11/raymond-tallis-on-tickling/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.902387 | 180 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Cooler Laptop Fan: 175X86X52mm
The Fan Inside: 75X75X25mm
Product weight: 230g
Fan speed: 1500-3000±10% RPM
Maximum air strength: 75.35CFM
Rated voltage: 5V network version
Rated current: 0.35±10%A
Input power: 1.75
Cooling fast: can help exhausting hot air quickly, cool down PC in short time, let you enjoy your laptop/laptop better, cool and protect your notebook.
Low noise: This radiator introduces the bass cotton in the most reasonable part of the cooling cavity, which greatly reduces the noise value brought by the higher speed.
Portable size and lightweight: the size is 175X86X52mm, then you can carry it everywhere when you take your PC. The weight is 230g. like you hold a phone.
How to use?
①Take out laptop cooler,silicon shrouds and USB-DC cable from packing box.
②Select a suitable silicon shroud matching with laptop vent,and connect it to the air inlet of this laptop cooler.
③Fix the ant-skid junction plate on the positioning holes of this laptop cooler.
④Slighyly lift the air outlet end of cooler,place the junction plate under your laptop and then connect the silicon shroud tightly to the air outlet of laptop.
⑤Insert the DC port of USB-DC cable into cooler’s power port,while insert the other USB end into USB port of laptop.
⑥Clockwise rotate the power/fan speed turning knob,then the cooler begins to work.
Make sure this fits by entering your model number.
*Maximise PC life expectancy: laptop cooler has a quite vacuum fan that sucks hot air very quickly, which extends long working hours and PC life expectancy, because overheating causes bad performance and shut down.
*Compatibility: 3 different sizes of silicon bushings are used to secure the air outlets and are compatible with most major brands of notebooks such as HP, Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer, Asus and others.
*With 3 rubber adapters: A is suitable for PC rear heat vent length:94mm, height:20-26mm. B is suitable for PC rear heat vent length:88mm, height:16-22mm, C is suitable for PC rear heat vent length less than 85mm, height:14-19mm. (Tip: before buying, pls check your pc heat vent size)
*Cooling fast: The speed of the fan is adjustable up to 1500-3000±10％RPM. The average temperature drop observed during our lab tests is of 14″ to 17″ in a few munites, which is far superior to most available on the market.
*MCU Control: Uses microchip MCU control with two modes to cool the laptop in smart way:automatic and manual dual mode When you play games or working, you donot want the PC shut down because overheating. | <urn:uuid:de0f52b3-a41e-4a6b-bf47-3428a05b80ce> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.laptops.co.uk/shop/accessories/cooling-pads-external-fans/yueming-cooler-laptop-fan-universal-gaming-laptop-pc-cooler-high-performance-fan-for-fast-cooling-action-usb-hot-air-extractor-notebook-macbook-computer-11-19inch | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.855453 | 648 | 1.578125 | 2 |
If you show people a cloudy, overcast day side-by-side with a bright, sunny one, almost everyone will choose the sunny day as the one that makes them happier.
Dave, one of Starts With A Bang's longest readers, is no exception. The extended winter he's living through in Kansas isn't making him any happier:
Someone remind me what the Sun looks like, it's been a couple of days since I've seen it....
No problem, Dave. Sure, there are good reasons that you want to see the Sun, for the effects it has on regulating your circadian rhythms, on the release of various endorphins, for Vitamin D production, and for just plain making you feel good. But let me remind those of you who are having extended winters what this great nuclear furnace looks like from Earth. We've got a Sunrise on Earth, both seen from Earth:
and also as seen from space:
Notice what the atmosphere is doing here? How the sky at sunrise looks red to us, but from space, it's only the very lowest part of the atmosphere that looks red, and the upper parts look blue? We can learn something very interesting about light works from this.
When sunlight passes through the atmosphere, it disperses the very different wavelengths of visible light, from the bluest blues at about 400 nanometers to the deepest reds at around 700 nanometers. Since light at Earth passes through an atmosphere instead of a vacuum, the different wavelengths spread out, the same way light does when you shine it through a prism:
Well, do you notice how the blue light "bends" more due to the prism? It also bends more due to the atmosphere, which means that it gets scattered away more easily. This is why, if you look out at the sky during the early morning or late evening, the sky looks red. There's so much atmosphere to pass through that the blue light doesn't make it through as well as the red does. So when the Sun is low on the horizon, the atmosphere scatters the blue light away, but the red light still gets to your eyes. And you see this:
But during the day, that same scattered blue light fills the upper atmosphere, but enough of the full spectrum comes straight through that the sky looks blue and the Sun looks white!
If we didn't have the thick atmosphere we have, the sky wouldn't look blue! (Go ask Mars if you don't believe me.) So what about the Sun in that picture? It's clearly white. Then, I ask, why does the Sun look yellow to you? Because of your imperfect eyes, which have the highest response in the yellow part of the spectrum. It's also incredibly bright against a blue background, which helps fool your eyes. But it's really white, as you can see if you look at sunlight shining down on a white piece of paper.
So I hope these images and the science of sunlight are enough to get you through the hard times, and I expect some beautiful pictures from you when the Sun does come out, my little orphan Annie!
We've had an absolutely gorgeous Easter here in Denmark. Five days of clear sun - finally. Still a bit too windy to lie out for a tan, but every little helps.
I've had a 'daylight' lamp for the last two Winters. Does seem to help reset that damn biochemistry, yes.
I feel brighter already! Thanks Ethan!
But don't disparage the dark. Its a good time for making whoopee.
As others may have noticed, the prismatic effect of the sunlight in the atmosphere is conspicuously devoid of green.
Now, the mechanism that prevents the sun from appearing green upon direct contact of its photons with a human eye seems straight-forward. The sun emits photons at many wavelengths, and when our eyes get that mix, we see white or sometimes yellow.
However, what is not immediately obvious to me is why - if the sun's light contains ~500nm wavelength photons - we do not see it in the atmospheric spread? Obviously, a regular prism on the ground does give us green light.
So it must be that a water droplet or glass prism interacts with light (perhaps specifically green light) in a different manner than the atmosphere. I'm tempted to speculate on the effect of nitrogen based merely on the knowledge that nitrogen and green light have some connection (aurorae) and that nitrogen is the most abundant gas in our atmosphere. What does alter the prismatic performance of air as opposed to water or glass?
If we didn't have the thick atmosphere we have, the sky wouldn't look blue! (Go ask Mars if you don't believe me.)
Although, were it not for dust in Mars' atmosphere, its sky would look dark blue. Sort of between the moon's black sky (due to no atmosphere) and earth's light blue sky (due to thick atmosphere).
And why doesn't our sky appear violet, or at least violet-blue, since violet's the most readily scattered light? Mostly it's attributed to our rather dim perception of violet, although I suspect that less violet light comes from the sun than does blue, as well.
As I understand it, the reason we don't see the green is an issue of receptors, as you suspected. The blue receptors are more strongly stimulated than the corresponding red and green receptors. In addition, the blue light *also* stimulates the red and green receptors:
But why is the sky NEVER green between daylight and sunset? Now that has got me stumped so far... (I'm not referring to the elusive green flash.)
I thought that the reason the sun looks yellowish is that, since the atmosphere scatters much of the blue light, the light that we see coming at us directly from the sun when we look at it has less of the blue part of the spectrum, making it look more yellow. The paper still looks white because blue light still reaches it in the proper proportion, only some portion of it is scattered through the atmosphere first and does not come in a straight line from the sun. If it were due to the imperfect response of our photoreceptors, then wouldn't the paper look the same yellow as the sun since it is reflecting all wavelengths? The blue background fooling your eyes makes sense too though, especially since staring at a blue background then looking at something white make it look yellow.
You forgot to mention Pink Floyd in your description of refraction.
Cool article, but the (especially the top 3) images need to be sized and reasonably compressed for web viewing.
The top 3 images exceed 10MB between them.
If you need any assistance in making versions that are optimal in size and quality, be welcome to drop me a line. I'd be happy to assist.
Hmm.. Any effort to why the sky is blue then?
Why the sky is blue came up in a conversation with my wife recently, and I initially asserted that the atmosphere REFRACTS the light like a prism, and when she said that she had heard something different, I looked it up and found that, indeed, it SCATTERS light, which is different. I still wonder, though, especially based on the similarity of frequency response (shorter wavelengths scattering/bending more than long ones), are these concepts related at all, or are they completely different phenomena? (Of course, you know me; I'm tempted to ask for a QED-based explanation of both, but that's probably a bit much, and may end up being over my head anyway, so whatever you've got....)
Are scattering and refraction related? Yes. Will this satisfy you? No.
I recommend looking up Rayleigh Scattering, since that's the "technical enough" explanation. Basically, blue light is scattered more easily by the atmosphere. This means that, when you pass through a bit of the atmosphere, a bit of the blue light gets scattered in all directions, and the scattered light is then re-emitted spherically outwards. So you see a little bit of blue coming at you from all directions. But when you pass through a lot of the atmosphere, enough blue is scattered away that you only see the red. That's why the sky transitions from red to orange to yellow to light blue.
As to why not green in there? Your eyes' insensitivity to green is only a small part of it, the big problem is that yellow and blue, when mixed together additively, do not make green! The sky tends to go whitish for awhile, and then transitions to a very pale blue.
It being a function of scattering vs. refraction makes sense.
So in terms of QED, the summing of probability amplitudes allows for photons to act in a comparatively uniform fashion (given a sufficient data set). In Rayleigh scattering, no such uniformity is observed until an enormously macroscopic view is considered. Unless I'm missing something with either or both.
However, in a sunset, the green light is not from yellow and blue mixing. There are photons of the green wavelength, I thought. In fact, doesn't the sun's blackbody curve peak in green?
So if our eyes weren't handicapped thusly, surely we would see the green, would we not?
Isn't the color of Mars' sky also a function of its composition? Certainly, being one hundreth as thick as Earth's perhaps its composition contributes less than the dust in this specific instance, but pedantry makes an orbital mass travel along its geodesic such that observers trace its path as an ellipse of some measurable eccentricity!
Surely on a cloudless day the sun's disk appears slightly yellow due to scattering of blue. In space, where the sun is seen against a black background, it would appear whiter than it does at the Earth's surface. Can anyone verify this?
This is a horrendous simplification of a something that's much more complicated. The article is misleading because the human eye doesn't measure direct intensity of light, but, instead measures local intensity of light relative to overal intensity of light in the entire scene.
The card in the photo is white because automatic white-balancing in the camera with which the photo was taken has made it white. And we think that's perfectly correct because white-balance correction in the camera mimics the automatic white-balancing that the human visual system performs. If you were to disable white-balance correction in the camera, you'd find that "white" cards under flourescent lights would have a strong green cast, white cards under incandescent lights would have a strong orange cast, and white cards outdoors would have a cast that varies between blue and orange, depending on the placement of the card relative to the dome of the sky, and the sun.
You can see an artifact of this in the first picture. The trees are noticeably more yellow-orange than in the second. Why? Because the human eye (and the camera) places the whitepoint half-way between the blue tones of direct and indirect light from the dome of the sky, and the light of direct sunlight (which is relatively more yellow/orange).
A follow-on thought. Science is particularly fond of tidy linear relationships (which are conveniently easy to calculate). I wonder whether science doesn't have a blind spot when it comes to the kinds of untidy non-linear relationships that govern phenomena such as actual human color perception.
You accuse the article of oversimplification, then accuse the very process that gave you the knowledge to make this determination as having a blind spot to the area you're criticizing?
Either you've missed the contradiction, or you didn't gain your knowledge of optics through science. In either case, your case is completely undermined.
Granted, in the constrainst of a blog, there will almost always be a simplification. Often, it can seem that the inability to instill several years of specialized education and experimentation in the reader prevents the effective transmission of knowledge. We're working on the backs of envelopes here. It's wonderful when a theory, idea, formula or phenomenon can be described in its entirety, but it's equally wonderful when a confusing portion of one more complex becomes less veiled than it was before. This is the creeping progress of, and is only one facet of the jewel that is science.
Just make sure yours isn't "princess" cut.
There's no problem with the science of this. As you state, there are many more details than the ones I gave, all of which are well-understood at this point.
Yes, Sean is right: I tried to give the simplest, shortest explanation possible that still communicates the main results of the science correctly.
But thank you for adding more detailed information for those who are interested!
If you look up at the sky *near* the Sun, you will --perhaps surprisingly -- find that the sky looks much paler and closer to white/clear close to the Sun than the blue you're used to. This doesn't show up on a camera, either, which makes me believe that your cones (that give you the color response) may be getting overridden by the sheer amount of light coming from the Sun! But this is a question I *don't* know the answer to!
That's a really cool looking picture of a sunrise in space. I had no idea that the eye tends toward the yellow spectrum of the sunlight. That's very interesting. I learned a lot about sunlight and the color spectrum. | <urn:uuid:c4746853-8a9a-49ac-a5e3-06d9635b48e3> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/04/13/pining-for-the-sun | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.962631 | 2,811 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Location: Cambridge & various around the UK and online
Course Type: Birth Doula Preparation, Postnatal Doula Preparation
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- Payment in instalments welcome. | <urn:uuid:2b4fc652-0923-432c-b69c-d4da9485ef28> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://doula.org.uk/preparation-course/developing-doulas/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.917305 | 495 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Now that people are starting to use their Obamacare coverage, some people have noticed that they can no longer go to the same doctor. For example, on Tuesday, Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a longtime opponent of Obamacare who’s undergoing treatment for prostate cancer, mentioned to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that his oncologist isn’t covered by his new Obamacare plan.
Plenty of criticisms from Obamacare opponents have turned out to be wrong or intentionally misleading (i.e., “death panels” or the supposed insurer “bailout”), but this one isn’t just Republican hype– some people who switch to Obamacare plans really will have to switch doctors. Partly this is just how all health insurance works– every plan has its own set of providers, and there’s no guarantee your old doctor will be covered by a new plan. But it’s also partly because plans sold on the Obamacare marketplaces tend to have smaller provider networks.
While it’s obviously frustrating to have to switch doctors, there is a tradeoff: these smaller networks mean lower premiums and (somewhat counterintuitively) could lead to better quality care.
Why do Obamacare plans have narrower networks?
Under the old system insurers had a bunch of different ways to keep premiums down that involved squeezing customers:
- Restricting how much they’d pay out when you got sick, by setting annual or lifetime limits
- Restricting who could buy coverage, by refusing to sell plans to older people or those with pre-existing health conditions
- Restricting what conditions and treatments were covered— insurers would often refuse to cover entire categories of care (things like pregnancy, mental health, or prescription drugs).
- Extremely high out-of-pocket costs
You might have noticed that these were some of the most hated and backward parts of the old health care system, and for the most part these tactics were eliminated by Obamacare.
Although insurers can no longer exclude the sick or limit how much they’ll pay for care, they can keep premiums lower by paying providers less– and an effective way to do that is by keeping networks small. Having smaller provider networks that means insurers can offer more business to the doctors and hospitals that are in their network, allowing the insurer to negotiate a lower rate (it’s like buying in bulk). Plans can also keep costs down by eliminating the providers that charge the most.
The downside is that consumers then have fewer choices for doctors and hospitals. Insurers could offer plans with larger networks, but, they’d be more expensive and according to The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn, insurers believe there’d be little demand for them:
According to nearly every source inside and outside the industry I’ve consulted, the primary reason carriers are offering so many small-network plans in the exchanges is that they believe consumers want them. Their marketing research suggests that, when forced to choose between paying higher premiums for wider networks or lower premiums for narrower networks, the majority of people will go for the cheaper insurance. The one survey I’ve seen on this question, by Morning Consult, suggests the carriers may be right: In that survey, nearly 60 percent of respondents said they’d opt for plans with fewer provider choices if meant saving on premiums.
How narrow are we talking?
There isn’t much nationwide data on the size of provider networks, but we can look at individual plans on the exchanges to get an idea. For example, in California, the plans Blue Shield is offering on the Obamacare marketplace only cover 60% of the doctors and 75% of the hospitals from its employer plans. And a recent report from McKinsey consultants looking at silver plans in 20 cities across the country found that 70% included fewer than 70% of local hospitals in their networks, and 38% of the plans included fewer than 30% of hospitals.
It’s important to note that smaller networks doesn’t mean dangerously small. Obamacare includes a “network adequacy” requirement, which says that every insurer’s network has to include enough specialists to provide the required essential health benefits “without unreasonable delay.” On top of that, many states have their own network adequacy requirements beyond those in the Affordable Care Act. There’s also an appeals process, if you feel that your insurer can’t (or won’t) provide medically necessary care within its provider network. And finally, we should also point out that these smaller networks would have no effect on your ability to get treated in an emergency– Obamacare prevents insurers from charging more for out-of-network emergency care.
Why narrow networks don’t necessarily mean worse care
Ok, so we know that insurers are offering smaller networks because it allows they don’t want to pay the high prices some hospitals are demanding– but it turns out these hospitals are some of the country’s most prestigious. For example, Blue Shield’s Obamacare plans won’t include L.A.’s renowned Cedars-Sinai Medical Center or hospitals affiliated with the University of California.
Intuitively, you’d think that the more expensive the hospital, the better the quality of care it would provide. But you’d be wrong explains The Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff:
Alas, the health-care system is anything but intuitive and, most research suggests, there is very little connection between how much we pay for health care and the quality of the provider. “Evidence of the direction of association between health care cost and quality is inconsistent,” Peter Hussey, Samuel Wertheimer and Ateev Mehrotra wrote in a recent RAND literature review.
“Most studies have found that the association between cost and quality is small to moderate, regardless of whether the direction is positive or negative.”
To give just one example, Jonathan Cohn looked at Cedars-Sinai and found that while it was ranked highly by two companies that rate hospital safety and quality, several other local hospitals that charge far less money were ranked even higher.
Also, some plans with small networks may be able to provide higher quality care precisely because they’re smaller. Kliff describes these “high performance provider networks”:
In a best-case scenario, they include a network of doctors who work more closely together to deliver coordinated, high-quality care. The best example of this is probably Kaiser Permanente (which is not affiliated with Kaiser Family Foundation), one of the top-ranked health plans that limits patients exclusively to seeing the doctors that they employ. Patients are generally okay with that model because they’re satisfied with the small number of hospitals and physicians they do get to choose from.
The alternative to small networks
While Kaiser Permanente shows that’s it’s possible to get excellent care from a smaller network of providers, there can be practical drawbacks (like having to travel a considerable distance to get treatment). Also, it can be difficult to find out what doctors and hospitals are covered by what Obamacare plans (the online marketplaces require include a link to insurers’ websites, but that info is often missing or incomplete). And while those expensive, prestigious hospitals we mentioned may not be any better than a community hospital for common procedures, for complicated cases requiring highly specialized treatment they’re often great.
The only way to truly guarantee that everyone has access to any doctor they need to see would with more regulation: either through an all-payer system (that’s where the government sets the doctor and hospital rates, so there’s no need for smaller networks to keep price down) or a single-payer system (which does the same thing, but would also get rid of insurers altogether). In other words, not having access to a certain doctor or hospital may be an actual problem for some, but don’t expect conservatives like Coburn to complain too loudly about it. | <urn:uuid:f1bcd875-1311-4b2c-bf30-a074e03d0f5d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://whatifpost.com/obamacare-plans-tend-to-have-smaller-networks-but-is-that-a-bad-thing.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.963036 | 1,657 | 2.03125 | 2 |
A European bulb-thread filled with metal wool. When the bulb is connected to battery voltage, the wool lights up with enormous power! One bulb is equivalent to about 50 x 60 watt bulbs lit for two seconds. Use 4.5 to 24 (NOT 240V) volt to ignite to fire the bulb. The bulb will be hot for a short time. Simulates the light from an explosion – but with no sound or smoke.
Several hundred of these bulbs were used to “blow up a floor” in the movie “Die Hard” where all bulbs were rigged to fire when only one firing button was pressed. Was also used in the final sequence of “Raiders of the Lost Arc” where the bad guys are pierced by light beams. In this case, the actors were protected with insulation and CGI-elements were added. Often used in movies for the nuclear white out effect. Will only work once. Sensitive to static electricity. REQUIRES EDISON SCREW IN BASE. | <urn:uuid:9b08b6f0-7979-4524-b619-4c5d4753015d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.geelongfireworks.com.au/product/3000w-bulbs/?add-to-cart=19920 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.960575 | 208 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Signs have been an integral part of our communication since the earliest days of life evolution. In the Stone Ages it was signs and figures that were used to send signals across masses. The sign industry evolved with the evolving life history. Signs were used as means to interact with those of unfamiliar language and culture. Signs have much simpler and unambiguous communication patterns than words. Logo designs are the modern products of this sign industry that help the organization to mark their presence differently from other market leaders.
Greeks laid the Foundation: The signs used for sending signals like war and peace soon made their way to a higher level where they were used to distinguish the coins of one country from the other and the Greeks or Romans were the one to start with it.
Transition of Symbols into Logo Designs: With the expanding number of nations on the surface of earth and proliferation of languages and cultures. These signs and symbols became the necessity of nations in order to maintain their individuality but with a broader horizon that stretched from simple color or alphabet to particularly defined trademarks. Numerous inventions and techniques have contributed to the contemporary logo design, including coins, trans-cultural diffusion of logographic languages, silver hallmarks and the development of printing technology.
Present Age Logo designs: With the industrial revolution and diversification of business entities in the market, the trends of logo designs changed tremendously and shaped up into a fully developed industry. An enormous number of online applications, need for identity development and various marketing tools and forums contributed to the evolution of this industry. Modern logo designs are much more than just having a graphical image of your organization.
In the present era, there are numerous organizations or products/services of different organizations that are similar in nature therefore, in order to get your organization recognized by the customer and to cast a different and unique image among the competitors, an enviable logo design for an organization is must. As it is said that Actions speak louder than Words and since logo design is also a visual tool like an action therefore it has a much wider and stronger impact on the target customers.
The journey from a simple symbol till today has attached an enormous importance for the incorporation of a logo design into ones business strategy. An unimpeachable quality logo design serves as a powerful marketing tool that helps your organization to tie a firm knot with your clients/ customers. Thus, helps to increase your sales. | <urn:uuid:6ea66cea-cc15-4db5-923a-061a4a6d5f9f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://brettdesign.ca/4-tips-in-logo-design/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.959641 | 476 | 2.234375 | 2 |
How long do you think your attention span is? Maybe a minute or even two, right? Sadly, your attention span is 8 seconds. That’s one second shorter than that of a goldfish. So, when you show people paragraphs of text, don’t expect them to read it all.
But did you know visualizations such as infographics are thirty times more likely to be read than text? And if that’s not enough to convince you to start using visualizations within your marketing, maybe this infographic will change your mind:
Click on the image below to enlarge:
You should consider creating infographics because they drive 250% more traffic than ordinary blog posts do. If you don’t believe me, just look at Mashable… they get three times more tweets when a post includes an infographic than when it doesn’t. Plus, 65% of people are visual learners, which means showing data in a visual format will make it easier for your readers to learn.
Once you create an infographic, make sure you check out this post as it will teach you how to make it go viral.
Embed This Image On Your Site (copy code below): | <urn:uuid:471357f5-37f9-4994-8c34-a493ce6beb24> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://buildpassiveincomeandwealth.com/this-is-your-brain-on-visualization-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.921802 | 246 | 2.109375 | 2 |
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With a simple liquid extraction approach and a short, 13-min GC method, dried blood spots can be analyzed effectively and rapidly. This method demonstrates that dried blood spot cards are an effective technique for toxicological studies.
In this article, we outline a simple, reliable method for the quantification of 12 polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in dried blood spots using a straightforward sample extraction method coupled with analysis by gas chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (GC–MS/MS). With a simple liquid extraction approach and a short 13-min GC method, dried blood spots may be effectively and rapidly analyzed, which demonstrates the use of dried blood spot cards as an effective technique for toxicological studies.
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are organobromine compounds commonly used as flame retardants in products such as plastics, polyurethane foams, textiles, electronics, and building materials (1). Flame retardants can be used as either reactive or additive chemicals. The reactive flame retardants are incorporated into the polymeric materials by covalent bonding between the polymer and the flame retardant, whereas the additive types are dissolved in the polymer (2,3). Because of their low cost and effectiveness, PBDEs are the most commonly used reactive flame retardants. PBDEs are structurally similar to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and so have similar properties, with 209 total number of congeners depending on the number and positions of the bromine atoms on the two phenyl rings (4).
PBDEs are highly hydrophobic and resistant to biodegradation, acids and bases, heat, light, and reducing or oxidizing agents, and as a result environmental concerns for their accumulation have been raised since the early 1990s when trace levels were detected even in rural areas (5–8). Humans may be exposed to low levels of PBDEs, which can result from waste incineration or from waste leaching from landfills into water, through ingestion of food and by indoor dust inhalation in their domestic environment (1). Studies have reported that PBDEs bioaccumulate in blood, breast milk, eggs, and fat tissues (9). PBDEs have been shown to cause brain, immune, reproductive, and hepatic hormone disrupting effects in animals (9–12), and health effects on humans are under investigation (13–15).
Over the years, sample preparation and analytical techniques such as liquid–liquid extraction, solid-phase extraction (SPE), gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) have been employed to quantify PBDEs in limited volumes of whole blood (16–18). Although methods assessing PBDE concentrations in whole blood and serum are detailed extensively in the analytical literature, very few methods have been developed and published for the quantification of PBDEs in dried blood spots. Preparation of liquid blood samples for the analysis of PBDEs can be both difficult and time consuming, with potential complications in sample collection and analysis. Dried blood spots, however, provide an alternative method for sampling blood that overcomes some of the limitations of using liquid whole blood (19–22). Using dried blood spots as a sample matrix significantly reduces the likelihood of contamination, as well as collection vessel breakage, and eliminates the use of analyte preservatives or treatments resulting from customs and import requirements that may interfere with the analysis. Sample transportation does not require refrigeration or freezing-it is economical and requires minimal manipulation at the collection site. Additionally, a sample aliquot obtained from dried blood spots is expected to yield equivalent levels of accuracy and precision compared to a pipette volume of a liquid blood sample (23). To take advantage of the alternative dry blood sampling technique described above for environmental analysis, it is imperative to be able to efficiently remove targeted contaminants from blood spot cards. The methodology described in this article, a development of our previous efforts (24), reports an efficient, rapid, and sensitive procedure for the extraction of PBDEs from avian dried whole blood spots followed by analysis using gas chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (GC–MS/MS) that minimizes sample matrix effects and retains analyte sensitivity.
Materials and Reagents
Isooctane (≥99.9%), formic acid (≥95%), and 4,4’-dibromooctafluorobiphenyl (99.9%) were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich. PBDE California Method 750-M standard solution mixture and 2,3’,4,6-tetrabromodiphenyl ether solution were purchased from AccuStandard. Chicken red blood cells were acquired from Lampire Biological Laboratories.
Red blood cells were spotted onto Whatman 903 Protein Saver cards, which were purchased from GE Healthcare. Clear 8-mL disposable vials and 2-mL microcentrifuge tubes used for sample preparation were purchased from Fisher Scientific.
Determination of sample and analyte weights was conducted through the use of a Precisa XT 220A analytical balance. A Bransonic 5510R-DTH ultrasonic cleaner was used to sonicate the samples, a Thermo Scientific 945093 multitube vortexer was used for sample mixing, and a Thermo Scientific Legent Micro 21R centrifuge was used for sample centrifugation. Analyses were performed on an Agilent Technologies 6890N gas chromatograph equipped with a 30 m x 0.25 mm, 0.25-µm df RXI-5MS Restek capillary column and coupled with an Agilent Technologies 7683B automatic liquid handler and a Waters Quattro Micro tandem mass spectrometer in positive electron ionization mode at 70 eV, scanning in multiple-reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. The carrier gas was helium at a constant flow of 1.0 mL/min and the collision gas was argon, both UHP300 grade. The injector port was equipped with a Restek Siltek single gooseneck splitless liner with a deactivated wool insert and was set at a temperature of 280 °C. A 1.0-µL injection in splitless mode was performed with a purge pressure of 50 kPa after 1 min. The oven program for the separation of all analytes was initiated at 110 °C, held for 1.5 min, ramped at 30 °C per min to 340 °C, and held for 3.8 min. Baseline separation was achieved for all analytes within 11 min with a total run time of 13 min. The GC interface temperature and the spectrometer source temperature were both set at 250 °C. Statistical analysis for obtaining calibration and quantification results for all compounds were performed using the Waters QuanLynx program, which was included in the MassLynx software v.4.2. The MRM parameters for each analyte, the fragmentation ions used for quantification, retention times, and the linear correlation coefficients of the calibration curves are presented in Table I, and the chromatograms are shown in Figure 1.
Standard Solutions Preparation
A 700-ng/mL solution containing the PBDEs of interest was produced by diluting and combining commercial 10,000-ng/mL and 50,000-ng/mL solutions of PBDEs in isooctane up to 10 mL in isooctane. Calibration standards with concentrations ranging from 700 ng/mL to 5 ng/mL were produced by further serial dilution. The internal standard stock solution used 4,4’-dibromooctafluorobiphenyl and was prepared by diluting a 10-mg/mL solution up to 10 mL in isooctane to a concentration of 1.0 mg/mL. A 10,000-ng/mL spiking solution was prepared by subsequent serial dilutions with isooctane.
Dry Blood Spot Extraction
Method validation samples were prepared by spreading 15 µL of the analyte free chicken red blood cells in replicates of five blood spots onto clean protein saver cards (Whatman) that were immediately spiked with PBDE spiking solution to ensure mixing of the solution with the still-wet blood. Blood spots were then allowed to dry at room temperature, and the result is a typical blood-spotted card as shown in Figure 2. After drying, each spot was center-punched from the card using a disposable punch, weighed, and transferred to an 8-mL glass sample vial. After all samples were punched and transferred to individual vials, 1.920 mL of methanol was added to each vial. An additional 80 µL of formic acid was then added to assist in lysing dried blood cells, thus enhancing the extraction. Samples were sonicated for 15 min, and then vortexed at 2500 rpm for 15 min. A 1.000-mL aliquot of each extract was transferred into individual 2-mL microcentrifuge tubes and centrifuged for 10 min at 14,000 rpm. A 450-µL aliquot of the resulting supernatant solution of each sample was transferred directly to a 2-mL autosampler vial and spiked with 50 µL of 4,4’-dibromooctafluorobiphenyl internal standard solution. The extracted residual card spots then were dried and weighed to obtain the weight of the spotted dry blood used in quantitative calculations.
The proposed method was assessed by performing both a method detection limit (MDL) study and precision and accuracy (PA) study. The MDL study was carried out by the preparation and analysis of seven replicate samples processed as described above. The method detection limit was calculated according to the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations Title 40 part 136 and is defined as follows:
where t(n-1, 1-α=0.99) = 3.143, and is equal to the Student’s t value at 99% confidence for six degrees of freedom, and S is equal to the standard deviation of the seven replicate measurements. At a 25-ng/mL spiking concentration, percent recoveries and method detection limits for the 12 targeted PBDEs ranged from 44ng/g for PBDE-99 to 114.7ng/g for PBDE-17 (Table II).
Similarly, precision and accuracy were determined at a spiking level of 100 ng/mL for four replicates, with sample recoveries used to document method accuracy and standard deviation used a measure of precision. Recoveries are shown in Table III and range from 70.5% for PBDE-17 to 105.3% for PBDE-66.
An important aspect in sample preparation is proper spiking of the PBDE standard solution onto the protein saver card to ensure acceptable PBDE spike recoveries and avoid bias from low recovery results in quality control samples. In our earlier research findings (24), recoveries were as low as 40% due to diffusion of the spiking solutions across the surface of the card outside the radius of the sample spot. In a comparison of dried blood spot spiking techniques, Li and colleagues (21) reported similar results, with direct spiking of dried blood spots yielding sample spike accuracies with a -45% bias. The preferred method involved the spiking of blood before spotting onto cards, according to the same authors, which had produced recoveries with a +7.9% bias. However, this method is impractical, because it would require the individual performing the initial field sampling to spike the blood samples with the appropriate quality control standards before spotting the blood on the cards. Although this requirement may not be an issue within a laboratory where the initial blood sampling through to quantitative analysis is performed, it is highly impractical for obtaining field-based samples. Consequently, it was found that to obtain acceptable PBDE spike recoveries without pre-spiking blood, the blood spots must retain the entirety of the spiking solution so that the only area for diffusion to occur is on the blood spot itself. Nevertheless, future investigations might benefit from comparing the merits of directly spiking blood before spotting the cards to observe any differences in recovery. Furthermore, red blood cell density can also be investigated because it is an important factor in analyte extraction from dried blood spots and liquid whole blood. Overall, this spiking methodology produced acceptable recoveries that are similar to results obtained for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in whole blood or plasma by other methods developed in our laboratory (25,26).
A rapid, efficient, and reliable method was developed and validated for the accurate determination of PBDEs in avian whole blood on blood spot cards in the low nanograms-per-gram range. The utility of dry blood spot card medium for the sampling of blood offers multiple unique advantages over traditional liquid whole blood or plasma samples for both the sampling and analysis procedures. The analytical methodology described in this article offers the advantage of the alternative dry blood sampling technique for environmental analysis. The overall success of this methodology heavily depends on the ability to efficiently remove targeted contaminants from blood spot cards. Our laboratory is expanding this method to be used successfully for routine screening of various persistent organic pollutants in blood and serum, and other similar liquid matrices that can be efficiently spotted on the cards.
We acknowledge valuable guidance provided from Kim Lilley and Stephen Harrington of Waters Corporation (USA) on the sample preparation and the analysis. Special thanks to Aliaksandr Yeudakimau and Gary Ulatowski who were involved in the early stages of method development and sample preparation of this study.
Anthony A. Provatas, James D. Stuart, and Christopher R. Perkins are with the University of Connecticut, Center for Environmental Sciences and Engineering in Storrs, Connecticut. Direct correspondence to firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:5d2c5a8d-4dac-4be4-af48-edea7f42bc2a> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.chromatographyonline.com/view/quantification-polybrominated-diphenyl-ethers-avian-dried-blood-spots-gas-chromatography-tandem-mass | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.935661 | 2,882 | 2.875 | 3 |
Latin name: Pterinochilus murinus
If you are interested in this incredible species, please note that we do not recommend them for beginner tarantula enthusiasts and be sure to read through all our information on them.
Our stock: We have several unsexed young adults available which are all about 4” in size including leg span. Photos are representative of our general stock.
They are eating live medium crickets.
Other names: OBT, Orange Bitey Thing, Mombasa Golden Starburst Tarantula, Usambara Baboon Spider.
Habitat: They are a very widespread species, native to many South and Central African Countries.
Lifestyle: These beautifully colored old world tarantulas are burrowers who will dig and live inside deep holes and line them with webbing. They will also build large visible web tunnels at the entrance to their burrows. They hunt by ambushing any insect prey that happens to be passing by the entrance of their burrow. They will live in this burrow for the duration of their lives unless they are disturbed or they are a sexually mature male searching for a mate.
Size and Lifespan: Their leg span when they reach adult size is typically around 6” and females are heavier-bodied than males with bigger abdomens. Lifespan differs greatly depending on the sex of the tarantula. Males top out at 4 years of age with them being sexually mature for last year of their lives. Females can live up to 15 years.
Quick care stats:
Temperatures: 80 degrees Fahrenheit on the warm end, 70 degrees Fahrenheit on the cool end.
Humidity: 60%-70% Manually mist lightly in the AM and PM or set up an automatic mister to do the job.
Tank size: 1-5 gallons or smaller for babies, 10+ gallons for adults.
Tank type: low rectangle-allow for ample floor space.
Lighting: Both a heat pad and a dimmable heat lamp are recommended, especially in winter. Thermostats are also helpful. Full spectrum UVB lighting is not required for this species but is recommended to simulate a natural day/night cycle.
Substrate and furniture: Soil or coconut fiber substrate 3"deep or deeper as these guys like to dig. Provide lots of hiding places. Provide a small water dish that is not so deep that the tarantula cannot climb back out on its own.
Handling: This species is not recommended for handling under any circumstances. Though they prefer to go into threat posture and will even slap the ground when they feel threatened, the risk of being bitten is still present and they have been known to bite without prior warning. They are also an extremely fast species. The potency of their venom is not well studied but it is known to be significantly toxic and very painful.
Use extreme caution when transferring them from one enclosure to the next or cleaning. The use of catch cups will make this process safer.
Feeding: 1 appropriately sized insect prey item no more than 1x per week. Feeding your Orange Baboon Tarantula can be very exciting to watch as they will often burst out from their web tunnels and snatch their prey with amazing speed as soon as the food item is offered.
Always remove uneaten food items if they have not been consumed after 8 hours. | <urn:uuid:906c00df-c980-4baf-acf3-22ecbd749905> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://eastbayvivarium.com/collections/tarantulas-spiders/products/orange-baboon-tarantula | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.94752 | 688 | 1.882813 | 2 |
The Supreme Court has ruled for states to be able to collect out-of-state sales tax. Your WooCommerce website makes it easy to automatically calculate sales tax and even simplifies filing your taxes!
The US Supreme Court ruled that a state may collect sales tax from out-of-state sellers that do not maintain a physical presence in the state. This was a victory for brick-and-mortar businesses who feel they are put at a disadvantage by having to charge sales taxes while many online competitors do not. States also feel that they have missed out on billions of dollars in annual revenue.
“State and local governments have really been dealing with a nightmare scenario for several years now,” said Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington think tank. “This is going to allow state and local governments to improve their tax enforcement and to put local business on a more level playing field.”
The new ruling overturns the Quill Corp v. North Dakota 1992 that did not require businesses to charge for out-of-state sales tax unless they had a physical presence in that state. | <urn:uuid:9f973fee-ec98-40e8-9015-069d105834d3> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.webrealsimple.com/enable-automated-sales-tax-calculations-and-tax-filing-in-woocommerce/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.973156 | 233 | 1.585938 | 2 |
January 27, 2019 - February 28, 2019
Galleries are open daily from 10-5 PM.
9652 Muirkirk Road
Laurel, MD 20708
301-377-7800; TTY 301-699-2544
Annual Black History Month Exhibition: Moving Out, Moving In, Moving Up
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Public Reception: Sunday, January 27, 2019, from 2 to 4 pm
Migration has been a defining characteristic of the Black experience in the United States since the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to the American colonies in the early 1600s. But the early 20th century marked a new and important phase in migration as unprecedented numbers of African Americans moved from the rural South to the urban North in search of a better life. Multiple waves of this “Great Migration” would continue during the course of the 20th century into the 21st century as blacks within the United States, as well as black immigrants, moved to and within this country.
This exhibit explores the factors spurring black migration and immigration as well as the resulting changes in society on the national, regional, and local levels. This exhibit is curated by the M-NCPPC Black History Program.
Ages: All ages are welcome | <urn:uuid:40061378-7f7f-4934-8196-68976c3f00d2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.pgparks.com/Calendar.aspx?EID=6147 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.958758 | 272 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Mobile Treatment Units for disinfection of produced water in the Oil & Gas industry
Mobile Treatment Units (MTU's) are the safest and most effective oil field water treatment solution on the market today. A MTU is a self-contained system for the on-site generation of sodiium hypochlorite, an effective oxidizer that can be used to disinfect water used in hydraulic fracturing operations and do the heavy lifting in recycling produced water. MTU's are build in standard C-containers, which are air-conditioned for a safer and more comfortable working environment, and the system comes with all of the equipment needed to generate and inject sodium hypochlorite as well as the testing equipment needed to monitor water treatment operations.
In 2009, the city of San Benito, TX completed the construction of a new six-million-gallon-per-day (MGD) microfiltration plant, which replaced a plant that had been in operation since 1928. The new facility is considered one of the most modern and innovative water treatment plants in the region and has been recognized for its use of microfiltration and solar power. Its chlorination system, while more traditional than these technologies, was selected for its cost-efficiency, reliability and flexibility.
On offshore Oil & Gas production and extraction facilities, the sewage treatment system often manages an enormous amount of raw wastewater, i.e., …human sewage. The untreatable or separated wastes from these systems are commonly referred to as “screened or filtered raw biomass”, or, “wet waste sludge.”
There are various options available for removing arsenic from groundwater; these processes range from ion exchange and activated alumina to reverse osmosis, coagulation and filtration. Each of these technologies have their own pros and cons, but in cases where arsenic treatment is the main treatment objective, adsorption is the ideal technology from a cost and ease of operation standpoint.
With longer laterals being drilled and stages being added, well completion by hydraulic fracturing (frac) now requires an ever-increasing amount of water for every well that is drilled and completed. Ensuring that the water used in frac is free of bacteria is a critical part of the overall treatment and conditioning of water before it is sent downhole. This is especially true as more operators are using recycled flowback and produced water for completion activities. | <urn:uuid:37642609-1283-4238-99e6-39fedd229f87> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://blog.denora.com/page/2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.955803 | 491 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Find out how to make new friends, keep old friends, and be the best Brownie friend you can be.
1. Make friendly introductions
2. Show friends you care
3. Share favorite activities
4. Learn how to disagree
5. Practice friendship!
When you've earned this badge, you'll know how to be a good friend.
This badge comes in a packet that includes the Letterboxer, Pets, Making Games, Inventor, and Making Friends badges.
Girl Scout badges, awards, and other insignia that are earned for the accomplishment of skill building activities or any set requirements should be presented, worn, or displayed only after Girl Scouts have completed the requirements outlined in the appropriate program materials. | <urn:uuid:ac9e08d1-6d23-4ce9-827e-fa788cb1c7ed> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://shop.girlscoutsgcnwi.org/product/brownie-making-friends-badge/?add_to_wishlist=47024&_wpnonce=a66aeac371 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.914503 | 157 | 1.859375 | 2 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. (February 2013)
Edmund "Leo" Morrissey (1914-1965) was an Australian politician. He was a member of the Labor Party (ALP) for the seat of Mernda from December 1952 until April 1955. In 1955, he left the ALP and "crossed the floor" and joined the anti-Communist Democratic Labor Party.
He died on 22 August 1965 at the age of 51 in Diamond Creek.
- Ainsley Symons (2012), 'Democratic Labor Party members in the Victorian Parliament of 1955–1958,' in Recorder (Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Melbourne Branch) No. 275, November, Pages 4–5. | <urn:uuid:c0066765-e378-43a9-b896-32d11cd45dae> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Morrissey | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.943778 | 162 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month This August July 31, 2022
Vision disorders make it difficult for people to interact with the world around them. According to Prevent Blindness, one of the nation’s leading eye health and safety organizations dedicated to fighting blindness and saving sight, untreated eye diseases and conditions in children become more difficult to repair as time progresses. In some instances, they also endanger a child’s chances of achieving academic and social success. This August, Prevent Blindness is celebrating Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month in partnership with the National Optometric Association. One of the main goals behind Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month is to teach parents and caregivers about what steps they can take to make sure their children have the best chance of achieving a successful school year by maintaining healthy vision.
Important Facts on Eye Diseases and Conditions in Children
One of the most startling facts about children’s eye health is that one in 20 children between the ages of 3 and 5-years-old has a condition that could lead to permanent vision loss if left untreated. Despite these numbers, current estimates suggest that approximately 80% of preschool-aged children have not received an eye health screening. Vision exams are particularly important for children because they may begin developing problems or experiencing a change in vision without themselves, their parents or caregivers noticing right away.
Here is some other important information from Prevent Blindness and the Vision Resource Center of Berks County on vision disorders and other problems that children experience:
- Vision disorders can negatively impact a babies’ ability to bond with their caregiver or parent, their ability to explore the world by reaching and grasping, and can also impede the development of their fine and gross motor skills
- One in every four school-aged children and one in every 17 preschool-aged children have some sort of vision problem that requires corrective treatment
- 80% of blindness and vision impairment is preventable or treatable
- 24% of teens with correctable vision disorders or issues have the wrong prescription
- Untreated eye conditions in children become more difficult to correct as time goes on. They can also lead to other serious conditions and can affect a child’s reading ability, focus, classroom behavior, and social adjustment
- Some of the most common vision problems in children are amblyopia (“lazy eye”), strabismus (“crossed eyes”), myopia (nearsightedness), hyperopia (farsightedness) and astigmatism
A great way to assess a child for eye problems is to undergo a vision screening. While vision screenings do not take the place of comprehensive eye exams, they are effective at identifying when a child is at risk for or currently experiencing a problem. After a vision screening, the next step is an eye exam conducted by an optometrist or ophthalmologist. A comprehensive eye exam includes an evaluation of the refractive state, dilated fundus examination, visual acuity, ocular alignment, binocularity, and, when appropriate, color vision testing. Various children’s health organizations provide suggested timetables for checkpoints related to children’s eye health. To learn more about these timetables, visit the Prevent Blindness website.
Sports-Related Eye Injuries in Children
Another primary cause behind eye injuries and conditions in children are sports-related injuries. Every day, approximately 100,000 sports-related eye injuries occur; roughly one-third of these injuries are sustained by children under the age of 16-years-old. Despite how common sports-related injuries are, the number of children who wear protective eyewear, such as safety glasses or goggles, is staggeringly low (15%). Here are some important statistics and recommendations regarding sports-related eye injuries in children from the Vision Council:
- Eye injuries are the leading cause of blindness in children between the ages of 11 and 14-years-old. The majority of these eye injuries occur while children are playing sports
- Sports-related eye injuries include bruises of the eyelid, corneal abrasions, internal bleeding and retinal detachments
- Boys between the ages of 11 and 15 are as much as five times as likely to sustain a sports-related eye injury that requires hospital care as girls in the same age bracket
- Current estimates suggest that sports-related eye injuries account for more than 100,000 physician visits per year
- Approximately 1.6 to 2.4 million Americans sustain eye injuries each year. 40,000 of these individuals will become legally blind in their injured eye
To mitigate these dangers, the Vision Council recommends that parents and caregivers insist that children wear safety goggles or glasses whenever they play sports. Protective eyewear should meet the impact standards prescribed by the American Standards for Testing and Materials (ASTM). Protective lenses should also be made from polycarbonate materials because they are able to withstand the highest level of impact protection. To learn more about purchasing protective eyewear for your child, visit your local sporting goods store or speak directly with your eyecare professional.
If you have a question or concern about an eye injury that your child sustained, someone at our firm can help. To learn more, contact a representative online now.
Philadelphia Medical Malpractice Lawyers at Galfand Berger, LLP, Representing Injured Victims Since 1947
If you have a question about filing a legal claim, contact the Philadelphia medical malpractice lawyers at Galfand Berger LLP today. Call us at 800-222-USWA (8792) or fill out our online form for a free consultation. Located in Philadelphia, Bethlehem, Lancaster, and Reading, we serve clients throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including Allentown and Harrisburg. | <urn:uuid:caabe8aa-f793-4b9f-b5d9-1e4321076788> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.galfandberger.com/2022/07/31/childrens-eye-health-safety-month-august/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.944938 | 1,170 | 3.359375 | 3 |
My 4/05/09 Missoulian column
I thought about writing on the Conficker worm last week, the latest malware that turns Windows computers into members of “botnets” controlled by “bad guys.” But I didn’t want to buy into all the hype about the Internet being clogged by millions of those “zombie” computers.
As I guessed – and some security researchers also guessed who know much more than I – Conficker turned out to be almost a nonstory on April 1, the day when the botnet was first thought to come “alive.”
The botnet didn’t take down the Internet, and I admit that hindsight is always 20/20. But those millions of infected PCs are still out there, and Conficker may return. Some security researchers say the botnet is already being broken up and sold off. Others aren’t so sure and are hanging fire, so to speak.
Botnets use their millions of captive PCs to send spam e-mails, steal personal information and extort money in exchange for not blocking Internet traffic from other Web sites. There’s much money to be made with botnets, and there’s evidence that many are controlled from Russia and Eastern Europe, out of reach of much law enforcement.
The developers of Conficker improved on the botnet concept by using encryption and new-version tactics to protect their worm from removal and to help it travel. When a PC is infected, anti-virus Web sites and Windows Updates are blocked by Conficker in order to protect itself.
The botnet controllers are still unknown, but those to blame now are all those PCs users who don’t protect themselves. With Windows, you must have anti-virus and anti-spyware and keep Windows Update set on automatic. If it’s not Conficker, then it will be other worms and trojans that will arrive in the future. It’s just a fact of life in the world of the Internet: You have to look out for yourself and your PC.
According to network statistics, only around 5 percent of Conficker infections are in the U.S., so if you’re running Windows Update and anti-virus and anti-spyware scanners, you should be OK.
Conficker can’t infect Apple computers – unless you happen to running Windows as a virtual machine – but you still must be careful about installing sketchy software on OSX.
Everything you want to know is at the Web site of The Conficker Working Group, a consortium of businesses and private groups.
The working group has a Web page test to see if your PC is infected. The best instructions I’ve found to remove Conficker and restore altered settings are at PCMag | <urn:uuid:3fb6773c-fcf0-43a7-9af7-531088cc6ec1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://markratledge.com/2009/04/the-worm-that-wasnt-at-least-yet/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.937609 | 584 | 2.015625 | 2 |
This is a great activity for your higher level students to refresh their English skills. It's a maze type of game where students answer questions and depending on their answer they proceed to this or that following question. They are getting a letter with each answer they give, and at the end of the maze the letters they have should spell out a message.
The answer is the following phrase: 'You are the best'!
Try it at your first back to school lesson and let us know how this activity goes with your students! | <urn:uuid:85cbc97a-20d2-4b27-80ea-78d53c00d0a8> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://busyteacher.org/2794-what-sort-of-language-learner-are-you.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.973998 | 106 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Mortgage Modification Meltdown
Article by jitesh arora
Loan modification programs these days are still not reaching house owners, who are in the need of prevention of foreclosure and creative financing, and in a large number of cases, these bailout programs backfire even if they reach the concerned individuals.
The National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA) has made the following comments on issues related to such meltdown problems:
* When the loan modification schemes are written, less than one out of ten of them result in lower principal balance on the current loan.
* More than fifty to sixty percent of the loan modifications turn unpaid interests and fees into larger, debts towards the end of the mortgage.
* Less than thirty five percent of the mortgage modification schemes reduce the monthly payment burden on the house owners.
* More than Forty five percent of loan the modification programs include hidden costs and increased payments.
The home loan modifications, which is granted upon the lenders approval, makes permanent amendments in the terms and conditions of the currently existing mortgage, with the intent of lowering the monthly payments and make the loans more easy and affordable to the house owners.
These schemes are basically designed for the house owners who are struggling in order to make their mortgage payments, and not for those people who are eligible for refinanced loans or those who can comfortably pay their mortgage installments.
The mortgage modification is one of the best methods of providing some relief to the house owners and stopping foreclosures, for those who are not eligible for refinanced mortgage, which, on the other hand is a program which provides completely new loans to pay off the existing home loans.
Other option include short sale, in which the lender decides to forgive some part of the debt if the owner finds a buyer for the house), filing for bankruptcy. Or auctioning – All these options cost the consumer his house.
The loan modifications generally do not require any fees to be paid to the lender and involve the mortgage holder or lender to lower the interests to make monthly payments easier or the conversion of mortgage with adjustable rates (ARM) to fixed rate mortgages (FRM) with a term of 30 years.
A mortgage is one of the most complex forms of transactions which exist. loan modification are also an unknown region for most people, therefore the people need someone who can take them forward through the whole process and tell them what they need and what they don’t require.
Along with reducing interest rates and locking in the rates of interest, less common modifications also include addition of missed payments to the remaining loan balance and extension of the term of loan.
A reduction in principal is the least common feature of loan modification, where the lender lowers the principal balance on the mortgage.
Reduced principal along with large interest reductions, were the core of the FDIC’s (federal deposits insurance corporation) loan modifications program: “The loans modifications program guide”.
About the Author | <urn:uuid:a22d5ed2-ad7b-46bb-bb8b-72e43ce9a5e5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://mortgagerefinancingblog.com/586/mortgage-modification-meltdown | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.960727 | 603 | 1.726563 | 2 |
The Georgia Governor's Office of Student Achievement has recognized 19 of Fayette County's 28 public schools for high academic performance during the 2010-2011 school year.
Across Fayette's system, 11 elementary, four middle and four high schools received award designations of platinum, gold, silver or bronze based on their performance on state curriculum exams and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) status.
The awards are calculated through the Single Statewide Accountability System (SSAS) and are based on the schools statewide that made the greatest academic gains and those demonstrating the highest performance.
A total of 370 awards were given statewide.
"I am very proud of our students, faculty and staff for the outstanding academic achievement of our student body. Time after time, regardless of the assessment, Fayette County students excel at all grade levels and in all content areas." said Superintendent Jeff Bearden.
The state awards were given in two categories: greatest gain, for schools that showed the greatest improvement in scores on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT) or the Georgia High School Graduation Test (GHSGT); and highest performance for schools that demonstrated the highest achievement on the CRCT or GHSGT.
Fayette's Platinum Highest Performance Award recipients included Kedron Elementary, Peeples Elementary, Tyrone Elementary and McIntosh High. These schools made AYP for three consecutive years with a minimum of 35 percent of students exceeding standards and 98 percent or more meeting and exceeding standards.
Platinum Greatest Gain Award winners included North Fayette Elementary and Sandy Creek High for making AYP for three consecutive years with a minimum of 35 percent of students exceeding standards and scoring in the 98th percentile of greatest gains. Sandy Creek High School was the only Fayette school to receive an award in both categories.
Fayette schools also scored in the Gold, Silver and Bronze categories. A Gold Highest Performance Award went to Braelinn Elementary, Peachtree City Elementary and Starr's Mill High. These schools made AYP for two consecutive years with a minimum of 30 percent of students exceeding standards and 97 percent or more meeting and exceeding standards.
The Silver Highest Performance Award went to five schools including Huddleston Elementary, Crabapple Lane Elementary, Spring Hill Elementary, Brooks Elementary and Rising Starr Middle. These schools made AYP for two consecutive years with a minimum of 25 of students exceeding standards and 96 percent or more meeting and exceeding standards:
Rounding out the award winners were those receiving the Bronze Highest Performance Award. Those included Sara Harp Minter Elementary, Bennett's Mill Middle, J.C. Booth Middle, Whitewater Middle, Sandy Creek High and Whitewater High. These schools made AYP with a minimum of 20 percent of students exceeding standards and 95 percent or more meeting and exceeding standards. | <urn:uuid:9c13ccb5-f3f4-4202-a6a5-bd4187a44efa> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.atlsouthside.com/fayette-county-schools-acclaimed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.952689 | 570 | 1.898438 | 2 |
More rigid and structured shoes,more power can be transmitted to the rock.
The more sensitive a shoe is, the more information gets transferred to the climber about the shape and the characteristics of the foot holds , giving a sensation of closer contact with the rock.
This is the capacity of the shoe to adapt to the width of your foot. This capacity is not only determinate by the width of the sole, in some cases a shoe with a narrow sole displays a great capacity to adapt to a wider foot.
Technology that increases the dynamic response of the shoe improving its ability to adapt to different rock shapes and greater precision and comfort.
Technology that improves the balance between all the performance of the shoe achieving a greater range of response and greater performance in very different situations.
- Curved form enables maximum precision on overhanging rock without sacrificing efficiency on vertical walls or friction holds.
- Perforated upper increases breathability while the tubular-shaped bellows tongue provides a glove-like fit and superb control.
- Unique and precise lace closure system maximizes the transmission of force, while leaving the rubber-coated toe-box free of impediments for marginal toe-hooking. | <urn:uuid:5b306bd9-ccec-4724-b5d4-0f67e83166fe> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://tenaya.net/en/tarifa | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.886653 | 269 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Nearly 34 years after its release, “Pride (In The Name of Love)” remains my favorite U2 song. As is almost always the case with a popular song, it’s the music–in this case The Edge’s ringing, keening guitar line–that I mainlined and got high on when I first heard it back in 1984. It took a while for the lyrics to fully register, and I’m not sure when it was that I fully realized they invoked Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. But when I did, the song evinced that much more power and emotion.
One can find plenty of interpretations of the meaning of the lyrics: references to Christ (‘betrayed by a kiss’), Iron Curtain-era Berlin (‘caught on a barbed wire fence’), power politics (‘one man to overthrow’). Bono himself (U2’s lead singer) has looked back and rued some of the lyric choices he made (emphasis mine):
“As a lyric, it’s daft! It’s a missed opportunity…It’s no description of him, it’s more of a description of a feeling he unlocked in me.”
The meaning of the verse that begins, “Early morning, April 4…” is clear, though. [Bono has also noted that he got the time wrong: King was killed in the early evening, not early morning. In performance, the lyric is often changed to “Early evening, April 4…”]
YouTube offers up many videos that layer images of King over the backdrop of this song. I especially like this one, assembled by a young man in honor of Black History Month a couple of years ago. What’s disheartening is that several images are as topical today as they were 50 years ago today, on the day King was murdered.
Another take: John Legend’s version was included in a History Channel documentary tied to the 40th anniversary of King’s death in 2008. Its style is completely different, yet it still packs a punch…one of the many wonderful things about music. | <urn:uuid:9275b184-427a-43ed-b26c-380f17d3b0ff> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://augenblickblog.com/2018/04/04/pride-in-the-name-of-love/?like_comment=1423&_wpnonce=4b6dee808e | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.967608 | 465 | 2.5 | 2 |
Kansas Online Masters
Kansas, constituent state of the United States of America. It has an area: 82,278 sq mi, with a population of 2,940,865. Its capital city is Topeka. Kansas is bordered by Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Colorado. It is located on the Great Plains, rising more than 3,000 ft (915 m) from its eastern prairies to the high plains of the west. The region was occupied by the Kansa, Osage, Pawnee, and Wichita Indians before European settlement. The first European explorer was Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, who came from Mexico in 1541 in search of gold. La Salle claimed the region for France in 1682. Kansas was acquired by the U.S. as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. In the early 19th century, the federal government relocated displaced eastern Indians to Kansas. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the Kansas Territory and opened it to white settlement. It was the site of conflicts over slavery, including one spurred by John Brown (see Bleeding Kansas). Kansas entered the union as the 34th state in 1861. After the American Civil War, the coming of the railroads promoted the growth of cow towns; Texas cattlemen drove herds to Wichita and Abilene to reach the railheads. Agriculture became important as farmers worked on the Great Plains. During and following World War II, airplane production expanded, and farm products remained strong. | <urn:uuid:325adbf3-f1ba-4f7b-9aca-2ac2f6951e79> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.onlinemasterscolleges.com/kansas-online-masters/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.959384 | 306 | 3.015625 | 3 |
India is a country that is full of makeshifts. We have innovative ways to solve our problems, and this just shows how much our country is bustling with talent. Till now, you might have seen inventions like temperature control shelters so that the vegetables don't go bad to even things as simple as kitchen hacks! We have so many innovative ways to solve every kind of problem. Recently, one such innovation has caught the attention of Anand Mahindra, and the business tycoon is all praises for it! Anand Mahindra is a frequent Twitter user. His Twitter page is full of food-related posts, some of which are educational, some are 'just for fun' and others of which are pure inspiration. His latest post shows a man who created a fruit picking tool.
As he shared the video on Twitter, we could see the making of this tool. In the video, a man first takes a plastic bottle and cuts it into four equal parts from the bottom. After that, he makes tiny holes in the cuts and adds strings to them so that it becomes functional. In the end, he shows the final fruit picking tool. After sharing this video, Anand Mahindra also mentioned in the tweet, "Not an earth-shattering invention. But I'm enthusiastic because it shows a growing culture of ''tinkering.'' America became a powerhouse of inventiveness because of the habit of many experimenting in their basement/garage workshops. Tinkerers can become Titans of innovation." Check out the video here:
Not an earth-shattering invention. But I'm enthusiastic because it shows a growing culture of ‘tinkering.' America became a powerhouse of inventiveness because of the habit of many to experiment in their basement/garage workshops. Tinkerers can become Titans of innovation. ???????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/M0GCW33nq7— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) June 2, 2022
Ever since this video was uploaded, it has been viewed 591.3K times and has 33.6K likes. Many people have also retweeted and commented on the post. Check out some of the reactions here:
"Simple, elegant, and easy to make! A solution for every farmer! Innovations like this are very exciting for a young agri- entrepreneur like me! Wonderful to see your support @anandmahindra, sir!"
"In a campus interview, my daughter was asked about different uses of an empty plastic bottle except filling it up. She could tell a few, but this is extraordinary. I am surely making one to pick fruits from my garden."
"The best inventions are the most simple. And they look like they are always there! #India can become the innovation country of the world if we keep pushing and ''grabbing'' in this manner!"
Many other people have also said that this invention is "awesome" and "amazing." Some others have reacted using emojis. What do you think about this innovation? Let us know in the comments below. | <urn:uuid:8db4e6d9-d971-4a64-8447-0ceed03c0db4> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://food.ndtv.com/news/watch-anand-mahindra-is-all-in-praises-for-this-unique-fruit-picking-tool-3042057 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.965925 | 633 | 1.75 | 2 |
This week, you will develop your personal philosophy of teaching in a written statement, articulating your beliefs about important educational theories and practices. Your teaching philosophy should be based on what is meaningful to you in your approach to teaching.
Note: As your experiences and beliefs about teaching grow and change, your philosophy will also change. Therefore, at the end of this course, you will submit your revised teaching philosophy with a brief discussion of how your philosophy has changed or developed during this course.
There is no right or wrong way to write a personal teaching philosophy. However, for the purpose of this assignment, please follow the assignment guidelines below to connect your beliefs, goals, and strategies into a coherent approach to help students learn and grow | <urn:uuid:ac4d5b3a-102e-4067-8d42-ba32bb82e40f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://nursinglib.com/2022/01/12/personal-philosophy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.957891 | 146 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Answered 4/24/2015 by Samuel Grossman, BS Pharm, Pharm.D, CDE
Marijuana, as an illicit drug, may come in different concentrations based on the batch that the leaves come from and is not closely regulated by the FDA. Marijuana, because of its status, has not been studied fully and may have the potential to affect different organs in the body. The use of marijuana can increase the appetite of a patient with diabetes and can worsen blood glucose levels when carbohydrates are consumed in large portions. Marijuana may have the potential to affect heart rate either directly or indirectly, but there are no conclusive studies that have shown a specific effect on the heart and blood pressure. I would recommend to discuss this issue further with your provider to prevent hazardous adverse effects. | <urn:uuid:3f7ed6d1-191b-4b60-b596-4b11c7f2ae98> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.diabetescare.net/ask/id/131930 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.958389 | 156 | 2.28125 | 2 |
ISLAMABAD: The Minister of State for Climate Change, Zartaj Gul has stated that violence is the product of coercive imposition of one’s ideologies on others; hence, we need higher goals in order to make the youth progressive, as the youth is a huge stakeholder in Pakistan.
She said this while speaking at a book launching ceremony followed by a seminar on “Street Code and Youth Violence in Risky Neighborhoods: A Cross-cultural Comparison of Youth Violence in Germany, Pakistan and South Africa” organised by the Department of Sociology, of Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) here on Wednesday.
It was the joint research project of the Institute of Conflict and Violence (IKG) Bielefeld University Germany, Department of Sociology Quaid-e-Azam University and Cape Town University South Africa under the leadership of Professor Dr Wilehlm Heitmeyer, Dr Steffen Zdun, Dr Sebastian Kurtenbach, Dr Simon Howell, Abdul Rauf and Dr Muhammad Zaman.
Zartaj Gul, who attended the seminar as a chief guest, stressed upon the importance of the issue of the juvenile in the streets of Pakistan.
She said that the regulation of the behaviour of youth is not only the responsibility of the state but also a collective responsibility.
She said the youth is the future of Pakistan and PTI government is committed to working for the youth by providing them with the employment opportunities that are the core of street violence.
The participants of the seminar discussed the core findings of their research on codes of street and violence. This seminar served as an opportunity to discuss the dynamics of the street code and violence and the way forward to address the youth affairs. Participants shared their knowledge, exchanged best practices, and discussed ways to improve and provide a conducive environment for the youth to be a productive part of society.
Dr Muhammad Zaman, who one of the authors of the book explained the findings of their research project “Street Code and Youth Violence in Risky Neighborhoods”.
He discussed the similarities and differences in how street codes operate in different cultural contexts. He further suggested the policy recommendations for the juveniles in the risky neighbourhoods with four “E”: Education, Employment, Engagement and Empowerment of the youth. The first and foremost was the provision of quality education followed by employment. He stressed that the youth should be provided with technical skills and economic opportunities.
Furthermore, the civic engagement and provision of sports activities shall be ensured. In addition to this, he asserted that the youth should be involved in decision making and needs to be politically empowered.
QAU VC Professor Dr Muhammad Ali appreciated the work of the research team on such an important issue. He recognised that there is a larger responsibility of academicians and the community to understand this issue and asserted that it is an important issue which should be admired. | <urn:uuid:c162f50b-a87a-4e8e-b76a-4004204fb461> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://archive.pakistantoday.com.pk/2019/02/20/violence-is-product-of-coercive-imposition-of-ones-ideologies-on-others-zartaj-gul/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.946747 | 591 | 1.789063 | 2 |
CoNOSC consists of a coalition of national and Open Science policymakers and international experts from the UN-European region.
CoNOSC is governed by the CoNOSC Board. It currently has 3 Board Members:
Henriikka Mustajoki, Secretary General for Open Science, Finland, CoNOSC Board Chair
“The National level is an important connector of different Open Science initiatives at multiple levels of activity. CoNOSC will support national work for Open Science by connecting countries and other initiatives.”
Marin Dacos, National Open Science Coordinator, Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, France, CoNOSC Board Member
“There is a need for open science coordination between countries at a European level and beyond. CoNOSC is a real opportunity to accelerate and amplify the open science roadmap.”
Karel Luyben, National Coordinator for Open Science, the Netherlands; President EOSC Association; CoNOSC Board Member
“CoNOSC will help countries create, update and coordinate their national open science policies.”
CoNOSC and its Board are supported by SPARC Europe. SPARC Europe facilitates knowledge-exchange activities, meetings and manages CoNOSC membership.
CoNOSC membership is open to at least all countries within the UN-European Region.
CoNOSC members are generally national OS coordinators, ministry representatives with OS in their portfolio or high-level national OS experts, i.e. OS policy decision-makers. CoNOSC takes into account the differences in how Open Science is organised across countries and takes a flexible approach when recruiting members. Members can be nominated by the CoNOSC Board, by other members. National OS co-ordinators may also reach out to request joining CoNOSC.
Members actively participate in the network by updating CoNOSC on national policy developments and priorities and by engaging in dialogue on key policy matters.
CoNOSC member meetings occur 3-4 times per year. The last CoNOSC meeting took place on 3 Feb 2022. Membership is free of charge.
Find out more about membership. | <urn:uuid:c11d857b-25fa-4908-a12e-4bfc6ad19cfa> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://conosc.org/governance/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.921693 | 460 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in a Non-commercial Backyard Flock In New York State
On February 19, 2022, The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) confirmed the presence of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) in a non-commercial flock of six chickens and two guinea hens. The two guinea hens and three chickens died suddenly over a three-day period. Swabs submitted to the Cornell Animal Health Diagnostic Center (AHDC) and the National Veterinary Service Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, confirmed the presence of HPAI. The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets (NYS AGM) is working closely with USDA APHIS on a joint incident response. The premises have been quarantined and the remaining birds euthanized. Additional surveillance and testing in designated zones will be carried out by USDA and NYS AGM.
What is HPAI?
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza is a very contagious disease caused by an influenza Type A virus of the Orthomyxoviridae family. Type A influenza viruses can infect human, swine, equine and avian species but occur naturally in wild waterfowl which do not show any clinical signs. When wild waterfowl mix with domestic poultry, they can transmit the virus. Types B and C influenza viruses only infect humans. Influenza virus classification into types A, B or C are based on variations in their nucleoprotein (NP) and matrix protein (MP) antigens. Further subtyping is based on the surface antigens Hemagglutinin (16 H types) and Neuraminidase (9 N types). Finally, avian influenza viruses are classified as either high or low pathogenicity based on genetic sequencing. Almost all highly pathogenic avian influenza strains or types belong to H5, H7 and sometimes H9.
Have other cases been detected in the US?
The virus has been detected in Europe since last year and in Canada recently. In mid-January, the first cases in the US were detected in South Carolina in wild birds. To date, the virus has been found in wild birds in many additional states and in commercial turkey flocks in Kentucky and Indiana, commercial broiler chickens in Kentucky and non-commercial backyard flocks in Virginia and Maine.
What are the clinical signs of HPAI and what should veterinarians do if they suspect HPAI?
HPAI clinical signs are variable but can include all or a combination of the following:
- sudden high mortality
- respiratory signs (sneezing, coughing and gasping)
- oculonasal discharge
- edema of face and cyanosis of combs and wattles
- hemorrhage on skin of shanks or breast
- severe egg production drops
- neurological signs
If you suspect HPAI in a patient at your clinic or at a client's farm, please call any of the following numbers for further instructions.
New York State Ag and Markets – Division of Animal Industry - (518) 457-3502
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) - (866) 536-7593
New York State Animal Health Diagnostic Lab - (607) 253-3900
Links for further information:
- New York State Agriculture and Markets announcement
- For backyard flock owners (APHIS)
- Disease information (APHIS) | <urn:uuid:7fdef334-8b0d-4a94-9095-b39c7059cd32> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.vet.cornell.edu/animal-health-diagnostic-center/news/highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-non-commercial-backyard-flock-new-york-state | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.91277 | 722 | 2.84375 | 3 |
To add the CORS authorization to the header using Apache, simply add the following line inside either the
<VirtualHost> sections of your server config (usually located in a *.conf file, such as httpd.conf or apache.conf), or within a
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
To ensure that your changes are correct, it is strongly reccomended that you use
to check your configuration changes for errors. After this passes, you may need to reload Apache to make sure your changes are applied by running the command
sudo service apache2 reload
apachectl -k graceful
Altering headers requires the use of mod_headers. Mod_headers is enabled by default in Apache, however, you may want to ensure it’s enabled by run
Note: you can also use
add rather than
set, but be aware that
add can add the header multiple times, so it’s likely safer to use set. | <urn:uuid:e3e29ac5-534d-41ac-b53e-ccbe58c4f5ca> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://aleprieto.com.ar/permitir-cors-en-apache-enable-cors-on-apache/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.843553 | 237 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Analytical control of cytotoxic preparations: development of a pedagogical analysis tool
2 Institut Curie, 75006 Paris, France
As part of the development of analytical control for cytotoxic preparations and due to the incompatibility between the QC-PREP+® and CHIMIO® applications, a simple and practical tool for the results’ analysis was developed and it also serves as a educational tool.
Created with Excel®, the tool is based on extraction from the prescription register featured in the CHIMIO® application. Only the concentration and the name of molecule determined by the QC PREP+® application as well as the first name of the manipulator then need to be keyed in. The theoretical concentration, accuracy and discrimination of the molecule are calculated automatically.
Two summary reports are extracted: the overall daily analysis and the monthly analysis by molecule. They also include the percentage of sample oblivion and discrepancies with the prescription register.
The results are presented weekly to manipulators. This helps to point out nonconformities and educate staff. Individual practices are discussed, which contributes to team cohesion and standardization of practices.
A new manipulator could review her methodology, consolidating her results on molecules simple to homogenize (monoclonal antibodies) and improving on more viscous molecules (taxanes) with overall compliance increasing from 50% to almost 100%.
This tool allows the monitoring of each manipulator on each molecule, an evaluation and the improvement of practices. The training of new manipulators is better evaluated.
Discussing practices values manipulators and their knowledge of those practices. | <urn:uuid:42348c2a-fd95-44d9-93f4-35776bf08cd2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.gerpac.eu/analytical-control-of-cytotoxic-preparations-development-of-a-pedagogical-analysis-tool | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.924833 | 339 | 1.617188 | 2 |
The current pandemic has pushed many of us into uncharted territory: working from home for weeks or months. Even if there are upsides to it, like taking a break from the stressful and often long commute or saying goodbye to face-to-face presentations, working from home can become a source of anxiety, too.
If you’ve been working from home for months now, you’re probably well aware of the adverse effects of a home office. Many things can ruin your mood, lower your productivity, or mess with your focus. Now is the perfect time to make self-care a top priority and use the most efficient strategies to distress and unwind during this stressful period. Take a look at our list with the most useful tips!
1. Don’t forget to take a break
Whenever you feel like you’re too stressed or anxious, you must take a break from work. Instead of working your mind in front of a laptop or PC, work your body. A great workout will help you destress and also boost your energy levels for at least a day. A 20-minute high-intensity training, a 20-minute jogging session, or a relaxing yoga all positively affect your body and mind.
2. Know your schedule
One of the hardest things to do when working from home is getting off the chair when the ordinary working day has ended. It is especially tricky when you have a bigger project with a deadline, and you feel like you need to work extra to finish it. If you have a hard time finishing your work at the usual time, let’s say 5 PM, think about the life-work balance that you had before working from home.
Yes, it might feel difficult to recreate that balance if you’ve lost it over these months, but you need to reestablish that order for your mental health. You have to know when your closing time. When the clock hits 5 PM, save all your work, turn off your PC or laptop and do something else that is not work-related.
3. Keep in touch with colleagues
When you’re forced into a home office, socializing with others is completely changed. Working from home comes with a sense of isolation and loneliness, paired with the fact that you don’t meet and talk to your coworkers face to face anymore. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you feel the need to be social, give them a call or facetime them and talk about whatever you want, not focusing on work.
You can create a separate group on Skype or Slack where you only talk about fun stuff. If your colleagues are open to the idea, schedule a call with them once every week. A social setting will cheer you up, make you less stressed, and even help you with your creativity.
4. Improve your home office
A lot of stress can come from a home office that is not organized, badly-equipped, or doesn’t have everything you need. If you feel like your chair is not alright, your desk is too old; you need improvement. If you have the budget, buy the items that you desperately need to feel fully comfortable.
Countless sites offer discounts on home office items, but sometimes they charge a hefty sum for their transportation. If you need fast and cheap delivery, you can always count on a moving company. Nowadays, they are specialized to meet all your needs when it comes to transportation and delivery.
5. Explore the outside world
Every time you have the chance to go outside to take care of some business, take it! Even if you have to go shopping, take your car to a carwash or repair shop, or pay for utilities, the fresh air and seeing faces will help you unwind. Just a short walk will boost your energy levels and reset your creativity.
It’s even better if you can work outside for at least an hour every day. Enjoying the fresh air and sunshine will improve your health, boost your immune system, and make you feel better overall. So, take out your laptop on the patio or balcony and start working. Or, if you have a call or conference on the phone, you can have those meetings outside. | <urn:uuid:444065f0-b144-4214-a34e-ed8f573f0d49> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://thriveglobal.com/stories/4-ways-to-make-working-from-home-less-stressful/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.954771 | 870 | 1.554688 | 2 |
In Lisbon, Porto, Viseu, Évora, Santarém and Couço, on March 10, the Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation organised several street actions, gathering hundreds of people all over the country, under the theme "Stop the war, give Peace a chance". They reaffirmed the pressing need to put an end to the escalation of the conflict, promote dialogue and negotiations, reach agreements that serve the interests of peace and cooperation among peoples!
On March 18, the Spanish Government, through its Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, supported the Kingdom of Morocco's intention to continue the illegal occupation of territories in Western Sahara, through a so-called 'statute of autonomy'.
The change of position by the Spanish Government is contrary to international law and disregards the resolutions adopted within the framework of the United Nations. These resolutions establish the respect and fulfilment of the inalienable right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people.
What we all hoped would not happen has happened The Russian Federation sent troops into Ukraine on February 24 in response to decades of relentless US-led NATO provocation. The present situation puts many serious, fundamental questions before the global peace movement.
In keeping with the tradition maintained over all previous years, the Belgrade Forum for the
World of Equals is marking March 24, remembering this day back in 1999 when the NATO
Alliance’s illegal and criminal aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the FRY)
began, thus paying tribute to the fallen defenders of the motherland and the killed civilians.
This aggression was the first war on European soil waged since the end of World War II. As the
bombs and cruise missiles thrown by the most powerful military machinery in the history of
The conflict in Ukraine has now entered its second week, with no end in sight. Casualties continue to rise and the flow of refugees through Poland, southern Russia and other countries grows daily. Hostilities must be brought to a quick end, and military confrontation replaced by diplomatic negotiations to stop the war before it spins out of control.
Preliminary negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian authorities have begun, but so far only reached agreement to open ‘humanitarian corridors’ for civilians fleeing some of the conflict zones.
The Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation (CPPC) followed with great concern the worsening situation in Eastern Europe, which led to a new escalation in the military confrontation that has been taking place in Ukraine since 2014 and to the military intervention by the
Russian Federation in that country.
The World Peace Council is its deeply troubled with the recent developments in Ukraine with the recent military escalation. We call upon all sides to restore and secure peace and international security through a constructive dialogue through political means. The Russian and Ukrainian people as well as the peoples of the region have nothing to gain from this military conflict which may reach broader dimensions.
The crisis in and around Ukraine has entered a new phase with the military operation initiated by the Russian Federation on the morning of the 24th of February.
The Cyprus Peace Council (CPC) condemns the arrival of British Typhoon fighter jets at Akrotiri. The British military bases in Akrotiri are being prepared to be used once again as a launching pad. The arrival of the British fighter jets is part of the escalation of tension promoted by the USA, Britain and NATO in Eastern Europe centred on the Ukrainian-Russian border. The NATO forces are preparing for war without taking into account the security and future of the peoples.
The evolution of the situation in Europe brings special relevance and urgency to what the
CPPC expressed as pressing, in mid-December: the “urgent adoption of measures
capable of immediately reducing the military escalation and the danger of confrontation
and promote the establishment of measures of mutual trust that, in the long term, will
make possible détente and the safeguarding of peace.”
Since then, the tension has not ceased to escalate. The US and NATO have further | <urn:uuid:a7ae6803-c86e-49f2-9bcd-f69ca967a12d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://wpc-in.org/node?page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.941529 | 818 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Category : Foundation
This term, the students will continue to learn about China in Asian Studies. Today, we made fried rice in our home groups and discussed what the students smelt, saw, tasted and felt. Some of the words that they came up with were: yummy, hot, tasty, rough and colourful (just to name a few). Language experiences such as these provide students with real life experiences and rich vocabulary to use in their writing. | <urn:uuid:bfa76508-8a20-40a5-b588-43c2ac6b752f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://virtual.morelandps.vic.edu.au/index.php/2017/04/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.960025 | 91 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Ultivit™ Kids (60)
Ultivit™ Kids contains natural beta-carotene, natural form of vitamin E, bioavailable forms of minerals, bioactive form of vitamin D, easily absorbed and safe form of iron (carbonyl iron).
Ultivit™ Kids does not contain yeast, wheat, milk, soy, starch, artificial colors, preservatives.
The product has been manufactured using high quality pure raw materials and the technology that ensures all their beneficial properties intact, in strict compliance with GMP and TÜV regulations.
What can be more important than you child’s health?
Does your kid receive adequate amount of vitamins and minerals every day?
Everyone knows that vitamins and minerals are essential for child’s proper growth and development. The researches show that nowadays lack of vitamins in children’s diet is not a seasonal phenomenon; they suffer from vitamin and mineral deficiencies all year round.
One of the reasons – unhealthy changes in our diets. Children also often prefer “tasty” to “good for you”.
Some children are quite fussy to take green leafy vegetables and fruits thus compromising their intake of micronutrients from dietary sources.
The full genetic potential of the child for physical growth and mental development may be compromised due to subclinical deficiencies of micronutrients which are commonly referred to as "hidden hunger".
Micronutrients are required for the integrity and optimal functioning of the immune system. Children with subclinical deficiency of micronutrients are more vulnerable to develop frequent and more severe common day-to-day infections thus triggering a vicious cycle of undernutrition and recurrent infections.
Micronutrients are required for optimal physical growth and neuromotor development.
The first 3 years of life are most crucial, and children are vulnerable to the hazards of undernutrition. All efforts should be made so that preschool children are given a balanced and nutritious home-based diet. However, it has been shown that it is not possible to meet 100% requirements of recommended dietary allowances (RDA’s) of micronutrients from dietary sources alone and most preschool children need administration of nutritional supplements to optimize their genetic potential for physical growth and mental development. (1)
Santegra®’s Ultivit™ Kids guarantees that your child will receive essential vitamins and minerals. The vitamins and minerals in Ultivit™ Kids are perfectly balanced. The chewable tablets taste great and the kids will never forget to take them daily.
Ultivit™ Kids contains:
Beta-carotene that the body converts into vitamin A, a potent antioxidant that defends cells from the damage caused by free radicals, improves vision.
Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant, which is essential for immune system. Helps to increase body’s defense against infections. It is vital to the production of collagen, the "glue" that strengthens skin, bones, teeth, blood vessels, cartilage etc. Vitamin C plays vital role in the support of the cardiovascular system. Enhances iron absorption.
Vitamin D is important in building strong bones and teeth. Vitamin D plays an important role in calcium and phosphorus absorption.
Vitamin E is a potent antioxidant, which protects the body against free radicals.
B group vitamins are necessary for numerous essential functions in the body.
Iron is a key component in hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying pigment in red blood cells, helps the blood supply oxygen to the body. Iron prevents iron deficiency anemia. It’s essential for the immune system and for promoting overall health. Lack of iron not only causes fatigue but can affect the learning ability.
Iodine is the thyroid gland component and the adequate iodine helps the body to get energy, fight excess weight; promotes alertness. Iodine is essential for healthy skin, nails and hair.
Manganese is an essential trace mineral needed for growing processes, healthy skin, bone and cartilage formation, blood formation, immune system.
Zinc stimulates the activity of about 200 enzymes. Among its many functions, zinc helps to maintain a healthy immune system, supports normal growth and development during childhood and adolescence.
Ultivit™ Kids does not contain yeast, wheat, milk, soy, starch, artificial colors, preservatives.
Per 1 tablet:
Vitamin A (as beta-carotene) - 2400 IU,
Vitamin B1 (as thiamin HCL) – 1.4 mg,
Vitamin B2 (as riboflavin) – 1.6 mg,
Niacin (as niacinamide) - 10 mg,
Pantothenic Acid (as D-calcium pantothenate) – 3.3 mg,
Vitamin B6 (as pyridoxine HCL) - 2.0 mg,
Folic Acid - 200 mcg,
Vitamin B12 (as cyanocobalamin) – 3.0 mcg,
Vitamin C (as ascorbic acid and sodium ascorbate) - 50 mg,
Vitamin D (as cholecalciferol) - 100 IU,
Vitamin E (as d-alpha-tocopheryl succinate) - 10 IU,
Iron (as carbonyl iron) - 9 mg,
Magnesium (as magnesium citrate) - 5 mg,
Manganese (as manganese gluconate) - 1 mg,
Zinc (as zinc citrate) - 1 mg, Iodine (as potassium iodide) - 50 mcg,
Potassium (as potassium citrate) - 1.5 mg
Packaging size: 60 chewable tablets.
4-7 years old children take ½ tablet daily at mealtime, 7-12 years old children take 1 tablet daily at mealtime, children over 12 years take 2 tablets daily at mealtime.
Keep out of the reach of children. In case of overdose seek immediate medical attention.
Vitamin and mineral deficiencies afflicts over two billion people worldwide. The highest prevalence is in regions where diets are poor and chronic hunger is widespread. Vitamin and mineral deficiency often has no visible warning signs. The effects, however, are devastating – resulting in decreased immune system functioning, impaired brain and physical development, preventable blindness, and severe birth defects.
The best way for the children to get essential vitamins and minerals is eating a variety of healthy foods. That means eating plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, lean meat, whole grains, nuts, legumes, and milk.
The problem is that children don't always eat the way we would like them to eat! Picky eaters might not get all the vitamins, minerals and other important nutrients they need.
Kids often prefer sweets, processed and junk food that do not contain much nutritional value, just unhealthy fats, sugar and calories.
Some experts believe that minerals are depleted in our soil, and therefore much of our produce may be deficient of minerals.
The report of the World Health Organization summarizes results from nutritional status studies undertaken in 80 countries and identifies four target nutrients crucial to health and development both in utero and in childhood: iron, vitamin A, iodine and folate.
Lack of vitamin A has left up to 40% of children less than 5 years old in the developing world with compromised immune systems, leading to the early deaths of one million young children every year.
Vitamin A deficiency affects 140 million preschool children. It weakens the immune system and increases vulnerability to different diseases. Vitamin A deficiency is the leading cause of child blindness in developing countries.
Folate deficiency results in about 200 000 severe birth defects annually. (2)
Iron deficiency causes iron deficiency anemia, impairs mental development in young children and results in a lowering of national intelligence quotients.
Iron deficiency affects two billion people worldwide — more than 60% are children ages 6-24 months – impeding cognitive development, causing poor learning and school performance.
Iodine deficiencies cause up to 20 million babies to be born with mental defects every year.
Iodine deficiency affects 780 million people worldwide. Every year, 20 million children are born mentally impaired because their mothers did not consume enough iodine while pregnant. It is the leading cause of preventable mental retardation.
Pediatricians have begun to look harder at Vitamin D levels in children because this vitamin, once thought to be primarily involved in calcium absorption, is now being shown to have significant implications for a variety of health conditions which manifest in later life. (3)
And while parents and doctors have assumed that children took in enough Vitamin D from sunshine exposure, supplemented foods, or vitamin supplements, a recent study has found that 12% of American infants and toddlers are deficient in vitamin D, and another 28% are at risk for it. (4)
Recent research has been showing Vitamin D has a potential impact on the development of some chronic diseases including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases and cancer. (5)
Kids who do not eat enough fruits and vegetables are at risk of vitamin C deficiency. Vitamin C is important for the immune system, for the connective tissues, and protects from damaging free radicals.
The B complex vitamins work together synergistically to provide a number of benefits. B vitamins are involved with carbohydrate metabolism, serve to produce energy, help maintain the nervous system, are necessary for proper brain functioning.
Zinc deficiency is linked to nearly one million child deaths a year from diarrhea and pneumonia.
Vitamins and minerals are important elements of the total nutritional requirements of your child. Because the human body itself is unable to produce adequate amounts of many vitamins, they must be obtained from the diet.
Kids who don't get all the nutrition they need from their diets should take children's vitamins as a good way to ensure that they get enough vitamins and minerals.
OBJECTIVE: To compare the food consumption and nutrient intakes of German children and adolescents in the 1980s with present dietary habits.
DESIGN: Two cross-sectional representative surveys, the German National Food Consumption Study (Nationale Verzehrsstudie, NVS) from 1985-8 and the nutrition module 'EsKiMo' of the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (KiGGS) from 2006, were analyzed for differences in food and nutrient intakes stratified by age and sex groups.
SETTING: Secondary analyses of data from representative observational studies.
SUBJECTS: Children and adolescents aged 6-17 years living in Germany in the 1980s (n 2265) and in 2006 (n 2506).
RESULTS: Food consumption was characterized by higher amounts of vegetables/pulses, fruits/nuts and beverages and less meat products/sausages, butter, fats/oils, potatoes/potato products and bread/pastries in 2006 than in 1985-8. The overall changes in food intake were reflected in improvements of macronutrient composition, increased water intake and lower energy density of the diet.
Intake of most vitamins and minerals increased in relation to energy intake, but the nutrient density of the diet for vitamins B12 and D decreased.
The most critical nutrients observed in NVS and EsKiMo were folate, vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin E, Ca and Fe. In addition, dietary fiber intake was relatively low and fatty acid and carbohydrate compositions were not favorable.
CONCLUSIONS: Further efforts will be necessary to improve dietary habits among children and adolescents. (6)
A recent UK-based study investigated whether daily supplementation with vitamins/minerals could modulate cognitive performance and mood in healthy children. In this investigation, eighty-one healthy children aged from 8 to 14 years underwent laboratory assessments of their cognitive performance and mood on the first and last days of 12 weeks' supplementation with a commercially available vitamins/mineral product.
The assessment was done at pre-dose, 1h and 3h post-dose. Interim assessments were also completed at home after 4 and 8 weeks at 3 h post-dose. Each assessment comprised completion of a cognitive battery, which included tasks assessing mood and the speed and accuracy of attention and aspects of memory (secondary, semantic and spatial working memory).
The vitamin/mineral group performed more accurately on two attention tasks: 'Arrows' choice reaction time task at 4 and 8 weeks; and 'Arrow Flankers' choice reaction time task at 4, 8 and 12 weeks. Picture Recognition errors showed significant decrement at 12 weeks.
While mood was not modulated in any interpretable manner, the author believes that these results suggest that vitamin/mineral supplementation has the potential to improve brain function in healthy children, and warrant further investigation. (7)
716 girls who enrolled at four Baltimore high schools were screened for non-anaemic iron deficiency (serum ferritin < or = 12 micrograms/L with normal haemoglobin). 98 (13.7%) girls had non-anaemic iron deficiency of whom 81 were enrolled in the trial.
Participants were randomly assigned oral ferrous sulphate (650 mg twice daily) or placebo for 8 weeks. The effect of iron treatment was assessed by questionnaires and haematological and cognitive tests, which were done before treatment started and repeated after the intervention. We used four tests of attention and memory to measure cognitive functioning. Intention-to-treat and per-protocol analyses were done.
Of the 81 enrolled girls with non-anaemic iron deficiency, 78 (96%) completed the study (39 in each group). Five girls (three control, two treatment) developed anaemia during the intervention and were excluded from the analyses. Thus, 73 girls were included in the per-protocol analysis. Ethnic distribution, mean age, serum ferritin concentrations, haemoglobin concentrations, and cognitive test scores of the groups did not differ significantly at baseline. Postintervention haematological measures of iron status were significantly improved in the treatment group (serum ferritin 27.3 vs 12.1 micrograms/L, p < 0.001).
Regression analysis showed that girls who received iron performed better on a test of verbal learning and memory than girls in the control group (p < 0.02). (8)
Low levels of vitamin D were associated with an increased risk of high blood pressure, high blood sugar and metabolic syndrome in teenagers, researchers reported at the American Heart Association’s 49th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention.
In the study, researchers analyzed 3,577 adolescents, 12 to 19 years old (51 percent boys), who participated in the nationally representative National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) conducted in 2001–2004.
After adjusting for age, sex, race/ethnicity, body mass index, socioeconomic status and physical activity, researchers found the adolescents with the lowest levels of vitamin D were:
• 2.36 times more likely to have high blood pressure;
• 2.54 times more likely to have high blood sugar; and
• 3.99 times more likely to have metabolic syndrome.
Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk factors including elevated waist circumference, high blood pressure, elevated triglycerides, low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL or “good”) cholesterol and high fasting glucose levels. The presence of three or more of the factors increases a person’s risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Low levels of vitamin D are strongly associated with overweight and abdominal obesity. (9)
Catherine M. Gordon, M.D., M.Sc., and colleagues at Children's Hospital Boston, studied 380 healthy children ages 8 months to 24 months who visited a primary care center for a physical examination between 2005 and 2007. Parents filled out a questionnaire regarding their nutritional intake and that of their children, and also reported on the use of vitamin D and other supplements, time spent outdoors, socioeconomic status and education level.
Among the 365 children for whom blood samples were available, 12.1 percent (44) had vitamin D deficiency, defined as 20 nanograms per milliliter of blood or less, and 40 percent (146) had levels below the accepted optimal level of 30 nanograms per milliliter. Breastfed infants who did not receive vitamin D and toddlers who drank less milk were at higher risk of deficiency (for each cup of milk toddlers drank per day, blood vitamin D level increased by 2.9 nanograms per milliliter).
Forty children of the 44 with vitamin D deficiency underwent X-rays of the wrist and knee. Thirteen (32.5 percent) had evidence of bone mineral loss, and three (7.5 percent) exhibited changes to their bones suggestive of rickets.
The data suggest that infants should receive vitamin D supplements while breastfeeding and raise the question of whether some children, including those with established risk factors for vitamin D deficiency, should receive regular measurements of blood vitamin D levels. (10)
Pneumonia is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in young children.
In a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial in Matlab Hospital, Bangladesh, 270 children aged 2-23 months were randomized to receive elemental zinc (20 mg per day) or placebo, plus the hospital's standard antimicrobial management, until discharge.
The outcomes were time to cessation of severe pneumonia (no chest indrawing, respiratory rate 50 per min or less, oxygen saturation at least 95% on room air) and discharge from hospital. Discharge was allowed when respiratory rate was 40 per minute or less for 24 consecutive hours while patients were maintained only on oral antibiotics.
The group receiving zinc had reduced duration of severe pneumonia (relative hazard [RH]=0.70, 95% CI 0.51-0.98), including duration of chest indrawing (0.80, 0.61-1.05), respiratory rate more than 50 per min (0.74, 0.57-0.98), and hypoxia (0.79, 0.61-1.04), and overall hospital duration (0.75, 0.57-0.99). The mean reduction is equivalent to 1 hospital day for both severe pneumonia and time in hospital. All effects were greater when children with wheezing were omitted from the analysis.
Adjuvant treatment with 20 mg zinc per day accelerates recovery from severe pneumonia in children. (11)
OBJECTIVES: Folate and the metabolically related B vitamins are an important priority throughout life, but few studies have examined their status through childhood and adolescence.
The aims of the current study were to investigate age, gender, and lifestyle factors as determinants of folate, related B-vitamin status, and homocysteine concentrations among British children and adolescents and to propose age-specific reference ranges for these biomarkers, which, at present, are unavailable.
PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: Data from the National Dietary and Nutritional Survey of 2127 young people aged 4 to 18 years were accessed to provide a representative sample of British children.
All of the subjects who provided a blood sample for homocysteine concentrations were included in the current study (n = 840). Of these, laboratory biomarkers of folate (serum and red cell folate: n = 832 and 774, respectively), vitamin B(12) (n = 828), vitamin B(6) (n = 770), and riboflavin (n = 839) were also examined.
RESULTS: The biomarker status of all 4 of the relevant B vitamins decreased significantly with age. Correspondingly, homocysteine concentrations progressively increased, with median values of 5.6, 6.3, and 7.9 mumol/L for children aged 4 to 10 years, 11 to 14 years, and 15 to 18 years, respectively, and were higher in boys compared with girls (15-18 years only). Independent of age and gender, fortified breakfast cereal intake (consumed by 89% of the sample) was associated with significantly higher B-vitamin status and lower homocysteine concentrations. (12)
1. Singh M. Role of micronutrients for physical growth and mental development. Indian J Pediatr. 2004 Jan;71(1):59-62.
2. Bull World Health Organ vol.82 no.3 Genebra Mar. 2004.
3. Huh S, Gordon C. Vitamin D Deficiency in children and Adolescents: Epidemiology, impact and treatment. Rev Endocr Metab Disord (2008) :(161-170).
4. Gordon C, Feldman H, Sinclair L et al. Prevalence of Vitamin D deficiency among healthy infants and toddlers: Archives Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 2008:162(6):505-512.
5. Garland C, Garland F, Gorham E, Lipkin M et al. The Role of Vitamin D in Cancer Prevention. American Journal of Public Health 2006 February: Vol 96(2) 252-261.
6. Stahl A, Vohmann C, Richter A, Heseker H, Mensink GB. Changes in food and nutrient intake of 6- to 17-year-old Germans between the 1980s and 2006. Public Health Nutr. 2009 Feb 23:1-12. [Epub ahead of print]
7. Haskell Crystal F; Scholey Andrew B; Jackson Philippa A; Elliott Jade M; Defeyter Margaret A; Greer Joanna; Robertson Bernadette C; Buchanan Tom; Tiplady Brian; Kennedy David OCognitive and mood effects in healthy children during 12 weeks' supplementation with multi-vitamin/minerals. British Journal of Nutrition. 100(5):1086-96, 2008 Nov
8. Bruner AB, Joffe A, Duggan AK, Casella JF, Brandt J. Randomised study of cognitive effects of iron supplementation in non-anaemic iron-deficient adolescent girls. Lancet. 1996 Oct 12;348(9033):973.
9. Reis JP, von Muhlen D, Miller III ER, et al. Vitamin D status and cardiovascular disease risk factors in the us adolescent population. AHA 49th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention; March 11, 2009; Palm Harbor, FL. Poster P54.
10. Catherine M. Gordon; Henry A. Feldman; Linda Sinclair; Avery LeBoff Williams; Paul K. Kleinman; Jeannette Perez-Rossello; Joanne E. Cox. Prevalence of Vitamin D Deficiency Among Healthy Infants and Toddlers. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med., 2008;162(6):505-512
11. Brooks WA, Yunus M, Santosham M, Wahed MA, Nahar K, Yeasmin S, Black RE. Zinc for severe pneumonia in very young children: double-blind placebo-controlled trial. Lancet. 2004 May 22;363(9422):1683-8
12. Kerr MA, Livingstone B, Bates CJ, Bradbury I, Scott JM, Ward M, Pentieva K, Mansoor MA, McNulty H. Folate, related B vitamins, and homocysteine in childhood and adolescence: potential implications for disease risk in later life. Pediatrics. 2009 Feb;123(2):627-35. | <urn:uuid:3752bb91-74a9-4964-b93f-08da9b33cb38> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://santegra.com/catalog/product/view/id/41/s/662a/category/2/?___store=us_en&___from_store=euw_en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.920872 | 4,858 | 1.929688 | 2 |
NORMAN, OKLA. – Justin Metcalf, assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Gallogly College of Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, has received a Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
In recent years, commercial and military demand for using the electromagnetic spectrum has exploded. Mobile devices, digital audio and streaming platforms compete with military needs for communications and intelligence. Metcalf’s research project explores how the electromagnetic spectrum has become critically congested.
“This is a spectacular honor and a very competitive award from the Department of Defense,” said Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, OU vice president for research and partnerships. “To have the University of Oklahoma represented in this program is a boon for the university and the state for advancing defense and national security research.”
“Just like your favorite radio or TV station, users of the electromagnetic spectrum traditionally operate in rigidly allocated frequency bands," Metcalf said. “To deal with the exploding demand for spectrum, government and telecommunications industries have been trying to develop technologies to share frequency bands. Unfortunately, sharing spectrum between 5G networks and defense systems is particularly challenging, especially with respect to sharing between 5G networks and radar systems."
“One solution being investigated to counter this problem is to develop techniques for radar and communications systems to automatically ‘get along’ while simultaneously maximizing their information throughput,” he said. “This technology would enable defense and commercial users of the spectrum to dynamically share unlicensed bands, allowing the DoD to maintain radar capability in bands that may be sold to 5G providers without requiring the costly infrastructure needed to enforce cooperative spectrum sharing technologies.”
The Young Faculty Award program offered by DARPA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, provides funding, mentoring, and industry and Department of Defense contacts to awardees early in their careers so they may develop their research ideas in the context of national security needs. The long-term goal of the program is to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers and mathematicians who will focus a significant portion of their career on national security issues. | <urn:uuid:195ce0f9-d436-4214-aa12-a0553f0d1c77> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.ou.edu/research-norman/news-events/2020/ou-researcher-receives-department-of-defense-young-faculty-award | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.945035 | 445 | 2.375 | 2 |
What is already known:
What this study adds:
The effect of snow on roads constitutes a major threat to human health and safety, causing more fatalities in the US than all other types of high-impact weather (e.g. tornadoes, floods, lightning). The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration keeps a record of all automobile accidents resulting in fatalities. Included in this archive are a number of useful metadata parameters, such as the time of day, number of vehicles, the present weather observed by the reporting officer, etc. Herein, this metadata are examined as well as the prevailing synoptic forcing to better understand the factors leading to winter-storm-related road fatalities. A number of counterintuitive results were discovered. For example, fatalities do not occur more often in areas with infrequent snowfall or early in the season (i.e. in places and at times when drivers are less acclimated to snow). Rather, they have a democratic temporal and spatial distribution. While media attention is often focused on major pile-ups involving a large number of vehicles, the vast majority of fatalities involve just one or two vehicles. Despite the fact that primary and secondary roads are more likely to receive treatment and regular plowing, most fatalities (about 75%) occur on these types of roads. The meteorological conditions during crashes that occurred over two winter seasons are investigated. A large majority (about 77%) of the events happen within midlatitude cyclones or lake-effect snowbands. These are fairly predictable forms of weather, begging the question of what type of messaging was produced by the National Weather Service at the time of the accident. Only 45% of all accidents occur within a watch or advisory polygon, suggesting a more graduated approach for the warning/advisory system in winter storms, as opposed to binary polygons, has potential life-saving benefits. | <urn:uuid:bcd55dfe-78fe-490b-b78c-0ed1f73c2e04> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://caps.ou.edu/reu/reu19/finalpapers/Burzdak-finalpaper.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.961519 | 377 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Considering a career in psychology? Chances are that you will need at least some graduate training. But academia is a weird place, full of unspoken rules and expectations. If choosing, applying, and interviewing for a graduate program seems like a total mystery – this is for you.
Over three sessions, Dr. Meredith Martin, from the Department of Psychology, will pull back the curtain on the grad school admissions process. You will learn the “rules” for successfully applying – and getting in – to graduate programs in psychology and psychology-related fields. Discover where to find and how to choose a program, what to wear to interviews, how to communicate effectively with potential advisers, the hidden costs of applying, and major faux pas to avoid. Don’t wait until your Junior or Senior year! There are things you can do RIGHT NOW to better prepare yourself for success.
Session 1: Where do I start?
The first session is applicable to any student (even freshmen!) who is thinking about applying to graduate school in psychology or a related field.
- Topics Covered During Session #1:
I like psychology, but I don’t know what I want to do!
Is graduate school right for me?
What you need to do before you apply
I hate research!
I’m considering a gap year…
Find the right graduate program for you
Do I have to take the Psych GRE?
Mastering the personal statement
How to get stellar letters of recommendation
What are faculty thinking when they read my application?
How to stand out…in the good way
Top five things to do if you want them to throw out your application
I didn’t get an interview…now what?
This event was published on March 2, 2020. | <urn:uuid:6ddd18da-086e-4921-be42-3c0a62afc61a> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://calendar.syracuse.edu/events/2020-mar-05/everything-you-should-know-about-getting-into-a-psychology-graduate-program-but-dont-part-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.937954 | 366 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Deciding on which breast implant you want for your breast augmentation is an exciting and important decision. It’s important to know the facts – the good and the bad – about each implant type so you can make the right decision for you.
Today’s breast implants come in 2 main types: silicone and saline. While silicone implants are still the most common ones patients choose, it is crucial to know each implant’s advantages and disadvantages to make the right decision for you.
Silicone and saline implants have a shell made of silicone rubber (yes, even saline implant shells are made of silicone rubber). Think of it as the container or bag. What makes them different is the implant ‘filling’. Silicone implants get filled at the factory with cohesive gel silicone. Saline implants come empty from the manufacturer and are filled by the surgeon with saline during the operation.
Silicone implants have two main advantages over saline. First, silicone implants feel softer than saline implants. Second, silicone implants tend to have less ‘rippling’ than saline implants. Rippling is essentially wrinkling of the surface of the implant because the implant is soft. Silicone implants tend to have less rippling because they are filled with a semi-solid rather than a liquid. Think of it like jello. It feels soft but can still hold a shape. Since saline implants are filled with saltwater (and not a semi-solid like the silicone), you can get more rippling with saline implants. But whether the rippling is visible from the outside depends on other things, too, including how much of your own breast tissue you have to hide the implant, the size of the implant you chose, and whether the implant is above or under the muscle.
Most women end up choosing silicone implants because of the softness and lower amount of rippling. But silicone implants have disadvantages too. Since silicone implants come already filled from the factory, the surgical incision’s size sometimes needs to be longer compared to saline. Silicone implants have a slightly higher rate of capsular contracture (hard scar tissue around the implant) compared to saline. Although the implant rupture rate (breaking) is only 1% per year, it can happen, and the surgery to replace a ruptured silicone implant is generally more involved compared to replacing a deflated saline implant.
Even though saline implants tend not to be as soft as silicone implants and can be prone to more rippling, saline implants have some significant advantages. Since they come empty from the factory and are filled during surgery, you can often use a smaller incision to them in. You can also fill each breast implant slightly differently during surgery if someone has mild differences in breast size beforehand. Saline implants are also easier to monitor. If the saline implant deflates (which occurs only 1% per year), you can usually tell right away, and there is rarely a need for any imaging. The surgery to replace a deflated saline implant is also more comfortable than surgery to replace a silicone implant. Finally, studies have shown that saline implants have a lower capsular contracture rate (hardening of scar tissue around the implant) compared to silicone. | <urn:uuid:f5d17c91-4b80-40ee-9c72-2127f5376603> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://drbrettbeber.com/silicone-vs-saline-breast-implants | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.929416 | 655 | 1.617188 | 2 |
It has been discovered that with a dull urban population, all formed under a mechanical system of State education, a suggestion or command, however senseless and unreasoned, will be obeyed if it be sufficiently repeated.
It don’t take much schooling (bad grammar intended) to know that turning a life-long criminal and putting up statues in his honor is indicative of something being serious wrong with the hearts and minds of the folks who do so and the people who allow them to do it.
Official court documents show that George Floyd, before finally dying in police custody, had been arrested nine times for charges including: four charges of drug possession and distribution, two theft charges, one illegal trespass, one charge of failure to identify to a police officer and one aggravated robbery. And this is what the Blacks and their enablers consider a hero.
As I wrote above, It don’t take much schooling to know this is wrong. More importantly it seems and far more dangerously for our nation’s future, it also probably requires not much of passes for schooling these days.
You can’t easily go online without reading or hearing America’s racism and how America and, hence, Americans are racist, racist,Racist, RACIST. Hellfire! we’ve Rep. “Mad” Maxine Waters hooting, hollering, and jabbering away that. “Every day, we have seen this nation get more racist than anybody thought perhaps [it] would be at this point in time,” in response to Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-SC) unequivocal statement that America was not a racist country.
But, is this even remotely true? The answer is a bit complex and convoluted in detail. Or, so it seems to me.
Why Racism Exists Today
Prima facie, the 5-panel cartoon above seems to state the reason why racism is considered to be rampant in America by so many. The Lamestream Media’s repeated failure to provide any data in “racial incidents” beyond an American did something to a Black is the proximate cause for many people buying into the idea that Americans are racist. However, that’s just the tip of a very large and very disgusting iceberg.
Yes, the media normally refuses to provide a context in White v. Black interactions in order to fuel racial anger and bring about more and – they hope – greater conflicts. That’s been part and parcel of their job since the mid-to-late 1960s when they started having to actually “earn their keep.” That, however, is only part – and probably a small part – of why they don’t explain the situation. Providing such context would anger what readers/viewers they have and bring, bring out the ravening #CancelCulture trolls, and spark a civil war within their own companies.
But, the horrific thing is that any context or explanation for any action taken by an American against a Black isn’t newsworthy and cannot be so in the minds of the sorts still devoted to the Lamestream Media. To the Blacks and their “White” enablers, the is never a valid reason for an American to take any action against a Black ever.
And that is a large part of why racism exists today. It’s a revealed truth and article of faith among Americans’ domestic enemies. As such, it will always be found by them and any argument otherwise will be considered by their sort as the worst sort of heresy.
ROFLMAO! Yeah, that’s about the size of it. In the spring a young ghetto thug’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of rioting, arson, looting, raping, murder, rebellion, and race war.
Well, actually it’s not. The Blacks have been rioting essentially non-stop for over a year. The Dems’ media just has largely stopped covering it, either out of national boredom with this “new normal” or as an effort to protect the Biden-Harris regime from political fallout.
So, recently two separate and far-distanced Blacks were put down by two equally separate and far-distanced in two utterly unrelated instances that had nothing in common with each other. And, of course, the Blacks have taken to the streets to “protest” – with, of course, all that normally goes along with their sort’s version of “peaceful assembly.” And, just to make matters triter and more over-played, the usual non-White, Democrat politicians have chosen to once again fan the flame of Black Violence and Rebellion and attack the very idea of law enforcement within America’s borders.
Honestly, “Same ol’ same ol’.” Some number of Black criminals were killed by police and the Blacks riot while their politicians decry America’s “racism” and call for the abolition of law enforcement in America. Frankly, Black rioting, looting, burning, raping, and murdering is essentially just “dog bites man;” it’s not news, not anymore; not after all this time with constantly doing it.
No, this is boring. This is the New Normal, the status quo, the purposeless unrest of our times. And, it will stay that way until We, the People decide to put an end to it once and for all.
While set up in classic, independent cells, #BlackLivesMatter does have a unified playbook that they operate from. It’s the same one – though the “Oppressors” and “Victims” have been altered greatly to fit their narrative, as have the specific “crimes” that are claimed to be committed.
It’s sort of funny though, how stupid and feral the #BlackLivesMatter sorts are. Almost exactly like the Nazis’ Sturmabteilung (SA), it’s only going to take one Putsch too many, too far, or in the wrong place for the Democrats to enact their own version of the Night of the Long Knives upon these Braunhaute. | <urn:uuid:2a23bb09-25c8-44d9-b5c1-0305be498ef8> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://blog.jonolan.net/tag/blackliesmatter/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.962013 | 1,306 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Uncovering the truth about shin splints
What is Shin Splints?
More accurately termed ‘medial tibial stress syndrome’ shin splints is repetitive trauma cause by either:
- Muscles pulling on the shin bone: Because the deep muscles of the calf (the soleus) attach onto the shin and produce a powerful force when running. Then this calf muscle could be capable of generating enough force to produce bone irritation if the load exceeds the body’s capabilities.
- Shin bone overload: This could be repeated shin ‘bending’ or ‘bowing’ when impacting the ground. Particularly on a hard surface! Causing repetitive micro-damage which eventually leads to injury. This particular theory follows a bone stress pathology and if ignored, can develop into a stress fracture.
Sign & Symptoms of Shin splints:
Pain is located along the postero-medial (inner) border of the tibia (shin), and most commonly in the lower aspect of the shin. A detailed history will often identify rapid change in training intensity prior to symptoms occurring. Initially symptoms are present when starting activity but subside once warmed up. If severe, pain can continue into running and into daily activities. Occasionally, there is pain with resistance testing and mild swelling.
Treatment & Prevention:
Running with a weak or fatigued soleus muscle means it cannot absorb shock and dissipate ground reaction forces when running. Therefore, if there is inadequate dissipation, then these forces are transmitted to the bone, increasing the risk of injury. With that said, here are four proactive steps to treat and prevent shin splints:
- Increase the strength of the soleus muscle: Add in heavy seated calf raises into your gym routine.
- There may be some benefit to short term pronation-controlled insoles (under the right guidance).
- Promote adequate shock absorption: If your cadence is below 160 I would recommend increasing this by 5-10%. ‘Running softer’ is a great cue for those runners who hit the pavement hard.
- If irritable with running, allow 1-2 days a week of cross training to rest the bone reaction (eg. Swimming).
- The dangers of self-diagnosing shin pain
- Find out what is the best running surface
- The running technique hack: Step width
- How to strengthen your calves for running?
Relevant podcast episodes:
- Moen et al. Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome A Critical Review (2009)
- Moen. Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome: Shin splints aetiology, treatment & prevention | <urn:uuid:49d0b339-33c8-4c9b-87e5-edb57cce3411> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://app.runsmarter.online/article/22781 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.902026 | 548 | 2.96875 | 3 |
After over two weeks of conferencing, the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (COP26) concluded with the finalization of the Glasgow Climate Pact (the “Glasgow Pact”) listing the accomplishments of the summit. The Glasgow Pact reaffirms the long-term global goals (including those in the Paris Agreement) to hold the increase in the global average temperature to “well below 2°C” above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. It also states that limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires “rapid, deep, and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 relative to the 2010 level and to net zero around mid-century, as well as deep reductions in other greenhouse gases.”
Despite agreement on overarching goals, country-specific commitments and actions will be key to achieving the stated objectives of the Glasgow Pact. A February 2021 United Nations Synthesis Report on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) concluded that the Party commitments to the Paris Agreement are not on track to meet the Paris Agreement goals. Although the Glasgow Pact and the Paris Agreement are not enforceable, they are meaningful in that they guide domestic actions when the country representatives return home.
The release of the Glasgow Pact comes at a time of rapidly increasing energy prices throughout Europe and the US, threatening the speed of economic recovery in many countries. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) now estimates that domestic coal use in electricity generation will rise for the first time since 2014 by 18 percent and that U.S. coal exports will also increase by 29 percent in 2021 to meet a rising global demand. China is also leaning more heavily on coal, reportedly expanding mines to produce 220 million metric tons more of coal per year, a 6-percent increase from last year. Questions over the transitory nature of these energy market fluctuations could significantly affect the ability of countries to meet their emissions reduction commitments that rely upon phasing down the use of coal.
In the Glasgow Pact, signatories commit to accelerating and scaling up the transition to clean energy and adverting the impacts of climate change through adaptation and the financing thereof. Its terms encourage submission of enhanced national adaptation plans and invite the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the next annual COP27 in November 2022. One of the final provisions agreed upon commits to “accelerating efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.”
National Determined Contributions. With the 2021 COP26 marking the five-year anniversary of that 2016 Paris Agreement, updated NDCs were largely anticipated. NDCs are the foundation of the Paris Agreement and reflect efforts by each country to reduce national GHG emissions to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. NDCs are supposed to be submitted every five years and, over time, successive NDCs are expected to increase the goals for GHG emission reductions. Countries can submit NDCs at any time. Since 2016, 194 counties have submitted NDCs overall, and 13 of those countries have submitted second NDCs. Months before COP26, in April 2021, President Biden announced the U.S.’s updated NDC, which puts the country on a more urgent schedule to cut GHG emissions from 2005 levels by 50 percent by 2030—almost double the U.S.’s prior commitment, prompting curiosity as to whether other nations would follow suit.
The U.S. is one of the top five emitters of CO2 globally, along with the EU, China, India, and Russia, and the UK, according to a 2021 report. The EU, the U.S., and the UK all share the goal to be net zero by 2050, and the UK and the EU had already updated their NDCs in 2020 before the U.S.’s 2021 pronouncement. Coming out of COP26, the UK has maintained its 2020 NDC pledge of reducing its emissions by at least 68 percent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. The EU has also stood by its 2020 commitment to at least a 55-percent reduction in GHG emissions by 2030 compared to 1990. For net zero goals, China’s NDC commits to carbon neutrality by 2060, whereas India and Russia have reportedly announced goals for carbon neutrality in 2060 and 2070, respectively. India also set a goal of 50 percent renewable energy by 2030.
Other aspects of COP26 are aimed at practical implementation measures to ensure that pronounced NDCs become reality.
Carbon Markets. Progress has been made on setting standards, incentives, and rules for carbon markets. Carbon markets are tools – regulatory and voluntary – that aim to cost-effectively reduce the emission of CO2 and other GHGs. Rules for such markets are intended to give confidence and otherwise help guide investments in new technologies. As we previously wrote, COP26 would focus on a framework or “Paris Rulebook” pursuant to Article 6 of the Paris Agreement in order to answer some key questions associated with carbon market operations, such as whether Kyoto-based credits could be relied on to meet Paris-based NDCs (i.e., double counting rules). The Article 6 deal struck at COP26 is said to help avoid double counting of emissions reductions. Specifically, the deal allows for the use of clean development mechanisms (or CDMs) from the Kyoto Protocol that were registered on or after January 1, 2013, yet it limits both (1) the amount of such credits that can be carried over into the Paris credit system and (2) the use of such credits to the first (or first updated) cycle of NDCs, to avoid an overwhelming market supply. The deal also restricts claims of emissions reductions to those backed by “corresponding adjustments” made at the point of authorization of an offset. Corresponding adjustments are adjustments made by the host country to its own inventory to account for the credit transfers.
Adaptation. The Paris Agreement included a goal to increase adaptation efforts (e.g., global resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate-related impacts). At COP26, over 100 organizations joined together to launch the Adaptation Research Alliance aimed at effective adaption to reduce the risks posed by climate change, particularly for those most vulnerable. The conversation on adaptation often focuses on what developed countries should be doing to assist with adaptation efforts in developing countries. As a first step, the Alliance set out guidelines to help “stimulate systemic change.” The impact principles underscore need-based research, concepts such as “learning-while-doing” to enable adaptation action to be evidence-based and increasingly effective.
Finance. Related to mitigation and adaptation is financing, namely who is going to pay for the efforts necessary to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement commits developed countries to contributing $100 billion per year from 2020 to 2025 – from public and private sources – to assist developing countries with mitigation and adaptation. Developed countries have thus far failed to meet this goal. At COP26, developed countries nonetheless remained committed to the $100 billion goal. Thus, the Glasgow Pact references Canada- and Germany-led efforts on the development of a Climate Finance Delivery Plan that seek to provide clarity on when and how developed countries will meet the goal.
Relatedly, COP26 leaders pledged to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. According to the UK, the pledge includes almost $19.2 billion of public and private funds. The 141 signatory countries cover approximately 91 percent of the world’s forests, close to 14.25M square miles.
Methane. Beyond CO2, methane, which is said to be much more potent from a global warming potential perspective, was a focus in the run-up to COP26. Ahead of COP26, the U.S. launched the global methane pledge that seeks to reduce methane emissions, by at least 30 percent by 2030. The U.S. used the COP26 stage to issue its domestic policy and action proposal that would lead to achieving this goal. While many other countries supported the pledge, China, India, and Russia have yet to sign on.
Coal. The UK, the host of COP26, sought commitments from developed countries to cease using coal as an energy source by 2030 and for all nations to phase it out by 2040. As a result of COP26, 46 countries signed onto a Global Coal to Clean Energy Transition Statement, committing to transition away from unabated coal power generation by about 2030 for “major economies” and a global transition by roughly 2040. Additional entities, such as states, energy companies, and other organizations also signed the agreement. “Unabated coal power generation” refers to the use of coal power that is not mitigated with technologies to reduce CO2 emissions, such as Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (or CCUS). The transition statement focuses on scaling up technologies, policies, and deployment of cleaner power generation and concomitantly ceasing new permitting and construction of new unabated coal-fired power generation projects. In their statement, the signatories recognized the economic concerns associated with decarbonization through a more rapid phase-out of coal—a principal concern of union officials, workers, communities, and governments in coal-dependent countries, such as South Africa.
Viewed as a potential model for phase-outs, under the South Africa Coal Deal struck at COP26 with wealthier nations, South Africa—said to be the 12th largest global CO2 emitter—will receive $8.5 billion in aid from France, Germany, the EU, the U.S., and the UK. The deal to phase out coal prompted immediate concerns over the fate of the country’s economy, workforce, and communities sustained by its mining and power industries, which provide 80 percent of power to the country.
Since returning from COP26, governments around the world face the task of planning a sure path to achieving their commitments. Questions surround how domestic and international policies and rules will evolve to implement COP26 agreements, including verification methods and metrics for involved public and private institutions. | <urn:uuid:ce093f7c-1127-48a6-bd7f-fe976f83d83e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.lexblog.com/2021/11/29/the-results-of-cop26/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.948313 | 2,103 | 2.765625 | 3 |
As families around the country celebrate high school and college graduations this month, they can also cheer another piece of good news: as part of the Affordable Care Act, our Administration is issuing regulations today that will allow young adults to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans until age 26.
This change is long overdue. For years, getting a diploma also meant losing your health insurance. And whether you went on to college or not, it was often hard as a young person to find affordable coverage. Overall, Americans in their twenties were twice as likely to go without health insurance as older Americans.
I saw this firsthand as a mom. When my sons graduated from college, they both found jobs. But like a growing number of employers, neither of theirs offered health insurance. Fortunately, they were both healthy and could afford to buy coverage. But I often wondered: what if one of them had a preexisting condition like diabetes? What if our family had fewer resources?
For too many young Americans over the years, the answer to these questions was simply to go without health insurance and hope that you stayed healthy.
Thanks to the rule we’re establishing today, no young American will have to take that risk ever again. Under this policy, insurers will be required to allow any American under the age of 26 who doesn’t get health insurance through their job to stay on their parents’ plan. To get more details, you can read this fact sheet or Q&A.
This provision was scheduled to go into effect in September. But we didn’t want any young person to needlessly go without health insurance this summer. So over the last few weeks, we’ve reached out to insurance companies and asked them to make this change immediately. And to their credit, we’ve gotten a terrific response.
So far, every major insurance company – more than 65 in total – and several major self-insured organizations have said they will provide continuous coverage for young adults this summer. That’s great news for graduating seniors and their families who will get added security in exchange for premiums that are only expected to rise by .7%.
And it’s not a bad deal for insurance companies or employers either. Insurers will save the administrative costs that would have added up as they dropped people in May only to sign them back up in September. And businesses have already been notified that the tax exclusion for employer health benefits will apply to all the young adults who choose to stay on their parents’ plans.
It’s only been seven weeks since President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, but Americans are already seeing the benefits. In addition to this new security for young adults, small business owners have been notified about a new tax credit to help them provide health coverage for their employees.
Seniors who have hit the prescription drug donut hole will begin getting $250 rebate checks next month to help them afford their medications. And we’ve been working closely with states for weeks to develop a new insurance option for uninsured Americans with preexisting conditions.
After years of feeling like they were losing control over their health care, Americans are finally getting a glimpse of a better future. And in the months to come, we’re going to continue to work diligently with our partners across the country to deliver the promise of this new law and make our health care system work better for the American people.
Kathleen Sebelius is Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services | <urn:uuid:72e0a50c-f471-45ee-8507-a46fdd153b0c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2010/05/10/a-long-overdue-change-help-young-adults-get-coverage | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.9774 | 714 | 2.171875 | 2 |
International trade means the exchange of goods and services between countries and across the borders, while local trade is purely the business that is conducted within a country's borders. This is the most basic difference between local and international trade. There are some other differences that separate local and international trades from one another. However, the basic rules of trading are the same.
The cost of trading is the first thing that comes to our mind when we talk about business across the border and within the country's borders. The cost involved in international trading is substantially higher as compared to local trading. Factors that make international trading expensive and difficult may include time required to transport goods across the borders, pricey tariffs that must be paid, time wasted at the borders, burdensome custom inspections, and so on.
Thanks to today's fast and improved ocean shipping logistics and the progresses in ocean cargo transport, these problems are now disappearing from the horizon. The cost of shipping is greatly reduced because of the modern cargo ships that can carry loads of goods. Furthermore, these shipping containers have also made shipping across the borders much easier and secure.
Importing the goods / material needed is a way to drive your own production industry. Countries across the borders can benefit from importing their required goods from the other countries. Global trading has already motivated the countries to come to a platform, collaborate and empower each other.
There was a time when trading your goods or commodities across the borders was extremely expensive and time-consuming process. Now, the standardization of global trading practices has recognized worldwide that makes it possible for the corporations to do business across the countries. Moreover, the advances in ocean shipping processes help countries to overcome difficulties associated with international trading.
Goods and commodities that are imported or exported from the other countries follow a very long route. For example, goods that are manufactured in the United States can be directly loaded through a container to a semi-trailer truck that carries them to a train station where they are transported by rail. After that, those containers can be loaded to an ocean cargo ship so that they can travel across the ocean. Reaching on the destination, those containers will be again moved from the cargo ship to a barge, then to a truck or train.
There was a time when international trading was an expensive, lengthy and time-consuming process. These days, with the modern tracking systems, industrial standards and advancement in shipping process make international trading a reliable, profitable and easy way to do business. Apart from ocean cargo advancements and shipping logistics, B2B portals have also changed the face of industrialization, global economics and international trade.
Clair smith is a content writer who works at TradeDeal.com - one of the fastest growing B2B marketplace for wholesale buyers, sellers, importers, manufacturers and wholesalers from all over the world. | <urn:uuid:129c2992-bd05-4f18-bd6b-e4ca1b5b1bd7> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://amp.sooperarticles.com/differences-between-local-38-international-trade-662036.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.955884 | 572 | 3.0625 | 3 |
If there is one thing to be observed of the President's April 10 speech at the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) in Hainan China, it is that unlike his usual extemporaneous and frank talks, Duterte gave that big audience a rare organized glimpse into the various facets of his economic program.
But apart from the usual menu of the "Build Build Build" initiative and the call for a comfortable life for its citizens, the President focused what is being done.
“We are slowly making the Filipino dream a reality. As we strive to push our economy forward, we encounter challenges. But we will not be deterred. We seek to partner with responsible businesses – home-grown and foreign based – to drive the progress we envision,” he said.
Duterte admitted that his administration has ambitious goals, as he bared plans to spend five to seven percent of the country’s GDP on infrastructure.He likewise noted the target of reducing poverty from 22 percent in 2015 to 14 percent by 2022.
What was new to many was how the President set the goal, and said the administration is investing on innovation, particularly on science and technology and human development.
“With greater access to technology and financing, we will apply Science, Technology and Innovation in agriculture and the service industries. We will invest in improving research and development and intensify international cooperation in this area. We are willing to learn from others,” he said.
This opens a wider door to cooperation that goes beyond mere trade. Innovation adds value to trading, pushing the impulse to improve our products and compete at a time when we ought to be able to benchmark ourselves against our ASEAN peers who have roughly the same endowments snd challenges.
Being in Asia at this time when the continent will lead global growth is a blessing to a country that has long languished in trying to get its economy off the ground and break the manacle of debt- ridden underdevelopment punctuated by weak institutions. Foreign investors have always noted how inconsistent the Philippine policy environment has been for them. Perhaps this is no longer the case.
With a sensible tax program to temper borrowings and a strong government able to carry out its mandates, financing this growth is more realistic, earning not just the recognition of ratings agencies, but the credibility that has prompted investors to pump in a record 10 billion dollars in foreign investment inflows in 2017, almost twice as much as the last year of the previous government.
By many standards, this government appears to be more coherent.
[Photo: President Duterte, in his speech during the opening ceremony of Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference 2018 at the BFA International Convention Center in Boao, People’s Republic of China on April 10, 2018, invites responsible businesses to invest in the country as he assures investors that government is strengthening its policy framework for businesses to thrive. SIMEON CELI JR./PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO] | <urn:uuid:834bf2f1-1aba-42f3-a829-8f39a5daa217> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://resurgent.ph/articles.aspx?id=302 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.962674 | 605 | 1.75 | 2 |
People also ask
How do you make scones?
To make a batch of scones, simply rub butter into flour using your fingertips, until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Next up, bring the mixture together into a dough by adding the wet ingredients.
How do you make Cheese scones ahead of time?
To make them ahead, mix and shape the dough into scones on a baking sheet a few hours before baking, storing the pan in the fridge, tightly-covered, until ready for the oven. Continue to 5 of 15 below. Cheese scones are a favorite savory snack in Britain.
How much self rising flour do I need to make scones?
3 1/4 cups (400 grams) self-rising flour, plus more for the baking sheet 2 ounces (55 grams) unsalted butter, cold, plus more for the baking sheet 2 tablespoons (25 grams) sugar, if you want your scones a little sweeter, optional Gather the ingredients. Heat the oven to 400 F/205 C/Gas 6. Grease and flour a heavy baking sheet.
What is the best cream for scones?
Sour cream is what sets the best scones apart from all others, it yields a tender crumb inside while the butter in the recipe makes the outside crispy and snappy, the perfect scone in my opinion. | <urn:uuid:5a914a79-1ec2-4903-bf85-d8ad8b0d6c7d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.bizcheat.top/a-good-scone-recipe-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.864559 | 281 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Establishing right up your possess fitness center will be a good costly starting. Dr. Nancy Messonnier, movie director of the CDC’s Country wide Middle for Immunization and Respiratory Illnesses, told STAT Information Wednesday that she desires the vaccine rollout to acceIerate pretty enormously” in the arriving days. A new healthy diet plan may balance out your entire body and allows it to functionality in its almost all efficient condition. It is not seeing that straight forward seeing that, Why wouldn’t I wánt to lose fat?” When you possess turn into totally concentrated on just the effect, and possess not necessarily long gone through the mental training course of obtaining they whys, your training method might be bound before you begin.
We eat till we bcome obese, and we waste óur foodstuff while the snooze of the universe is plagued by malnourishment We eat as a result significantly that we give up our health, as excessive physique pounds is associated with various medical circumstances. Numerous modern-day critics criticized AristotIe about this see as inside numerous Ancient greek tragedies the downfall of th tragic hero is usually beyond his control and is usually not his personal fault. In brief summary, the Shape usual is a circuit-training software that focuses on carved endurance and high energy activity.
The vibration training also helps to increase the group of muscle mass through muscle mass tightening along with http://www.lovetalkfilm.com/2021/05/10/shirtless-freedom/ relaxation in proper ways. This should be taken into consideration and be it known that forever , just like the Europeans trace their history from the Roman and Greek civilizations, South Africans must page and trace their history, cuIture, customs, practices and traditions from those of Egypt and Mapungubwe, in particular. To purpose the up coming working day properly, we want to have health care of ourselves physically by taking best suited, receiving involved in physical task and having an satisfactory amount of sleeping each working day.
It’s important to come to be aware of both the shórt-term and long-term consequences of unhealthy over eating, and to attempt to consume a balanced eating habits always. Turn out to be warned that to shed fat and improve well being, it won’t merely are available from ranking at the workplace and walking around around the place of work every nowadays and then throughout the working day. Possibly running way up and all the way down a staircase are able to be painful such as it is like adding th pressure of way up to four moments your human body body weight. Thus, the transformation into contemporary living is definitely beneficial and should turn out to be extended inside of command.
Persons getting vitamins and minerals, vitamin products and vitamin antioxidants supplementations transpires to come to be a strong important ingredient for an important healthy life style. The body is even more reclined than an upright exercise bike, and the seat will generally possess a back again to it for a resting position. Numerous gyms limit you to 30 short minutes about the cardio machines. During your outbreak, Trump prolonged to help deliver the results with your leading professionals on your country wide place, adding latest CDC home Medical professional. Robert Redfield, have into struggle and widely contradicted him on challenges like the agenda for the Covid-19 vaccine.
Acquire instant medical related remedy if you previously have got serious rest condition to preserve a new healthy life-style. Nowadays have a tendency get me opposite, I am definitely not aphorism that aerobic and energy training are definitely not an important some of a very well rounded physical fitness method – they are. The final word: Sprouted fóods, when manufactured under good developing practices, are a safe and healthy option for people who possess trouble absorbing grains, seeds and legumes. When the experts looked nearer at who was leaving th program, they discovered that it was primarily individuals who were fairly healthy: Those who hádn’t had any care and attention associated to a chronic illness , ánd that had below-median heaIth investing. | <urn:uuid:7d90c8cc-4520-426c-8072-21729bd79147> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://kjst.org/harmful-meals-combinations/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.951765 | 842 | 1.804688 | 2 |
A Steady Deterioration in Basic Services
Thus far, the response of States and donors to the vast needs of cities has focused on decentralization and good governance. An increase in State transfers, the regularity and predictability of these transfers, improvements in the area of local taxation, and the gradual increase in their own funds, along with progress in the area of administration and management and, lastly, donor financing, were supposed to be a surefire path leading cities to the virtuous circle of sustained growth.
Unfortunately, the facts point to the shortcomings of this approach. Despite a number of successful experiences, infrastructure services, basic services, and the living conditions of most citizens have deteriorated steadily in the majority of Sub-Saharan cities, simply because the growth rate outpaces the investment rate.
The Volume of Investment Needs to Be Scaled Up
The African continent has experienced the strongest urban growth in the world. Over the next 20 years, there will be an influx of more than 300 million additional persons into Sub-Saharan cities alone. In most countries on the continent, the economic productivity of cities and the living conditions of residents are already being seriously impacted dysfunctional and inadequate facilities. Why? Because urban investment continues to be insufficient relative to the vast needs spawned by demographic growth as well as the effects of global warming.
The volume of investments needs to be scaled up to ensure that the city can truly become the engine of growth and job creation, as it has been for the emerging economies of Asia. Efforts must continue to increase solvency and to improve governance at the local government level. Financing procedures and systems must also be reviewed with the aim of enhancing the solvency and ability of local governments to deliver. The financing of local governments is linked to a series of problems in such areas as decentralization, local taxation, controlling local government debt, and urban governance, as well as to sectoral policies, particularly those related to land, development, and housing.
Practical Solutions Can Be Applied to Modernize Financing Systems
African case studies and examples taken from other parts of the world point to the fact that practical solutions can be applied to modernize investment financing systems, promote private sector involvement, facilitate the use of home-grown solutions, and mobilize new sources of financing.
Financing through land development and improvement is one solution that has, from time immemorial, been used widely on all continents. Sub-Saharan Africa, the exception in this area, can in turn adopt this solution. The root factors stifling this approach are historical and cultural, and are linked to the specificities of land rights in Africa, poor management, a lack of strategic vision on the part of the authorities, and land grabbing by the elite.
It should be noted that the housing and construction sectors are the main engines of economic growth in countries with strong demographic growth. In Sub-Saharan Africa, however, the development of these sectors is stymied by land management rules and practices that are unsuited to conditions on the ground and the modern urbanization process.
For many countries, lifting this constraint to growth and employment will entail land governance reform and the adoption by informal markets of modern production methods, using the models of other continents, in particular those of Asia.
The opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of their institutions or of AFD. | <urn:uuid:303ebfd8-1dc9-4f5d-affa-11157f88b038> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ideas4development.org/en/africas-cities-scaling-up-the-volume-of-investment/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.945929 | 685 | 2.375 | 2 |
In the Oct. 13th newsletter, we talked about Aero-Flex Pre-Apprenticeship in Engineering, an innovative workforce development approach designed by the South Bay Workforce Investment Board (SBWIB) to meet the workforce needs of manufacturing firms and their greatest challenge of finding and attracting a qualified workforce.
Initially funded through AMP SoCAL and California’s Workforce Accelerator Fund, the program has expanded from the South Bay area to all of Los Angeles County. The project is looking to engage multiple size companies in a discussion of your current and anticipated workforce needs as they relate to engineering. In addition, multiple no cost resources may be available to assist with your training and development challenges, whether in the engineering arena or in other positions.
BENEFITS: Aero-Flex is an employer-driven pre-apprenticeship framework in engineering that meets the workforce development needs common to the aerospace and advanced manufacturing industry. Partnering employers are able to flex the curriculum to their needs, build their workforce pipeline, enhance existing internship programs, receive funding to support training and recruitment and have access to a pool of talented job seekers ready to work. The program timeframe, based on your business needs, ranges from 6-12 weeks and consists of work readiness training, industry specific occupational skills training and on-the-job work-based learning provided by Aero-Flex member employers.
The SBWIB is expecting to enroll over 100 Aero-Flex Pre-Apprentices and to support companies adopting the program with available funding. Pre-Apprentice candidates may include high school and post- secondary students, veterans, under-served or under-employed populations, and your incumbent workers. The SBWIB also is developing a new Registered Apprenticeship in aerospace engineering. This will allow a seamless link for Aero-Flex Pre-Apprentices to enter into an apprenticeship program; moving into roles with a higher level of skill development.
For more information and to learn more about how the Aero-Flex Pre-Apprenticeship program may fit within your organization, please contact Deborah Shepard at [email protected] or call 310-680- 3705. | <urn:uuid:7945b462-33c1-4af7-b76b-f2170e625aca> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ampsocal.usc.edu/wanted-aerospace-industry-companies-ready-to-get-on-the-launch-pad-with-aero-flex-pre-apprenticeship-in-engineering/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.948211 | 438 | 1.648438 | 2 |
In the modern age of digital technologies, people often stumble on the need to work with Outlook data in different extensions. Whether you have to archive it or transfer, you have to understand what Outlook data is and how to manage it. There is a wide range of activities which may be performed with the help of the data extraction tools, including migration and conversion of email, its archiving, as well as recovery of a password.
All of the mentioned above actions may easily be performed by one and only Data Extraction Kit for Outlook being the Outlooktransfer.com as well as its alike versions. When many functions merge into one and efficient instrument, the dreams of users comes true. It is of special importance for users to know that many small though important tasks can nowadays be performed with a single tool as this saves users’ time and gives larger efficiency.
Things To Know About Multifunctional Data Extraction Tool
Generally speaking, Outlook data extraction represents an act of getting data from weirdly or inefficiently structured resources and in order to progress these and structure them. In terms of MS Outlook and the operations which can be done with the special Outlook data extraction kit for it, data may be manipulated in one of the following ways:
- Migration of email: if you have ever encountered the need to change your email address while also transfer all the old mails to the new one, you can imagine the struggle. In order for your crucial emails not get buried under the layers of other unimportant ones, as well as your folders not to lose their initial structure, you need to try the basic tools allowing for transfer of formats and thus perfect retaining of the initial email quality and composition.
- Archiving of email: this one is very important for the Outlook users given that PST files grow large, thus becoming vulnerable to all kinds of data disruption accidents. To avoid these unfortunate situations, one may choose to constantly archive their emails within regular periods of time so that they do not fall prey to brand new viruses or hackers attacks frequently taking place all over the Internet.
- Digital forensics: for some this term may still be unknown, however this shall never diminish its importance. Just like on the crime scene, in the world of online communications there are victims and criminals. In order to be able to trace the communications of bad gangs and lately be able to present these as evidence in the court, Outlook data extraction tools are a must.
All in all, for you to be more productive at using Microsoft Outlook, you have to additionally consider other tools like the ones responsible for Outlook data extraction. This activity usually includes email migration and conversion. Often digital forensics offers, as well as password recovery, is not to be neglected by users. | <urn:uuid:b29342b4-474b-4c9d-98b1-6015318f333f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.dragonblogger.com/extracting-outlook-data-with-special-multi-functional-tool/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.957082 | 550 | 2.03125 | 2 |
In this brief article, we are going to answer the question “How long does a birthday cake last in the fridge?”. We will also discuss what is the best way to freeze a cake?.
How long does a birthday cake last in the fridge?
Birthday cake will last for 3 to 4 days in the fridge if it is topped with butter-cream or ganache and will stay fresh for three to four days. If the cake contains custard, cream, cream cheese, or fresh fruit, then it will only be edible for a maximum of one to two days.
The shelf life of cake is affected by a number of different elements, such as the ingredients that are used during preparation and the method in which it is kept.
If your cake has a cream cheese icing, it is best to refrigerate it for no more than one to two days, bring it to room temperature before serving, and then refrigerate it again.
Keeping it at room temperature for a longer period might ruin the texture of the frosting.
When cake is carefully wrapped in plastic wrap or foil and then stored in an airtight container or bag, it will have a longer shelf life and remain fresher for a longer period of time.
The majority of frosted cakes may be stored in the refrigerator so long as they are properly covered and kept in the appropriate manner.
If you have a cake that is frosted with cream cheese, this is an even better option for preserving in the refrigerator because of how slowly it will start spoiling, as long as the cake is well covered.
Cakes typically only stay fresh for a maximum of two days, however this number might alter depending on its type.
One-pound cakes, for instance, have a shelf life of up to five days if they are properly stored.
Before starting serving you need to make sure that the flavor of your cake will remain the same even after it has been sitting on the shelf for a few hours.
What is the best way to freeze a cake?
Yes, as long as they are packaged correctly, cakes may be frozen successfully. This option is highly recommended. If you wish to freeze your cake, first wrap it very securely in plastic wrap, and then put it in either a freezer-bag or container, making sure that all of the air is pressed out before you seal it.
After that, you may place it back in the freezer, and it should last for around three months there. When you take it out of the freezer, cover it in aluminum foil, and then put it in the refrigerator for a few hours so that it may thaw before you consume it.
How to defrost your birthday cake?
If you need to utilize your cake from the freezer, defrost it in the refrigerator for 12 hours or on the counter for 8 hours before proceeding. If you want to use your cake after it has been frozen, then remove it from the freezer and then preheat your oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
Put a cooling rack on top of a rimmed baking sheet, and then put the baking sheet into the oven. Your cake will need 20 minutes in the oven at a temperature of 175 degrees Fahrenheit. After that, let your cake fully cool before proceeding to frost it or use it as a foundation for cupcakes or any other dishes.
What are the side effects of storing cake in the fridge for too long?
After being stored in the refrigerator, the cake may have a white appearance. This is referred to as blooming or curdling, and it occurs when there is an excessive amount of air that is trapped within the batter.
If you take out your cake after it has been stored in the refrigerator for some time, you will see that it has become a shade of light brown. The only thing you can do is attempt to cut around this area when you are serving it since there is nothing more you can do.
Keep your cakes away from direct sunlight since it may cause the frosting to melt and can also change the color of the icing if it is colored.
This is a clue that the cake is rather old, and consuming it might result in food sickness. In addition to that, you need to dispose of any frosting that has mold developing in it. Cakes that have odd colors or scents, should not be used.
Other FAQs about Cake that you may be interested in.
In this brief article, we answered the question “How long does a birthday cake last in the fridge?”. We also discussed, what is the best way to freeze a cake?. | <urn:uuid:8c79214d-fed7-44de-82b3-a7121580b497> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://thewholeportion.com/how-long-does-a-birthday-cake-last-in-the-fridge/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.959332 | 948 | 1.625 | 2 |
Results for "author_first: Anselm, author_last: Grun"
Becoming New An explanation of the theological concept of panentheism.
Becoming New Two theologians on the Divine Mystery within everything.
The Legend of Saint Nicholas A simple and elegant account of the life and ministry of Saint Nicholas.
Jesus: The Image of Humanity Shows how Jesus draws out the divine center in those he encounters.
Jesus: The Image of Humanity Fresh and soul stirring interpretations of familiar biblical incidents in the life of Jesus.
Building Self-Esteem Speaks boldly and broadly about the nature of faith, grace, mystery, prayer, and personal transformation.
Heaven Begins Within You An extraordinary book about the early Christian ascetics who pioneered spirituality from below. | <urn:uuid:4a3fb6f9-cfff-459b-aa62-c53aba2a57f7> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/search?author_first=Anselm&author_last=Grun&s=book_review | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.780849 | 162 | 1.5 | 2 |
ANDRES F. CIBILS, PH.D.
Feb. 16 | 2020
Professor of Rangeland Science
Department of Animal and Range Sciences
New Mexico State University, Las Cruces
Andres Cibils is a Professor of Rangeland Science in the Department of Animal and Range Sciences at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM, USA. He teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in arid land management and grazing ecology. Andres and his graduate students conduct research on animal-plant interactions, focusing specifically on the foraging behavior of rangeland-raised livestock. Andres collaborates with researchers in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico and has volunteered in farming communities of Central America and West Africa. | <urn:uuid:7874149e-7f6f-4913-9e5d-e02a01f0ee95> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://commonpastures.org/team/andres-f-cibils-ph-d/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.877838 | 154 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Vyoshadi Vati is an Ayurvedic medicine which is used for treating cold, cough and related problem.
This medicine is prepared from various herbs such as dry ginger powder, Black Pepper, long pepper which are traditionally used for treating common cold.
Ingredients of Vyoshadi Vati
Shunthi, Maricha, Pippali, Amlavetasa, Chavya, Talisa, Chitraka, Shveta Jiraka, Tintidika Tvak, Sukshmaila, Tejpatra, jaggery
Uses of Vyoshadi Vati
- Cold And Cough
- Running Nose
- Hoarseness Of Voice
- Sore Throat
- Allergic Rhinitis
The Dosage of Vyoshadi Vati
Take tablets few times a day with lukewarm water or chew or as directed by a physician.
Manufactured by Shree Baidyanath Ayurved Bhawan, Dabur and some other pharmacies. | <urn:uuid:08f26627-cdb7-49af-b4b9-e06f4cfe23f8> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.bimbima.com/ayurveda/vyoshadi-vati/1194/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.900897 | 218 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Most important initiative
Any step that is being taken to increase the security of the nation and its citizens is a welcome one. Self-defence is an extremely important aspect considering the increasing crime rate in the country. Eve teasing, chain snatching, attack on modesty are some of the heinous crimes taking place regularly. Girls should be armed with the techniques to ward off these evil perpetrators of crime. Such programmes should be made mandatory in schools and colleges, leaving no excuse for the girls or their parents to avoid the training. The success of these programmes solely depends on the active participation of people.
Srishty Singh, researcher, NCERT
For the past one decade, there has been a number of initiatives taken under schemes such as Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao and National Programme for Education of Girls at Elementary Education (NPEGL) to train girls in self-defence. However, these efforts do not resolve the issue completely as they fail to acknowledge the need for working at both ends – preventive and redressal mechanisms. The state must also work to change the attitude of the boys towards the girls along with measures such as mandating the constitution of grievance redressal mechanisms in schools. The proposed National Educational Policy (draft) emphasises on zero tolerance towards violation of child rights. The crux lies in effective implementation.
Geeta Verma, team leader – Girls’ Education Programme, CARE India
Need for continuity
In order to successfully implement a programme, consistency and continuity need to be maintained. While self-defence is an important tool to empower girls, various other measures need to be taken in terms of police patrolling, access to security and emergency numbers at all times, setting up infrastructure for proper training and grievance redressal to resolve the conflicting situations faced by girls. These steps should come together as a comprehensive policy rather than implementing one step at a time, to address the overall issue of safety.
Charu Wahi, principal, Nirmal Bhartia School, Dwarka, Delhi
Feedback mechanism is key
The self-defence programme initiated by the government is an important step towards ensuring the safety of girls within the country. However, one of the key problems with these policies is the lack of implementation at the ground level. It is imperative to keep a check on the execution of the policies through a feedback mechanism involving regular visits to schools and student redressal by state authorities. Literacy is an important factor when it comes to controlling the crime rate. Coupled with this, enhancing the security system, raising awareness and imparting knowledge on the issue of girls’ safety will help in the long-run.
Sri Keshav, teacher, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Sector 22, Rohini, Delhi | <urn:uuid:ef25ccb5-20a1-44d3-b755-9976c95fbbc4> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://myeducationtimes.com/article/260/20190715201907131826473443a1a5d5b | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.952622 | 567 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Senator Lankford in Tulsa World: On the 20th Anniversary, we remember bombing tragedy by embracing the 'Oklahoma Standard'
It’s been 20 years since we experienced the worst act of American home-grown terrorism at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. This solemn day stands as a reminder of the 168 souls that were lost. On a day where anger lashed out, Oklahomans responded with compassion.
Every year since April 19, 1995, we stand together and read aloud the names of those who lost their lives. We remember the first responders who acted selflessly in a time of need. We remember the families impacted by this tragic event, and we remember the survivors who continue to re-count and re-live that fateful day. We remember this day — a day that Oklahomans did not allow fear to overcome their love for our fellow man.
In response to the 20th anniversary, Oklahomans re-commit to that same spirit of generosity — the “Oklahoma Standard.” This year, we place a special emphasis on participating in acts of service, to help us never again allow anger to blind our eyes to one another. To honor those who died, we encourage Oklahomans to reach out to people to serve them, even those with whom they may disagree. We will engage in conversations and participate in acts of service to show that our bond of community and patriotism will not be shaken by terror. In the end, we may have differences, but we will show the nation that love overcomes hate, and civil discourse can be achieved even when there is disagreement. That is the “Oklahoma Standard.”
The Senate passed a resolution (S.Res. 139) this week, authored by Senator Jim Inhofe and I, to commemorate the anniversary. In addition to remembering the victims and their families and honoring the first responders, the resolution applauds the people of Oklahoma City for making tremendous progress over the past two decades. Instead of deteriorating after this tragedy, our city has rebounded and experienced great opportunity and growth. This story of perseverance stands as a beacon to the rest of the nation, and the world, attesting to the strength of goodness in overcoming evil wherever it arises in our midst.
There is an entire generation that has grown up since 1995. It is up to us to teach them how love and kindness can still shine through even the most tragic event. I ask Americans to join Oklahoma in remembering that tragic day, but also to show this generation and the nation how we respond to hatred and violence.
Twenty years ago, our state experienced firsthand Psalm 34:18, which says, ‘the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.’ May God bless our state, and may we never lose our resilient Oklahoma and American spirit.
By: Senator James Lankford
Source: Tulsa World
Next Article Previous Article | <urn:uuid:5cd260fa-6720-4958-9c83-d856a38c22fa> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.lankford.senate.gov/news/in-the-news/senator-lankford-in-tulsa-world-on-the-20th-anniversary-we-remember-bombing-tragedy-by-embracing-the-oklahoma-standard | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.946231 | 603 | 1.664063 | 2 |
What does a bookkeeper do?
A bookkeeper’s duties can be quite diverse depending on the business. Their primary role is keeping the books. They perform multiple tasks to support the organization’s accounting and financial system. Besides, their reports are passed on to the business owners and managers to help in decision-making.
The main duties include data entry which deals with recording financial transactions and balancing the books. There’s also bank reconciliation where the books are cross-referenced against bank statements and other source documents to verify their accuracy. The last core duty of a bookkeeper is to condense the business’ financial position and prepare a monthly report. Other additional responsibilities include calculating pay and deduction, credit control, and dealing with the accounts payable and accounts receivable.
The bookkeeping checklist your business needs
There is no room for mistakes and errors in bookkeeping. It is necessary to perform all the responsibilities without fail. Here we have a checklist of a bookkeeper’s typical duties – keeping in mind not all responsibilities are necessary for every business type or size. Let’s look at a bookkeeper’s job in detail.
- Record business transactions such as sales and purchase transactions
- Sort through daily emails and manage them
- File and archive essential files and folders digitally and physically
- Deposit checks and cash receivables, then at the end of the day, issue receipts to customers
- Check bank statements in real-time and reconcile bank statements
- Prepare revenue and expense account
- Check cash position
- Reconcile bank account regularly and don’t leave it for a month or else there would be a huge task to deal with later on
- Prepare and send invoices
- Update payroll files and if there are new employees, make sure to add them and get their necessary information
- Record payments, customer invoices, and vendor bills
- Look into bills due for payment to avoid possible accumulation interest and late fees
- Review projected cash flow
- Manage the budget according to different department’s needs and distribute resources equally
- Reconcile bank account with the bank statement and make sure that all transactions are accurate
- Verify aged receivables and follow-up when necessary
- Meet payroll obligations such as payroll tax
- Review the month-end balance sheet
- Check profits and losses, then compare to prior months
- Track and maintain inventory records
- Sum-up projected budgets and cash flows
- Evaluate aged receivables
- Submit and pay the Business Activity Statement (BAS) and super obligations (this could either be monthly or quarterly)
- Review sales tax and compute estimated income tax, then make payments
- Complete tax returns
- Asses annual accounts and compare with the business goals at the beginning of the fiscal year
- Review past-due receivables and inventory
- Assess and approve full-year financial reports and tax returns
This checklist includes highly important tasks that bookkeepers should perform without any room for error. It could vary depending on the nature of the business, but these are the essence of the tasks that a bookkeeper should take on for the company’s success.
Bookkeeping is a big task to take on, given that it is the backbone of your business. It is crucial that you get your bookkeeping services from a trusted and reliable company. Ensure that they are more than just capable of doing the things listed above; they should be qualified and competent. You can contact G&R Bookkeeping Services today and check out our full-range services that can significantly help your business. | <urn:uuid:a716d4da-46b7-4f7f-b72c-2eece1bf84c2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.accountantcapecoral.com/bookkeeping-checklist/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.94682 | 762 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Part of a series of articles and commentaries describing the impact the change in the manufacturing industry has had on the Black Community in major American cities
Most American consumers are familiar with Black Friday—the day after Thanksgiving when bargain hunters go on a retail blitz that officially kicks off Christmas holiday shopping.
But in my hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, we remember Black Monday. It has a starkly different meaning, even for people like me from generations then unborn. In the years before Black Monday, everyone worked. Families thrived. Youngstown was an eminent producer of American steel, a true leader among its Steel Valley counterparts.
(Courtesy Photo/Facebook-Youngstown Steel Heritage)
Then came September 19, 1977. The workforce at one of the major industries, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, reported to work Monday morning only to be stopped cold. The doors were shuttered. The plant was closed—for good.
That day symbolically signaled a transition from boom to spiraling bust; from a 20th Century industrial renaissance to a saga of economic ruin.
Without notice, nearly 5,000 workers were instantly thrown into unemployment. Most of them, three generations of workers, had clocked 20 to 30 years on the job. What followed was a continuous drum beat of industrial flight, the rippling failure of other businesses, soaring unemployment, homes abandoned, neighborhoods fractured; poverty, crime and despair.
Youngstown, once a city of 170,000 residents, has been reduced to about 64,000. Demographers call us America’s fastest shrinking city with the highest concentration of black poverty.
Industrial flight has imposed a unique burden on black communities, which historically lag behind their white counterparts in wealth, retirement savings and homeownership. The added pressure of housing discrimination saddled black families with limited mobility, leaving them trapped in broken neighborhoods.
The impact of industrial flight helps explain the monthly jobs data. In August, Black unemployment was 3.7 percent higher than Whites; Black youth joblessness was at 26 percent, compared to 14 percent for Whites. The impact is a problem hiding in plain sight. The failures can’t be blamed on the people who are jobless, nor do the solutions rest with them fixing the problem alone.
Youngstown is not unique. In Baltimore, Bethlehem Steel’s factory in Sparrow’s Point – once one of the largest steel plants in the world – at its peak employed some 35,000. By the 1980s, fewer than 8,000 workers remained, a whopping 77 percent decline. Further south in Birmingham, Alabama, Sloss Furnace Company and United States Pipe and Foundry Company were economic engines of the region. Both closed in the 1970s, leaving the city in disarray for years to come.
Similar stories can be told for places like Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, Flint and Chicago. These areas, popularly called the “rust belt,” illustrate how industrial flight has unmade America, outsourcing offshore to cheap labor and exacting a toll on entire communities.
The disappearing manufacturing sector has profoundly impacted Black communities, but they affect all communities. More than 63,000 factories have closed in the United States since 2001 and we lost 5.7 million manufacturing jobs between March 1998 and December 2013.
But the damage can be reversed. Communities can recover. And in the end, everyone can benefit.
Public infrastructure investment is critical. By making smart investments in roads, bridges and the faltering systems of our cities and towns, we can create better environments and put people back to work.
Workforce development will also put the nation on a path to success. While a four-year college degree is commendable, it is just one path to forge meaningful skills and to earn a good living. Just as manufacturing jobs established middle-class neighborhoods across the country in the post-World War II era, so too can they be a part of the 21st Century revitalization.
Model programs are stepping to the new demands. For instance, in Kentucky, Michigan and South Carolina, private/public partnership apprentice ventures are equipping young workers with skills in technology, science and engineering – requisite knowledge to thrive in today’s manufacturing climate.
And finally, trade and import terms must be fair, ensuring that U.S. workers can share in America’s continued economic growth. Our policymakers should be bound to forge trade agreements that level the playing field for U.S. workers without widening inequality domestically or globally.
Who’s to say that Youngstown and other depleted industrial centers can’t come back? While Black Monday will be forever etched in our city’s history, the lessons and solutions can put us on a brighter path to the future.
Gerald Taylor, a doctoral student at Georgetown University majoring in philosophy, is author of a new report, Unmade in America: Industrial Flight and the Decline of Black Communities, sponsored by the Washington-based Alliance for American Manufacturing. | <urn:uuid:eca04356-c5b8-4f2d-b74c-304f2c84dffe> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://afro.com/the-youngstown-story-from-renaissance-to-ruin/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.944738 | 1,019 | 2.890625 | 3 |
The Power Designers of New York City Are All About Green Spirit
In New York City, where it’s harder to get access to fresh air and residents don’t typically have a sprawling backyard (we’re not all Staten Islanders here!), bringing light, air and plants to the buildings has become more important than ever, and that’s what the top architects and designers are doing in 2017.
Some firms are doing it by adding more terraces to their projects, or green roofs, and then there are others that are changing the game completely. Take ODA New York’s design of 305 East 44th Street, a residential condominium tower that has full-floor gardens weaved in between the apartments. Or FXFOWLE’s design of Circa Central Park, a residential building at the northwest corner of Central Park, which has a curving design on the corner facing the park, so residents can get amazing views of the greenery.
Of course, getting air and light isn’t the only thing that architects have to contend with at their projects. For CetraRuddy’s John Cetra, he is concerned with how the sun affects buildings’ color and texture when the light hits the structure. That’s why he designed The Moinian Group’s rental at 572 11th Avenue with white terra-cotta up to the seventh floor.
These are the power designers in the city. The projects are different in a lot of ways, but the common thread seemed to be an embrace of green spirit.
ODA New York
Eran Chen, Founder and Executive Director
ODA New York has a distinct style for its projects, which are often porous, fragmented and look like boxes were stuck on the side of buildings. That allows for more terraces and views. According to Eran Chen, who launched the firm in 2007, architecture should “restore our relationship with nature,” and therefore the more terraces, open spaces and views, the better.
Take for example his technique employed for Spitzer Enterprises’ residential towers at 420 Kent Avenue, which is under construction in Williamsburg. The living rooms in most of the units at the three-building, 857-apartment project have a corner view of the Manhattan skyline and East River, because they jut out from the building. The project also includes 77,000 square feet of outdoor space on Brooklyn’s north waterfront and will be completed in about 16 months.
The concepts of light and air and views play heavily into ODA’s design of two projects at the Rheingold Brewery development sites in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Besides terraces for the apartments, the team added courtyards.
At the first Rheingold site, a 1-million-square-foot building at 123 Meserole Avenue, where All Year Management is building a more than 800-unit rental project, ODA put in landscaped courtyards that are connected to building amenity spaces and lead to the street. This courtyard style allows more people to meet and enjoy outdoor space.
“It’s really the way that people want to live [in New York City]—to be connected to the grid and the big city but, at the same time, be able to connect in small-scale and more intimate environments,” Chen said.
And at the other Rheingold Brewery site, 10 Montieth Street, ODA is designing a 350,000-square-foot, 500-unit rental project for the Rabsky Group. It is a block-long property that has a doughnut-shape and has courtyards in the middle. It also features a large rooftop garden, which slopes in key areas to allow more sunlight into the courtyard.
And of course, there is 305 West 44th Street, a 116,000-square-foot condominium for Triangle Assets in Midtown. Starting at the 21st floor of the building, each homeowner will have access to a floor with a private garden either below or on top of her unit via a Parisian staircase.
Dan Kaplan, Senior Partner
Since Superstorm Sandy caused widespread flooding and power outages in New York City in 2012, architects from the nearly 40-year-old FXFOWLE decided to take precautions with the design of the Statue of Liberty Museum and visitor center on Liberty Island, Dan Kaplan said.
The previous visitor center on the island was demolished, and the new 26,000-square-foot structure will be elevated higher than the former structure to increase resiliency against future storm surges. Meanwhile, FXFOWLE designed the building to blend in with the landscape of the island. It has a green staircase that leads up to a green roof, which doubles as a viewing terrace. It is expected to be completed in 2019.
FXFOWLE also signed on to design The Moinian Group’s 1.8-million-square-foot office building at 3 Hudson Boulevard, which is set to be completed in 2021. The architecture firm added a communal green space inside the building adjacent to the second-floor lobby, as well as what Kaplan calls eight or nine “sky gardens,” which are essentially terraces. And the building will have a green roof, which Kaplan referred to as a “green crown.”
“As New York goes through this growth spurt that we are experiencing and becomes denser we need to temper the increased density with greater access to natural amenities so that we create a healthier and more desirable, sustainable city,” Kaplan said.
And it’s not just the insides of the building that the architecture firm is counting; FXFOWLE’s design of Artemis’ 11-story, 125,000-square-foot condo Circa Central Park at 2040 Frederick Douglass Boulevard is curved around Central Park, exposing residents to views of Manhattan’s crown jewel.
Plus, the 48-unit building features terraces and open spaces “so that the experience of Central Park is laced throughout the building,” Kaplan said.
FXFOWLE is applying a similar concept at One Willoughby Square in Downtown Brooklyn for Forest City Ratner Companies and JEMB Realty. It’s a planned 505,000-square-foot office building that will be constructed over the newly created 50,000-square-foot Willoughby Square Park. The 36-story office building features about 16 balconies, and four pavilions made from the building’s setbacks that overlook the park.
John Cetra, Co-Founder and Principal
John Cetra would bend over backward to offer great views at all of his projects.
We mean the buildings would bend, not the guy, of course.
Cetra’s design of 242 West 53rd Street for Algin Management is slightly curled to afford more units with sweet views of the city. It will house 426 apartments in 468,000 square feet and extend 62 stories up.
“It is a tall building in the middle of Midtown surrounded by tall buildings,” said Cetra, who co-founded the New York City based company with Nancy Ruddy in 1987. “How do you create a building that lets the residents inside see views? It was a conscious decision to have the building twist on sides so that within the apartments you can get views of the north and east and west.”
The building has what looks like a fish net covering the façade—making it stand out from the other glass-heavy buildings surrounding it.
Another similarly tall property, Macklowe Properties’ 152,000-square-foot building slated for 200 East 59th Street, will have wrap-around terraces on every floor to allow future owners of the 68 units to have wide views of the city. The 35-story structure also has an unusual but sleek waffle-style exterior on the base floors, which are earmarked for retail.
Sure, balconies and terraces are great for people to get air and light and for nature to be a part of the buildings, but Cetra believes highly in the way that the sun can change the appearance of a property.
“We like to create buildings with an attitude,” Cetra said. “Buildings that are different than just flat glass surfaces. We want to mix glass with terra-cotta and metal and other materials so that when the sun hits the building it glows and changes personality.”
For him, there is more of an urgency as he said the world sees the rise of the texture-less, flat glass buildings. With that in mind, he designed The Moinian Group’s 165-unit apartment building at 572 11th Avenue with white terra-cotta and curved glass.
One new project that Cetra is proud of is 45 Broad Street, a condo being developed by Madison Equities; Gemdale Properties and Investment; and Pizzarotti & CSpA and AMS Acquisitions. It’s designed to be 1,115 feet tall with 150 units, according to city records. Groundbreaking is scheduled for April.
Renzo Piano Building Workshop
Renzo Piano, Founder
Renzo Piano Building Workshop, the eponymous studio of the 1998 Pritzker Prize-winning architect, is working on a completely green campus.
The international firm, which has offices in Paris, Italy and New York and was created in 1981, has been in charge of the master plan and buildings for Columbia University’s Manhattanville 17-acre campus expansion between East 125th Street and East 133rd Streets.
Columbia’s campus addition is designed according to the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) platinum standards. Major highlights include open spaces, as former industrial blocks will have tree-lined streets and open green space, and the buildings will be set back from streets and sidewalks widened, allowing for more sunlight to make its way to pedestrians.
In the first stage of construction, the Renzo Piano-designed nine-story, 450,000-square-foot Jerome L. Greene Science Center and the eight-story, 60,000-square-foot Lenfest Center for the Arts will be completed. The Greene Science Center, which will become home to the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, features reflective surfaces to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and a double aluminum and glass façade that keeps the building insulated, so it can stay energy efficient. The Lenfest Center building nearby will have screening, performance and presentation spaces. Both buildings are expected to open this year.
Also on the campus will be the 56,000-square-foot University Forum and Academic Conference Center, a building for lectures and panel events. The building will house a 430-seat auditorium and is set to open in 2018.
The new campus will have a pair of buildings that will house the Columbia Business School: The Ronald O. Perelman Center for Business Innovation and the Henry R. Kravis Building, both of which are planned to open in 2021. The sister buildings were designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and will be separated by a park.
Besides the Columbia expansion, Piano’s firm has designed Bizzi & Partners Development, Aronov Development and Halpern Real Estate Venture’s 30-story condominium at 565 Broome Street. It’s his firm’s first residential project in New York City and is clad with curved glass devoid of mullions and gives a view of the World Trade Center, Hudson River and Soho. It houses 17,000 square feet of amenities including a pool, a fitness center and an outdoor landscaped terrace.
Carl Galioto, President and Managing Principal of New York and Philadelphia
Remember just three years ago when former Vice President Joe Biden infamously likened LaGuardia Airport to being “in a third-world country”?
The dig stung—because it felt true. Just last year the airport was ranked the worst in a study by travel publication The Points Guy, and it took the bottom spot this year in an analysis by the Global Gateway Alliance that ranks on-time arrivals.
International design powerhouse HOK, which has more than 1,700 employees in 23 offices around the world, is working to change that image through design.
Together with engineering firm WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff, HOK is designing the new 1.3-million-square-foot LaGuardia Airport Central Terminal B, which will replace the aging 1964 terminal building. WSP and HOK are part of the LaGuardia Gateway Partners team with Vantage Airport Group, Skanska and Meridiam which won the bid for the $4 billion LaGuardia Airport renovation project—the first public-private partnership aviation project in the United States. The 35-gate terminal will be modernized and will “redefine the passenger experience…and position it among the world’s best airports,” Carl Galioto, the managing principal of HOK’s New York and Philadelphia office, said in a statement to CO.
A key feature of the new terminal will be pedestrian bridges over active plane taxi lanes with sweeping views of the airfield and the Manhattan skyline. The design allows for natural light to stream into the facility and includes spacious seating areas. The building is expected to be LEED silver certified. Last June, LaGuardia Gateway Partners signed a lease with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey through 2050 for Terminal B. The overall project, which includes a new central hall, garage, related roadways and infrastructure, is set for a 2022 completion.
HOK is also providing advisory services to the Port Authority in the planning of the redesign for the entire airport. As a company, HOK has been striving to reduce energy use across its portfolio and expects to achieve a carbon-neutral design by 2030.
Other designs the company completed or is working on in New York City include the offices for media company GroupM’s nearly 700,000-square-foot headquarters in 3 World Trade Center and an 18-story condominium at 147-151 East 86th Street for Ceruzzi Properties and Kuafu Properties. HOK is also the architect of record for NewYork-Presbyterian’s new 17-story, 733,500-square-foot building on the Upper East Side. | <urn:uuid:baf1fe21-7677-4d6d-b051-91d4e93a2972> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://commercialobserver.com/2017/04/power-designers-of-new-york-city-are-all-about-green-spirit/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.945751 | 3,031 | 1.898438 | 2 |
You may know about Shellmound Street in Emeryville, but you may not know about Shellmounds in Oakland. This is just a start of an entry, but if you have more information about shellmounds in Oakland, please add it here. (Also, learn about the Emeryville Shellmound).
Another shellmound was mapped near the site of present-day Dennison Street in 1869.http://servlet1.lib.berkeley.edu:8080/mapviewer/searchcoll.execute.logic?coll=eartmaps&catno=b22254106 The area was later named the Shellmound Tract, and a Shellmound Street existed there into the 1910s. The site is occupied by the Veronica Foods warehouse today. See map excerpt.
Links and References
- There Were Once More Than 425 Shellmounds in the Bay Area KQED Arts November 12, 2018 | <urn:uuid:e7ec02f0-77e6-4d2f-905e-974e62852b9c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://localwiki.org/oakland/Shellmounds | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.935485 | 195 | 2.03125 | 2 |
The Madara rider is a unique monument of the ancient Bulgarian art. Its popularity is immense in Bulgaria and since 1979 it has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage list. The high-relief depicts a rider on his stallion accompanied by a dog. A dead lion is carved under the horse and some inscriptions in Greek all around. The scene celebrates the founding of the Bulgarian state by the Khan Asparukh (680-700 AD). The Madara rider is the only European rock carved monument from the Early Middle Ages. [Text and photogallery]
Bulgarian rock art: the Madara rider
The Madara rider (in Bulgarian Мадарски конник, Madarski konnik) is a unique monument of the ancient Bulgarian art. It is carved, almost life-size, at 23 meters above the ground on the vertical 100m high cliff of the Madara National Historical and Archaeological Reserve. It is situated in the north-eastern Bulgaria, near the Madara village and 70 km west of the Black sea coastline, where the town of Varna lies. Since 1979 it has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage list.
The high-relief depicts a horseman with shoulder-length hair, riding a horse with a bushy tail. Under the horse there is a dead lion pierced by a short spear. Behind the horse a fine shaped dog, of the same size of the lion, with tail and front paws up on the air. The scene is surrounded by three groups of inscriptions, cut in ancient Greek. Figures were originally covered with a red plaster: most of it is gone, but some traces are still visible. The letters of the inscriptions were also filled with the same plaster.
[more pictures? A photogallery is vailable at the end of this short presentation]
The popularity of the Madara rider in Bulgaria is immense: since 1931 all Bulagarians coins (the skotinki) show its image, and in 2008 it was chosen as the national symbol of Bulgaria.
A close-up view of the monument is not allowed; as the metal scaffolding is closed, you may take a look only from the base of the cliff. Despite this, the vision of the carved scene is perhaps even more impressive. From the nearby parking area, the access to the monument is facilitated by the 230 steps of a straight stone staircase.
The surrounding Reserve discloses an impressive natural and archaeological heritage: we may cite only the most important elements, like majestic cliffs, impressive caves, holy springs, an Iron Age settlement of the Getae Thracian tribe, a late antiquity fortress, a medieval architectural cult complex and a cliff church. Archaeological materials found in the caves testify the human occupation since the Neolithic. Dating back to the Roman period, various worship sites has been found. In the Big Cave the base of a stone building and inscriptions testify the cult of the three Nymphs. Still today people collect dripping water, believing that it would allow the blind to see. In a nearby area the stone buildings for the goddess Tyche cult were discovered, with many votive tablets. Dozen of tablets, found all over the area, bear the image of the Thracian horseman, the god of life and death, of hunting and fertility, the most worshipped deity by the Thracians in Madara.
The Madara rider was popularly associated with St. George by Bulgarians and Turks. The first scientific mention dates back to 1872: Felix Kanitz, being unable to get close to the engraved rock surface, thought that the inscriptions were in Latin, and assigned the monument to the late Antiquity, interpreting it as the Thracian horseman. In 1895 for the first time a scaffold was erected, and the Czech archaeologist Karel Skorpil suggested that the inscriptions were of Bulgarian origin. He proved that the monument was not Thracian, pointing to the depiction of stirrups, which were not in use in Europe until the VI cent. AD; effectively they are absent in the Madara votive tablets depicting the Thracian horseman. Another element is to be outlined: concerning the Thracian heroes the lion is a companion in hunting, not a prey. And more, the monument was not touched by the colonies of Christian hermits who inhabited the Madara rocks during the 13th and 14th centuries, so demonstrating that it was not considered a pagan icon, like the Thracian horseman was. The inscriptions were later further analysed by other scholars, such as Geza Feher (1928) and Veselin Beshevliev (1935).
In 1954 the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences organised a complex archaeological and epigraphical research project: thirty scholars studied the high-relief for a month; The carving, which is in a quite bad condition and has some missing parts due to erosion – horseman, lion and stallion heads are effaced – was observed under different light conditions, including artificial grazing light by night. After this detailed studies it is possible to say that the Madara rider depicts a triumphal scene, which is the symbol of the Bulgarian Khan glory over the enemy. The monument was most likely carved by the order of Khan Asparukh (680-700 AD), so celebrating the founding of the Bulgarian state by depicting himself on the huge Madara vertical cliff, a place of worship of centuries-old tradition, so marking a link with old traditions. The three groups of inscriptions, where for the first time the name Bulgarians is mentioned in a Bulgarian monument, date back to the rulings of Khan Tervel (705-707 AD), Khan Krumesiss (738-754 AD) and Khan Omurtag (815-831 AD); they tell how the Bulgarian kings gave support to Byzantine emperors to maintain the throne, who in turn recognised the independence of Bulgaria with the 681 AD treaty.
It is to be outlined that the Madara rider is the only European rock carved monument from the Early Middle Ages.
by rupestre – pictures AA
PLEASE NOTICE that a detailed and useful guide-book by Vasil Marinov, from which many info of this page have been borrowed, is available at the ticket office of the Madara National Historical and Archaeological Reserve (NHAR):
MARINOV V. 2009, National Historical and Archaeological Reserve Madara guide, Sofia.
Madara rider TRACCE photogallery
(23images, pictures by AA) | <urn:uuid:f5204879-8795-4797-9708-71d3650c0136> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.rupestre.net/tracce/?p=8122?shared=email&msg=fail | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.952439 | 1,352 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Millions of dead jellyfish are washing up around the world. ‘The blob’ could be to blame.
By Brandon Specktor
The dead jellies form a ‘crunchy carpet’ of corpses, one expert said.
Like a tourist on a cruise ship, the by-the-wind sailor jellyfish (Velella velella) spends its days drifting aimlessly through the open sea, gorging itself on an endless buffet of complementary morsels.
The jelly straddles the ocean’s surface with a rigid sail poking just above the water and an array of purple tentacles dangling just underneath. As the sail catches wind, the jelly floats from place to place, capturing tiny fish and plankton wherever it roams. Thriving Velella colonies can include millions of individuals, all just partying and chowing down together in the open water. Life is good.
Until, that is, the wind blows a colony of sailor jellies onto shore.
Every year, on beaches around the world, colonies of sailor jellies become stranded by the thousands. There, they dry up and die, becoming a “crunchy carpet” of dehydrated corpses covering the sand, Julia Parrish, a University of Washington professor and co-author of a new study on mass Velella strandings, said.
Sailor jelly strandings are common when seasonal winds change course, but some — like a 2006 event on the west coast of New Zealand — are on another level entirely, with the jellyfish corpses numbering not in the thousands, but in the millions. Why? What force of nature makes some Velella strandings so much larger than others?
Parrish and her colleagues wanted to find out. So, in their new study (published March 18 in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series) they delved into 20 years of Velella observations reported along the west coast of the United States.
The observations came from a program called the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, also known as COASST, which trains citizen scientists to search their local beaches for marine birds that have washed ashore, plus any other unusual animal sightings. COASST’s network covers hundreds of beaches stretching from northern California to the Arctic Circle, according to the group’s website — and, of course, some members have had run-ins with Velella.
The researchers found nearly 500 reports of Velella strandings in the COASST database, sighted on nearly 300 beaches. According to these reports, the most massive die-offs by far occurred during spring months from 2015 to 2019. During those years, dead jellyfish littered more than 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) of continuous coastline, the researchers found.
Those jellyfish die-offs also coincided with a massive marine heat wave known as “the blob.” Beginning in 2013, surface waters off the Pacific coast began heating up to levels never recorded before. The intense warming continued through 2016, tampering with every level of the marine food chain and resulting in mass die-offs of seabirds, baleen whales, sea lions and other creatures. According to the new study, it’s likely that the blob drove the mass die-offs of by-the-wind sailor jellyfish reported during those years.
The catch is, those warming ocean waters may have actually been good for the jellies, the researchers said. As the blob increased ocean surface temperatures, certain fish (such as northern anchovies) benefited from longer spawning seasons, providing more food for Velella jellies to gobble up earlier in the year. This may have caused jellyfish populations to spike before seasonal wind changes blew the jellies ashore in the spring.
In other words, the blob may have helped Velella jellies thrive off the Pacific coast, leading to much larger stranding events those years. The sailor jellies could therefore become climate change “winners” as global warming is predicted to increase the frequency of marine heat waves, the researchers wrote. But their success will come at the expense of other, less fortunate creatures — and a whole mess of jellyfish carcasses on our coasts.
“A changing climate creates new winners and losers in every ecosystem,” Parrish said in the statement. “What’s scary is that we’re actually documenting that change.” | <urn:uuid:720b158b-866d-40e6-b98d-cc47b8936157> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ysb.co.nz/blame-the-blob/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570741.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808001418-20220808031418-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.944965 | 919 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Audio parameters are adjusted using a combination of sliders, knobs, text boxes, and more. Each control has several interaction methods:
- Click and drag – The knob position will follow the mouse pointer relative to the center of the knob.
- Mouse wheel – Roll the mouse wheel while hovering over the knob to turn the knob in 2-step increments.
- Left-click once to enter new text. It is not necessary to enter units (dB, Hz, etc).
Horizontal and Vertical Sliders
- Click and drag – The slider position will follow the mouse pointer.
- Mouse wheel – Roll the mouse wheel while hovering over the slider to move it in 2-step increments.
X/Y Pads and EQ Graph
- Click and drag the control dot to change two parameters at the same time.
- Normally, this is used to control the frequency (horizontal) and gain (vertical) of a filter. | <urn:uuid:a5a56d18-8b2c-433d-9a4e-4099bf64aad4> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://sdk.bongiovidps.com/docs/dps-profile-creator-2-user-manual/window-management/controls/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.752124 | 201 | 2.09375 | 2 |
“So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”
(1 Thessalonians 2:8) This verse from the second lesson on Sunday, October 23, 2011, jumped out at me. Youth and adults who attended the 2009 ELCA Youth Gathering could have written that to the people ofNew Orleans.
Whether they know it or not, through their presence in New Orleans ELCA youth and adults are modeling a way of being in mission that defines our church. This form of mission is about relationship-building, about deep investment — emotionally, physically, mentally, financially and spiritually, and it is about self-emptying. This way of being in mission is called “accompaniment.” “The ELCA Global Mission unit defines accompaniment as walking together in solidarity that practices interdependence and mutuality. In this walk, gifts, resources and experiences are shared with mutual advice and admonition to deepen and expand our work within God’s mission.” (http://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Global-Mission/How-We-Work/Accompaniment.aspx)
Notice that it is God’s mission in which we participate and not our own. For example, immediately after Hurricane Katrina devastated theGulfCoast, disaster workers inMississippitold us they had to figure out what to do with hundreds of winter coats, hats and mittens that caring people sent. Really? What were people thinking sending winter gear to the Gulf? This expression of care, which I’m sure came from kind, good-intentioned people, became a health hazard (as rodents took up residence in the mountains of useless materials that piled up), and required the attention of disaster workers who were there to serve people who had lost everything. That is an example of humans responding out of their own need to help rather than offering what is most needed. God’s mission or my need? Americans, especially, do it all the time. We act as if theUnited Stateswere at the center of the earth’s orbit. We think the rest of the world should want to be like us, and we act accordingly.
If ELCA youth journey to New Orleans this summer, and then return to their home congregations with an understanding that it is God’s kingdom that is truly exceptional and God’s way that should be advanced, then they’ll be on the path of discipleship. The fruits of their discipleship will be identification with the poor and weak, the sick, those who are treated like outcasts and those called strangers. In Ephesians, the book from which our core text (Ephesians 2:14-20) is chosen, Paul says the church was to show that people — Jews/Gentiles — would get along because they love Jesus and are committed to the things the church is committed to. The confession that Jesus is Lord was one thing that held them together in community, their actions of feeding the poor, caring for widows and orphans, raising the dead, and serving all people were the living out of this confession.
I, for one, am really excited to welcome a generation of leaders in our church whose radical identification with “the other” becomes the Lutheran charism. | <urn:uuid:3351394a-a828-46dd-8ff1-88ee463cbf64> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://blogs.elca.org/youthgathering/because-you-have-become-very-dear-to-us-1-thessalonians-28-november-2011/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.975677 | 723 | 1.679688 | 2 |
You and I both know that dogs are better than cats. From the way they are always happy to see you to how they know how to comfort you when you’re sad. I mean, come on it’s basically a scientific fact that dogs beat cats every time.
So if dogs are better than cats…what does that mean about their owners? Are dog owners better than cat owners? Well, the research is in and the answer is…
An absolute YES!
So why exactly are dog owners better and happier than cat owners? Well, we’ve got 12 reasons for you backed up with research that will have you begging for a dog or wishing you could go home to play with yours right this second!
Table of Contents
12. They Can Detect Cancer
That’s right! One study found that some dogs can naturally sniff out cancer. If they aren’t inherently able to, research found that a dog could be trained within about 3 hours to detect cancer early on just by its smell.
11. They’re smart
Research shows that dog owners are 28% more likely to be students. Instead of being lazy know it alls that are busy sitting on the couch and only show you love when they feel like it. Dog owners are busy improving themselves.
10. They Can Always Find An Answer For You
Scientists found that dog owners are 23% more likely to be iPhone users. So anytime you have a question, ask your dog owning friend to whip out his iPhone and find you an answer.
9. They Can Take A Chill Pill
Research found that in general dog owners are less stressed than their cat-owning counterparts. That’s right cat owners, you may be all sassy, but that’s cool we aren’t gonna stress about it.
8. They’ll Love Ya When You Need It Most
Dog owners are typically more nurturing. They know when you need a hug and will be happy to give it to you. Even if you have decided you are their sworn enemy.
7. They Love Children
Dog owners love the kiddoes. (Probably because they’re not self-absorbed *cough* cats) Being nurturing and taking care of their pack is such a part of their personality that research found that they’re 24% more likely to have kids. Give it enough time and all those cat owners will be outnumbered by the much better dog-owner.
6. They Got Your Back!
Dog owners are naturally more supportive. Scientists found that dog owners like to be a part of a pack, they are better team players and are more likely to work well in a team environment.
5. They Can Take a Joke
Dog owners love to laugh. They’re 30% more likely to enjoy slapstick humor and impressions. They want to enjoy life and a major part of that is laughing at the small stuff and having a good time. I.e. not brooding and trying to take over the world.
4. They’re Responsible
Team Players that are also responsible? Now that sounds like a winning combination! Dog Owners are 28% more likely to own their own home. Want a sassy, moody, and unreliable person? Go Get a Cat. Want someone who can pay the bills and take care of his pack? Get a Dog!
3. They Know People
Not only are they happier and more able to laugh, but they’re also more personable. Research found that they are 11% more likely to know their neighbors by name. When was the last time you said “Hi” to your neighbors?
2. They’re Super Fun!
Researches found that they’re 15% more likely to be extroverts. Fun at parties, willing to say hi and talk to you. Dog owners want to make friends and be a good friend.
1. They’re Accepting
Research found that 70% of dog owners would allow a cat to live in their house while 68% of cat owners said there’s no way a dog could live in their house, even if they had adequate space and accommodations. Meaning that dog owners are willing to help other animals and love others. For a cat owner you have to fit a certain mold and criteria in order to earn their love.
So there you have it – there is scientific research that proves that dog owners are fun loving, out-goining, smart individuals that love their fellow man and are responsible enough and willing to help others even if it is not convenient for them. There friendship is undying, they are loyal, and they want what is best for you. They want to be the best friend that they can be and are there to support and love you in your best and worst times. | <urn:uuid:38aec0b7-2fa0-4a5d-a136-5d60f8e1b2b6> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://lonemind.com/12-reasons-dog-owner-awesome/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.9764 | 1,001 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Mentoring and coaching plays a vital role in:
- Developing and supporting doctors
- Nurturing medical leaders
- Helping a doctor achieve their full potential
As a psychiatrist, it can help you at any stage of your career.
In dealing with the ever changing NHS, mentoring is one of the tools used to build personal resilience.
Dr Janice Birtle, the Specialist Adviser for Mentoring is working to champion mentoring and coaching throughout the College, and to support the setting up of mentoring schemes and to develop mentor training.
A mentor is a person who will support you by providing advice and support at any stage of your career.
Your mentor will usually be more experienced and qualified than you. They are often a senior person in the organisation.
The mentor can pass on knowledge and experience, provide or recommend opportunities which you may not have considered, so you can develop skills and competencies to progress your career, and provide contacts that you wouldn’t normally access.
- A personal approach to a recommended mentor or known senior colleague often works well.
- Most mental health trusts have in-house mentoring schemes for consultants, or know how to access mentors. Contact your clinical or medical director.
- If you are a trainee or involved in training, contact your Deanery to find out about their mentoring schemes.
- The Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management runs a mentoring scheme.
- Some College Divisions are developing mentoring schemes, with lists of volunteer mentors. This might help if you can’t find a mentor within your own organisation, or would prefer not to. Please contact us at email@example.com if you would like the details of your Division mentoring lead.
- The College has a small team centrally that oversees mentoring and takes the lead in managing the ‘Mentoring Network’.
- Nearly all the Divisions have their own mentoring leads which together make up the Mentoring Network. The leads are instrumental in promoting and supporting mentoring in their areas.
- Mentoring and coaching guide (unfortunately the training for new mentors mentioned in this guide is currently on hold, we are looking at ways to hold virtual training for mentors, please check this page regularly for updates)
- Guidance on setting up a mentoring scheme
- Guide to mentoring for psychiatric trainees
- Model mentoring agreement
- What is Mentoring? - Health Education England
Experiences of Mentoring
Dr Jan Birtle, Specialist Advisor for Coaching and Mentoring at the College, interviewed Dr Adrian James and Dr Hilary Grant about their experiences of mentoring. | <urn:uuid:1195e5da-9dc3-4553-a8c2-e05b8db5519b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/members/workforce-wellbeing-hub/mentoring-and-coaching | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570741.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808001418-20220808031418-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.932013 | 553 | 1.84375 | 2 |
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